Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
Okay. BIG HONKING CLIFFHANGER WARNING. If you don't want to read the cliffhanger, then only read up to the last scene break.
The title of this chapter comes from Yeats's poem of the same name.
Chapter Sixty-Eight: Stolen Child"I think that if you just apologized—"
"Draco." Harry controlled himself with an effort, which in this case meant he kept his voice calm, though cool, and didn't look up from the letter he was writing. "We've been over this. I've tried all the compromises I can think of. I've told him I love him, I trust him, that I understand what he's trying to do and why he's trying to do it. I can't just agree with him, though, and I think he'd take an apology the same way right now. When I work out what I actually want to say, then I still have to say it to him without shouting, and so far that hasn't worked." He looked up at Draco, who was leaning on his bed on one elbow and watching Harry as he wrote the letter on top of his Transfiguration text. "So stop talking to me about Snape right now."
Draco snorted. "I don't see why it's so hard. You love and trust me, and you made up with me just fine."
Harry rolled his eyes. "And you actually made an effort, Draco. Snape seems caught in his own little world, one where I'm a child to be protected and he's the father to do it, and he and I have no other roles to play. He actually got huffy last weekend when Opalline said that he was my father and I said he wasn't."
Draco said, "It is very disturbing to hear Professor Snape being talked about as if he were paternal."
"See?" Harry shook his head. "This needs to be fixed, but neither of us can fix it in the moods we're in now." He leaned back on his own elbow, disturbing the Many snake in his pocket, but she just squirmed into a new position and went back to sleep. Argutus was more vocal.
"What are you writing?" he asked, as he slithered along Harry's shoulder and draped himself to look down at the letter. He still couldn't read English, but that didn't keep him from trying. So far, he claimed to be able to recognize "a" and "s." "Is it a challenge to the other snake-speaker, so that you can fight him in a duel to the death?"
"You've been listening to too many fey stories in the Forbidden Forest again," said Harry, deciding that he could do worse than just close the letter with a simple thanks for the time the reader had put into reading it. "Not every war ends in a duel to the death."
"But lots of them do!" Argutus wound his head in several directions, which for him was the equivalent of bouncing up and down. "You could challenge him to a duel to the death, and then all the snakes in the world would come and surround you in a ring. And you would defeat him in a blast of fire, and the snakes would tell the legend of the other snake-speaker's death for the rest of time."
"You've been listening to the Many." Harry started to read his letter over again from the beginning. "Believe me, Argutus, most snakes aren't that concerned with me and Voldemort unless they actually come into contact with us. Even Sylarana only decided to come to me because she wanted someone to compliment her and feed her, and she decided that, since she'd seen me fighting in the Forest with Voldemort, I was able to talk to snakes and could do it. There's no mystical bond between Parselmouths and snakes."
"The Runespoors said there could be," said Argutus, sounding hurt.
"Do we have a mystical bond?" Harry raised his eyebrow and looked at the Omen snake.
Argutus lifted his head and flicked his tongue rapidly three times, one of his signs of irritation. "We could, if I was just a different kind of snake or you were a different kind of human," he said primly.
"Exactly my point." Harry turned back to his letter.
"I'm itchy," said Argutus, running his neck up and down Harry's. "Scratch me."
"My nails aren't sharp enough." Harry gently pushed the snake in the direction of the head of the bed, which had a few sharp ridges he could rub himself against. Argutus was shedding his skin for the first time, and continually wanted someone to oblige him by helping to scratch his skin off, and continually complained that nothing was sharp enough to actually tear the skin and give him relief.
Argutus huffed at him and slithered away. Harry shook his head, completed his reading of the letter, and then looked up to see Draco smiling at him with barely concealed amusement. "What?" he asked, reaching up to his neck, thinking Argutus might have left a bit of shed scales there.
"You have no idea how cute you look, arguing with him like that," said Draco smugly. "Even if I can't understand what you're saying. And I remember that I chose Argutus for you when I watch him with you. That's my gift you get on so well with."
"I am not cute," said Harry, because he didn't even have an answer to the rest of it. He lifted the letter to the Daily Prophet. "Well, here it is. I'm asking them to consider running an article about the equinox meeting, so that as many people as possible know about it. Want to go to the Owlery with me so I can post it?"
