See endnotes for content warnings if you think you're squeamish.
Finally. Triumph burned brightly in his veins. His skin tingled with anticipation, and his magic coiled itself tightly in wait, ravenous.
Harry stood at the edge of a clearing ringed with towering golden larches. At the centre was a modest cabin obviously wrought by magic—the trusses seemed to have grown straight out of the ground and twisted themselves into shape, for they still sprouted pale leaves, and the wooden surface in between betrayed the seamless perfection of undisguised transfiguration. There was no door.
Inhaling sharply, he tasted the air. Malice and old fear were the strongest flavours. He smiled.
"Alecto, Amycus, secure the perimeter," he whispered, holding up a hand. Two of his robed and masked compatriots stepped out and raised their wands. A blue wave pulsed around the edge of the clearing before vanishing into the night. Behind their group, the trees began to stretch and crowd together until they closed up into a single, looming gestalt.
"We proceed," he murmured. The sister glanced to him in surprise, the whites of her eyes glimmering in the moonlight. He nodded to her. "Worry not."
They walked as one, a dark, slithering shadow. Their feet stirred up the sweet scent of rot from the cold, slick leaves carpeting the ground. Malevolence licked at Harry but slunk away as it was lashed by a wisp of his magic. He raised his wand and drew a rectangle into the cabin wall. With a mocking smile, he knocked.
The rectangle fell cleanly inwards with a thunk, and a green curse flew out from the dust. Harry batted it into the sky with a careless motion of his off hand. Incandescent rage surged through him for a moment, freezing and setting in his blood.
"Igor," he called out softly, "Don't play with fire. You'll only hurt yourself."
He whipped his wand forward and a dozen snakes shot out. He heard a strangled cry. Flashes of spell light briefly revealed a human figure stumbling about. Another pair of curses hurtled towards Harry, and he caught them with a sigh, letting them fizzle against his skin.
The cabin's occupant had made a fatal mistake in diverting his attention, for Harry's serpents soon reported that their task was complete. He took a step forward and, finding it too impenetrably dark for his liking—he wanted to see every detail—carved a precisely circular hole in the ceiling.
A beam of moonlight struck his captive's sweating, bearded face. It was the only part of his disgusting body visible. The rest was completely obscured by a mass of pleasantly green constrictors. Like hungry buzzards, the Death Eaters swooped into the small room and formed a ring around the spectacle.
"Dolohov," Harry said, and one of them whipped out his wand, making a wide slash. A jet of purple flame found its mark and sank into the captive's skin. Though there was no outward effect, Harry felt the watchful force of the curse like clinging static.
Satisfied with the preparations, Harry suspended his captive in the air with a flick of his wand and held up his other hand. A stick of wood rolled out from beneath the mass of snakes and came hurtling into his open palm. Deliberately, he held the wand up so that the bound man could see it, extracting a faint whimper.
"You won't be needing this now, will you?" he asked. Flicking his hand to send his own wand back into his sleeve, he placed both hands on the other man's wand and pressed. The wood splintered, revealing a shimmering, stringy core, and it drew an agonised wail from the man, as if it were his bone that was breaking. That too could be arranged.
"Break his legs," he hissed to his snakes, and this time his captive screamed with satisfying vigour.
To his human followers, he said, "What shall we do? It seems as though we've caught ourselves a traitor. His crimes need no explanation, but perhaps I shall repeat them for his own benefit, since he doesn't seem to have understood. Running, hiding, slinking about in the woods—my knights, tell me, is this behaviour the sign of a repentant soul?"
He looked around the circle, which rustled with shaking heads and murmurs of, "No, my lord."
Harry nodded slowly. "What was I to think, but that this errant knight had left us forever? Igor Karkaroff, you stand accused of treason. Thinking that your master had fallen, you gave up the names of your brothers and sisters, consigning them to suffer in Azkaban so that you might walk free. A grave offense, but one that you might have recovered from."
He stopped there, relishing in the surprise in those beady black eyes. Was that disbelief, perhaps? What was there to disbelieve when the truth could never be known?
"But then," he continued, lowering his voice so that his followers had to lean forward to properly hear, "when your master returned, after ten long years, what did you do? Instead of crawling back to him and begging to repay what you owed, you ran from him. You deserted the one to whom you swore eternal service. So, Igor, how do you plead?"
A smattering of laughter echoed around the circle. Harry let a tiny smile touch his lips. Igor said nothing. He could taste the man's terror without even opening his mouth.
Suddenly, Harry's face grew blank. He was finished with small talk.
"Macnair," he said, waving to his left, and a burly man stepped forward eagerly. "Cut off his hands."
The snakes obligingly shifted to expose the traitor's hands. This finally seemed to startle Igor out of his stupor. He began struggling in earnest, though there was little room to move. Amusingly, he seemed to be trying to pull his limbs back underneath his writhing bonds.
Macnair's own large hand darted into the gap and caught his bony wrist with little difficulty, pulling it out for all to see.
"No, no, please! Please, Master," Igor babbled, addressing Harry.
"What did you call me?" Harry asked after a pause, as if he had misheard.
"Master, please, please," the traitor sobbed.
"You dare? You do not have the right to call me your master," Harry whispered "Are you not the one who left of your own will? Rejected me by choice?"
"Please, I'm sorry, please…"
Growing bored of this prattle, Harry silenced him with a flick of his wand. More laughter from the onlookers.
Macnair had paused to look up at him. Harry nodded. "What are you waiting for? Go ahead."
"Yes, Master," said Macnair with much relish. From beneath his robes he produced a small axe and without much ceremony swung it at Igor's exposed wrist. The traitor's mouth opened wide and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
Harry thought he might enjoy this silent suffering more. Incessant screaming could wear on one's sensitive hearing.
The axe had been stopped by the bone, and Karkaroff's half-severed hand was jerking feebly in Macnair's, dribbling blood. "Oops, sorry," said Macnair unapologetically. He swung again, missed his original incision, and finally chopped the hand off at a somewhat lower point. Blood sprayed onto his robes and the floorboards. He dropped the limp flesh and crushed it with his boot.
"Next," he said, and captured the remaining hand. Tears were pouring down Karkaoff's face. Some of the Death Eaters had looked away. Harry understood; Macnair's tastes weren't for everyone. Most preferred the cruciatus curse, but it really was only the most basic and expedient punishment. They had ample time and opportunity now. There were many kinds of torture that went beyond physical pain, and the cruciatus was woefully inadequate on that front.
Macnair gleefully stacked both ruined hands together, posing them with his wand so that they formed obscene gestures. Then he shot a jet of continuous fire at them, roasting them, finally turning to the heavily bleeding stumps and also cauterizing them as an afterthought.
"How's that?" he asked Karkaroff. "Looks good enough to eat, doesn't it?"
Harry watched in delight as Macnair levitated a charred hand up to Karkaroff's mouth. The traitor's eyes were wide and black with horror. He clamped his mouth closed and refused to open even as Macnair bumped his cooked fingers inelegantly against his lips.
"Perhaps our old friend needs some help," Harry said with faux sympathy. "Yaxley?"
"Imperio," said Yaxley tonelessly, raising his wand. Snivelling had never appealed to him.
Expression suddenly going slack, Karkaroff opened his mouth and took a generous bite with some difficulty, as the flesh inside the burnt skin was skill raw and glistening. He chewed and swallowed quite properly before going in for another bite, this time crunching through bone. Macnair fed him about half the hand before he seemed to decide that it was taking too long and just shoved the remainder into his mouth, gagging him.
Awareness hit Karkaroff like lightning—he convulsed and sputtered, trying desperately to spit out the remains of his hand, but Macnair had not let up on his charm and was actively trying to press it deeper into his throat. The room was overtaken by girlish giggles.
