15.
Snape worried the hem of his robes as the aurors dropped one by one into the hole under the sinks in the abandoned girls' lavatory. He shared a fearful glance with Lucius, whose own stoic public face was frayed at the edges. They waded through the labyrinth that wound through the underbelly of Hogwarts and Severus's eyes widened at the sight of the massive skin that the basilisk left in the carrion that surrounded him. How could anybody have missed this? The staff followed as the aurors cleared each antechamber and motioned for them to follow. At last, they reached the main chamber and McGonagall and an auror rushed to examine the two girls they found at the entrance.
"Alive," McGonagall said, sighing heavily with relief.
"Where's Harry?" Severus's uncharacteristically worried voice cut off the relieved murmurs floating around the room.
"I've got him!" an auror shouted from within the main chamber. "Someone with medical training get over here and hurry!" The team had gone in and fanned out to make sure they were in no danger from the basilisk. Fawkes, who'd remained at Harry's side, chirped and caught their attention. Severus's stomach dropped as he approached the auror who'd spoken. The basilisk lay mere feet from the limp figure the auror was stooped over.
"It's him. Bloody hell, did he kill that thing himself?" the auror cursed, taking his hat off from where he was trying to staunch the bleeding as Severus shoved him out of the way. Gently, Snape peeled away Harry's robes and found puncture wounds in his shoulder. A disconcerting gurgling sound came quietly with every breath Harry took.
"He's been bitten," Severus cried. Beside him, Fawkes nudged his arm, giving him a meaningful look.
"You gave him tears?" Fawkes nodded. "Can you give him any more?" The bird shook his head, nodding towards Harry's grievous wound.
"You've given all you can and it wasn't enough to heal it," Snape said in understanding as he hastily pulled potions from his robes and dumped them on the wound to make the blood clot and start the healing. Fawkes nodded vigorously.
"I don't see any more traces of venom," Snape said when the work was done. The potion worked its way down through to Harry's lungs and mended the wounds there. Harry coughed violently, expelling the blood from his lungs, though he remained unconscious. His torso bucked from the pain and trauma before flopping motionless to the floor. Snape pressed a finger to Harry's neck and found a strong pulse.
"That's a good lad," he hissed with relief. "Thank God." Gingerly, he spelled bandages over the worst of the wounds and levitated him off of the grimy chamber floor.
Harry woke with a sharp intake of breath and sat bolt upright in bed. Pain blossomed in his body that took away his breath and held him there, curled in tightly on himself, until calloused hands pushed him gently down into the pillows and held him until the pain left. He lay there panting, staring up at the too-white ceiling of the hospital wing and wondered how he'd gotten there. Then, he felt the hollow space in his mind that Tom used to occupy and the memories crashed down on him in a ceaseless current that swept him unwillingly along. He was too numb even to cry and though he knew Tom would be safe, that he would have Lockhart's corpse to help him, Harry couldn't help but feel the loss gnaw at his gut. Dimly, he heard someone shouting something and he only wanted it to be quiet so that he could think and be alone. The one calloused hand returned and tenderly touched his cheek, delicately tracing the wounds there as if they would disappear with every stroke. Harry turned his head slightly and followed the hands to their owner. Snape sat sullenly in a chair by his bed looking as if he'd been crying for days and hadn't slept in that time. His face brought Harry back to the present and he squeezed Snape's hand with as much strength as he could muster.
"Hey," he rasped, opening a wound on his lips as he tried to smile weakly at Snape.
"Shh… Just rest, Harry," Snape said, taking Harry's hand in both of his own.
"Are the others hurt? Voldemort, he-"
"Everyone is fine except for you, Harry," Snape said brokenly, his brow furrowing sadly. Harry took a few moments to examine himself. He lay shirtless with most of his torso swathed in endless yards of linen bandages, splotches of blood the only telltale signs of the wounds that lay beneath. His wand hand was wrapped to treat the burns caused by his frantic casting. Under the thick woolen blankets, his left leg felt all wrong and he realized that in the confusion, his ankle must have broken and Madame Pomfrey mended it he slept, though incompletely. Of all his mostly healed wounds, the most grievous was the one that the basilisk's fangs made in his upper chest. He could breathe, so his lungs had clearly been mended, but he could still feel the pain and stiff, swollen unresponsiveness where muscle was impaled and torn.
