Contains Spoilers For: SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, and OotP.
Author's Notes: Big, Big Thanks to Zillah and Amy for their betas, suggestions, poking, and encouragement! This story is better because of them, and any errors that remain are in no way related to the work that they did. Thanks, girls! I owe you! This story will also be housed at my web page and on schnoogle.com.
Episode One Summary: In which
there are Final Battles, Dark Lords in Training, evil plots, dastardly
demons, and old arch nemeses. Also, Harry Potter starts university.
The Riddleway Chronicles (1/22)
by Sarah
Episode One: The One With the Demon
At some point during the final battle, the sky had turned black. Not the normal black of night that Harry Potter—or the rest of the world, for that matter—was used to, the one littered with stars and moonlight and shadowy puffs of gray cloud. Instead, it was a deep, dead darkness, a void of oily nothingness that was closing in around Hogwarts, eating what few hints of blue sky had made an appearance that day.
As Harry stood at the bottom of the staircase that led up to the school, however, his wand wrapped in one hand while his other was clenched tightly at his side, he barely noticed. All of his concentration was focused on the battlefield in front of him, his eyes searching for Voldemort's black clad figure amongst the mass of people and wand-light.
No matter how desperately he hunted, though, no matter how hard he strained his eyes, he couldn't find the Dark Lord.
Harry's breath was coming in shallow gasps, through barely parted lips, and the oily consistency of the air had coated his tongue long ago. He was bruised and filthy all over, but it was the two cuts on his face that people would be most likely to notice: one on his cheek, the other on his forehead, intersecting the scar that Voldemort had gifted him with seventeen years before.
Unconsciously, he scratched at that cut, maybe because of a natural itch, maybe because of the Voldemort-induced ache that had been plaguing him all day, all week. Dry blood flaked off underneath his fingernails, but he scratched at the cut again, with more force, and a drop of blood welled up beneath the pads of his fingers. Unconsciously, he smeared it away.
He turned slowly on the bottom step of the staircase, trying to stay aware of his surroundings, looking, staring, and that was when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye: black robe against black sky, pale skin, a wand pointed in his direction. He spun towards the interloper, moving swiftly on the ball of his foot, and the two words that he needed to say to (hopefully) end Voldemort's life were sitting heavy on the tip of his tongue, ready to be spoken.
It wasn't Voldemort that was approaching him, though. Black robes, yes. Pale skin, yes. But where there should have been the face that had haunted his nightmares, he saw dirty strands of blond hair, a mouth that fell into a sneer more easily than a smile, and gray eyes set in a pale face, shadowed underneath the hood of a cloak.
"Malfoy," Harry heard himself say. The word was far less satisfying as it passed through his lips than Avada Kedavra would have been. His voice was hard, as cool as he knew Malfoy's voice would be when he responded.
"Potter," Malfoy answered. There was a thin line of blood on what was visible of the pale neck, the result of a physical injury, Harry decided, rather than a magical one.
"What do you want?" Harry asked after a moment of silence. His gaze reached beyond Malfoy again, scanning, searching, hunting. The sound of a woman screaming rent the air and it turned Harry's stomach to hear it, but he made himself ignore the cry. He couldn't let himself wonder which side she had been on, whether or not she, too, had fallen victim to Voldemort's darkness.
"Voldemort," Malfoy said. He turned away from Harry, scanning their surroundings, too. "Word is that he's ready for you, that he's waiting for you on the Quidditch pitch. He seems to think that his victory will taste even sweeter if he beats you on your home turf, and the pitch is about as home turf-like as you're going to get, isn't it?"
The other teen's lip curled, showing part of a row of perfectly white teeth. His eyes were lidded with exhaustion, but even in the darkness, the gaze was cold and sparkling, like sun reflecting off of icicles. He chuffed a laugh.
"I suggested it, actually. To Father, months ago. Apparently Lord Voldemort chose to listen to him about that."
Harry had stopped listening to Malfoy, though, because Voldemort, he thought. Waiting for him. Ready.
He took another deep breath and, for the first time that day, truly tasted the taint of the air. He was suddenly conscious of the oiliness of it, the coating that covered his tongue. He swallowed heavily once, twice, trying to rid himself of the taste.
Then he swallowed a third time, just on general principles. Not from nervousness, he told himself. Not because he had entered what would probably be his last few minutes on this earth. Not because he hadn't had the opportunity to drink a last butterbeer, or to take a last spin on his broomstick, or because he hadn't told Ron and Hermione, all of the Weasley's, Remus, everyone how much he loved them one last time.
Not because the last two people to see him alive were, more than likely, going to be the two people that he'd hated most during his lifetime.
"You chickening out, Potter?" Malfoy asked, his voice sharp enough to shatter Harry's thoughts. "You wishing that you'd joined with Voldemort years ago, so that you wouldn't have to be doing this little prophecy fulfillment episode now?"
