- Chapter Six -
Twenty-One
'And then it started reciting, like at the sorting ceremony... It was all so weird, I don't understand...' Ron shook his head, his eyes bulging with puzzlement.
In the kitchen of the Dumbledore house, they sat around the Sorting Hat, placed in the middle of the table, and the glittering jeweled necklace. Ginny and Hermione, still in their cloaks and nightgowns, let them in with their morning coffee mugs in hand, after they had banged on the door for half an hour or so. Now, however, both of them blinked with sleepy eyes, but with interest at the long-seen school relic. Together, Harry and Ron had managed to remember the lines of the poem, which they had quickly put down on paper after the Hat had gone silent, and were now reading it to the two girls.
'It was also odd that the Hat seemed to wait until Malfoy and Dawlish had left before speaking.'
Hermione sighed thoughtfully.
'And it hasn't said a word since?'
'Not one bit,' Harry shook his head, but the moment he moved it, it felt so heavy that he was afraid it would fall on the table.
It had been a long night, Ron's office was more than uncomfortable for a few hours sleep, and they didn't want to wake up Mr and Mrs Weasley in the middle of the night, so they spent the time at Auror Headquarters half asleep and bored. They didn't have to think twice about taking the Sorting Hat to the evidence room, and Ron also spontaneously decided not to mention Ciaran's necklace until they had solved the mystery themselves. When Harry asked him whether he could get into trouble for it, Ron laughed outright and wasted no more words on the subject. Harry thought he might end up getting himself kicked out of the Ministry if he kept pushing his luck - but he didn't seem to care in the slightest, only about the Hat and its mysterious gift. The topaz necklace was the strangest part of the whole thing, Ron and Harry were in complete agreement.
'How did it get into the Hat?' Ron wondered over and over again during the night.
'The question is why it gave it to us,' Harry reckoned. 'There's no question how it got there: the Hat summoned it, just like with Gryffindor's sword - no matter where the sword is, it'll always find it... I think the Hat is trying to help. It always does when Hogwarts is in danger.'
Ron snorted in puzzlement.
'So far, it has only given us the sword, which is a traditional school relic. This, however...' he shook the topaz stone necklace in his hand, 'is a simple necklace, it has nothing to do with the school.'
'Maybe it does,' Harry guessed with a raised eyebrow. 'The Hat said it was a gift from Hufflepuff, and there are three more like it. But what I don't understand is how the Sorting Hat knows about the Nameless and the Fourth Tower...'
Ron immediately had the answer:
'McGonagall is in on everything. And the Sorting Hat is in the principal's office all day, so...'
Yes, that makes it obvious, Harry thought. But everything else was so confusing and intransparent that it must have been deliberate. Someone - perhaps the Hat itself - had presented them with a mystery to solve, and the answers were to be found in the lines of the poem. Harry has learned over the years that it is better to believe in the legends of Hogwarts, because most of them are based on truth. And he also knew very well that the founders have left behind objects of great magical power, which sometimes were given to someone as a "gift"... He remembered how he had received Gryffindor's sword at the right time, which had saved his life.
'Could it be the sword the Hat is aiming at?' he put his theory into words in the morning, when Ginny and Hermione hadn't said a word for minutes. 'Valiant Gryffindor's courage, is what you need,
His gift, the watchful eye will find quickly indeed... That pretty much sound like it, doesn't it?'
'Well, you can certainly find it quickly if you know where to look,' said Ron. 'It's in the headmaster's room, but only those who can prove their courage can use it.'
'That does sound like a reference to the founder's relic,' Ginny wondered, 'but the rest is more problematic. Directly with Hufflepuff's treasure, which is not a necklace, but the cup Hermione broke...'
'There must have been more than one,' the named girl speculated, 'from Gryffindor, also two have survived, and the descendants of Slytherin claimed the Resurrection Stone as their own when they married into the Peverells. The only thing left of Ravenclaw is the diadem, but we know where that is, don't we?'
Harry, Ron and Ginny looked at each other. Yes, they knew where the remains of the destroyed item were at the moment - and as he scanned the lines written on the parchment, Harry realised there were some pretty obvious clues:
A gift from Rowena Ravenclaw to the one she loves most... After the battle was over, Hermione gave the diadem, torn in two pieces by the fiendfyre, to Xenophilius Lovegood, Luna's father, who was obsessed with reconstructing the stolen relic of the famous witch who lived a thousand years ago.
He also knew where to look for Slytherin's gift - and once again, the Hat was right about it being among Muggles. It was, after all, where the emerald-encrusted locket was buried with Voldemort's corpse in the Muggle cemetery at Little Hangleton, less than two parcels from the Riddle family tomb. Except that the shattered locket did not have a single drop of magical power left in it..
But the Hat said that the gifts of the founders were objects of great power: "The four gifts of the four houses may appear humble, but before them, the mightiest power shall crumble!"
As he pondered this contradiction, dawn was slowly creeping into morning. The sun was only just beginning to rise outside, and its first rays were already touching the curtains of the kitchen window. Ginny got up and opened the window to let in the fresh air. A yellowish light flooded the kitchen, and Harry turned off the lantern hanging over the table, only to find Ron's eyes suddenly widen. The boy picked up the necklace and began to examine it with such squinting eyes that his face pulled into a strange grimace. Before Harry could ask what had gotten into him, Ron was humming in surprise.
'There's a sign... You can barely see it. Look, here!' he poked it with his long finger.
Harry, Ginny and Hermione leaned so close that their noses almost touched the shiny stone. It did indeed have a mark - it literally looked as if it had been carved into the inside of the stone, not scratched onto its surface. Harry thought it was a T-letter at first, but then he saw that the horizontal stems curved upwards, and the whole thing looked like a clothespin.
'It's a rune!' Hermione squeaked excitedly. 'And it is... Yes, it certainly is! It's the ear-rune, the Anglo-Saxon symbol for earth. I've learned it in Study of Ancient Runde.'