"How long have you been here?" Harry felt like his mouth was full of cotton balls.
"Since I brought you here from the chamber," Snape said, still holding Harry's hand.
"How long ago was that?"
"Three days. You've been asleep three days."
"How did you find me?" Harry couldn't remember if he left the chamber door open.
"Voldemort left the chamber passage open in his haste to flee the castle. Harry, the state you were in...I almost lost you again. I knew there was something off about Lockhart."
Feigning ignorance, Harry asked, "So he was possessed?" Snape nodded, clenching his jaw.
"He stormed out of the castle before anyone could stop him. We thought Lockhart had just decided to run away and got out before anyone realized he was gone. It wasn't until Draco and Weasley came to me for help that we realized you were in the chamber. Lucius showed up with a team of aurors and we found you and the girls in the chamber."
The privacy curtain around his bed swished open, revealing Healer Smethwyck and Madame Pomfrey, both trying to squeeze their way past each other.
"You're awake!" Smethwyck shoved Poppy aside unceremoniously and started handing him potions, all the while casting diagnostic charms.
"Oh goodness we were worried you wouldn't come out of it this time," Poppy sobbed into her apron.
"Yes, you are one of the very first people in centuries to encounter a basilisk and live," Smethwyck said breathlessly reading the data that appeared before him.
"I'll publish these findings in my next article and we will finally have definitive methods to treat basilisk bites." Smethwyck swooned a little bit, thinking of the possibilities. He looked over and saw Harry and Snape wearing matching puzzled expressions, eyes flitting from hysterical mediwitch to the equally hysterical mediwizard. Smethwyck cleared his throat and placed a hand gently on Harry's shoulder.
"I can't tell you how happy I am that you are alive, Harry."
For the next few hours, the hospital wing received a slow trickle of visitors regulated by Madame Pomfrey.
"Only one group at a time please," she said to the crowd that waited by the door, "Harry needs his rest. He's only just woken up."
The very first people allowed in were his family. Lucius lead his wife in quietly while Draco trailed behind them, trembling. To preserve his modesty, Harry put on his pajama top, though it remained unbuttoned so that Madame Pomfrey and Smethwyck could monitor his bandages. They talked of how his recovery would fit into the rest of the school year and how they could make things more comfortable for him back home. Draco's eyes flickered back and forth between his hands and the bandage peeking out from Harry's shirt as the adults spoke. Smethwyck and Madame Pomfrey lead the Malfoys away and left Draco sitting at the foot of Harry's bed.
"We keep meeting like this," Harry said, laughing weakly. Draco floundered a little bit before he sighed and thwacked Harry playfully on the shin.
"Yeah, I really think Madame Pomfrey might make good on that promise. I'll put in a good word for you with Father and I think we can get you your own ward in here." Draco tried to keep his voice steady, but it broke once as he spoke. His smile was forced and never reached his eyes.
"Hey, come here," Harry said, scooting to one side so that Draco could climb in and sit with him. Draco toed his shoes off and gingerly climbed into bed on Harry's uninjured side, legs still dangling off of the side of the bed. They slung one arm each companionably around each other's shoulders.
"Want to talk about it?" Draco asked cautiously after a while. Harry shrugged.
"What else is there to tell? Voldemort lost control of the basilisk and it went after him, so he ran away and I killed it. I was more afraid you and Ron were dead."
"Harry, the only person who was really hurt after all of this was you. You're obviously more bothered about this than you're letting on. Stop putting on a brave face and tell me what happened."
Harry made sure no other magical energy signatures were about and whispered, "Dumbledore sent Fawkes to me in the Chamber."
