Author's Note: the characters of the Harry Potter novels are the property
of their creator, J.K. Rowling, and are used here without her knowledge
or permission. All other characters property of the author. 53,000 words.
January, 2002. Adult situations, mild sexual content and violence.
****************************************
Chapter Thirteen – The Tombs.
Harry woke Tuesday
morning with the feeling that something was very badly wrong.
Of course there
was! He'd kissed Hermione! And liked it, too.
The events of
the entire previous day and night came back to him. What with everything
that had happened, especially in the greenhouse and after, was it any wonder
he felt out of sorts? As if the whole world were ever-so-slightly off-kilter?
Everything had changed.
He dragged himself
through the process of washing and dressing, doing his best to avoid meeting
the eyes of his fellow students. They all seemed a bit off too, snapping
at each other over inconsequential things. Probably upset themselves by
yesterday's conversation with Dumbledore. The knowledge that the witch
in that picture really was McGonagall had to have worked on their
brains in the wee hours.
As they went
down to breakfast, it became plain to Harry that everyone was not quite
right. Hermione, he could understand. She could only glance at him for
a moment, the memory of their kiss shining in her eyes, before looking
away.
And Ginny …
with the unformed telepathy that he was beginning to believe all girls
possessed in some measure, Ginny was regarding him and Hermione with a
hurt and angry suspicion.
All that would
have been understandable. It was when he factored in how all the
students, the teachers, and even the portraits in the hall and the occasional
drifting ghost, were curt and cranky that Harry started to wonder what
was up.
Something was
missing.
Something was
wrong.
Hagrid wasn't
at breakfast, and that only added to Harry's disquiet.
The arrival
of the morning owl post didn't make things any better. Several people at
Harry's table, including Hermione, received copies of the Daily Prophet,
and the front page was taken up with screaming headlines: Dark Lord Strikes
Scottish Cemetery, Dozens Disinterred. The story accompanying the headline
went on to say that in the boldest move yet, agents of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
had frightened a Muggle gravedigger into a heart attack, dug up all the
graves, and presumably raised the occupants as the undead. The Ministry
was hard at work convincing the Muggles that it was a case of pre-Halloween
pranksters, nothing more. It was, the paper added, the third such incident
this fortnight.
Harry watched
Snape closely as the Potions teacher read through the paper. Snape's expression
was unreadable, yet unpleasant nonetheless. As it was daylight, there was
of course no sign of Ophidia Winterwind. Harry remembered what she'd told
Snape. That she had a plan, some way to stop Voldemort. That had been just
before she'd turned on the charm and the two of them had retreated into
the classroom, so no more information had been forthcoming.
Resolving to
try and talk to her after Defense Against the Dark Arts tonight, Harry
choked down the rest of his food. The eggs and toast had gone tasteless,
his mouth soured by that newspaper article.
The meal period
trudged irritably on. Many times, Harry had the feeling that someone was
standing near him, trying to get his attention. It wasn't until he was
pushing away his half-finished glass of orange juice that he slapped himself
in the forehead and applied more drops of True-Sight.
The twilight
world of the shades swam into being in front of him, but it was different.
Something had changed. It was dark, for one, what light from the Great
Hall that filtered thinly into that realm seeming only to emphasize the
darkness.
Jeremy Upwood
was right at Harry's elbow. He wore a pleading, mournful look.
"Hi, Jeremy,"
Harry said. It came out almost a question, as he didn't even know if they'd
be able to hear each other.
Hermione shot
him a quick glance, divined what was going on – the blue-grey smears around
his eyes probably clueing her in – and struck up a discussion with Colin
and Parvati to distract the rest of the table from him.
"You have to
help," said Jeremy. His voice was a dim and distant echo of its former
self. "Please, Harry. You're the only one who sees, the only one who knows."
"I want to help,"
he said. "What can I do?"
"It's stolen."
"What --" He
needn't finish. The silvery prongs that had held the Soulstone now supported
only empty air, explaining the absence of the blue-white radiance that
used to illuminate the Battenby table.
"Someone came
last night," said Jeremy. "He took the Soulstone away. Harry, it was him.
The one who … the one who killed me."
Harry's blood
chilled to ice water. "Do you know who he is?"
Jeremy's pale
head shook side to side, but his twilight-blue eyes never left Harry's
face. "But I know where he took it."
"Can you get
it back?"
Again, the slow,
solemn shaking of the head. "Only the living can trespass in the realm
of the dead."
"You sound like
your professor," Harry said, remembering how Professor Charon had uttered
the cryptic 'fear no evil' to him. "What do you mean, the realm of the
dead?"
