Chapter 14. Sunday December 1, 1996
Harry had been vaguely aware of part of the battle between the wizard and Lord Voldemort, though he could make little sense of it. He had been certain he was about to die when there had been a flash of heat in his pocket and some wizard he did not even know apparated into Lord Voldemort's chambers and then proceeded to move and cast spells faster than Harry would have believed possible. Then a backlash from one of the curses Voldemort and the strange wizard were hurling at eachother had hit him in the head, and he did not know what happened after that.
He was unconscious for over 12 hours. When he awoke, he was in surrounding which were not nearly as ominous as the torture chamber where Lord Voldemort's portkey had brought him, but far more peculiar. He was lying on a floor made out of rough wooden boards that were uncomfortable warm. There was a splinter in his cheek where he had scraped against one of them while lying there for who knew how long. How long had it been, anyways? There were no windows in this place, wherever it was, to tell him whether it was day or night.
Harry stumbled to his feet, shaking his head to try to get rid of the muzzy feeling. It was far cooler away from the floor. But that didn't seem right. Professor Snape had spent long enough hammering it into his head that heat tended to rise, so if anything it should be hotter when he stood up. Curious, he knelt down and poked a finger through a wide crack between two of the floorboards. He felt something smooth that was burning hot, and hastily withdrew his finger, sucking on the reddened tip.
The room he was in was long and narrow, perhaps about 100 feet by 10 feet, resembling a wide hallway more than an ordinary room. There were doors on either of the narrow ends, and the long sides were lined with shelves stuffed so thoroughly with books and scrolls that some of them seemed as if they would come tumbling down at any moment. Harry looked at the literature curiously. Whoever it was that had put them on these shelves obviously had a very broad taste in reading. There were grimoires and other spell books, many of which he recognized from Hogwarts. But there were also books on dark magic, far darker than were kept even in the Restricted Section at Hogwarts Library. He pulled one of them out, and saw that it had a thick leather cover with a small eyeball set into it. The eyeball blinked, and turned to look at him. Hastily, Harry put the book back. He had seen a few things like this at Borgin and Burkes. It was something a Death Eater would own, not a decent wizard like himself or Dumbledore. Which would explain the lousy way he had been treated, just being dropped on the floor. But then, he thought with puzzlement, why would a Death Eater have rescued him from Voldemort in the first place?
Walking further down, he was even more puzzled to see several shelves with a selection of muggle literature. Something he was certain no Death Eater would ever read, much less own. A few books had fallen to the floor, and Harry saw a sort of overly thick wooden grating behind the shelf with polished rock behind it. That was strange. Why put that grating behind the shelves, it just took up space? He poked his finger through it experimentally, and found that the rock on the walls was as hot as the floor had been.
As was the rock ceiling, as he learned a few moments later.
Gazing at the rock ceiling, a number of questions entered his mind. If the floor, walls, and ceiling were all so hot, then why was the air temperature fairly comfortable? And there was something strange about the construction as well, the rock walls were not made of blocks, but seemed to be one contiguous peice. As if he were inside a cave or something. But so far as he knew, caves were not shaped like perfect rectangles. It could be a reshaped cave, but why go to all the trouble of polishing all the walls and the ceiling to such perfect smoothness? Especially if you were just going to put wooden gratings and bookshelves in front of the walls? And why the hell were they so hot, anyways? From the little reading Harry had done about caves, he was certain they were supposed to be fairly cool inside.
Stepping a little bit farther, Harry felt a blast of cold air hit him, reminding him of a muggle airconditioner, except that the temperature of it seemed far below freezing. He looked around and saw a box filled with light hanging from the ceiling above him. The air seemed to be coming out of the box. Was it a ventilation shaft of some kind, leading out of this place?
Curious, he took one of several stepstools that were scattered around this room, most likely to enable access to the highest parts of the bookshelves, and examined the box. It was not a ventilation shaft in any normal sense of the word. It was not connected to anything, but was merely a crude metal box dangling from two rusted chains that were bolted into the ceiling. The end of it that glowed with light was covered with a metal grating. Harry stuck his head by it, but could only see a few runes etched on the outside, and a sparkling white light.
Very strange.
