Story Notes
Hi everybody, and welcome to the next little installment of this story. I'd like to say a huge, ma-hoo-sive thank you to every single person that has taken the time to read this so far, and an even bigger thank you to those who have taken the time to leave Kudos and/or a review comment. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart, because every single one makes me smile, and the encouragement makes writing this story feel so worthwhile.
Many thanks to my wonderful alpha/beta champagneandliterature. I appreciate you more than you will ever know!
Here we are then…. The next chapter of Bring Me To Life, I hope you enjoy it. XXxx
Hermione arrived at the Ministry of Magic on Monday morning brimming with curiosity. She, Harry, and Draco had spent a lot of time over the past weekend discussing the arch and the possibilities that lay beyond its eerie, fluttering curtain, and by now, she was desperate to get started on the practical side of the investigation. She was hoping that something exciting would happen to definitively prove that their theories were right, but, unfortunately, their first week of study wasn't quite that dramatic.
Instead of visiting the places that had been important to Sirius throughout his life, as Hermione had been hoping to do, she and Blaise spent the entire week quietly working on the theory side of the project inside the Death Room itself.
They tested and retested Blaise's ideas, trying their best to pull each one apart and to prove it wrong, but by the time Hermione left work on Friday evening, they had achieved the exact opposite. Hermione was mentally exhausted, but she was also convinced that Blaise was right with every single one of his predictions. She was now absolutely certain that if they found the right spell and the right place to perform it, then Sirius should indeed be able to come back through the veil.
The following Monday morning, Hermione stood fidgeting impatiently in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, waiting for Blaise, Harry, and Draco to finally begin their first field trip of the investigation.
The kitchen table was groaning under the weight of many different recording instruments, most of which Blaise had borrowed from the Department of Mysteries' resources section. Many of these were strange, spindly looking instruments similar or identical to the ones that Albus Dumbledore had kept in the headmaster's office during his time at Hogwarts. Now that she knew what all of these instruments did, Hermione couldn't help but wonder why Dumbledore had felt the need to have so many of them present at the school.
Also on the table were several different types of energy gauges, three different spiritometers, a resonance imaging graph, and a sound recorder, all of which were currently on loan from the Unspeakables who worked in the Spirit and Hauntings Research room. There was even muggle ghost hunting equipment similiar to the kind Hermione had seen on the television as a child, Infra-red cameras, electromagnetic field recorders, and a spirit box.
Finally, at the very end of the table was the majority of Harry and Draco's Auror kit. A jumble of magic revealers, dark and light energy receptors, spellnet recorders, and several more things that Hermione didn't recognize had all been carelessly abandoned in a heap before the boys had gone to make coffee.
Hermione was itching to get started, but Blaise just stood by the sink yawning. Harry caught her eye and smiled sympathetically. He knew how much this investigation meant to her and how she loved nothing more than researching a subject and then scientifically recording her findings. Still, neither Blaise nor Draco knew her well enough to recognize how impatient she felt right now. "Tough night, was it?" Draco asked, smirking at Blaise as he put the kettle on.
Blaise grinned and rubbed his eyes. "More like a busy weekend, actually."
Draco chuckled. "Some things never change, I see. Was she anyone we know?"
"Absolutely. If I remember rightly, you know Tracy very well indeed."
Draco shook his head. "Not that well. You're getting me mixed up with Theo and Greg. I've never been with her, although it wasn't through lack of trying on my part."
"You mean you didn't get your way for once?" Blaise asked with a smirk of his own as he rubbed at the stubble on his usually clean shaven chin. "That figures, actually. She's not keen on blondes, which works out very nicely for me. Right, I need to wake up, especially if today is going to consist of so many… gadgets." He threw the table a mildly disdainful look and turned to the kettle, prodding it with his wand to hurry it along. Harry set cups on the side as Draco started to set the Auror equipment up, and Hermione began to sort out the equally tangled pile of D.O.M. equipment.
The four of them were divided in their opinions on the recording apparatus. Hermione and Draco preferred the scientific approach and liked gathering measurable data, while Blaise and Harry disliked using so much tech. They both argued that feeling the energy of a place was a much more natural and magical way of working, and although Hermione could see some merit in their views, it didn't stand up to scrutiny in her logical, fact-based brain.
There were a lot of different devices to set up. It took over an hour to get everything in working order and finally, after what felt like an eternity of muttering and angle checking, they were all satisfied.
The spindly silver instruments sat whirring and clinking quietly and occasionally emitting puffs of white smoke. The spirit detector sat drawing its readings on a graph and periodically beeping when it picked up a spike of some invisible force.
Hermione picked up her notepad and started to write down the results as they came in.
