In His Memory
Part Four: Searching for Answers
By: WeasleyTwin2
Though hope is frail
It's hard to kill
When You Believe
From the Soundtrack to Prince of Egypt
We can face whatever comes
If we face it now as one
In Whatever Time We Have
From the Musical Children of Eden
"Is he going to be alright?"
"I'm not sure. It's really to early to tell."
"What happened…?"
"I don't know that either? It's so strange…"
"His not…?"
"No. He is alive, but just barely."
"He's the lucky one. If it hadn't been for…"
"I realize that, but he's still in grave danger."
I heard muffled voices all around me. They faded in and out like a badly tuned radio. I tried to focus on the voices but they soon faded completely, leaving me alone in the silent darkness that surrounded me. My body and my very soul hurt with the most horrible pain I had ever felt in my life. I felt as if a bludger had hit me both inside and out. Awareness of the things around me began to fade away.
*
Suddenly the whispering voices invaded my silent world again, bringing light in with them. I felt someone put a cold cloth to my head. It was then that I realized that my body seemed to be made of fire and my very soul seemed to burn. I moaned and moved on the bed, trying to get away from the burning pain. I heard someone shout for help and soon they had me calmed down again.
"It's alright," I heard someone say. "You'll be alright. Just calm down and let us take care of you."
I relaxed, knowing at last I was somewhere safe and not trapped in that dreadful place surrounded by fire burning through me, pain flowing through me. Soon the voices faded away again and I slept quietly again.
*
There was complete silence. My body still burned with fever and my soul seemed to be on fire. I moaned again, softly and moved a little. Then I opened my eyes and saw the concerned face of Madame Pomfrey, the school nurse, looking down at me. I tried to ask her what had happened and what was wrong with me but my voice refused to work.
"Awake at long last. Welcome back to the land of the living Mr. Malfoy. How are we feeling? Better?"
I tried to answer with my voice, found that I couldn't so I just answered with a nod. She beamed down at me for a moment. I watched her as she tended me and then she left without another word seeming to realize that I couldn't yet speak. When she returned, she brought three visitors with her then she left after telling them not to stay too long. Ron and Hermione sat down one on either side of me, a look of profound sorrow etched on their faces. The third person was Harry or rather it was his ghost. He had toned down the light that was around him and looked almost as if he were alive again except that I could see the wall behind him. He looked down at me from where he stood floating at the foot of my bed. His eyes were very grave and sorrowful and they held mine for several minutes. I tried to speak again but failed. A wave of pain passed through me causing the room to blur around me.
"What's… wrong…?" I managed to croak after several attempts.
Hermione burst into tears and Ron mumbled something I couldn't hear.
"What…?" I mumbled, wanting desperately to know the answer yet fearing it at the same time.
"Seth-Ra took your soul from your body and sent it away to a place of unending torment," said Harry's voice though he hadn't moved his mouth to speak.
"Ron and Hermione distracted him in the physical world while I journeyed into that realm of dark despair to retrieve your soul. You very nearly died and your body would have if I hadn't put a part of myself in you," he continued quietly.
I nodded, not really understanding what he was saying to me.
"A part of himself…?"
"You have been out nearly two months," said Ron with a worried frown.
"We thought you had died. You spent three straight days and night screaming as if your very soul was in agony and you moaned and cried for weeks after that. Then you went completely still and silent. We all thought you had died," Hermione said, her eyes wide
.
"Until two days ago when Harry returned with your soul that is." Ron said, looking at Harry's ghost.
I remembered nothing of all this and I was glad that I didn't. The three of them looked awful and even Harry looked mortally tired though he wasn't alive.
"It's from holding the spell on you that will keep you body and soul together," said Harry, with a small grin as if he had read my mind.
I nodded and then a hiss of pain escaped me as a wave of intense pain washed over me. The others looked on unable to help me, though I saw them reach out to me. Finally, the pain subsided into a dull ache once more.
"It will take a few weeks for the pain to subside,' said Harry, still looking grave.
Ron and Hermione looked pale and sorrowful.
"What… aren't… you… telling… me? I asked weakly, every word a struggle for my broken voice.
Tears ran down Hermione's cheeks and Ron let out a shuddering breath but neither of them spoke. Neither one of them would look at me either so I turned to Harry, who bowed his head and then said in a voice heavy with sorrow:
"You were the lucky one. You survived the attack because we all shielded you. The others…"
"How… many…?" I was afraid to hear the answer and yet I needed to know.
"You, Ron, Hermione, Professor McGonagall and a few others were the only ones to survive the attack and Seth-Ra is not even at full strength yet." Harry paused to look southward a moment and sighed heavily.
The room around me spun out of control and a cry issued from my throat. This was almost too much for me to deal with. I couldn't believe it; almost all of the people I had talked to before the Ceremony were now dead. Tears streamed down my face and my body shook with the force of my sobs.
"No they are worse then dead," said Harry with a shudder. "Their souls have been sent to the Place of Despair without having died a "natural" death. They are being held there, imprisoned by Seth-Ra who is draining them of their powers to add to his own. His own powers are being augmented by these stolen powers."
I paled as understanding dawned. Seth-Ra was some kind of power stealer, a soul drainer… There hadn't been one of those in thousands of years and the last one had almost destroyed the magical world in his quest for power before he was defeated. I shuddered at the thought.
"Exactly!" said Harry. "He is what the ancient legends call a "lich" and those same legends also speak of a cataclysmic battle which will decide the fate of the magic world. "Final Judgment Day" it is called."
There was something more he wanted to tell me, I could see it in his eyes. I wanted to know what but I was not able to ask. My eyes were beginning to fell heavy and I began to feel sleepy.
"Rest now." said Hermione.
