AN: Gets a little bit heavy near the end. If you're not cool with suicidal ideation, I suggest skipping the third section and go right down to the third.
Chapter Sixteen: In Which Harry Does Their Best; They Hope It Will Be Enough
It was simple and yet tricky to work a sigil. It was simple in explanation — one would create a design representing their end-goal and then burn the slip of paper the design was on; how one created the design was entirely up to them, and while there were a number of methods, none were better than any other beyond personal preference. Doodle a lil' sum'n-sum'n, set it on fire, and you're done! But in actual practice. . . .
Even without the designing part (which Harry personally agonised over because of all the small but important aspects concerning the end-goal that their neurosis insisted they had to take into consideration), the thing that those new to sigilism had trouble with the most was the mindset. Your chances of success depended on you having a clear understanding of what exactly you wanted, having a clear picture in your mind of what you wanted happening, and having the steps you would take to activate already conceptualised as well. Most difficult of all, you had to be open to accepting that ink on paper (or whatever you used to form the image) would go forth to achieve what it was created to manifest.
Of course, in this reality, it was a given that magic-workers would already be in the proper paradigm to activate a sigil. When it was boiled down, sigilism was ritual-work, albeit niche. And rituals were an established part of this reality's magic-system. By all rights, Harry's sigils should work just as well if not even more dramatically so.
It was nearing lights-out, and Harry was sitting on their bed, headphones on, heavy green curtains drawn, with their sketchbook in front of them. Overtop their criss-crossed legs was their lap-desk, whereupon their eruditionary was open and displaying charts of planetary kamea. Scattered around them alongside some pens and pencils were slips of tracing paper with simple one-word sigils they'd made from calculating letters into numbers into positions on the charts; Harry didn't plan to use all of them in the final image — in fact, they might not even use any of them — but it was better to have them available to fiddle with rather than not have them at all.
Here was another instance that Harry lamented that personal devices weren't a thing yet. How they missed their tablet! Drafting sigils was so much easier when designs could be tweaked, readjusted, and taken back to save-points with just a few clicks. Faster and more cost-efficient, too. They eyed the slips of tracing paper that had been used; Harry wasn't about to call it a waste, but they really weren't a fan of creating discardables of any kind.
Pencil moved over paper in sporadic little bursts of motion. A curve here, a line there, a corner here, an empty space filled there. . . . It was slow work for obvious reasons, but after the master copy was set and finished, it would only be a matter of reprinting it for future use.
Since the second day of being at school, Harry had been using a crude, ugly sigil made through a few speedy turns of a Rose Cross wheel of which they had attached to the top of one of their bedposts, which that acted (in the words of HP-fanfiction) as a kind of proximity ward. Anyone who was not Harry could not budge anything in Harry's space; not the bed-curtains, not their trunk, not the chest of drawers. Not even something they accidentally dropped on the floor — they'd tested it with Sophie with a fallen quill.
Harry's mouth had almost fallen open when they saw that the girl literally couldn't budge the quill. Even when she was clearly putting her back into it, it was as if the quill was stone, a protrusion of the floor instead of something separate. Before, with an 'others cannot' type of sigil, it wasn't that people were literally incapable of doing what [REDACTED] was binding them from, but that the thought to do what it was that [REDACTED] didn't want them to do was prevented from crossing their mind for them to act on. But here there was no subtlety — reality was directly distorted instead of lightly influenced.
Since discovering this, Harry made it a point to jot down every single idea for a sigil they could think of as soon as it crossed their mind. Most of what they thought up could be achieved through wand magic, but there was no overlooking how useful it would be to be able to cast spells without others being able to trace it back to their primary focus. Not that Harry was planning to do anything that they needed to be untraceable, but to have that option open to them was vastly appealing.
The design they were currently working on was an improvement on another crude sigil they'd been using in the mean time — a slapdash 'notice-me-not'. As one might guess from hearing its name, it was to prevent the one that Harry didn't want perceiving them from perceiving them. However, after testing it out on Malfoy, it was shown that direct physical contact as well as someone pointing Harry out would automatically negate its effect. Considering who it was Harry was trying to keep from noticing them, these flaws in the design were unacceptable.
