- CHAPTER EIGHT -
The Hallowe'en Feast

Harry came to slowly in the hospital wing, still hearing voices. For a moment he thought he was still telepathic, and then realised that the owners of the voices were merely talking a little way away from him, probably assuming he was still asleep. He kept his eyes closed.

"-didn't think Muscomens would have nearly such a dramatic effect." That was McGonagall.

"Hagrid assures me that Mr. Potter's fainting fit is highly unusual." And, of course, there was even less chance of mistaking Dumbledore. "But then, it is likely that Harry is considerably more susceptible than most."

"Because of-"

"His link to Voldemort? Yes, partially. But also because of who he is. Bear in mind he is doubly connected to this - consider his parentage."

Harry was confused, and for a moment McGonagall seemed to be too. Then she said, "Ah. You're referring to what happened in the Chamber of Secrets?"

"Indeed. Of course, you know only Harry Potter could have done what he did."

"True. Well, you know, I always did think that James might-" She broke off, as people often did when discussing Harry's parents, as if even after this long the memory of their deaths still came as an unpleasant shock.

Harry's mind was racing. What did his father have to do with anything? He was doubly connected to what? Connected to Voldemort?

Tom Riddle was the heir of Slytherin. But what if Hermione's first theory had been right all along? He'd seen how closely intertwined the families of the wizarding world were from the family tree at Grimmauld Place. What if he was a descendent of Salazar Slytherin? Voldemort might be the heir... but for all Harry knew, he could be the next in line. The Riddle name had come from the Muggle side of the family; who knew who Voldemort's long-dead mother had been, what bloodlines she was related to?

Could she even have been a Potter?

Perhaps some sign of this mental agitation showed on his face, for Dumbledore and McGonagall broke off their conversation.

"I do believe Mr. Potter is about to rejoin us," the Headmaster observed.

There was no point pretending to still be unconscious, so Harry blinked a few times, and sat up. "Professor..."

"You gave your young friends quite a scare there, Harry," Dumbledore said jovially.

Of course - Ron and Hermione. "Are they-?"

"They're waiting outside, Mr. Potter," McGonagall informed him. "Madam Pomfrey will want to check you over before you see them."

"I'm fine," he protested automatically. "It was the Muscomens, I just-"

"Nevertheless, Potter, Madam Pomfrey will check you over. You of all people should understand the importance of avoiding making assumptions."

Yes, he of all people. He squashed the flare of anger, and decided not to mention the voices he thought he'd heard before passing out. It hadn't been Voldemort - he knew what that felt like well enough by now - but everyone would be bound to assume so, and then he'd never get out of the hospital wing. He'd been temporarily telepathic; he could have been picking up anything. The swarm of Muscomens, Thestrals in the Forbidden Forest, the giant squid - even squirrels! It would be daft to make an issue of something he'd heard on a telepathic frequency when he had no idea what you could usually hear on it.

That might be so, but he still got prodded and poked by Madam Pomfrey, and ordered to stay in the infirmary overnight for observation. Ron and Hermione came to see him and make sure he was all right, as did Hagrid.

"Sorry about that, Harry," he said, shuffling his oversized feet.

"That's all right, Hagrid." He smiled to show he meant it. "You did warn me."

"Still. I should've know yeh'd be worse affected than most."

Harry forced the now rigid smile to stay in place, knowing Hagrid meant no harm. Nobody meant any harm, but that didn't mean their fussing over him was any less stifling. "I'm fine, really."

"The Muscomens went kinda wild when yeh passed out - I reckon they felt guilty or summat. Took a good while ter calm 'em down, after."

Harry wondered if they'd heard the voices, too. Perhaps they'd picked them up through him, considering him a temporary member of the swarm or something.

"Well, I'll be leavin' yeh to it," said Hagrid after a moment, giving Harry a careful pat on the head. Madam Pomfrey had been surreptitiously glaring at him - it wasn't that Hagrid was unwelcome, of course, but he had a way of filling all available space when people were trying to work. "You should come an' see the Muscomens when yeh feel better - they'll prob'ly be right glad ter see that yer all right."

"I will," he promised, and lay back in his bed.

He was actually quite tired, although he was sure it had more to do with the weight of the revelations suddenly thrust on him than any kind of ill effects from his brief foray into telepathy. So many mysteries... Why the magical barrier outside? What was the Curse of Durand? Who or what had attacked that Slytherin girl down in the dungeons? And what had Dumbledore meant when he'd said that Harry was 'doubly connected'?

He drifted into a restless, dreamless sleep.

Harry was woken later in the afternoon by somebody coming into the hospital wing. He recognised her as the girl who'd been attacked - Emma something? Aufstand, that was it. He wouldn't have known her if Hermione hadn't pointed her out to him when she first appeared at lunch after her convalescence. She was a shy little thing who seemed to spend all her time hiding behind a long fringe of wavy blonde-ish hair. Not like a Slytherin at all, really. If he hadn't known better, he would have placed her in a much lower year than Ginny's.

