Inklings of Celebrity: Chapter Nineteen
It didn't take long for the news of Dumbledore's death to get around the school, and when it did, it came with a jolt. It sealed their fate almost immediately; for without Dumbledore, what chance did anyone have against Voldemort? That was what made Harry so nervous, especially when he noticed people looking his way hopefully. It was clear that now that Dumbledore was gone they expected him to do something.
"But what am I supposed to do?" he scribbled impatiently in a letter to Sirius. "I haven't even taken my OWLs yet, I've hardly grown an inch in the past six years–and there's only so far luck can take me."
True, there had been noticeably less work since Dumbledore had died, especially since there was no Defence Against The Dark Arts anymore, but the lighter load had turned Harry into some sort of Hermione, and so Ron had good-naturedly accompanied them to the library. The real reason he worked was because he needed something to take his mind off it, Ginny counselled him, and with Dumbledore gone he needed to live up to the expectations the Headmaster would have had.
Ginny had had a noticeable rise in popularity lately. Somehow, there was always someone there asking for her opinion. She was an advisor, and the sparkle in her eye (a guilty sparkle, albeit) showed how much she thrived on it. She was more than just the youngest Weasley now, the only girl–she was the one who Hogwarts had somehow naturally centred itself around. Neither Ron nor her friends, Harry noted, were very happy about this. If Ron didn't become Minister of Magic or a very good Auror, Harry feared he would dye his hair and change his name, especially now that his father had reluctantly accepted the post of Minister himself.
For Harry, it was like the past year after he'd won the Triwizard Tournament. He spent most of his time with Ron and Hermione and it was best when they could just sit in silence enjoying each other's company. Perhaps there was a dull haze of shock that kept them from talking, but it was one they pretended not to notice.
The school inspector from the Ministry had come, regardless of any tragedy, as had Dementors, and Professor deFanel was no more, while Professor Binns, Snape, Aston and Hagrid had been forced to attend a Muggle teaching seminar one weekend (Hagrid and Binns sufficiently disguised); they couldn't be spared from Hogwarts because most wizards were very busy these days. It had been sort of funny for a brief moment, and the school had breathed more easily with Snape gone. Slytherin had lost many points and not gained them back, making them second last to Gryffindor's -46 points.
Harry, somewhere along the way, had started to sneak out each night in his Invisibility Cloak into Hogsmeade. He would wear a thick heavy hood upon getting there and would go into the Hog's Head, where he was soon branded as a regular, and would order drinks in a deep American voice. The Hog's Head had a large array of alcohol, and with trying two or three drinks every night, he came back to Hogwarts pleasantly inebriated and no one was the wiser. It became a compulsive habit of his.
One night he realized with a jolt that he had tried each of the pub's seventy-six-and-a-half drinks. Harry, who had never drunk anything stronger than Butterbeer before his excursions, was shocked. He would either leave forever and not drink for a long time or end up downing a Butterbeer with Scotch and honey, his favourite.
He made as if to watch a game of poker, in which Hagrid was playing, and thought about it. What had led him towards this? He excused himself immediately when he realized how much he wanted his drink. He was Harry Potter. He had troubles. Why could he not indulge in a drink should he want one? Once the game was over, Hagrid all the worse for it, he went up to the bar and sat himself down, asking for a Hell's Warmth. He gulped it down; it affected him right away.
For perhaps the first time, he took note of his surroundings, not yet blurred by the haze of intoxication. The Hog's Head was perhaps the filthiest building he had ever been in, actually. Strong-smelling liquids were spilt across the crusted bar, the lights were caged-in fireflies, and drunken wizards and witches tiled the floor. Harry could make out the sounds of a belching contest across the room and he was in the tobacco-chewers' line of fire. Though it explained his decaying robes, the conditions in which he had spent many hours shocked him.
As he sat there, coughing from the smoke that drifted his way, a hand clasped his shoulder. He whirled around, on the alert.
His companion shook back his shaggy black hair. "I know you, don't I?" he said.
Startled into the truth, Harry nodded. "Yeah, it's me, Harry Potter."
The other one smiled and held out a gloved hand to him. "So it is. I'm surprised you don't recognize me, though it's understandable."
Harry scrutinized him, trying to place him in his mind.
"Van Fanel. We share classes at Hogwarts. And preferred drinks, apparently.... can I buy you another?"
Harry gestured freely towards the barmaid. "By all means."
"So what brings you out here? I hope you won't be offended when I say you can't hold your liquor."
"No, I guess I can't. My problem is, I'm too involved in everything that happened at the school lately. Dumbledore, deFanel, Ginny, everything. You understand what I mean?"
Van laughed, making Harry shiver, and buried his face in his mug. "Damned if I don't, damned if I do." He sighed, but turned angry suddenly. "Get yourself out of here, Harry. This isn't the place for you."
"Why not?" yelled Harry. "My life is a shambles. Everyone wants me to save the world, but I don't know how! I am young, I am weak, I am a bloody useless fool! I needed Dumbledore. I haven't the slightest idea what to do now."
