- Chapter Seven -
Bogo
The training ended a few hours later. Harry waited for Ginny outside the dressing room, but the conversation with Michael Svetich was still on his mind. He had no idea how she would react to this, or how Ron and Hermione would react - Ron might be in on the Nurmengard operation, but Hermione might put out a public alert on Svetich and Prosper straight away to get them thrown out of the country.
One by one, the young women of the Harpies came out of the dressing room, all of them wide-eyed as they passed Harry, and then one by one they put their heads together with excited giggles. Harry frowned and looked after them; did everyone recognise him so easily, or were they just laughing at his eccentric appearance?
'Wow, you're making a grumpy face!' Ginny said to him, one of the last to sneak out the door, and quickly planted a kiss on his cheek.
Harry looked at her, and the smile faded from her lips.
'What happened? Is there a problem?' she asked, understanding perfectly Harry's sombre expression.
After telling Ginny about the meeting with Svetich, they were reluctant to leave the stadium, lest they run into the less polite Prosper, who might try to persuade them to participate in their plan with more than just words.
'They are completely insane!' Ginny fumed. 'Wait till Dad finds out! And I'm sure I'll write a letter to Neville to tell him he's gone mad. And Dean... goodness Merlin, he's lost both his eyes! And he wants to be a hero?!'
When they finally went home to the Dumbledore house and told them what had happened, Hermione reacted exactly as Ginny had. The two girls rambled on loudly for a long time about the reckless lunatics, as they called Svetich and Neville, Seamus and Dean, which Ron and Harry watched in silence for a long time, and Harry only casually showed his friend the business card he had received from the wizard. Ron frowned as he read it, then handed the card back without a word, as if he had memorized the address.
Harry still didn't know what to make of it all. Part of him wanted to go with Svetich to put an end to the affair, the other part of him thought it was madness and surely doomed to failure. Then, as the sun set and the moon rose, Hermione held out the Psiché Peregrino in a wooden cup (which, unlike before, was not smelly and smoldering, but freezing cold, like some kind of ice-porridge), and remembering its supposed effect, Harry smiled. Who knows, maybe there are really two opposing selves inside a person, always arguing with each other, and rarely agreeing... I wonder what life would be like without that particular other half? - Harry wondered as he slowly sipped the liquid.
The icy drink made his teeth ache and he felt his throat go numb. He began to wheeze, and the stuffy, summery air in the room felt like a hot gust of air that burned through his lungs.
'Damn it...!' he growled, slamming the empty cup down on the table. Hermione blinked at him, startled, and Ron and Ginny looked at him expectantly. 'Why is it that they always have to be either foul smelling or undrinkable?' Harry pouted, but Hermione relaxed and laughed softly.
'Don't grouch, Harry,' she patted his shoulder encouragingly. 'It'll work wonders, you'll see. The dark sorcerer Loxias wrote about it that he had never felt as content as when he had the experience of being out of the body.'
Harry stifled a laugh.
'Yeah,' he tilted his head to the side, 'but I suppose he didn't feel too discontent when he was massacring the people, did he?'
Hermione made a thoughtful face.
'Well, um...'
All four of them were amused, and Harry was glad to have been momentarily made to forget what and where he was preparing for. Then, when they remembered, the laughter slowly died away and the smiles disappeared from their faces. Harry turned away so he wouldn't have to see them, he wanted to remember them as they were when they were happy and carefree.
He kissed Ginny goodbye again outside the cellar door, and she locked him in the dark room with the usual charms. The clang of the iron door sounded like a heavy hammer on an anvil; it made Harry wince. With nothing better to do, he turned on the light using Ron's Deluminator and sat down at the base of the wall in his usual spot, and waited...
He thought again of Svetich's words, and now an old voice reminded him that a few years ago neither of them would have hesitated whether to go or not. They were not in the habit of hesitating so much, of sitting idle and waiting for something to happen. Maybe that's just what they'd need, he pondered thoughtfully. For something to happen that would shake them up, and then maybe Ginny and Hermione would make up their minds with them in a moment. The only problem was that such events usually involved a lot of deaths...
Harry soon began to feel strange when, after half an hour or so, the potion slowly but surely took effect. At first he only noticed that his limbs were moving with increasing difficulty; if he tried to lift them up, they were slow to obey; if he turned his head, the image would blur before him, and sometimes everything would go black for a moment. This frightened him, and when this state not so much passed as increased, he began to panic. He glanced at his watch to see how much time he had left before the transformation - perhaps there was still time to tell Hermione, to neutralise the potion somehow, or simply to take a Puking Pastille to get rid of it...
When he wanted to get up from the ground, he realised it was too late: not a single part of him obeyed, he was a prisoner in his own body. His legs, his arms, everything was paralysed, he sat there on the ground like a helpless puppet. Then the darkness came over him completely, creeping slowly before his eyes, as if the shadows were a huge figure encircling his body...
He felt weightless, and all sensations ceased, no more the cold of the cellar, the dampness of the tamped earth, the smells - everything ceased, the only thing he could cling to was his thundering fear, which signalled that he still existed, that he had not disappeared...
He heard a low, rumbling sound, and at the same time his vision began to clear. He was still in the cellar, but something had changed - at first he thought the cramped room was under water, because that was what the greenish-blue dim lights, the shaky, blurred shapes, and the feeling of weightlessness reminded him of. He looked down at his hand (as he lifted it, he felt how difficult it was to move) and was surprised to see the back of his left hand spotless, with no "I must not tell lies"mark. He then touched his forehead with his fingers and was sure that the lightning bolt-shaped scar was gone as well. There was his soul, naked and intact, just as it had been in that bizarre dream-reality when he had been talking to the ghost of the long dead Dumbledore at King's Cross station.
