Chapter 12: For whom the bell tolls
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Originally, I wanted this to be the last chapter, but since I got the worst writers block on it all the time, I decided to split it into two halves. So please enjoy the first part of "For whom the bell toll"!
Oh yes, another thing: I've written an Harry Potter one-shot called „Cursum perficio" I highly recommend you to read and to review (in other words: pleasepleaseplease)
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Harry hummed happily to himself when he left the Great Hall after the feast, his green eyes burning brightly behind the characteristic glasses.
This definitely had been one of the most splendid Christmases of his life! Not only that the tortured look on Snape's face when Dumbledore had talked them into singing "Oh come all ye faithful" had been worth a fortune, he had also actually managed to give Glory her Christmas present without turning as red as an tomato, a scenario he had feared for the last four days.
The boy had to grin when he recalled her speechless face at the sight of the snake-shaped silver bracelet he had given her. At least the endlessly long afternoon he had spent in Hogsmeade searching for the elusive present hadn't been a total waste; after a moment of silence, she had even wrapped her arms around his neck and fiercely kissed him on the cheek, before quickly turning around, admiring the way the jewellery became alive whenever one reverently ran one's fingers down it. A crimson blush appeared on his face when he recalled the sensation of the soft lips on his flesh. Yes, definitely a splendid Christmas...
Passing the entrance to the Astronomy Tower, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, a spontaneous idea popping into his head. Hadn't Snape told him that his mother had sneaked out up there almost every evening when she had been at school? A mischievous little grin appeared on his lips. Perhaps finding out the reason why would be the perfect way to end this evening!
Making sure that nobody was nearby, he quickly opened the door to the tower's entrance and sneaked into it, curiosity shining brightly in his eyes as he began to climb the countless stairs before him. Of course he had been on the tower about hundred of times the last five years for his Astronomy lessons without noticing anything special about the place, but then he was usually more interested into getting to bed than into paying attention to his surroundings whenever Professor Sinistra held her boring lamentations on patterns in the middle of the night, so that didn't say too much.
Reaching the outtrance to the platform, he finally emerged into the freezing night and found himself holding his breath at the sight that awaited him there.
So beautiful.
A strange feeling prickled up the boy's spine as he wrapped his cloak tightly around him and wandered down the chilly, empty platform out to its end. The stars, glowing so brightly that they nearly hurt the eyes, seemed closer than usual, so close actually that Harry felt as though he could reach out his hand and pluck one from the sky.
His eyes closed briefly and he shivered in the growing cold, for one moment experiencing the same light, dreamlike feeling he knew from his dreams of Tom Riddle. How fragile all those tiny lights were, hanging before the black oblivion as though ready to be plunged into the darkness, how weak...
"Nice night, don't you agree?"
Startled, Harry jerked around, catching sight of a figure standing by the doorway, not exactly blocking it, but unmistakably there, half-hidden by the shadows and her midnight blue robe. "Pro...Professor McGregor", he stuttered stunned when he had finally recognised her. "What are you doing...I mean I didn't notice..."
"Clear nights always draw me out", she explained casually, pouring her long blond hair over her shoulders like a golden waterfall. "And don't worry, I certainly won't spoil your Christmas by taking points from you just because you follow the same desires as I myself."
"Thanks", he muttered under his breath, despite himself feeling nervous about her presence. He did not know what it was, but for already the whole week he couldn't fail to notice something strange about the blonde, some constant hungry expression in her beautiful blue eyes that never failed to make him blink away when their gazes met.
He watched her carefully as she moved to the parapet where he was standing, unable to explain the sudden feeling of dread that sat like a lump in his stomach. "Did you know that the Astronomy Tower was your mother's favourite place when she was still at school?" she broke his reverie, her voice so soft that he scarcely heard her. Staring out into the blackness before her, her face a blend of contrasting shadows in the moonlight, a melancholic expression settled briefly on the delicate features. "She could spent whole insomnia-plagued nights hidden away up here, watching the moon rise, trace its path across the sky and finally set as morning dawned. When I heard of her death, I began to pick up this habit; somehow I felt as though I wouldn't lose her completely if I did so."
Harry let his head bow, feeling tangled stands of untidy black hair falling across his face. "Professor Snape told me", he acknowledged quietly. "That's why I came here in the first place.