Harry took a step towards Malfoy, so quickly that he didn't even realize he was moving until he already had. The tip of his wand was pressed to the blond's robes, resting directly above Malfoy's heart.
"Never."
After he said the word, he arched his eyebrow and, just for a moment, tried to pretend that he was back in the school hallways, that this was just another episode in the infamous Potter-Malfoy rivalry.
"You wishing you hadn't switched sides?" he asked.
"Never."
Malfoy's eyes searched out Harry's as he spoke so that Harry could—would—see the truth in the word. Then he reached around the wand that was still pointed at him, wrapped his hand around the back of Harry's elbow, and gave it a firm, nearly painful squeeze.
"Go live up to your hype, Potter," he said right before he let go. "We're all expecting great things from you, after all. Can't have the Great Harry Potter letting us down, now can we?"
Then, just before he turned, he said, "good luck" so softly that if Harry hadn't seen Malfoy's lips move, he would have thought that he'd imagined hearing it. He watched as Malfoy walked away, the black of the cloak fading into the darkness again.
"The Great Harry Potter," Harry murmured to himself, and for some reason, hearing the nickname that he'd detested for so many years uttered in this defining hour made him stand up a little bit straighter, made him feel just a little bit more confident.
It was his hype, after all. It was his prophecy, his destiny, and it might be fulfilled or it might not be, but either way, it was going to happen that night.
He was going to find out now.
He took one last deep breath before he started walking across the Hogwarts grounds, dodging the stray (and intentional) curses that came his way, stepping over the bodies of both fallen Death Eaters and, he hated to see it, his comrades. He just kept walking, walking for forever and for no time at all, keeping his eyes focused on what had once been the Quidditch stands, but was now little more than a heap of broken wooden beams and torn silk.
The closer he came, the more extensive the damage seemed, and then he was there, picking his way through the wreckage. He moved under one beam, over another, batted a piece of red cloth out of his way, and with that, he had a clear view of the center of the pitch and the lone figure that stood there.
He could, he thought, just utter the killing curse from where he was crouched. He had a clear shot, after all, and if luck was with him, Voldemort would never know what had hit him. It would all be over and done with, thank you very much, the end.
It was even possible that Voldemort would do the same thing if he was the one in Harry's position, if he was the one crouching in the wreckage of the stands, staring out at the figure in the center of the charred field.
But then again, he probably wouldn't. Voldemort had always met Harry face to face, after all. Wand to wand. Wizard to wizard and due to some twisted logic, Harry thought, if that was the way that Voldemort was playing it, then that was the way it was supposed to be.
He had just started to move, to step out from behind the fallen beam that he was crouched next to when he heard Voldemort speak out, call his name. The raspy voice felt like sandpaper across his skin.
"Harry Potter," Voldemort called softly, tauntingly, but his voice was clear to Harry's ears. "Harry Potter, come out, come out wherever you are…"
Harry crouched down again, watching as Voldemort slowly turned in a circle. The red eyes seemed to glow in the gloom—the darkness was deeper here than it had been near the castle—and his skin looked as if it belonged to one of those worm-like creatures that lived at the bottom of the ocean, the ones that had never seen the light of day.
"Come out, Potter," Voldemort called, his voice growing in volume. "I know that you're here… I can smell you here…"
Indeed, he was looking directly at Harry's hiding place. Harry could see, or maybe it was just his imagination supplying details, the slits of Voldemort's nostrils flicking open and closed, tasting the still air.
Harry stood up again, moving as slowly and as carefully as possible. As he walked, he trained his wand on Voldemort's figure, at the shadow that was the dip of the Dark Lord's throat. His wand stayed steady, even as he did not, as he stumbled up and over the rubble, tripping over burnt wood strung with frayed cloth.
Voldemort smiled at him as he stepped out into the open, out onto the grass of the pitch.
"Ah," he hissed. "Harry Potter… So nice of you to join me."
"Voldemort," Harry said, biting the word off as sharply as he could. His wand hand was shaking now, from the effort of keeping the wand still, of keeping it pointed at the exact same spot on the Dark Lord's body.
"Aren't you supposed to say 'Ah yes, Lord Voldemort, we meet again?' That's the way it goes in those Muggle movies of yours, isn't it? You're a fan of Muggle movies, aren't you, Potter?"
Harry tightened his grip on his wand, fisting his other hand in the sleeve of his robe.
"Let's get on with this," he spat. "What are we going to do? Wizard Duel? Quick-draw challenge? Whoever can get the curse out of his mouth the fastest wins?"
"You really think that you can kill me?"
Voldemort started to move towards Harry, but for some reason, much to Harry's surprise, the closer he came, the more he seemed to diminish in size. Suddenly his skin didn't seem to be quite so unnatural looking; his eyes didn't seem to glow quite so brightly.
"Yes." Harry kept his voice calm, even. "I think that I can."
"Well then." Voldemort sounded rather amused. "Two wizards of equal power, settling a life-long feud. It's the sort of exploit that epic stories are made of, isn't it?"