Draco made a face as he stood. "That means that Mud—" Harry's gaze cut him, and he flinched. "Uh, I mean, Muggleborns can be there, doesn't it?"
"You heard what I answered Edward Burke last week," Harry said as he turned away. "Yes, if they'll contact me about coming and swear the oath. You really should get over this prejudice of yours, Draco," he added, in the most chiding manner possible. He wasn't going to condemn Draco for his beliefs, but he was going to try to persuade him out of them. "After all, it's not as though there's any difference between Muggleborns and purebloods when it comes to magical skill, is there?"
"Of course there is!" Draco sounded scandalized. Harry made sure to keep his laughter silent. Luckily, he was facing forward as they went through the Slytherin common room, so Draco couldn't see the grin on his face. "Purebloods have been the most powerful wizards and witches throughout history, Harry."
"And I suppose you're stronger than Hermione, then?" Harry asked, as if this were merely a question in which he had an academic interest.
Draco made an inarticulate sound at his back. He knew very well that he was not stronger than Hermione in sheer magical strength, though he probably knew more spells, and he hated it. "That's not the point," he said, finally.
"Really? I thought it was."
"I mean—I meant, that is, that pureblood wizards are strong in other ways than sheer magical strength," said Draco haughtily. "They have a completely different culture backing them than Muggleborns. Muggleborns lose one culture when they enter ours, and then they can't adapt."
"Then Zacharias Smith's education has been sadly neglected," said Harry. "I'll be sure to tell him."
There was a long silence behind him. They got up three whole staircases before Draco gave in and said, "What does that mean?"
"Hermione manipulated him with a pureblood ritual in the dueling club last week," said Harry, grinning at him over his shoulder. "But she must have been making it up, because, as you said, Muggleborns can't adapt. And Zacharias is a pureblood, so he should have realized the ritual was false. Such a sad gap in his education."
"Look," said Draco, and then stopped.
"Yes?" Harry kept his eyes on the staircases ahead of him, and his voice as free as possible of either smugness or laughter.
"Granger's a freak of nature," said Draco firmly.
"Oh," said Harry, with a nod of his head. "So if a Muggleborn is powerful and tries as hard as she can to learn pureblood culture, then she's a freak of nature? But you won't deny that she might be able to be and do those things?"
"That's right," said Draco, sounding relieved.
"Then tell me," said Harry. "If it's neither power nor culture, then what does separate purebloods from Muggleborns?"
Draco seized his shoulder and spun him around, glaring at him. Harry looked up at him and cocked an eyebrow, secretly pleased to note that he no longer had to look so far up. He was growing again, and was probably only an inch shorter than Draco now.
"You can't argue this way with just anyone," Draco said. "You've got to understand that, Harry. There are thick, old prejudices in some of your allies from the meeting that you can't hammer down with mild, reasoned arguments like this."
"I know," said Harry. "But some of them, I will be able to convince just by showing how stupid they're being. The smarter ones, at least. And you're already getting there, Draco." He held Draco's eyes calmly. "You can't deny that Hermione exists and that she's done these things, because that would be even more stupid than holding these prejudices in the first place. So you'll need to start shedding them, unless you want to act like an idiot and shut your eyes to reality."
"It's the blood that separates us, Harry," said Draco steadily. "And you know it. Purebloods have pureblood ancestors. And you might consider that silly and separatist, but there you are. We don't have Muggles for parents. We don't get torn away from one world at eleven years old and plunked down in another. Merlin! You ought to understand that part, at least. You were raised in the wizarding world yourself."
"A very small part of it," said Harry quietly. "I learned most of what I knew about it from books. And one thing that my parents were never very successful at teaching me, even when they tried, was that only certain people could inherit certain things, because they were pureblood or Dark or Light. I learned the Dark pureblood rituals, Draco. I wasn't born to them, if you can even be born to such a thing. And as for having no contact with non-magical people, pureblood families have Squib children sometimes, and you know it."
Draco let him go with a scowl. "It's still different," he muttered. "I don't expect you to understand, Harry, I really don't, but it's about family. That's not something that people are going to give up easily."