"You never do," said Van, "not until you're out there, in the middle of a battlefield with someone lunging for your throat. Sometimes you even get used to it, end up liking it. And even though you can never take a war for granted, nothing is ever the same when it ends. Sometimes you even miss the excitement compared to the responsibility afterwards."
Harry nodded, a smile spreading onto his face. Van Fanel was expressing his very sentiments, rising several notches in Harry's regard for him. Why hadn't he given enough thought to the matter at hand instead of sitting around drinking and moping?
"Van–may I call you Van? –what are you doing here?" Harry asked him, leaning in and swaying.
"My brother died," Van said, and barked another horrible laugh. "You never knew, did you? Folken Lacour de Fanel. We never looked alike; you may not have guessed. Can you tell I worshipped him once? Disappeared and worked for the enemy, came back, died, came back, died again. Maybe it was his fault. I never could rely on him."
"Professor deFanel–he was your brother? Oh, I–I'm so sorry," sputtered Harry. "I really never knew."
Van considered him, head to the side. "You never seem to." He shook his head. "I can't blame you. Your world is brutal. So many–if you'll pardon the play on words–Draconian measures taken."
The joke went over Harry's head, but he nodded anyway, not wanting Van's impression of him to lessen.
"See, Harry, you're still a child," said Van. "You don't belong here. Get out." He jerked his head towards the door, looking menacing.
Harry fled.
If there was any one thing Harry really dreaded, it was the Morning After. He would rise to dizziness, disorientation, and horrible throbs of pain, and he would have to pretend as if he hadn't. Hermione's voice would always be shriller, and Ron's hair would glare at him even more. The Slytherins, jostling with one another and tossing him insults, would be even crueller, and the teachers seemed to take more points off. Harry would have to smile and pretend his tongue wasn't cotton in his mouth.
But when he woke up the next morning after coming across Van, he promptly forgot about these things when he realized he had lost his Invisibility Cloak. He did everything in his power to find it: levitating the bed, ripping apart his trunk, tearing at his pillow.
"What's the matter, Harry?" asked Ron, leaning on his own pristine bed. "You could be Ginny the way you're going at the room. What'd you lose?"
Looking up, dazed, Harry discovered that this was something he could not tell Ron. If he did, Ron would know he went out and would want to know why.
"Divination homework," said Harry, smiling weakly.
Ron scrutinized him. "Oh, is that all? Copy mine."
"Right." Harry nodded.
When Ron had left, Harry searched the room again before he finally realized whom to ask.
He found Van Fanel outside, staring out at the lake.
"I never saw water until I was fifteen," he said to Harry.
"Neither did I until coming here," Harry agreed. "Listen, I have something to ask you. Do you recall the cloak I had with me yesterday? The silver one. I've lost it."
"I have it with me," said Van. "Follow me to get it."
Inhibitions leaving him, Harry followed him all the way up to his dorm where Ginny was lounging by the fire, trying to stop Dilandau Albatou from throwing Van's books in. Some of the other boys in the room looked up and snarled at him, but with a gesture from Van, they turned away.
Rummaging through his trunk, and then through the trunks of others with a suspicious look, Van finally found the cloak and tossed it to Harry.
"You done here?" asked a blond boy in the corner, and Harry turned to leave.
Ginny stood up. "Wait a minute," she said. "Harry, what's all this? Why does Van have your cloak? Ron told me it was important. He told me it was your father's, Harry."
Harry's face turned very hot, and he supposed he must be very red. "Well..."
"He was sneaking out to the Slytherin dormitories to meet his girlfriend." A wicked smile spread across Van's face. "I caught them at an inopportune moment and they left it behind."
Smiling, Ginny put her hands on her hips and, for a second, resembled her mother. "Harry, is this true?" she teased him.
"Er..." Harry ran his hand through his hair, which stuck up in untidy spikes. "I think I should go now."
He ran out of the room amidst the laughs of the others, but Ginny did not join in. She looked troubled as she left Dilandau to his own evil devices and went to find her brother.
Van sought Harry out the next day. At first Harry was nervous, afraid that Van would again want to bring up the other night, but Van had no such intentions. He wanted to go for a drink and was wondering if Harry knew a good way out of the castle in the daytime.
"Should you really be drinking right now?" Harry whispered, and gave him directions only when Van allowed him to come along.
Harry had never gone through the tunnel to Hogsmeade with anyone else before; he had always expected that, if anyone, Ron would be the one accompanying him, not this strange foreign boy who seemed older than Dumbledore sometimes. He had expected jokes and thrills as he went through with a good friend. Van remained taciturn the entire way, even when he cracked his head against the ceiling. The sinister silence that followed lasted all the way to Honeydukes, where Harry breathed a sigh of relief.
Had Van been on the alert, he would have anticipated the Death Eater who threw herself at him with a curse upon escape. Had either of them not been breaking the rules—and doing it together—they would have not made the Death Eaters' job that much easier.