"Master, may I have a turn?" Bellatrix asked like an impatient child. Harry waved his hand indulgently.
"If Walden is finished," he said.
"Go ahead," Macnair grunted, ceding the floor. With a wet gurgle, Karkaroff finally managed to expel the hand, vomiting up some black chunks in the process.
Bella sauntered up to Karkaroff and took out a small knife. Unceremoniously, she grabbed his ruined stump and made a tiny incision. As if paring an apple, she peeled off a flap of skin with a quick sweep of the blade beneath her thumb.
"Oh, Master, can we hear his pretty little screams? Pretty please?" Bella asked, peering up at Harry beneath her eyelashes.
Harry flicked his wand and hoarse sobs immediately joined the intermittent retching. Bella generously healed Karkaroff's abused throat and his whimpering grew higher and smoother.
With a satisfied hum, she exchanged her wand for her knife again, returning to the task of shaving off skin. Singing a jaunty tune under her breath, she held the detached skin up to the light with a considering look. Apparently deeming it satisfactory, she then turned to Karkaroff's sallow face.
Now she took the knife to his tangled grey beard, giving him a very inexpert and bloody shave. Karkaroff held stock-still, perhaps afraid that the knife would stray into his eye if he weren't careful. Once shorn, he found his naked chin the victim of a grotesque mosaic. Bella was happily sticking pieces of his arm skin to his face. She admired the bloody strips for a few moments before she turned to Harry, as if for permission.
He glanced down and saw that she had taken his left arm. Of course.
"Carry on, Bella," he said. She began making careful incisions around the Dark Mark, allowing for a generous margin. At length, she turned her blade and sliced, carving out the entire scar and a good section of glistening red flesh besides. Karkaroff howled.
Bella slicked back his tangled hair and pressed the Dark Mark to his forehead, pinning it with a quick charm and stepping back to admire her handiwork.
"Enough, Bella, we must let those who were most wronged receive their due," Harry said. "Rookwood."
From across the circle, Rookwood stepped forward shakily, hands clasped behind his back where they were no doubt fidgeting. He had no stomach for these sorts of things.
Harry crossed the room himself, carefully cleaning the floor of blood and expectoration as he approached. He traced his wand lightly across Karkaroff's patchwork face. "As I'm sure you know, Augustus here enjoyed ten long years in Azkaban and was deprived of his invaluable position in the Ministry because of you, Igor. Perhaps I was an unsatisfactory master in your eyes, but Augustus, what did Augustus do to deserve your craven betrayal? He is a gentle soul. Is there anyone here who does not take pleasure in his company?"
Harry brandished his wand and a thin tongue of fire shot out to curl threateningly around Karkaroff's face and neck, remaining there like incandescent smoke. He flicked his wrist and the rope straightened out, hanging limply from his wand tip as he circled behind the traitor. With a whispered command, he bade the snakes release their hold and slither into the corners. Karkaroff was in no condition any more to make an escape.
"Strip him," Harry told Rookwood. The thin Death Eater obeyed with trembling hands, extending them as far as he could to unbutton Karkaroff's heavy robe and pushing it from the old man's emaciated shoulders. Going on the run had not done his figure any favours. Harry observed the ridges of the spine in his wrinkly back. With a lazy flick of his arm, he lashed Karkaroff with the fire rope, leaving a faint, reddish welt and eliciting a small yelp.
Coming back around to the front, he said, "Shall we ask Augustus to determine when your punishment ends? You'd like that, wouldn't you? He would say, 'no more, just kill him,' almost immediately."
Rookwood looked a little ashamed, and there were some chuckles and jeers from the circle. Harry smiled and clapped Rookwood on the shoulder, startling him horribly.
"Fret not, my friend, I would not force such an unwanted duty on you. No, instead, we will have Igor himself decide. Yes, that's right, Igor," he said, relishing in the flash of confusion that passed through Karkaroff's clouded eyes. "Tell me when to stop. Tell me when you judge yourself to have repaid what you owe to Augustus here. Look him in the eye, there we go. Ten years in Azkaban, remember, while you lived in comfort. Headmaster of Durmstrang—that's quite the accomplishment."
He offered Karkaroff one last smile before stepping behind him and pivoting, swinging his whip of fire. It didn't move quite correctly at first, too wispy and slow, but he improved it soon enough with a thought, and it began to crack and hiss with satisfying crispness.
"Please, please," Karkaroff mumbled weakly, sobbing as the rope seared into his flesh.
"Please what?" Harry asked, not pausing. "Are you finished already?" That would be surprising—he had estimated that Karkaroff was too afraid to even attempt to save himself.
"No, no, no…" Karkaroff cried. Rookwood stared at him in open fascination, no longer repelled.
"Perhaps your traitorous tongue could be put to use," Harry said. "Who helped you hide? One rarely finds such talent for sale. Why don't you recommend them as your replacement?"
"I won't," Karkaroff choked out in animal fear. He knew the end was coming, and despite everything, clung desperately to life. Harry would respect that attitude if it weren't coming from a traitorous worm.
"You won't? Regretting your resignation, are you? It's rather late for that. Rookwood, make him talk," Harry said.
Rookwood swallowed, glancing up nervously. "Just do as Master says, Igor, please. Spare… spare yourself more suffering."
Harry delivered a particularly vicious lash. Blackened skin bubbled and crinkled, flaking away and revealing the next layer of flesh. Karkaroff screamed. He held on for some time longer, but eventually, Rookwood's imploring eyes, glimmering from behind the skull mask, did their work.
"He's nobody special, just a dark arts dealer," Karkaroff bit out hoarsely, and Harry lowered his wand, listening. "His name is Joachim Petri."
Petri? Why was Petri's name coming out of this man's mouth? He knew no Joachim Petri but at the same time the man's familiar face was flashing before his eyes. He smiled.
"Very good, Igor. Allow me to grant you a last reward. Avada Kedavra."
Harry woke up with green light flashing behind his eyelids and his heart pounding furiously. Petri was in trouble! He had to warn him about the Dark Lord's newfound interest. Harry shook his head, trying to disentangle himself from the still-vivid spark of curiosity, bright against the backdrop of dark satisfaction. In his mind's eye he saw Karkaroff choking on his own severed hand, and Harry had to hold back bile, his silver hand clenching into a tight fist. He pressed his face into his pillow, shuddering.
When the wave of nausea passed, he sat up and checked the time. Two in the morning. Slowly, he sank back into his bed, drawing his legs up to his chest and hugging them tightly as he worked to ease his erratic breathing. There wasn't anything he could do right now. Everybody was asleep, because it was the middle of the night.
No. That wasn't right. Petri would be awake. Rosenkol would be awake. Harry sat up and kicked the covers away, shrugging on a robe as he crept over to the bathroom. The quiet snores and even breathing of the other boys accompanied him the whole way like a suffocating blanket.
It was uncomfortably bright in the toilet, and Harry realised that he had forgotten to put on his glasses when he couldn't make out the features in his reflection. Shutting the door behind him, he muttered, "Rosenkol."
Nothing happened, and he felt a little foolish. He was at Hogwarts—the elf had no reason to be listening for him.
"Rosenkol!" he called a little more loudly, his voice echoing off the tiled walls. There was a soft 'pop' and Harry jumped despite himself as Rosenkol appeared in mid-air and dropped to the floor in an elegant bow, his pointed nose brushing the floor.
"Wizardling is calling for Rosenkol?"
"Yes, sorry, I've got a message for Master Joachim. I…" Harry stopped, realising suddenly that Rosenkol and Petri didn't know about his visions. He was the one who had made it that way in the first place. How could he have forgotten? Well, he just wouldn't mention them. Steeling himself, he continued, "I think he's in danger. From the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord knows he was helping a traitor—Karkaroff. Igor Karkaroff is dead."