Harry's name had to pass through their target's ears unassumingly; Harry's inadvertent touch had to evoke absent-mindedness instead of scrutiny; the sight of Harry should fade into the background; and the thought of Harry had to be swiftly overwhelmed by other thoughts. Considering the target Harry had in mind for this sigil, there could be no flaw, no weakness in the wording or layout; it would be their protection until they could figure out how to take care of the problem (the target in mind) permanently.
(They didn't want to think about it. They refused to think about it. They were not going to think about it until they were certain they could make it so that he couldn't see or touch them even if they were standing right under his nose.)
Under their hands, another section of the sigil had its intention outlined and truncated.
The eyes of the one I choose slide off of me with incuriosity.
th ys f th n chs sld ff f m wth ncrst
T-H-Y-S-F-N-C-L-D-M-R
| — | — | \ | / S | — — | \ | ( | — | ) | \ / | | ) \
Harry sighed, beginning to re-piece the lines together. How they missed the fonts they'd accumulated on their word processor of alternative alphabets; those could also add another layer of meaning and/or connotation. Harry had to do without that entirely, though, because they'd yet to find any book of symbology that included the alphabets they favoured.
Slowly but surely, the page before them became filled with glyphs, tentative sketches. Harry let themselves be absorbed in this until the lights of the room eventually flickered, signalling the five-minute countdown the students had to get themselves ready for lights-out.
Under a low-hanging magnolia tree in the Sun Dial Courtyard, Harry sat with their back pressed against the tree and their knees bent, mandola against their thighs and belly. Their ponytail'd hair was a deep green to match the dark parts of their instrument's ribbing, nails pale green like the light parts. Their left hand danced through simple chord forms as their right plucked and strummed.
"There be a daffodil down in the meadow./ Lo, and a rose and an ivy-covered elm,/" Harry quietly sang in one slow exhale. "There be a dragonfly up where the leaves grow./ Lo, and a rose and an ivy-covered elm./ See it swirling, see it twirling,/ see it set the petals all a-whirling./ See the daisy dance and sway, see the myrtle dance and sway./ Lo, and a rose and an ivy-covered elm./"
Sophie and Lily were perched in the branches above Harry, both quietly reading something. Tracey was higher up on another branch with Harry's Walkman and a book of crossword puzzles.
"There be a salvia blue as a sapphire./ Lo, and a rose and an ivy-covered elm./"
There was no breeze, but the grass rustled in a certain spot.
"There be a hummingbird new to the shire./ Lo, and a rose and an ivy-covered elm./"
The rustling moved towards Harry.
"See it flitter, hear it twitter,/" — more rustling, this time from other spots in the grass — "see it flutter, hover all a-jitter./ See the daisy dance and sway," — a small, scaled head peeked out from the grass — "see the myrtle dance and sway./ Lo, and a rose and an ivy-covered elm./"
One by one, serpents slithered out from the grass. They slid up Harry's legs and then Harry's arms, coiling their way up Harry's body.
"There be a yarrow plant" — a cool tail grazed Harry's right ear as a tiny baby Eve nested in their hair — "bright in the sunlight./ Lo, and a rose and an ivy-covered elm./ There be a turtle-dove perched in a tree's heights./ Lo, and a rose" — Dewey's thin tongue flicked at their collar bones — "and an ivy-covered elm./"
Fang stayed wrapped around Harry's waist, under their outer-robe. He settled there with a satisfied hiss that Harry could feel against them.
"Hear it cooing, hear it wooing,/ hear it sing its vows, ne'er ado'ing./ See the daisy dance and sway, see the myrtle dance and sway./ Lo, and a rose and an ivy-covered elm. . . ."
Harry plucked the ending melody as the glass lizard, Blinding-Break-of-Day (or Daily), settled around their left forearm, underneath Harry's cardigan's sleeve.
