Ch17

(Author's Note:  Thanks again to all who have reviewed!  Hermione Chang:  you can review as many times as you like.  :)  To everyone: I need a little help with the Latin in this chapter, so if you Latin scholars have any suggestions for the Memory Reliving Charm or the Summoning Incantation, I'm eager to hear them.  Again, these characters all belong to J.K. Rowling, except Persephone and Demetrius Green.)

***

 "HOW ... COULD ... YOU?!"

Harry had never seen Snape speechless before.  Yet as he and Neville watched, Snape stared at Professor Green, mute with horror, a vivid red welt now visible across the left side of his sallow face.  After a few seconds, he tried to speak.

"You don't understand—"

"I understand completely."  Professor Green spoke in a deadly whisper.  "How could you say those things—those horrible things!—to these boys?"

Snape just stared at her in silence.

"Harry's parents were killed by the most powerful Dark wizard in the world, through no fault of their own!  And Neville!  He should be so lucky to grow up to be like his father.  I'll have you know that Frank Longbottom was as good an Auror as I ever met in all my time at the Ministry.

"Yet here you stand, insulting these ... CHILDREN—"

Harry bristled at being called a child, but he wouldn't dare correct Professor Green just now.

"—who've lost their parents to Dark wizards.  My God!"  She began to laugh bitterly.  "Surely you see the irony here.  Tell me, where were you, Professor, during those long years when Longbottom worked to keep the Dark Lord and his followers from taking over?"  She began to laugh even louder. 

"Where were you?  Oh," she said with feigned sympathy, "but you don't feel much like talking now, do you?  Interesting."  The rest of Snape's face had reddened to hide the welt that Professor Green had given him, and his expression of shock had given way to one of combined fear and anger.  Still, he kept silent. 

Suddenly Professor Green's manner changed entirely.  She addressed Snape gravely, with no hint of sarcasm.  "The thing I can't figure is, how you can stand it.  I mean, you're capable of so much more than this.  I know you."  She paused, glancing down at Harry and Neville. 

"Yet you've allowed yourself to become this small, wretched person who derives pleasure from making children cry.  I don't understand—I don't know how you can stand it—"

This was too much for Snape, who looked as though steam might pour out of his ears at any moment.  He interrupted her, in a very low, even tone.  "At least I'm not in love with a ghost."

Professor Green actually took a step backward, as though Snape had tried to strike her.  For a split second, she looked shocked and hurt, but then—so quickly that Harry had to question whether her first reaction had even been real—she composed herself.  She narrowed her eyes and grinned.

"Are you quite sure about that?"

Now it was Snape's turn to look taken aback.  His eyes moved involuntarily down to Harry, then back to up Professor Green.  She laughed.  Snape, however, was not amused.

"What is that supposed to m—"

"You know quite well what it means," she interrupted calmly.  "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to speak to my students in my office.  I think it's time that Neville met his parents."  Harry tried to shoot Neville a questioning look, but Neville was staring at Professor Green open-mouthed.

She walked over to them and placed one hand on each boy's shoulder.  Suddenly, she stopped and turned back to Snape.

"Why don't you come along?  It would give you a chance to properly understand what you've been taunting him about.  Unless you'd rather not know what an ignorant clod you've been."

Snape's fists were clenched at his sides.  Now he was the one trembling with rage.  "I should think not.  I have better things to do than hear about Longbottom's family history."

Professor Green glared at him for a few seconds.  Finally, she whispered something Harry could barely make out, just one word.

"Coward."

She turned back toward Harry and Neville and ushered them down the corridor toward her office.

As they walked inside her office, Harry noticed that Sirius wasn't there.  Professor Green shut the door and turned to Neville and Harry.  "Now, I'm sure that you two missed dinner.  I'll conjure us up some sandwiches, and then, Harry, I'll send you up to Gryffindor Tower.  I'll take Neville up to the hospital wing myself, after I've showed him—"

But Harry wasn't hungry.  He was curious to know what she was going to show Neville, but it looked as though she wasn't going to let him stay. 

Neville shook his head and interrupted her.  "Harry's my friend.  I want him to stay."

For some reason, Harry felt a thrill of pride that Neville would want to include him in this.  He smiled at Neville.

"And we're not hungry," Neville added, smiling back.  "And my knee feels fine now, so I don't need to go up to the hospital wing after all. 

What is it that you wanted to show me?"

Professor Green smiled at them.  "Neville, I have memories of your parents from before ... Before the attack ..."

Neville nodded gravely.

"I was thinking I might give you a look at your parents, as I remember them.  But I'll let you decide—is that something you would like to see?"

Neville didn't have to think about this.  "Yes," he answered instantly.  "My parents.  Yes.  More than anything."  He seemed to have trouble accepting that such a thing was possible, but he appeared very eager. "And you're sure you want Harry to stay?"