'Earth...' muttered Ginny. 'I wonder why it's there?'
Hermione grimaced, perplexed.
'I don't know. Runes are usually used to describe spells, especially on amulets and talismans... We should finally check what kind of magic this necklace has,' Hermione suggested, and already drew her wand. 'Specialis Revelio!'
Blue smoke billowed from the wand, and surrounded the little jewel, puffing and fumbling around the golden links, the smooth, firm surface of the masterly crafted topaz, and then, as it was, the smoke receded and slowly dissipated.
'Hm... That's strange,' Hermione frowned.
Like Ron, who blinked in puzzlement, Harry could not make anything out of the spell.
'It doesn't have any magical powers?' Ginny wondered, but she was perfectly aware of the results of the spell.
'Indeed it doesn't!' Hermione nodded. 'It doesn't even have a simple indestructible charm. It's completely and utterly muggle.'
Harry could not have hidden his disappointment even if he had tried. How could it not be able to do anything?! After all, the poem clearly stated that "it stands for your protection". He expected it to have some sort of neutralizing power to protect the wearer from any attack. True, if it had, he reminded himself, Mrs Diggory would not have died when Kingsley and the Auror Savage had mistakenly attacked them.
'The Hat never lies!' he shook his head in exasperation. 'Why would it do that now?'
'Did it ever occur to you that the Selwyn siblings might have intended it as a trap?' Ginny suggested, casting suspicious glances at the still headgear and its gift.
Ron's expression immediately darkened at the idea.
'You are right... Maybe this necklace is a tracker!'
Hermione, however, shook her head.
'The revelation charm would have shown that too,' she explained calmly.
'Isn't there some way to hide the fact that it's charmed?' Harry wondered. She shook her head again.
'Most definitely not. One can achieve it with very complicated spells so that you can't tell what charms or hexes have been cast on it, but you would still be able to detect that it has some hidden magical property. This necklace has absolutely none.'
All four of them stared down at the necklace. It didn't seem so interesting to Harry now, and the mystery of solving it was much less appealing. It seems that even magical hats are becoming senile after a thousand years...
Ginny gave a big yawn and rested her head sleepily on the table.
'Perhaps it has deteriorated over time', she speculated idly. 'Perhaps the the magic within went cold.' Hermione nodded.
'That is possible. But it's still strange,' she glanced at the necklace. 'The Founders' items were not known for losing their power after a thousand years. Look at the sword of Gryffindor!'
'Well, yes, that's still strong as hell,' Ron agreed, and he stifled a yawn. 'But what about the other two? The diadem and the locket? Broken, true, but...'
'They also had magical powers. I don't know if they have any left. Slytherin's locket worked as a talisman, protecting the wearer from curses... No, it didn't protect from Avada Kedavra, Harry, but that spell didn't even exist in Slytherin's time,' Hermione added, when their eyes met.
For a few more minutes, they looked at the Hat and the necklace in silence, although all four knew that they could wait until the end of days, even then the Hat wouldn't speak up to give a meaningful explanation.
Ginny was the first to tire of the silent stare, and she pushed her chair back with a loud noise, stood up, drained the rest of her coffee and slammed the cup down on the table. This woke the others from their reverie.
'All right, let's not waste any more time. This won't do us any good,' she said.
Hermione jumped up with the agility of a grasshopper and ran to the bathroom to get ready, but she called back from the doorway. 'Ron, shouldn't you take the Hat back before Dawlish notices?'
'I'm not going to work today...' he muttered in a barely audible voice, yet, Hermione stopped on the doorstep and with her back to them, she screeched back in a deafening voice:
'WHAT?! Say that again!' she ordered, and spun around. Ron grunted in response.
'He who is a hero by night, should be a hero by day,' Hermione mused. 'I advise you to show your face at headquarters, otherwise...'
'Otherwise, what?' Ron asked boldly.
Hermione sighed for a moment, then blurted out:
'Otherwise I'll tell your mother you're skipping work!'
That worked; Ron made a frightened face, then, seeing that she was deadly serious about the threat, he got up from the table, cursing under his breath, and started to get ready himself.
Harry was the only one who continued to prop his head, staring at the useless donation of the Hat, but he could feel Ginny's gaze on the back of his head.
'What about the necklace?' the girl spoke up.
She addressed her question to his brother, who was hopping on one foot pulling on his shoes, but he only answered with a shrug.
'It should be given back to Ciaran. After all, it's his...' Harry muttered, thinking that if the jewel should produce some unexpected phenomenon in the next few minutes, it might be worth keeping Ciaran waiting.
'The investigation is at a standstill,' Ron announced with a sigh as he struggled with his shoes. 'We have no leads on the Selwyns... But at least we have this stupid hat.'
With that, he grabbed the headdress and necklace and stormed out the door, while Harry continued to stare at the empty table top. Soon he felt Ginny's hand brush across his back.
The thirty-first of July arrived more slowly than he had expected, for the daily idleness made it seem as if the clocks were ticking slower and the calendar was frozen. It had already been arranged - or rather, Mrs Weasley had decided on her own - that Harry would be celebrated at the new Weasley house, which neither he, Ron, Ginny or Hermione had seen before, but were told only stories about by the Weasley parents.
Harry and Ginny spent pretty much every day alone together, while Ron and Hermione were at the Ministry, and their only daily task was to go shopping in the village and cook dinner. The shopping was done in a method they had practised during the Horcrux hunt, under the Cloak of Invisibility: they would take the necessary ingredients off the shelf in the shop and then slip the payment into the till.
Apart from shopping, however, they did not set foot outside the Dumbledore Tower, but just watched the beautiful, bright summer weather from inside, which gave the landscape and the red roofs of Godric's Hollow, visible from the hilltop, an almost unearthly beauty.
