Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling
Chapter 11: OotP 6: Revealed!
(Thoughts)
(Looks like there's no point in hiding any longer,) thought the sword.
Luna gazed around the room at the shocked expressions on everyone's faces. Harry had gotten to his feet and started backing away with an expression on his face that looked as if she'd just announced that she was leaving him for Lord Voldemort.
"Harry please try to understand," pleaded Luna. "It's not as bad as it sounds."
By now, Harry had backed all the way to the door. He turned and ran down the stairs, then, shadow walked away.
"Harry, wait!" sobbed Luna.
"I'll go check on the boy," said McGonagall as she followed Harry out the door. "You two handle her."
"Well, well, it looks like you belong in my house after all," drawled Snape.
"Not for long," said Dumbledore. "You realize, of course, that we will have to perform an exorcism."
"You can't!" stated Luna. "We've been together for six years! We've grown together. If you remove the influence of the others, I'll have the mind of an eight year old in the body of a fourteen year old! I won't even remember the three years at Hogwarts that I have behind me. Besides, how would I, with the mind of an eight year old react to the advances of my husband?"
"Unless I'm very much mistaken, your marriage to Harry is over," replied Dumbledore.
"Typical Potter arrogance, marrying an under age girl and thinking he can get away with it," drawled Snape.
"How did the others get inside of you?" asked Dumbledore.
"The war against Voldemort didn't go well," began Luna. "In an effort to change the timeline, I sent my spirit back in time to inhabit the body of my younger self. When I arrived, my mother had just died while attempting to summon a long dead spirit. When I touched my mother, I accidentally absorbed both hers and Slytherin's spirits."
"Is that all there is to your story?" asked Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling.
Luna felt his send a subtle legilimency probe. In response, she shielded her mind with occlumency. Dumbledore increased the pressure but couldn't break through into her mind, so he increased his efforts again. Then, Snape joined in. Luna kept both of them out of her mind until she felt that they were exerting themselves to the utmost, then, she let them in.
Old Luna drew them into a memory that she kept hidden from the others, the aftermath of the Third Battle of Hogwarts.
The Hogwarts castle was a smoldering ruin. All around her were the bodies of the students, teachers and Death Eaters. Here were the few pieces of Ginny that the werewolves had not eaten. Here was the soulless husk of Minerva McGonagall after the Dementors kissed her. Here was Mad-eye Moody. His remaining eye had been gouged out. He was blindly groping around for his lost magical eye. Here were the charred remains of Draco Malfoy. He was so badly burned that his face was barely recognizable. It went on, body after body until both Dumbledore and Snape screamed in anguish as they fled Luna's mind.
"It may already be too late to repair the damage you've done," said Luna. "But if you do anything else to interfere with my daughter's marriage, I will slip youthening and sex change potions into your food, give you a make-over, bind you, gag you, and let the Slytherin boys have their way with you. Do I make my self -"
Luna made a hole in the desktop with her fingers.
"- absolutely -"
Luna pulled on the hole splitting the wood along the grain.
"- perfectly -"
She continued to pull apart the desk.
"- crystal -"
By now, Luna had split the desk in two.
"- clear?"
Luna released the two halves of the desk and they fell away from each other spilling what was left on the desk all over the floor.
"And another thing," said Luna. "Don't waste your time guarding the prophecy. It is not worth the cost in lives."
With that, Luna strode out of the room, her head held high, partway down the stairs, then shadow walked away.
When Luna stepped out of a shadow in the Chamber of Secrets, she found Harry Potter was there, sulking, alone.
"I thought I might find you here," said Luna.
"Hello, Salazar," said Harry through gritted teeth.
"Harry, try to understand," pleaded Luna. "I was afraid of how you might react if you knew. Remember how you and Ginny treated me when I first got sorted into Slytherin? You acted as if I had done something wrong. You two hardly spoke to me until we formed the D.A."
"You had done something wrong!" yelled Harry. "You lied to me! All those years you pretended you couldn't read Slytherin's library and now it turns out that you wrote it! I can't believe I let you talk me into studying the dark arts! Ron and Hermione tried to tell me it was wrong, but you convinced us that we need to know dark magic in order to know how to counter it!"
"Do you want a divorce?" asked Luna, sobbing.