____
"So where is he?" Ron and Selena said at exactly the same time.
He was talking to Hermione and she was talking to Dilandau, her arms crossed as she glared at him with suspicion. At opposite sides of the common room, they heard each other and looked up, ready for a confrontation.
"Whom are you talking about?" Hermione stood up and came over to them, hand reaching into her robes for her wand.
Selena and Dilandau glanced at each other, and after a short internal struggle, Dilandau stepped back and Selena came face-to-face with Hermione.
"Our friend Van," she said. "He has been gone for quite some time, and I am getting worried."
Hermione frowned. "Well, the same thing has happened to Harry. He's been gone since—" A shout of laughter interrupted her.
"They've eloped!" Ron gasped, tears forming in his eyes. He fell to his knees, shaking all over. "Van and Harry are madly in love, and they've run off together to ride off into the sunset and join the circus! Oh, VC Andrews, you have taught me well!"
Stifling the smile that flickered across her face, Hermione yanked him to his feet. "Oh, shut up. This is no time to be a Wizard Wheeze, Ron. Shame on you."
Selena, confident in Van's ability to survive, allowed herself a giggle and smiled at Ron, who looked away.
"We have to tell Dumble—" Hermione began, but stopped. In the awkward silence that followed, she said, "I never...I'm sorry, I—I can't do this. Dumbledore is gone, Harry is gone, and I thought I was a witch born from Muggles because I was important, but I'm so useless and, sometimes, I wish I had never come into the wizarding world!"
Ron turned to her. "Sh, Hermione, we'll go look for Harry. What d'you know, Dobby might know where he is. We'll go see Professor McGonagall, and it'll all work out, you'll see."
Putting his hand on Hermione's shoulder, Ron steered her towards the portrait hole, and Selena thought she heard, "Hermione, you are capable, and—and everyday when I see you I consider myself lucky."
When they were gone, she turned back to Dilandau. "Did you do anything to him? I swear, if you have—well, I should have expected it of you. Blessed be the day my other half walks unarmed in peace!"
His eyes widened. "Would you suspect it of me, Selena? I have sworn to you I would not touch him."
"But you have not."
Dilandau sighed. "I would swear on the body of my enemy, but I don't know where it is. Are you satisfied?"
Selena stared at him, sighed, and turned away. Dilandau caught her wrist before she could leave.
"Let me go," she whispered.
"Never," he replied.
Facing him, she looked into his eyes. His hand slipped down to hold hers.
They smiled.
_____
Drifting through a smooth viscous fluid, which enveloped him in a warm embrace. Nice, soft, comforting. Harry could have been back in the womb.
"Do as I tell you," said a voice. "Bring me Sirius Black." A wonderful voice, caressing and smooth; it should have been accompanied with a body that Harry could cling to.
"Open your eyes," the voice said.
Harry's eyed blinked open, the first action of his. In his fatigue, his eyes did not want to open. It jarred him to have the voice make him do this.
He could see nothing.
"Come on out, Harry. Wake up! Wake up!"
Harry groaned, though it was more of a mew. His eyes shut again.
"You can come back, Harry. Bring Sirius Black first."
I will, thought Harry, I will.
His eyes shot open again, and he was hurtling out, cold and wet.
"I will," Harry muttered, "I will. Sirius—huh?"
He had opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was Van, who was sponging at his forehead with his robe sleeve.
"Do you have a fever?" asked Van, his voice low and urgent. "There's a cold sweat all over you."
Harry lifted himself up, leaning on his elbow. He looked around and tried to identify his surroundings. It looked like he was back in the Chamber of Secrets, except this time Van, not Ginny, was here. Harry knew whom he preferred. Van's intensity and calm frightened him, while Ginny was dependable and familiar. Why had he followed him?
Harry pushed Van away.
"Did you do it?" he yelled.
Van shook his head. "What did I do?"
"It was you, wasn't it? You fooled all of us. I should have known... you, a Death Eater."
"I don't know what you mean," said Van, standing up. "You had better tell me."
"Like you don't know," Harry spat, crawling away. "All this time, I thought you were just crazy. I thought we were getting along... of course, it makes sense. Your brother was the one to kill Dumbledore, wasn't he? Not to be trusted for anything, no... liars, the both of you. It must run in the family."
Van threw himself at Harry. "Don't you say anything, Potter, about my family!" He tackled Harry and gave him several blood-inducing blows on the head.
"Stop!" Harry yelled. "Please." He held his arms out as a shield.
Breathing heavily, Van stopped. "What would you have me do? I'm in the same mess you are, and you still accuse me. Without trust, neither of us will make it out. Make your choice, Harry." He rolled off him and slunk over to the other side of the cell.
Harry said nothing.
Laughing, Van turned to the corner and undid his trousers, but he twisted his head to Harry again. "Until you decide, Harry, I'll be waiting."