There were several more boxes, they seemed to have been hung up about every 20 feet or so, to combat the oppressive heat coming from the rock this place was made out of. One of them glowed with a blue color that seemed oddly familiar to Harry. He could not quite place it, though. Another one seemed fairly dim, and Harry got the stool again to look into it. What he saw was puzzling and alarming.
Peering into the box he saw, as if from a great height, a range of mountains with the sun just setting over them.
He looked at it for a very long time. Now he recognized that blue color, it had been sky. And he recognized the runes as well, they were those used for certain types of magical portals. Which is what the boxes were, this wizard had opened them onto cold locations to let in the cold air. A pity they weren't larger, he could have tried climbing through them and getting out of this place. But then what would he have done? He didn't have his wand, he thought he had had still had it back with Voldemort, so this strange wizard must have taken it from him. But even if he had had it, he wasn't sure if he had the strength to cast a levitation spell. All those portals seemed to open at great heights. And if he didn't fall to his death, what then? Given the temperature of the air coming out of the portals, he would most likely freeze to death in short order.
Harry saw that he had now reached the end of the room. The door stood slightly ajar, and he wandered through it, finding himself in another room, equally long and narrow. This room seemed to be a store-room and kitchen of sorts. There were boxes and crates containing food, various peices of magical equipment, and near the end was a counter, a sink, and a stove. There was yet another door just past it, and Harry opened it up to find himself looking at a bathroom. A brief examination showed him that the plumbing was as peculiar as everything else here. A pipe came out of a box near the ceiling, that didn't connect to anything, and ran to supply water to a sink, toilet, and small bathtub. Other pipes came from the drains of all three, and ended up in a second box sitting on one corner of the floor. A small bureau held several worn towels, washclothes, and bars of soap.
There was a frame on the wall above the sink that had once held a mirror, but now had only a few splinters of silvered glass remaining in it.
There was no door to the bathroom, save the one he had come in. Harry retraced his steps, back through the kitchen and the library where he had woken up and tried the door at the other end.
The wizard he had seen before, in Voldemort's lair was writing something at a large desk in a room much more ornate than any of the others. The Lumos crystals here had their harsh light softened by multi-colored glass lampshades. There were several paintings and small sculptures of both muggle and wizarding origin, as well as large workbenches with magical equipment on them.
Except for the small bed in the corner, it reminded Harry almost of Headmaster Dumbledore's office. That, and the fact that his wand was sitting on the desk next to the wizard.
But the wizard at the desk was not Dumbledore. He was far younger, chesnut hair waved down to his shoulders. Though there was a hint of something about his face that seemed drawn, and much older than it should have been. It reminded Harry almost of Snape. But then the expression was gone, and the wizard looked almost alarmed as Harry stepped into the room, hastily overturning a picture of some sort that was on the desk next to him. Then he took a large pile of parchments, including the one he had been writing on, and stuffed them into a drawer, before turning to back Harry.
"Ah, Mr. Potter. Finally awake I see." he said. "I suppose you're wondering why I've arranged this meeting."
"Well, yes." Harry was not at all certain who this wizard was, or what he wanted. "I don't mean to seem ungrateful, since Voldemort was about to kill me before you showed up, but I'm not really sure what this place is. And how do you get out of it? I've been through the whole thing, and there are no doors leading out. Unless you've got one hidden behind one of the bookshelves."
The wizard seemed amused by this question. So Harry had gone through his entire home, and learnt absolutely nothing. There could hardly be doors leading out of this particular place. And this imbecile was supposedly the hope of all of wizarding England?
"No, there are no doors here, Mr. Potter. When I wish to enter or leave, I simply apparate."
"That seems kind of inconvenient." Harry said. He looked at his wand, sitting next to the wizard. "What's your name?"
He was pleased to see that the wizard was actually startled by this question. No-one had asked him his name in a very long time. Very few people wanted to know it, particularily after the things he did to them.
"My name would mean little to you, Potter. I was famous once, in my own small corner of the world, but that was likely before you were even born. And I would prefer that you not tell others who I am, at any rate. So I suggest you think of me as the man who saved you from Lord Voldemort."
"Yeah." Harry looked at his wand again. "Can I have my wand back?"