"No I don't want a divorce!" yelled Harry. "I want to be able to trust you again. I want the girl I fell in love with, back. I look into your eyes and I don't know whom I'm talking to. Are you Luna? Her mum? Slytherin? Who are you?"
Luna held out her hand and called forth the sword of icy fire. She thrust it into the floor like it was King Arthur's sword in the stone, then, stepped away from it.
"Most of the time, you're speaking to that part of me that I call: Old Luna," began Luna. "Occasionally, I say something silly. That comes from the part of me I call Young Luna. Only rarely does my mother speak through me. The sword never does."
"You mean: Slytherin?" accused Harry.
"It's true that, at one time, he was Salazar Slytherin," replied Luna. "But now he is just that sword, over there. When the sword is inside of me he can talk to me and share my experiences, but I don't share memories with him, as I do, the others. Right now, he is out side of me and I can't hear him at all.
"So you share memories with your other personalities?" asked Harry.
"To refer to them as personalities is something of a misnomer," replied Luna. "It may have been true at one time that they were separate entities, but by now, we have six years of shared experiences as a composite mind. Young Luna was only eight when the others arrived. She's spent almost half her life as a part of the composite that is me. With each new thing that we experience, we are woven closer and closer together. Still, we can hide certain memories from each other, providing it's not something that we have all experienced. For example, my mother was able to conceal her memories of making love to our father until you and I became intimate. And old Luna has some horrific memories of things from the future that she hopes the rest of us never have to experience.
So, now that I've cleared up who I am, where do we go from here?"
"I need some time to think about this, to figure out what to do," said Harry. "Until I've decided what I'm going to do about this, leave me alone. We're in different houses and years, so we don't need to see each other if we don't have to."
With that, Harry stepped into a shadow and went back to his room in the Gryffindor tower.
Luna cried herself to sleep on the cold stone floor of the Chamber of Secrets.
"Good morning and welcome to Defense Against the Dark Arts. I am Professor Scrimgeour. I apologize for not attending the welcoming feast, but this was a last minute appointment as your original Defense teacher is suddenly facing charges for abuse of power. It seems, that your previous Defense instructors have been pretty hit and miss. Lockhart was a complete fraud, Lupin was a dark creature who should have been put down years ago, and Moody is a deranged paranoid that I had already had to force into retirement from the Auror Division of the Ministry."
"But Lupin was the best teacher we ever had!" interjected Stan.
"What is your name?" demanded Professor Scrimgeour.
"Stan Benford, sir."
"Well, Mr. Benford, you will not interrupt me again," said Scrimgeour. "This class is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship and I am the dictator. Now open your text books to page five and start reading chapter one."
"Excuse me, Professor, but are we going to be doing any actual magic in this class?" asked Luna.
"Five points from Slytherin miss-?" asked Scrimgeour.
"Mrs. Potter, sir," corrected Luna.
A general murmur arose throughout the class.
"SILENCE!" yelled Scrimgeour as he slammed his wand down on the desk.
"All she did, is tell you her name!" said Ginny.
"That will be five points from Gryffindor, and five more points from the next person who mentions that delusional boy who thinks he-who-must-not-be-named is back!" growled Scrimgeour.
"Do you mean Voldemort?" asked Stan. "But he is back. The Quibbler said so."
"TEN POINTS FROM SLYTHERIN AND DETENTION AND THE NEXT PERSON WHO SAYS A WORD WILL BE STUNNED!" yelled Scrimgeour. "Now read your books and keep quiet!"
That evening, after dinner, Stan went back to the classroom to report for his detention. When he got there, Harry Potter and the Weasley twins were already there. As more students filed in, it became apparent that Professor Scrimgeour had given detention to at least one student from each year. Finally, Scrimgeour came in carrying a stack of files.
"Alright, you lot, sit at your desks and face forward until I finish reading your permanent records," said Scrimgeour.
As he sat at his desk reading over their files the hours passed by. When he finished the last file, he slammed it down on the desk and said:
"ALRIGHT YOU LITTLE SHITS, YOU LISTEN AND LISTEN GOOD! You may think that you-know-who is back and he might even be. But the Ministry wants to avoid a panic so that we have time to prepare for the worst. Until we have definitive proof that he's back, we need to keep this quiet and your fear mongering is not helping!
Now, Weasleys and Potter, you are suspended from Quiddich for the rest of the month. Benford, you will not be allowed any free time in the potions lab for a month. Greene, your greenhouse privileges are revoked for a month. Featherston, Blair and Martin, your library privileges are revoked for a month. If any of you act up in class again, there will more harsh penalties imposed. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir."