Rosenkol's eyes widened and Harry could tell that he recognised the name.
"Rosenkol is telling Master right away," said the elf, snapping his fingers and disappearing.
Harry let out a breath, sliding all the way down the cool wall. There wasn't anything else he could do, so he could just go back to bed now. Instead, he sat there for a long while, letting cold sweat seep through his thin nightgown and shuddering uncontrollably. It felt impossible to un-see what Voldemort's eyes had shown him. The worst part was that the thrill and fascination of it were equally unforgettable, superimposed over his own revulsion like spun sugar floating in a cesspool.
A thunk echoed around the bathroom and Harry scrambled to get to his feet, only to slip back down as his legs tried to go in two directions at once. For a moment, he thought Rosenkol had come back, but it was just Terry, hopping on one foot and cradling his knee, which he looked to have smashed into the doorjamb. He was cursing under his breath.
"Oh, hey. What are you doing on the floor?" Terry whispered as he looked over, shoving the door shut behind him with one shoulder.
Harry licked his parched lips, tugging his legs up to his chest. "Just taking a moment. Nightmare."
Terry winced. "That's the worst, mate."
The sight of a familiar person, warm and alive and unthreatening, helped to bring Harry back to himself. He managed to push himself to his feet, his heart thudding dully in his ears. Terry disappeared into a stall, humming absently, and Harry, shivering now, stumbled back into the silent darkness of the dormitory. The indent he'd left in his bed was long cold. He shoved the covers over his head and curled up, teeth chattering as he rubbed his feet together. He could grab his wand and cast a hot-air charm. He didn't.
He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, bright light shone through the cracks in his bed hangings, and birdsong was streaming in alongside a chilly draught. He pawed his glasses onto his face and peered around blearily, noting with confusion that all the other beds were made up and empty. He grabbed his wand.
"What time is it?"
Eleven, apparently. Late by some measures, but Michael and Oliver were known to sleep until well past noon on Saturdays. Harry stared listlessly at the wall for a few moments before the explanation came to him: quidditch. Ravenclaw wasn't playing—it was Hufflepuff versus Gryffindor—or Terry probably would've woken him.
He lay back and stared into the canopy of his bed, debating whether he actually wanted to go to the game. Hufflepuff was almost guaranteed to win, with how disastrous the Gryffindor seeker had been all last term. The rest of the team wasn't so much better than Hufflepuff that they could hope to get a hundred fifty points ahead.
Mind made up, he removed his glasses and went back to sleep.
It was lunchtime by the time he felt human enough to get dressed and leave the dormitory. He merged into a stream of students entering the Great Hall from outside, searching for his year mates at the Ravenclaw table.
As he sat, he noticed that the hall was abnormally quiet, the clinking of silverware and dishes apparent against the hum of subdued conversation. There were long faces all around.
"How was the match?" Harry asked, eyes darting back and forth between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables. Nobody looked particularly happy, which was peculiar.
"Did you just get up?" Terry asked as he sat down, eyeing his lack of cloak and scarf with a raised brow.
Harry nodded.
"Lucky you. Dementors crashed the game," Terry said, shuddering with his whole body. "Merlin, I'm starving. It's like I got hollowed out."
He began loading chipolatas onto his plate, heedless of Harry's startled gaping.
"Is everyone okay?"
"Mhm." Terry swallowed his food and gesticulated widely with his fork and knife. "Dumbledore drove them off with this great big silver bird. It was pretty brilliant, actually, now that I think about it. Anyway, got any plans for today?"
Harry took a moment to think. "Charms club. Homework. Duelling, I suppose."
Terry glanced up in surprise. "You're still going to duelling?"
"It's useful," Harry said, shrugging. He hadn't been sure whether he wanted to go today, but in saying it found that it was true. Despite whatever problem Snape had with him, up to and including being a Death Eater, he actually was teaching honest duelling skills.
"I suppose," said Terry, clearly unconvinced. "Have you got time to help me with the fire-making charm later? I can help you with transfiguration. Or history."
"History, definitely history," Harry said. Terry slept as much as anybody else in Professor Binns's class, but that was because he already knew all the goblin rebellions back to front. "After lunch?"
Terry gave him a thumbs up.
Instead of going to a classroom, they went outside to practice the charm. It was freezing, and Harry didn't have his cloak, but he made do with the hot air charm.
"I don't want to accidentally burn down the castle," Terry explained, leading him towards the lake.
Harry raised an eyebrow. "It's stone. Outside is way more flammable."
"Okay, you got me. I just don't want Filch to walk in on us. No unsupervised magic practice and all."
"Is that a rule? I thought it was just no magic in the corridors. I practise spells in classrooms all the time," said Harry.
Terry made a flailing motion. "But this is the fire-making charm, not like levitation. Fire!"
Harry decided not to mention that he tried destructive charms indoors on a regular basis. "There's a way to make it not burn anything. You just have to change the wand movement a little."
Terry groaned. "Don't go extracurricular on me, mate. I just want to pass."
"You're literally not allowed to say that anymore," Harry grumbled. "Top seven in every class."
"That was a fluke!" Terry protested. Harry levelled an unimpressed look at him. "Let me rephrase—that was on purpose because I made sure just to study the things I thought would be on the exam. And I write great first drafts, you know me. I'm too lazy to edit my essays, so I have to get them right on the first try. But getting good marks doesn't mean I'm good at magic. You're actually good at magic."
"I'm only good at charms," Harry muttered.
"Most of the spells that people actually use are charms," said Terry with a knowing nod. They walked for a while until they reached the pebbled shore of the lake, where Terry kicked aside some icy stones to clear a patch of ground. "Here's good. Let's grab a few sticks and pile them here."
"Are you trying to make a campfire?" said Harry, bemused.
Terry shook his head. "No, but don't I need something to set on fire?"
"It'll burn on its own for a few seconds. You don't need fuel if you don't want it to last," Harry said.
"I knew it," Terry muttered. "Oliver made it sound all reasonable somehow, that you need wood for fire. Nothing against muggle-borns, but I shouldn't have trusted him about theory."
Harry watched Terry perform the fire-making charm with a critical eye. His wand movements were economical and precise. They conjured up a single spark, which sputtered out almost instantly.
"You've got to make your wand movement bigger. Like this. Incendio," Harry said, sweeping with his arm. A curl of flame shot into the air, bringing with it a wave of uncomfortable heat.
"Nice," said Terry, trying to copy him. He got it on the first try. "I swear that's different from how Professor Flitwick did it and from the textbook."
"Professor Flitwick doesn't always follow the textbook exactly," Harry agreed. "And this is just how I learned it."
"Just curious, but have you got a Gregorovitch wand?" Terry asked.
"A what?" said Harry. "I mean, I don't know. My wand used to belong to a… relative."
"Can I see?"
Terry held out his own wand and gestured for Harry to compare them side by side. He lifted it up and inspected the base. Curious, Harry followed his gaze and saw the same spiral pattern at the end of the grip.
"Yeah, I think both our wands are Gregorovitch. Mine used to belong to my great aunt. I reckon ours were made before the nineteen thirteen international wand movement standardisation initiative," Terry concluded with a satisfied nod.
"The what?" said Harry blankly.
"So every school used to teach different wand movements for the same basic spells, and wandmakers would account for that somehow. Don't ask me how, because I have no idea. But that means it's harder to cast some spells with old foreign wands like ours." Terry blew a raspberry into the sky. "But this is the only family wand that had any response to me. Dad says it'll make me better at advanced magic later. But I don't care about later. I want to do less work now."
Harry examined his willow wand, as if expecting to divine its peculiarities on sight. He resolved to compare it to his new wand later, and perhaps revisit the wand movements outlined in the Standard Book of Spells.