§Tell me what you've seen,§ Harry susurrated, barely discernable from a sigh to the human ear. As they said this, their fingers began Hallelujah.
§This one wandered the lower halls of the castle on the far side of the ravine,§ said Dewey. §Two of the ones with the polished metal on their chest were entangling in a small room on the ground floor. Both have short hair the colour of corn-silk. One wore the colour of deep waters, the other wore the colour of grass. They appeared to be attempting to mate, both of their reproductive appendages were out, but they kept stopping whenever footsteps passed outside the small room.§
Harry fought not to make a face, notes inadvertently growing louder for a few seconds. Ugh, yikes. Still, information was information. . . .
§Did you note any other defining features about them?§ Harry asked.
§The one of deep waters is skinny,§ Dewey said after a pause of thought. §The ears of that one are small and stick out. The skin is of snow. That one is shorter than the one of grass. The one of grass has a head like an egg. Speckles of brown on the skin. There was a loop of metal in the fleshy part of that one's ear on one side.§
Harry didn't know the Ravenclaw, but the Slytherin. . . . Harry didn't know his name, but he was one of the boys on the quidditch team.
§Is that all?§ asked Harry.
§This one did not know what those two were doing at that time,§ said Dewey repentantly. §It took some time for this one to realise, and so this one lingered longer than usual and discovered nothing else.§
§Understandable,§ said Harry. §Cold-Evening-Wind?§
§This one wandered the lower floors on this side of the ravine,§ Eve reported in her sweet, childish voice. §This one saw three that wore the colour of blood provoke one that wore the colour of deep waters into shedding water from the eyes. The one of deep waters was tall, a head taller than the tallest of the three of blood. Hair of soil, skin of wheat, the nose pointy, the glass discs bound by wire in front of the eyes. The three all had long, dark hair, but this one saw nothing else of them because of where this one was hiding. The three of blood forcibly took a book from the one of deep waters and then ripped pages from it.§
That was something to report to the librarian. Harry didn't want to imagine what it would be like for a Ravenclaw to be barred from the library for the destruction of a book; Madam Pince would have it out for them for the rest of their school career, and they'd have a bad rapport with the rest of the House as well.
§After than, on a floor lower, this one saw a small one of the colour of fallen leaves strike a cat the colour of dead grass with its foot,§ Eve continued. §The one of fallen leaves appeared ready to strike the cat again, but quick footsteps came, and the small one of fallen leaves fled into another corridor.§
Sounded like some opportunistic Hufflepuff took the chance to kick Filch's awful cat. Harry frowned instinctively at hearing of animal abuse, but if any cat deserved a kick, it was Mrs Norris. . . . Eh, Harry wasn't actually didn't care much about animals beyond the abstract that all living things shouldn't be harmed for no reason, so maybe they were just being unsympathetic.
§Fangs-Glinting-in-the-Water's-Reflection?§
§This magnificent one saw one of blood steal metal discs that humans use for exchanging goods from the carrying pouch of another one of blood§ Fang said proudly. §This one was on the uppermost floor of this side of the ravine. The thief is of the age-group that is Overlord's elder by one cycle. This one knows this because the thief appears young, but shares no lessons with Overlord, nor is the thief of the age-group of Overlord's comrades that are two cycles older. The thief has short, curling hair of dried reeds, an angular face, a thick neck, and skin of wheat. They stole the metal discs as one of their comrades distracted the one that was being stolen from.§
. . . . Surely that couldn't be Cormac McLaggen?
§Did the thief appear similar to Handsome's comrade, Bright-Headed?§
§Handsome is the one Overlord met first, correct?§ Fang asked. When Harry confirmed it, he said, §Yes. Thinking upon it, the thief shares many appearance traits of Bright-Headed.§
Well. Harry would have to go look into that. Harry's hands transitioned from Hallelujah into Ash Grove as they pondered.
They didn't know of any Gryffindors a year above them beyond Cormac, so maybe this would be a good opportunity to scope them out while simultaneously establishing a strong, effective impression. With Cormac's type, he needed to be intimidated before he would be willing to respect and listen to someone. Harry thought it felt like bullying, but it wasn't like Cormac deserved Harry's pity.
