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Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Eight—Trial by Ordeal

"The owl came back from Remus?"

"It did."

Harry closed his eyes and leaned back a little harder against the pillows. He already knew part of the truth. Severus would have told him right away if the news was good. "Remus said that they were all dead, didn't he?" he whispered.

Severus hesitated and moved in to fluff up one of his pillows. "You should drink one of the Calming Draughts I have ready for you," he murmured. "You can do nothing for the dead and nothing for the allies you still have if you exhaust yourself."

"I'll drink a Calming Draught and go to sleep if you just tell me the truth about Whitepaw's pack," Harry whispered. He reached out and managed to catch hold of Severus's wrist even though he didn't have his eyes open. Severus's hand flexed rapidly in his hold, and Severus released a stuttering breath.

"All but five are dead."

Harry nodded and released Severus's hand, but resisted when he felt the cool lip of a vial full of Calming Draught at his lips. "You also promised yesterday that you would tell me what Voldemort was doing with those potions ingredients he was getting. You said that you finally knew."

Severus swallowed audibly and then murmured, "He was producing a potion that would allow him to control others from a distance. They do not need to ingest the potion. Instead, certain ingredients combine with the brewer's magic so that he can control their movements. That was why the werewolves suffered and died even though he appeared to cast no spell on them."

Harry opened his eyes, and Severus took the chance to dump the Calming Draught down his throat. Harry swallowed, staring dully at the walls of Severus's quarters in the meantime. His stomach contracted as though he was going to throw up, but the potion kept him from doing that.

"You should rest," Severus murmured.

"How do we stop him from using that potion on us?"

"We cannot," Severus said, quietly. "The potion goes off very quickly, however, so it is unlikely that Voldemort has any at the moment. But if I were him, I would maintain a batch of ingredients frozen under stasis in all but the last stages of brewing, so that I might prepare them quickly the moment I had need of them."

"So he could make you suffer and die at any time. Or me. Or Draco. Or Dash. Or Ron. Or Hermione."

"He could," Severus agreed. "But Harry, how is that different from before? We knew that if he attacked, he could—"

"No. It is different." Harry sat up despite the Calming Draught and Severus both trying to press him back into the pillows. "Before, he would at least have to risk his skin and maybe one of the Horcruxes if he came near enough. Now he can stand at a distance and slaughter us all!"

He hadn't realized his agitation was radiating down the bond so much, but in a few seconds, Dash was there, crawling rapidly into the room and flicking his tongue out. He looked at Severus for a moment, then bowed his head and dropped it so that his neck was a solid wall next to the bed. He wrapped Harry in a delicate coil.

Harry clung to him, not caring that Dash couldn't really stop it at the moment, not caring that most of Dash's body was still outside the door of Severus's quarters and he'd have to go outside to really hug him. False comfort was better than no comfort at all, right now.

There is a chance, Dash said down the bond.

What is it? Harry knew his voice was thin and listless. He didn't care. There was nothing they could do, and he could already feel—Severus had told him once he would know what madness felt like when he experienced it. And right now, Harry knew that he was a few mental inches away from that happening.

You have a powerful artifact that wants to gain your favor.

Harry pulled slowly back from Dash and turned his head. The Elder Wand had been lying on a table next to the bed since Severus had carried him here. It vibrated gently now, and Harry reached out and picked it up, feeling the carvings of elderberries warm against his palm and glow with eagerness.

"But how can you stop Voldemort from just brewing his potion even if we destroy all the ingredients?" Harry whispered.

It was the Elder Wand that answered, a slick, buzzing voice that made Harry wince in disgust. We destroy the part of his mind that holds the knowledge.

Dash wound tighter around Harry, to the point where Harry would usually protest it, and flicked his tongue out in quick emphasis. It is the best thing to do. The brain damage would accelerate the damage caused by the destruction of the Horcruxes. We might render Voldemort less dangerous by the time that we need to actually confront him.