"Severus told you?" the blonde repeated softly, her cool blue eyes glittering strangely but never breaking their contact with Harry's. "Can I take this as a sign that you two are getting along better by now?"
Harry tried to swallow against the sudden, unqualified panic that began to rise in his throat. Dear Merlin, he was really getting paranoid! "That's...you see, I...."
A barely perceptible smile on her lovely lips as she saw his distress. "Your mother would have appreciated this, I'm sure", she muttered more to herself than to him. "She loved both of you so very much."
"Did you often come up here with her when you were still at school?" he eventually asked weakly, trying to hide his unexplainable nervousness, the feeling of dread that increased with every minute.
"Only in the early days of our friendship. Later on when Sev and Lil..." Tearing her eyes away from him for a moment, she stared once more blankly at the black emptiness before them. "It's a strange feeling when your two best friends suddenly fall in love with another", she eventually continued after a while, her voice very quiet. "One moment, you are still the Unstoppable Trio that shares their everything, the next moment you feel guilty because your simple existence disturbs them. The next moment you are utterly alone."
*When your two best friends suddenly fall in love...*
Harry froze, feeling his heart turn to something heavy and cold, a horrified expression growing on his face despite his best attempts to stop it.
Snape and his mother. Snape and his mother had been...
Observing his reaction watchfully, a playfully cruel little smile appeared on the blonde's full lips. "Didn't you know?" she asked with the utmost softness. "Well, I'm sorry to shutter your illusion about the perfect love between your parents, but I guess it's time to grow up for you, little lion. The entire wizarding world isn't perfect or good - barely anything is anymore."
For one moment there was complete silence between them. Silence and nothing but the weight of her stare.
"I think I better go inside", the boy muttered weakly after a moment, his voice barely audible. "If you excuse me now."
Snape and his mother...
"I'm sorry, darling, but I don't think I will do so." Her voice sounded very as though she were trying not to frighten him with her words, but staring into her perfectly, mercilessly cold eyes the boy couldn't suppress a shudder, a feeling of some horrible dread clawing its way up his throat while his scar began to tingle in sudden alarm. "Professor, please, I really..."
"Do I distress you, boy?" She was now only inches away from him, so close that he could almost feel her body heat. "Do I scare you?" Her voice was as clear and sweet as ever, but the hungry expression of her delicate face let a shiver run over the boy's spine.
"No." His own voice seemed to be coming from miles away, while his forehead began to pound in merciless bolts of blinding pain.
What was going on here? What the hell was going on here?
The cobalt blue eyes stared back at him intensely, their colour deepening into an impossible near-black as though they were drifting into the depths of his soul. "I think you're lying", she eventually retorted, her tone casual but her eyes still glazed with unfulfilled need. "Watch yourself, Harry, this is quite a Slytherin trace and you really can't afford to become even more like us than you already are, do you? I mean what would your Dumbledore say if his chosen saviour, his innocent little Christ Child, fell to the dark?"
He stared helplessly at her. Oh God, let this be a dream, don't let this be real. Pleasepleasepleaseplease...
She smiled slightly derisively at the sight of his chalk-white face. "Come on, Harry, you don't want to tell me that you enjoyed this silly charade the headmaster made us gone through tonight, do you?" She wrinkled her nose in contempt. "By Merlin, the man may be a great wizard, but he's as naïve as a first year Hufflepuff - as though the world were perfect, if we just held hands with Muggles and sang foolish tunes about celestial peace. As though he could paint the world in black and white and force everyone to make a choice."
His nails were pressed so hard into his palms that they were beginning to draw blood. "I will go now", he said with all determination he could force into his voice. Eyes fixed firmly ahead, though each fibre of his body seemed attuned to the blonde's every movement, every breath, he began to march determinedly to the door, when a wand was suddenly pointed directly at his face.
For one moment the world seemed to be swimming in front of his eyes while a frozen terror he had never known before pooled itself in his stomach. This, then, was cause of it all and the ruin of everything he thought he'd known and understood about himself and the world.
Staring up at his teacher with terrified widened eyes, he almost shrieked back at the sight of her; the face of a doll from which someone had cruelly ripped the eyes and replaced them with cold blue fire.