Eventually, they said carefully, §Blinding-Break-of-Day? What of. . . ? What of that one? Did you discover anything?§
Daily, as a legless lizard instead of a snake, was the only one of Harry's serpents so far to be able to actually hear human words, so he was the one that Harry sent out to keep an eye on the important characters of this current arc.
§That one. . . .§ said Daily disdainfully. §That one speaks to themselves. Crying. Begging. Always whimpering when alone. That one has said nothing that hasn't been said before when this one laid in watch. That one went around the third floor again, poking the air with his wand. Nothing interesting happened, though. This one did not see that one achieve anything.§
§That one mentioned nothing of this one?§ Harry asked.
§Nothing,§ Daily confirmed. §That one only muttered about mercy and assurances of success. None of what that one said mentioned anyone at all.§
Harry didn't know if that meant Quirrell was too busy fretting about the Philosopher's Stone to think about anything else or if that was a sign that Harry's current notice-me-not sigil was functioning well enough despite its deficiencies, but they allowed themselves a swell of relief before smothering all feeling and thoughts about Quirrellmort from their mind.
Harry's hand's shifted into a set of melancholic introductory chords. They opened their mouth and inhaled in preparation to sing, but then their mouth closed once more as they thought about it again. A mournful ballad was the last thing they needed right now.
The chords shifted into something much more bouncing and fun.
"Many a year ago,/ in a kingdom by the sea,/" sang Harry, letting their voice take on an accent they hadn't worn in over ten years, "there lived a maiden you may know/ by the name of Annabelle Lee./ No other thought did trouble her mind/ but to love and be loved by me./
"We were children both,/ in this kingdom by the sea,/ but we loved with a love that was more than love,/ I and my Annabelle Lee./ With a love that the winged angels high/ coveted her and me./"
It was an unfortunate truth that Harry's early years of needing to pretend they were a normal child came with years of living in their own mind instead of interacting with the world around them. And after getting used to the Dursleys and learning their habits so that Harry wouldn't accidentally alarm them, it was a small matter for Harry to run long chains of events all within the confines of their own heads. This dubious ability was another trait brought over with them from their past life (developed from reasons we will not get into here), and it resulted in Harry's memories being . . . inconsistent, to put it kindly. Sometimes Harry would go through the motions of initiating the chain of events that would invariably unfold as they had estimated, but other times . . . they just didn't bother. Sometimes they just forgot to bother.
It was a little like being able to see the future, but in the most unexciting way (which was saying something considering Harry already could see the future in a deathly unexciting way). Why say something when you already know what response you'll get? Especially when the response wouldn't be what you want? Why act? Why move? Why do anything at all? When you know essentially all the ends of the paths in front of you, was there even a point?
As you can imagine, this wasn't an encouraging line of thought for someone who came into this life after purposefully ending their previous one. Harry wasn't as naturally despondent in this life, but that might have been difficult to tell if someone were to walk in on them in them middle of running a scenario in their mind, still as a statue and staring into the distance without blinking. Add on the field of wizardry that was mind magic and how the minds of wizardkind fundamentally differed from their mundane counterparts on a structural level, and you can imagine what mental anomalies might be going on inside the head of this Harry Potter.
And so, as Harry's new cohorts got used to being around Harry, it was inevitable that they would start picking up on these anomalies. As a general rule of thumb, Harry wouldn't normally allow themselves to get lost in their head in the presence of others, but Harry was warming up to the girls for real; they trusted the girls not to be bitches about the uncool facets about them.
When Harry zoned out in the middle of a conversation, Tracey picked it up and carried on with it without a blink until Harry faded back in. When they blanked in the middle of doing something, like taking notes or reaching for something, Lily would remember it for them or remind them later as needed. When Harry seized up and just stopped moving, Sophie would take their hand and lead them along until they could walk on their own again. And these girls lived up to being Slytherins — they did all these things in the subtlest way so that no one else noticed when Harry was dysfunctioning.