"The tombs,"
said Jeremy. "He took it to the tombs."
The Marauder's
Map had shown the tombs, catacombs even lower than the dungeons. Harry
had asked Hermione about it once, wondering who'd be buried there.
"Anyone who's
everyone," she'd replied. "There aren't any great wizarding cathedrals
like there are for Muggles, so most of the great wizards and witches of
the past were buried here. I've heard that some still are. Important people."
The obvious
question had gone unasked because Harry couldn't stand to hear the answer.
He wasn't sure if he wanted to know where his parents were buried, or visit
them if he found out. He had beheld their visages in the Mirror of Erised,
heard their voices courtesy of the dementors, and come face to face with
their ghostly echoes in his last battle with Voldemort. That was far more
than he'd ever expected.
Now that he
thought about it, he also remembered some of the ghosts, Nearly Headless
Nick and Moaning Myrtle chief among them, making reference to the fact
that they were glad ghosts weren't bound to the location of the body because
it would get boring down in the catacombs.
"Why did he
take it there?" he asked Jeremy now. "And how come you can talk to me,
and not anybody else?"
"We're bound
together, Harry. Because you were there. Because you raised me, made me
what I am."
He flinched.
"I'm really sorry about that, honestly I am. I didn't mean to."
Jeremy shrugged
wistfully. "It beats being all the way dead, and it beats being at the
orphanage."
"I want to help.
Tell me what I need to do."
"Find the Soulstone.
Bring it back."
"Any hints on
how? What about Professor Charon? Can't he 'trespass' down there?" Thinking
of Charon's dining habits, Harry wished he hadn't even brought it up.
"He went last
night when the theft was discovered," Jeremy said. Blatant fear radiated
from him as surely as the flickery light of life force had come from the
Soulstone. "He never came back."
"Does Dumbledore
know?"
"I don't know."
"All right.
I'll go down there and have a look."
Jeremy's smile
of relief was the last thing Harry saw as the potion wore off again. He
gradually became aware that, Hermione's chatter aside, some of his classmates
were still giving him odd looks. Breakfast was over and the first bell
rang, summoning them to their daily routine.
Which posed
Harry an awful dilemma. He couldn't very well cut class, but if the Soulstone
and Professor Charon were missing, he didn't want to waste time. He wavered
for a moment, torn.
"What's up with
you?" asked Ron.
"Trouble. Something
I need to do." He looked at Ron and Hermione. "If Binns asks, if Binns
even notices I'm not there, cover for me, would you?"
They agreed,
though reluctantly. At least the first class of the day was History of
Magic, and experience had taught them that they could pass notes, doodle,
read, or even sleep without Professor Binns saying anything except to go
on with his seemingly endless lectures on the passing of various Ministry
laws, the faerie convention of 1886, and so on.
When everyone
else filed out into the corridor, and split off to take the various routes
to their classrooms, Harry lagged behind and veered off to Gryffindor Tower.
Peeves the Poltergeist
was playing darts halfway up the stairs. His target seemed to be Mrs. Norris,
which to Harry was a mixed blessing. Peeves was a pain, but if any creature
within Hogwarts deserved getting turned into a dartboard, Mrs. Norris would
come in high on his list. Maybe even in the top five, right behind Malfoy,
Snape, Crabbe, and Goyle.
Unfortunately
for Harry, Peeves was easily distracted by the appearance of a new target.
The next thing Harry knew, four darts were whizzing toward him.
"Defende
Missilus!" he cried. Magical Combat coming in handy. The spell bloomed
around him, invisible but there, and caused all of the darts to veer off
course by the barest degree necessary to leave him untouched. He felt the
breeze of their passage.
Peeves squalled
in outrage, sensing he'd been cheated. "Think you're so good against darts,
eh, Potter?" came his cackle. "Let's see how that spell holds up against
a piano!"
The staircase
above him was swiveling, making gritty grinding sounds as it did so. Looking
up, Harry saw the leading edge of a grand piano poised and inching out
over the drop. It would flatten him like a cartoon character.
He started to
lunge up the stairs, but while his attention had been occupied on the staircase
above him, the one he was on had also decided to play tricks. Two more
steps would have sent him off into space, to plunge fifty feet onto the
marble floor below.
Spinning the
other way, he ran down the flight of steps just as the piano teetered and
fell. It hit the stairs above and behind him with a terrible din – wood
splintering, the abused twanging of strings, all clatter and crash and
cacophony. And then it began to roll.
Unevenly, more
of a tilt-and-slam-and-tilt-and-slam, but it was swapping ends as it rumbled
down the stairs after Harry. Desperate, he jabbed his wand back over his
shoulder and shouted, "Pugnatis!"