"I know," said Harry. "I do know that, Draco. But saying that they won't give it up easily isn't the same as saying that they'll never give it up at all, or that I can't get some people to realize what blind gits they're being."
"You really do mean it, don't you?" Draco asked resignedly as they started to climb towards the Owlery again. "You want to change the way people live. That's what you said at the meeting."
"Yes," said Harry.
Draco sighed. "I don't know why I'm doing this," he complained to the ceiling. "Since I don't even believe in half of what you're spouting, and I'm a pureblood, born to lounge around and be served delicate sweets by house elves. But I'll tell you to start with the children first, Harry. I was thinking the other day that I didn't want to kill Muggleborns because I know some of them. It's different when you think about killing someone of a different kind of blood, and when they have faces. So you'll have better luck with Millicent than with her father, for example."
Harry turned around and smiled at him. "Thanks, Draco. I really do appreciate it."
"Someone has to protect you when you're being blind," Draco replied. "I—"
Harry dropped to one knee abruptly on the steps, his letter fluttering out of his hand as he slammed it to his scar. It had started bleeding. Harry tried to breathe through the pain that possessed every inch of his body, his mind racing. Was Voldemort here at Hogwarts? That was the only thing he could imagine that would start his scar flaring this way.
"Harry?" Draco's voice, and even the touch of his hands on Harry's shoulder, were distant, and no more important than blocks of wood.
Harry opened his eyes. He found himself in an unfamiliar house, looking straight at a window through which he could see a dark sky. This wasn't now, then—it was still early afternoon—but some time at least a few hours in the future.
He turned, and saw a long trail of blood on the floor of what looked like an ordinary Muggle hallway. Harry followed it, not knowing if he was moving his body or not. He was so entirely gone into the vision that he couldn't feel or hear Draco anymore.
The trail of blood ended in a room with Muggle devices shoved back to the walls, and an awful kind of rack set up in the middle of it. Harry felt his stomach heave as he stared at the two bodies hanging on the various branches of the thorn tree that had grown up through the floor. He knew them, though he hadn't seen them in almost ten years, and had only met them once. This would be his Muggle aunt and cousin, the Dursleys.
Their blood ran from star-shaped holes in their bodies, probably cut with the help of knives or magic. It was painted over their faces in careful masks, patterns that Harry recognized from looking at some of the more unpleasant books Regulus had gifted him with. Dark magic, evil magic, magic that could be used only when the victims of the ritual were blood relatives of a target.
He heard a distant roar as he stood there, and he knew that Voldemort and the storm he would have raised from this blood were coming. It made sense that Voldemort would strike at the Dursleys, really, Harry thought numbly. They were the most vulnerable of his blood relatives. Connor, Lily, and James were all too well-protected.
The vision ended as Harry felt the hurricane gathering closer and closer at his back. If Voldemort completed that ritual, he thought from deep in his daze, he wouldn't be able to defend himself against it. It would strike through the common bond that linked Petunia to Lily, and Lily to him—a bond that he wouldn't be able to get rid of unless he somehow tore every bit of shared genetic material from his body.
And it would likely hurt Connor, too, and perhaps even his parents. It would depend on whether Voldemort thought he needed to get rid of them. Connor, at the least, he probably would kill.
Harry sat up, slowly, leaning against the wall of the staircase. He knew that he was moving too slowly—though not fast enough for Draco, who was shouting in his face—but he needed to get his bearings. He could not remember where the Dursleys lived, which meant he couldn't ride his broom there, and he wouldn't want to Apparate based on a glimpse of a bloodied, altered room several hours in the future. The Knight Bus was a possible solution, but he still had to learn their address. He hoped that Dumbledore would have kept it among his papers, and that McGonagall would still have those papers.
"Harry!" Draco was insisting on his attention. "What's the matter?"
"I had a vision," said Harry. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. He didn't know if that was from the searing pain that had finally left him, or the shock of the vision. "Voldemort's going to be attacking my Muggle aunt and cousin, I think. He'll use blood magic to get at me and Connor."
