Title: Come What May
Author: DuchessAndromeda
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If I owed it, would I be writing this?
Summary: All Harry wants is to be normal, but what we want and what we need are sometimes two very different things. Sometimes it takes an extreme act to get either.
Author's Notes: Thanks be to my two reviews, becca and WiccanPussyKat. Also, the later has kindly offered to be my beta (Yay! Go me! Now I feel like a real author!) and as such, the quality of these chapters should improve. If she would be so kind as to go back and beta the previous chapters when she gets a chance, I would greatly appreciate it. The rest of the good news is that since PK likes this story so much, and has access to my e-mail addy… well, you might be getting chapters more frequently. It only takes about an hour or so to knock one of these chapters out, so time isn't much of a problem. And I think remembering is about to get a whole lot easier…
Anyway, on to the story.
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~Chapter 4~
There are some things that one must know when dealing with Harry Potter. Of course, these things can only be passed on from someone who actually knows him, so they don't get passed around very often.
The first thing that any one must know is that to fully appreciate Harry for who he is, you have to forget everything that you have ever known about him. Every newspaper article, every rumour whispered behind the hands of children who see him everyday, every assumption that comes into play with his title of the Boy-who-Lived.
The second thing that you must do is to be prepared to accept anything that he says or does, because a failure to do so will end up with trouble for everyone.
Albus Dumbledore had been the Headmaster of Hogwarts when Harry's parents had attended there. He had seen them laugh and grown, seen the friendships that formed and broke. He watched them fight and fall in love, and when Harry was born, he was one of the first to meet him.
It was because of all of this that it might be possible for it to be said that he knew Harry Potter better than almost anyone else. But what he had forgotten, in his advanced age and wisdom, was that little boys who look up at you with adoring eyes and calmly say their first word ("wampa"), may eventually grow up into teenagers who can battle evil wizards, grant interviews like the pros, and steal the harts of his teachers. But they still need the same things they did as children.
Behind him, Albus was vaguely aware of Moody cursing the muggle, and of Remus' wounded howls. He heard Molly Weasely's wails of sorrow, and the harsh retching of Tonks that inspired a similar response in himself.
The muggles were finally appearing. Leaving their warm homes and comfortable beds to stand in their yards. And watch as both magical and muggle authorities reported to this strange scene.
All this registered to Albus, and later he would be able to recount what went on that day without any really conscious idea as to how- for his entire world was lying in his arms, dying, and apologizing.
But this was Harry. He was the boy-who-lived. He couldn't just die. Not like this. Now when…
'When what?' the sneaky part of his brain asked. The part he privately labeled Tom and publically called his muse. 'When he has nothing left to live for?'
Albus locked gazes with the green eyes that had once been so clear. Now, through the swollen slits that the horrid muggle had given him, the crystalline quality was vastly reduced. His eyes seemed almost- milky. Blind. As if not used to light of any kind…
And that conjured up a whole plethora of thoughts that he could not focus on right now, because thinking led to anger, and anger led to pain for the people that caused it, and that would require leaving his fallen child on the floor and he couldn't do that. He couldn't leave this fragile form that had already seen too much for it's years. He couldn't make his arms release their grip upon the starved and ravaged form of his child! His precious, precocious child that had never done anything to deserve this!
Something deep inside him let out a wail to rival that of Remus' and Molly's combined, but all he could do was look at the child in his arms- his child in his arms- and try, try so desperately, utterly hard to be gentle with this form, this fragile, delicate, breakable –broken!- form.
With a hand that shook despite years of practice, he reached out and gently smoothed a lock of hair away from his Harry's eyes.
"What on earth for, child? You have done nothing…" In his arms, the disfigured form leaked all sorts of liquids onto his vibrant robes. Lemony yellow dancing hippos dodged out of the way as yet another drop of Harry's blood dropped onto the maroon fabric. The green gaze turned sad. Even as the child opened his mouth to explain, a coughing fit over took him, rendering speech impossible.
Albus took out one of his large, neon green handkerchiefs and gently cleared out his childs mouth.
Silently, Ron and Hermione watched.
