The Disclaimer. Of course. Well, this is it: I don't own. You don't sue. Simple, no? All right then. Stop hassling me.
Chapter Four: A Little Bit of Magic Goes a Long Way
"Oh, fuck."
Harry stumbles backwards, spine slapping the wall and aching the whip marks that still haven't all healed over since the last time Lucius was too wrapped up in a torture session. He searches the shadowed planes of the face that he has only ever seen in his photo album, and he thinks, God no. It's a testament how shocked he is, that he uses the word God. He hasn't for such a long time, despising the word ever since Aunt Petunia dragged him to the Church for the first eleven years of his life.
He might not be as smart as Hermione, but he knows things. He learns fast and remembers things if said things interest him. The Polyjuice potion, that had interested him. And he knew that samples couldn't be taken from someone already dead, which was why the real Mad Eye Moody had just been caged, so that new ingredients could be extracted at will. He knows that it's not possible for a Polyjuice potion of his father to pop up, anywhere, because his father is most definitely dead and rotting in the ground. So... this has to be a glamour, or an illusion, another way of Moldywart mentally destroying him.
It just figures, some part of Harry thinks bitterly, I finally have a day off, and I get this. The rest of him is angry. The rest of him has to yell.
"What gives you the RIGHT?! Haven't I been put through enough without this, how CAN you?! What next, my mother's corpse is dug up and paraded around and spat on and raped before me? My friends being killed while I scream in the background? Oh, wait, we've ALREADY DONE THAT. What more can you DO to me, what more? You've already taken so much, you and your DAMNED Death Eaters. God, Merlin... no. Forget this. I won't play your games anymore, I won't, I'm getting the hell out of the place, right NOW." Harry is aware distantly of some dampness falling to his hands, of something sharp digging into his palm's flesh and drawing blood. He feels an odd kind of release with each syllable that drops out of his mouth like an angry spear, and a tenseness coiling up in him as well.
The... the IMPOSTER just looks at him with shocked, glazed eyes, and says, "Can you help me? Please? My friend... I think he's hurt really badly. Are there any medi-witches or medi-wizards here? Please, I need to know, I need to make him get better."
Harry just stares at him, sickened disgust playing out across his face. "You can't play with me! I won't fall for any of that, I WON'T, you can't make me believe that you're not one of THEM."
The imposter just steps closer to him, disheveled and slightly bloody, arms outstretched beseechingly. "Please, where ARE we? I - What happened to me?"
Harry thinks, 'Why won't he just give up? I won't believe him. I won't, Voldemort has already taken everything else I've got, he can't have my belief too. I won't give that to him.' He prepares to fight against the Death Eater thrown in his cell with him, feeling the feral anger bunching up in him.
But some instincts get too deeply ingrained to overcome so easily, and Harry has been conditioned the last few weeks to fear any one larger than him, anyone who can conceivably cast a spell. He flinches away, arms curling protectively around his abdomen, and he snarls. "Don't come any closer to me."
The imposter falls back, a shocked look on his face. "I - I'm not going to HURT you. I'm not."
Harry can almost feel the sadness that radiates off of this Death Eater, and he thinks, 'Voldemort is really training them before he sends them to me.' He looks over to the lump that is the other man. He thinks, 'That guy's barely been breathing since I've seen him. He could actually be hurt, a prop for this whole scheme. If I didn't help him, I would be worse than any of the Death Eater's here. But, if I do help him, and he dies the same way Susan and Rick did... No. I won't think about that, I won't.'
Instead Harry stares intently at the man that resembles so closely his father. He scrambles, keeping his back to the wall, around the stooped over man, and slowly begins to make his way to the barely breathing one. When the imposter tries to come close to him again, he stands very still. "I could maybe help him," Harry nods towards the unconscious man. "But you'd have to stay away. If you come near, your..." he chokes on the next word, "friend won't be able to get all my concentration."
The imposter nods reluctantly and backs away, huddling into a far off corner so quickly that Harry can almost believe that the Death Eater actually cares about the other man. Almost, but not quite.
Harry darts down to the other man's side, brushing back tangled, silky black hair from a bruised forehead. Blood runs in thick streams from a gash on it, and Harry winces at the brutally broken nose. He quickly waves his hands over top the man's body, searching his magic out in probing, gentle tendrils to find any spot that is broken or sprain, hurt. The man's arm is definitely broken, possibly in two places. His skull has a hairline fracture that has to be dealt with, and one rib is cracked, the rest severely bruised. Harry won't have enough endurance to heal all of this.
He closes his eyes and drags in a heavy breath. The head wounds are the most dangerous, as well as the cracked rib. It's got potential to break all the way and possibly pierce a lung. He'll deal with those first, and if he has anything left by the time it's done... he'll see what else he can do.
Harry tugs at the magic that he can feel inside of him. It's curled up in a ball in the pit of his stomach, and waits eagerly to be called up. It amazes Harry how much magic he can feel inside of him, pouring through his veins. He brings only a little up to the tips of his fingers, struggling to keep control of it. It's easier when he's healing himself, when he doesn't have to consciously control the magic lest he burn himself or the other person out. Magic is a hard thing to control without a focus, so Harry doesn't even try. His old focus was his wand, but he doesn't know where it is now. It could be that his family has broken and burned it, but he hopes not. His new focus is his hands. He pushes and controls magic from them, a complicated way of control that uses up all his concentration, but they're all he has.
Harry touches the tips of his fingers to the man's fracture first. It's right above his eye and a bruise is blossoming along it as he watches, disappearing just as fast as his fingers trace it. He sighs, feeling his energy drain away from fighting to control the magic so rigidly. He steadies his trembling fingers and moves them along the gashes, sealing up skin and smoothing away the bruises that threaten to pop up just below the surface. Harry's fingertips dance along to the man's ribs, tugging the cracked one back into place without ever touching it. He makes the bone seamless beneath the skin and is just about ready to drop dead. The energy drain is tremendous in doing this. He hasn't ever healed anyone other than himself and hadn't realized how hard it could be, how much when it had been his own body he just let the magic flow through and take care of whatever wound he had, with minimal direction.
"What're you doing? Is he okay?"
The imposter's anxious voice isn't helping Harry's exhaustion, but Harry can't be bothered to look up from the man he's healing to pay any attention to the other man. He instead calls up more magic, thinking that he could at least try to mend the man's broken arm, but he calls too much up, too much and it explodes in his veins like an internal bomb going off, and he feels like he's on fire from the inside, only it's cold fire, and the magic's bursting out of him.