"You can't trust those visions," Draco said desperately, kneeling down next to him. "I didn't hear much of your conversation with Snape at the meeting, but I heard enough. Surely Voldemort could have sent you a vision to entrap you and make you do just this? Go running off to protect these Muggles, and straight into a trap?"
Harry let out a sharp breath. "I don't know. The vision could have come because of the blood connection we share, Draco. The magic of families will sometimes reach out and attempt to protect its members like that." Draco was nodding slowly, reluctantly; he'd probably heard of at least one instance where one member of the Malfoy family had a vision of another in trouble. "I have to look in one of the books Regulus got me." He strangled his own impatience, which was both trying to calculate how much time he might have left and get him to dash to the Headmistress's office right away. "You're right. This could be a trap. I'll have to look up this kind of vision in the books and see if this is actually likely, that it could be a real thing."
Draco's hands were shaking as he supported Harry to his feet. Harry glanced curiously up at him. "Are you all right, Draco?"
"You were on the floor in such intense pain that you stopped breathing for a little while, you prat," Draco said. "What do you think?"
Harry pressed his hand briefly, in apology, and then they started back down the stairs in the direction of their bedroom, and Harry's trunk, where he'd put the books Regulus gave him.
There is a blood ritual that can be performed with any blood relative in the first two generations of connection. Thus grandparents can be used against their grandchildren, and second cousins can be used against each other. Further than that, this ritual cannot bind them.
The words beat in Harry's head like wings as he lurched against the side of the Knight Bus. Draco, sitting in the armchair across the aisle, reached out as if to help him, and then lost his own balance and launched sideways. Harry heard him mutter something uncomplimentary about "Muggle-based" methods of transportation.
Connor, who was sitting in the chair in front of Harry, turned around with a grin. He had balanced himself perfectly, somehow. "Fun, isn't it?" he yelled, as the Bus spun around a corner and then shot down a street that Harry was glad he couldn't see too clearly.
Harry ground his teeth and didn't say anything. The vision he'd seen still blazed in his head, and the words of the Black book he'd looked up the ritual in still pounded in his blood, his heartbeat.
His blood.
The ritual must be begun precisely at the turn of nightfall, the moment of sunset. The victims—the ritual may be done with one victim alone, but every sacrifice gives it an added potency—must be trapped without the use of magic that binds or confines. The only magic used in this ritual must be that which draws blood.
Harry heard Auror Moody's voice from the front of the Bus, urging the driver, Ernie Prang, to go faster. Though that would mean more jostling, Harry was glad for it. They were still probably an hour from sunset, but it was February, not Midsummer, and the daylight was waning fast.
Tonks, who was sitting opposite from Moody, had already turned to him a few times with different faces and tried to cheer him out of his bad mood, but it was hard for Harry to be comforted. The vision was still present whenever he closed his eyes, and the book had said that it would be present for an unnatural period of time, unless he died from the magic raised by the blood ritual.
The ritual relies on star-shaped cuts. What "star-shaped" means has been widely debated, but in general stars with five points are used (though four-pointed ones may be cut as well, with no apparent loss of potency). The victims must be marked on every limb and on their torsos, and their hands and feet removed. Then their faces must be painted with the blood in the shape of a Guile mask (see the description on page 263), and their bodies impaled, preferably on a thorn. This operation must be completed before midnight. If it is, then a storm will come to the caster's call. Named a 'blood-gale,' this will tear through the shared bloodline at the caster's command, destroying any specified blood relative of the sacrificed victims within two generations of connection.
On occasion, this ritual has been thwarted by a vision—the family bloodline reaching out to defend itself. This happens most often with Lord-level wizards and witches. The vision, which usually comes to the intended victim of the blood-gale, will show the completion of the ritual several hours in advance, and thus warns the victim in time, hopefully, to prevent the sacrifice. The vision lingers behind the eyes, burning, for up to a month, or, in one case, six months. It gives no guarantee, however, that the victim can actually thwart the completion of the ritual. And it cannot be controlled, either compelled to appear by a victim who knows that his family may be in danger, or stopped by the caster.
Harry leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. He'd read the book, and he'd discussed with Draco the possibility that this was a trap, and Draco had reluctantly agreed that it didn't seem likely, not when the vision would come in spite of everything Voldemort could do. But he'd insisted on taking proper precautions, and everything he said was so sensible that Harry had agreed to it.