"I didn't hear you!"
"YES SIR!"
The next night, the D.A. met in the Chamber of Secrets.
"Thank you for coming," began Harry. "Everyone, over the summer, Luna discovered a way of absorbing knowledge from a book just by touching it. Here is a diagram of a dodecahedron. In order to do the spell, you need be able to visualize one clearly in you mind while tracing an octagonal pattern with your wand and saying the incantation, Gnosis. I've brought a stack of books, so everyone grab a book and try out the spell."
Most people had to make several attempts before they got it right. When Hermione had achieved success, she ran up to Harry and enveloped him in a bone-crushing hug before kissing him firmly on the lips.
"Oh Harry thank you so much!" gushed Hermione. "For such a wonderful gift I'd be willing to be your love-slave!"
"Hey!" said Ron.
"Actually, it was Luna's discovery," admitted a blushing Harry.
Hermione pounced on Luna and hugged her.
"Thank you Luna! If you ever need anything, ANYTHING, it's yours for the asking," gushed Hermione.
"I'll keep that in mind," replied Luna.
After everyone had absorbed the knowledge from every book, Harry called everyone back together.
"After tonight, I recommend that everyone absorb all the knowledge from every book in the library," said Harry.
"This brings up another point. Now that Voldemort's back, we need to make this more than a study group. We need to become an army. To this end, I think that we should split up into four groups and train by houses. This will make it easier for us to fit the D.A. into our schedules. To lead these groups, I'm appointing myself, Luna, Susan and Zacharias. Also later in the year, I will be forming us into squads. The A squad will be our best fighters. The B squad will the second best fighters. The other squads will all have specialized purposes, like research.
Several weeks later, Harry got an invitation to attend a special meeting in the Defense classroom. When he got there he found that everyone he had served detention with was there. Also present were Ron, Hermione and all of the other prefects from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Also, the Quiddich captains from those three houses were also invited.
"Thank you for coming," began Scrimgeour. "I have been empowered by the Ministry to form a youth auxiliary to combat threats and disloyalty. Sedition can come in many forms: a word, a deed, even a thought. If you choose to join the Jr. Aurors, you would be charged with rooting out such threats. You'll be giving your self a boost if you ever choose a career in the Ministry, you'll be paid a galleon per week and you'll get to wear a special badge that identifies you as a member of the Junior Aurors.
"Well, if the Ministry wants to throw its money around, who am I to argue," said Ron.
By the end of the evening, Ron and Hermione had joined the Jr. Aurors, but Harry, Stan and the Weasley twins had not.
One evening, Luna, Amanda and Stan were doing their potions homework in the Slytherin common room when Draco Malfoy walked up to them.
"Some of us have formed a Deputy Death Eaters club," whispered Draco. "What do you say, Lovegood, are you in?"
"First of all, I would never lower my self to kissing the hem of a half-blood bigot's robe," said Luna as she raised her middle finger at him to show off her Ravenclaw ring.
"And secondly, the name's not Lovegood, it's Potter," said Luna as she raised her ring finger to show off the Potter ring. She then wiggled her raised fingers in a variation of an obscene gesture.
"You'll be sorry for this," whispered Draco.
That night, after everyone else had gone to sleep, Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle slipped out of their beds and snuck over to Luna's bunk. Soundlessly, Malfoy cast a stunner at her then levitated her out of the bed. The sheet slid off of her as she floated out of the bed revealing her nakedness to the boys. When they got her into the Slytherin playroom, Crabbe put suspension manacles on her wrists and ankles and attached them to four chains that were hanging from the ceiling while Goyle put a ball gag in her mouth. When this was accomplished, Malfoy simultaneously cast an enervation charm and dropped her. She came down so hard that any other girl would have torn ligaments and muscles. As it was, she kicked herself in the face, raising a visible bruise on her face. As she struggled to break loose of the chains, she realized that in spite of her great strength, she didn't have the leverage to break free. All her struggles did was swing her back and forth. Draco had tried to rape her many times. But this time it looked like he might succeed.
Luna awoke with a start. She'd had another of her prophetic dreams. When she opened her eyes she realized that Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were lurking around her bed. Malfoy had his wand pointed at her.
"Stupefy!" yelled Draco.