He took another step towards Harry, then another. He seemed to glide across the grass smoothly, like a snake slithering towards its prey.
"You do remember proper dueling etiquette, I would assume? Or am I going to have to teach you another lesson?"
"I remember."
Harry forced the words out through clenched teeth. His brain was telling him that he should be cursing Voldemort at that very moment—the other wizard hadn't even drawn his wand yet—but his conscience said that he needed to play by the rules. He was Harry Potter, after all. He was the good guy, and in the end, the good guy won by doing good guy things.
Or, alternatively, they didn't win, and they died doing good guy things.
"Then come here," Voldemort rasped. "Let's get started. I would like to declare my decisive victory and your… untimely death… sometime today."
Harry walked towards the dark wizard, making himself move one step at a time, slowly, confidently, even as the ache in his forehead grew stronger. There had been enough agony from his scar recently that he'd learned to school his features against betraying any of that pain to those who might be observing him, though. He tried to make himself smile: a cold, nasty curve of lips.
Voldemort just looked amused. His wand had appeared in his hand, from where, Harry hadn't seen, and it was held upright, in front of him, like proper etiquette entailed. Harry raised his own wand, and then he was a mere step away from Voldemort.
The Dark Lord nodded at him, a sharp jerk of his head, and Harry forced himself to nod in return. In unison, they turned on their heels, and started walking away from each other.
One step, two.
There was a bubbling of bile in the back of Harry's throat, a sensation that imitated the way his stomach was churning, the irregular beat of his heart. He swallowed, took a deep breath.
Three, four.
He looked towards the sky, maybe for guidance, maybe so that he could say that he'd seen it one last time. There was a small patch of sunshine in the distance, a break in the blackness, and it seemed to warm him. It was bright, a glimmer of hope in pervasive gloom.
Five steps.
Halfway to death, he thought, as that patch of sunshine was eaten by darkness again. He looked back down to the ground. He didn't want to die, but he wouldn't live through this duel with Voldemort, he was suddenly sure of it.
All of a sudden, it seemed to him that the most that he could hope for was to take Voldemort with him when he went. That was the only way that he could ensure his death would not be in vain, that the Wizarding world would not be subjected to an otherwise inevitable seeming future of darkness and terror and pain.
Six steps, seven.
His hands were clenched so tightly that he could feel his fingernails scoring his palms, cutting half-moon shapes into the thin skin there, drawing blood.
He didn't want to be the good guy who finished last, he thought. He didn't want to die because he'd followed the rules. Not at the hand of a man who had made it his business to break every rule he could. Who had not only broken the rules, but had torn them to shreds, burned the parchment that the rules had been written on, and then had let the ashes be carried away in the wind.
He felt a sudden surge of rage, a rage that called for him to toss the rulebook out the window, too. For him to be impetuous. For him to…
Eight steps.
He wanted to avenge his parents. He wanted to avenge Dumbledore. He wanted to avenge all of the lives that had been lost in this war and the previous wars, everyone who had ever known fear because of the man walking away from him. He could do that if he…
If he didn't follow the rules. If he stopped being the good guy. If he did whatever it took to win.
He wanted to win.
His body thrumming, he swallowed heavily, and turned on the ninth step. He turned quickly, on the ball of his foot, and his wand was pointed at Voldemort's back before he truly realized what he was doing.
He could wait, he thought. He could wait for the count of ten, for Voldemort to turn, or he could… He hesitated for the time that it took him to blink, but then, just before the tenth count, before Voldemort turned, before he stopped moving away from Harry with that slithering gait of his, Harry opened his mouth to whisper the words and said—
"Harry."
The voice was feminine, very close to his head, and he looked all around the black landscape, trying to figure out where it was coming from. But then he shook his head, because this wasn't the way that it had gone. He'd opened his mouth and before Voldemort had turned around, he'd said those two words—
"Harry Potter." The same feminine voice, a voice that he knew that he should know. Hermione's voice.
—and Voldemort had crumpled to the ground before he'd even had a chance to turn around and—
"Get out of here," he hissed. He batted at where the voice was coming from, looked back to where Voldemort had been standing just a moment before, and saw that the other wizard was gone, like he'd never been there at all.
"Harry Potter," Hermione said again, very loudly this time, her voice even closer to his head, if that was possible. "Get out of bed right this instant or I won't be held accountable for what I do."
He opened his eyes.
There was plain white cloth beneath his face. He turned his head so that he could look around, so that he could try to figure out where he was. He saw three white walls, a white ceiling, a nightstand with a lamp and clock, and a Hermione standing not a foot away from him, her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.
"If you don't hurry up, we're going to be late," she said. "And if we're late, we might miss some of the new student orientations or the campus tours and who knows when we'll have time to set up our rooms."
Harry blinked at her. Owlishly.
