Chapter Twelve: The THEORY
When morning came, the rain was still falling, and Buffy slept on, completely unaware of anything around her. Her dreams were plagued with things of darkness, a combination of the dream she'd had where she'd killed Harry, and of the events of the evening before in the alley with the homeless man. She tossed and turned in her sleep, but did not awaken, staying instead with the darkness of her dream world.
Back at Hogwarts, the students rose, grumbling at the weather that would ruin their Hogsmeade Sunday outing. The students went down to breakfast, and as Harry, Ron and Hermione sat down, they noticed their missing friend.
"Where's Buffy?" Harry asked, his eyes narrowing with worry.
Hermione shook her head and shrugged. "She was already gone when I woke up," Buffy's roommate explained.
Harry paused for a moment.
"She was already gone? Or she never came back?" Harry asked, his voice quiet and deathly serious.
Hermione and Ron both paled at the implied suggestion.
"You don't think…" Hermione trailed off uncertainly.
Harry swallowed hard. It wasn't something that he enjoyed thinking about, but it had been in his thoughts more and more since Buffy had been Called as the Slayer. He knew that one day, Buffy wouldn't return at night. She would be killed in battle, and he didn't even want to imagine what his life would be like after that.
"But…but, she's the Slayer," Ron whispered. "She can't die. She's…she's Buffy."
"Maybe she's in your room," Hermione said.
Harry looked thoughtful before nodding and standing up, abandoning his half-eaten piece of toast. "I'm going to check it out. If Professor Giles comes down, ask him if he's seen her. Maybe she just went to train or something."
"She usually tells us before she leaves though," Hermione pointed out. "Especially in the morning. It's not like her to be careless like that."
"You don't think maybe it's to do with those ghosts of hers?" Ron asked, chewing on a piece of bacon. "She's been on about them for days. If you ask me, she's gone bonkers."
"She's not crazy," Harry said angrily. "She's…she saw my dad. Described him to me in perfect detail, and…and she'd never seen a picture of them before, so…so it can't be a lie. Besides, she wouldn't make something like that up."
Ron just shrugged and continued eating. Harry rolled his eyes and stalked out of the Great Hall. Just as he reached the Entrance Hall, he ran into a familiar person with white-blonde hair, wearing a similar expression of concern.
"You're looking for Buffy aren't you?" Draco asked.
Harry nodded. Draco sighed, wondering how it was possible for his cousin to get into so much trouble.
They checked the Room of Requirement, the library, and Buffy's room searching for any clues. Harry sighed and knew of one more place that Buffy may have ended up after a patrol.
"Come on," Harry said, Draco following behind him.
They walked down the corridors until they came to the door to the infirmary. Breathing in deeply, thye walked inside and came to a halt at the sight in front of him.
Madam Pomfrey was gesticulating wildly as she spoke to a very concerned Professor Dumbledore. Neither Draco nor Harry could hear a word of what they were saying even though it looked as though Pomfrey was yelling. They were standing beside a bed that had blood staining the sheets, empty bottles of potions lining the table beside the hospital bed.
Harry stepped forward slightly to make himself known, and Dumbledore turned to look at the Gryffindor and Slytherin students. Harry saw Dumbledore say his name, but again, he couldn't hear the Headmaster. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion and he absently rubbed at his forehead as Professor Dumbledore stepped away from the bed.
"Harry, Draco…you look like men with a mission," Dumbledore commented.
Harry nodded. "We're looking for Buffy."
"Ahh…yes, that would explain it," Dumbledore said, stroking the length of his beard. "Professor Giles is also conducting his own search for Miss Summers. She seems to have…well, vanished."
Harry felt his heart sink. It was one thing to think that his girlfriend was missing, but another thing entirely to have Dumbledore confirm it.
"Can't that girl go a week without being taken?" Draco asked.
"We do believe that she was here last night though. Or very early this morning," the Headmaster said. "The spell holding the bubble of silence over this bed is…incredibly strong. Not something that any of our other students could have erected within an evening. And none of the Professors have any knowledge of it. Plus…we also found this."