They had decided to use the kitchen as a control zone. As the heart of the house, and seeing as it contained the only fireplace patched into the floo network, many people came and went through it, and since it had never been a place of particular interest to Sirius, none of them felt that they would pick up any significant readings here. However, they all agreed that they needed a baseline reading from a neutral room to measure the rest of the house against.
Once all of the readings were recorded, Harry peered over her shoulder to look at the list. "House Elf activity, that's got to be from Kreacher when he visits to check that we're eating properly and not letting the housework slip. Mild spirit activity, I think that's only to be expected in a house this old. General light magic, some darker stuff but not much, again that's to be expected in a house that was inhabited by pureblood zealots. There's nothing remarkable in here at all," Harry said after a minute. "This room is exactly as we thought it would be."
"What's that line?" Hermione asked.
Blaise frowned, pulling his glasses down from the top of his head to study it more closely. "Current dark magic." He turned to frown at Harry, "why's that on here?"
"That's my magical signature, don't worry about it," Draco said, looking slightly uncomfortable as he glared at the fine red line.
"Draco's magic always makes that spike on the dark detectors," Harry agreed, throwing him an apologetic look. "We think it's because of his Dark Mark. Some of Vol-sorry, some residual energy still lives inside him, unfortunately."
"It's alright. You can say his name." Draco rolled his eyes, "we're all friends here, and there's no point beating around the bush. Some of V-, okay, It appears that I still can't say his name, some of the Dark Lord's energy is still hanging around inside of me."
"Oh." Blaise nodded and said no more as Hermione peered at the line curiously. It hadn't occurred to her that any dark magic would remain inside Draco from his Death Eater days, but she wasn't overly surprised to find that it had, given the level of evil that she knew had been branded into all of Voldemort's followers.
As they got ready to move upstairs, Draco looked at the summary that Hermione had scribbled onto the notepad. "I wouldn't bother reading it too closely, mate," Blaise said, levitating some of the heavy instruments up the stairs in front of him. "That might be the scientific opinion, but I can give you my professional thoughts on the usefulness of that room much more quickly."
"Go on then." Draco quirked an eyebrow in Blaise's direction and nearly let a spectrometer fall as he turned the corner.
"There's sweet bugger all there, and it's not worth wasting our time on it anymore."
Draco nodded with a smirk. "That's your professional opinion, is it Zabini? The one you write on your professional reports?"
"To be fair," Harry laughed, "I've seen a couple of his past reports, and he's not far off. And I happen to agree. I've never felt a single thing amiss in the kitchen. Lounge next?" he asked, pausing in the doorway.
"Yep. Then outside to the shed and the motorbike since the garden is on the same level of the house, then Sirius' room and Regulus', then finally the attic." Hermione said, reading from her list of places to check at Grimmauld.
"Why the attic?" Blaise asked as he set the equipment down on the lounge table looking confused.
"Sirius hid out there with Buckbeak a lot," Harry explained. "That Hippogriff that Malfoy tried to condemn to a death sentence in our third year at school, remember?" he clarified as Blaise nodded. "Well, myself, Ron, and Hermione saved Buckbeak the same night that we saved Sirius, and they both lived secretly in the attic here for a while."
"I remember that very well, actually. After all, that's why Hermione punched Draco, and he's had the hots for her ever since," Blaise teased as Hermione huffed out an irritated sigh, put the spellnet detector down, and glowered at Blaise.
"Seriously, boys, I really do remember it being more of a slap than a pun-"
Blaise laughed and started to set up his equipment again. "Really? I think Madam Pomfrey would disagree. Theo too. Did you know that he got detention three nights in a row for supposedly being the one who did that?"
"What? Why?!" Hermione gasped and Harry looked up in surprise as Draco pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers and gave a pained groan.
"Must we go here?" Draco asked, "I'll remember this if you ever want me to be your wingman again, Zabini."
"It was because," Blaise grinned and blew Draco a kiss as Draco mimed punching him, "Madam Pomfrey wanted to know who had broken Draco's nose. He wouldn't tell her, so she passed the matter onto Snape. So, ever the gentleman, Draco told them it was Theo rather than drop you in it, or let Snape use legilimency to find out for himself."
"But!" Hermione spun to stare at Draco in horror, "poor Theo. I mean why did you drop him in it?! It wasn't him!"
"I know," Draco shrugged, " but it had to be someone, and I wasn't about to rat you out. Anyway, it's not as bad as it sounds. It was payback for him copying my Transfiguration homework three weeks running. When McGonagall pulled us both in for it, he saved his skin and told her it was the other way round. He'd told her I copied his. Old McGonagall never liked me much, so she believed him, and I had detention with the old bag two Friday nights in a row. She kept me there till midnight both times, and I was pissed off. Revenge," he grinned wickedly, "was sweet."
Hermione was still staring at Draco in horror while Blaise chuckled, and even Harry looked slightly amused. "It was definitely a punch, Hermione," Harry confirmed, "A good one too. Even myself and Ron winced."