He faints.
XXXXXXXX
"Shift his head over a bit, that angle looks uncomfortable for his neck."
"Merlin, look at his hair! What's made it so...."
"Stiff? Take a really close look, Prongs. I think it's blood."
"Fu-"
"Language! The kid can't be more than ten, you can't swear in front of him!"
"Oh, c'mon Padfoot! He's knocked out cold."
"You still can't swear in front of him. But I agree. What kind of monsters would do this to the kid?"
"The same monsters that made me turn against you. I'm really, really sorry about that, by the way."
"I know. I heard you the first few million times. Do you think it's Death Eaters, then, that have us?"
"Do you think it's not?"
"Good point there. Twist his head a bit so that his neck isn't turned that way. It gives me the creeps seeing that. And maybe you should rearrange his legs a bit, they'll get stiff if he doesn't wake up soon."
"Since you seem to know how, exactly, the kid's supposed to be set up, he can sleep up against you."
"Hey, do you think I'd object after he healed me up? Hell no. But he seems attached to you, what with the whole slobbering all over your robes..."
"Hey! You're right, he IS drooling over me, the brat."
"I feel weird calling him kid and brat all the time. Why didn't you ask him what his name is?"
"Well, gee Padfoot, it could have been because he was TERRIFIED of me."
"While I agree that you do look particularly horrible today, that's not enough to scare a kid, let alone one that's had to live with Death Eaters for Merlin knows how long."
"Yes, well, he was scared of me and I don't know why. When he finally wakes up, we can ask him. All right?"
"James... How do we know that he's even going to wake up?"
Harry blinks and thinks, 'No way is that Sirius' voice.' He turns a bit restlessly, and feels exhaustion pull him into sleep, which is a step up from unconsciousness.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Harry opens his eyes and sees pale blue ones staring down at him.
"So. You're up."
It's the man that he had been healing. From this angle all Harry can tell is that the man has no visible injuries anywhere. Instinctively he tries to send out probes of magic to check the injuries the man used to have, and winces when he feels the magic burn against the inside of his skin.
He hears a warm chuckle from above him and feels the rumble of a chest shaking. "It's called burn-out, when you're body over-loads on magic and can't control the flow well enough to prevent it from hurting. You can still cast spells, but it hurts like hell. It doesn't usually happen when a wizard has a wand, unless the spells he's been casting are particularly hard. But, since you've been working wandless for only Merlin knows how long, it's expected that you burn out over simple magic."
"Um. Okay," Harry says, unsteadily. He's very thirsty, but there are no drinks anywhere to be found. He coughs hoarsely, the dryness in his throat hurting.
"I know you probably want something to drink, but me and James couldn't find anything. You'll just have to wait until we can figure a way to get out of this place. By the way, my name is Sirius. Sirius Black."
Harry sits up so fast he almost pukes from the disorientation. Steadily gentle hands pull him back down-wards by the shoulders, and the voice he heard as his Godfather's through his dreams says, "Easy, kid, you gotta take it easy. You've been out for a couple of hours. It usually takes a few days for people to get over magic burn-out, but you seem like a fast healer. You'll be all right in no time, but you're not there all ready, so just take it easy in the meantime. You think you can handle it?"
Harry nods, uncertain. He doesn't know what to do or say or think. This is all very odd, because the man he'd healed before was most definitely not thirty-six. He was more like nineteen, not that much older than Harry himself. It was impossible that this Sirius Black be the Sirius Black that was his Godfather, yet they had the same voice and the same gentle pressure when their hands touched him.
"Is it safe for me to come out now?"
Harry stiffens instantly and backs right into the supposed Sirius Black's arms. It's that Death Eater. "Be careful," he hisses to the other man. "That's a Death Eater. I think he's the one that hurt you so badly."
He feels another shaking rumble and hears another chuckle. "That's not a Death Eater, that's just James. Though at times he seems as ugly and unseemly as a Death Eater, he isn't actually one."
Harry shakes. "What do you mean? He can't be James Potter, not him!"
"Hey," 'James' blinks, "How did you know my last name?"
Harry shrinks back into the warm body behind him, closing his eyes and bending his head so he doesn't have to look at the twisted mockery Voldemort has made of the memory of his father. "I guess it was all a set-up, even your friend, Death Eater," Harry says. He's not aware of the lifeless voice he has just now, the syllables slurred despairingly as the drip out of his mouth. "I guess you're here to drive me all the way insane. Well, fine, insanity sounds like a better place than here and since I can't get out, I guess it's my only other alternative."
'Sirius Black' tugs Harry closer in and hugs him from behind in what is meant to be a comforting gesture. "Hey kid, we're neither of us going to hurt you, okay? Believe that, if nothing else. Okay? Me and Prongs don't hurt kids."
Harry closes his eyes. "You sound like Sirius, anyway. A lot. But if you really wanted to mess with my mind, you would look a lot like him too. I mean, I guess you could pass for him when he was around your age, but he looks way different now. Skinnier, for one, but I don't think Death Eaters really like to starve for the sole sake of their mission."
"Kid," 'Sirius Black' says, exasperated, "What can we do to convince you that we're not going to kill you or try to make you nuts (here 'James' interjected by saying, "What makes you think he isn't already?")? Honestly, we don't want to hurt you." He hugs Harry tighter to emphasize his point.
Harry sighs. "You can't say anything to make me fall for your tricks, Death Eater. Not a thing." He leans back even more, deciding that even if this is a particularly mind-bending Death Eater, at least he's a comfortable Death Eater. He feels so tired, he wants to sleep, but even more he feels hungry. He wishes that when the Death Eaters had come in they had at least brought in food with them. Then his eyes snap open. "What did you call your friend?"
'Sirius Black' sounds puzzled and 'James Potter' takes a wary step backwards. "James," 'Sirius Black' says, quizzically.
"No, before that," Harry says, and whirls himself out of 'Sirius Black's' arms. "You called him something. It started with a P." Harry desperately searches 'Sirius Black's' face and sees the scar that twitches along the man's cheekbone, exactly the same as his Godfather's. He knows that glamours can be incredibly detailed, but only when great detail is paid attention to the original person of whom the glamour is based off of. He feels hope bubble up in him.