The wizard picked up the wand and examined it. He held it in his hand, feeling the magical vibrations from it. "Interesting. A powerful wand, though not particularly precise. More of a bludgeon than a scalpel, I'd say. I suppose it suits the sort of wizard you English tend to be. As for getting it back, that's entirely up to you."
It was as Harry figured. This wizard wanted something. But he needed his wand back. Dumbledore thought it was important that he have the wand that was a brother to Lord Voldemort's. "Do you want money? I have a vault full of money my parents left me at Gringotts. I can pay you for it."
"Money?" the wizard laughed, an unpleasant sound, that made Harry wand to plug his ears against it. "No, I hardly think I need any of your money Potter. I have plenty of my own. Even if I didn't, money could hardly buy me what it is I'm looking for."
"Looking for?" Harry was confused. He was certain he did not own anything that belonged to this wizard. Unless it was hidden somewhere in the house he had inherited from Sirius.
"Tell me, Potter. Can you tell me where it is?" The wizard's eyes glinted with humor, and a touch of something far more dangerous.
"Where what is?" Harry looked baffled.
"It doesn't matter." The wizard waved in annoyance. "I've been looking for it for 15 years. I haven't had much luck. I've tortured bits and peices of information out of people about it every so often, but not very much. I believe it's been protected with the Fidelius charm. I need to find the secret keeper first. Though no-one seems to know who he is. But there have been clues. They've led me here. I think I am very close now, I can smell it."
"I'm sorry." Harry said timidly. That part the wizard had mentioned about torturing people had him frightened. This might not be a Death Eater, but it was a very Dark wizard nonetheless. "But I'm not the secret keeper for anything. I'm afraid I really can't help you find this... whatever it is you are looking for."
"I didn't say you were." The wizard looked at him with an expression of contempt that Harry had often seen on Snape's face. "You would have been less than a year old at the time the Fidelius was made. I hardly think someone would make an infant a Secret Keeper."
"Well, yeah. I guess so. So what do you want from me?"
"It's like this, Potter. You may not know the Secret, but it is my belief that you have some information, a few more clues, which will lead me a few steps closer to the one who does. Now, the way I see it, I have just saved your life from Lord Voldemort. You therefore owe me a life-debt. The fashion in which you may pay it is to answer several questions which I have for you."
"And if I answer them, what will happen then. Will you kill me?"
"Kill you?" The wizard raised his eyebrows. "I bear you no malice, Potter. Frankly, I'm not much interested in you at all. Our lives have unfortunately intersected for this brief period. Hopefully it will be a brief period. Once you have given me the information I ask of you, I shall give you your wand back, and return you to Hogwarts. Or wherever else you wish to go. Though I would not recommend your returning to Lord Voldemort."
"Well, alright. I'll answer them. Maybe. It depends on what they are." Harry was frightened. If he refused to answer, would the wizard torture him? He was not sure what he would do then. This wizard must want whatever it was he was looking for very badly indeed, to risk fighting Voldemort just to get the opportunity to ask Harry a few questions.
"You really don't have a choice about answering." The wizard said. Then he opened up a large scrapbook on his desk, which was full of clipping from both wizard and muggle newspapers. He flipped through it until he came to an article that was familiar to Harry. It had been in the Quibbler last year, and described how Harry and his cousin Dudley had been attacked by Dementors near their home on Privet Drive.
The wizard tapped the article with one long, boney finger. "This article is about you, correct?"
Harry looked at it. "Yes, of course it is."
"I see." the wizard began looking at Harry with a greedy expression that he did not at all like. "Now, the Quibbler is not always, how shall I put this, the most accurate source of information. Occassionaly they do tell the truth, however. Is this one of those times? Were you and your muggle cousin, in fact, actually attacked by a dementor in a muggle neighborhood?"
"Yeah, we were. Actually the Quibbler was telling a lot more truth than the Daily Prophet last year, if you want my opinion."
The wizard ignored Harry's remark about the respective veracities of the two competing newspapers. He closed the scrapbook with a loud BANG, and began pacing in an agitated manner.