As promised, Terry accompanied Harry to the library to help him compose his history essay. The main advantage of his presence was that Harry hardly had to look anything up, since Terry knew it all by heart. A few paragraphs in, Hermione came over to join them, at which point she and Terry practically wrote Harry's essay for him.
Afterwards, Harry remembered to relay to Hermione what Professor Flitwick had told him about the galleon and the rationale behind the law against buying muggle items.
"I never knew about that treasure thing," Terry said, leaning forward with a glint in his eye. "Goblins won't let any wizards write books about how their magic works. But I never even considered that Professor Flitwick would know. This changes everything."
Hermione looked put out. "They've probably got a good reason not to want wizards knowing these things," she said. "I mean, just look at how they're treated. They're second-class citizens."
Terry snorted. "Trust me. They give as good at they get. Binns hasn't covered the most recent goblin rebellion yet, but that's the worst one by far. In fact, it's the reason for that law against buying muggle items, and a whole load of other laws. We had to bend backwards just to get them to stop coming out in public to brandish swords at people. Goblins not being allowed on the surface isn't even a real concession for them. They hate sunlight and they hate wizards."
Hermione wasn't as bad as Lisa, who would have shut Terry down by now, but Harry could see outrage percolating from behind her furrowed brows nonetheless. Harry rolled his eyes. Terry couldn't go five minutes without taking an inflammatory position.
"I had an idea about how to get around that law," Harry said as loudly as he dared. He glanced over his shoulder reflexively, though Madam Pince's desk wasn't even in sight.
"Just ignore it," Terry suggested. "Granger, you aren't the first muggle-born to try to make some quick coin with exotic muggle artefacts. You just have to learn to be more discreet."
"I'm not breaking the law," Hermione said, glaring daggers at him.
"I was thinking," Harry said, putting his arm down on the table deliberately between them. "That you could charm your muggle stuff, and that would make it your magical creation."
Hermione considered this for a moment, and then said, "But don't you think that could be a misuse of muggle artefacts?"
Harry straightened up, incredulous. "How is that misuse?"
"There's a Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office that Ron's father works for. I think you've got to get approval before you can charm muggle-made things," Hermione said.
Harry frowned. He did vaguely remember hearing about that office before. "But why? It's not like you're going to sell them back to muggles."
Hermione shrugged. "I'm not sure, but that's how it is, based on what I've read. Maybe you ought to read up more on law yourself, if you're interested in why."
Harry wrinkled his nose, thinking of the giant tome Hermione had shown him before. "No thanks."
"It's because the Ministry of Magic has licences for everything," said Terry. "And fines. Fines everywhere for if you dare wave your wand the wrong way. And that's because of the goblin rebellions, and how they can't collect enough taxes because of them."
Hermione sighed loudly. "I'll look into some other way of making money, to be safe. Perhaps I can learn to make things from scratch."
Harry shook his head at that. "That's artificing. You have to get approved by the Artificer's Office to sell new inventions. And if you're making someone else's invention, then you have to get their permission."
At this, Hermione tugged at her hair and frowned in earnest. "How on earth are you meant to make galleons then, if your parents aren't a witch and wizard?"
Harry thought on this for a moment, and then said, "I expect you aren't, and that's why they've got the Hogwarts fund." When Hermione looked unsatisfied, he added, "Or you can just go the black market route, and don't get caught."
"Harry!" she breathed with scandalised mirth.
"That's what I said already," Terry pointed out.
"But you weren't joking," Hermione told him severely. Harry pressed his lips together, shrugging helplessly at Terry. He hadn't been joking either. She turned back to Harry, and he quickly composed his expression into something netural. "You're probably right about the Hogwarts fund. But I still don't like it. Anyway, enough about that. Have you got any more homework?"
"No," said Harry, at the same time as Terry said "Lockhart's essay," with a theatrical groan.
"You can copy mine later," Harry told him, since he felt like his help with the fire-making charm hadn't really counted for much. Terry immediately beamed.
"Do you want to practise the patronus charm some more?" Hermione asked Harry. After a moment, she turned awkwardly to Terry and said, "You can come, too."
"No thanks," Terry said immediately. "That sounds very hard and very not on the curriculum."
"All right, but I've got charms club in half an hour," Harry told Hermione.
"Oh, never mind then. I don't think we'll be able to find a teacher to supervise in time," she said.
"Would you be interested in coming to charms club?" Harry asked her.
Hermione bit her lip. "What do you do there?"
Harry explained the general format of the club, and she gave a non-committal shrug.
"Sorry, I think I'd rather finish up some reading," she said.
"I suppose you've got the whole Standard Book of Spells memorised," Harry recalled. He wished he'd been able to make some progress of his own on that front, but he'd had other, non-standard spells to learn. Guiltily, he remembered that he needed to get started on his resurrection stones. He'd been putting it off after being unable to get the patronus charm to work properly, still reluctant to voluntarily seek out the dementors with only occlumency to protect him, even though he did not realistically have any other options.
He headed to charms club early, having no desire to return to the Ravenclaw common room only to turn right back around five minutes later. Penelope was already at the rotunda, setting up rolls of parchment across each glass bench. She looked up to greet him as he entered.
"We're doing the ironing charm today," she told him.
"Oh, excellent," said Harry. He'd voted for that one. It was one of the many somewhat useful charms that he had never got around to learning before. He took a seat near the door and Penelope instructed him to crumple up the parchment as best he could.
Other club members began trickling in soon enough. When Ginny arrived, she strode straight towards Harry and sat down heavily beside him.
"Did the book go back to you?" she demanded at a harsh whisper. Harry blinked in incomprehension for a few moments before panic seized him.
"No, did it disappear for you?"
Ginny shook her head. "Worse. I got busted by Dumbledore. I don't know how—I swear I didn't snitch, but he knew I had it."
"He confiscated it, then?" Harry asked, his stomach twisting uncomfortably.
"Yeah. I thought, maybe he wouldn't write in it and it would go back to you," Ginny muttered, glaring at the floor.
"He probably has some way of preventing the spell from working," Harry said, sighing. "I hope he didn't tell my uncle."
Ginny winced. "Dunno, but I have a note for you. It's probably for detention."
She passed him a crinkled bit of parchment. Professor Dumbledore's handwriting could still be made out. It was a simple request to see him at eight in the evening on Tuesday. He wasn't sure if that meant he was in trouble or not.
"Sorry," Ginny said. "I did look through the book, though. There wasn't anything. I mean, none of it was Percy's handwriting. Do you think maybe we've been looking in the wrong place the entire time?"
Harry frowned. "You're sure?"
"I got Fred to show me an anti-cheating spell to check," Ginny confirmed. "Maybe Percy destroyed it, whatever he wrote in there. It makes sense, doesn't it, if it was something bad?"
"It's possible," Harry agreed slowly.
Ginny sighed. "Forget about it. I'm going to focus on looking into Malfoy's dad. I've been thinking, if we can prove that he was the last person to officially own the book, that would be enough, right? For my dad, anyway, and Dad will convince Mum. If it's not technically a dark artefact, then there ought to be a record of it being bought and sold."
Harry was about to protest that this plan seemed like a long shot, and that finding out what Percy had divined had to be the most direct route to understanding why he had killed himself, but he had to remind himself that it was Ginny's brother they were talking about, and Ginny's family that was looking for closure. Maybe it didn't matter, ultimately, what Percy had seen. Maybe it was more important that they had somebody concrete to blame. So he nodded.
"You don't have to help with that," Ginny said. "You've already done a lot, and I feel bad that you got in trouble because of it. I think I can do this on my own."
Without giving him an opportunity to protest, she stood up and left the room. She had timed her escape well. Just then, most of the other club members arrived at once, and Hannah and Neville hurried over to sit on either side of Harry, preventing him from running after her.
"Hey Harry, was the spell Dumbledore used on the dementors this morning the patronus charm?" Hannah asked without preamble.