Their only visitors were Mr and Mrs Weasley (she always packed them a three-course lunch, despite their protests), occasionally one of Ron and Ginny's siblings would drop in (Percy was somehow never available), and once even Aberforth knocked on his own door on a Tuesday afternoon
true, he only came to take the several barrels of Elv-made wine he had stored in the cellar. Harry imagined how disappointed Ron would be when he got home.
Late in the morning of the twenty-ninth, when Harry finally woke up and climbed downstairs, wondering which part of him was not in pain, he found Hermione in the kitchen. She was unloading bottles and cans from a large bag onto the table, next to the large cauldron in which they had made the wolfsbane potion together last month.
'Harry! Did you sleep well? Hermione looked up with a smile as she saw the boy limping at the foot of the stairs.
'What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the DMCR?' Harry frowned, quickly checking the day in his head.
'I've taken the day off today,' she announced with such a naturalness, as if it were not the first time in her life that she had taken the opportunity to do so.
'Day off? You?'
Hermione nodded. 'Yes. So I have time to brew the new potion for you,' she pointed around at the several ingredients piled on the table.
Harry came closer and looked at the ingredients, discovering bizarre additions such as a bottle of fresh dragon's blood, a vial of snake's eye, bat wings dried in a wooden box, and the brains of a mountain troll looking like a stewed cauliflower. The latter was smaller than he had thought.
Do I have to drink this? - he thought, horrified, but he did not comment aloud, knowing that she had to pay a lot of hard work and even her blood to get the recipe.
'That's what you read in that Forbidden Knowledge thing, right?'
Hermione glanced up as she struggled to pry the stoppers out of the jars and light a fire under the cauldron.
'Ron told you?' she asked quietly.
Harry did not reply. He suddenly remembered something else Ron had said to him that evening, and so he turned his head away conspicuously quickly, lest Hermione catch a glimpse of a detail of that conversation in his head about Ron's grand plans - or see his blushing face as he imagined one of his best friends in a wedding dress.
Hermione, however, noticed nothing, as she was excitedly packing the bottles.
'This is the Psiché Peregrino, a very special potion! It was worth the price, I am sure of it!' she said obsessively.
Harry could tell from her tone that she was perhaps trying to convince herself, but he decided not to say anything again. Instead, he watched Hermione smoothing out a folded parchment on the table, on which the recipe for the potion was written in long, compact lines in small print.
Hermione noticed Harry peering over her shoulder.
'What is it?' she looked at him. 'You didn't think I was going to turn the pages of that hideous book, did you? I'm glad to be rid of it.'
'I'm not surprised...' Harry remarked, thinking of the book sewn into human skin.
Hermione mumbled in a barely audible voice, reading out the tasks to herself, checking each ingredient one by one. When she had finished the instructions, she picked up a bottle of purple juice, but then froze, as if unsure, and looked at another bottle, which contained a thick, smoking pulp.
'If you like, I'll check the Prince's book, see if he's got any tips for it...' offered Harry, seeing her uncertainty, but Hermione sighed.
'Don't be ridiculous, Harry! Advanced Potion-Making is a school textbook,' she pointed out. 'You won't find potions like this in it even if you look hard enough... It's the highest level of potion-making. As a matter of fact, for that reason, I'm not sure I'll succeed. I'm pretty out of practice since Nurmengard...'
Harry raised an eyebrow and moved to pour himself a morning coffee Ginny had cooked before she left for the shop.
'Remind me again before you make me taste it,' he said to Hermione, and took a sip from his cup with relish. She was pouring the bottle of dragon's blood into the boiling water in the cauldron; for some reason, Harry suspected that the potion wouldn't taste as enjoyable as Ginny's coffee.
'Don't worry,' Hermione replied a little belatedly, all her attention on the juice she was preparing. 'There are no seriously toxic additives. The worst that can happen is that you throw it up.'
Harry made a grimace.
'So... what does this potion do again?' he asked after a throat clearing.
'What it does is help you separate your consciousness from your body,' Hermione said, in an astonishingly natural voice.
Harry just blinked silently as she patiently stirred the darkening contents of the cauldron, checking the time on an hourglass.
'What?' Harry finally asked when he found his voice, trying to sound as natural as she did. He couldn't.
Hermione glanced up from the swirling liquid - which, after the addition of a vial of fidgeting tadpoles, had become a swamp-like swirling mass - and pushed a tangled strand of hair out of her face.
'It's quite difficult to explain...' she sighed. 'Okay. Do you remember how Voldemort was able to possess others, take over their bodies and control them?' She waited for Harry to nod, then continued. 'He did it with this. The method was copied from African shamans by travelling sorcerers two centuries ago. This potion allows access to the spirit world, the user becomes a spirit himself, a wandering soul for a time, without his body dying. Professor Slughorn once told me that Riddle had back then brewed this potion almost all the time in his school potions class, and he suspected that Riddle had consumed it regularly.'
Harry cut in here:
'Wait a minute, you said this was forbidden knowledge - so how did Riddle get it at Hogwarts?'
'One could still find things like that in the library back then,' Hermione said, 'probably a legacy from Phineas Nigellus' headmastership, or maybe the Nameless smuggled these books in before the Tower scandal... Of course, Dumbledore had already removed the books that dealt with it, probably along with the ones about Horcruxes.'
'That's for sure,' Harry agreed with her mentally, remembering the minor censorship the old headmaster had carried out at Hogwarts, which had so offended some traditionalist Pureblood families.
Hermione explained further.
'So Riddle consumed so much Psiché Peregrino that eventually his system became saturated with it, so that he could leave his body at will, enter the spirit world, and he could move around, go to places he couldn't have gone otherwise, and learn to possess people.'
'How?' frowned Harry. There were so many abilities Voldemort had that he still couldn't comprehend, and this was one of them.
'The wanderer can also use his magic - very weakly, of course, just as a ghost, the mundane imprint of a departed soul, can affect its surroundings. The stronger the wizard, the more, of course. The strongest - like Riddle - may be able to possess others in this way, but it is the most difficult magic that one can imagine. You can forget about curses, they are too serious for this incorporeal form, because most of our magic is found in our physical form,' Hermione finished with a smile.