"We know. Father reported Fawkes's presence to the board. The ministry's launched a full investigation into Dumbledore's affairs."
"Keep your voice down."
"Why? He'll be sacked within the day."
"What can the investigation really do? There's no real proof that he knew where I was or where the Chamber was. He could say that Fawkes went to the Chamber on his own and no one in the ministry could say anything."
Draco huffed frustratedly and held onto Harry a little bit tighter. "That sucks."
"Yeah, it does," Harry huffed back.
Harry limped cautiously into Gryffindor common room a few days after he woke in the hospital wing. Exams were cancelled and he wanted out from the hospital wing, so there was nothing Madame Pomfrey could do except let him go. The second the portrait swung closed behind him, he was met with the shocked faces of Ron and Hermione, who'd been unpetrified before he woke.
"Harry," Hermione breathed, scuttling to help him into a chair, "what are you doing out of the hospital wing?"
"I told them I was fine," he said, returning Hermione's embrace, "and Madame Pomfrey let me out." Ron pulled up another chair and sat on Harry's other side. They sat together talking, Ron and Hermione asking after Harry's health and Harry asking after theirs. Slowly, the other Gryffindors trickled out of their rooms to gather quietly around the quietly conversing trio. While most of them pretended to be doing other things around the common room, a few, including a teary Ginny, came up shyly to shake his hand and utter a quiet thank you. Harry accepted them with his good hand and awkwardly smiled up into each face, though he could only maintain a few seconds of eye contact before he felt too awkward. Harry received the same treatment everywhere he went from almost everyone he came across and it was driving him bonkers. He gave up on lunch the next day and decided to head straight for the Room of Requirement. Draco and Pansy cornered him outside the Great Hall and directed him outside.
"What are you doing?" Harry limped along without protest with Draco's hand at his elbow.
"Shut up and follow us, Potter," Pansy called playfully over her shoulder. They led him to the clearing in the sundial garden where Ron, Hermione, Crabbe, Goyle, Blaise, and Neville sat waiting for him.
"We thought you needed some time off from people being absolutely stupid," Draco said. The group, headed by Blaise and Neville, made their way to Hagrid's hut, where Harry was surprised by Hagrid's return and a less than bone crushing hug on account of his injuries. Crabbe and Goyle stood guard at the hut's entrance and Harry felt for once that he was experiencing a semblance of normalcy.
Harry was right about the investigation coming up with nothing on Dumbledore. Solicitor Lawson dropped by to brood in the Malfoy house, head leant tiredly against her fist, her elbow rested on the dining table. Her other hand nursed a tumbler of firewhiskey.
"It's called plausible deniability," she sighed, "and it's no surprise that Dumbledore got away with saying he had no idea what Fawkes was doing in the Chamber. Poor Fawkes. This must be an insult to that bird's intelligence."
"Don't feel bad, Lawson," Narcissa said, replacing her tumbler with a teacup, "the board managed to reprimand him for not taking appropriate action against a threat like a basilisk. The second one of those children turned up petrified, he should have shut down the school and dealt with the basilisk himself. If he's so powerful, he should have been the one dealing with the deadliest creature in the magical world, not a twelve year old." Narcissa's fingertips turned white against the glass of Solicitor Lawson's half empty tumbler, though her posture and expression showed no such strain. Harry and Draco watched the exchange awkwardly from the other end of the table, still trying to finish breakfast.
"Yes, well," Lucius said, folding up his paper to break the awkward silence that followed, "the ministry and the board will take up more responsibilities regarding the school's safety and I'll be heading the committee appointed to sweeping the school for dangerous artifacts. We're also looking into what happened last year. Hogwarts is a school and not a safe house. The Philosopher's stone should never have been placed in the castle. The officials in charge of monitoring Nicholas Flamel and the Stone resigned shortly after the stone moved to Gringotts. No paper trail remains on how Dumbledore managed to move such a highly regulated magical artifact on the hunch that Voldemort would return and yet here we are."