Dumbledore handed Harry a white gold ring with three diamonds encrusted in it. The ring that Harry had given to Buffy on their one-year anniversary. Buffy had definitely been there earlier. He looked over the ring carefully, his heart pounding furiously as he saw the blood stains on it. He polished it against his robes and slid it into his pocket.
Draco's attention had been caught by something in Dumbledore's last statement though.
"Bubble of silence?" Draco repeated. "Why would she need that?"
"We do not know," Dumbledore replied sadly. "We also wish to know why Buffy did not call for Madam Pomfrey when she arrived back on school grounds. And why she would have used such a potent healing potion, and not stay in the infirmary afterwards."
"She hates hospitals," Harry murmured.
"True, true…but, logically she should have stayed within school grounds. Why she would leave is a little beyond my imagination," Dumbledore said.
Harry frantically tried to think of any reason that Buffy would want to leave Hogwarts. He couldn't think of anything, and the more he tried to think of reasons, the more worried he became about her. The pain in his forehead was more pronounced than before, though nowhere near as painful as it had been when he'd awoke after having nightmares of Voldemort several years back.
Dumbledore looked at him in concern.
"Are you alright? Is it your scar?" the Headmaster asked.
Harry continued rubbing at his head. "I don't understand it. It…it shouldn't be hurting like this. You said the scar would only hurt whenever Voldemort was either close by or really angry, and…well, he's dead. We made sure of that. You swore that he couldn't come back!"
Harry's voice was rising with panic and fear, and Dumbledore placed a calming hand on Harry's shoulder.
"Voldemort is not alive, I assure you of that," Dumbledore said.
"But my scar…it's been…well, it's not as painful as it was a few years back, but…it keeps stinging a little," Harry admitted.
"Hmm…I do have a theory about that. The recurrence of the pain regardless of Voldemort being dead," Dumbledore said.
Harry nodded eagerly, desperate for any theories that would explain the oddity.
"I believe the answer is very simple. Your connection to Voldemort through your scar was passed on to his only blood relative," Dumbledore said. "But, rather than being a warning, your scar is picking up on Buffy's emotions."
"But…sometimes it's been hurting when we've just been sitting there doing nothing," Harry said, completely confused. "Like yesterday in the library."
"Hmmm," Dumbledore said thoughtfully. "And what happened just after your scar hurt?"
Harry cast his mind back to the day before. He hadn't even connected the two occurrences, and now that he thought about it, the answer was fairly simple.
"She left," Harry stated. "She got up and left the library. But…what emotions am I picking up on?"
Dumbledore shook his head. There were many things he understood in the world. The mind of an eighteen-year-old girl was not one of them.
"That is something I cannot answer for you. Unless there was a reason that she left the library…something that happened that no one else but Buffy noticed," Dumbledore theorised.
Harry's eyes lit up. "The ghosts!" he yelled triumphantly.
Dumbledore's eyes widened. That was not something he'd been expecting to hear. "Pardon?"
"Buffy's been seeing ghosts. Of my dad and some woman named Jenny. And of…of Angel," Harry said. "She…she said they were scaring her, but…but I couldn't understand why a ghost of my father would be that scary."
Dumbledore was now definitely concerned. The Hogwarts ghosts were very seldom invisible, and Dumbledore knew of every single ghost, ghoul and poltergeist that haunted the Hogwarts grounds. Hearing that James Potter was visiting was something that Dumbledore knew would not bring good news.
"What about other times when your scar ached?" Dumbledore asked.
Harry went into a thoughtful silence, searching his memory for the incidents where he had absently rubbed his forehead. He hadn't noticed it as the pain hadn't been mind-numbing. It had been a gentle reminder that something was wrong, but Harry had ignored it, thinking it nothing more than a headache.
"It woke me up the other night," Harry said. "But…I hadn't had a nightmare so I ignored it." He paused for a moment, trying to remember what had happened the morning after. His eyes lit up in discovery. "But when I spoke to Buffy that morning, she said that she hadn't slept well. She said she was going crazy."