'That sounds like a quote...' Harry remarked, glancing at the heavily smoking cauldron.
'The Standard Book of Spells, volume one, chapter one,' she said, and pushed him away from the potion she was preparing. 'Seriously, Harry, you have a catastrophic memory!'
Harry didn't think his memory was that catastrophic, but he knew that he and Ron spent a good part of their lessons bored scribbling, playing chess below the desk or resting their heads in a half asleep state, which Hermione was perfectly aware of, but he quickly changed the subject.
'So... how can this potion help me? Why is it good for me to wander around without a body, apart from being able to sneak into Quidditch matches?'
'Because then you won't feel the transformation,' Hermione said immediately. 'There will be no pain, no blackout, no going wild. You'll be yourself all the time, and you won't be locked in a basement room - or so I think.'
'You think so?'
Hermione looked up at him with a questioning look.
'Harry, this is a very foggy path of magic. I don't think this potion has ever been drunk by people with werewolf disease before. At least I couldn't find any record of it. It's also possible that your body won't tolerate the potion and you actually throw it up, just like you can't use Polyjuice Potion anymore.'
Of course, Polyjuice Potion! - Harry remembered. Lupin had once explained that neither Hagrid nor he could take his form, because the potion "could only be used for human transformation..."
Human transformation - so I would be no longer be human? - he thought bitterly to himself. Lupin didn't consider himself human, he had spent his whole life in the kind of unnecessary and foolish self-flagellation that would have made him leave his pregnant wife, just to escape himself... if Harry hadn't turned him back from that path.
'It's worth a try!' Hermione suddenly said with strong determination. 'Harry, if this works, you'll never suffer from the disease again!'
'But it won't cure me,' Harry said quietly.
It was a long time before Hermione answered:
'No. It won't,' she whispered, and then she went back to that determined, fierce voice: 'But as long as I live, I won't give up! And, just so you know, I'm not the only one working on this problem. I have submitted a motion to the Wizengamot to triple the spending on the cure for werewolf disease. Ron's father is backing it, so soon a team of experienced healers will be searching for a cure for the curse. Until now, few people have tried to cure this disease, because it was not worth it to them: the patients are usually poor wizards, they could not spend hundreds of galleons on a miracle cure. The last breakthrough was some thirty years ago, when Damocles Belby invented the wolfsbane potion... It's time for another miraculous discovery!'
She was trying to smile encouragingly, to lift his spirits, and Harry wanted Hermione to think she had succeeded. He smiled back at her, as genuinely as he could, but he could see that he wasn't fooling his friend - she was too good a Legilimens for that.
After Hermione had finished the potion, she told Harry that it would need to rest for a few more days, so the cauldron was brought down to the cellar. Hermione reckoned that this amount would last for up to eight or nine months, since Harry only had to drink it one night per month.
And the first time came two days later with the thirty-first. Harry woke up that morning not with the pleasant knowledge that his friends were going to celebrate him and that Mrs Weasley was probably waiting for him with a delicious cake in the rebuilt Burrow, but with the bitter thought that tonight it would happen again...
And this time he'll be completely transformed, even if he probably won't be experiencing it in his own body, but will be an outsider witnessing it - if Hermione's potion works at all, and it doesn't end up in the toilet. He had a bad feeling about the whole thing, almost to the point of getting thoughts of going down to the cellar and spilling the whole thing - but then he remembered that Hermione would be immensely disappointed.
Skipping breakfast, the four of them apparated together to where the burnt-out Weasley home once stood. The four good friends had arrived within the trees (Ron landed right in the middle of a prickly pine bush and cursed as he climbed out with Hermione's help), and as they pushed the last branches apart and stepped out into the familiar clearing surrounded by marshy reeds, they caught sight of the house.
'Wow!' marveled Ron, as next to him Ginny's jaw dropped.
Mr Weasley was right about one thing: this house did not resemble the Burrow in any way, shape or form. It was a mansion worthy of a Minister for Magic, and therefore not at all to the liking of the current Minister for Magic, one that even Lucius Malfoy would have hemmed enviously at, especially when he remembered that while his family had lost all influence, the Weasley family, as poor as a church mouse, rose from the ramshackle Burrow to the ministerial seat and the wealth that came with it.
It was a three-storey house, with beautiful white walls, a high roof and three chimneys reaching upwards. On either side of a glazed door overlooking the garden, neatly trimmed lime trees lined the walkway leading to a small pavilion in the middle of the yard. The house was decorated, with ribbons colouring the banister and purple balloons fluttering in the gentle breeze beside the pavilion.
'It's beautiful!' Hermione enthused, and she and Ron started walking towards the house.
'Come on,' Ginny took Harry by the hand and pulled him along.
Because Harry's feet were rooted to the ground at the sight of the building. He already knew this house inside and out, and he had a not-so-fond memory of it: it was the place where he had first seen Albus Severus, as he had smashed the windows of this house overlooking the garden as well as the living room beyond, and then shot a death curse at Draco Malfoy.
Still in a state of shock, he walked with Ginny towards the house, thinking that he could have figured this out earlier. He knew that this strange connection between him and Al only worked when they were in the same place - just at different times. He should have known that Mr Weasley was going to build a new house on the site of the demolished Burrow, and that this house would be the site of the particular event which the boy had insisted had done no harm, but it always gave Harry the creeps when he thought of it.
The glazed door opened and Mr Weasley stepped out with a rolled up banner in his hand, looking very annoyed. But when he saw the foursome, he smiled.
'You're finally here!' the wizard rejoiced, hugging his children running towards him, then Hermione and finally Harry. 'Half the crowd has arrived, they're in the house...'
'But Mr Weasley, I said no fuss!' Harry groaned, looking miserable.