"Prongs," Sirius says, and then stumbles backwards as he receives an armful of over-enthusiastic teenage boy.
XXXXXXX
"Hand me that piece of wire and I'll be done in two seconds," Harry is kneeling at the cell's lock, tongue stuck slightly out of his mouth and fingers busily twisting a bent piece of wire in the lock. Sirius stands slightly behind him, bemused, and James stands way in the back of the cell. James still doesn't know quite what to do around the odd boy that impulsively hugs Sirius after accusing him, and continues to ignore James.
Sirius hands Harry the piece of wire, and Harry inserts it into the lock, jimmying it for a second, and all three inhabitants of the cell hear a click.
"Now we can get out of here."
Sirius starts to walk out of the cell, but can't make it past the threshold. Harry groans. "Not again!"
XXXXXXX
James shifts uncomfortably. He feels incredibly excluded as he watches the boy Harry and his supposed best friend laughing together at the other end of the cell. He doesn't know if he's welcome to come over, and doesn't want to risk upsetting the boy to find out. Harry seems like an unnaturally paranoid child, but James supposes that's normal when someone spends too much time among the Death Eaters - which brings to mind a big question of his.
How did Harry come to be in the Death Eaters' presence?
James shifts again, wincing as his stomach growls. He hasn't eaten anything since breakfast and feels kind of hungry now. Well, really hungry. He looks around the cell that he came out of the Imperio in, curious, and winces. It's not much more than a hole in the wall, kind of disgusting, really filthy. He wonders how long Harry's been living here, and winces again.
He looks over in Harry and Sirius' direction again, and manages to lock gazes with Harry. Harry's eyes widen and he blinks. James blinks as well, from recognition more than anything else. He could swear that he's seen eyes like Harry's before, that exist same shade. He shakes the feeling off, and looks back down at his hands. He strains his ears to hear what Sirius and Harry are talking about now.
"How're you feeling now?" Sirius touches a large, calloused hand to Harry's elbow. James resists the urge to deck his best friend, and doesn't know why he feels it in the first place.
"A bit better," Harry answers, blinking up at Sirius. James swears he has heard a voice so much like Harry's before, somewhere. "I think I'll be able to break the binding spell on you guys soon."
"Yeah, about that. How is it that you can cast such complicated spells without a wand? I mean, I know that certain wizards that have practiced over and over can do things like I've seen you do, but you're still so young."
Harry shrugs, his thin shoulders rising and falling heavily. "It was either figure out how to heal myself or die. Actually, I've only recently learned how to do it... ever since I got here, I mean. When I lived with my family, I never knew how to cast wandless magic, though I suppose a child I let it loose uncontrolled. Accidental magic, you know."
Sirius grins. "Yup. My family's Muggle, so they didn't know what to make of it when I started making things burn or float. Scared them witless, I did." The two of them share a secret, tentative sort of smile, and James feels a surge of jealousy.
He doesn't know why he feels like Harry belongs to him and doesn't understand why he really, really wants to be where Sirius is sitting right now, but he does.
"Harry, what're you doing here anyway? I mean," Sirius falters uncertainly, "I mean, why do the Death Eaters want YOU?"
Harry looks down. "I'm not sure why I'm here. They don't tell me anything... Well, Morpheus talks a lot and we have a lot of strange discussions about really odd things. And Sev - he's okay. When he's not pouring some new poison down my throat, I mean. But I get the feeling that the only person who knows why I'm here is Voldemort."
James blinks. It's so strange to hear that name coming out of a child's mouth, when so many grown men and women are afraid to utter it. He wonders who told Harry to speak out despite fear. He and Sirius both learned to name Voldemort underneath Dumbledore's tutelage, and it had taken a lot of subtle probing before they'd gotten that far.
"Well," Sirius says. "Do you know why WE'RE here? Or how we even got here?"
Harry shakes his head. "I've got a suspicion or three, but I'm not sure. When we get to Dumbledore, then we'll ask him. He'll know. Or maybe we could ask Sev, he should know as well."
"Wait," James says, because it has to be said. "Isn't Sev a Death Eater?"
Harry very carefully doesn't look in James' direction as he shakes his head, eyes intent on the floor. "Not quite. It's... complicated. But Sev is all right. And he'll know the best escape routes out of here for you guys to get through." He stands and stretches a bit, and James can feel a slight tingling that means that magic's happening, and he still gets such a big kick out of it. He's only been able to feel magic for the last few months, brought to a new level in spell-casting by his Auror training and subsequent cases. "I think I'm okay to break the binding spells on you guys."
"Are you sure?" Sirius looks carefully at Harry, judging the boy's stance and the clarity of his eyes. Of both of them, Sirius is the one who's experience magical burnout the most often, and the one who has to recuperate for days just to get back to normal. It seems inconceivable to both of them that Harry can recover in just a few hours.
Harry bites his lip as he stares at the space around Sirius. "Yeah, I'm sure. I've felt a little like this before, like I'm on the verge of a burnout. But I've still been able to work magic with it, so I should be able to do this little thing."
"From what you said about it, it's not a simple thing," Sirius says. "Why don't you just show us how to cast the spell so we can try on our own? We've both had some training in wandless magic."
Absently, Harry shakes his head. "No, that doesn't work quite the way you're thinking of. And I don't think I could teach you the spell since I don't know it. I guess I could try to teach you how I do break the spell, but I don't know how long that'll take and we do have to be out of here soon. So just let me do this so we can all get out of here before the rat bastard comes back to take me."
James idly wonders who the 'rat bastard' is, but stays silent. The one time he has spoken up, Harry didn't look at him, and he feels kind of like he's terrorized the kid.
Harry is swiping at the around surrounding Sirius, his fingertips glowing with magic as they make swift motions. Harry does this repeatedly for a few minutes, then sighs back, exhausted. "There, you're free to go." He looks over at James and clears his throat semi-nervously. "Do you mind coming over here? My knees feel a bit weak."
James obligingly steps closer to the boy and the concerned Sirius hovering at Harry's side. He stops in front of Harry and waits, eyes downcast.
He feels the tingling of magic arcing across his arms and legs, torso and head. He looks up and sees Harry's face lit up with the glow of magic and sees long fingers, their tips filled with magic. Harry starts to breathe harder, then takes in a very long breath and exhales all at once.
"Okay, we're all good to go. So let's go."