Neville nodded again.  "He can stay if he wants to."

"Alright, let's get to it.  It's a difficult charm, not many people can do it, but I think I can manage it—"

Just then someone knocked briskly at the door.  "Ah, yes," she said, "I nearly forgot."  She crossed to the door, and as she opened it—before she could even see who was outside—she said, "Come in, Professor Snape."

If Snape was surprised that she was expecting him, he didn't show it.  He stepped inside and began to speak resentfully, in the same tone that he used with Dumbledore when the headmaster disagreed with him.  "Against my better judgment I have come, lest you conclude that I am afraid of—"

"Right then.  Do come in and shut up."  She closed the door behind him and crossed back to Harry and Neville. 

"Now, you three," she said, gesturing at the wall to Harry's right, "stand against that wall.  Yes, I think that will be the best way."  They did as she directed.  Snape moved reluctantly, and kept his arms crossed, but eventually he took his place against the wall, next to Harry.  "Good, good," Professor Green said as she took out her wand. 

"Are we ready?"

Neville nodded excitedly, Harry nodded a bit apprehensively, and Snape just grunted.

Professor Green placed the tip of her wand against her right temple and closed her eyes.  "Memoriam referendum," she murmured.

Suddenly the room disappeared; it was pitch dark.  A landscape began to appear all around them, emerging from the darkness as from a receding fog.  Soon they were standing in a dense wood, on the edge of a clearing.  A bright, nearly full moon shone brightly in the night sky.  A chorus of crickets was chirping and, somewhere, an owl hooted.

Harry understood:  they were standing inside Professor Green's memory.  He had been taken into other people's memories before, but he hadn't realized that a charm existed that allowed a person to show her memories to others at will.

"Here we come," Professor Green whispered to them.  She stood on Neville's other side; Harry assumed she had taken a spot against the wall, too, although he could no longer see it.

She was right, someone was coming.  They could hear the footsteps of someone running through the forest and, a second later, a man crashed

through a shrub to their left, at the edge of the clearing.

The man was short, with shoulder-length brownish-blond hair and a bald spot on the top of his head.  He wore a tattered robe, and he appeared to

be in his late thirties, though it was difficult to tell on account of the dirt, leaves, and scratches covering his face.  The man stumbled into the middle of the clearing, clutching his chest and breathing heavily.

A second figure then crashed through the edge of the clearing, breaking through the same shrub from which the man had just emerged.  The man looked behind him, turned, and made a break for the woods on the clearing's other side. 

"Stupefy!" the second figure called, pointing her wand—for it was a she—at the man.  He fell to the ground facedown, just at the edge of the woods.

The woman looked around the clearing and walked over to the Stunned man.  Harry saw that she wore a long black cloak and black shoes that reminded him of Muggle hiking boots.  She knelt, lit her wand, and surveyed the man.  Then she looked up again, as though she were listening for something.  In the moonlight Harry recognized the woman's features—it was Professor Green.

But she looked different.  Younger.  Her face wasn't as lined, and she had no scar running down the left side of her neck.

"Fisher!" she called.  "Over here!"

Harry heard a popping noise and another figure suddenly appeared in the center of the clearing.  He was a tall, blond man, a few years older than this younger Persephone Green, and dressed just like her.  He walked over to her.

"Stunned?"

"Yeah."  The younger Green stood up.  "Help me drag him to the middle, will you?"

"What, you're going to do it here?"

"Yeah.  Why not?  Have you seen any of the others?"

Fisher looked around the clearing, just as Green had done after Stunning the first man.  "No.  But don't you think it would be safer to do it back at the Ministry?"

"I'd rather not take any chances.  We can't Apparate with him, of course.  You know the Portkey takes us to a spot about a mile away from the Ministry offices, for security, so even if we used that we'd have to carry him the rest of the way.  And even if we had help ... Fisher, I think it's safer to just do it here.  If he gets loose again, they're likely to kill him."

The man thought about this for a few seconds, then nodded slowly.  "Alright.  Just let me take a look around and secure the area."

He walked back into the woods, and in his absence Green grabbed the Stunned man's hands and began to pull him to the center of the clearing.  By the time she had finished, Fisher had returned.

"Everything looks fine.  I'm going to take up a position a few yards back, where I can hear anyone coming, and I'm going to watch.  Alright?"

She nodded, and Fisher left the clearing again.  Green stood and regarded the Stunned man for a moment.

"Mundungus Fletcher," she murmured.

She reached into her cloak and drew out a small black velvet pouch.  From within it she pulled out a handful of what appeared to be dust. 

Holding the pouch and her wand in her left hand, she began to sprinkle the dust on the ground as she walked in a wide circle around Mundungus Fletcher.