'We only invited Hagrid and Andromeda for your birthday,' he said, belying the shapeless crowd in the living room behind him. When he noticed Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny looking over his shoulder with sceptical looks, he adjusted his bone-rimmed glasses and smiled while explaining. 'The others are here for the housewarming.'
'For the housewarming?' echoed Ginny and Ron.
Mr Weasley just nodded, and asked Hermione to help him unroll the banner on the grass in front of the house.
'It was your mother's idea... She came up with it at the last minute that a housewarming party was a must for a house this big, and since she's cooking for more people for Harry's birthday anyway, why not have it now...'
'Sure, why not?' muttered Harry to himself. He knew very well that this was just a transparent ploy by Mrs Weasley to give him a big birthday party and try to cheer him up. As if that would solve anything! He wasn't angry with the woman - how could he be, after all she had done so much for him; Harry was just thinking that sometimes it would be better if Mrs Weasley tried to please him a little less often...
On the banner flashed a large neon green inscription: WELCOME TO OUR HOME! Whether the message was addressed to the guests or to the Weasley family was anyone's guess, but Harry was sure it was another of Mrs Weasley's brilliant ideas.
Hermione used her wand to get the wide tarpaulin over the entrance, and attached it with a few sticking charms. The flickering text had now changed, the letters had rearranged, and a new inscription had appeared - this time in red: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HARRY!
Harry closed his eyes for a moment in horror.
'So how do you like the house, kids?' Mr Weasley looked up at the house behind him. His shrill, ringing voice made them unsure of how to answer the question, but the wizard's scowl finally gave them the answer.
'Don't tell your mother, but I've already found a buyer,' he leaned closer to them in a whisper. 'I hope you understand, but this place is so strange! I can't even sleep properly, I toss and turn every night...'
'And who would be the buyer?' Ron asked in a similarly whispery tone, even though they wouldn't have heard him shouting from the cackling and clinking of glasses inside.
A sudden uncertain shadow crossed Mr Weasley's face, as if he regretted what he had just said.
'To tell you the truth... I would have done better not to tell you either...' And with that he went to greet the two more apparating guests arriving for the housewarming.
Ron, Ginny and Hermione looked puzzled at Mr Weasley's remark, but Harry was beginning to suspect what Draco Malfoy was doing here many years later... He shook his head and, once again following his friends, went into the house, into the ring of the assembled Weasley, Prewett and Delacour kin.
As one might expect, almost everyone raised their glasses when Harry appeared in the doorway and they all wished him a happy birthday at the same time. Harry forced a smile on his face, but couldn't help the unpleasant feeling that his mouth was pulling into a rather lion-like grin - but no one seemed to notice it, except maybe Ginny or Hermione. Hagrid's mountainous figure stood out among the guests, and he was the first to give him a bone-crushing hug.
'Happy birthday, mate!' he greeted in a gravelly voice. 'If you only knew how Grawp and Prometheus miss you!'
Ron, Ginny and Hermione all hugged their old friend in turn. Hagrid didn't wait for Mrs Weasley to arrive with the cake, he immediately gave Harry his gift, which was rather bizarre and made Harry gape in bewilderment at first: a looped rope of unicorn fur was revealed from under the rough paper wrapping.
When Ron saw it, he laughed holding his stomach.
'What is this for, Hagrid? To hang himself?' he snorted, and the gamekeeper's face became serious.
'Don' be silly!' growled Hagrid darkly, and then, mysteriously, he leaned down to Harry and whispered in his ear. 'Yeh know, sometimes a werewolf would wander inter the woods. I use this ter tie up the poor creature for the night, so it doesn' hurt itself. It can' break it, so I thought...' Hagrid's mutterings had died away by the end, and he looked at Harry with a humming, sorrowful look in his eyes.
Harry tried again with a grin (which, he was sure by now, got creepy) and thanked Hagrid for the gift, but secretly vowed to get rid of it at the first opportunity.
Soon the cake was on the table: decorated with twenty-one candles, a chocolate frosting-covered delicacy – or it would have been if Harry hadn't felt sick from the first bite, which seemed as tasteless and burnt as if Mrs Weasley had left it in the oven an hour longer than it should have been. Harry knew that this was simply impossible, given her cooking skills, so he had to owe that to the side effects of the werewolf disease.
Ron was still laughing at the gallows noose joke until Hermione kicked him in the ankle, but by then Harry was suffering through the birthday toast with an awkward smile and a nod. There was Andromeda Tonks with Teddy Lupin, who was staggering on his feet; the sleepy-eyed Luna Lovegood kissed him on the cheeks and handed him a colourful, thick, knitted scarf as a present; Proudfoot, the old Auror, had come to Mr Weasley's housewarming, but he had a toast with Harry and Ron, and poured them both a strong drink from his flask, which Mrs Weasley did not look kindly on. Harry thanked the heavens that Aunt Muriel was forgotten to be invited.
'Harry, would you like a sandwich?' Bill asked, as he and Ron were sneaking out of Mrs Weasley's reach while drinking.
The eldest Weasley boy offered the only remaining piece on a silver platter, but Harry wanted anything but another charred piece of junk that would torment his digestion for days.
'No thanks, I just ate...' he pointed to the sliced cake, the memory of which made him feel sick.
'Take it, you won't regret it!' Bill encouraged, holding the tray up to his nose. 'Trust me, it's delicious.'
Harry smiled and shook his head insistently.
'Thanks, but I really don't...'
'Take it!'
Harry was so startled by the sudden commanding voice that he automatically took the sandwich from the tray and stared stiffly into Bill's eyes while he took a bite.
As he defiantly chewed his food, he was overwhelmed by the juicy, fresh, raw bacon grinding beneath his teeth. Bill turned away with a knowing smile on his face and took the empty tray back to the kitchen before Harry could thank him for the sandwich.
'Well, of course...' Harry thought as he looked after him, his scarred face peeking out from under his long hair. Bill knew from experience what he needed.
