PART FOUR

CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE SERVENT, THE DRAGON AND THE SNAKE

"Harry! HARRY!" his mother was screaming on top of the other noises. He could hear spells being shouted from a corner of the room to the next.

He couldn't get up. The mirror had fallen on top of him. He could feel glass cutting through his skin on his arms, legs; it was everywhere. He was crushed. He couldn't move. He couldn't even reach his wand.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" cried Sirius' voice.

The heavy mirror frame lifted. Harry tried to use his hands to pull himself up, but there was glass everywhere.

Around him, it looked as though Dumbledore's office had just been visited by a tornado. All the books, odd instruments, chairs, cabinets, everything was spread out on the floor or flying awkwardly in circles.

His mother ran towards him as Sirius sent the heavy mirror frame falling with another loud crash a few feet away from him.

"Are you alright?" said Lily Potter, pulling pieces of glass off his robes. "Oh dear, you're bleeding!"

"Where is Crouch?" he said, ignoring his mother's fretting.

"Don't worry," said his dad, stepping over a broken cabinet. "We got him."

On the other side of the office, Dumbledore was magically lifting the inert body of Barty Crouch Junior from the bookcase on which it had fallen.

"Snape was supposed to be watching him," said Sirius, joining Dumbledore. "I'm going to kill him."

"Before you do," Dumbledore said evenly, "I will go down to the donjons to make sure Severus has not sustained any injury."

"I'm with you," said Sirius who was now holding Crouch's body at the tip of his wand.

A few seconds later, Dumbledore, Sirius and the floating and motionless Crouch were out of sight.

"Sit here, Harry," said James calmly. "Let me look at those cuts."

Harry was walking over to the chair that his father had turned over for him when another strange sound caught his ears.

"The old man isss gone," hissed the voice. "Yesss, get him now."

Harry wheeled around quickly, almost tripping on shards of glass as he did so. Then he saw it. Sliding out of the window on the right of Dumbledore's desk was the slithering form of a long, dark green snake.

"He cannot essscape," hissed the snake.

Suddenly, as Harry's eyes fell on the snake, his scar burst with pain. When he looked up again, his mother and father had moved in front of him, wands at the ready, shielding him from the snake.

"Serpente Evanesca!" his father bellowed.

But the snake was too fast. The spell had no effect whatsoever. The beast had already moved behind the desk. Its long body was now coming in and out of sight as the creature was undulating slowly amongst the debris and under the broken furniture, coming closer and closer.

"It's Voldemort's snake," Harry said loudly, recognising the intruder from his memory of the night in the graveyard. "You can't kill it. Get out of here!"

He tried to push his mother and father out of the way, but at the same time, something grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him down. He fell on the floor on his elbows, avoiding his head clashing with a sharp instrument only by an inch. The snake pulled hard at his legs, bringing him back the same way it had come.

"Stupefy!" cried lily Potter, fury in her voice.

The spell seemed to bounce off the snake's skin.

"Avada…" James started to say.

"NO!" Harry's mom cut in, grasping at her husband's wand. "You could kill Harry."

"Massster isss not happy," the snake was saying to Harry's ears. "Massster will not be fffooled again."

The throbbing on Harry's forehead seemed to intensify.

"Reducto!" he said, pointing his wand at the snake's tail at his ankle, which was the only part of it that he could see. "Stupefy! Petrificus Totalus!" he tried again. None of the spells had any effect. The snake seemed impervious to curses.

Harry's dad suddenly came into sight holding a long silver chandelier. He started to beat the serpent's tail feverishly.

"Release him, you monster!" he said angrily.

The snake stopped short. Harry could hear it hissing in pain. Its tail contracted, tightening its grip on Harry's leg. Then suddenly, as fast as lightening, the snake's head wheeled around, twisting its body in a loop, and collided with James Potter's torso with such force that he went flying across the room. Harry heard a crush as his father landed somewhere around where the Mirror of Erised had stood only a few minutes ago.

"Let go of me!" yelled Harry, willing himself to speak Parseltongue.

"He speaksss, thisss one," replied the snake.

"Let me go!" yelled Harry louder in the snake language.

The snake was pulling him off the floor now. It was dangling him upside down towards the window through which it had come.

"Time to fall," hissed the snake.

Harry tried to grab the window sill while still holding on to his wand, but his hands were slippery with blood and he could not get a firm grip.

"Harry!" cried his mother in horror.

Harry's feet were now over the threshold, but his head was still inside. "Release me!" he screamed in Parseltongue with as much force as he could muster. "Help me!"

Then suddenly, as though answering to his call, something white and shiny shot through the window and across the room. Harry's feet were propelled forward as the snake gave a strong pull on his ankle and his entire body slid out of the window faster than Harry anticipated he would. He was soon hanging from the window sill with his fingers clutching the rim as best as he could.

"The traitor!" hissed the snake in furious rage.