"University," Hermione said. She jabbed her finger towards him. "Riddleway College for the Advanced Studies of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You do remember that today is moving day, don't you? Or did someone cast a memory charm on you while you were sleeping?"
Harry blinked again, memories starting to sort themselves out in his head, and slowly he nodded. Then he looked at the clock, saw the time, and shook his head, trying to scatter the last vestiges of sleep from his mind, trying to draw his focus away from the dream.
"Why—" he started as he tossed the sheet back, away from his body. "Why did you let me sleep so late?"
"'Let?'" Hermione sounded scandalized. "Mum knocked on your door a good half-hour ago and you said that you were up. And then I came in here not even a minute ago to find you still asleep, so I called your name and I shook you and now, here we are. There was no 'let' about it, Harry Potter."
She humphed and crossed her arms over her chest, but there was a dancing twinkle in her eyes.
"We're leaving in half an hour and you'd better be ready to go," she continued. Then she turned on her heel and started towards the door, but just before she stepped out into the hallway again, she looked over her shoulder and said, far too kindly in Harry's opinion, "I hope that you were having a good dream, anyway."
After she'd gone, Harry blinked again, scrubbed his fingers over his eyes, over his scar, and smiled wanly after her.
"Dream," he said. "Yeah."
Then he stood up from the bed and started to get ready for the day.
Two hours into the journey, when Harry was sitting beside Hermione in the back seat of the Granger's beige, four-door sedan, she turned to him and said, "This is going to be so wonderful, Harry. You and me, back at school, together again."
She paused for a moment, and then continued softly, "I missed you this summer."
Harry turned away from the window, from the gray, cramped Oxford streets that they were passing through, so that he could look at her. The excitement that had been radiating off of her for the entire journey seemed muted, somehow. Submerged, maybe, by her sudden earnestness.
He had no doubt that she really had missed him that summer, while he'd been living with the Dursley's. Again. He knew that she hadn't wanted him to go; she'd told him as much on more than one occasion. He'd said that he'd had to—after what he'd done, he'd had to—but he didn't tell her why.
"I know," he said. He lifted one of his hands from where it had been folded in his lap and scratched at his scar, scraping ragged fingernails over uneven skin. "I missed you, too. I just… I couldn't."
His voice caught as he spoke the last word, so he swallowed, blinked, and watched as Hermione nodded, honestly looking as if she understood the things that Harry wasn't saying.
The things that he couldn't say to her, to anyone.
Things that he would never say.
Because her understanding, as far as Harry was concerned, was faked understanding. It had to be, because she wasn't him. She hadn't done what he'd done. She didn't have to live with the knowledge that after the Final Battle was over, when he'd been found unconscious on the Quidditch pitch, he'd been only nineteen steps away from Lord Voldemort's prone, lifeless figure, not twenty.
He looked away from Hermione again, down at his own lap, and stared at his bitten fingernails and at the rough knuckles that bore a spider web pattern of scars from a curse that he hadn't quite been able to dodge.
He kept staring at his hands, lightly tracing fingernail over scar, but it wasn't until his nail had started its second circuit that he noticed that Hermione still hadn't said anything. Suddenly, the silence between them seemed to be a nearly tangible thing. It might have truly become so if it weren't for the low hum of the Beatles tunes that were coming from the car's speakers.
It was hard to have tangible, awkward silences, when there was talk of Lucy in the sky with diamonds, after all.
His nail had entered its fourth trip around the scar when Hermione's hand entered his field of vision, grasping at one of his own, stopping him.
"I know," she said. "I understand."
She tugged at Harry's hand, until he let her move it from his lap to the stretch of seat between them. He let her fold his fingers in her own, let her rub gentle circles on the back of his hand with her thumb. He looked away from their joined hands, back out the window, his eyes damp. He blinked, several times, quickly; he snuffled quietly as Mr. Granger turned a corner.
"We never hear about this part of the story, do we?" she asked. "Usually, we only hear an abbreviated version of what happens after the Hero wins his fight; we hear the Happily Ever After, but we never hear the details. You're living the After now, though. You're living the details."
"I'm not a hero," Harry said, his voice was steeled so that it wouldn't catch again. It didn't matter, though, because Hermione ignored him, as she always ignored him when he said such a thing.
"I understand how overwhelming this all must be for you," she said. "I mean, I'm overwhelmed and I only did a hundredth—"
"That's not true, Hermione, and you—"
"—no, probably less than that, of what you did. So I understand, okay? I just wanted to say that I'm glad you're back. That I'm glad you're doing this with me, Harry. That's all. That's all I wanted to say."
Harry let himself look at her again as she said the last words. Her lips were curved into a tentative smile, her eyes were warm, proud, grateful, and Harry's eyes were still damp and he couldn't stand it, so he looked past her, beyond her, out the window behind her.
It was then that he realized the buildings weren't moving anymore, that while Hermione had been talking, the car had stopped, and that he had, in fact, arrived.