A bolt of energy
shot from his wand. It hit the piano a split second before the tumbling,
splintery mess would have rolled over Harry and squashed him into the stairs.
Instead, some other mass hit him, something light and crackly and smelling
of dust and ink. Although not as heavy as a piano, the sudden deluge of
paper in rolls and paper in sheets was enough to knock Harry sprawling.
He fell face-down on the landing, covered in paper.
He rolled over
and sat up, and looked at what the piano had become thanks to his Transfiguration
spell. It had been replaced with an approximate mass of sheet music, everything
from beginning children's lessons to entire concertos.
Peeves had disappeared,
probably rushing off to find someone to report this mess to in hopes of
getting Harry in trouble. Deciding not to be here when Peeves got back,
Harry shook himself free of the pile of music and hurried to the nearest
accommodating staircase.
His Invisibility
Cloak was secured in his trunk again. It was getting a lot of use this
month. Pulling it on, he couldn't help but think of how it had been to
be huddled so close to Hermione under here. He fancied that he could still
smell a hint of her strawberry shampoo caught in the cloak's fabric.
The halls were
empty by the time he got to the ground floor. From the various classrooms
came the drone and murmur of school in session. Harry headed down, passing
Snape's dungeon and the lower, unoccupied chambers where they came for
lightning-bolt practice (and where he'd once been partly at fault for turning
Neville into a frog).
The passageway
leading to the tombs was black as Voldemort's soul. The light at the end
of Harry's wand did little to push back the hungry, encroaching shadows.
The air was so cold it seemed liquid, and congealed around his lower legs
in a layer of mist.
But someone
had been down here recently. Some of the hinges had fresh scrapes in age-old
rust, and oil was still wet and glistening upon them. The bronze door handles,
caked with verdigris, were shaped like wraiths in flowing shrouds, their
arms stretched up and bent back over their elongated heads. Their eyes
and mouths were open in stretched ovals of spectral doom.
"Nice," Harry
said to himself. "Very nice. Welcoming."
The handle felt
slick and skinlike beneath his hand. As if, should he squeeze it, the door
would come awake and raving like a pinched beast. He depressed the latch
and pulled very carefully.
More mist, and
a cold draft, swirled out around him. Patterns formed and dissipated in
the low-hanging fog. Beyond was a darkness so total it might have been
the empty space between stars. His wandlight was pitiful and inadequate
in the face of such a darkness.
He stepped inside,
and was immediately struck by a vision of the door swinging shut, latching,
locking, trapping him in here with the dead. For there were dead,
he could feel them if not see them. Rank after rank of coffins, set into
wall niches or atop stone biers, and in the oldest sections there would
be crumbling skeletons that had been buried in nothing but winding cloths.
Harry lowered
his wandlight to the floor and searched for something with which to prop
the door open. The fog hid any helpful items from him, so he settled for
wadding up his Invisibility Cloak and wedging it in the gap. It would end
up damp and dirty, and any lingering scent of Hermione's shampoo would
be replaced by the gravemold aroma of this place, but it would have to
do.
Shivering –
and telling himself it was only from the chill in the air – Harry moved
deeper into the tombs. The small, shaky sphere of his wandlight showed
him a scene very much like that which he'd expected. Coffins, biers, niches.
Some with plaques on which names, dates of birth and death, and inscriptions
could be read. He didn't want to look too closely. Suppose he were to see
his parents' names? Their death was real enough to him already, had always
been real. He didn't need any more reminders.
Nor did he particularly
need to be down here in what was essentially a graveyard. He'd had enough
of that after being captured by Voldemort. The memories of that horrible
night were never far from him. Cedric dying … killed by Voldemort with
no more caring or effort than one might take to swat a fly. Death always
seemed closer in such places, with the visible trappings of it as far as
the eye could see.
Swallowing and
feeling a dry click in his throat, Harry moved further into the crypt.
The niches in the walls were four or five high, the biers crowded close
so that there were only the narrowest paths between them. Paths it was
impossible to walk without now and then bumping or brushing against the
cool, slick stone. Some had raised stone effigies atop them, witches and
wizards reclined with their arms crossed on their chests, some with wands
held the way Egyptian mummies held ankhs. He recognized a few from portraits
in Dumbledore's office. Past headmasters. Still moving in the pictures,
usually nodding and napping but giving the impression of life. While here,
they were frozen and irrevocably dead.
Blue-white light
shone on a section of wall ahead. Harry, who had been on the verge of giving
in to his nervousness, steeled himself and continued his stealthy creeping
among the biers. He followed the light into an older section of the tomb.
The coffins here looked very old indeed. Centuries old.