They'd gone at once to the Headmistress. Though pale-faced, she had told Harry that, yes, Albus had retained information on the Dursleys, as he had on almost everything connected with "Lily's boys," which he usually referred to Harry and Connor as in his own writing. Their address was Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.
Harry tensed against the impulse to go charging off, and firecalled the Minister from McGonagall's hearth. Scrimgeour had agreed without complaint when he heard the vision to ward Lily and James as tightly as he could, just in case Voldemort intended to send Death Eaters to sacrifice them at sunset. If they were the targets of the blood-gale, and Voldemort did manage to kill the Dursleys, there was little any guards could do to stop it.
But Harry, of course, didn't intend that Voldemort's ritual should succeed. He abhorred the thought of someone dying simply because they were his relatives, when they'd done nothing to attract Voldemort's attention, and he would have ignored them otherwise.
That done, he would have been all for calling the Knight Bus and going to the Dursleys' house himself, in the company of Draco, who refused to stay back, and Connor, to make sure that he wouldn't be left behind as a target, held only by Hogwarts' weakened wards. But Scrimgeour had said—well, insisted, really—on sending two Aurors, and Tonks and Moody were both skilled, experienced, and trustworthy enough that Harry had accepted.
It made sense. Voldemort would surely have people in place already, since he would know that Harry might receive a vision like this. The Death Eaters were unlikely to move before sunset, since they would have to confine their prey without binding spells, and the easiest way to do that was inside their house. But while Harry thought he could face them alone, he had to admit that it made sense to have two battle-tested adults come along with him. Other Aurors would arrive later, nearer sunset, to help if they were needed, to catch Voldemort and some of his Death Eaters if they could.
Harry had asked the Minister why he was so determined to help. Scrimgeour had wrinkled his brow as if the question were a stupid one, and said, "When the wind blows, Harry, you don't pretend it isn't blowing. And I'd rather get the good from this ill wind, by helping the one Lord-level wizard alive who doesn't seem to have an interest in corrupting my Ministry."
Harry had nodded his thanks, and then they'd waited for Tonks and Moody to come through the fireplace. Moody had cast a curse first thing to test Harry's vigilance, and Harry had blocked it with a shield. Moody grinned, his familiar-strange face—Harry had seen it across the desk for months at a time in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but of course that had been as Mulciber's mask—fierce and half-mad. Harry had heard Moody described as the wildest of the Aurors. It made sense.
"A chance to punish them as they should be punished," Moody had snarled, and slapped his wand so hard against his hand that Harry had thought for a moment it would break. "I like this mission."
Tonks had rolled her eyes and whispered at Harry from beneath her mop of currently long, currently blue, hair, "He's hated most of the missions Burke's given him. Complained that they aren't half as challenging as the ones when he was young."
Harry had nodded, and then they'd gone outside Hogwarts to catch the Knight Bus. The Ministry had no one who knew the area where the Dursleys lived well enough to Apparate in or create a Portkey, and no one magical lived very near on the Floo Network. Once Tonks and Moody saw the street, they could contact the other Aurors and give them a detailed enough image of it for Apparition.
"Here," Moody said, his voice sharp enough to cut Harry's absorption in a moment. "Stop here."
Harry looked up, or at least looked up once he'd recovered from the Knight Bus throwing him into the seat in front of him as it jerked to a stop. They were on a street that stirred vague memories in him. He thought he'd seen it the one time Lily brought him to meet the Dursleys. The sign said nothing about it being Privet Drive, though.
Moody turned back to look at him, teeth bright. "Don't want to alarm our little friends by arriving on the street itself in the Bus," he said.
Harry nodded. The Knight Bus was rather noticeable. Death Eaters might have seen them already, but once they got out of the Bus, they would be under Moody's expert Disillusionment Charms. They were more likely to think it was normal wizarding travelers.
At least, so Harry hoped. If not, the best the Death Eaters could do, since it was still half an hour to sunset, was try to stop Harry and his companions, and he was ready if they tried that. He called, and his magic swirled around him. He also touched the pocket of his robes, where the Slytherin tie with Dumbledore's magic stored in it rested. He still hadn't figured out a way to cleanse that power, but he had less compunction about using it against Death Eaters than just about anyone else.