Hermione was still looking at him, though, with that oh-so-kind expression on her face, so he said, "It's because of you. I'm here because of you."
As he spoke, Harry kept his eyes focused on the building beyond, the building that led to the place he would be spending the next two years of his life. He could see stone and red shutters, a bright red front door. He saw a small, golden plaque to the right side of the doorway that read: Oxford School of the Fine Arts.
"No, Harry, you're the reason you're here," Hermione said. "You filled out the application yourself, you know. I didn't force you to apply."
Harry blinked and then blinked again. He coughed, pulling the hand that she still had grasped in her own away so that he could curl it at his mouth to muffle the sound.
"No," he said. "You just sat with me while I filled the application out, sharpened my quills for me when they broke, and then walked with me to the owl barn so that you could watch me attach the scroll to Hedwig's leg."
He waited for Hermione to respond, to say something sharp in his direction, something self-deprecating, maybe. Maybe, he thought, she'd laugh at him, with him.
After too many moments had passed, though, Harry forced himself look directly at her again. It took more effort this time because he suspected that Hermione wasn't going to be staring at him with an excited glimmer in her eye, with the kind look that she'd been giving him just moments before.
He could feel the tension in the air again, as if they had an elastic stretched between them, ready to snap. In his direction, of course, hurting him if he didn't manage to diffuse the sudden strain.
He forced himself to meet her gaze, nearly cringing at what he saw. There was shuttered pain in her eyes and a frown curving her lips where there had been a smile. The color in her cheeks, which had seemed rosy only moments before, now seemed to be bright red patches on top of pasty skin.
"No," he said again, quickly. He tried to force some amusement into his voice, to make it sound as if he'd just been joking, just playing around, like the Harry of old might have played around.
"No, Hermione," he said, "you didn't force me to apply. You just encouraged me. Strongly."
"I wanted to have company here. I wanted you to—"
She paused, obviously still hurt, obviously looking for words. Words that Harry thought he could hear in his head, words that he knew she'd come very close to saying more than once over the previous year.
Words about plans, about after the Final Battle. Words about the future.
"—to," she continued, a moment too long later. "I wanted you to do this with me. Because this is going to be so wonderful."
She smiled too widely at Harry, then, and the spread of her lips was brittle, showing too many of her perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth.
Harry swallowed, ducked his head, and said, "You're right. It's going to be wonderful."
There was a knot in his throat as he watched her out of the corner of his eye, waiting to see what she would do, and he couldn't help but let out a small sigh of relief as she reached across the seat again to give his hand another squeeze. Then she pulled back fully, turning to look out her window, so that she could look at their new school, too.
"It was rather intelligent of Minister Fudge to make the entrance to the campus an arts school, I suppose," she said. "Not only will that explain why there are so many student-aged people about, for one, but also why so many of them will be eccentrically dressed." She paused, just for a brief moment, then said, "Because you know they will be."
"I mean, to the common Muggle, we're eccentrically dressed," she continued, glancing at him over her shoulder and using one hand to gesture at her robes.
Harry looked down at his own navy blue student robes, of the same sort that they'd had at Hogwarts, just bigger, and nodded.
"We are about as normal as it's going to get around here, I suppose," he said. Then, because he didn't want to let silence lapse between them again, he said, "Uncle Vernon would choke and blubber and turn a magnificent shade of red if he heard me call myself normal."
Hermione snorted, rather indelicately.
"Normal is in the eye of the beholder, you know. I mean, you and I think that it's perfectly normal to walk around in wizards' robes, do wand work, mix potions, and recite spells, whereas he, apparently, thinks that it's normal to have a son the size of a beached whale."
Hermione's voice was softer, edged with laughter when she spoke, and Harry thought that maybe she'd already forgiven him for his earlier faux pas, for her hurt feelings. He wasn't sure if he was grateful or not, because she was looking at him expectantly as she said it. Waiting for him to start laughing loudly, he thought, as he used to whenever she or Ron made jokes at his cousin's expense. Sometime during the year before, he thought, he would have. Might have. Probably would have.
Now, though, he just smiled weakly.
Nodded.
Opened his mouth to say something, anything that would change the subject, that would keep the conversation going. Before he could, though, Hermione's father harrumphed, drawing Harry and Hermione's attention to the front seat, to him.
"Do you need any help getting your things up to your room, Harry?" Mr. Granger asked.
"No, sir," Harry said quickly. "I can spell my trunk so that it'll fit in my pocket. Hedwig's the only other thing that I have."
Hedwig's cage was sitting at his feet and he tapped on it lightly as he spoke, his knuckles bouncing off of the thin golden bars. She blinked at up at him, clacking her beak twice, apparently not happy with either the car ride, the situation in general, or his actions.
"Nonsense," Mr. Granger said. "We'll carry your trunk up to your room together, while Mrs. Granger helps Hermione with her things."
Then, as if to show that the discussion was at an end, he opened the driver's side door and exited the car.
