16.
Harry woke slowly and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion at the unfamiliar green canopy above his head. Sitting up groggily, he was met with a very giddy looking Draco straddling a chair in front of his bed.
"Surprise!" Draco exclaimed, throwing both hands up in the air. Harry whipped his head around and found himself in a completely different room than the one he fell asleep in.
"What's all this, then?" he asked, grinning like mad.
"Well after what you did for father, he decided to finish the new wing of the mansion all at once because he was so excited. I've never seen him this energetic. The elves started work on it while we were away at school, but he did all the wall coverings and furniture while you slept. Isn't it wonderful?"
"How did you get me here?" The bed was definitely different than the one he fell asleep in and he couldn't remember moving as he slept.
"Let me tell you, it was a feat," Draco said, looking pleased with himself, more so than usual. "Since you are such a light sleeper, father had to levitate the entire bed and transfigure it once we got here. I thought you were going to blast our heads off on accident, but you were so tired, I don't think anything short of an earthquake could have woken you up. I've been waiting for ages for you to wake up, come on!"
Harry hopped out of bed as quickly as he could without jolting his shoulder and wandered around his new wing of the mansion, following Draco as he practically skipped ahead of him. The hangings and wall coverings matched the rest of the house, but Harry's wing was lit with much more natural light, with every wall containing at least one enormous window. His new bedroom was topped by a glass dome shaded by the leaves of poplar trees through which light filtered gently into the room. He didn't have to ask to know that the light was a loving touch so that he would never have to think about his cupboard ever again. Harry could reach Draco's wing of the house by walking the short distance through an atrium carpeted with new grass and practically shimmering with the light bouncing from the water from a bubbling fountain mounted against the far east wall.
"I love magic," Harry breathed, staring out one of the enormous windows.
"I knew you'd love it."
"Just one thing," Harry said mischievously. He snapped his fingers and the drapes on his bed shuddered and turned red and gold.
"Oh ew," Draco said, wrinkling his nose, "That makes your room look like a badly themed Christmas sweater." Harry shrugged.
"That's why you're the fashionable one and I'm the one who gives into my Gryffindor tendencies," he said, laughing at the disgust that spread through Draco's face as he picked at the red curtains with two fingers.
Harry trained with Legion every morning that summer. Though he rose before the sun, Harry was thankful for the distraction and his dreams stayed away for a while. After a few weeks, Hippocrates gave him a clean bill of health. He was so happy, he started jogging one enormous lap around the manor grounds every morning. One morning as he passed by a ground floor window, Draco sat waiting on the window sill, one eyebrow raised questioningly.
"What are you doing? Healer Smethwyck patches you up and you immediately start running yourself ragged?" Draco's eyebrows knitted themselves together the same way they did that day Harry collapsed in the lavatory.
Harry stopped to catch his breath and waved his hands helplessly. "I'm just so tired of being tired, Draco. I've been either asleep or too injured to move around since the summer started and I wanted a change." Draco sniffed and jumped the few feet onto the grass. Harry hadn't even noticed Draco's athletic clothing.
"What?" A smile spread across Harry's face.
"You think I'm going to let you do this all by yourself?" Draco stretched, clearly not explaining any more. Harry shrugged and ran a little to catch up to Draco, who'd run off without him. Every other day, the Malfoys paid the Weasleys a visit so that the children could play quidditch together. The summer passed like this for Harry, always warm, always sweaty, always revelling in the energy his body now possessed. When the Weasleys won enough coin to make a trip to Egypt, the Malfoys followed them and Harry got the chance to meet Bill Weasley.
"This tomb was built for a magical Egyptian artisan," Bill said as he lead the children into a tomb he had yet to clear, "and the curses here were cast to protect the valuables that his family placed for him so that when his soul came back for his body, he would be surrounded by the things he loved in life. Gringotts has interest in these tombs because the descendants of these people as well as the Egyptian magical government want to reclaim artifacts or bodies to protect them better than old timey curses."
"Wicked," Ron said, waving around a torch. "Do you reckon he actually came back from the dead?"
"Ronald, really," Draco said, nudging him playfully, "are you really going to try and give yourself nightmares by believing that?" Fred and George took this opportunity to jump Ron and scare him into dropping his torch. They fist bumped Draco.