"Yes, and the media hasn't dared to write anything about Voldemort because the only witnesses are minors," Lawson huffed, taking a sip of her tea and grimacing when it did not taste of firewhiskey. She pulled out a small flask and spiked her mug with a suspicious looking amber liquid.
"Oh please, Narcissa, I need this," she said at Narcissa's raised eyebrow. "Ministry trials are awful." The fact that no one in the room dared to mention the newspapers' reluctance to call "The Boy Who Lived" a liar was not lost on Harry.
The summer began with open invitations sent to all of Harry and Draco's friends to visit the manor while Harry recuperated. All of his wounds were about healed, but the wounds in his shoulder, though closed, remained stubbornly inflamed and would inevitably leave a scar. All of Harry's scars kept him awake and he took to walking the manor grounds early in the morning so that he would tire himself out enough to force himself to sleep. He was sure at least Narcissa knew about his insomnia, but only because the house elves never tried to rouse him after he finally fell asleep. Oddly enough, however, Harry's curse scar had taken to maintaining a mild burning sensation ever since the Chamber and it took all of Harry's concentration to keep it from bothering him. One morning, Harry strolled out into the manor gardens, hand absently massaging his scar. He was utterly alone on account of the hour and nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a voice call out his name from behind a hedge. Harry didn't answer, but flicked his wand into his hand from its holster before turning a corner and leveling his wand at whoever had called him. The sight before him shocked him to his bones as if someone had shot him in the sternum. As his wand clattered to the floor, Harry tried desperately to convince himself that the ghostly figure before him was a hallucination.
"Mum?" he said in a fearful whisper. The shade of Lily Potter smiled, though her eyes remained closed, and shook her head. She wore the clothes she died in and her skin was ashen as it might have been in death, but Harry wasn't bothered because all he could see was his mother. His first instinct was to run to her, but Lily held up a hand and spoke.
"Calm, child," she said. Her voice was both what he imagined it would sound like and a familiar mixture of many voices.
"Legion? Why?" Harry sat down numbly in the grass, fingers curling limply around his wand. The shade knelt in front of him, still smiling.
"We apologize. It was not our intent to harm," it said as it did when he was a child. "We took this form because we believed it would be suitable for our task."
"What task?"
"To instruct. You have come very far and your powers with the dead have reached a level that requires further instruction. When you made your first revenant, we deemed it necessary to begin your training."
"Why my mother?"
"We sensed you would prefer it. She is with us as you are and always have been," Legion replied as stoically as ever.
"What are you going to teach me?"
"We will teach you to manipulate and communicate with the dead. You have done well so far in releasing the girl spirit, but there is much you can learn." The shade held up a hand and a rabbit appeared from behind a bush. With a gesture, the rabbit was dead. Harry's eyes widened minutely at the morbid sight, but he knew what he had to do. He looked closer at the rabbit with the Sight and found that the soul's connection with the body had been cut, killing the rabbit without any apparent physical cause.
"This is how the avada kedavra curse functions, by tearing the soul away from the body," the shade said, still smiling.
"I did that to Lockhart, didn't I?"
"You did, but when you put back what you took, what happened?" The shade made another gesture and the rabbit's soul reattached itself seamlessly to its body. The rabbit was at once well again, nibbling at the grass at Harry's feet.
"He turned into a monster," Harry replied, tentatively reaching out to touch the rabbit.
"Two things affect how a vessel will react to moving a soul," Legion said, tilting its head. "The first is the state of the body and the second is the removal. If the body is beyond saving, any soul forced back into it will turn it into a revenant. If the body is well, but the soul is torn imperfectly, the same will occur. Perfect reanimation requires that both the body be pristine and the soul be neatly torn."
"My brain hurts," Harry said, looking uneasily at the rabbit. "How am I supposed to tear away a soul neatly?" Legion said nothing, but waved invitingly at the rabbit.