So he was here again, Harry thought. Hermione's magic seemed to be working perfectly, and he was once again walking in the bizarre spirit world - but at the same time, tangible reality was all around him... He could see his own real body on the other side of the cellar, but there was no way he could recognise his own features in it. A huge wolf with jet-black fur and glittering green eyes crouched in the corner, seemingly completely at peace. He was not frantic, not raging, not clawing himself to calm the raging passions within him - he just lay there, staring into nothing... He could not see the thing that was Harry at the moment.
'Oh my God...' he wanted to say when he saw himself, but no sound came out of his mouth.
He could not speak, his present disembodied form did not allow it, only his thoughts, his consciousness remained his whole being. He was also quite sure, as he glanced down at his hand again, that it was all in his mind, that he was only imagining his own body - but then he remembered Dumbledore's words: why on earth should that mean that it is not real?
Harry moved closer to the wolf. The creature still didn't feel his proximity, but Harry sensed a faint pull towards the body, like a magnet pulling him; he knew how to return to his body. Now, however, he certainly didn't want to be "at home", he wanted to feel the freedom Hermione had promised him, the freedom of disembodied thought of what it must have been like for Voldemort for nearly thirteen years. Harry was sure he couldn't in his right mind endure so many years in this state; the constant buzzing as if underwater, the ponderous, hovering movement, and the oppressive, dark lights gave the impression of a gloomy, inhospitable world.
He turned away from the wolf, the sight of which was too disconcerting for him (especially the eyes - the green eyes were the only thing that remained unchanged on his body, everything else was distorted beyond recognition), and headed for the heavy iron door... He floated easily through it, he could slightly feel the solid surface, but it couldn't hold him back. The narrow staircase was empty, Ginny wasn't sitting in front of the door as she had been the last time; it occurred to Harry that Ron and Hermione might not have let her spend another night crying against the cellar door. Harry was grateful for that - he had no idea how he would have reacted to the sight of her hunched over, or whether Ginny would have sensed it when he passed her.
He went up the stairs, certain that he would soon see one of them or hear their voices, but the monotonous buzzing was joined by a dulling of voices. As he reached the ground floor, he passed a window and saw that it was raining outside like cats and dogs, but he heard only the sound of the raindrops as a steady hiss and the thunder that flickered in the night as a low, distant rumble.
Strange, thought Harry. When the full moon rose, there was not a cloud in the sky...
There was no one in the living room or the kitchen, and again he was surprised. Had they gone to bed already? Wandering around as a ghost without a body, he had no desire to go out in the pouring rain, so he continued his search for Ginny, Ron and Hermione, heading for the stairwell, aiming for the second floor parlour.
Where have you disappeared to? Harry wanted to say, forgetting that he was unable to speak in his present state. He was getting annoyed at being left here alone, trying such a serious potion for the first time in his life, and he couldn't understand why they had gone to bed at ten o'clock at night. As he walked up the stairs with light, fluffy steps, he noticed a yellowish light, contrasting with the greenish twilight that painted the walls of the dark stairwell. He paused; a thin strip of light filtered out from behind the ajar door of the parlour.
So they are awake! Who knows, maybe Ron and Hermione are comforting Ginny and trying to reassure her that he'll be fine. Harry didn't want to hear it, he didn't want to eavesdrop on them like this, but he wanted to see someone, he wanted to be near people more than anything, so after a brief hesitation he went to the door and slipped through. The open door moved gently as his ghostly presence touched it, but only as if the wind were moving it.
Harry was at first surprised at the number of people in the room - he could see the outlines of five people in the gloom instead of the three he had expected - and at first he thought it was Michael Svetich and the Italian Auror paying another uninvited visit, but then, as he drew closer, he saw that one of the people present was as large as he had ever seen a human being.
He moved closer and closer, completely confused, and the blurred image of the large, semi-circular parlour became clearer and clearer. The huge man was slender, almost gaunt, and as Harry reckoned, he was about three, three and a half metres tall, and he was stooped to fit in the room.
The figure beside him was, in sharp contrast, curled up on a chair, wrapped in a large shawl or toga, from under which only her hairy hands and face showed - Harry was shocked to recognise in her the little girl he had once seen in a dream.
By this time he realised where he was and why he couldn't see Ron, Ginny or Hermione, and with that he immediately started looking for the cause. He saw Al, his hands in his pockets, leaning over the maps spread out on the large coffee table, his head almost colliding with two others of similar age, a blond-haired boy and a red-haired girl with freckles, who were also buried in the maps.
'That's no good either,' said Al, shaking his head, in an annoyed, impatient tone. 'The guards could spot us here at any time.'
He looked up, then straightened, stretching and moving his limbs, numb from the hunching. Harry stopped right in front of him, yet the boy pretended not to notice him.
'So where do you think we should try?' snapped nervously the blond boy, who looked remarkably like a young Draco Malfoy.
'Scorpius, calm down...' the redheaded girl put her hand gently on his shoulder. Her soothing, warm voice was accompanied by kind features and mischievous blue eyes. 'We must not rush things, we must choose the place carefully.'
'Albus...' Harry tried to address the boy, forgetting his muteness again.
Can he even see me? - he wondered. Al didn't seem to sense his presence at all, he just listened to her explanation. The only thing Harry could think of was that, because of the Psiché Peregrino and his entry into the spirit world, Al's Occlumency was no longer working against him, and since he was just a wandering soul, he couldn't see him. By now he was going back and forth to the future invisible even to the other Master of Death.