"Dementors do not get out by accident." The wizard said, speaking half to Harry and half to himself. "Up until recently, they were loyal to the ministry of magic. Or to be more specific, they went to great pains to convince the ministry that they were loyal. So if one of them got out, they must have been LET out. Someone did it. Who? I must know who it was. I have questions for them."
Harry began to be frightened. As the wizard became agitated, his eyes gleamed strangely, and his skin seemed to become pale, like a vampire's. Or Lord Voldemort's. Come to think of it, there was a strong similiarity between the expression on the face of this wizard, and that of the younger Lord Voldemort's that he had seen in Dumbledore's pensieve.
The wizard did not take kindly to Harry's silence. He pointed at him angrily. "Who was it, Potter? Who sent the Dementor after you!"
Harry shook, not certain what to do. He was not at all fond of Umbridge, but was not sure he wanted to give her name to this wizard. He had talked about torturing people. He was no better than Voldemort. Much as he hated Umbridge, he did not think it would be right to betray her to someone like that.
"If I tell you who it was," Harry said, his voice trembling, "What are you going to do to them? Are you going to hurt them? Torture them like you said you did to those other people?"
The wizard gazed coldly at Harry. "I'm going to make them talk, Potter. If they don't want to talk, I'm going to hurt them until they do talk. Everyone talks in the end. There's a limit to how much pain a human being can stand."
"I don't think I can tell you then." Harry whispered. "I don't think it would be right. Why do you want to know about Dementor attacks anyways."
"Oh, you don't think it would be right." The wizard sneered. Harry saw with horror that something was happening to his eyes. The pupils were far more dilated than they had any right to be, the blue irises were completely covered by them. "You want to know why I want to know about dementors."
"Well let me tell you something about what is and isn't 'right', you stupid little boy." The wizard roared. "Was it 'right' that your ministry of magic took bribes to ignore the Death Eaters decades ago, when they could have been easily stopped? Was it 'right' that the Death Eaters decided to attack mere children at a school in my country? Was it 'right' that when we asked your Ministry of Magic to send aid, as was their legal and moral obligation, they told us to... what is the expression? 'Go Hang'? Was it 'right' that most of my friends died protecting those children? Was it right that even after we drove them off, some of them came after me a month later, looking for revenge?"
He tore open his shirt with a loud ripping sound. Harry saw a pale, sparsely haired chest and stomach, covered with thick, deep scars. He did not understand how someone could have been so cut up and still survived. Even if they had gotten to a mediwizard right away, there would have been little that could have been done.
"Look what they did to me, Potter!" The wizard cried. "Your filthy countrymen that you want to protect. Look at it!"
Afraid not to, Harry forced himself to look. And the scars were not the worst thing. The wizard's eyes had completely changed now. There was no white, or other color to them. They were silvery-transparent orbs, like spheres of clearest ice that had been hollowed out and filled with the essence of mercury. Or perhaps some vacuum from cold, starless reaches of outer space. For there was not only monstrosity in those eyes, but a terrible empty sadness and pain as well.
"What, what happened to you." Harry gasped "How can you still be alive, after that. And what have you done to yourself? What's wrong with you?"
"Let me give you some advice, Potter. Don't ever take unicorn blood. No matter what temptation you have, how badly you want to live, don't ever take it. It isn't worth it."
"You killed a unicorn? And you talk to me about what's right?"
The wizard closed his shirt again, casting reparo on the tears. "Oh, no. I didn't kill it, Potter. I thought I was quite clever to do what I did. Well, I wasn't as clever as I thought. The results were not at all to my liking. And even though I lived, I wasn't able to stop the Death Eaters from going after my wife."
"Your wife? You were married?"
"Oh yes. They found out where she was. They tortured me for three days, Potter. Three days, under the crucio spell, until I finally talked. Then they stabbed me, as you can see, and left me for dead. To go after my wife. If it had just been me, I would have lain there and died. But I had to save her."
He looked a Potter pleadingly, as if asking for a redemption that no longer existed for him. "I thought I had time. I thought they would spend time hurting her and raping her first. I was a rich man, Potter. I could afford the best mediwizards. If there were anything at all left of her, they could have put her back together. But that's not what they did."
He pointed an accusing finger at Harry. "They had a dementor, Potter! They brought a filthy dementor into Gibson Territory! After we've spent 2 centuries keeping them out! They sucked her soul out! By the time I got there, it was too late. There was nothing left, nothing but an empty drooling shell..."