The light's
source seemed to be coming from a chamber beyond this one, accessible through
a stone archway. This archway was held up by columns shaped into statues.
The one on the left was a skeletal figure with a hood and a scythe. The
one on the right was some sort of bird-woman, with feathered wings folded
close against a nude body and a wickedly-curved beak. The stones of the
archway were inlaid with runes. Most of the letters were worn away or obscured,
and Harry could only read the last bit. It read: God Grant They Lie Still.
He doused his
wandlight and moved carefully forward. Now he could hear rustlings, and
a muffled noise that sounded like someone trying to speak through a gag.
It set his nerves on edge. Still gripping his wand, he sidled along the
passage. It ended in another archway, with a massive iron-bound oak door
that stood wide open.
The room beyond
was a nightmare of angles that didn't add up. The floor was sloped upward
toward the downhill corner, the ceiling soared in a drooping Turkish dome,
squatting stone imps and looming gargoyles cast monstrous shadows, and
the coffins in here were not only padlocked but many were bolted to the
floor with metal straps, or as wrapped in chains as Marley's ghost. Some
of the niches in the walls were smaller, holding sealed urns and jars that
Harry was sure contained cremated remains.
There were torch
sconces along the walls, all of them bronze demons and devils. The torches
in them were unlit and ancient, ready to crumble at a touch and so warped
from the constant moisture of the atmosphere that if lit, they'd probably
smolder out sick plumes of smoke but shed no light. The blue-white beacon
that had guided Harry here came from the Soulstone.
The glowing
sphere was suspended near the middle of the room, in a rusted crow's cage
that could have come right from Filch's beloved torture chamber. Beneath
it, the floor had been cleared bare. A double pentagram was sketched in
stark white chalk on the stones. Unlit candles rested at each of the five
outer points. Between the two thick lines of the pentagrams were designs
and symbols in other colors – red, yellow, a burning bile green. These
were nearly phosphorescent, emitting their own strange light into the blue-white
glow of the Soulstone.
Two figures,
naked and bound, lay at the center of the inner pentagram. They were gagged
and awake. Their eyes were fixed in dread on the slowly-swinging cage above
them. Two urns also sat within the pentagram, positioned just above the
heads of the helpless captives. Both were of black ceramic glazed in a
translucent red like a veneer of blood.
The two people
were in their early twenties, a man and a woman, neither of them anyone
Harry knew … or did he? He'd seen them somewhere before, and would probably
be able to remember if his head weren't so filled with other thoughts,
so distracted by the scene before him. This was Dark magic at its Darkest.
Necromancy. The pentagram was used in the summoning of spirits or demons.
Sacrificial victims laid out for some hideous ritual.
He had to get
them out of here. As he moved toward them, the nearer, the man, saw Harry
and looked at him with frantic fear. As if Harry was no ordinary-looking
teenager … well, ordinary-looking for a Hogwarts student, in his black
robe with the Gryffindor crest, and a wand held tightly in his hand.
"It's all right,"
Harry whispered. "I'm not going to hurt you."
The woman, craning
her neck to see over the man, made pleadingly hopeful sounds from behind
her gag. As Harry came closer, twisting to avoid touching any of these
biers even more than he had the other, he suddenly knew where he'd seen
them before.
The man's eyes
widened in terror. Looking not at Harry now, but past him.
The gnarled
tip of a wand touched Harry at the base of his skull.
"A force bolt
here," hissed a low voice, "and your head would fly clean off, Potter."
Harry felt as
cold and immobile as any stone effigy.
"Put down your
wand," the other commanded. "Nice and slow."
His arm extended
out to the side. Harry reviewed Summoning Charms in his mind. He deposited
the wand atop a chain-wrapped coffin, the lid of which was cracked as if
something in it had beat so furiously against the underside that it had
very nearly split apart.
A hand snaked
out, in every sense of the word. It was covered in fine overlapping scales,
the fingers tipped in claws. The long and nastily supple arm was draped
in the loose sleeve of a black robe identical to Harry's own. Except that,
if he could see the patch sewn on the chest, it would be the green and
silver of Slytherin.
It all made
sense now. Harry could have kicked himself for not seeing it sooner.
"You won't get
away with this, Grimme," he said, and was proud by how even and sure he
sounded.
"You of all
people," Fyren Grimme replied, almost amused, "should be on our side in
this matter."
Harry risked
a half-turn, enough to let him see the massive seventh-year. Grimme had
resumed the form he'd worn when Harry initially saw him. Half man, half
serpent. His legs had fused into a muscular, scaled coil. His eyes were
lidless and vertically slit. A quick black tongue flecked testingly through
his pebbled, greenish lips.