He was slowly munching on his sandwich, taking small bites, trying to get out of the crowd when someone else spoke to him:
'Uncle Harry!' little Teddy shrieked with delight, eliciting a merry laugh from all present, and ran to Harry, who picked him up with one hand.
'Missed me, Teddy?' he looked at him happily, but the smile seemed to have disappeared from the little boy's face.
Harry couldn't understand what had happened, but Teddy's face, just shining with joy, froze, his hair colour changed from black to grey, then red, then blonde-brown, then grey again... it couldn't settle, and Harry felt the boy shiver in his arms, mouth closed, unblinking. He made no sound, no cry, no tears in his eyes - it was pure fear frozen into an ice sculpture.
Harry, finally understanding what was happening, carefully put down his godson and took a step back. He himself felt something, too, though he wasn't quite sure what it was; perhaps a tingling in his skin, or a chill running down his spine, but he sensed something in Teddy that his father had been so afraid of - and Teddy sensed something in him.
The little child stood motionless between the feet of the talking adults; no one around them noticed anything had happened, everyone continued to giggle and laugh, but Teddy looked at Harry blankly, as if seeing his godfather for the first time.
Ron was talking to Hagrid, and Hermione and Ginny were in a deep conversation with McGonagall, apparently reciting the Sorting Hat's song in a hushed voice - no one was paying attention. Harry fled the house in a panic; he slammed the front door and didn't stop until he reached the pavilion.
It can't be that Teddy is one as well! The blood pounded in his ears. The transformation would have happened long ago, they would have known about it... But there might still be his father's legacy lurking inside him, the wolf-blood of Remus Lupin, which might only be revealed in the next generation. He remembered the freak child he'd known from his dreams, Eloise. Once, that strange bowl, the Fate Peeper, had already warned him that he knew too much about the future, just when he thought that the girl's father might be the adult Teddy Lupin...
Harry closed his eyes again in horror, but this time the fear that ran through him was real, and not caused by a colourful banner proclaiming his birthday.
Coming here was a very bad idea, he told himself. He still had the remnants of the sandwich in his left hand, but as he took a bite, he was more irritated by the delicious taste of raw bacon; it just reminded him that he was different now. The relatives chatting by the pavilion ignored him and continued to talk and drink, but Harry noticed that he was not the only one walking lonely around the new Weasley house. As soon as he saw the light brown-haired young boy strolling along the newly laid pavement, he looked up.
'Hello, Harry,' the boy greeted him, and came over to shake his hand.
Ciaran Diggory had grown a great deal in the past few months, Harry would've bet that even Ron wasn't that tall at fourteen. However, seeing him only made Harry feel more awkward, that it was the dead Cedric Diggory himself standing in front of him, they looked so much alike.
'Hi! You came too?' he asked, surprised.
'For your birthday,' the boy insisted. 'Who cares about a housewarming?'
He gave Harry a half-smile, then glanced sideways at the people talking inside.
'I can see that your uncle and aunt do very much,' Harry remarked.
Mr and Mrs Diggory were deep in conversation with Mr Weasley, but at least no one was shouting drunkenly, and Harry was pleased to see that Mr Diggory was holding only a cup of coffee, not a half-empty bottle of whisky.
'Well, yes, they came for that. But I haven't forgotten what you did for me,' he looked Harry in the eye.
'Do you mean the time I tricked you with Polyjuice Potion, or the time I dragged you home with the Imperius Curse?' Harry giggled.
Ciaran replied with a deadly serious face:
'That you kept your word. You got Shacklebolt!'
Harry wouldn't have put it quite like that. He felt he had pushed the minister into the arms of death rather than the face of justice. What had happened to him was not justice.
'Unfortunately, I didn't fully,' he said. 'He was not brought to court, he was not able to testify.'
The boy snorted, as if he thought his words were ridiculous.
'But he was punished, wasn't he?' the boy looked at him with glowing eyes. 'If you ask me, it's even more just that the Selwyns did it. He got what he really deserved.'
Yes, Harry suspected that this would be Ciaran's opinion. But one can't expect an orphaned son to forgive the murderer of his parents, for whatever reason, however accidental. It would have been too much to expect of anyone, and Harry knew of himself that Ciaran would have to take a lot more slaps in the face before he learned that justice could not be dispensed so hastily. But he did not want to convince Ciaran of that; he would find out for himself when he was judged by someone else. But there was something else he really wanted to talk to him about, and that something was more important than the deceased minister.
'Ciaran, the necklace...' began Harry, but the boy cut him off:
'Oh, yes, your friend gave it back to me, he told me where you found it,' he nodded with a bright face, feeling the topaz hanging under his clothes. 'I never would have thought that the Selwyns were the robbers... True, that Moebius was already bullying me in Nurmengard.'
'It was your mother's necklace, wasn't it?' Harry asked.
He has thought a lot about the song of the Hat since he heard it, and about the magic of the necklace and the treasures left behind by the other founders. Only the sword was still intact and undamaged, but even then: how could one defeat one of the most powerful dark sorcerers in the world with a single sword, even one as special as Godric Gryffindor's?
Ciaran frowned at the mere mention of it, but then nodded.
'Yes... The only thing that's left of her belongings,' he replied quietly.
'Do you know, by any chance... did it have any magical powers in the past?' Harry continued to inquire carefully. 'Like that of a talisman or an amulet...'
The boy, forgetting his previous gloom, looked at him with genuine wonder.
'Magical powers? It didn't have any...' shook his head, but then suddenly his brow furrowed and he continued thoughtfully, 'Although... my mother told me that long ago, before I was born, when my grandmother gave it to her - my paternal grandmother - it was still shiny and warm. But she said it got cold later... So maybe it did have some magical properties back then. But why do you ask?'
'I was just... I was curious,' Harry shrugged, trying to keep a straight face. 'Anyway, I'm going back, because Mrs Weasley must be looking for another slice of cake to stuff inside me!'