'We need to find a place where there are few guards, where we can escape easily, but the spell has the strongest effect. There aren't many places like that in Nurmengard, maybe we can try somewhere here on the east, southeast coast, although it's not the safest because of the wild beasts...'
When she finished explaining, her audience didn't say a word for a long time, they just looked at her as if waiting for something. Finally, the boy called Scorpius (What kind of a name is that anyway?, Harry thought) grew tired of the silence and shrugged his shoulders in a spectacular manner.
'All right, Rose. So...' he looked at her wide-eyed, 'where should we do the spell? Where can we sink the island undetected?'
Someone else answered the question for Rose:
'I still think it's the Mountain of Phoenixes,' the wolf-like girl in the poncho poked at the right spot on the map, circled in red ink. Everyone looked at her before she shied away, adjusting her blanket so that only her flashing yellow eyes showed.
'The Mountain of Phoenixes tip will not do,' Al said, looking at her with a smile. 'The birds wouldn't let anyone kill, they wouldn't let us destroy the island knowing there were people on it.'
Scorpius was surprised by what he heard, as were Eloise and the giant.
'I see... Well, who would know if you didn't?' the blond boy flashed Al a grin. 'And that means we can't count on Kinkaku's help either, right?'
'We can't indeed! And not only now: if we go through with the plan, she'll never speak to us ever again,' the boy said with a bitter expression, and Harry saw a strange emptiness in his eyes, which was very unusual for him.
'Who cares? She's just a stupid bird...' Scorpius snorted, and threw himself down in one of the armchairs opposite Eloise.
Al stared at the boy with darkening eyes.
'Kinkaku is the bird of my family...' he whispered, 'and by the way the only one in my family who still likes me.'
Scorpius was about to open his mouth to apologise, judging by the look on his face, but Rose beat him to it:
'And what am I if not your family?' the redheaded girl raised her voice in a huff, addressing Albus.
The boy was silent for a long time, staring ahead of him as if still looking at the map, but Harry knew from his veiled look that he couldn't see the coffee table. Her silence caught the attention of the others; the blond boy frowned while staring at him.
'What is it? What are you thinking?' he asked.
Al sighed heavily before replying.
'Sometimes I feel it would be easier the other way...' His mournful features made it clear that the "other way" could not be very pleasant, and Rose was downright indignant.
'Albus Severus!' she growled sternly at him. 'We've been through this!'
'Rose...' Al tried to calm her down, but she was adamant.
'I don't recommend you ever think of such a thing again, or I'll beat it out of you for sure!' she growled angrily, and stamped her foot.
Al opened his arms wide with a desperate look on his face.
'Why?' he asked nervously. 'My father was prepared to sacrifice his life to defeat Voldemort. I, too, am willing to die to destroy Nurmengard...'
'You don't know what you're saying,' said the crouching giant in his deep voice, his face darkening.
They all looked at him as someone who rarely speaks and hardly ever shares his opinions with others.
Al snorted.
'You think so, Prometheus?' he looked at the giant with a gloomy look. 'Don't think that this is the first time that this thought has crossed my mind.'
Rose paled visibly.
'That's still not the way to go, Al! Killing yourself... you can't be serious!'
'But it would all end in a moment,' he explained in a matter-of-fact tone. 'The power of the Hallow would cease to exist, would no longer be transferred to another person, and everything the Wand of Destiny has created would be destroyed.'
Harry listened paralysed to his words as he talked about throwing his life away, like his father. He'd never known Al had such an idea in his head, he'd always imagined him to be a talented, determined, joking and slightly hot-headed child, but this was too much.
Apparently he was not the only one who thought so, for Eloise and the giant listened with open mouths, and Rose shouted to vent her anger at the boy's words:
'We don't know if this applies to the island! We can't be sure that it only draws its magic from the Wand, there are thousands of magical creatures and dark objects there. It's a massive land created to be indestructible...'
'...Held together only by magic,' Al finished for him, to his own taste. 'I think that once the Deathly Hallows cease to exist, the island will sink like Atlantis.'
Scorpius was obviously interested in the details, but she didn't listen.
'Let's not base our plan on legends!' Rose shook her head in exasperation. 'Let's stick to the plan we agreed on, in which, I might add, we have invested the last three years of our blood and sweat!'
'How poetic you can be, Rosie...' Al murmured with a half smile, but Harry saw only bitterness in that smile too. 'You are talking about us like we were some kind of heroes... Our parents were the real heroes.'
'Speak for yourself, Albus, mine was a Death Eater,' Scorpius snorted in a flippant tone.
Al did not agree with him.
'Your father was a hero too,' he shook his head. 'You should be proud of him! Honour him, however he was, because once life has torn you away from him, it will be too late to regret anything!'
Scorpius swallowed hard as he listened to the Al's words, and turned as pale as Rose had just done. She was now frozen like a stone statue, and the silent giant and Eloise beside them stared wide-eyed at him. Then Rose spoke softly:
'You can't blame yourself forever, Al,' she looked at him sympathetically. 'What happened to your father...'
'Would not have happened if I wasn't such a hot-headed jerk!' Al snapped with unexpected fury. 'If we don't fight like that, he'd still be...' He suddenly bit off the sentence and put his hand over his trembling mouth. He turned away from his friends so they couldn't see his face and stared out the window.
Harry's heart was pounding like a hammer was hitting his chest; he dared not move, as if doing or saying anything may change things forever. He wanted to hear the end of the sentence more than he had wanted to hear anything else in his life, but when Al turned back, he looked at the redheaded girl with an angry expression.
'So don't be surprised if I think once or twice that maybe the world would be better off without me!' he yelled. 'My sister won't even see me, my older brother would probably beat the life out of me if we met... What kind of life is this?!'