"Speaking about choices", she said in a dreadfully calm voice, her wand still pointing at him. "I think I never answered your question how exactly I was marked by Lord Voldemort."
Harry felt something inside of him turning to ice and beginning to break. "No", he whispered. "No..."
But mercilessly she pulled back her sleeve with her free hand, revealing an ugly skull on her pale forearm with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue.
The Dark Mark.
Staring at his nemesis's sign, he had to choke back a brief, hysterical laugh. This wasn't happening. This simply wasn't happening.
"It can't be", he suddenly heard himself whispering into the dreadful silence, a wail of frigid fear mixed with the painful feeling of utmost betrayal raising in his chest. "It can't be!"
She arched a sardonically amused eyebrow. "Why not?" she asked softly.
Because I trusted you...
"Your...your sister", he finally stuttered, trying desperately to find a reason for this madness, an explanation that would make everything okay again. "You said she was killed by Death Eaters. You couldn't..."
The coldness of her smile disappeared, making place to a wariness that was in its way equally frightening. "You naive little boy", she returned quietly, her eyes veiled by something he couldn't quite name. "Haven't you understood? I killed Mona."
His head began to spin frantically as he stepped back from her, floundering in the face of the burning hatred. Blood roared in his ears, pooling and aching in every inch of his body. He could only shake his head before he felt his back hit the solid wall of the parapet. "No, he whispered. "No..."
"Oh yes", she returned with dreadful calmness, a shadow falling over her face momentarily. "Perfect little Mona. The Dark Lord ordered me to kill her when she, acting like the righteous bitch she had always been, refused herself to him, and I followed his orders. And I'll tell you something else, a secret between you and me." He shook his head in frozen horror but she only pressed closer to him, lowering her lids so that her rich lashes almost brushed the delicate curve of her cheekbone. "The secret, Harry, is that I wanted to kill her. That I enjoyed it." Something very akin to a smile crept slowly over her features. "You must know that I killed humans every night back then. I seduced them, draw them close to me, with an insatiable hunger, a constant never-ending search for something... something, I don't know what it was, but none of them meant anything to me. I did not care where they came from or where they would go. With Mona it was different. Mona I hated. Mona I wanted dead."
He jerked back from her as though branded by the coals of hell, wanting nothing more than to escape from this place, from this stranger with Professor McGregor's face, but his legs seemed to have rooted him to the spot and he had a sinking feeling they wouldn't support him much longer. "Why?" he whispered, his voice barely more than a whisper.
"Because she didn't love me", she returned, her tone suddenly still Weary. Moving her head to one side and studying him carefully, a strangely tender smile appeared on her lips. "Let me give you a lesson about the world, Harry: Love and hatred are just two coins of the same medal. You can't experience one without getting to know the other."
And suddenly he saw Tom before him, pale and delicious and so tragically fragile, laying a rose on his parents´ grave, the dark green eyes full of pain and something more. That's the secret of the universe, that is my cry and my message. There is no one to help us. We are born alone and we die alone.
Staring at the heart-wrenchingly beautiful woman with the angelic face and the hardened, bitter eyes before him, he suddenly felt an odd mixture of disgust and compassion rising in him. "Professor", he began, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "I..."
He caught his breath as her long slim fingers suddenly reached up and grabbed his chin, tilting his head back.
"Don't you dare pity me, child!" she hissed hatefully, her tone chilling him to the bone. "Who are you to pity me when you are not better off than me?!" A bitter laugh escaped her mouth. "Your hypocritical Muggle family never touched you, except in revulsion, and your dear friends are much too innocent to understand the feelings you're hiding behind your fragile mask of joy. The only one who ever saw your true face, the only one who ever laid his eyes on you with sincere emotional intent was the Dark Lord, but the bare thought of him makes you reel in agony."
She laughed shrilly, her fingers cruelly biting into his flesh. "But let me tell you something, Harry Potter, something about whose mind-child you really are."
He shook his head in rough denial, the image of Tom flashing before his eyes again. "No..."