Harry cranked his neck and saw the long and heaving shape of Leo the Dragon surging through the opened window. The snake was making horrible, hissing noises while the dragon was roaring. A fireball shot over Harry's head and flew out of the window. Harry's hands were cut badly. He could feel the blood running down his wrists. He did not know how much longer he could last.

"Hold on, Harry Potter," said Leo's voice in his head. The air around him had gone suddenly misty white.

"I've got you," his mother's voice suddenly said closer to him. She looked like she was coming out of a cloud. She grabbed his left wrist with her right hand. "Hang on," she said. "I can't get a grip…" There were crashing sounds behind her, and roaring and hissing.

Her hands were slippery too. Harry felt his grasp loosen. He was going to fall. He looked below. The tower to Dumbledore's office was perhaps the highest one of the castle. Evening had covered the ground. Everything was a blur. He couldn't see pass the mist. He would be falling into the darkness of the night.

"Harry, give me your wand," his mother said, desperation in her voice.

He knew that if he lifted his right hand to give her the wand, he would fall. Yet, he didn't have another choice anymore. Slowly, he raised his wand towards her.

"Got it," she said.

And then he fell. He didn't hear his mother scream; the wind was too loud. He hit the roof flat on belly. He was plunging fast.

"Leo, help!" he yelled as he was sliding down the towers inclined roof, swinging towards the empty sky.

The roof had the effect of propelling him far away from the tower into nothingness. He didn't have his wand. He was going to hit the ground any second now.

But he didn't. The white and undulating dragon had flown under him and, before he realised what had happened, he was safely riding the mystical beast, soaring into the night sky in a speedy ascension.

"Thanks," Harry let out in a sigh. His scar was no longer burning.

"We seem to be bond to each other, Harry Potter," said the dragon in Harry's head.

Harry smiled and wondered if the dragon knew how much that was true. Leo's race was supposed to be extinguished.

"Yes, I know," Leo said softly.

The dragon wheeled around towards Dumbledore's tower. Harry could see the outline of his parents in the window. He thought he saw tears on his mother's face.

"My dad's OK," he said, relieved. "Can you take me to them?" he asked the dragon.

But the dragon soared in higher and Harry had to grab the creature's neck tighter to avoid falling. He peered down at the tower, but he could no longer see his parents.

"I will make a deal with you, Harry Potter," said the dragon mysteriously.

"I'm listening," replied Harry, now curious.

"In awaking me, you have started a quest that goes beyond the boundaries of this world which you created," the dragon said in Harry's head. Every word was like an echo as though the dragon wanted to leave an imprint in Harry's mind.

"It won't last," said Harry, miserably. It was paining him to have to admit this to Leo, but once the year was over, he was certain that the dragon would vanish from existence as Harry's parents would.

"So certain are you," commented the dragon as though he had read Harry's thoughts. "You have much to learn about the intricacies of magic, of time, and of space."

The castle was almost no longer visible from where they were. It was but a shadowy outline in the night sky. Over his head, Harry could see millions of stars and the round, silvery moon.

"What quest are you talking about?" he murmured to Leo's ears.

"My quest will be to find my own kind," answered the dragon. "Your quest is still to be determined."

"We would leave everything behind?" he asked, the image of his parents bursting into his mind.

"Yes, if you are ready."

Harry thought of the possibilities. Dumbledore had just made it clear that he was not even real. He was nothing more than a dream. Could Leo change that?

"When?" he said. None of this made much sense.

"At the end of the year, I will come and fetch you," Leo answered.

"That still gives me plenty of time," Harry thought. His upcoming date with Ginny came to his mind, then the Third Task, then the broomstick that his father had given him.

"Alright," he said to the dragon. "I'm in."

As soon as he said this, Leo's rising and falling body changed course and resumed its flight towards Hogwarts.

Harry realised with a gasp that his bleeding hands had tinted the dragon's white skin and he spent the rest of the descent trying to wipe it clean with his sleeve. Leo appeared to take no notice of it. He landed gracefully on top of the astronomy tower where Harry had once landed with Buckbeak the Hippogriff in order to save Sirius from the Dementors.

"We will see each other soon, then," said the dragon.

And as he took off again, the mist on Harry's eyes lifted as well. He stared at the starlit sky for a while. He felt strangely peaceful and poised. Perhaps it was only because he was tired and sore and had lost a lot of blood, or else it was because he knew that he had made the right decision.

When he came down from the tower, his parents greeted him with hugs and kisses. They ushered him to the hospital wing where Neville was fast asleep, snoring. Ginny was there too, hunched up on the bed besides Neville's. Madam Pomfrey had pulled a white sheet over her curled up form but her red hair was visible in the moonlight.

After Madam Pomfrey had bandaged all of Harry's cuts, he fell asleep while his parents watched him.

No one made any mention of the Dream Book or of how their world was anything but real.