Harry stumbles his way out of the cell, and both Sirius and James hesitate to help the overly independent boy. They instead walk behind him, following Harry down the dim hallways that are lit solely by torches. As they walk along, James is hit with disturbing thoughts: What if Harry is a spy left here to get all the information he can about the Light side's defenses? What if Harry's leading them both to their deaths? And, if Harry can leave his cell so easily, why hasn't he already escaped?
He whispers them to Sirius as they walk along behind Harry, but Sirius only glares at him. "When he healed me, he used himself to do it Prongs. I could feel that, even half-dead; I'd know if he were a mini Death Eater."
James quiets and lets Sirius walk ahead with increasingly long strides till he's walking side by side with Harry. "Well, I didn't want to think that way, but one of us had to consider all the possibilities," he mutters to himself.
He has to almost run to keep the two in front of him within eyesight as they continue to walk fast-paced. It's amazing how Harry can walk so quickly, given that he does so with a limp. James wonders what the story behind that is, and then decides that he doesn't want to know. He hears the muted voices of Harry and Sirius ahead of him, but can't quite make out the words.
They turn down a corridor, and then stop at a door. Harry looks at Sirius, then back at James, and sort-of smiles. "Well, it's now or nothing, I suppose." He lifts a bony arm up to knock on the door, but it opens without him ever touching it.
A familiar face stares down at Harry and James has to choke down a gasp. Sev is Severus Snape, his long time rival.
"What," Snape snaps, "have I told you about wandering around while I'm not there?! It's not safe as long as this castle is filled with brain numb maggots who think that you're only here to entertain them! Get in here before anyo..." Snape's voice trails off as he notices the two other men with Harry. He blinks, examines each face carefully. Blinks again.
Harry takes the initiative and walks past him, into the dungeon-type room. Sirius and James follow him, and leave Snape standing, open-mouthed, at the door. James has to think about what Snape looks like now, haggard and tired and so much older than the man he saw last month, in passing glance. A month can't change a man that much, he thinks, and he's right.
Harry has settled down on a stool that's set up near a wall, and Sirius takes the chair next to him. James is left standing with nowhere to sit, so he leans against a wall instead. Snape finally snaps out of whatever put him in such an odd mood and closes the door. He looks at Sirius and James again, then at Harry.
"What's the meaning of this?"
Harry grins. It's the first real one James has seen so far, and the way it changes the kid's face shocks him. "I was hoping you could tell me, Sev."
The only person that James can remember ever calling Snape 'Sev' is Lily, and she only said it occasionally, when she was being friend-Lily to him, not Gryffindor-Head-Girl-Lily-who-really-does-have-to-be-a-bitch-as-it's-a-requirement. He barely tolerated it from her, and seems to take it from Harry without an eye-blink. James wonders what kind of relationship the two have.
Snape closes his eyes. "Only you, Harry, could bring Potter and Black into this entire mess."
"So it is them, then?" James and Sirius both start at the desperate hope naked in Harry's voice. Snape opens his eyes and looks at Harry, smiling fondly and shaking his head. The smile alone throws James off his stride.
"Yes, it is. The minute I recognized who they were I cast a recognition spell to see if they were really Death Eaters in disguise, but it's really them. Somehow, it's them." Snape snorts in disgust. "Only they would find a way to travel decades through time."
"Time-travel." Harry nods, disregarding the shocked looks on both James and Sirius' faces. "I thought so. I wasn't sure if they were actually Death Eaters or not when I first met them, but then Sirius said 'Prongs', so I knew it had to be them."
Snape is suddenly still, then snaps out angrily, pacing the carpet to the ground, "Harry, you're an idiot. The rat could have informed them of the old nicknames; they could have killed you while your back was turned. Or worse."
Harry's face pales as well, but he sticks his chin up against Snape's tirade. "Well, they're not Death Eaters, you just said so yourself. So what do we do about them?"
Snape finds a spot far away from the still-shocked James and slumps to the ground. "I don't know what we CAN do. It's inconceivable that this should happen. Really, it is. We don't know how they got here, so we can't exactly send them back. We don't know who knows that they're here, and we don't know anything about why they're here. This is the problem with time-traveling, there are so many places where it can all go wrong."
Harry leans back against the wall. "We can get them out right?"
Snape shakes his head. "They tormented me when we were in Hogwarts together. They tried to KILL me. Why, pray tell, should I HELP them?"
"Sev," Harry says earnestly and leans forward. "You'll help them."
Snape sighs.
"You'll help them, Sev. You'll whine and complain, but you will help them. So let's just bypass the whining and complaining part and go straight to the helping, hmm?"
Snape sighs again, and pushes himself up. "All right. I'll help them." He takes a closer look at James and Sirius. "But maybe first we should make sure they're still alive. They haven't moved for the last five minutes. I don't think Black has even blinked."
XXXXXXX
"So. What you're saying is that the broken time-turner reacted to the curses being thrown at us and pushed us forward through space and time, landing us right outside the castle that currently houses Voldemort and his Death Eaters. That's crazy enough to actually be the truth."
Snape glares at Sirius, but can't seem to work up the energy to actually insult him. "Yes, if you want the simplistic version of it, that's what it all boils down to."
James leans forward, glaring at Snape. "I don't believe that. If it's true that Voldemort has been alive all this time, fifteen or sixteen years to hear you tell it, he would have taken over completely already, or we'd have killed him by now. You two are lying."
Snape snorts, takes a deep breath as if to sharply retort, but Harry beats him to it.
"Actually, Voldemort has been dead for a while. I killed him that first time. Then, just a few months ago, I brought him back to life. So, really, this is all my fault. And I'm more sorry for it than you'll ever know."
A/N: All right, I know that this is a shorter chapter than most of the others. I'll make the next few chapters longer to compensate, I promise! But it was rushed because I wanted to finish it now since I promised certain people it would be done this week, and I will have absolutely no access to a computer for the next few days.
Thanks to all those who e-mailed and told me that they were eagerly awaiting the next chapter, you prodded me to actually write. Unfortunately, not in this series... but you still got me to write. I won't say sorry, because I have been a busy little worker bee on some of my other projects, but I do regret that I made everyone wait for an update. I know how incredibly frustrating that can be.
The next chapter will be up much sooner than this one was, I promise you all. Thanks again for your e-mails and reviews (I reply to e-mails, and will reply to reviews at the end of this series).
And this will be rewritten sooner or later, just wanted to give you guys something to read. I didn't check the grammar or anything, so it's all pretty rough... Sorry for that.