And Harry appreciated it. They really did. And it helped quite a bit more that Harry would have thought.
But for what it couldn't help. . . .
Harry didn't know if it was their state from before being exacerbated by stress, or if they were relapsing (after all, they had thought they were doing well while they were growing up again), or if they were being hormonal because of the onset of puberty, but when their lows hit them . . . it was starting to scare them.
Was it good or not, Harry wondered, that feeling so low now made them frightened instead of simply indifferent like before? Was it a sign that their mental state was better or was it a sign that it was worse?
They were already dead; they'd already died; they'd already killed themselves — Why did there have to be a before and a now? Why were they still here? Why didn't they stay dead? Why was it them that was brought back like this?
Why was it them? Why was it them? Did something choose them? Did no one see they were the wrong choice? They were obviously the wrong choice! Anyone with eyes could see they were not right for the job. They would fail! They weren't fit to do this! They were the furthest thing from a hero, selfish and a coward! They didn't know how to be brave! They couldn't do this! They couldn't do this!
Theycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothistheycouldn'tdothisanditwasgoingtobealltheirfaultalltheirfaultalltheirfaultalltheirfaultalltheirfaultalltheirfaultalltheirfaultalltheirfaultalltheirfaultalltheirfault—
Dear reader, let us take a step back from the immersion of the story for a bit so that we might address something. It is understandable that such breaks in the fourth wall like this might be off-putting and unenjoyable when you're reading, but it might be better off for everyone involved if you can feel separated from this story for a moment.
There were unexciting, uninteresting, unhappy things that the Narrator-that-is-Harry and the Narrator-that-is-the-Writer both would much rather weren't included in the narrative of this story. It was a given that they would panic and feel useless; any Insert-Harry that was being written realistically would be so at least occasionally.
However.
They didn't want to mention how in the quiet moments when there was nothing to distract them, Harry could almost feel their heartbeat slowing to a life-unsustaining degree, as if complying with Harry's deepest subconscious conviction that they weren't meant to be alive. They didn't want to make it known that Harry would have to lean against something if they didn't want to slump to the ground from all the thoughts they'd suppressed during the day washing over them and choking them in a sense of futility, that nothing they did mattered, that nothing they said mattered, that to continue to live and consume resources was an exercise in waste.
Words spoken in jest, thoughts bush aside as unproductive, things done when there was something, anything in front of them that could distract them — there was no jesting or sweeping them away when it was brought back to mind that nothing was actually productive, nothing was worth sticking around for, nothing done to them or by them meant anything in the long-term or even short-term. They could see it; they could anticipate it; they knew exactly how every pointless end would turn out.
Nothing mattered.
Nothing mattered.
Nothing mattered.
To do anything, to say anything, to believe anything, was simply for naught.
They didn't want attention drawn to how Harry would lie wherever they were slumped, in whatever hole they'd tucked themselves in when no one was around to pull them out, hardly believing they were still alive even though they were certain that the last breath they took was taken longer ago than what a human body to accept, their face damp with inexplicable tears even though they didn't think what they were feeling was sadness. They didn't know what to name what it was they felt when submerged in futility; it wasn't defeat since they weren't trying to achieve something; they didn't think it was despair since that implied that they'd been hopeful before. Maybe these were physiological tears? Perhaps their body could tell the one driving it wasn't interested in keeping it alive, was a failure that would rather not live at all, so the survival instincts were doing what they could?
They, we — the Narrator, the Writer, Harry — didn't want to bring up uncomfortable facts that didn't benefit anyone by knowing them. Was this story enriched? Was the reader titillated? Did it bring any value to the plot for such things to be written in explicitly?
Are you better for knowing this? Do you feel any better?
No. No one needed to know. There were no benefits for anyone to know. Chances were that now after knowing, those who now know it are unhappy in their new knowledge; uncomfortable. They'd rather that everyone could just gloss over this information, so they can all get back to the fun, amusing parts.