"Ohhh!" She frowned, scrunched up her face, and was just about to stamp her foot when she remembered Harry's diary entry and put her left foot carefully back on the ground, took a deep breath, and forced herself to relax and to let the matter drop. "Shall we continue, boys?" she asked with as much dignity as she could muster, and tried not to frown when they all laughed.
The readings they took from the lounge were as unremarkable as the previous ones taken in the kitchen. The same was true for the ones they took in the purpose built shed, and the next set that they took directly from the old motorbike itself. They took a break for lunch and then levitated the equipment up a further flight of stairs ready to start testing in Sirius's old bedroom.
Harry had tidied up a little since Hermione had been in here last. There was no longer a nest of messy blankets beside the bed, and the cups and snack wrappers that had littered the area were now gone, but all of the old objects and junk from the rest of the house remained.
"Umm, Potter," Draco said, entering the room and stopping to stare at the suddenly frantic gauges and monitors that were now struggling to escape from his arms, "what the actual fuck?"
"Oh." Harry stared at the furiously working silver instruments in surprise. "Yes. There might be a few... umm, darker objects up here."
"No shit!" Blaise said, looking around him in wonder. "Have you ever had Aurors in here, Harry? Apart from yourself, that is?"
"In all honesty, no. Not since the house served as headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix and Mad Eye, Kingsley, and Tonks were all coming and going from here regularly. I didn't think it was a good idea to invite any Aurors back after the war ended."
Draco blew out a long breath and smirked, "It's a good job it's me that's here now then, else I think you'd be arrested on the spot. What the hell have you got in here?" He set the still protesting instruments down and stepped towards the bed, looking at the piles of cardboard boxes, books, artifacts, and other items that were piled carelessly all around the room.
All of the things that had been gathered here had come from the rest of the house during past dark magic purges, and they had all been lumped up here together as there was simply nowhere else for them to go.
Hermione knew that the music box that sent people to sleep was in here, there was an enchanted dollhouse whose secret they had never figured out, several extraordinarily dark and unpleasant books, and several other unidentified items that had sent Harry's dark energy detectors into meltdown mode in the past. "And there was me thinking you were the poster boy for the light side." Draco continued, "Fucking hell, Harry, If I'd had known that you had all this stashed up here, I'd have told you I fancied you years ago!"
"It's nice to know that you like me for my wonderful personality and body Draco," Harry laughed as Draco put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.
"You know I care for you. Hopefully, you do anyway. I know I'm not too good at showing that at times, but this…. There are things in this room that rival some of the things in Malfoy Manor, and that's saying something."
"Even the -" Blaise began, looking somewhat surprised at Draco's rare public show of affection, and was hit instantly with a silencing spell as Harry and Hermione stared curiously at them both.
"No," Draco said, abruptly releasing Harry. "Nothing rivals that."
"Nothing rivals what?" Hermione asked, starting to sort out the still frantic equipment before the room was engulfed in white smoke from the freely spinning dark detector. "Is there a way to stop this before we all get asphyxiated?"
"No," Blaise said with a frown. "If there's dark energy present, it will pick it up. Just put it outside the door and it will settle down once it's out of range."
"Right." Hermione scooped all of the D.O.M.s protesting devices up and took them out onto the landing, where they all quietened down significantly. "Let's read one device at a time. I can't cope with them all bleeping at once like this."
Once the room was quiet, Harry set up the spellnet and magic detectors, and when Draco and Blaise had finished poking around the room and joined them by the bed, they all stood by to watch as some rather different readings came in.
The results of this set of tests were genuinely shocking. "General magic. Well, that much is obvious," Blasie said as Hermione wrote their findings down. "Light magic. Dark magic. Every shade of grey magic in between. Cursed objects. I think all of those frequencies are coming from the artifacts in this room, and we can safely ignore them for now. This is what I'm interested in," he held up a frantic spiritometer and a still whirring and beeping energy gauge. "These two specifically are set at-"
"The exact same frequency as the arch," Hermione finished weakly. "And that's the exact same reading that we got in the Death room."
"Yeah," Blaise agreed, adjusting his glasses and finally looking satisfied. "It's identical."
Harry sat down on Sirius' bed, breathing hard. "Shit," he muttered.
"Very eloquent." Draco smiled, offering him a hand. Harry took it and held onto Draco for support.
Smiling softly at Harry and Draco's interactions, Hermione brought the sound recorder back into the room and set it down in the place that Harry's writing nest had been. She set the bell to record and silently held her breath until the metal spindle flipped and the bell turned back the other way.
As far as Hermione could tell, nothing had happened, but, watching Harry, she suspected that she had missed something rather important. He was still holding Draco's hand, but the color had drained from his face until he was as pale as a ghost. "Can you hear that?" Harry whispered, and she frowned, still listening as hard as she could but still only hearing silence.