Chapter Four: A Little Bit of Magic Goes a Long Way
"Oh, fuck."
Harry stumbles backwards, spine slapping the wall and aching the whip marks that still haven't all healed over since the last time Lucius was too wrapped up in a torture session. He searches the shadowed planes of the face that he has only ever seen in his photo album, and he thinks, God no. It's a testament how shocked he is, that he uses the word God. He hasn't for such a long time, despising the word ever since Aunt Petunia dragged him to the Church for the first eleven years of his life.
He might not be as smart as Hermione, but he knows things. He learns fast and remembers things if said things interest him. The Polyjuice potion, that had interested him. And he knew that samples couldn't be taken from someone already dead, which was why the real Mad Eye Moody had just been caged, so that new ingredients could be extracted at will. He knows that it's not possible for a Polyjuice potion of his father to pop up, anywhere, because his father is most definitely dead and rotting in the ground. So... this has to be a glamour, or an illusion, another way of Moldywart mentally destroying him.
It just figures, some part of Harry thinks bitterly, I finally have a day off, and I get this. The rest of him is angry. The rest of him has to yell.
"What gives you the RIGHT?! Haven't I been put through enough without this, how CAN you?! What next, my mother's corpse is dug up and paraded around and spat on and raped before me? My friends being killed while I scream in the background? Oh, wait, we've ALREADY DONE THAT. What more can you DO to me, what more? You've already taken so much, you and your DAMNED Death Eaters. God, Merlin... no. Forget this. I won't play your games anymore, I won't, I'm getting the hell out of the place, right NOW." Harry is aware distantly of some dampness falling to his hands, of something sharp digging into his palm's flesh and drawing blood. He feels an odd kind of release with each syllable that drops out of his mouth like an angry spear, and a tenseness coiling up in him as well.
The... the IMPOSTER just looks at him with shocked, glazed eyes, and says, "Can you help me? Please? My friend... I think he's hurt really badly. Are there any medi-witches or medi-wizards here? Please, I need to know, I need to make him get better."
Harry just stares at him, sickened disgust playing out across his face. "You can't play with me! I won't fall for any of that, I WON'T, you can't make me believe that you're not one of THEM."
The imposter just steps closer to him, disheveled and slightly bloody, arms outstretched beseechingly. "Please, where ARE we? I - What happened to me?"
Harry thinks, 'Why won't he just give up? I won't believe him. I won't, Voldemort has already taken everything else I've got, he can't have my belief too. I won't give that to him.' He prepares to fight against the Death Eater thrown in his cell with him, feeling the feral anger bunching up in him.
But some instincts get too deeply ingrained to overcome so easily, and Harry has been conditioned the last few weeks to fear any one larger than him, anyone who can conceivably cast a spell. He flinches away, arms curling protectively around his abdomen, and he snarls. "Don't come any closer to me."
The imposter falls back, a shocked look on his face. "I - I'm not going to HURT you. I'm not."
Harry can almost feel the sadness that radiates off of this Death Eater, and he thinks, 'Voldemort is really training them before he sends them to me.' He looks over to the lump that is the other man. He thinks, 'That guy's barely been breathing since I've seen him. He could actually be hurt, a prop for this whole scheme. If I didn't help him, I would be worse than any of the Death Eater's here. But, if I do help him, and he dies the same way Susan and Rick did... No. I won't think about that, I won't.'
Instead Harry stares intently at the man that resembles so closely his father. He scrambles, keeping his back to the wall, around the stooped over man, and slowly begins to make his way to the barely breathing one. When the imposter tries to come close to him again, he stands very still. "I could maybe help him," Harry nods towards the unconscious man. "But you'd have to stay away. If you come near, your..." he chokes on the next word, "friend won't be able to get all my concentration."
The imposter nods reluctantly and backs away, huddling into a far off corner so quickly that Harry can almost believe that the Death Eater actually cares about the other man. Almost, but not quite.
Harry darts down to the other man's side, brushing back tangled, silky black hair from a bruised forehead. Blood runs in thick streams from a gash on it, and Harry winces at the brutally broken nose. He quickly waves his hands over top the man's body, searching his magic out in probing, gentle tendrils to find any spot that is broken or sprain, hurt. The man's arm is definitely broken, possibly in two places. His skull has a hairline fracture that has to be dealt with, and one rib is cracked, the rest severely bruised. Harry won't have enough endurance to heal all of this.
He closes his eyes and drags in a heavy breath. The head wounds are the most dangerous, as well as the cracked rib. It's got potential to break all the way and possibly pierce a lung. He'll deal with those first, and if he has anything left by the time it's done... he'll see what else he can do.
Harry tugs at the magic that he can feel inside of him. It's curled up in a ball in the pit of his stomach, and waits eagerly to be called up. It amazes Harry how much magic he can feel inside of him, pouring through his veins. He brings only a little up to the tips of his fingers, struggling to keep control of it. It's easier when he's healing himself, when he doesn't have to consciously control the magic lest he burn himself or the other person out. Magic is a hard thing to control without a focus, so Harry doesn't even try. His old focus was his wand, but he doesn't know where it is now. It could be that his family has broken and burned it, but he hopes not. His new focus is his hands. He pushes and controls magic from them, a complicated way of control that uses up all his concentration, but they're all he has.
Harry touches the tips of his fingers to the man's fracture first. It's right above his eye and a bruise is blossoming along it as he watches, disappearing just as fast as his fingers trace it. He sighs, feeling his energy drain away from fighting to control the magic so rigidly. He steadies his trembling fingers and moves them along the gashes, sealing up skin and smoothing away the bruises that threaten to pop up just below the surface. Harry's fingertips dance along to the man's ribs, tugging the cracked one back into place without ever touching it. He makes the bone seamless beneath the skin and is just about ready to drop dead. The energy drain is tremendous in doing this. He hasn't ever healed anyone other than himself and hadn't realized how hard it could be, how much when it had been his own body he just let the magic flow through and take care of whatever wound he had, with minimal direction.
"What're you doing? Is he okay?"
The imposter's anxious voice isn't helping Harry's exhaustion, but Harry can't be bothered to look up from the man he's healing to pay any attention to the other man. He instead calls up more magic, thinking that he could at least try to mend the man's broken arm, but he calls too much up, too much and it explodes in his veins like an internal bomb going off, and he feels like he's on fire from the inside, only it's cold fire, and the magic's bursting out of him.