But she didn't seem to hear him. Her eyes flashed to the scar on his forehead, a disagreeable smile appearing on her full lips. "As much as you try to deny it, a piece of Voldemort lives in you ever since that fateful night at Godric´s Hollow when he failed the Killing Curse on you." She laughed mirthlessly. "You could be brothers, do you know this? Not only this unspecific resemblance between the two of you at the best of times, but also the same agonizing hunger for any form of family."
And again he saw the graves, the blood-roses laying on them. Who could love us, you and me, as we can love each other?
"The funny thing is that there are certain similarities between the two of us as well", the ragged voice continued above him. A cruel little smile appeared on her lips as she dejected the look of frozen horror on his face. "Oh yes, Harry Potter, we have the same gift for playing roles and wearing a suave, inscrutable mask of amiability. For the world you are but Gryffindor´s Golden Boy, brave and courageous and determined, but there is a black hole at the inner core of you, and everything you have built over it, lacks a foundation. You are no better than me."
* Poor darling, all your life you have tried to escape the inevitable. You've tried to be good and light and brave so hard and yet you always knew that a part of you would forever long for darkness and night and sin *
"That's not true!" he finally found his voice back. Desperately he searched for something, for some salvation. He knew that there was none. "I'm nothing like you. I have my friends. I have my godfather. I have..."
"But don't you understand, Harry?" Laughing low under her breath, her eyes measured him hungrily. "They are but children, all your so-called friends and admires. You soak their love and admiration up like a sun-deprived flower, but deep down you know that this love isn't for real. They don't love Harry, but the Boy-Who-Lived. They don't need the person you are, but the perfection they project onto you. They rejected you mercilessly in the past once and one day, when you fail in your perfection another time, when you reveal the tragic, flawed human that you are, they will let you fall again. We both know this to be true, so don't try to deny it."
As she stopped in her rage for a short intake of brief, Harry heard a harsh strange sound coming out of his throat, quite beyond his control. Staring at her, seeing and not seeing in the same time, he began to shake mercilessly. "Why?" he finally heard himself whisper. "Why are you doing this? Why haven't you killed me long before if this is what you wanted all along?"
She smiled briefly, bowing her head so that her golden curls tumbled down her face like a concealing veil. "You live so bright", she answered him with sudden heart-wrenching sincerity. "The moment I first saw you in the dark corridor this very first night...I still remember how you appeared in my eyes. So much like and yet unlike Lily. All of her innocence and pain and youth and burning green eyes, none of her cool, self-sufficient strength. None of her protection walls." She regarded his chalk white face thoughtfully. "From this first moment on I wondered how it's right for one such as me to be so near to one such as you. I wondered if I had been given a second chance, if I could live in the warmth of your life. But then I realized that it didn't even warm yourself."
"Professor." His green eyes met her blue ones, searching for some sort of emotion in that heartbreakingly handsome face and finding none. "Professor", he pleaded again, not knowing what else to say. Not knowing how to feel.
She arched an eyebrow. "Such betrayal in one word", her voice purred in his ear, a seductive murmur of consent. "Another theme that repeats itself constantly in my life, it seems. Oh, don't cry, my boy." Laying her pale hand on his cheek, she pulled his face down to hers, drying the moisture on his cheeks he hadn't even known was there with surprising tenderness. "It will soon be over, so don't cry."
But the tears wouldn't stop flowing. Forcing himself to look up to her, he felt them running over his face mercilessly. "Why Voldemort?" he finally asked, his voice barely audible. "How could you submit yourself to him?"
With the utmost gentleness, Morrigan raised her hand and slowly stroke over Harry's scar. "He saw me", she whispered very softly. "From the very first moment when Lily, Severus and me drew his eyes on us with our mindless game, he looked straight through all my masks, all the glitter and false joy and he wanted what he found." She laughed hoarsely. "Oh, he used me as well, I won't deny that, but he wanted me. Not somebody else, but me."
„And this was enough for you?"
A strange little smile flickered briefly around the corners of her mouth. "Enough for me to follow him everywhere", she agreed tenderly. „From this very first moment on, this was all I wanted. Hateful as he was ...cruel as he was...beloved as he was...beyond any reason and unreason, I wanted to stand at his side through it all. Can't you understand this, Harry? You, who never had anything stable in your life, can't you understand my choice?"
Staring at her bewildered, a dreadful revelation slowly settled down on him. "Then you were weeping for Voldemort that night at your quarters", he whispered in shock. "Not for my mother, but for him."