"Are you serious? What if I mess up and end up with a bloody rabid revenant rabbit on my hands? Mrs. Malfoy will kill me." Legion said nothing again and tilted its head. Shaking his head, Harry decided to give it a go anyhow. Looking into the rabbit's soul, he imagined slicing the soul's threads with a scalpel and imitated Legion's slicing gesture. In an instant, the rabbit was dead and Harry could sense the decay gripping the body already. He stuck the soul back into the body quickly after, hoping the thing wouldn't spring to life and attack him. To his astonishment, the rabbit got back up and hopped away as if nothing happened. He whooped in triumph and thumped his chest to get his heart to stop beating so hard. Legion only raised another hand where a sparrow flew down to perch and Harry came to the sickening realization that he would have to do it again.
"Again?" Legion nodded unsympathetically, still smiling. Harry groaned and got to work. When the fog cleared from the early morning sky, Legion finally let Harry stop after he'd reanimated four more rabbits, a door mouse, and six different birds. Only the mouse came back wrong and Legion made him remove the soul and disintegrate the body.
"You have progressed well. We are pleased," Legion said, rising from where it sat. Harry followed and stretched out his cramped legs. His limbs creaked and his eyes felt strained, but the morning's accomplishments curled deliciously in his stomach, making him giddy. Legion smiled in parting as if amused by Harry's pride and quietly dissolved into the morning sunlight.
We will return when the day is new again, it whispered in Harry's head. Still far too giddy to go to sleep, Harry decided it was best to make his way back to his bedroom anyhow to avoid running into a house elf. When he reached his room, however, his bed looked as unappealing as it did when he left for his walk and he decided instead to resume his meditations, something he'd fallen behind on since Tom's departure. He plopped down on the hardwood floors in the middle of his spacious room and produced the glass orb he'd taken to carrying around with him. It was one that Tom had formed himself during one of their meditation sessions and Harry pocketed it absently, unaware that it would be the only physical evidence of his time with Tom.
Harry closed his eyes and levitated the ball with the tendrils of his magic out into the space in front of him. With one thought, the orb dissolved slowly into hundreds of grains of sand that looped and whirled about the room at Harry's whim. The room wasn't quite as large as the room of requirement, but Harry experimented with hovering various grains of sand over the furniture, coating it like spray paint. At some point, he noticed that he had an audience and decided it was time for his exercises to conclude for the morning. Harry opened his eyes and in an instant, the sand reformed into the glass orb at a point between his outstretched hands, catching it in his right hand as he released the spell. Turning to the presence at the doorway, Harry feigned surprise at the sight of an astonished Lucius Malfoy, still dressed in his robe with his back pressed against the door.
"Mr. Malfoy," Harry started, "I didn't see you there. Good morning." The words tumbled effortlessly from his mouth and his smile easy to form on his lips. Speaking to Lucius was always more pleasant than he anticipated because Harry was always keenly aware that the man saved him from the Dursleys and welcomed him into his home.
"Good morning to you as well, Mr. Potter," Lucius said gamely, padding over to help Harry to his feet. "I was awake earlier than usual and decided to check up on you. Narcissa's told me that you haven't been sleeping very well."
He lead him to the window seat and helped him settle into the padded leather before taking a graceful seat himself. Ever since returning to the manor, the Malfoy's had subjected Harry to quite a lot of sitting because of his injuries.
"May I?" Lucius asked, gesturing to the orb. Harry held it out to him in an open palm and Lucius plucked it from his hand with two fingers, inspecting it closely.
"Where did you learn to do that, if I might ask?" Lucius said, shifting his gaze to Harry.
"At school," he replied, suddenly squeamish. "Professor Quirrell taught it to me, said it would help me with my spellwork." Again, it wasn't really a lie. Lucius arched an eyebrow.
"Quirrell? Interesting, considering the circumstances," he said, tossing the orb from one hand to the other.
"I know," Harry said, scratching his chin, "and that's why I didn't tell anybody about it. You're the only one who's ever seen me doing it."
"I feel exceptionally privileged," Lucius said, smirking, "though I have seen this exercise before. It brought back many memories watching you. Not very many can manage it."