Tears welled in Rose's eyes as she watched him with trembling lips.
'Albus...' she murmured his name almost inaudibly.
Scorpius, Eloise and Prometheus didn't say a word, just stared at each other with mournful expressions; Harry was almost waiting for something dramatic to happen to explain all this exchange, to make sense of all the questions that had been swirling around Al, but the only possible answer that floated before him was more shocking than he could bear.
Al's features hardened, and he stormed around the coffee table, darting between her and Scorpius.
'Albus!'
'Leave me alone now, Rose.' Al's voice was cold and dismissive as he passed her.
Rose started to go after him, but Scorpius quickly grabbed her arm to hold her back.
'Where are you going?' Prometheus growled in his deep, gravelly voice.
Al paused on the threshold, gripping the doorframe with pale fingers - Harry could have sworn the boy was shaking from silent tears. Just over his shoulder he spoke back:
'I'll clear my head.' And with that, he stomped down the stairs, slammed the front door with a bang, and disapparated in the pouring rain.
In the next moment, Rose, Scorpius, Prometheus and Eloise who were left in the lurch were gone as well, the vision vanished, and Harry returned to the parlour he knew well. Fresh newspapers were spread out on the table, and Kinkaku was cowering on a seat, her head tucked under her wing. The rain was not beating against the walls of the Dumbledore Tower, a still, moonlit night dominated the landscape beyond the window, but in Harry's soul a storm was raging by what he had heard.
The next day he woke up in his room again on a slightly overcast, grey morning. The first thing he saw was Ginny's peacefully sleeping form beside him; she might have stayed up all night again to get him from the cellar at dawn, until at last, her legs curled up, she also fell sleep. Her red hair spread across the pillow like a flaming shroud, and Harry couldn't help running his fingers through it.
Again he could not remember how he had got up into the room; when the Psiché Peregrino and the full moon's curse had passed, he returned to his own body, and immediately lost consciousness from the physical exhaustion of the transformation. Though his spirit was free and he did not suffer from the pain and self-destructive aggression of the werewolf, his body was just as tired, his muscles ached, and he felt terribly weak.
But as soon as he recalled the details of his vision under the influence of the potion, his consciousness cleared painfully quickly, and, skipping the dazed moments of waking, he sat up in bed and crawled carefully out of it to dress. At the frictional noise of the clothes, however, Ginny's eyes opened, and now she looked up at him, blinking, dead tired.
'Harry... Are you awake?' she muttered feebly.
'Yes. But you go to sleep,' he said, leaning down and pressing a kiss to her freckled cheek. 'I love you...'
Ginny smiled, stifled by a yawn.
'I'm just going to rest for a few minutes...' And the next moment she was dozing off again.
Harry looked at the sleeping girl for a while and thought of the two of them. How was it possible that something that had brought unprecedented happiness and joy into his life could have such a terrible future? Not knowing why, he glanced at Dumbledore's blank painting, as if waiting for some answer to a question he had been thinking about. When that, of course, did not come, he quietly slipped out of the room and down the stairs, but his thoughts were already miles ahead of him.
More than anything, he wanted to know what had happened to Al and himself, that might be the most important thing to prevent the terrible future Al had told him about. Potentially, he was now even more determined than before to change events, to not let the worst to occur...
It wasn't the fact that he might not be alive in twenty years that bothered him - that was a thought he had grown used to throughout his childhood and the agonizing half hour he spent on his way to the Forbidden Forest to stand before Voldemort, defenceless, ready for his last moment of life. What really tormented him, almost drove him mad, were the things they had said, which might have suggested that it was Albus Severus himself who had...
He stood in the kitchen and stared out over the hills lit by the grey morning light. If all goes as he planned, Ginny would sleep for a long time and Ron and Hermione would remain at the Ministry, so no one would mind if he disappeared for a few hours. He knew exactly where he needed to go, what he needed to do, because the idea had been there somewhere in a hidden corner of his mind for some time when he decided to change the future, whatever it took, on the beach by the Shell Cottage. He knew of no one - no witch, no wizard - or any magical being who could give him advice or explanation - in fact, he knew of no one who would not think him a madman when explaining his problem. But he knew of something else that could help him, that he knew where to look for and how to get, and he had seen how to make it answer.
The Fate Peeper was his only chance; the magical crystal bowl created by the sorcerers who invented the Time Turners to monitor changes in history, as a precaution against tampering with something that could not be fixed - and all it took was a single drop of blood.
Harry had put on his shoes, scarf and coat, which still had the invisibility cloak crumpled roughly in the pocket. He stepped over to the kitchen counter and, just in case Ginny did wake up, left a note scribbled on a parchment note that he had to drop by Ron's at the Ministry for something, and then stormed out the door, and with the same momentum, he was off to disapparating. He arrived in the narrow alley near the Ministry entrance and stepped out onto the busy street. In London's swirling crowds, no one noticed him, he blended into the multicoloured stream of people, and for a moment he wondered how many times he had passed people on the street who were hiding a secret so great that even the most trained would have been horrified or frightened. Again he had the sickening feeling that he was approaching something terrible, and could not turn back on the road that lead straight to it. He could feel his weakened legs shaking with every step, but he didn't know whether it was due to his dark thoughts or the aftermath of the full moon. Maybe both, he thought, as he stepped unobtrusively into the single red phone booth standing near and far, and dialled six-two-four-four-two from memory...
'Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and the purpose of your visit.'
'Harry Potter,' Harry said into the receiver, in response to the pleasant female voice that filled the phone booth. 'I'm here to visit, er... Hermione Granger.'