"I wasn't there, but probably," Harry said, remembering the description Terry had given him. "Are you guys all right?"
Neville nodded. Hannah said, "We're fine now, but it was pretty bad earlier. There must've been hundreds of them. I think I nearly passed out."
"It was like being underwater," Neville mumbled.
"You think we could learn to do the patronus?" Hannah asked.
Harry shrugged. "I've tried it but I can't get it right," he said, eliciting a groan from Hannah.
"Well there's no way we can do it, if even you can't do it. Is there any other way to ward off dementors?"
Harry listed off the options that Professor Flitwick had told him with a regretful mien. "It's all advanced magic."
"It shouldn't happen again, though," Neville said, though his voice was thin. "Professor Dumbledore was really angry. I've never seen him look like that before. I heard him yelling at the dementors that they weren't allowed on the grounds anymore."
"He what?" Harry blurted out in panic, coughing when Hannah and Neville both shot him bemused looks. "I mean, that's great. Are they going to be gone for good?"
"Sadly not," said Hannah, to Harry's relief. "They'll still be there, outside the gates. Honestly, I can't believe they were just allowed to come and go as they pleased before."
Harry grunted in half-hearted agreement. He couldn't believe he hadn't just started his resurrection stones a month ago and been finished with them. Instead of just sneaking into the forest, he might have to make it off the school grounds now. He couldn't delay any longer, or the dementors could move out of his reach entirely.
After charms club, Harry hurried straight back to his dormitory. Dragging his cauldron out from under his bed, he tipped it over and let the stack of books inside slide out onto the floor. He grimaced as he spied the familiar teal binding of A Primer to Contingent Reading, which he supposed was irrelevant now. It spilled open, and a scrap of parchment wedged between the pages caught his eye. Harry fished it out curiously.
It was covered in familiar cramped handwriting. Hastily, Harry took out his charms club member sheet and compared the two pages side by side. The writing belonged to Penelope for certain. He sucked in a breath as he saw the date at the top: October fourteenth, several weeks before Percy's death.
14.10.1992 5 → 22 → 4
The rising star is soon to fall 7
His dearest love from him shall part 7
Between their souls a lightless pall 6
A plight unknown to his heart 6
7766 5 → 31 → 4
rising star = scorpio = Percy's ascendant
rise/fall: success and failure
unknown: key signifier, dangerous. Pall or parting unknown?
2281976 5 → 40 → 4
28 + 5 → 33 → 6
chaos vs stability
Harry squinted at the arcane note. There was arithmancy happening, he was sure. The poem looked suspiciously like a prediction—perhaps it had even come from Bridging the Veil. His heart sped up unwillingly. The last line he understood well enough, at least at face value: four was for chaos, six for stability, and most of the reductions seemed to be pointing towards chaos.
He let out the breath he'd been holding. He supposed he could just ask Penelope to explain it to him. Surely she would understand her own notes better than he could.
As Harry turned towards the door, he paused, biting his lip. This wasn't just circumstantial evidence. If his suspicions were right, this note contained a copy of one of the predictions that Percy had made, the very thing they'd been searching for earlier. Professor Trelawney had advised Harry and presumably Percy not to read their own psychography, and to get somebody else skilled in grammatology to do it. Grammatology was just a type of arithmancy, and Penelope was good at arithmancy, so it followed that Penelope had helped Percy interpret his predictions. If he showed this to her, what was to say she wouldn't realise too much and fall back into melancholy? Or worse, bring about the very future that Percy might have died to prevent? It wasn't Harry's responsibility to look into the matter anymore.
Slowly, Harry turned back around and tucked the note back into the book, though not before scanning the page it had marked. It looked like a dictionary entry for the word 'unknown', only instead of a conventional definition, it gave a wide range of possible meanings. The book seemed to be a guide to interpreting written or spoken predictions.
The unknown, or that which was not known, represented great and inescapable danger. It was ignorance so deep that it could not be rectified even by knowing of its existence.
Harry's mind unwillingly leapt to the fateful words that had been burned into his consciousness—but he shall have power the Dark Lord knows not.
That was, presumably, the same as that unfathomable 'power to vanquish the Dark Lord'. If Lord Voldemort didn't (couldn't) know what it was, then how could Harry, even if he supposedly possessed it?
The Primer was not much help. It only advised that attempting to discover a foretold unknown was futile and almost certain to lead to an undesirable outcome. Reluctantly, Harry shut the book and tried to push the prophecy to the back of his mind. He had more immediate concerns.
Underneath the Primer was Deepeste Risinges, which was the book he had actually come for. Harry picked it up and kicked the rest of his books back into the cauldron.
He carefully reviewed the procedure for making a resurrection stone. There was a spell he needed to use every day for a month while the stones were saturated in dementor essence, so that they would gain its properties. The spell did not look that hard, but he would have to give the dementors something in return for their help. Unfortunately, the only things they were interested in were souls and happiness, neither of which Harry had in abundant reserve.
There was no way he could feed someone else's soul to the dementors, so he would have to somehow grant them access to some happiness they otherwise wouldn't be able to get to. The thought came to him then that he actually had the perfect opportunity now. Dumbledore had barred them from the school grounds. If he promised to let them inside, perhaps at the next quidditch game…
He was going to be in so much trouble if he got caught. He might even get expelled. His stomach did several backflips.
By evening, he still hadn't thought of a better idea. He had instead thought of a plethora of reasons why his current idea was terrible and wouldn't work. For one, he had no idea what kind of protective magic Dumbledore had implemented to keep the dementors out in the first place, and whether it would even be possible for him to circumvent it.
Step one was therefore to get out to the edge of the grounds and inspect the security. Harry set out after dinner, when it was technically before curfew and he wasn't breaking any rules. He wore his invisibility cloak anyway.
A thick knot of malcontent wraiths hung just outside the gates, exuding a nearly tangible cloud of longing. Harry felt their excruciating boredom, their hunger, percolate into him as he stood and watched. It expressed itself as a horrible premonition of doom. Swallowing and taking a moment to fill his mind with only what was needed, Harry approached them.
The sightless gaze of a hundred dementors converged on him at once, like a frigid, grasping claw. Harry pressed on until he was almost up against the iron bars, which were encrusted with brittle ice. He wet his chilly lips.
"Er, hello. Do you remember me?" he said.
A lumpy, desiccated hand reached through the bars and unmistakeably gestured for him to come closer. Harry did so, stopping with his face a hair's breadth from the gate. A ravenous, gaping mouth slammed into the space between the bars, just slightly too wide to pass through. Harry's ears popped and he slumped forward, suddenly enervated. The burn of freezing iron through the thin material of the invisibility cloak shocked him back to awareness, though it did nothing to abate the rushing in his ears or the distant screaming echoing through his skull.
The dementor's hand was still outstretched. Harry reeled, realising that they'd finished the conversation in the blink of an eye. His breath came in short bursts. He swallowed thickly, trying to parse the deluge of information that seemed to be lodged in his throat. The dementors knew exactly what he was after. They would change his stones, and he would let them in during the next quidditch game. All he had to do was open the gate with its key. There was no special magic keeping them out, only a lock and an agreement with the headmaster. But agreements could be broken, if better terms could be obtained elsewhere.
"I don't have the stones with me," Harry said, feeling foolish and worthless. He fought the hollow fatigue and backed away. "I'll bring them tomorrow."
The dementors did not respond. Harry turned away and forced himself not to look back. He could feel the heavy shroud of their presence laid across his shoulders, sucking hungrily at his will to move.
Somehow, he managed to stumble back up the path to the castle. By then, he had worked up the care to cast a hot air charm on his frozen face, though the unnatural exhaustion had not left him. The thought that he was going to have to go visit the dementors every day for the next month was not heartening.