It was one thing to expect that your best friend is being abused; it is quite another to have to confront it as a fact.
Facts were what Hermione was good at. Facts and figures and calculating the exact time that you had to add the powdered bighorn to the potion before turning off the flames, and stirring precisely six and a half times.
There was no precision in this.
This was madness. This was chaos and disorder and all those other things that Hermione rarely allowed, and then mainly in her hair and in her boys. Her sweet boys that tried their best for her, that had saved her from a troll their first year, and in doing so, created a bone between them so strong that it could not break!
But now one of them lay broken.
But that was inconceivable, because only Ron had ever been broken, and he was still here and real, and it was Ron, not Harry. Ron. Ron. It should be Harry standing beside her now, Harry who would know what to say to make everything all right again.
But it was Harry lying there, broken maybe beyond fixing. Even so, this was magic! Magic, the things that begot fairy tales and superstitions. Magic that ended wars and created new species. Magic that could do anything… except save her boys from their fates. That's the real reason she hated Divination. The very idea that her boys had a fate without her, a fate where they died all alone… But no, that couldn't be right! She wouldn't let it be right because in all the scenarios that she had ever thought of, it had always been her or Ron lying there, beaten and broken. Bleeding and dying, but going to be saved because that was what Harry did! However, it was Harry lying there, and that went against all the things that she had ever learned and believed in.
And with that green-eyed child, Hermione's well-organized world collapsed into the nightmare of war and reality. Her spine straightened, and her gaze hardened. Harry was mercy and light. Without him, she was left…
Despite everything that he had ever told his parents, or even his friends, Ron still remembered the night that they had gone out to save the stone from Voldemort. He still remembered the feeling of the chess piece hitting him, and how he flew across the room. He remembered the pain, and his friends frightened cries, and he remembered them leaving him to go onto the next room. Leaving him on his own, with nothing to distract him from the crushing silence, and the dark. He had felt death then, and he knew that it would always be close by. Last year's escapade with the brains had intensified his awareness to the ebb of life and death of those that surrounded him, so instead of behind only aware of the shadow about himself, he now knew the shadows that hung over other people as well. The shadows that would one day swallow them whole.
Clenching his fists, Ron stood in the midst of chaos and resisted the urge to shiver as his shadow left to join with the others. The ones that cloaked Harry from his view. Beside him, he could feel Hermione's do much the same thing, and as much as he long to just put his arm around her and pull her into a comforting embrace, the knowledge of what was happening to Harry left him feeling…
Cold.
The thought echoes between the two teens, and the grass beneath their feet turned white and cracked with sudden frost. Professor McGonagal apparated to where they were, Madam Pomfrey in tow. They pushed their way through the crowd that had formed of muggles and wizard alike, united in their gross fascination with the scene in front of them. They paused momentarily at the threshold between the outside world and the interior of the house before continuing on inside. They were the only ones besides Moody to enter the scene that was devoted to Harry and the Headmaster.
The Nurse's bag swung in her wake, and pushed a startled Professor Snape into the teens beside him. The sleeve of his robe turned white with ice, and the man's sudden body heat seemed to burn where it touched tem. With low moans, the two simultaneously scrambled backwards to avoid touching the man who stared at them with open-mouthed astonishment.
Their lips were blue and their skin was the pale white that comes from extreme cold or death. Small icicles hung in their hair, and their breath was visible even in the low light. They looked at their Potion's professor with the indifference that Slytherins prized and worked hard to obtain. Severus looked down at the spreading realm of frost in the summer and then back up at the teens that had turned their gaze away from him, back to the house. He knew then that whatever they were doing was tied in with the Potter boy, and that if he died…
They would extract their vengeance from the world. The part of him that he thought had died, killed by numerous attempts on his life and playing the fine line between double agent and Spy for the light let out a wail of fear at the thought of their attentions focused back on himself. And before he could stop it, he was moving in an undignified scramble back towards the house and Poppy. If she didn't have the proper potions, he would make them from his own blood if he had to, but that boy had to live.
If he didn't, it looked as if the next ice age would be coming early.