I closed my eyes and began to drift off but, just as I had almost done so I heard, Harry say "Do you think he knows…" in a quiet voice. I wasn't able to hear the replies, if there were any because I drifted into slumber but even as a slept I wondered what he was talking about.
For the next several weeks all I could concentrate on was healing. My body was still in shock and it felt strange to me almost as if I didn't belong in it anymore. It was in a constant state of pain that as, the weeks passed, subsided into dull aches throughout my body. I still felt odd and slightly disoriented from the attack and a wondered if I would ever completely heal from it. Yet, somehow I had managed to survive the attack that had killed several others. In all about 30 more of our class had "died" when Seth-Ra cast his spell at us all. I still couldn't believe that more of us had died. It was incomprehensible. We had already sustained heavy losses last year. I had no clear understanding of why our class had been hit so hard by the hand of fate. Had tragedy chosen us as it had once chosen another Hogwarts class before us? The last class that was nearly wiped out in battles against evil was the class Harry's parents had been a part of. I could only think of two living members of the Hogwarts Class of 1976: Remus Lupin and Sirius Black. I was beginning to wonder who would be left of our class after this battle. It was hard for me to deal with all this especially in my current state of weakness. I tried to shove these thought from my mind but they came to the surface time and time again.
Instead I tried to turn my thoughts to Seth-Ra's spell. I lay in bed recovering and thinking about the spell that was used and about Seth-Ra. The spell he had used on us had seemed familiar to me, although from where I wasn't sure. I just knew I had seen a similar spell somewhere, perhaps had even read it. I could still feel him. He was nearby, biding his time. Seth-Ra was waiting for… I didn't know what he was waiting for. It was sufficient to know that he waited. He was watching and growing in power with each sunrise. The time had come to seek out the answers to the questions that we all had. I resolved to search for these answers as soon as I was well enough to walk.
As the weeks passed I began to wonder exactly had happened to me during the attack. What had Seth-Ra done to me? How had Harry managed to save me? What had he seen?
I tried to ask the others but they became silent whenever the subject came up or they would try to change the subject. The whole time it seemed as if Harry wanted to tell me but didn't known if I would believe what he said. I got the impression that there was something more going on then they were willing to talk about and because of this I decided not to ask unless it became important. They would tell me when they were ready and my asking would not make them tell me any sooner so I resolved not to ask
About a month later I was ready to leave my bed and the Hospital Wing for good. It felt good to be mobile and upright again. School was back in session by this time and Professor McGonagall had asked the three of us to stay on. She believed we were the only ones who stood a chance of defeating Seth-Ra's power. She truly believed that we were the ones spoken about in the fragments of the prophecy. I wasn't so sure but I kept my doubts to myself. Wherever the three of us went, we caused excitement. Whispers followed us down corridors, individual students who stopped us in the halls to talk gave words of praise to us, and applause broke out in the Great Hall at dinner. They all seemed anxious to show their apparition to us. I was flattered by it but couldn't understand why they did this.
There were very few opportunities for these events to happen though. We spent most of our time closeted with professors or else in the library trying to gather information on the ancient battle between Gryffindor and Seth-Ra. Harry was still with us but he spent most of the time being invisible. He didn't want to upset everyone by being seen around the school.
"It would be upsetting for everyone here if I were to be seen roaming the school. There are still to many grieving for me in particular,' he said one day as we gathered in Ron's room.
I agreed with Harry. It was even a little disturbing to the three of us. Ghosts were a fact of life at Hogwarts, you couldn't attend the school without meeting several but they were all ancient ghosts of people long dead. Harry felt that though he to "haunted" Hogwarts he was really to recently dead to be seen. It could upset everyone; especially since he was now even more famous then he had been before.
"I would just remind everyone of what was giving and they would probably want me to give them magical solutions to their problems"
Privately, I agreed again but I said nothing. I was to busy with a long roll of parchment on which was written all the information we had found so far. Most of it was fragmentary at best and sheer speculation at worst. I had made it my job to write down all this information we found while Ron, Harry and Hermione did the actual searching because I was still too weak from the attack. I was also experiencing bouts of dizziness and disorientation but Harry promised this would soon pass. As I copied down some new information from a very tattered and brittle scroll Hermione had given me, I wondered about my body's continued weakness. Would it pass or was it a sign that there was something worse wrong with me? I remembered Harry asking if I knew anything or suspected anything when he thought I was asleep. I wondered what he was talking about. He had also told me that he had put a part of himself in me. There was something going on here that I didn't completely understand and wasn't even aware of and whatever it was it had to do with the attack and me. Did they suspect me of having had a hand in it? No, that didn't make sense. They had risked their lives and souls to protect and save me. Did others think I was on Seth-Ra's side? Possibly… and yet that didn't feel right to me either. I wanted to ask Harry, needed to ask and yet I didn't. Everyone around me looked so tired that I was unsure about asking them. Even Harry was looking completely worn out which was unusual for a ghost. Harry was floating a few feet in the air, staring intently at an old leather bound book with a peeling spine. The eyes behind his glasses were squinting at the ancient writing and he was wearing a frown. He obviously knew I was watching him because he suddenly looked up and grinned at me briefly. Then he returned to his reading and I returned to my copying wondering more then ever what was going on. I wondered whether all this work would be of any use against a dark wizard who had already killed so many and only at half strength and I wondered what secret the others were hiding. I also wondered if we would find the answers in time.
A/N: None of these characters are mine. They belong to J.K. Rowling. I only own the plot and the Dark Wizard Seth-Ra. Hope you enjoyed it. Please take time to review. Thanks. The fifth part will be called "Keeping Secrets" and will be coming soon.
~WeasleyTwin2~