He faints.
XXXXXXXX
"Shift his head over a bit, that angle looks uncomfortable for his neck."
"Merlin, look at his hair! What's made it so...."
"Stiff? Take a really close look, Prongs. I think it's blood."
"Fu-"
"Language! The kid can't be more than ten, you can't swear in front of him!"
"Oh, c'mon Padfoot! He's knocked out cold."
"You still can't swear in front of him. But I agree. What kind of monsters would do this to the kid?"
"The same monsters that made me turn against you. I'm really, really sorry about that, by the way."
"I know. I heard you the first few million times. Do you think it's Death Eaters, then, that have us?"
"Do you think it's not?"
"Good point there. Twist his head a bit so that his neck isn't turned that way. It gives me the creeps seeing that. And maybe you should rearrange his legs a bit, they'll get stiff if he doesn't wake up soon."
"Since you seem to know how, exactly, the kid's supposed to be set up, he can sleep up against you."
"Hey, do you think I'd object after he healed me up? Hell no. But he seems attached to you, what with the whole slobbering all over your robes..."
"Hey! You're right, he IS drooling over me, the brat."
"I feel weird calling him kid and brat all the time. Why didn't you ask him what his name is?"
"Well, gee Padfoot, it could have been because he was TERRIFIED of me."
"While I agree that you do look particularly horrible today, that's not enough to scare a kid, let alone one that's had to live with Death Eaters for Merlin knows how long."
"Yes, well, he was scared of me and I don't know why. When he finally wakes up, we can ask him. All right?"
"James... How do we know that he's even going to wake up?"
Harry blinks and thinks, 'No way is that Sirius' voice.' He turns a bit restlessly, and feels exhaustion pull him into sleep, which is a step up from unconsciousness.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Harry opens his eyes and sees pale blue ones staring down at him.
"So. You're up."
It's the man that he had been healing. From this angle all Harry can tell is that the man has no visible injuries anywhere. Instinctively he tries to send out probes of magic to check the injuries the man used to have, and winces when he feels the magic burn against the inside of his skin.
He hears a warm chuckle from above him and feels the rumble of a chest shaking. "It's called burn-out, when you're body over-loads on magic and can't control the flow well enough to prevent it from hurting. You can still cast spells, but it hurts like hell. It doesn't usually happen when a wizard has a wand, unless the spells he's been casting are particularly hard. But, since you've been working wandless for only Merlin knows how long, it's expected that you burn out over simple magic."
"Um. Okay," Harry says, unsteadily. He's very thirsty, but there are no drinks anywhere to be found. He coughs hoarsely, the dryness in his throat hurting.
"I know you probably want something to drink, but me and James couldn't find anything. You'll just have to wait until we can figure a way to get out of this place. By the way, my name is Sirius. Sirius Black."
Harry sits up so fast he almost pukes from the disorientation. Steadily gentle hands pull him back down-wards by the shoulders, and the voice he heard as his Godfather's through his dreams says, "Easy, kid, you gotta take it easy. You've been out for a couple of hours. It usually takes a few days for people to get over magic burn-out, but you seem like a fast healer. You'll be all right in no time, but you're not there all ready, so just take it easy in the meantime. You think you can handle it?"
Harry nods, uncertain. He doesn't know what to do or say or think. This is all very odd, because the man he'd healed before was most definitely not thirty-six. He was more like nineteen, not that much older than Harry himself. It was impossible that this Sirius Black be the Sirius Black that was his Godfather, yet they had the same voice and the same gentle pressure when their hands touched him.
"Is it safe for me to come out now?"
Harry stiffens instantly and backs right into the supposed Sirius Black's arms. It's that Death Eater. "Be careful," he hisses to the other man. "That's a Death Eater. I think he's the one that hurt you so badly."
He feels another shaking rumble and hears another chuckle. "That's not a Death Eater, that's just James. Though at times he seems as ugly and unseemly as a Death Eater, he isn't actually one."
Harry shakes. "What do you mean? He can't be James Potter, not him!"
"Hey," 'James' blinks, "How did you know my last name?"
Harry shrinks back into the warm body behind him, closing his eyes and bending his head so he doesn't have to look at the twisted mockery Voldemort has made of the memory of his father. "I guess it was all a set-up, even your friend, Death Eater," Harry says. He's not aware of the lifeless voice he has just now, the syllables slurred despairingly as the drip out of his mouth. "I guess you're here to drive me all the way insane. Well, fine, insanity sounds like a better place than here and since I can't get out, I guess it's my only other alternative."
'Sirius Black' tugs Harry closer in and hugs him from behind in what is meant to be a comforting gesture. "Hey kid, we're neither of us going to hurt you, okay? Believe that, if nothing else. Okay? Me and Prongs don't hurt kids."
Harry closes his eyes. "You sound like Sirius, anyway. A lot. But if you really wanted to mess with my mind, you would look a lot like him too. I mean, I guess you could pass for him when he was around your age, but he looks way different now. Skinnier, for one, but I don't think Death Eaters really like to starve for the sole sake of their mission."
"Kid," 'Sirius Black' says, exasperated, "What can we do to convince you that we're not going to kill you or try to make you nuts (here 'James' interjected by saying, "What makes you think he isn't already?")? Honestly, we don't want to hurt you." He hugs Harry tighter to emphasize his point.
Harry sighs. "You can't say anything to make me fall for your tricks, Death Eater. Not a thing." He leans back even more, deciding that even if this is a particularly mind-bending Death Eater, at least he's a comfortable Death Eater. He feels so tired, he wants to sleep, but even more he feels hungry. He wishes that when the Death Eaters had come in they had at least brought in food with them. Then his eyes snap open. "What did you call your friend?"
'Sirius Black' sounds puzzled and 'James Potter' takes a wary step backwards. "James," 'Sirius Black' says, quizzically.
"No, before that," Harry says, and whirls himself out of 'Sirius Black's' arms. "You called him something. It started with a P." Harry desperately searches 'Sirius Black's' face and sees the scar that twitches along the man's cheekbone, exactly the same as his Godfather's. He knows that glamours can be incredibly detailed, but only when great detail is paid attention to the original person of whom the glamour is based off of. He feels hope bubble up in him.
"Prongs," Sirius says, and then stumbles backwards as he receives an armful of over-enthusiastic teenage boy.