"On your side?
Kidnapping Muggles for sacrifice?"
The two vacationers,
whose pictures he'd seen in the clipping that Professor Dursley had given
him on Monday morning – was that only yesterday? – had subsided into blank
stares of horror. Huge silent tears spilled from the woman's eyes.
"Stopping the
Dark Lord," said Grimme.
"Stopping
him? Now why don't I believe you?"
"You're in no
position to take that tone, Potter." Grimme propelled himself closer with
a smooth flexion of his coils. He thrust Harry's wand up his sleeve.
"I thought she
cured you," Harry said, backing up a step. But warily. He didn't want to
set even the heel of his shoe across the boundary-lines of that pentagram
until he knew what spells might be on it.
Grimme hissed
again, and his eyes flared dull yellow. "It wore off. I've been promised
another."
"For a price."
"There's always
a price. What of it? At least I got something in exchange for my services,
Potter. Unlike you. You did your bit for free."
"What are you
talking about?" Harry's stomach rolled with vertigo.
"I killed the
boy. You brought him back."
"I don't know
what you mean. What does this have to do with Jeremy?"
"One more shade
was needed." Grimme's fangs, not vampire fangs but wicked needle-thin cobra
fangs, flashed as he grinned. Clear serum – poison – was oozing from them.
"One last bit of life force to bring the Soulstone to full power, or power
enough to do the job. I couldn't have brought him back. It had to
be done by someone of good heart and good intentions."
Harry remembered
the odd, detached feeling he'd had on the night he'd seen Ophidia Winterwind
and Fyren Grimme in Knockturn Alley. He remembered how he'd gotten back
to his room by autopilot, and how slow he'd been to awaken.
"She mesmerized
me," he said in dawning realization. "Programmed me to try and revive whoever
you killed, even though I knew it was too late. But what does she want
the Soulstone for? Why was it so important that there be that much life
force?"
"I told you,"
said Grimme with an impatient darting of his tongue. "To stop the Dark
Lord. That's a goal I think you should appreciate more than most."
"If it involves
killing innocent Muggles, how can I possibly appreciate it?" Harry cried.
"That's doing Voldemort's work for him!"
"Omelets and
eggs, Potter," rasped Grimme harshly. "Can't make the one without breaking
the other. A few Muggles now to save all of them later … you do the math.
Besides, who ever said they were going to be killed?" He shook his hairless,
scaled head. "On the contrary. They'll live, oh, yes, they will. Forever."
"I'm not letting
you do this," Harry said. "Whatever it is, I'm not letting you."
"Don't be a
fool. I spent five years like this. Five years. As a freak. Even
my own family couldn't stand to look at me. I won't let you, or anyone
else, prevent me from having my true body back."
With that, he
reared back. Flaps of skin on the sides of his neck fanned out into a hood.
He spat a clear stream at Harry's face.
Harry dove,
rolled, and as he came up to his knees thought that he was getting pretty
sick of this. Spooky dark places and snake-monsters … first the Chamber
of Secrets and a basilisk, or Voldemort's graveyard setting and Nagini,
and now this.
"Accio Wandus!"
he called.
But Grimme anticipated
him, and had pressed his arm hard to his torso, pinning Harry's wand inside
the sleeve of his robe. Grimme jabbed out his own wand and the force bolt
with which he'd threatened to blow off Harry's head shot from the end,
a brilliant bullet of swampfire green edged in silver.
Harry dove the
other way. The bolt struck a bier and left a crater. Cracks spread out
in a slow network, with a grating sound. Chunks fell away. Harry scrambled
on hands and knees as the entire bier disintegrated. The coffin atop it
hit the floor and bone dust puffed out.
It was a game
of chase, and hide-and-seek then. Harry kept a few steps ahead of Grimme,
taking refuge behind caskets and gargoyles while his foe slithered after
him. Sometimes he'd spit, sometimes he'd loose another force bolt, and
once a fine rain of venom landed on Harry's robes. They immediately began
to steam and erode. He couldn't have been out of them quicker if a willing
naked girl had been waiting for him – ludicrous thought though it was to
be having at a time like this.
In chasing him,
though, and enjoying it with all the zeal of any hunter, Fyren Grimme wasn't
being so mindful about holding his arm just so. Harry popped up, shouted,
"Accio Wandus!" again, and yelled wordless triumph as his wand sped
out of Grimme's sleeve and into Harry's waiting hand.
As Grimme whirled,
hood framing his face like a fan, Harry sent a jet of flame straight at
him. The snake-man twisted just enough to escape with a long scorched patch,
but then the battle was on in earnest.
** |