The next evening, it was only as he was already heading down to the gates with his sack of stones in hand that he realised he was going to have to do magic with the dementors there. Worse, there would be no way to tell if the spell had worked until several weeks into the process. He could only hope that his morning spent practising it had been enough.
At least for today, he had already applied the spell to each stone beforehand. He tried to set aside his worries as he approached the waiting dementors, knowing that negative emotions would blossom like poisonous weeds in the wash of their aura.
Again, one of the dementors held its hand out. This time, Harry upended his bag and poured a dozen translucent marbles into the bony palm. The dementor turned and, to Harry's surprise, distributed the marbles to its compatriots so that they each had custody of only one.
Seized by the black hunger that suffused the air around him, Harry asked, "Why?"
Words weren't important. Dementors hardly had ears with which to hear. Harry had given up his meaning well enough. It wafted through the gate like a summer draught. Against his better judgement, which seemed small and apathetic in the cavernous hollow of his chest, he stepped forward and reached through the bars.
The closest dementor swallowed its stone and then grasped Harry's wrist in its punishing grip, pulling his hand up to press it against what might have been its stomach. Harry felt a peculiar resonance in his own gut, just behind his navel, like something was bubbling and sparking. When the dementor released him, he pitched over, dry heaving into the frosted grass.
He was wet, cold, and miserable, and had no desire to move an inch. Above him, the dementors sucked in rattling breaths, but Harry didn't think he had any novel happiness to give. He didn't know why he was even still alive. Why did he try to fight fate? He stared listlessly at his silver hand, which glimmered in the moonlight with arcane patterns projected from the underside of his invisibility cloak.
Some time later, he found himself standing with his back to a roaring fire, bone-white wand raised like a conductor's baton, literally directing an entire string quartet. The instruments appeared to play by themselves, but in reality Harry grasped intimately each part, manipulating the angle of the bow and applying appropriate pressure to each string with his mind. A lively menuetto filled the cosy chamber, at first whimsical, then falling into an anxious cadence. Not pausing, Harry raised his wand higher and surged forward into the next movement, the violins erupting into a frantic phrase, invisible hands flying across fingerboards. It softened into a gentler interlude, before repeating once more with urgency.
Harry was suddenly hit with a strange sense of deja vu. He knew this piece, had heard it somewhere before.
Well of course he knew it. How could he play it otherwise?
Harry's eyes snapped open, the last crescendo of solitary pleasure still fluttering in his chest even as agony erupted all across his frozen body. He forced himself to his feet unsteadily, wincing as pins and needles assaulted his entire left side. Shrugging his cloak back over himself, he hobbled back towards the castle before the dementors could come back. They must have lost interest once he had fallen unconscious.
The next evening Harry cast his dysfunctional patronus charm before he went out. It clung to him like a wispy shroud, the opposite of the dementors' gloomy aura. They were horribly curious about the phenomenon, but for all their scrabbling and squeezing, could not make it through the bars of the gate.
Harry felt much better than he had the previous night—buoyant, almost giddy. He held out his hand expectantly, and one by one the dementors coughed up his marbles to be charmed. They looked more or less the same as they had before and felt cool and dry against his silver palm. He laughed to himself, relieved that there seemed to be no such thing as dementor spit.
Though he remained in good spirits, Harry nonetheless found himself horribly exhausted. It was still well before curfew, but he barely had the strength to drag himself up to Ravenclaw tower and collapse into his bed.
Somehow, he ended up somewhere else, which was upsetting—he was so sure he had managed to crawl under the covers, but it was bright with firelight now instead of the comforting dark behind his curtains.
Also, he was sitting upright and twirling his wand idly between his fingers. There was somebody else, too. A tall man with familiar, blunt features and long blond hair pulled back in a severe braid hovered in the doorway.
"Corban, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Harry asked.
Yaxley dipped his head and entered the room properly, dodging past a beige settee to kneel at his feet.
"My lord, I encountered unexpected resistance from the dark arts dealer. He refused to lend us his aid, and threw off my imperius curse immediately. I was… unable to best him in a duel, so I thought it best to make you aware of my failure as soon as possible." Yaxley reported.
The wand in Harry's hand stilled, now gripped in a proper hold. Though Yaxley maintained a rigid, upright posture, never one to grovel unnecessarily, Harry could smell the fear wafting from him like heavy clumps of mist. They remained in silence for a few moments longer.
Then Harry said, "He left you alive, and, as far as I can see, whole."
"Yes, my lord. We duelled in his shop, and as such, neither of us used detectable dark magic. He expelled me using his anti-intruder protections when I lowered my guard. I did not see him leave the shop later that night. That is, I determined that he had left it, but I could not divine the means," Yaxley said.
"Allow me to summarise," Harry murmured, now somewhat amused. "You failed to convince a fellow practitioner of the dark arts to join our cause, failed to subject him to the curse you claim as your speciality, failed to defeat a shopkeeper in a non-lethal duel, and failed to keep track of him in a known, represented location."
Yaxley, who had an unhealthy relationship with his own dignity, knew better than to defend himself. "Yes, my lord. Please punish me for my failure."
"You want me to punish you?" Harry said, as if surprised. "You are finished with this task, then?"
Yaxley's knuckles went white as his hands curled in the soft carpet. "Unless my lord sees fit to grant me a second opportunity…"
Harry smiled. "Now, Corban, you know better than to placate me with slippery words. You do not want a second opportunity. You believe that you were ill-equipped to complete this task, and still are. I find myself inclined to agree. Crucio!"
Yaxley gasped, collapsing onto his side and shuddering silently. Tears trickled down his lined face. Harry sighed inwardly. In this, as in everything, Yaxley was tediously stoic. Harry lowered his wand after a few seconds, dissatisfied.
"Look at me," he ordered, and Yaxley immediately righted himself and met his gaze. Harry saw gratitude and relief in his limpid eyes. Predictably, Yaxley had no idea how uninteresting he was, and mistook it for mercy. "Forget about the shopkeeper. I want you to focus on Scrimgeour."
"Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord," Yaxley murmured.
Harry nodded in dismissal, spelling the door shut behind Yaxley. He had work to do.
He was settled behind his desk, carefully inking a diagram over a map of the British Isles. He labelled each of the vertices with runic numbers, then crossed out the labels and went over them all again with different numbers. It still wasn't right. What was he missing?
Harry blinked and saw that a stripe of sunlight was filtering through his bed curtains and warming his face. His eyes ached, but he could hear his dorm mates bustling around already, and forced himself to get up.
More visions. He was sure they hadn't been dreams, not least because he could still vividly remember the map and the peculiar dots and lines he'd been drawing, as if he'd just been working on it before bed. He remembered Yaxley, too, no longer aloof and threatening but vulnerable and simple to read. And he didn't have to wonder to know that the shopkeeper that Yaxley had failed to recruit was none other than Petri.
Harry frowned. He didn't know what to feel about Petri rebuffing the Dark Lord so openly. Hadn't Petri been the one to tell Harry to do whatever the Dark Lord said? Now he was going ahead and doing exactly the opposite. Then again, it wasn't as if Petri had a prophecy twisting his fate together with the most dangerous wizard alive. Lord Voldemort probably didn't care about him at all.
All morning, Harry found himself irritable and incapable of concentrating. It was probably attributable to the fact that they had double Defence with Lockhart first thing, which was even more of a travesty than usual. They had just got to Voyages with Vampires, and Lockhart's information about vampires was so wrong that Harry had to sit with his hand pressed to his mouth the whole lesson to keep from blurting out protests. It was ridiculous, because Harry remembered that the book itself had seemed more or less factual—Lockhart just couldn't be bothered to even quote himself correctly.
The man was under the imperius curse, and had to appear useless, Harry reminded himself. It was still impossible to keep the annoyance at bay.