He thought it would be wiser to mention Hermione's name, firstly because he had no idea whether Ron was at headquarters or out in the field with Dawlish, and secondly, he didn't need to think of any particular reason for leaving Hermione, because she would most likely send him back to the Dumbledore house as soon as she saw him - and then he would have the opportunity to make a detour to the Department of Mysteries...
After a click and a clatter, the visitor's badge fell into the cash return tray.
'Thank you,' said the monotone female voice. 'Visitor, please take the badge and attach it to your robe.'
The journey down began, the phone booth started to descend like an elevator, and a minute later it arrived in the crowded atrium of the ministry, which could have been an underground counterpart to the surface traffic.
'The Ministry of Magic wishes you a pleasant stay!'
His knees were still shaking as he cut through the crowd towards the security wizards. He was nervous, and now he was worried not only about the distant future, but also about the next few minutes. He was sure that Mr Weasley, being the Minister for Magic, could get him out of the potential mess that would result from him getting caught, but the explanations he would have to give were beyond his reasoning skills. Why would he want to go into the Ministry and use one of the most closely guarded and special magical items in its custody? He had no idea what he could come up with that would be plausible enough.
Perhaps Mrs Parker would understand, he recalled the late unspeakable, who did her bizarre and mysterious work in the Brain Room, likely something that had to do with the brains swimming in green juice. But Mrs Parker was dead, along with all of Dumbledore's other protégés, members of the more peaceful side of the Fourth Tower. There was no one to turn to...
The queue for the gold-grated lifts moved slower than he remembered, and he waited impatiently in the winding queue. When at last he could squeeze into one of the elevators, squeezing his arm between a barrel-bellied wizard and an equally bulky old man, he pushed button four. The lift stopped at each level, and after five minutes the familiar announcement sounded:
'Level four, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, incorporating Beast, Being, and Spirit Divisions, Goblin Liaison Office, Pest Advisory Bureau and House-elf Assistance Bureau.'
Harry was flushed out by the crowd in the lift, which didn't reduce a bit between the four levels as passengers changed. He exhaled and, adjusting his rumpled coat, made his way to Hermione's office, hoping to get through to her quickly. He passed monotonous corridors, sunlit windows that belied the gloomy skies outside and brown oak doors, and the diverse crowd of DMCR workers stared at him all the while. He had heard from Hermione that since the escalation of the anti-being policy in Nurmengard, the workload of the Being Division had increased, and this was evident in the crowds of goblins and other folk. He was no longer surprised by any of Mr Weasley's comments when he signed the decree expanding the division. Nor has it escaped his notice that most of the subdivisions that used to deal with magical beasts, tamed, illegally cross-bred or smuggled creatures, have been transformed, and a new set of magical beings complaint offices, an extended wizard-goblin liaison department and a werewolf assistance bureau have been put in place.
He was dodging a group of people waiting in a wide corridor when he bumped into someone's shoulder.
'Pardon me...' Harry apologised.
'I need to...' the man turned around, but then, with a shocked look, he stopped in mid-sentence.
At first Harry didn't even wonder what the person was staring at – there were still a lot of people surprised when they saw Harry Potter with their own eyes, especially after nearly a year of being presumed dead – but then he noticed the man's eyes. They were blue, but not like a human's - they were more like an animal's, and his behaviour was downright disturbing. He leaned in boldly close to Harry's face and began to sniff, his teeth bared under his lips in a snarl.
Harry didn't flinch; he knew exactly why the man was acting so strangely. He felt the same as when he held Teddy Lupin in his arms: he felt the closeness of another werewolf. For a long moment they just looked at each other, neither blinking, but then the man backed off, perhaps because he noticed that more and more people were staring at them.
'I need to apologise,' he finished the sentence he had started, then took two steps back. Harry slowly let out the air he'd been holding in. 'Use a thistle flower on your eye,' said the werewolf suddenly, a little awkwardly. 'It stops the bloodshot.'
He nodded and then moved on, and Harry just blinked in surprise. His eyes were indeed burning, and as Prosper had said, they were bloodshot from the transformations.
When he got tired of people wondering why he was standing there, he walked on, but he was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't even notice that he'd arrived in front of the House-elf Assistance Bureau. He raised his hand to knock when he heard Hermione talking to someone inside.
'So it will be difficult to find anyone who will take you in. Madam Malkin sent you back to us with the message that we would be doing humanity a favour if we drowned you in a bucket of water - and I know Madam Malkin and she's not the drowning type... And she demands that we compensate her for her losses... A collection of twenty bottles of the most expensive elf-made wine... How could you drink that much?!'
The answer was an unintelligible mutter, to which Hermione growled in irritation.
Harry was unsure: could it be a wrong time to bother? The girl seemed rather upset, and Harry knew from experience that the last thing she needed was to be annoyed because of him. He turned to try his luck at creating an alibi with Ron, but after a few steps the door opened behind him.
'As if someone had come... Harry?' said Hermione, surprised. 'What are you doing here?'
Harry turned and grinned reluctantly at the girl.
'I just... came in. To visit you,' he explained, scratching his head. 'What, I can't even get a foot outside the house?'
Hermione gave him a downcast look.
'I don't think you want to hear my answer,' she said, then sighed. 'All right, come on in...'
Harry anxiously entered the cramped little office and met the person who had been the cause of Hermione's anger. Sitting on the chair opposite the desk was a house elf with a purple top hat on his head - Harry recognised him as the drunken elf from the Merry Hog.
'Harry, this is Mr Bogo... Mr Bogo, Harry Potter...' Hermione introduced them languidly, but then went on to say her piece: 'Mr Bogo has already kicked himself out of the third place I tried to get him in. And now they're even threatening to sue...'