Moody cast the Disillusionment Charm on himself, then on Connor, Draco, and Harry. Harry shivered a bit as the spell spiraled down over him like a cold, rotten egg. Tonks had already changed her features to that of a nondescript woman in ordinary wizarding robes, to give any watching Death Eaters an excuse for the Bus stopping here in the first place. She ambled off the Bus, looked around several times, and began wandering up the street, muttering and comparing addresses on a piece of parchment in her hand. Harry relaxed a bit. Tonks was in danger, that was true, but she was in less danger than most other Aurors in the same situation, if only because she so emphatically did not look like an Auror. She would find an out-of-the-way place where other Aurors could Apparate in.
Moody guided them off under the Disillusionment Charm, and they went slowly towards the street that Harry knew must be Privet Drive. Behind them, the Bus charged away like a mad thing. Draco gave another mutter about "Muggle-based transportation," but fell silent quickly enough.
Privet Drive was a very Muggle place, Harry decided almost at once. The houses were small, and square, and neat, and looked as if their owners' greatest ambition was for them to have as few distinguishing features as possible. Here and there a different kind of fence surrounded the snow-dusted gardens, or a different kind of curtain hung in a window, but altogether, it was uniform and devoid of magic. Harry shook his head. There are wizards in hiding, though. We have to remember that, that we're almost certainly being watched.
Number Four had no one obviously standing outside it. Harry swallowed. He wondered if the rooms he'd seen in his vision were inside it, not blood-spattered right now, but about to be in another twenty minutes. The light above them and around them had turned red, as if in anticipation.
Harry arrived at the door and knocked, once, not yet taking off the Disillusionment Charm.
A loud voice shouted from inside, "Muuuuum!" A moment later, footsteps sounded, coming towards the door. Harry tensed, thinking the Death Eaters might take the opportunity to attack, but nothing had happened yet. Besides, Moody would be standing at his back, watching the street, and his magical eye could see through Invisibility Cloaks and most other means of concealment.
A woman opened the door. Harry stared, but, try as he might, he could see barely any resemblance to his mother in her face. This woman had lived a perfectly ordinary life, he thought, and her face had querulous lines and laughter lines, and her eyes had a tendency to squint. She did not look as if she had ever seen the blast of a sacrifice burning, which was the thing Harry remembered best about Lily from his childhood.
Moody muttered a quick spell to make the doorstep and door of Number Four unnoticeable for a few moments, and then dropped the Disillusionment Charms. The woman, whom Harry knew must be his Aunt Petunia, reeled back, clutched at the door, and then put one hand over her mouth. Harry thought she was suppressing a scream.
He stepped forward, letting the movement draw her eyes to him. "Aunt Petunia?" he asked.
She froze for a moment, as though that combination of words was one she'd never expected to hear, and then looked at him. Harry saw her recognize him—by his green eyes, if not as the little boy she'd met once nine years ago.
"You," she said. "Harry." Her eyes found Connor for a moment, flinching away from Draco and Moody as too obviously "wizarding." "And you. Connor. Her boys." The words were poisonous. "What do you want? What are you doing here? Bringing this sort of—of freakishness to our doorstep?" Her hand scrabbled at the door like a rat's claw.
Draco stiffened. "This is your aunt, Harry?" he asked, his own voice icy. "Muggle or not, there's no excuse for such poor breeding." He lifted his head and managed to look down his nose at Petunia, though she was taller than he was.
"The freakishness is already here, Aunt Petunia," said Harry, ignoring Draco entirely. "Did Mum ever tell you about a wizard called Voldemort?"
Petunia bowed her head, and her cheeks grew paler. "That name," she whispered. "That man!"
"He's targeted your family," said Harry. "He plans to sacrifice you at sunset today. I came to stop it, but we don't have much time. I think his servants are already here, watching. May we come in?"