"I'm sorry, Harry," Hermione said once both of her parents were outside, unloading the trunk. "You know that my parents don't believe in using magic for quick fixes." She paused, fingers playing with the hem at the sleeve of her robe. "It's times like this when I find it's better just to smile brightly and go along with whatever he says."
"No, no," he said. "It's okay. I just thought that they would want to help you up to your room. I'll be glad for the help. Really." He nodded, trying to emphasize how glad he actually was. Because he was. Really.
Hermione rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, nodding, too.
"He's probably trying to avoid my room for as long as possible. Mum likes to decorate things. She never got to have any say about my Hogwarts rooms, so she's relishing the opportunity to think that she has a say now. Ultimately, though, it'll be up to me—and Susan, of course—no matter what mum says. Or what Susan's mum says."
Harry nodded. "Neville and I will probably just tack a poster or two to the wall and call it good."
A single poster was all that Harry had packed to decorate with, anyway: the somewhat tattered Chudley Cannons poster that Ron had given him the previous Christmas.
Hermione rolled her eyes in a way that seemed to scream, Boys! and when she (fondly) shook her head back and forth as she opened the car door, it just seemed to emphasize the unspoken statement.
Then, before Harry could respond, she was outside, moving around to the back of the car to help her parents.
Quickly, Harry followed suit, opening his own door and sliding out into the cool fall air, too. It smelled of the city, but also of fallen leaves and a recent rain shower. He took a deep breath as he stood up, stretching and twisting his arms behind him as he did so, cracking his back.
When he turned towards the back of the car, he saw Mr. Granger struggling to lift his trunk out of the rather small boot-space, and he stepped around the back of the car to help. It took a little bit of maneuvering, but a short while later they'd set it down on the sidewalk in front of the school.
After Harry had helped to unload enough of Hermione's things for a first trip, he returned to the back seat of the car and lifted Hedwig's cage out.
"I'm sorry," he said as the owl swiveled her head out from underneath her wing, clacking her beak at him. "We'll get you settled in your new home soon, okay? It won't be too much longer. I promise."
She clacked at him again, but this time it had a slightly more pleased tone to it. She shook herself, ruffling her feathers, then started smoothing them out with her beak again.
"You have your papers?" Hermione asked him as she retrieved Crookshanks' carrier from the front seat of the car. The cat had spent the entire journey riding underneath Mrs. Granger's feet. "The one with your room number and the rest of your registration information?"
Harry nodded, making a visible show of rolling his eyes, more because it was what Hermione would have expected him to do, rather than a real desire to roll them. He pulled the folded piece of paper out from his front trousers' pocket, and showed it to her.
"Yes, mum," he said.
Hermione glared at him briefly, but then she was turning to look at the building in front of them again.
"We should head on in," she said. "We've only got two hours before the welcome luncheon begins, after all. We can't be late for that!"
Then, with Crookshanks' carrier in one hand, and a suitcase in her other, she started for the building's front door.
Shaking his head, Harry stepped up onto the sidewalk, Hedwig's cage banging lightly against his thigh. He reached down with his other hand so that he could grab one of the handles of his trunk, but didn't lift it until Mr. Granger grabbed the other.
Then they, too, started up the steps to the bright red front door of the Oxford School of the Fine Arts, leaving the world of Muggle Oxford behind them.
Half a block away, a man leaned back against a power pole, watching intently as the small procession entered the school.
In his early twenties, the man had blue eyes and long, wavy blond hair that was pulled back into a ponytail which ended midway down his back. With his tie-dyed shirt, ripped jeans, and the black wizard robe that was hanging open over the ensemble, he looked as if he belonged in a different place, a different era.
He stayed completely still, not even moving to scratch the itch at the tip of his nose until the bright red door that was the Muggle-side entrance to Riddleway College, had finally closed again, falling shut behind Harry Potter, the last of the four.
Then, finally, a wide smile slowly spread itself across his face and he pushed his body away from the power pole, so that he was standing up straight.
"Finally," he said, sounding nearly blissful. "Johan Madden the Third, your time has finally come."
And with that, Johan turned on his heel and, with a bounce in his step, walked away.
There was still a bounce in Johan's step ten minutes later, as he walked into his basement flat and turned to shut the door behind him.
Well, he called it a flat, anyway, despite the fact that it was little more than a sparsely furnished basement room. It was only meant to be a starting off point, though. That's what he told himself, anyway. And others.
Besides, it had everything he needed: a bed and a couch that only had some of the stuffing hanging out of it. A faux Oriental rug that he'd found sticking out of a rubbish bin a month before. Two sitting chairs to go with it. Wooden, and quite hard, but chairs none the less.
There was a fireplace in the room, also, and whereas everything else in the room could be considered either small or threadbare, the fireplace was a thing of beauty. It was deep and large, taking up a good portion of one of the walls of the room. The bricks that lined its interior were stained black, from flame and ash and potions gone wrong; a hue that contrasted sharply with the sheen of the polished oak mantle and the glow of the twisted metal hearth.