With a pursed mouth and shaking her head in annoyance, she looked at the elf, who was not for a moment embarrassed. He sprawled in his chair like some kind of little king, showing off his large belly, which was probably the result of his heavy beer consumption. He had a long nose, ears slightly smaller than Dobby's, and tiny, squinting green eyes. Apart from the purple top hat, he wore only a grey toga, like most house-elves, and worn-out, half-ankle shoes on his feet. He eyed Harry with undisguised curiosity, took a good look at the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, and lingered on the motley scarf.
'This is not a good time for us to get hit with this compensation litigation, Mr Bogo,' Hermione continued to scold the elf. 'You know why?'
The elf cleared his throat.
'I suppose because of the bumpkins in Nurmengard, ma'am...'
Hermione was obviously surprised that the elf knew the answer, let alone what he said next: 'They have a problem with elves. But if you want to wash your own socks, go ahead. I'm not complaining...'
Harry almost chuckled into the palm of his hand, but Hermione's angry words would have made that inadvisable.
'It's not about the socks, Mr Bogo!' she shrieked in exasperation, then stared at the elf for a few moments before slamming her hand on her desk and fished something out of the back of her drawer. 'See this document? I'd need to fill this out about you, for registration purposes. Orders have been issued to all ministries to record the details of all - I stress all - magical beings, so that they can be found at any time. Why do you think they need this?!'
Bogo shrugged carelessly.
'The Nurmengardians will not stop at giving you clothes! After registration comes the collection, then the execution... Stop smiling!' Hermione snapped when the elf just smirked at her. 'I've been through this before as a Muggleborn, you may remember. You'll have to be careful, because now they're after the beings! But with that attitude...'
Harry knew what Hermione was like when her emotions started to lead her. She was just as she was now: if she saw injustice anywhere, she would fight it with all her heart and soul, and that determination would double when it came to house-elves.
He glanced down at the parchment Hermione had slapped down on the table; House Elf Registration Form; Please fill in accurately for further identification - the bold lettering proclaimed.
'Has the order really been issued?' Harry muttered gloomily.
'Yes... And not just that,' she snarled, and pushed the blank form back into the drawer in disgust. 'The entire Beast Division is going crazy. The ICW has abolished the laws against experimental cross-breeding, saying they hinder the development of magical research. I also met Mr Weasley in the lift, he was upstairs with his old colleague Perkins, who still works in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office... They also passed some one or two new laws in Nurmengard regarding them. Now there's no such thing as misuse of muggle artefacts. It's perfectly legal to charm and curse any unmagical item - officially, of course, only if it doesn't endanger anyone's physical safety... What outrageous hypocrisy!' she sputtered with a reddening head. 'The whole point of this is to slowly infiltrate the Muggle world with magic. The stage is being set for a wizard takeover...'
Hermione puffed as if she had been running; Harry had no idea that things were already so bad at the Ministry, that the shadow of Nurmengard was already so much over their heads.
'But at least Mr Weasley can have his flying car back,' he tried to humour her, but Hermione's pursed lips and flashing eyes told him that the joke wasn't exactly on the mark.
'Can you tell me why you're here?' she asked coldly, turning away from the elf and finally turning her attention to Harry.
'I told you, just visiting...' he began, but she didn't let him finish the sentence.
'Oh, Harry, it's clear you didn't just come in because this building is so irresistible!' she shouted, and slumped wearily in her swivel chair.
Harry had already planned what he would say to her. He couldn't lie to her, Hermione was such a good Legilimens that she could spot a lie in an instant, so he had to resort to another method.
'All right,' he said in agreement. 'There's something about the Psiché Peregrino...'
It was as he expected: Hermione's eyes widened in fright, and she glanced uncertainly at the curiously listening elf. Talking about such a forbidden, secret potion in front of an audience was not the safest thing to do, Harry knew that very well, and Hermione would most certainly look at him like that even if they happened to be alone in the room.
'Don't you think we shouldn't be discussing this here?!' she hissed crossly. Harry pretended to come to his senses, and glanced at the elf as well.
'Err, of course, no! You are right... W-we'll talk... at home...' he stammered, gesticulating wildly. Hermione gave a firm nod.
'I'm glad you get it. Now go home, Harry.'
In other cases, he wouldn't have liked this commanding tone (as if talking to her disobedient little brother) - even if he knew she was right - but now everything was going as he had planned. He said a quick goodbye to the girl, waved to the slyly squinting elf, and was already plodding down the corridor towards the lifts.
This day seemed to get worse by the minute. His earlier overwhelming fears were now being compounded by the problems at hand, and the most exhilarating thing was that he couldn't do anything about it. Yet these small steps the Nameless was taking throughout the wizarding world would one day lead to him lying dead somewhere...
While he had been at Hermione's, he had managed to suppress his feelings, but now his heart was pounding in his throat as he went down the lift, again in droves. When the lift reached the atrium level, he waited until everyone had squeezed past him, wrapped the cloak of invisibility around him in the cover of the moving people, and quickly pressed the door lock button just before the next group could board. The angry humming and shouting died away as the door closed and the lift started down creaking and rattling, now carrying only the invisible Harry.
'Department of Mysteries,' announced the female voice, and the darkest, most depressing corridors tied with the worst memories of the Ministry were revealed to Harry.
He walked down the corridor as if he were in the spirit world again: invisible, silent, alone. There were no paintings, no windows in the torch-lit corridor, just the black, gleaming tiles and the black door at the end of the path. He hadn't been here for over a year, yet he remembered everything as if he came here every day. He pushed through the door and found himself in the familiar round room, where candles - the kind of truth candles that had been in the Selwyn and Peverell houses - burned with a blue flickering flame.