He closed his eyes, remembering back.
"I killed her myself. It wasn't really her. It was nothing but an empty peice of meat. Why did they have to do that? She wouldn't have hurt them. She could never have hurt them, come to that." He raised his head once more and howled like an animal in agony. "For God's sake, she was a MUGGLE!"
Harry did not know what to say. The wizard was a horrible person, he had done horrible things. But he had also suffered horrible things. "I'm sorry. At least they didn't torture her. She didn't suffer."
This was not at all the right thing to say to the wizard. His eyes, which had started to recover some of their color and human appearance went silvery again, then darkened to purest black, like the depths of a tar pit.
"Didn't suffer! Didn't suffer? Have you not been listening to a single thing I have been saying Potter! Her soul was sucked out by a Dementor! No Heaven for her, Potter! She had the voice of an angel, and there will be no heaven for her! What is there for her now? Eternal darkness! Eternal suffering, in whatever sort of hell exists in a Dementor's guts? All so that you filthy, arrogant English bastards can enjoy keeping dementors and watching it suck out eachother's souls! Well, I won't have it, Potter! I'm getting her back! Do you hear me? I'm getting her back!"
He raised his wand and apparated, reappearing right next to Harry, pressing his frightened, darkened eyes only a few inches away from Harryy's face. "Now I'm going to ask you one last time, Potter: Who sent the dementor after you!"
"You're crazy!" Harry mewled. "There's no way to get a soul back from a dementor! I'm not telling you anything!"
The wizard said nothing. He seized Harry by his neck and apparated, carrying Harry along with him. The next thing Harry knew, they were standing in the midst of some ravaged white plain that was cold, colder than anything he could have ever imagined. The air left his lungs in a rush, crystalizing before him, and he felt his saliva bubbling on his tongue. Then the wizard shifted his grip on Harry's throat, and forced his head upwards, to gaze at a moon that seemed amazing large and multicolored. Until he realized a moment later that that was not the moon up there at all.
He tried to scream at his realization but no sound came out. The effort seemed to break something in his soft tissues, and blood spurted from his nose, drifting down in a lazy, improbable arc. Before Harry could reflect on this peculiarity, the wizard had gripped him tightly once again, and apparated.
Harry was almost sick with relief to find himself back in the wizard's chambers. He collapsed on the wooden floor, trying to hug himself to the heated rocks beneath it, anything to drive the terrible cold from his body. He didn't get a chance too, though. The wizard had seized him by the front of the throat, driving in his fingers so visciously that it actually drew blood, which mingled with the stream coming from his nose.
"Please..." Harry gasped. "You're wife... she wouldn't have wanted you to do this."
For a moment the wizard looked like he was ready to do something even more terrible, at hearing the mention of his wife. Then he looked disgusted and pushed Harry violently to the floor. He strode over to his desk and picked up Harry's wand.
"You haven't got any choice about telling me, Potter. You owe me a life debt. Apparently you are so ignorant that you don't understand what that means, though you're going to find out. I'm sending you back to Hogwarts. And I'm keeping this." He waved the wand, and then put it in a drawer. Then he took a coin out of his pocket, took out one of his own twin wands, and cast an enchantment on it. "I'm giving you a month to change you mind about telling me what I want to know. When you do, take the coin in your hand and speak the word 'returno'. It will take you to me. ONLY you, it will not bring along more than one person, so don't think you can get your headmaster here to fight me."
"What if I don't change my mind in a month." Harry said, wiping some of the blood from his face.
"Oh I think you will." The wizard said in a voice as cold as that horrible place he had just forced Harry to apparate withhim to."And if you don't, I'm coming after you. And unless your headmaster is prepared to confine you to Hogwarts for the rest of your life, there is no way to keep me from finding you."
With that he waved his wand, and before Harry could protest further, the wizard's chambers vanished from around him, and he found himself, to his great relief, lying next to the hedges that marked the boundaries of Hogwarts. Staggering, he got to his feet, and walked towards his school, trying to think of what Dumbledore would say about all this, and in particular, how he was going to explain to him that he had lost his wand.