"Ah, Emmaline." Madam Pomfrey bustled about, either not realising or unconcerned that Harry could overhear the conversation. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine, Madam Pomfrey," Aufstand mumbled to the floor.

"Are you sure, dear?" the kindly matron probed carefully. "Professor Snape says you haven't been doing very well in your classes since you came back, and he's concerned that his potion didn't work quite as well as he'd hoped."

"I'm just tired," she excused herself, while Harry attempted to digest that. Snape was Head of house Slytherin, of course, but somehow it was hard to imagine him keeping a concerned eye on his charges or doing anything about poor marks except bawling the offender out for letting the house down.

"Hmm." Madam Pomfrey didn't sound like she believed that for a moment. "How about your memory?"

"I still don't remember anything after heading towards my Muggle Studies class that morning," she said meekly.

"Well, I can't find any evidence of a Memory Charm, and Professor Flitwick agrees with me. You may get your memory back in little pieces, or suddenly all together. As soon as you do remember anything, even if you don't think it's important, you should-"

"Go and see Professor Snape," she recited, as if this was a piece of advice she'd been given several times before. "Yes, I will."

"Good. Now, if you're sure you're feeling better-"

"I am."

"All right, then you run along back to class before you're late."

Harry sat up as the Slytherin girl left the room. "May I go back to class now, Madam Pomfrey?"

"You stay right where you are, Mr. Potter," the matron told him sternly. "I recommended bed-rest, and bed-rest you will get."

He lay back down, defeated.

The days passed. As Hallowe'en approached, he and the other two had still not found any reference to the Curse of Durand.

"The trouble is, it could be anything!" Hermione groaned. "I mean, is it an actual curse, or does it mean curse as in bane, or does it mean-?"

"Some bloke called Durand who swore a lot?" Ron suggested.

"But then it would be the curses of Durand," Harry put in.

"Well, maybe he only swore once, but he said something really bad. Like that time at Christmas when Fred dropped that fake Bludger he was working on right on his foot. You should have seen mum hit the roof! Believe me, five hundred years from now, Weasleys will still be talking about the Curse of Fred."

"We don't even know for sure that Durand was a person," Hermione continued, apparently deciding Ron's tangent was best completely ignored. "Is it a first name or a last name? And was he cursed, or was he the one doing the cursing?"

"All right, Hermione, we get the picture." Harry raised his hands in surrender. "It's a tough job! But I don't know what else we can do."

"I reckon we should take a couple of days off," Ron advised. "Let's just forget all about this until after Hallowe'en. We'll never get anywhere if we read so much our brains switch off and we don't notice the answer when we find it."

Harry thought that was the most sensible suggestion anybody had come up with in two weeks of researching.

The Hallowe'en Feast was a rather nervous affair compared to previous years. Everybody was jumpy - the lack of owl post made it impossible to keep up with news from home, although Dumbledore had confirmed that he had his ways of getting the most important messages through. So all anybody knew about Voldemort's movements was that he hadn't attacked the family of anybody who attended the school - yet.

And today was, of course, a date of some significance to him. Harry had to fight to swallow his mouthful of Cauldron Cake, suddenly dry and tasteless in his mouth. He'd never really thought much of Hallowe'en being the anniversary of his parents' deaths before, but this year it seemed he could think of little else.

It was too easy, when you thought of parents, to picture people like Arthur and Molly Weasley, or Mr. and Mrs. Granger. Parents the right age for him as he was now. But of course, that was an illusion - he'd been just a baby, and they'd been young. Very young. Dead at only a handful of years older than he was now.

And what of their friends and schoolmates? Gone or ruined, most of them, the legacy of a war the same as the one his own generation were shortly to face up to. His parents, had they lived, would have still been in the primes of their lives even as Muggles, let alone when you considered the extended lifespans of wizarding folk. But they were dead, and so was Sirius, and Remus was aged before his time; Wormtail was a spineless traitor and a twitching wreck of a man after his existence as a rat; Snape was so warped and twisted and angry he had no trace of youth left in him at all... and how many other wizards of their age did he even know?

It gave him a start to consider that Snape was probably closer in age to his students than to any of his fellow teachers. Perhaps that was why the Defence Against the Dark Arts position had been so hard to fill even in the days before anyone knew how dangerous it could be. Who was left of the generation that should have been rising up to fill the ranks? Those too inept or too scared to have fought in the war... and those who had, and had been left forever scarred by it.

"Cheer up, Harry," Ron advised, nudging a plate of Pumpkin Pasties towards him. "No obsessing over the research, remember?"

Hermione gave them both a worried look, so Harry smiled weakly, not wanting to explain that it was not the Curse of Durand occupying his mind tonight. He picked at a pastry, having even less appetite than he could muster most days. If it hadn't been for the fact that everybody was watching him so bloody closely to make sure he didn't crack, he would probably be back to being as skinny as he had during his childhood with the Dursleys.