He couldn't draw attention to himself by loudly asking the candles where the Time Chamber was, instead he chose a different, simpler solution:
'Alohomora!'he whispered the command almost inaudibly, but he drew his wand around in a circle above his head.
Each door in the circular room clicked softly, but together they sounded like a gear that had come loose. Harry sighed contentedly and set about examining each room in turn. Everywhere he only peeked through the ajar doors, but he did not have to fear exposure; only in the Space Chamber, which contained a model of the solar system, did he see two wizards, but they were arguing loudly about Pluto, so they didn't even notice that the door had opened behind them.
Then, at the tenth entrance he tried, he found what he was looking for: a room glistening with pearlescent light, which he had seen before he had ever set foot in the Department of Mysteries. He and Voldemort had shared dreams of this room, and the vast hall behind it, once the repository of prophecies - now an inventory of confiscated B and C category dark objects.
He let out a deep, shaky sigh as he opened the door and entered the room, which was filled with the sound of countless clocks ticking. It was a longish room, with a large table in the middle, full with various timepieces; the pearly glow was caused by the object Harry had come for.
The Fate Peeper was where he expected it to be, at the far end of the table, on a tall, four-legged little table. Without hesitation, he rounded it and jumped to the crystal bowl - he couldn't stall, every minute would increase the risk of being caught. He did not remove the cloak of invisibility, just in case someone entered the room, he simply stretched out his arm and made a small cut on his thumb with his wand ('Diffindo!'). The drop of blood collected on the tip and fell into the bowl.
The next moment, the cool glow of the Fate Peeper changed, and a red light flooded the room - and something else happened that made Harry's heart skip a beat: the watery contents of the bowl surged, bubbled, fizzed and sizzled in waves, giving an unmistakable sign that something was very wrong. Harry remembered Al's words about what it all meant - Time had become confused, unpredictable, and perhaps something had changed for Harry, for the blood drop had made the Fate Peeper attune solely to his life's journey.
Harry gripped the rim of the bowl nervously.
'Stop it...' he whispered through gritted teeth, but the content of the bowl seemed to go mad.
He heard a rattle from behind him and he jumped in fright. The echoing sound of footsteps in the hall... He looked uneasily to right and left, but saw no movement. He turned back to the bowl and closed his eyes for a moment. He couldn't wait any longer, he had to try:
'How will I die?' he asked the Fate Peeper, nerves on edge as he waited for an answer, but there was none. The bowl showed nothing, no change in its churning, foaming surface, which looked as if a sea of blood was seething.
He heard another crash from behind him, and again he looked back - but what he saw this time made his heart skip a beat. The entrance to the circular room swung open, and five Aurors with wands drawn rushed through.
'All the doors are open!' one of them exclaimed in amazement. 'How is that possible?'
'Maybe the security charms got broken...' one of them speculated, as they dispersed and began to search the rooms one by one until they came across the two arguing unspeakables in the Space Chamber.
'What happened, gentlemen? Is there a problem?'
'The Ever-Locked Room protection spell alerted us that someone had opened the door!' one of the Aurors informed the wizards, and Harry recognized it as Gregor Proudfoot's.
How could I be so stupid? - he scolded himself angrily. The Wand of Destiny unlocks all protective charms, even the secret locked room Dumbledore had told him about. He should have expected there would be an alarm charm protecting that room, even if there weren't on the others...
'Stop talking nonsense, that room cannot be opened! It's perfectly and unbreakably closed...' the unspeakable's words trailed off, and while Harry couldn't see him, he was sure he'd noticed the all the doors were open.
He couldn't waste any more time, he might already be too late to get out safely. He turned back to the bowl to give it one last try.
'Where will all this lead to? What will happen if I do nothing? What will happen if I don't change the future? What will Albus Severus Potter do?'
To his surprise, the content of the bowl suddenly calmed down. Harry had no idea which question was the right one, but the surface of the water cleared until it became a mirror, and then an image appeared, of two people from a bird's eye perspective, as if in a Pensieve, and Harry eagerly leaned forward to get a good look at them...
One of the men lay on the stone, motionless, his tangled black hair soaked with raindrops. The other, a dark hooded figure leaned over him, gripping the lying man's robe with pale fingers, his shoulders shaking with bitter weeping. A wand lay on the ground beside them, in which Harry recognised his own phoenix feather-core wand, made of holly... A pool of blood, spreading rapidly from the prone figure, reached and covered the wand...
'I think they went this way!' The shout brought Harry to his senses, almost paralysed by the sight, but now he realised he had to get out of there immediately.
With a wave of his wand, he dispelled the death scene from the Fate Peeper, and turned to face the Aurors from below the concealment of his cloak. Three of them stood in the doorway of the Time Chamber, their glowing wands scanning the room warily.
'Homenum Revelio!' one of them said, as a gentle breeze swept through the room, softly blowing Harry's cloak over his head, tracing his body, and then back to the wand.
'There are two of them!' the man in front warned his companions, and they moved past the clock table with their wands drawn.
Two?! - Harry was stunned by the Auror's words, but he had no time to ponder this puzzle, for the next moment the ground jumped out from under his feet with brutal suddenness, his chest and lungs were crushed, the air squeezed from his lungs as he turned into the suffocating void...
When the completely unexpected and incomprehensible apparition ended, he found himself a hundred metres up, on the street, in the dirty little alley next to the phone booth. The aftermath-sickness of the full moon and the unprepared apparition made Harry's stomach lurch, he curled up and threw up against the wall of the building. He heard sounds of disgust from down the street, and passers-by quickly moved on to avoid the "drunkard."