Harry thought about it as he held his hand on Dash's scales and ignored Severus's polite, agitated questions from outside the hug. He didn't really have ethical objections to destroying part of Voldemort's mind. He had always known he would need to do it anyway, since he would be destroying the Horcrux that had some kind of tie to Voldemort's mind.

But he did wonder if he would be able to do it before Voldemort brewed more of that potion and used it somehow to punish Harry and his allies.

Do it now, suggested the Elder Wand. Harry was relieved that he could tell that wand's voice apart from Dash's in his mind.

But perhaps we could tell Severus our plan, since he seems about to expire if he doesn't get an answer.

Harry let Dash pull gently back, and put the wand down on the table just as gently. He smiled in an embarrassed way at Severus. "Sorry. We were just coming up with a plan that would destroy part of Voldemort's mind and keep him from using the potion."

"We." Severus's eyes traveled back and forth from Harry to the Elder Wand, and only lingered on Dash for a moment.

Harry nodded. "The Wand has enough power to do it. It's not—I don't think that I'm ready to take on Voldemort with battle Legilimency. But we could do this. And that way, it won't matter if he still has the ingredients. He won't be able to remember or have the ability to brew it anymore."

"You are talking about destroying his brewing skill." Severus probably wouldn't have looked tense to anyone else, but Harry knew him well enough to see it. "It is—perhaps the only thing that would work."

"Yes," Harry said, and reached a hand out. "But I would never do that to you, Severus. You have to know that."

"The Wand might want to."

"Then I won't be its Master anymore," Harry said. "I won't ever take it out or use it again if it tries to hurt you."

I can hear you, the Wand said in what sounded like a sulky mutter. That's fine. There were always people that my temporary masters didn't want to hurt.

The buzz retreated, and then Dash said softly into the back of Harry's mind, It doesn't like there being limits. It will press you, and it will try to make sure that you learn to prize power over anything else.

Luckily I have a basilisk who used to be Salazar Slytherin to ground me, Harry told him, and Dash's tongue touched his arm before he pulled his head back and looked around at Severus, giving him a solemn nod as a promise of his own.

"It was not that I truly feared you would," Severus said, his voice steady although his face was pale. "Or that I object to such a thing happening to Voldemort. It was only the knowledge that someone could."

Harry nodded. "I don't—there's not much I can do except act to stop this." He swallowed, and Dash licked the side of his face this time. "And I think I have to act now, before he can do anything that will harm anyone else." He lay back on the bed and gripped the Elder Wand again. Dash arranged himself carefully next to the bed, as much of him as would fit through the door into Severus's quarters.

"You are saying that—" Severus looked a little ill.

"I have to go now," Harry said, and then he closed his eyes and willed himself to leap the distance between his own mind and Voldemort's. The fact that the man insisted on maintaining the Horcrux link was going to make him all the more vulnerable.

There was a shimmer and a twang, and Harry was away from his body and somewhere that hurt him.

Severus stared at the motionless body lying on the bed, and the motionless basilisk lying beside it, and felt a tremor of helplessness seize hold of him. He turned away and sat down on the chair in the corner of the room, his head bowed and his chin resting on his balled fists.

He wanted so badly to protect Harry. And he didn't know how. It wasn't a comfort to know that even Dash sometimes found the task difficult.

Harry was stronger, in some ways, than he'd ever been. But he still wasn't as skilled in battle Legilimency as Severus would have liked, and now he was going to face a battle on the home ground of a master Legilimens.

Severus wished he could pray. As it was, he simply went to assemble all the healing potions he could think of, all the ones that Harry would need when he came back.

Harry screamed as the pain shook him and tore him away from the comforting links that bound him to Dash and the Deathly Hallows. He hadn't known how comforting the Hallows were until they were gone. He was being shaken, his bones broken, his skin torn, his head crushed and bleeding—

That is enough of that.

The voice blazed through the bond Harry and Dash shared, and lessened his sobs. He found that he could feel Dash after all. He opened his eyes.

He was floating in a red darkness that reminded him of the emerald one that the Hallows had kept him in while they argued with him, but this one didn't have facets. It didn't have a floor, or walls, or anything except the space and the pain. Dash was somewhere near him, but Harry could only vaguely see him as a crimson blob that was a little more defined than everything else. Harry tried to shift closer to him anyway.