"Hear what?" Draco asked with a confused shake of his head.
"That. That whispering. It's the… it's…." Harry closed his eyes and inhaled a quivering breath, "it's the same whispering I can hear through the veil. The whispering that I could hear when Sirius… fell. It's the whispering that I can hear and most other people can't, and it's here. Right now. In this room."
Blaise nodded and took the sound recorder out of the room to give them a moment of privacy together.
Hermione crossed the room to Harry, and he pulled her down to sit on his lap, wrapped his spare arm around her, and held her close. He buried his face into her hair as Draco lowered himself onto the bed on Harry's other side and took Harry's hand in both of his own. Hermione twisted around until she was sitting on Harry's thigh, and she felt Draco wrap his other arm around her so that the three of them were all holding onto each other.
"Do you think we can do this?" Harry asked in a quiet voice, "do you really think we can bring him back?"
"I don't know," Hermione answered truthfully as Draco stroked Harry's arm. "But with all of these readings supporting what we already thought was a possibility, I believe we need to try."
"Absolutely," Draco agreed. "And if we don't try it, we'll spend forever wondering what could have been. "We've got you, though, Harry. You're not doing stuff like this alone anymore. You've got us now."
They sat like that for a long time until Harry finally took a deep breath and patted Hermione on the thigh. "Thank you. Both of you. I needed to hear that. Come on then, let's finish up these recordings, shall we?" Hermione nodded and stood up. Harry nodded to both of them and, without saying a word, strode out of the door and into Regulus's room to help Blaise.
Once all of the readings in the house had been completed and the equipment was packed away, they settled down at the kitchen table to look over the results. It was after six, and they had been busy all day. Hermione was feeling almost as tired as Harry looked. She pulled out the notepad she had been writing the results in and cleared her throat.
"Right." Blaise scrutinized her perfect handwriting and grinned, "I do wish you'd joined me years ago, Granger. This is so much easier with a partner, especially one as smart and gifted as you. Okay," he smiled as she glowed with pride at his praise. "Kitchen, lounge, shed and motorbike, nothing. Regulus's room, a flicker. The attic, a little more, but we can't deny it, it was in Sirius' old room that the readings went off the scale. I've only ever seen anything like this in full-scale hauntings, and that's without counting the readings we've taken here that match with the ones taken at the veil itself.
"I feel his presence in the bedroom," Harry admitted. "All the time. It's the place I go to write because I feel closest to him in there."
"I do too," Hermione admitted as Harry looked up, "and I've never felt a single psychic connection in my whole life. I'm now convinced that it was him blocking me from reading your diary Harry, He was protecting you. There's just no other logical explanation for it, no spells would act in the way that diary did, and you said there was no spell on it anyway."
Harry shook his head in agreement. "Nothing on it at all."
"Then there's no other explanation," Hermoine stated, feeling thoroughly shaken herself. "So what do we do then? Do we just try to bring him back in there?"
"We still need to visit Azkaban and Hogwarts first," Blaise said as Draco wrinkled his nose elegantly. "I know how you feel about Azkaban, mate, but we need to check it out," Blaise said.
"I honestly don't think he would come back to Azkaban," Hermione said, "I mean, can you imagine how he must have felt about the place? He spent twelve years there, and most of that time was spent in dog form to avoid the effects of the dement-"
"The fact that he was in there for so long is why I think we need to take basic readings from his old cell at least," Blaise argued. "You're probably exactly right, but Azkaban has a strange energy, you know that, Draco, Harry, you've both been there. It's to do with the dementors lowering the energy frequency of the environment."
"The dementors are long gone, though," Hermione protested weakly. In truth, she didn't want to visit Azkaban any more than Draco did.
"Yes, but they left a permanent mark. If the energy field is lowered and the readings are strong, we might have an easier time pulling him back. We'll probably draw a complete blank, but we need to check. The same goes for the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade and Hogwarts itself."
"Why Hogwarts?" Harry asked, avoiding the suggestion of the Shrieking Shack entirely.
"Because there's a different energy in there as well," Blaise said. "Hogwarts has a higher energy vibration due to the sheer amount of magical people in the area. It might help, it might not. Also, you've both told me that Sirius hated this house and his family here. What if we find a stronger imprint of his life force in the Gryffindor common room simply because he was happier there?"
"I can't argue with that logic," Hermione said as Draco nodded, and eventually, Harry agreed as well.
"So," Blaise continued doggedly, I think we should go to Hogwarts and the shack tomorrow, then Azkaban on Wednesday, and spend Thursday and Friday in the office recording our findings and researching the spells we'll need to try to bring him back to life. What do you all think?"
"I think," Harry said, standing up decisively, "That that's an excellent plan indeed."