His foul mood persisted through lunch, and he had no appetite, even though he'd barely eaten at breakfast. By the time Potions came around, he apparently looked peaky enough that Hannah suggested he visit the hospital wing.
"I'm fine," Harry muttered, even though he did feel a little faint amidst the potion fumes. He couldn't go to the hospital wing, though. Madam Pomfrey might well notice that he'd recently been exposed to dementors. Spending half the night before last passed out on the ground outside hadn't done his constitution any wonders.
He felt a little better when dinner came around and managed to eat a hearty portion. He was just calculating whether he should do his homework before or after his visit with the dementors when he remembered that he had an appointment with Dumbledore that evening. He groaned. That would likely require him to have all his wits about him. He wasn't sure if he was in trouble, but figured it was best not to presume.
When he entered the headmaster's office, Professor Dumbledore greeted him with a tight expression and bid him take a seat.
"Harry, I must unfortunately preface our meeting with a piece of terrible news. Your uncle was killed last night in an attack."
Harry's heart almost stopped on the spot. "What? But I thought he got away," he demanded, furiously reviewing what he recalled from Yaxley's report. No lethal curses, and it was supposed to have been a failed operation. White noise filled his mind.
Professor Dumbledore looked taken aback. "I'm afraid that isn't the case. We were able to rescue your aunt and cousin, and they are currently in a safe location."
Aunt. Cousin. Harry sucked in a much-needed breath. His actual relatives.
"Right, so… Uncle Vernon is dead?" He didn't know if it was wrong to feel relief, but his whole body tingled from the force of it.
Professor Dumbledore nodded. "I'm sorry."
"What happened?" Harry asked, more in a bid for something appropriate to say than out of any real curiosity.
"Two Death Eaters attacked your relatives' home. The guard we had stationed there was able to subdue one of the Death Eaters, but not in time to save your uncle from the other. He had gone and knocked on the front door, posing as a muggle salesman."
Harry winced, despite himself. He could just imagine Uncle Vernon tearing open the front door, full of bluster, ready to castigate whatever poor soul had dared to disturb the family in the middle of the night, only to be faced with a flash of green.
He was interested now, if only because it was puzzling. "Why would Voldemort go after them, though? And why did you have a guard there, sir? You knew they would be attacked?"
"I suspected. Voldemort is not as unpredictable as he believes himself to be. In fact, his plans are almost transparent in their organisation. He has a list of priorities, you see, and prefers to proceed down it in an orderly fashion," said Professor Dumbledore.
"But sir, why would attacking my relatives be a priority? It's not as if…" Harry trailed off. It was probably in bad taste to admit that he didn't care about them. Uncertainly, he checked the softly swirling void of his mind for some shred of emotion, sadness or guilt or even lingering resentment. He found nothing.
"Voldemort has always made the mistake of seeing people as only objects to be acted upon, rather than actors in their own right, with their own thoughts and feelings. When he failed to kill you as a baby, he did not and still does not understand that it was your mother's love that saved you—he saw only the bloodline curse, and so, to prevent it from happening again, he seeks to eradicate your bloodline," Dumbledore explained.
That made a funny, almost juvenile sort of sense.
"He's not technically wrong, though," Harry said, wrinkling his nose.
Dumbledore sighed. "No, he is not. We are fortunate that his primary aim was thwarted. Forgive me, that was perhaps crass. It is of course tragic that your uncle was caught in the crossfire."
"Oh, er, right," said Harry.
"The funeral is scheduled for next Sunday. I can arrange for an escort off Hogwarts' grounds for you to attend, as well as to visit with your aunt and cousin beforehand if you would like."
"Please, sir," he said before he could think. Then the horror of these words caught up to him, plunging him into wakefulness like ice water dripping down his neck.
"Very well," Dumbledore began, but Harry cut him off.
"I'm under the imperius curse," he said.
There was an awkward beat of silence, during which the icy feeling got worse and Harry felt like crawling under his chair.
"I am heartened that you are able to recognise it," Professor Dumbledore finally said.
"Right. I mean, you were right this whole time, sir. And I mean, I don't want to go to the funeral." Realising how bad this sounded, Harry hastily amended, "Voldemort wants me to go to the funeral, so I shouldn't, right?"
Dumbledore hesitated visibly. "That Voldemort desires something is not incontrovertible reason not to do it, though I admit it does give me pause."
"He'll want me to assassinate my relatives, sir," Harry said with confidence.
"My dear boy, even the imperius curse cannot bring you to do something completely against your nature, and certainly not when you have spent so long fighting it," Dumbledore stressed.
Harry nodded wordlessly. A hard lump had formed in the back of his throat at the thought. Could he really rely on the premise that murder was against his nature? He knew murder was bad and difficult, of course, but when he played out imaginary scenarios, probed deeper into the response in his chest, there was no twist, no jarring revulsion demarcating the boundary of his selfhood.
"It is your decision," Dumbledore said at length.
Harry furrowed his brows. "Even though I'm under the imperius curse?"
"You are as much affected by the imperius curse as I, at this moment. Though it can be terribly insidious in its ability to escape the victim's notice, it becomes quite obvious once the victim has identified its influence as separate."
Harry knew that Dumbledore was right, but he also knew that the Dark Lord was not one to give up. How many times had he fallen into complacency and forgotten the curse, only to come to his senses in a panic? How many times had he failed to come to his senses at all? "I still think I shouldn't go to the funeral, sir."
"I presume you wish to avoid visiting your aunt and cousin at all?" Dumbledore paused, and at Harry's silent agreement, said, "Very well. Now then, if you are amenable, let us proceed to the intended topic of this evening's chat—Voldemort's activities in China."
He paused to pluck a scroll from behind a stack of books on his desk.
"You found something, sir?" Harry asked.
Professor Dumbledore nodded. "I am fortunate to have many friends around the world, including in the far east. They were able to give me a location and a rough time frame, and even a description of Voldemort as he presented himself. All that remains is to uncover is how he hoped to use what he learned there. For that, I shall require your assistance."
Harry felt his eyebrows shoot up. "Me, sir?"
"To bring to light information that nobody knows is the realm of divination, and as I have mentioned before, it is not my strong suit," said Dumbledore.
"But what about Professor Trelawney?" Harry protested. "I haven't even taken her class yet."
Dumbledore stroked his beard with one hand. "Alas, I have ignored one too many warnings from Professor Trelawney. I doubt that she would condescend to allow me to further misuse her talents."
Harry didn't believe him, but nodded anyway. He did want to know what Dumbledore had found out.
"In any case, Harry, you should not underestimate the advantage that personal acquaintance with Lord Voldemort affords you. There are precious few who have had the dubious privilege of seeing his true face and living to tell the tale."
Harry blinked. "But sir, his Death Eaters have all seen him."
"Have they?" said Dumbledore, tilting his head fractionally to the right. "I daresay that they have all seen only what he shows them. I fear I am no exception, either, though I have known him a long time. He acts a terribly convincing part, whatever it is—a friend, an adversary, a teacher, a student, a father, even a god—but the man himself is only known to someone who has seen in here."
Professor Dumbledore tapped the side of his head with the scroll, and for a moment Harry felt the cold hand of dread swooping towards him—did Dumbledore know about his visions?
Then Dumbledore continued, "However briefly, you were able to confront him in your own body and mind, a space where lies have no meaning."
Right. The possession. Harry nodded once, his mouth dry.
Dumbledore unfurled the scroll and laid it out between them, tapping it once with his wand. The ink rippled, and blocky pictographs transformed into tight letters.
This drew Harry's attention in a flash. "Is that a translation charm?"
"It is," said Dumbledore, "though it is only as effective as the caster's own proficiency in translation. You will forgive me if the result is unpolished. Now, I would like you to keep your knowledge of Voldemort in mind as you read this missive. It comes from the leader of the Guwang sect, Xin Jiaqin. You can think of him as my counterpart in China, as the great sects are where young cultivators go to be educated."