'Wow, you looks like crap!' a cheerful voice beside him called, and Harry gasped as he turned to see at something.
The "thing" was translucent, like a small man under a disillusionment spell, with only his eyes squinting at him. There was a snap of fingers, and the disillusionment spell was lifted, and Harry recognised the house-elf called Bogo, in his purple top hat.
'You...? Did you help?' he groaned in a feeble voice, exhausted.
'Certainly!'
The elf's terse reply was evidence of his good mood.
'Thank you... Really... thank you...' Harry muttered, trying to compose himself.
'Don't thank, your oh-so-highness, show some gratitude in another way!' said Bogo in a bouncy, boisterous tone that gave the impression of someone who always shouts.
Harry straightened up and looked at him with furrowed brows, distrustful. For some reason, he didn't like this demanding tone.
'How?'
'Well, by giving me a job, food and a home! Especially food...' the elf patted his belly and grinned with his wide mouth.
Harry was shocked at first, then quickly cleared his throat and smiled, shaking his head.
'Sorry, but I'm not in need of an elf right now...' he opened his arms and tried to put on a sorry expression.
The elf snorted, as if he was laughing at Harry.
'That's not what your brilliant burglary shows!' he jabbed his long finger at the asphalt below and adjusted his tilted top hat.
Harry stopped trying to smile.
'This was just a one-off incident.'
'Well, then, this one-off incident will be my one-off insurance policy, your gracious Mr Potter!' Bogo shouted. 'Because if you don't need an elf, then this elf is going to talk, and that's as sure as a nightly bed-wetting!'
Enough is enough! - Harry huffed. Is this creature really supposed to be a submissive house-elf? He's just blackmailed him! He couldn't have dreamed that Dobby or Winky or Kreacher would ever dare blackmail a wizard. True – he remembered – Dobby had given him broken bones, Winky drank more than a herd of cattle, and Kreacher had taught him more swear words than Ron and the twins put together.
He took a deep breath to calm himself.
'Look...' he began patiently, trying to resolve the situation diplomatically. 'I'm happy to give you a reward for your help, seriously, I'm not an ungrateful person, but I really don't need a house-elf!'
'That's your problem, moron!' the elf snapped angrily. 'I'll put you right back to that sink, and then you can ask it how you're going to kick the bucket until the Aurors come!' and he raised the middle and thumb fingers of his left arm to a snap.
'You stay where you are!' Harry pointed his wand at him, but by the time he said the words, the elf had already disappeared...
... just to, apparating behind his back, make a vile little fist and smash it against Harry's head. Harry fell face-first into a puddle, the elf clinging to his back.
'Well, you don't need a servant?' mocked Bogo, and grasped a good chunk of Harry's hair, then pushed his head into the puddle. 'No work from my lord, the majestic wizard? - (he pulled his head back, then pushed it into the puddle again) - How about a slave revolt, eh? You like it? Hahaha!'
Harry pulled himself together and with one great swing kicked Bogo off of him, turning to the side to fire a body freezing spell at him, but the elf was gone by then. He apparated with amazing speed.
Now he was standing on top of one of the rubbish bins, laughing at Harry lying on the ground, whose face was aflame from the shame. Had a house elf just done that to him?
'Okay...' he gasped exhaustedly, and Bogo stopped chuckling.
'Got a job for me?' he stared at the boy with sparkling eyes.
Harry nodded resignedly.
'Yeah...' He got up from the ground, and with a wave of his wand straightened his battered looks, then turned to see whether he had attracted the attention of some passers-by with his squirming. 'Let's get back to the Ministry. We'll talk about it there, okay?'
The elf nodded ceremoniously and jumped off the top of the bin, then reached for Harry's hand without a question. Again came the squeezing, the spinning and the dizziness, and a second later they were standing in the corridor of the Being Division.
There was a turmoil that Harry had never heard here before, shouting, hundreds of feet pounding; witches and wizards all running in the same direction, towards the lifts. He couldn't understand the reason for the commotion that had greeted him, at first he thought the people might be running from something, but then he noticed that there was no look of terror or fear on any of their faces, but rather worried looks and nervous anxiety.
'What's wrong with them?' Bogo shouted in bewilderment, and Harry caught the arm of one of the wizards running past him.
'What happened?'
'Trouble!' was all he said, and ran off, swinging his briefcase behind him.
Harry was trying to get the reason for the apparent alarm from several people walking by, but most of them didn't even hear him speak.
'Sir, we... Excuse me... Ma'am, why...?'
Then the elf stuck his foot out in front of one of the young sorcerer clerks, who fell on his stomach in the corridor. Before Harry could scold his newfound servant for his unsolicited help, he turned invisible with a snap, perhaps to pin the tripping trick on him.
Harry helped the cursing young man off the ground and took the opportunity to question him:
'What happened? What's wrong?'
'Durmstrang!' he shouted over the crowd, so excited that he didn't even realize who had helped him up. 'Durmstrang was attacked! Everyone is dead! The school was set on fire. They say it was werewolves and giants... It's just been announced over the loudspeaker, the Minister will be briefing us in the atrium shortly! Come quickly!'
But Harry didn't move, his body was paralysed by what he had heard. He couldn't even pay attention to Bogo's persistent coat-dragging, the only thing on his mind was that the bloodshed, the war that Albus Severus had told him about, had really begun; he felt the moment much closer and more real than when he had seen it with his own eyes in the Fate Peeper - when he would be lying there in the rain, drenched in his own blood...