XXXXXXX
"Hand me that piece of wire and I'll be done in two seconds," Harry is kneeling at the cell's lock, tongue stuck slightly out of his mouth and fingers busily twisting a bent piece of wire in the lock. Sirius stands slightly behind him, bemused, and James stands way in the back of the cell. James still doesn't know quite what to do around the odd boy that impulsively hugs Sirius after accusing him, and continues to ignore James.
Sirius hands Harry the piece of wire, and Harry inserts it into the lock, jimmying it for a second, and all three inhabitants of the cell hear a click.
"Now we can get out of here."
Sirius starts to walk out of the cell, but can't make it past the threshold. Harry groans. "Not again!"
XXXXXXX
James shifts uncomfortably. He feels incredibly excluded as he watches the boy Harry and his supposed best friend laughing together at the other end of the cell. He doesn't know if he's welcome to come over, and doesn't want to risk upsetting the boy to find out. Harry seems like an unnaturally paranoid child, but James supposes that's normal when someone spends too much time among the Death Eaters - which brings to mind a big question of his.
How did Harry come to be in the Death Eaters' presence?
James shifts again, wincing as his stomach growls. He hasn't eaten anything since breakfast and feels kind of hungry now. Well, really hungry. He looks around the cell that he came out of the Imperio in, curious, and winces. It's not much more than a hole in the wall, kind of disgusting, really filthy. He wonders how long Harry's been living here, and winces again.
He looks over in Harry and Sirius' direction again, and manages to lock gazes with Harry. Harry's eyes widen and he blinks. James blinks as well, from recognition more than anything else. He could swear that he's seen eyes like Harry's before, that exist same shade. He shakes the feeling off, and looks back down at his hands. He strains his ears to hear what Sirius and Harry are talking about now.
"How're you feeling now?" Sirius touches a large, calloused hand to Harry's elbow. James resists the urge to deck his best friend, and doesn't know why he feels it in the first place.
"A bit better," Harry answers, blinking up at Sirius. James swears he has heard a voice so much like Harry's before, somewhere. "I think I'll be able to break the binding spell on you guys soon."
"Yeah, about that. How is it that you can cast such complicated spells without a wand? I mean, I know that certain wizards that have practiced over and over can do things like I've seen you do, but you're still so young."
Harry shrugs, his thin shoulders rising and falling heavily. "It was either figure out how to heal myself or die. Actually, I've only recently learned how to do it... ever since I got here, I mean. When I lived with my family, I never knew how to cast wandless magic, though I suppose a child I let it loose uncontrolled. Accidental magic, you know."
Sirius grins. "Yup. My family's Muggle, so they didn't know what to make of it when I started making things burn or float. Scared them witless, I did." The two of them share a secret, tentative sort of smile, and James feels a surge of jealousy.
He doesn't know why he feels like Harry belongs to him and doesn't understand why he really, really wants to be where Sirius is sitting right now, but he does.
"Harry, what're you doing here anyway? I mean," Sirius falters uncertainly, "I mean, why do the Death Eaters want YOU?"
Harry looks down. "I'm not sure why I'm here. They don't tell me anything... Well, Morpheus talks a lot and we have a lot of strange discussions about really odd things. And Sev - he's okay. When he's not pouring some new poison down my throat, I mean. But I get the feeling that the only person who knows why I'm here is Voldemort."
James blinks. It's so strange to hear that name coming out of a child's mouth, when so many grown men and women are afraid to utter it. He wonders who told Harry to speak out despite fear. He and Sirius both learned to name Voldemort underneath Dumbledore's tutelage, and it had taken a lot of subtle probing before they'd gotten that far.
"Well," Sirius says. "Do you know why WE'RE here? Or how we even got here?"
Harry shakes his head. "I've got a suspicion or three, but I'm not sure. When we get to Dumbledore, then we'll ask him. He'll know. Or maybe we could ask Sev, he should know as well."
"Wait," James says, because it has to be said. "Isn't Sev a Death Eater?"
Harry very carefully doesn't look in James' direction as he shakes his head, eyes intent on the floor. "Not quite. It's... complicated. But Sev is all right. And he'll know the best escape routes out of here for you guys to get through." He stands and stretches a bit, and James can feel a slight tingling that means that magic's happening, and he still gets such a big kick out of it. He's only been able to feel magic for the last few months, brought to a new level in spell-casting by his Auror training and subsequent cases. "I think I'm okay to break the binding spells on you guys."
"Are you sure?" Sirius looks carefully at Harry, judging the boy's stance and the clarity of his eyes. Of both of them, Sirius is the one who's experience magical burnout the most often, and the one who has to recuperate for days just to get back to normal. It seems inconceivable to both of them that Harry can recover in just a few hours.
Harry bites his lip as he stares at the space around Sirius. "Yeah, I'm sure. I've felt a little like this before, like I'm on the verge of a burnout. But I've still been able to work magic with it, so I should be able to do this little thing."
"From what you said about it, it's not a simple thing," Sirius says. "Why don't you just show us how to cast the spell so we can try on our own? We've both had some training in wandless magic."
Absently, Harry shakes his head. "No, that doesn't work quite the way you're thinking of. And I don't think I could teach you the spell since I don't know it. I guess I could try to teach you how I do break the spell, but I don't know how long that'll take and we do have to be out of here soon. So just let me do this so we can all get out of here before the rat bastard comes back to take me."
James idly wonders who the 'rat bastard' is, but stays silent. The one time he has spoken up, Harry didn't look at him, and he feels kind of like he's terrorized the kid.
Harry is swiping at the around surrounding Sirius, his fingertips glowing with magic as they make swift motions. Harry does this repeatedly for a few minutes, then sighs back, exhausted. "There, you're free to go." He looks over at James and clears his throat semi-nervously. "Do you mind coming over here? My knees feel a bit weak."
James obligingly steps closer to the boy and the concerned Sirius hovering at Harry's side. He stops in front of Harry and waits, eyes downcast.
He feels the tingling of magic arcing across his arms and legs, torso and head. He looks up and sees Harry's face lit up with the glow of magic and sees long fingers, their tips filled with magic. Harry starts to breathe harder, then takes in a very long breath and exhales all at once.
"Okay, we're all good to go. So let's go."