After he turned the lock on the door behind him, Johan walked across the room, to the fireplace. He pointed his wand at the logs that were laid on the hearth, muttered a quick incendio, and watched as the flames leapt to life.
He smiled as he pocketed the wand again, a smile that grew even wider as he clasped his hands behind his back and stared down at the flames, watching them as they danced and flickered and rose ever higher.
It was nearly a minute later that he acknowledged the three people that had already been in the room when he'd entered. He didn't turn to look at them as he spoke, but he rocked back and forth on his heels as he said, "Sorry I'm late."
He could hear the soft sound of a magazine fluttering, of hands moving through air, as his three companions fanned themselves.
"God, Joe," the girl, Mel, said.
Mel was pixie-like in build, with a sharply angled face and slightly pointed ears. Her hair was short and naturally a dirty blonde, but on this particular day it was streaked orange.
She'd been curled up at one end of the couch when Johan had walked in, her shoulder blades pressed to the armrest. It was her spot, the spot that she gravitated to whenever she was in the room.
"It's bloody hot in here," she continued. "Can't you let the flames die down a bit, b'fore we all boil in our skins?"
Johan didn't answer. His fingers twitched and tightened together slightly, but that was the only indication that he gave that he'd heard her.
"Toddy agrees with me, don't you, Toddy?" Mel asked. "Martin?"
"Mel's right, mate," Toddy said. He was lying on the Oriental rug. Johan would be able to see him if he looked down far enough, out of the corners of his eyes.
Toddy's head was pointed in the direction of the couch, his feet towards the fireplace, and because he was a tall man, his body covered nearly the entire distance. His hair was long, lank and oily, and was fanned out beneath his head in such a way that it looked like he was lying on a thin pillow of damp hay.
"Yeah, Joe," the third man, Martin, said.
He was lying on the couch next to Mel, his head resting on her thigh.
"Mel's right. Let the bloody fire simmer down a bit, will ya'. It's eighty-fucking-degrees outside, y'know. You already got us here at this god-awful hour of the morning—"
"It's eleven," Mel said. "It's hardly morning at all, you twat."
"It's morning," Martin said, "and that's a time I prefer not to be intimately acquainted with, as you should well know, darling. But as I was saying, you already lured us here at this god-awful hour. There's no need to add to our discomfort."
Johan rolled his eyes, waited a beat, and then turned around. He moved his hands so that they were clasped in front of him. Gently, serenely.
"I have good news," he said. "Very, very good news."
He smiled at them all, serenely, to match his handclasp.
"Well," Martin said. "Get on with it. Tell us this very, very good news, let us exalt over it, and then let some of the rest of us go back to bed, why don't you?"
Johan felt his smile become just a tad bit brittle. He staunchly kept smiling, though. He said, "After you hear what I have to tell you, I doubt bed'll be the place you want to head. I'm thinking that a trip to the Duck's Foot is in order."
Only Mel raised her eyebrow—pierced—at the mention of the pub on the corner.
"The news is that good, Joe? Good enough to make you drink b'fore noon?"
Johan nodded. He unclasped his hands and stuck them into the pockets of his jeans.
"Today," he said. "Today is the day that we embark upon the first step of our plan to take over the world."
He couldn't stop his chuckle of happiness. He didn't think that Dark Lords—or future Dark Lords, even—were really supposed to smile and laugh as much as he was, but at the moment, he really didn't care.
His loyal followers didn't appear to be sharing in his joy, though, because they weren't smiling. Or laughing. Instead, they were looking confused.
"But I thought that the first step of our plan to take over the world was to take out Potter," Martin said, no hint of the claimed exhaustion in his voice.
"It is."
"And the last time I checked, we were still in Oxford and he was still living in that bloody hell-hole of suburbia with those relatives of his, with that spell, whatever the fuck it's called, that won't let us touch him."
Johan muttered "accio Daily Prophet" under his breath and watched as the newspaper came floating across the room towards him, moving from its place on the milk crate by the front door and sailing directly over Mel's head.
"And that would be where you're wrong," he said. He held the paper open in front of his chest and tapped the top headline, written in four-inch type, with the tip of his wand. Orange sparkles fell to the floor.
"Riddleway College opens," Mel read out loud. "Harry Potter, other students arrive."
"Bloody hell, Joe," Toddy said. "So what that the great Harry Potter's in Oxford? You're out of your fucking mind if you think that we're going t'be able to get within fifty meters of him. I mean, it's not like we can walk into the school office, talk to the bloody receptionist, and say, 'excuse me, ma'am, but could you point us in the direction of Harry Potter? We're here to kill him.'"
"Not kill," Johan said. "Maim, yes, impair, yes, make him take a dramatic swan dive from grace, yes. Because, remember? We went over this? If we kill him, he becomes a martyr, and if he becomes a martyr, the people of the wizarding world will fight for his memory and then they'll never fall into our evil clutches. If we impair him, though, the rest of the population will be so shocked at seeing him fall—they'll be so demoralized—that they won't know what's hit them until its too late."