"Imperius Curse," the real Professor Green whispered.  Harry jumped; he had become so involved in watching the memory that he had forgotten the other watchers in the room. 

She continued to explain.  "Fletcher was a low-level clerk working at the Ministry, and I suspected that the Death Eaters had put him under the Imperius Curse in order to get him to pass information to them."

"What are you doing?" Neville asked, fascinated.

She looked down at Harry and Neville.  "You two—three—" she added, remembering Snape, "are going to witness something that very few wizards ever see.  This is a Summoning."

Neville gasped.  "We're going to see a Summoning?"

She nodded, grinning excitedly.  But apparently she could read Harry's confusion even in the darkness.  "Harry, the Summoning is the process by which a Dark wizard is forced to choose his destiny.  It's like having all the good and evil things you ever did laid out before you, and being forced to choose which version of yourself you want to be—the good one, or the evil one.  There are no other options.

"That's phoenix ash," she added, nodding at her younger self, who had almost finished sprinkling the dust-like substance in a circle around the prostrate Fletcher.

"Fletcher was a Dark wizard?" Harry asked.

Professor Green shook her head.  "No.  The Summoning is also useful for bringing a person out from under the Imperius Curse.  You see, it lets them choose.  It gives them their will back, in a sense.  Shhh!  It's about to start."

The younger Green had returned to the spot where she had started the circle.  She closed the small pouch and put it back inside her cloak.  Then she pointed her wand at Fletcher and shouted, "Enervate!" 

He awoke, dazed, and looked around, not seeming to register where he was or what was happening.  Green glanced around one last time to make sure no one was coming, took a deep breath, pointed her wand at Fletcher, and began to incant.

"Accio animus zamius, optare bonum, an optare pernicies..." 

It was a very long incantation, and Harry couldn't make out all the words, but the younger Green seemed to know them all by heart.  As she spoke, she kept her wand pointed straight at Mundungus Fletcher and paced around the circle.  After a moment, Fletcher seemed to realize what was happening.  He stood up angrily and began to shout.

"Stop!  He's mine!  You can't do this!"  He walked to the edge of the circle, and appeared to contemplate crossing it.

Green ignored him.  She finished the incantation just as she returned to the spot from which she started.  Then, as soon as she stopped speaking, crimson flames sprang up from the phoenix ash scattered around the clearing.  Fletcher sprang back from the flames and into the center of the circle.  He glanced angrily at Green and let out a piercing shriek.

"NO!"

The flames grew very tall—taller than either of the figures standing in the clearing—and began to twist sideways, forming a kind of fiery vortex.  It reminded Harry of pictures of tornadoes that he'd seen in books, except that the tornado was bright red and upside-down.  And at its tip, about ten feet in the air, was Mundungus Fletcher.

Harry would have had a difficult time describing what he now saw happening to Fletcher.  And if he had never seen it, and had only heard about it from someone else, he doubted he would have been able to imagine it.  Fletcher was levitating motionless at the tip of this vortex.  He wasn't spinning, though Harry thought at first that he was—he was stationary.  But it was as though a Fletcher-shaped hole had been cut in space, so that you could see things flying past the hole in some other

dimension.  What those things were, Harry couldn't make out, except that some appeared very bright, and some very dark, and the rest must have occupied every possible place on the spectrum in between. 

At first the alternating pieces of light and dark flew by very quickly, but after a few minutes they began to slow down, until eventually the brighter ones outnumbered the dark ones.   Finally a blinding light shone from the Fletcher-shaped hole in the universe.  The fire shrunk down to the height of a candle flame, and Fletcher fell onto his hands and knees in the grass.

Just at that moment, another man Apparated into the clearing, behind Green.  It wasn't Fisher—this man wasn't wearing the Aurors' black cloak and boots.  Instead, he wore a regular brown wizard's robe.  As he pulled a wand out of his left sleeve, Harry could see a black mark on his left forearm. 

Persephone Green hadn't noticed the man who Apparated behind her; instead, she seemed transfixed by the sight of Fletcher.  Harry wanted to shout out to warn Green, but he caught himself at the last second, remembering that this was only a memory.  As he watched, the man pointed his wand at Green's back.

Suddenly Green stiffened, alert. 

"Cruci—"  Before the man could pronounce the curse, Green turned around to face him and kicked his wand out of his hand.  She then pointed her own wand at the man.

"Mulciber, I presume?" she addressed him calmly.  "Stupef—" 

But the man had learned by her example; he advanced on her and knocked the wand out of her hand before she could Stun him.

Green backed up, and stood, feet apart, hands up, in what Harry recognized as a fighting stance.  She quickly pulled something out of a sheath on her belt—a small, golden dagger that gleamed in the moonlight.