'This isn't achieving anything,' many people are no doubt thinking. 'Why include it at all? Why are you telling us? Why like this? Why do it when it makes no one happy?'
But there's no going back to that unknowing state now, so why are we even bothering with regret? Does that not also achieve nothing?
And now everyone involved is stuck in this state of knowing too much.
We're sorry.
We don't know why we did this to you.
But it's hollow and cold here, so maybe you might stay here with us for a while? We shouldn't have brought you here to this state — it was selfish. So selfish. But we don't want to be alone in this darkness.
Just for a few moments more? Please? And then you can go back and forget.
Sorry.
We're sorry.
I'm sorry.
Bringing you into this was so pointless.
We just made everything worse.
Here, let's just end it here.
N-Not the end?
"Will you, won't you, please, Maypop?/ Won't you make it stop, stop, stop?/ All the world is black, grey, blue./ Oh, what are we to do?/"
On the first floor of the Charms Wing, next to a wide window overlooking the grounds of the Herbology Wing, a small figure was tucked beside a cluster of statues that hid the view of them from anyone who might traverse the hall they were in. This person was sat cross-legged on the floor with a mortar and pestle set, a small box filled with tinctures and dried herbs, and a student-sized cauldron seated on a portable burner all in front of them. The weather was getting colder, but the afternoon sunshine was bright and warm, melting the snow in the person's hair from the light snowfall earlier.
"Let your tears drop, drip, drip down,/ down upon the king's gold crown./ Smash it into dust, dust, dust,/ that's all that we can trust./"
The cauldron was lightly simmering. Green shredded leaves were floating along at the edge, pushed from the centre by the bubbles. A stirring rod was inserted, and the solution was lightly stirred in a pattern twice clockwise and then twice widdershins, following the rhythm of the singing. After a few moments, a dropper filled with a golden liquid dribbled drops into the cauldron.
"Find a cherry in the frost./ It must have been lost, lost, lost./ It's the berry of a goose;/ chokes you like a noose./"
From the mortar was scooped a powdering clump that looked a bit like partially-dried chilli pepper that had been sent through a coffee-grinder. The orangey-scarlet spoonful was slowly lowered into the cauldron, care being taken to neither spill nor cause a splash.
The solution was then stirred once more in the same manner as before.
"Mash it all up, drink it down/ when you're dressed all in a frown./ Trust me, trust me when I say/ you'll see a brighter day./"
After the entire solution was simmered to satisfaction, an open thermos was placed mouth-up on the stone floor. A strainer was set on top, and a clean white handkerchief on top of that. With two hands, the cauldron was tipped over the strainer and handkerchief, the contents poured into the thermos sans the undrinkable parts.
The thermos filled with tisane was then capped and set aside. The handkerchief filled with grounds and leftover pulp was tied up, secured with a bit of spare twine, and placed in a corner of the ingredient box to be taken care of later.
After everything was tidied up and put away, Harry took up the thermos again. They held it in two hands and they breathed in the slightly sweet, slightly bitter steam. After a few inhales, they leaned back so that their head rested against the wall and lifted the thermos to their lips.
A familiar yet unfamiliar taste filled their mouth. Harry's eyebrows drew together in displeasure. As expected, it still tasted as far from delightful as they remembered. And they didn't have any honey to add to it to make it better. This didn't stop them from going in for another gulp, though.
"It's a bitter soup to sip,/ but take care! Don't drop a drip./ Trust me, trust me — this I pray./ We'll see another day."
Songs in this chapter:
1) "There be a daffodil. . . ." Original lyrics; sung to the tune of Dacw Nghariad
2) "Many year ago in a kingdom by the sea. . . ." Annabelle Lee by Sara Jarosz. Originally, it was going to be Annabel Lee by Monica Gil, which used Poe's original poem in its entirety.
3) "Will you, won't you, please, Maypop?" Original lyrics; sung to the tune of Polly, Put The Kettle On
AN: If you would like to support my writing and/or get access to advanced chapter updates, go to my tumblr — high-pot-in-noose — and follow the link in my bio. We are currently five chapters ahead over there.