"But you've never told us how we're going to maim him," Mel said. "You've only said, 'Oh, leave it up to me. I'm the mastermind of this operation.' And now you're telling us that the key here is that we're going to walk into that school and we're going to go right up to Potter and—"
"That's not what I'm saying at all," Johan said. He stuck his hands back in his pockets, letting the Daily Prophet fall to the floor in front of him. It fluttered down right beside Toddy's leg. Johan saw him twitch.
"What I'm saying is this," he said. "Martin's right. We aren't going to get within fifty meters of him, but we don't have to. That's the key to being a Dark Lord, in'it? Delegation. I mean Voldemort, Grindewald, the like, they didn't do their dirty work all themselves, did they? No, that's what they had followers for, and that's what we're going to have followers for."
"And the followers will flock once we take down Potter," Toddy said. "But we don't have any followers to take him down, do we? And we can't, you just said. I'm seeing flaws here, Joe. I'm seeing great gaping holes in The Plan."
Johan pulled his left hand out of his pocket and showed his companions the golden medallion that was sitting on his palm. It was about the size of a Spanish doubloon, and it gleamed dully with reflected firelight.
"You don't need followers when you have this," he said, lightly bouncing the coin up and down on the palm of his hand.
"You're going to pay somebody else to do it?" Toddy said, looking skeptical.
Johan rolled his eyes. "No, you twat." He tossed the coin over his shoulder, but didn't look behind him, knowing that it had ended up in the flames. He smiled serenely again as he waited for the gasps, the oohs and awws that were sure to follow.
Indeed, he saw Mel's eyes go wide. He saw Martin sit up on the couch and Toddy prop himself up on his elbows. All three of them had their eyes trained steadily on the fire behind him.
"What in Helga Hufflepuff's name is that?" Mel asked. Her voice had a slightly squeaky edge to it, and Johan could see that she'd curled her fingers as tightly around the couch's armrest as she could.
Johan turned then, so that he could stare at the flames, too. It was startling, he supposed, if one didn't know what to expect. The large green eyes that peered out of the flames blinked slowly, evenly.
"It's a Veruznak," he said. He looked towards his three companions again and saw that all of them were staring blankly at him. He sighed.
"Honestly, don't you people do any research into evil things at all? Standard Book of Demons? Page 73? You should try looking it up sometime. It'll tell you everything you need to know."
"Well, why don't you give us the Cliff Notes version," Toddy said, his tone dry. "Save us having to use any of our limited brain resources on reading."
"Yeah, Joe," Mel said. "Give us the short and sweet. The sooner you tell, the sooner we can marvel at your cunning brilliance."
Johan raised his middle finger in Toddy's direction, then turned back to the flames. "The short and sweet?" he asked. "It gets inside you—rather painfully, I've heard—and eats your magic, just gulps it down, rather like you chubby bastards gulp down chips."
"So it's going to eat Potter's magic," Mel said slowly, a few moments later. "It's going to drain him of magic so he'll be a… squib?"
"Exactly," Johan said. "Because what could be more demoralizing to the Wizarding World than that? To suddenly have a hero that has no magical ability at all, who is no more powerful than the common Muggle?"
It took a few moments longer, but finally the brilliance of his plan seemed to sink in, because all of a sudden Mel's, Martin's, and Toddy's faces all lit up, eyes dancing, wide grins spreading across their faces.
"That's bloody brilliant," Mel said, as Toddy said, "So how'd you come into possession of this demon?"
"It owed me a favor," Johan said, because there wasn't any need to get farther into the story than that.
Then he reached down, picked up the newspaper that was still lying on the rug, and turned it so that the front page was facing the demon. There were two pictures on the front page. The first was of the front office—or so the caption said—where a somewhat chubby receptionist was standing in front of the fireplace—the main floo entrance—smiling stupidly, Johan thought, as she waved the camera. The other picture was of Harry Potter at the Order of Merlin ceremony, accepting his Order of Merlin First Class award.
"This is Harry Potter," he said slowly, pointing at the second picture. "This is the one whose magic I want you to drain. I want you to get to him anyway you can. And after you do that, the debt shall be repaid."
There was a grunt of flames from the fireplace.
Then Johan reached into the pot on the mantle, pulled out a small handful of floo powder, and tossed it into the flames; they glowed green, but the green eyes glowed brighter still.
"Riddleway College," he said clearly. There was a puff of smoke and then the green eyes were gone. He stared at the flames for a moment, before pulling out his wand and muttering the spell to extinguish them.
He turned back to the three other people in the room and said, "So? Duck's Foot here we come?"
Mel was already standing up. She nodded and walked towards Johan, linking her arm through his when she got close enough.
"Duck's Foot here we come," she said.
Onto Part Two...