She smiled bitterly. "Your mother!" Violent frustration rent her face for an instant. "I always thought that she cast this bloody protection spell around you because he was about to kill her! Vengeance, that much I would have understood." She shook her head in defeat, brushing her soft curls against his face in the process. "But he would have let her live! He would not have touched a hair of hers and nevertheless she destroyed him with this double curse of love and death she cast on you. She willingly destroyed *me*!"
*Oh, Lily, Lil, Lil, did you hate me this much?*
"Then she didn't mean anything to you!" At least, shock and hurt embarrassment gave way to such unbridled fury that he thought he would explode from their intensity. "All those things you said about her, all those things you told me, were nothing but petty lies to gain my trust!"
"You didn't understand anything, boy." As though to mock his rage, her eyes laid on him with an odd mixture of sympathy and weariness. "I loved your mother, every minute of every goddamn day of my life. I loved her even when I wished her soul to hell. That's the torture of it."
"You..."
"Why do you think I haven't killed you long before?" Her voice was painfully calm by now, all emotion hidden under its controlled tone. „You were my best friend's son and I wanted to love you as I loved her, to protect you from all the harm I couldn't prevent her from, but in the same time I wanted to rip you apart."
For one moment she looked right through him as if he were not there, her face a saccharine, sweet mockery of innocence once again. Then she shook her head, her wand pointing directly at his face again. "And, regarding all those facts, who would be able to tell the victim if I cast the Killing Curse on you now", she finally continued in a soft murmur, watching his eyes widen in terror with dispassionate eyes. "Who would be able tell the greater pain? Because you're under my skin, my beautiful little boy. You're invading me like a cancer every second of every minute of every goddam day. Your very existence is boring down inside me like a thousand little worms, and sucking my soul out of me."
His head began to spin around as he stared at the wand before him. She was insane. Dear Merlin, she was completely insane. Frantically he looked around himself. He had to run. Somehow he had to try and...
"Crucio!"
He could hear himself screaming as his nerve endings lit themselves on fire.
Spots of colour began to dance before his eyes, as he sank to his knees before her, his bones jarring in unbelievable pain and stunned he finally fell against the parapet, moaning softly, eyes drifting half-shut. Through a thick wail of pain and misery, he felt icy fingertips touching his cheeks, cooling the burning there before tracing their way down to the sides of his neck.
"Yes, close your damnable green eyes so I don't have to see them", he heard her voice near his ears. "Because every time I do, every time you enter the room, I remember. You've stolen my everything, Harry Potter. You and your dear mother have left me crumbled, exposed and huddling feebly on the floor before you the night you destroyed the man I loved and although I flew the country, although I tried to begin a new life without Him, I could never forget. That's my purgatory. And it won't end as long as you are alive!"
Someone please help me...someone...anyone...
"But I will not live with this hatred any longer! I will not live with this rage! I cannot. I will not abide it!" For one moment she looked away from him down at her hands, her eyelids quivering as if the slight rise in her voice had disturbed her even more than him, before she turned to face him again. "Tell her...", she whispered. "When you meet her in heaven, tell her that I'm sorry. That I always loved her, in spite of everything I said and did.´" Weariness strived her features once again. "If there is one person who could understand, who could grant forgiveness, it would be Lily."
„Professor, please..."
But she already pointed her wand straight at him again. "Don't think I want to do it", she whispered, and for one moment she was the fragile, angelic being that he knew, too radiant, too full of grace to be anything evil or dangerous. "If there was any other way...but there isn't. I'm truly sorry."
And he believed her.
Closing his eyes in sudden resignation, Harry prepared himself for the flesh of pain that would indubitable come any moment, tearing his soul away from his body, leaving him empty and cold back on the ground, before it would finally be over for good. Before there would be no more pain, no more emptiness, no more danger to others. No more dreams.
And suddenly...
"EXPELLIARMUS!"
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TA-DA!
So now you know Morrigan's deep dark secret - although I fear that I've given out so much hints that it wasn't a secret anymore ^^. All other question will be answered in the following chapter and in the epilogue (but please let me know what exactly you still wish to know so that I can make sure to clear absolutely everything!)