Harry stumbles his way out of the cell, and both Sirius and James hesitate to help the overly independent boy. They instead walk behind him, following Harry down the dim hallways that are lit solely by torches. As they walk along, James is hit with disturbing thoughts: What if Harry is a spy left here to get all the information he can about the Light side's defenses? What if Harry's leading them both to their deaths? And, if Harry can leave his cell so easily, why hasn't he already escaped?
He whispers them to Sirius as they walk along behind Harry, but Sirius only glares at him. "When he healed me, he used himself to do it Prongs. I could feel that, even half-dead; I'd know if he were a mini Death Eater."
James quiets and lets Sirius walk ahead with increasingly long strides till he's walking side by side with Harry. "Well, I didn't want to think that way, but one of us had to consider all the possibilities," he mutters to himself.
He has to almost run to keep the two in front of him within eyesight as they continue to walk fast-paced. It's amazing how Harry can walk so quickly, given that he does so with a limp. James wonders what the story behind that is, and then decides that he doesn't want to know. He hears the muted voices of Harry and Sirius ahead of him, but can't quite make out the words.
They turn down a corridor, and then stop at a door. Harry looks at Sirius, then back at James, and sort-of smiles. "Well, it's now or nothing, I suppose." He lifts a bony arm up to knock on the door, but it opens without him ever touching it.
A familiar face stares down at Harry and James has to choke down a gasp. Sev is Severus Snape, his long time rival.
"What," Snape snaps, "have I told you about wandering around while I'm not there?! It's not safe as long as this castle is filled with brain numb maggots who think that you're only here to entertain them! Get in here before anyo..." Snape's voice trails off as he notices the two other men with Harry. He blinks, examines each face carefully. Blinks again.
Harry takes the initiative and walks past him, into the dungeon-type room. Sirius and James follow him, and leave Snape standing, open-mouthed, at the door. James has to think about what Snape looks like now, haggard and tired and so much older than the man he saw last month, in passing glance. A month can't change a man that much, he thinks, and he's right.
Harry has settled down on a stool that's set up near a wall, and Sirius takes the chair next to him. James is left standing with nowhere to sit, so he leans against a wall instead. Snape finally snaps out of whatever put him in such an odd mood and closes the door. He looks at Sirius and James again, then at Harry.
"What's the meaning of this?"
Harry grins. It's the first real one James has seen so far, and the way it changes the kid's face shocks him. "I was hoping you could tell me, Sev."
The only person that James can remember ever calling Snape 'Sev' is Lily, and she only said it occasionally, when she was being friend-Lily to him, not Gryffindor-Head-Girl-Lily-who-really-does-have-to-be-a-bitch-as-it's-a-requirement. He barely tolerated it from her, and seems to take it from Harry without an eye-blink. James wonders what kind of relationship the two have.
Snape closes his eyes. "Only you, Harry, could bring Potter and Black into this entire mess."
"So it is them, then?" James and Sirius both start at the desperate hope naked in Harry's voice. Snape opens his eyes and looks at Harry, smiling fondly and shaking his head. The smile alone throws James off his stride.
"Yes, it is. The minute I recognized who they were I cast a recognition spell to see if they were really Death Eaters in disguise, but it's really them. Somehow, it's them." Snape snorts in disgust. "Only they would find a way to travel decades through time."
"Time-travel." Harry nods, disregarding the shocked looks on both James and Sirius' faces. "I thought so. I wasn't sure if they were actually Death Eaters or not when I first met them, but then Sirius said 'Prongs', so I knew it had to be them."
Snape is suddenly still, then snaps out angrily, pacing the carpet to the ground, "Harry, you're an idiot. The rat could have informed them of the old nicknames; they could have killed you while your back was turned. Or worse."
Harry's face pales as well, but he sticks his chin up against Snape's tirade. "Well, they're not Death Eaters, you just said so yourself. So what do we do about them?"
Snape finds a spot far away from the still-shocked James and slumps to the ground. "I don't know what we CAN do. It's inconceivable that this should happen. Really, it is. We don't know how they got here, so we can't exactly send them back. We don't know who knows that they're here, and we don't know anything about why they're here. This is the problem with time-traveling, there are so many places where it can all go wrong."
Harry leans back against the wall. "We can get them out right?"
Snape shakes his head. "They tormented me when we were in Hogwarts together. They tried to KILL me. Why, pray tell, should I HELP them?"
"Sev," Harry says earnestly and leans forward. "You'll help them."
Snape sighs.
"You'll help them, Sev. You'll whine and complain, but you will help them. So let's just bypass the whining and complaining part and go straight to the helping, hmm?"
Snape sighs again, and pushes himself up. "All right. I'll help them." He takes a closer look at James and Sirius. "But maybe first we should make sure they're still alive. They haven't moved for the last five minutes. I don't think Black has even blinked."
XXXXXXX
"So. What you're saying is that the broken time-turner reacted to the curses being thrown at us and pushed us forward through space and time, landing us right outside the castle that currently houses Voldemort and his Death Eaters. That's crazy enough to actually be the truth."
Snape glares at Sirius, but can't seem to work up the energy to actually insult him. "Yes, if you want the simplistic version of it, that's what it all boils down to."
James leans forward, glaring at Snape. "I don't believe that. If it's true that Voldemort has been alive all this time, fifteen or sixteen years to hear you tell it, he would have taken over completely already, or we'd have killed him by now. You two are lying."
Snape snorts, takes a deep breath as if to sharply retort, but Harry beats him to it.
"Actually, Voldemort has been dead for a while. I killed him that first time. Then, just a few months ago, I brought him back to life. So, really, this is all my fault. And I'm more sorry for it than you'll ever know."
A/N: All right, I know that this is a shorter chapter than most of the others. I'll make the next few chapters longer to compensate, I promise! But it was rushed because I wanted to finish it now since I promised certain people it would be done this week, and I will have absolutely no access to a computer for the next few days.
Thanks to all those who e-mailed and told me that they were eagerly awaiting the next chapter, you prodded me to actually write. Unfortunately, not in this series... but you still got me to write. I won't say sorry, because I have been a busy little worker bee on some of my other projects, but I do regret that I made everyone wait for an update. I know how incredibly frustrating that can be.
The next chapter will be up much sooner than this one was, I promise you all. Thanks again for your e-mails and reviews (I reply to e-mails, and will reply to reviews at the end of this series).
And this will be rewritten sooner or later, just wanted to give you guys something to read. I didn't check the grammar or anything, so it's all pretty rough... Sorry for that.