Ciaran laughed as he said goodbye, and Harry, deep in thought, wandered back into the house to join Ginny and George, and tried to pretend he could follow their discussion of Weasleys' Wildfire Whiz-bangs II.
So the necklace had magical powers after all! And the Hat wasn't senile, perhaps he just missed the small fact that his gift had become useless in the meantime. But if that is so - if the founders' items can lose their magic - when will Gryffindor's sword become as "cooled off" as them?
His musing was certainly good for one thing - it made him forget the unpleasant feeling that had been weighing on him from that creepy encounter with Teddy Lupin. It was only in the afternoon, away from the horde of friends and relatives, on the way to the Holyhead Harpies stadium, that he shared his thoughts with Ginny as they were on their way to her first scheduled team meeting. Ron and Hermione hadn't kept up with them, the Nurmengard investigation had made them agree to work weekends, so they apparated straight from the birthday party to the Ministry, while Harry and Ginny to the Holy Island Quidditch stadium, which was disguised, with noble simplicity, as a Muggle golf course.
Harry and Ginny had apparated in front of the club's gates and entered through a separate entrance, now walking across the green lawn towards the stands.
'I don't think these objects would lose their magic overnight,' she shook her head after Harry finished telling her his hypotheses. 'They last a thousand years and then poof, they just go cold? That's nonsense. If Ciaran wasn't lying, then something must have happened to that necklace to make it lose its power.'
Harry shook his head, but was a little disturbed by his magically enhanced blonde fringe, which Hermione had conjured before leaving, along with a large Austrian moustache and a few extra pounds, so that no one would recognise him.
'You saw that there was no damage, Ginny! It was perfectly intact and flawless,' he said, trying to ignore her efforts to hold back her laughter, perhaps because of the thick moustache that bounced up and down as Harry spoke.
'I didn't mean that they were destroyed,' Ginny said. 'Look at the Resurrection Stone! It was cut in two with the sword, but it still works. Something else must have sucked the magic out of it...'
There was a lot of truth in this, but Harry didn't have many ideas in his head as to how this could have happened. The only thing he was sure of was that he shouldn't let the mystery of the Sorting Hat drop so easily just yet.
'We could look at the diadem and the locket. Just in case,' he suggested quietly, as they arrived at the door to the stadium building, above which was a sign that read "ADMISSION FOR TEAM MEMBERS ONLY".
Ginny squinted at him, the afternoon sun shining in her eyes.
'We buried that...' she muttered, adjusting the huge sports bag on her shoulder.
'Well, we'll dig it out then,' Harry said. 'Old Voldemort won't mind anyway...'
Ginny laughed, and after they kissed goodbye, she ran into the dressing room, where, judging by the cheering, her teammates were waiting for her.
'Good luck!' Harry shouted after her, and walked up to the stands with his hands in his pockets.
There were only a few people around; a few house-elves were clearing the benches of chewing gum and soft drink puddles, and apart from Harry, a few witches and wizards were waiting for the training, presumably family members of players like him.
Family members... - Harry savoured the word as the thought crossed his mind. He'd been a member of the Weasley family for quite some time, having spent months with them every summer since he was twelve. But Ron's words had put a bug in his ear.
He had long hoped, and a year ago he had known with absolute certainty, that he and Ginny would sooner or later be a family, but Al had made him think of it as an event in the distant, misty future, and he had not felt the significance of it all. If he had, his heart would be pounding with excitement, as Ron's was...
What should he do? Just ask her to marry him? He'd asked Ginny once before if she'd like to move in with him, and she'd happily said yes, but that was before everything around them been ruined. In their current situation, it wouldn't be easy to start a family, he couldn't count on his two hands how many arguments against it he could come up with.
Ten minutes later, the glorious Holyhead Harpies marched out onto the pitch and the one or two spectators present began to whistle and clap loudly. Harry also stood up, gave a coo and slapped his palms together in a frenzy. Ginny - now in her green and yellow robes with the famous bird-claw sign on her back - spotted him and waved to him with a smile before team captain Gwenog Jones blew her whistle. After a few minutes of briefing, which could not be heard from the stands, the team members suddenly started clapping and hugging Ginny, the returnee, in turn. The girl blushed as she endured the hugs and pats on the back, and Harry watched her cheerfully from above. His mood could not be spoiled even by the fact that the approach of the full moon made him shiver as if he were being shaken by the full force of a person the size of Hagrid, and as he felt his forehead, he could feel how damp it was. On a sudden impulse, he pulled Luna's gift from his pocket and wrapped the colorful scarf around his neck.
At another whistle, the team members rose into the air, and Harry now had to look up. Ginny was flying on a brand new broom, a white-handled Icestorm, as were the other players, advertised in the sports pages as the successor to the Firebolt. As Harry watched Ginny flying her first laps, he thought how long it had been since he'd had his own Firebolt between his legs - although, on second thought, it might not be the best idea to jump on a broom in this condition, as his weak limbs would make him roll off.
His deep thoughts were interrupted by an unexpected event - someone sat down on the bench next to him. As he looked to the side, his breath caught for a moment as he recognised the wizard, the rattling bag of sunflower seeds in his hand. Michael Svetich didn't look at him, just watched the girls flying above, and calmly cracked two sunflower seeds with his teeth.
Harry sighed; he knew very well that the man was perfectly aware of his identity, as it was no coincidence that he had come to this very stadium at this very time and sat right next to him in the almost deserted stands.
'How did you know it was me?' he asked in a hoarse voice. It was pointless to keep up the charade.
Svetich spat out the husks and reached into the bag for more seeds.
'It wasn't hard to guess,' he said without turning a hair. 'My friend Prosper spotted you at once: sweating, pale as a sheet, and shivering as if you were in the North Pole, despite the summer heat.'