He kept his fears and concerns on the inside, these days. Everybody else knew things were grim, they didn't need him rambling on about death and destruction all the time. Even if he hardly seemed to think of anything else. There was no part of his life to retreat to that hadn't been scarred by the terrible losses of the last few years. Every time he managed to snatch a brief moment of happiness he felt guilty for it afterwards, angry at himself for forgetting the grief that he hugged close to himself because it was all he had left of a godfather.

His grim musings were abruptly interrupted as the doors to the Great Hall were kicked open. It was Snape. Harry had noticed his absence, but thought little of it - it was hardly out of character for the Potions master to avoid social gatherings.

He was carrying what seemed a bundle of dark cloth; it wasn't until Harry caught a flash of Slytherin green and flesh too pallid to even be the Potions master's own that he realised what it was. A young boy, surely no more than twelve, stiff and unmoving in the teacher's arms.

Dead? No, surely not, for Snape would not have run so fast or brought him to the Great Hall. But perhaps greivously injured...

"Madam Pomfrey!" Snape's call was an imperious bark of command, not the more panicked gasp you'd expect from anyone who showed more human emotion. The matron was out of her seat and moving to join him immediately, clearly startled but already back in her professional capacity. Occasions like this when practically everybody was in the Great Hall were the only chance she got to let her hair down a little, but even then she was never fully off duty.

Several Slytherin students had risen to run over to their house master and fallen comrade; Snape gestured most of them back, but did snare one seventh-year girl and speak a few words close to her ear. She nodded soberly and ran over to the head table to pass his message on to Dumbledore.

The whole student population was on its feet now, and shocked whispers were rippling through the room. Padma Patil made it over from the Ravenclaw table to join her twin sister. "It's Neil Kirkpatrick!" she said breathlessly.

"Kirkpatrick?" Harry and Ron both looked to Hermione, who always knew these things.

"He's a second-year. Slytherin, again."

The 'again' reminded Harry of Emma Aufstand, and he looked for her in the crowd, but couldn't spot her amongst all the other bodies.

"He looks practically dead," Ron observed, his own face similarly pale. He might not be overly fond of Slytherins, but that certainly didn't extend to any pleasure at seeing one of them at death's door. Especially such a little kid... It was funny how young twelve started to look from the vantage point of sixteen.

"What's wrong with him?" asked Seamus Finnegan anxiously. No one could give him an answer. Madam Pomfrey had taken a quick look at the boy in Snape's arms and exchanged a few words with him, and now they were both leaving. Headed for the hospital wing, no doubt, and leaving a trail of unanswered questions behind them.

"Quiet - quiet, please." Dumbledore's voice was not raised or amplified, but it cut through the hubbub filling the Hall as cleanly as a knife. "Please return to your seats. Mr. Kirkpatrick's life is not in danger, thanks to the quick actions and quicker thinking of Professor Snape. Everybody, please sit down."

Gradually everyone did so, the agitated Slytherins last to obey. Harry couldn't help noticing that Dumbledore hadn't actually explained what had happened to Kirkpatrick, only that he would survive it.

"I must remind you once again," the Headmaster said gravely, "that this is a dangerous time, and we must all be conscious of our own safety and that of those around us. Hogwarts is as secure as we can make it, but nonetheless, I ask you all to be careful, and look out for your fellows - regardless of house rivalries or other internal divisions. Obey the school rules, and do not wander deserted parts of the grounds or the castle unnecessarily; the best way for us to ensure we can look out for you is for us to be confident we know where you are at all times."

If this speech was supposed to be comforting, it was doing more to raise the tension than defuse it. Dumbledore, clearly recognising this, broke into a familiar twinkle-eyed smile; Harry coldly wondered if it was always as calculated an expression as it was now. "I am aware all this sounds needlessly grim - and no doubt it is. We do not expect there to be any danger, but it behoves us to be overly cautious in these troubled times, and pay attention to incidents like tonight's lest one of them turn out to be more than the unhappy accident it seems."

Harry noticed that he didn't actually come out and say that tonight's events had been an accident. Had Dumbledore always spoken so carefully, chosen his words so artfully? Had he simply been oblivious to it before, wallowing as he was in a trust that was not as well placed as he believed it to be?

The Headmaster smiled. "We must be cautious... but not to the point of paranoia. I realise that the lack of news from outside the school has many of you on edge; this, again, is nothing more than a safety precaution, and one that we hope will need only be temporary. Rest assured that whatever happens, the owl post will be restored before the start of the Christmas holidays, and you will be able to resume contact with your families in time for the festive season."

That welcome news helped restore the mood a little, although the feast was even more subdued than before. Harry was just as relieved as his classmates, even if he had no relatives he cared to correspond with - he would at least be able to check on Remus and the extended Weasley family, and keep up with at least the publicly known side of Voldemort's activities from the Daily Prophet.

However, watching the faces at the head table, which looked nowhere near as cheered as the student population at Dumbledore's announcement, Harry couldn't help but feel a chill. Whatever the Headmaster claimed, it was clear that the current safety precautions were hardly the result of unnecessary caution.

There were far more ominous things at work here than a simple desire to keep Hogwarts well protected.