Petunia nodded as if overwhelmed, and stepped mechanically backwards. Harry went in first, but Connor wasn't far behind him, looking around the Muggle house with open curiosity. Harry wasn't sure what was stranger to him, personally: the furnishings, such as the unmoving pictures, or the fact that he couldn't sense any magic in the house at all except what they brought with them.
"Muuuum!"
An apparent half-giant watered down and made to grow sideways instead of up came waddling down the hall. Harry blinked. That must be Dudley. The vision hadn't shown him just what his cousin would look like while still alive. He looked grotesquely fat, that was how he looked.
"Who're they?" he asked, staring at Moody. Moody's magical eye rolled around to point at him, and Dudley shrieked and backed away, waving his hands in the air as if he thought that would make Moody cease to exist.
"Friends, Dudders," said Petunia in a voice which had lost all its tone. "Go to the kitchen, all right? Sit in the kitchen. Mummy will be along in a moment."
Dudley hesitated a moment, eyeing all four of them as if he thought they might chop him apart and use him for Potions ingredients, and then turned and lurched back up the hall. Petunia returned her gaze to Harry.
"We should all be in one place, shouldn't we?" she whispered. "Just in case they try to take us while we're isolated."
Harry nodded, wondering now just how much Petunia knew. Lily had claimed that Petunia was jealous of her magic and had cut off contact with her completely, but this sounded like Petunia knew at least a little about the Death Eaters.
"Yes," he said. "You should call your husband, too. Uncle Vernon?" he added, when Petunia just stared at him.
"Vernon's dead," Petunia said shortly. "A car accident, two years ago." She shook her head, as if asking herself why in the world she was discussing this with freakish wizarding strangers, and then turned and led the way into the kitchen. Her back was thin, her shoulders set with determination.
Harry followed her, and found Dudley cowering on the other side of a large table. "Mum?" he whispered the moment he saw Petunia. "Who are they?"
"Your cousins, dear," said Petunia. "Harry and Connor Potter." She cast a thin-lipped glance at Moody. Harry had to admire her strength of mind; some of his students who'd had weeks to get used to Mulciber-as-Moody couldn't have looked at him as if he should be binned. "I don't know who these two are," she added, in a tone that implied introductions should have happened by now.
"Alastor Moody," said Harry quickly, indicating Moody. "He's an Auror, the wizarding equivalent of a—"
"I know what the Aurors are," said Petunia, eyes distant. "And this one?" She glared at Draco, who glared back.
"Draco Malfoy," Draco said. "And really, Harry should have introduced you to me, because I'm above you in ways you can't imagine."
Petunia's gaze became glacial. Harry stepped on Draco's foot and shook his head at him, then looked back at Petunia. "I'm sorry to burst in on you this way," he said. "I know it's sudden."
"You said that my family had been targeted for a ritual," said Petunia, apparently recovering herself enough to remember that. "What kind of ritual?"
Harry winced. "A blood ritual," he said.
"So he's targeting us because of my sister," Petunia finished, in a dead voice.
Harry nodded.
Petunia sat down at the table and said nothing. Harry hesitantly arranged himself across from her. Connor took the seat next to Dudley, still looking around him with friendly fascination, while Dudley peered at Connor through his fingers, shaking. Moody began pacing a beat between the kitchen window and the door, his wand already out. Draco stood behind Harry's chair, putting a hand on his shoulder as if that was the only way he could keep from screaming at the sheer Muggle-ness of it all. Harry waited, trying to be as alert as Moody, and suspecting he was failing. His gaze kept coming back to his aunt's strained, pale face, filled with memories, all of which looked bad.
"Where is Lily?" Petunia asked abruptly. "Why didn't she come?"
Harry winced. He hadn't thought of the fact that Petunia wouldn't know what had happened to her sister, either. "Mum's in prison," he said.
Petunia spun and stared at him.
"For child abuse," said Harry, and looked away from her. The silence in the kitchen was thick with unspoken things. Harry caught a glimpse of Connor looking anxiously at him, and shook his head to tell his twin he was all right. Connor sat back in his chair, but didn't seem reassured. Draco's hands were both on Harry's shoulders now, rubbing as if they could calm him that way. Harry didn't think he would relax until this was all done. He reached out intently with his magic, seeking some sign that Voldemort was here.
"She was stolen from me, you know."
