Harry Potter and the Fifth House
Christine Morgan
christine@sabledrake.com / http://www.christine-morgan.org


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.
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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.

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page copyright 2002 by Christine Morgan / christine@sabledrake.com