Harry leaned forward, squinting at the tiny print.
To Respected Grand Sorcerer Dumbledore:
I was very pleased to receive your letter. It has travelled truly far. Invite you to forgive my delayed response. Many years ago our sect library burned down in a fire, so previous visitor records are all gone. I asked the masters if any remember this visitor, 'Mo Fudi'. Two immortals of the Yeting Monastery recall studying with him. They estimate he came to them three decades ago and remained there three years.
I have included their accounts of the visitor in the postscript. If he has truly returned to your land to practise demonic cultivation, then rest assured that he is as much our enemy as yours. If you have need, immortals from our sect would be honoured to lend their aid.
Harry looked up in surprise. "He's going to send help? To fight Voldemort?"
"I'm afraid it is likely impossible for us to take Grandmaster Xin up on his offer," said Dumbledore, closing his eyes for a moment. "I very much doubt that Voldemort has committed the crime that he alludes to here."
"Really, sir?" Harry frowned. 'Demonic cultivation' sounded right up the Dark Lord's alley.
Dumbledore nodded. "I have mentioned before that Voldemort would have found immortality that relied on continuous maintenance, of the sort offered by the elixir of life, to be intolerable in the long run. Demonic cultivation, as I understand it, requires arrangements with malicious spirits, whereas ordinary cultivation relies only upon personal achievement. You can see how the latter would appeal much more to Voldemort's sensibilities."
When he put it that way, Harry supposed that Dumbledore must be right. He nodded reluctantly.
"I would like to draw your attention to the accounts from the two monks," said Dumbledore, smoothing out the end of the scroll. Harry followed his direction to the postscript.
Account of Wang Hairong: The foreigner Mo was quite something. When he first arrived, his cultivation was low and he could not swing a sword. Yet soon after, he surpassed the seniors and could defeat even the head disciple at the time. It is impossible to forget this 'demon'. His appearance could frighten a person to death. I had thought it a myth until then, that foreigners had faces without colour, but he proved it was true. People cannot judge by looks, however, for he was very polite and helpful. My cultivation progressed because of his advice. Hearing that he suddenly left one day, I was very disappointed. He stayed with us only three years and surpassed the primordial infant stage, so he was surely a one-in-ten-thousand genius. I do not believe a man of such talent could ever be tempted by the demonic path, however inauspicious his name.
Account of Jiao Tianji: I remember this foreigner with the ridiculous name. He made me lose face in front of my juniors. I was angry enough to catch fire, but he was very humble afterwards and invited me to drink tea with him. I believed he was insincere but accepted his invitation. For a foreigner, he was surprisingly polite. He taught me several western magic tricks and we had tea every new moon. I thought perhaps he wanted something from me, but we only ever spoke of the cultivation practices available to everyone in the sect. Except for his frightful appearance and unlucky name, there was nothing suspicious about him. I believe he left right after making his breakthrough to the primordial infant stage. I was very envious of him back then, and not sorry to see him go.
"What is the primordial infant stage?" Harry asked, bemused.
"I am not entirely certain myself," Dumbledore admitted. "It is one of their alchemical terms, and I believe it is similar in nature to the homunculus. However, it is difficult for me to conceptualise, as eastern alchemy is not performed in a cauldron, but within the body."
"In the body, sir?" Harry repeated, staring down at his chest. For some reason, he recalled suddenly the strange feeling the dementor had showed him around his stomach. "Like, they eat potions ingredients and mix the potion inside themselves?"
Professor Dumbledore blinked. "I suppose that is one way of understanding it."
Harry tried to imagine making Nic's homunculus inside his stomach and quickly came to the same conceptual barrier that must have stumped Professor Dumbledore.
"I don't get it either, but this is important, right sir? If Voldemort left right after he figured it out, then doesn't that mean that was what he wanted in the first place?"
"That is one possibility," Dumbledore agreed. "Another is that he simply thought his study of luck sufficient by that point."
"Luck, sir?"
"Apologies, I must not have mentioned it. The Yeting Monastery specialises in manipulating karma. Are you familiar with the term?" Dumbledore asked.
"Yes, I think," said Harry. "It's like when someone gets what they deserve, after doing something bad?"
"Yes. It is the principle that evil deeds result in evil returns, and good deeds vice versa. Its most obvious magical manifestation is good and bad luck. As you can imagine, Voldemort was no doubt eager to rid himself of the karmic consequences of his indiscretions. Happily, he has not been entirely successful on that front," said Dumbledore.
Harry furrowed his brow. "He hasn't?"
Dumbledore nodded. "You are living proof of it. The prophecy of his downfall was only made because Voldemort, in his arrogance, disturbed cosmic forces beyond his understanding."
Harry wasn't so sure that the prophecy was really about Voldemort's downfall, even if it did cause him to make a mistake that cost him his body for a decade. The downfall still seemed much more likely to belong to Harry. "What about me? Did I do something wrong to deserve the prophecy? It was about me even before I was born."
"No, of course you do not deserve this, Harry," said Dumbledore, glancing away contritely. "I did not mean to suggest such a thing."
There was an awkward pause. "It's all right," said Harry. "Life's unfair. I suppose with people like Voldemort figuring out how to make themselves luckier, that makes things even more unfair, right sir?"
Dumbledore's lip twitched slightly. "It is not quite as bad as you make it out to be. Fortunately—pardon the pun—it is almost impossible to use karmic manipulation offensively. That is, you are at least safe from being made especially unlucky."
Though Dumbledore said all this in a light tone, Harry had the impression that he knew what he was talking about. That was perhaps odd in and of itself.
"If Voldemort had to go all the way to China to learn about this, how come you know about it, sir? And how come it isn't taught at Hogwarts?" he asked.
"You overestimate my familiarity with the subject," said Dumbledore. "I understand only the most basic theory, and only because I too sojourned briefly at the great sects in my youth. As for why we do not teach it at Hogwarts: it requires an entirely different way of thinking about magic."
"But sir, isn't arithmancy related to luck?" Harry asked, hoping he wasn't entirely off the mark.
"You are correct," said Dumbledore, "and arithmancy is a prime example of how the wizarding approach to luck is almost diametrically opposed to the cultivation approach."
An inkling of forced patience had crept into the headmaster's tone, and Harry realised with a start that the conversation had veered away from Voldemort entirely. "Sorry, sir, I didn't mean to get so off topic."
"No need to apologise, Harry. I would happily answer as many questions as you have, only it is getting rather late and I do believe you have lessons in the morning."
Dumbledore was right—it was nearly curfew, and Harry still had yet to make his visit to the dementors. He felt suddenly eager to leave, as if evidence of his intended wrongdoing might be visible on his face.
"Right, sir," he mumbled. "Should I try to scry for more information on Voldemort before our next meeting?"
"It would be kind of you to make the attempt," said Dumbledore. "But please, do not feel compelled. If at any time you wish for these meetings to end, you must only say the word."
"No, I mean, I'm glad that we're doing this, sir. I'm glad there's at least something I can do, besides just letting Voldemort do as he pleases," Harry said hastily.
A mournful expression came over Dumbledore's face and made him look especially ancient.
Harry took his leave after exchanging some final pleasantries. Once he judged himself far enough away from the headmaster's office, he ducked into a toilet to escape any painted eyes and slipped under his invisibility cloak. Tonight would be the third night, which meant he would be a tenth of the way finished with his resurrection stones. The thought failed to cheer him up.
CW: torture, murder, mutilation, burns, dismemberment (don't worry, it's not Harry this time), autocannibalism, Voldemort doing dark lord things
So this chapter kept getting longer and longer and finally I just cut it in the middle. Imagine having the ability to be concise. Not me.