Dumbledore was now truly worried. While he knew that the American girl had a penchant for using hyperbolic words to describe her moods, the Headmaster also knew that the Slayer may not have been exaggerating her state of mind. And, for someone who was as powerful as Voldemort's daughter, and the Chosen One, it did not bode well for anyone.
"If your scar is hurting now, then chances are it is reacting to Buffy's emotions. Seeing as we've come up with fear being the link, it does not instil confidence in my heart," Dumbledore said.
"How can we find her though?" Draco asked, rejoining the conversation. "I mean…would a locator spell work on her? The Wiccan variety. I know they require a connection to whoever you're trying to find, but…well, who's more connected to Buffy than Potter or I?"
Dumbledore looked at the young Slytherin, impressed with the logical thinking.
"Yes. Summoning the goddess Aradia will usually lead you to the person you wish to find. I would not suggest doing so with your nerves as frazzled as they are though," Dumbledore said.
Harry groaned. He didn't know how Dumbledore expected him to calm down. He'd been told that his scar was hurting because Buffy was afraid of something, and that did very little to calm him down.
Harry sighed and tightened his grip on the ring that Dumbledore had handed Harry earlier. He could feel his chewed-off fingernails biting into his skin, the pain grounding him in reality, giving him something else to concentrate on.
Dumbledore stepped back towards the bed, once again looking at the blood stains that marred the white sheets.
Harry closed his eyes and focussed his energies on the ring in his hand.
"Aradia, Goddess of the lost,
The path is murky, the woods are dense,
Darkness pervades, I beseech thee,
Bring the light."
Dumbledore spoke Harry's name, but, being inside the bubble that Buffy had created, Harry didn't hear him. A small green light appeared in the air and circled Harry's head.
He looked at it, thankful that the spell had worked. He hadn't been certain that he'd remembered the correct wording of the spell, but he was thankful that he'd spent several hours researching Wiccan spells with Buffy and Draco over the last few months.
"Take me to Buffy," he whispered to the green light.
The green light danced in front of him and began zipping out of the infirmary and down the corridor. Harry and Draco raced to follow it, Dumbledore on his tail.
They bumped into Giles, and after a very brief explanation, the DADA Professor was running to keep up with the Boy-Who-Lived, the former Slytherin Prince and Professor Dumbledore. They were lead down a flight of stairs and the light danced in a spot halfway down the third floor corridor, the light flitting around the statue of the one-eyed witch. Harry withdrew his wand, recognising the statue from his third-year exploits. "Dissendium."
The statue's hump opened wide enough for Harry to fit through, and he hoisted himself into the hole headfirst. He slid down a stone side then landed on cool damp earth.
Several seconds later, Draco, Giles and Dumbledore landed just behind him. Harry didn't even want to know how the Professors had fit through the fairly small trap door within the statue.
"Dare I ask how you know the password to this particular passageway?" the Headmaster asked.
Harry shrugged in the darkness. "Probably best for us all if I didn't tell you."
Dumbledore chuckled, and the two of them followed the green light, which illuminated the otherwise dark corridor. They walked through the passage, twisting and turning and nearly stumbling on the uneven floor. Dumbledore felt the magic of Hogwarts recede and he stopped Harry by tugging on the sleeves of the boys robe.
"We can apparate from here," Dumbledore said.
Harry was thankful for that reprieve. He remembered the several hundred stairs at the end of the passageway, and he had no desire to climb them when all he wanted to do was see his girlfriend.
Giles and Dumbledore apparated them into the middle of the Hogsmeade street, the green light taking a moment to work out that they'd disappeared. The guiding light appeared in front of them before taking them up a winding path towards a run down house on the outskirts of the village.
"The Shrieking Shack," Harry whispered.
"Indeed," Dumbledore replied, the four wizards quickening their pace to get up to the dilapidated old building.
----
Sorry for the lateness in updating. Real life sucks sometimes. Well, no assignments suck. Thanks heaps for your continued support and feedback! You're all very cool!
Toodles.
DKG.