"Really?" Harry asked, genuinely surprised. "Where did you see it?" The corners of Lucius's mouth turned downwards for a split second as he handed the orb back to Harry.
"Harry," he began, scooting around as if trying to find a more comfortable position on the seat, "you know that I used to be a death eater."
"Yes, but you were under the imperius, or at least that's what happened at your trial."
Lucius looked down at Harry, eyes sad. "Well yes, but I wasn't. I chose to be one at first, but when things got more...violent, I decided that I would do what was best for my family and feign innocence. I joined at first because I thought we were making a better world for magic and I never imagined the death eaters would cause a war. I thought you deserved to know that I joined by choice."
Harry was taken aback by this admission and gaped at Lucius for a few seconds before a smile broke out onto his face.
"You're not angry," Lucius stated, rather than asked, torn between smiling and frowning.
"Oh no of course not," Harry said hastily, "I'm just happy, is all. Thank you for telling me, Mr. Malfoy. Ever since you saved me from the Dursleys, people have tried to persuade me that you were a bad person because you were a death eater. What you just told me proves that you're not. I'm confused, sir. What does that have to do with the exercise?"
"Well, the only person I ever saw pull off that particular meditation ritual was the dark lord," Lucius said, his eyes taking on a rather far away look, "and I don't know if I ever came across anything like that ever again. I walked in on him while he was meditating and he tried to teach it to me once. I did so poorly that he ejected me bodily from the room." Lucius shuddered. Harry struggled not to smile thinking that sounded like something Tom would do. In the same thought, he remembered that Tom was gone and Harry's gut twinged at the memories.
"Can I see it? Your mark," Harry asked Lucius tentatively. Lucius's eyes widened with surprise, but he complied, rolling up his robe to expose a bright red tattoo that looked rather a lot like it hurt. Harry noticed for the first time that he'd never actually seen Lucius's arms because they were always covered, he realized, to conceal the mark. Gently, Harry traced the mark with his fingers, examining the magic behind it. It was a novel thing that somehow tied itself Lucius's magical core. The magical energy signature was a closer match to the older Voldemort and Harry could see lines of madness coloring the magic. Inwardly, he shook his head. It was a masterful use of magic, but he could see that the mark latched on Lucius's magical core and leeched power from it in order to channel it to its master when called. If the need ever arose, Lucius could be leeched dry like a living battery. Such a crude and desperate safety measure bespoke paranoia and weakness that Harry could not place with the Tom he knew. Experimentally, Harry pressed a little harder into the mark with his fingers and used his magic to gently untangle the mark's magic from Lucius's core. Before he fully realized what he was doing, the mark dissolved from Lucius's skin in a soft wisp of blackened miasma, leaving his forearm whole and new again. Lucius jerked once and his body stiffened and trembled as he pulled his arm away from Harry.
"How," he said at last, staring unbelievingly at the blank slate of alabaster skin where the source of so many of his troubles once lay, "did you- Did you do this?" Harry shrugged, playing innocent until the last.
"I don't know," Harry said, "I just sort of thought you would be happier if it was gone and it was." This wasn't really a lie at all because even he couldn't explain how he'd done it. Lucius gaped at him as close as a Malfoy can get to a gape, which made Harry giggle. In a move that shocked even Lucius himself, he leaned forward to embrace Harry briefly and gently. Harry didn't know how to return the gesture at first, but wrapped both arms loosely around Lucius's back. It was the closest he'd ever been to Lucius and he could smell the sweet smelling cologne Lucius wore as well as the detergent the elves used. After a while, Lucius straightened and smiled at him, still slightly dazed.
"Excuse me, Harry. I simply must show Narcissa." With one more companionable one armed embrace, Lucius went gracefully out the door. Harry climbed back into his bed and, with the overwhelming warmth of his accomplishments curling his toes, fell asleep quite easily for the first time in many weeks. The elves allowed him his rest well past noon.