Harry followed the man's gaze and saw the tattooed Italian wizard, laden with body jewellery, standing by the stairs leading to the stands. There he strutted, his wand hidden beneath the folds of his tattered robes, watching them. Svetich chuckled.
'And of course, we didn't miss the fact that you were the only one staring at player number seven all the time...' he added, and then gave a appreciative hum. 'She's a very pretty girl. And quite passionate too – as we had the opportunity to experience the other day.'
Ginny was chasing the Snitch with the spare seeker, and was giving all her attention to the game, so she didn't notice that Harry had company.
'Do you like passionate women?' asked Svetich. 'I, for one, can go crazy for them. Many people say that in my country, where I come from, the women are the most beautiful and the most fiery in the whole world. But I don't think you should be ashamed either...'
'Are you here to talk about women?' Harry interrupted in a bored tone. He didn't like people who were so evasive, who skirted the point, talked at length about all sorts of meaningless things, and then got to something extremely unpleasant. Rufus Scrimgeour was like that, and Harry could have named a few more like him.
Michael Svetich, however, was apparently not like that, because he shook his head and got straight to the point:
'No. I'm here to talk about the future. Do you want some?' he held out the bag, but Harry declined.
'Do you care much about your future, Mr Potter?' the man asked.
'One could say that...' Harry muttered, thinking of Al. Svetich continued after two cracks.
'Our future will look pretty bleak if we don't do something about the inner circle. That nameless sorcerer has everything in his hands, and it's only a matter of time before he steps up the stage.'
Harry was already fed up and cut in:
'You already got our answer last time!' he looked at him with a steady gaze from behind his blonde hair, which he found extremely disturbing and kept pushing them out of his face. He didn't even care that the indelible lightning scar on his forehead could be seen.
Michael Svetich sighed heavily and nodded ruefully.
'Yes, I know. But I thought it was worth another try...' He dipped into the bag again and stuffed half a handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth, then began to spit out the empty husks one by one, which Harry was beginning to find increasingly disgusting. With his mouth full, Svetich continued to mumble the sentence he had begun: '... especially when you hear what Neville Longbottom told us when we asked him.'
Harry looked at him, stunned. He had not expected the three would-be Nurmengard assassins to try to recruit others into their suicide plot.
'Neville?' he gaped silently, remembering the boy writhing in pain, the curse spreading over his legs, which would have done who knows what if not for Snape's spell to hold it back.
'You know him, don't you?' Svetich grinned at him cunningly. 'After you had so politely shown us the door, we continued to investigate who else was there in Nurmengard that particular day. We spoke in turn to Mr Longbottom, as well as Seamus Finnigan and a gentleman called Dean Thomas. I understand you know them too, don't you?'
He didn't even wait for Harry's reply, he just got a seed between his teeth.
'Of course you do, you were roommates at Hogwarts for seven years,' he explained in a raised voice. 'Imagine, all three of them showed a keen interest in the project, and what's more, they said they wanted to take part!'
Harry almost jumped up from the bench when he heard this.
'You're bluffing!' Harry snapped at Svetich with a sudden anger. 'Dean Thomas lost both eyes in Nurmengard. He wouldn't go back there!'
The wizard gave him a sceptical look, and crumpled the empty bag into his pocket - then reached into his other pocket and pulled out an unopened one.
'That doesn't seem to be holding Mr Thomas back... Unlike you,' he hummed, opening the second bag. 'For a long time I couldn't understand why your opposition was so vehement the last time we met. My friend Prosper simply believes that you are just window-dressing characters and have built your reputation on the shoulders of others, when you really had nothing to do with the defeat of the dark lord known as Voldemort.'
Harry growled irritably.
'He can think what he wants...' He's heard enough of this in his life, from the Rita Skeeter smear campaign to the Ministry's vendetta. He had no desire to listen to another.
'I see it differently from him,' Svetich said again. 'I think you are simply tired. You are tired of risking your lives for others. And as Merlin is my witness, I understand you. Nurmengard must have been a hellish place, anyone could have been broken there... But still, the only way to get over what happened there is to go back.'
Harry looked at him. He had thought about it himself, if only when he remembered his own helplessness, or when he was weakened by illness and waiting for the full moon, locked within the four walls from which only exceptional occasions like this could offer a release. Many times during his confinement, he wondered what it would be like to return to Nurmengard and finish what he had left unfinished, this time to do the right thing, to capture the Nameless and end the matter.
'We have spies in Nurmengard. The inner circle is up to something big, planning something at one of the wizarding schools - Prosper says murder. You want to wait and see if Hogwarts is that school? Come back with us and let's change everything!'
The long-haired wizard's persistent persuasion was beginning to achieve its goal, and he knew it:
'I see I've got you thinking, Mr Potter. I can see in your eyes that you're struggling...'
'My only struggle is whether to hit you with a Stinging Hex!' Harry snapped angrily, but his empty threat was a lie. He had indeed considered Svetich's offer, but he hated being cornered and made to feel as if his feelings were just wires to be pulled like a puppet.
'No need to be that fierce,' the man put up both hands defensively, and with the same gesture pulled a small card from the sleeve of his robe. 'This is my card. On the back of it I have written the address of the inn where Prosper and I are staying. You can also reach me through Mr Scamander at any time...'
Harry took the card without thinking, and Svetich stood up, pleased. With a sigh, he put a sunflower seed into his mouth and looked up at the players. He glanced at Ginny, then looked down at Harry, who was crouched on the bench.
'She's a very pretty girl indeed,' he repeated his earlier statement.'If you want a nice future for the two of you, contact me by August thirteenth. After that, you won't find me here. We're going through with this operation whether it kills us or not. Goodbye, Mr Potter.'
With that, he walked between the benches to the Italian sorcerer, who sent Harry a scowl when Svetich shook his head, telling him the outcome of the conversation. They both left, and Harry looked down at the card in his hand. The address was indeed scrawled in ink on the back, and underneath was a pithy message: 'The world waits for no one.'