Dash bowed his head and touched Harry with his tongue again. Then he said, We can still work together to defeat him.

How? asked the voice that laughed from every side, and made Harry choke back another scream from the agony. I am the master here!

Abruptly, the space shifted, and they were somewhere else, somewhere that hurt more still. Harry gritted his teeth and fought through it. They appeared to be in a smooth, bone-white place, and in front of him was a dark red, veined thing that he instinctively knew was the Horcrux bond that held him and Voldemort.

And something else. The Elder Wand was back, but wary, not showing itself fully. Harry knew without asking that it didn't want Voldemort to tear them apart again, and he was likely to do that the moment he noticed it.

I am going to destroy you, Voldemort said to him, and his voice purred at a deep level that made something worse than Harry's skeleton or his heart ache. I am going to make you hurt. I am not going to kill you. The Horcrux will not bring you back. I am simply going to make you wish that you were dead.

Harry felt himself slipping into a dread so intense that it incapacitated him. How in the world had he thought he could come here and just—

Because you can. Dash's voice slipped through him, and eased away some of the pain and panic. You can do this. I think it will cost you more than we thought, but coming here was not a mistake.

We do not want it to cost him anything. The Elder Wand sounded annoyed. Harry kept a wary eye on the way the white light around him shifted, but so far, Voldemort didn't seem to have sensed his ability to speak with his companions.

It may happen anyway. It's more important for Harry to destroy Voldemort's ability to brew this potion than it is to return to his body completely undamaged.

Maybe it was something about the simple way Dash put it, but Harry found himself calming down, and nodding. Dash was right. He was willing to get hurt as long as it meant he didn't have to live with the mind-numbing desperation that any moment, something would happen to one of his friends. What had happened to Josephine's people was bad enough.

That is not what I agreed to, the Elder Wand snapped.

But it's what we have to do because we're here and fighting Voldemort on the ground of his own mind, Harry snapped back. Shut up.

That surprised the Wand enough to do so, and Harry picked it back up, or sort of. He was still in an imagined place that was mostly composed of Voldemort's thoughts, after all. What mattered was that he had the ability to strike back, and remembering that lifted him out of the paralysis that had begun to consume him.

Nothing to say, Harry? Voldemort was gloating.

I can do this. I just have to accept the fact that it's going to hurt.

Harry settled himself with one more deep breath. Then he hurled all the power of the Elder Wand—not at the blob that marked the Horcrux connection tying him and Voldemort, but at the part of the mind that he knew held the knowledge of brewing.

Voldemort's shrill scream was one of surprise, but he struck back at once. Harry felt as though someone was emptying out of his mind like blood. Voldemort hit, and hit, and Harry knew what Dash meant when he said that Harry might not return to his body completely undamaged. It might be brain damage, the same kind they were trying their best to inflict on Voldemort.

I would still rather have that than the fear, Harry thought, and returned to his own determined pulping of that area of Voldemort's mind.

Voldemort snarled and launched himself onto Harry, grabbing onto his magic like some sort of spider. Harry gasped and thrashed. It didn't matter. The sucking and pulling at his magic grew worse, and Harry wondered if he would wake up a Squib.

Better not to wake up at all—

The sucking grew worse. Harry felt his attack faltering. Any second, his arms would drop to his sides. He would give in and just let Voldemort do what he wanted, because the thought of waking up magicless was horrible.

You can't think anything like that! Dash roared down the bond, and Harry moaned in pain, because right now even that was making shattered shards move and try to repair themselves, and Harry didn't have the energy. You give in to him and feed him strength when you think like that!

With a deep breath, Harry removed all thoughts that he might wake up as a Squib from his head. He was only going to destroy Voldemort's knowledge of brewing potions, and then he was going to go home. No matter what condition he woke up in. No matter what his brain was like. He was going home to Severus and Draco and Ron and Hermione.

And Dash.