Harry looked back at Petunia. None of the Muggle lights in the kitchen were on, meaning the only illumination came from the sunset. Harry shivered, even though the light wasn't nearly as bright as the blood in his vision depicting the Guile mask on Petunia's face.
"She was stolen from all of us, but mostly me," Petunia whispered. "She was my sister before that letter came. My sister. My parents could accept it, after a while. I think she convinced them it was her destiny to go." Petunia spoke "destiny" in a high-pitched voice that told Harry exactly what she would think of prophecies and the wild Dark and the rest of it. "And she was never the same again."
She turned and looked at Harry. "You're like fairies," she said fiercely, "all of you."
Harry blinked, trying to figure out how wizards were like creatures only a few inches high and not very bright.
"You steal children," Petunia said. "Just like the old legends. You took my sister from me. She was never the same after that first year. Just talked a lot of nonsense about blood status and not fitting in, and when I tried to tell her what did it matter, because she had a family that loved her, she looked at me and said, 'That's why you can't understand, Petunia. Because you're a Muggle.' She made no sense any more. She'd spent eleven years of her life being as Muggle as I was, and now suddenly she wanted to be some kind of grand witch, respected by all. Magic was all there was to her. I didn't matter. Nothing mattered but that freakishness."
Harry could feel Draco opening his mouth. He reached up and squeezed one of his hands, hard. Draco shut his mouth with an audible smack.
"And then she came home after her third year there and started talking even more nonsense," Petunia went on. Harry wondered if she even realized she was speaking aloud. Her voice rambled, and didn't make it seem so. "About sacrifices, and how she understood what they meant now, and almost no one else did, and they were all going to save the wizarding world from Voldemort." She clenched her hands on her arms as if she were cold. "I told her I wanted my sister back. She got this pitying look in her eyes and said, 'I'm not just your little sister anymore, Petunia. Can't you see that? I'm going to save the world, and you're just going to live a little, petty life and die a little, petty death. This is better. The Headmaster says so.'"
Petunia turned around, as if she'd exhausted her reserves of bitterness. Harry didn't think so, though, and waited, still reaching for Voldemort. Sunset was drawing closer and closer.
"And now she's in prison for child abuse." Petunia laughed dully. "I wonder if she thought of that, too, when she was making sacrifices? But she couldn't have. She was stolen." She stared down at the table, and said no more.
It was just past sunset, and Harry was jumpy.
Dudley had finally decided Connor wasn't going to hurt him, and tried to make conversation. Connor replied with bright incomprehension, but Dudley kept it up, probably to soothe his own fear.
Petunia hadn't looked up from the table since she'd finished her strange little speech. Draco was currently hovering over Harry as if he would protect him against an attack from the door, and muttering phrases that Harry recognized as ones they'd used in his training in possession under his breath. Moody snarled like a grumpy hound, glaring out the window as if it was the sun's fault that he hadn't seen any action yet.
Then pain grabbed Harry by the throat so suddenly that he couldn't speak. He stiffened, and his scar burned, and a vision stole his sight again.
Voldemort was laughing, and the words overrode and twined with the vision, until Harry found he was listening more than looking.
"I couldn't stop a vision if I sent a blood-gale, Harry, but I could make up a false vision that would make you think of a blood-gale," he said, and he laughed, and his laughter tore the world apart. "Carefully manipulate it, and send you running to the wrong place. Lord Voldemort is more clever than you think.
"And now this." His voice sharpened, turned racking. Harry shook with the force of it. "Come without your wand. Come alone. If I sense either your wand or someone with you, including your Omen snake or your little Malfoy, I will destroy him at once. It's a simple enough matter, Harry. You can see where we are in my vision. You know how to get here." His voice soared exultantly again. "I swear, Harry, by blood and breath and bone, your life for his. Come to me, and yield yourself willingly, and he lives. Violate any of the conditions I have named, and he dies." He laughed again. "I wouldn't hesitate very long, Harry. Each moment you wait gives me more time to bleed him."
The vision ended. Harry sagged forward over the table, working to get breath back in his lungs, and answer Draco's shaking and shouting, and assimilate what he'd seen.
Voldemort had Snape.