This time, the Elder Wand came in behind him as an arrow-shaped attack, and the magic that hit Voldemort was more powerful than anything Harry could have summoned alone. And the pain that came back to him was worse, too.

He forced himself to ignore it. He remembered the werewolves, and that was bad enough to drive him on. They had to take away this weapon from Voldemort. So he struck, and struck, and struck, and the Wand helped him, and Dash lent his strength when he could and whispered fierce encouragement down the bond the rest of the time.

Harry felt something twist and crack free in his own skull in the moment when Voldemort finally screamed in a long, trailing note, and the Elder Wand said, It is done. His knowledge of brewing is gone from him.

Harry didn't know what had happened to him in turn. He didn't try to think about it right now. He reached out to Dash.

Bring us back home?

Of course. A basilisk always knows where his body is.

And Harry felt himself pulled through nothingness, which at least was better than the echoing pain.

Severus didn't want to acknowledge how relieved he was as he watched Harry's limbs stir on the bed. But he held some of the relief back until Harry's eyes opened and he could see that they were bright green instead of red.

And Dash lifted his neck and carefully laid his chin across Harry's legs. Severus was sure he wouldn't have done that if Voldemort had come back inhabiting Harry's body.

"Severus?" Harry muttered, and coughed.

And he remembers me. Considering the amount of damage that Harry would have inflicted on himself destroying part of Voldemort's brain, and the fact that they were linked, that had not been a guarantee.

Severus's hand trembled as he picked up one of the vials. He forced himself to set it down and wait until his fingers were steady before he picked it up again. He desperately wanted to soothe Harry's throat and make him feel better, but he would be guilty of criminal waste if he dropped it.

"I am here," he murmured as he gave Harry a general pain-killer and then a Calming Draught and then a headache potion when he groaned and clutched at his eyes. "I will always be here for you, Harry."

A second later, he winced at the echo of those words in his own head, but Harry didn't seem to have noticed. He sighed and rolled to his side. "Feels funny," he muttered. "Fuzzy. I think—I destroyed part of my own brain to destroy part of his, Severus."

Severus nodded, then realized that Harry really wasn't looking at him, and murmured, "I surmised as much. Can you—what did you lose?"

"I don't really know?" Harry's voice was still a bit slurred, but getting stronger, which made Severus sure that he hadn't sacrificed his ability to talk. "I think—I remember you and Draco and Hermione and Ron. I know I'm in Gryffindor. I remember Dash and everything. I remember Sirius and Narcissa and Remus and Lucius. I just—"

Then he froze.

"What is it, Harry?" Severus whispered, kneeling down beside the bed so that Harry need not strain his neck trying to see him.

"I can't—I know that I heard my mum dying when Dementors came near me," Harry whispered, and there was a sound of tears in the back of his voice that made Severus stretch out an instinctive hand, even though he knew he couldn't prevent this, it had already happened. "But I can't remember what she sounded like."

Severus pulled Harry into his arms and closed his eyes. There was nothing he could say to that. "You don't remember anything else?" he whispered.

"I know my mum had green eyes like mine," Harry whispered against his neck. "I know I saw her and Dad in the Mirror of Erised in my first year. But that's all. It's a fact. It doesn't have any context. I can't remember what I saw."

"If you saw a picture of them—"

"I'd know it was them. But I don't—I don't have any connection. They're just names. I can't remember—Sirius told me some things about my dad, I know he did, but I can't remember what I felt when I heard it—it's gone."

Harry did begin to weep then. Severus held him and said nothing. He met Dash's hidden eyes, and Dash simply inclined his neck.

Severus imagined what Dash would say if he could speak.

This is a sacrifice Harry didn't want to make. But it's still better than knowing Voldemort could reach out at any time and slaughter everyone he holds dear simply by brewing the right potion.

Severus agreed with that unspoken statement. It still made him bow his head and hang onto Harry in silence, and wish the sacrifice—not undone, but that it need never have existed, that it need never have happened.

That Voldemort had never existed.

That, after all, would be the best thing that could have happened, Severus thought.