"What curses?" Harry was busy scanning the walls for the magical currents running through them. They were old, very old, and he could see that they fed off of the ambient magic of the environment, storing the magical energy in the rocks themselves much like a charm or a rune. This place could not house a spirit, Legion said, but they did try to understand, to communicate. We remember this.
"This is a middle-ish class tomb," Bill said, magically lighting the room with a casual flick of his wand. "The curses are most likely low-risk, anti-burglary curses because the valuables in here aren't worth very much. I already disarmed the one at the front door, which is usually the most dangerous. You buggers didn't think I would have brought you here if it was actually dangerous, did you? Mum would have killed me. Scratch that, pretty boy's mum would have killed me." The children's' laughs bounced around the carved walls of the tomb. Bill went farther into the tomb first and disarmed the treasury so that the kids could explore in there. While the others prodded at mummified cats and antique furniture, Harry followed quietly behind Bill as he worked his way into the burial vault.
"Harry, I can hear you breathing," Bill chuckled, turning around swinging his arms with easy swagger. Harry trotted to catch up with him.
"Sorry," he breathed, scratching his head.
"Nah, it's fine. Just stay behind me and try not to touch the walls." Concern touched Bill's voice only slightly. Though it was dark, Harry could tell that Bill's shoulders were tensed just slightly and he looked over them often to check on him. Every now and then, he would stop, methodically sweep the space in front of him with his wand, and continue. Harry saw that Bill cast something like a web of magic in front of him and when something dangerous got caught in it, he would stop to unravel it methodically like a rubix cube and keep going. Bill was so preoccupied with Harry, however, that he didn't see a small tangle of malignant magic ahead of him and ran headlong into it. The curse hit him with a full body-bind and an incendio launched itself at him from the darkness ahead of them. Harry didn't stop to think before stepping swiftly in front of Bill, throwing up a shield charm with one hand, and quickly unravelling the curse with the other. Three more incendios hit his shield charm and threatened to break it before he managed to unravel the charm. Bill fell forward when the curse released him and seized Harry by the shoulders, looking over him to make sure he was safe.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Harry mistook Bill's concern for anger.
"No, no, Harry," Bill said, half laughing and half panting from the adrenaline,"I'm not angry. You saved my life. I should be thanking you."
"I shouldn't have followed you, Bill. I almost got you killed." Bill laughed again and repeated his reassurances, but a confused look passed over his face.
"How did you do that, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Er I've been practicing wandless magic at school and, you know. Accident, I guess." Bill shook his head.
"No, I felt you disarm that curse, Harry. Come on, I won't tell anybody. How'd you do that?" Harry huffed and decided it wasn't worth it to lie.
"I saw you disarm the others, so I kind of copied you. Took me too long, though. One more incendio and we would have been toast. Literally." Bill laughed and ruffled Harry's hair.
"Kid, you have a gift. You ever think about going into curse-breaking? Just don't tell my mum or pretty boy's mum what happened. You'd never see graduation." Nothing unusual happened after that and the children were treated to their first mummy, though the fun had to end when the twins tried to put Ginny in the sarcophagus. As they prepared to leave Egypt earlier than the rest of the Weasleys, however, Bill handed Harry a well loved, leather bound book on curse breaking and common curses. He stashed it amongst the many birthday presents the rest of the family gave him and winked, pressing a finger to his lips, which Harry mimicked. Harry read through the book cover to cover and worked through it with Snape without the Sight so that he could sense malignant energy signatures without "cheating," as Tom would say. The work mostly involved projecting a web of magic around his body constantly until it became a passive activity.
"I'm sure you got into this because of that rugged and exotic Bill Weasley, but I'm glad you're more interested in the magic than the glamor of the work," Snape said as Harry worked through his latest challenge curse. Harry smirked.
"It looked useful," he said, shrugging.
"And the use-value is more important than anything, right?"
"Of course," Harry said, nose still buried in his work. Between his exercise routine, his friends, his lessons with Legion, and his revision with Snape, Harry had no time or energy to dream and it suited him just fine. By the time summer ended, his body felt stable for the first time in his life and his skin was golden, warmed by the sun. Though he was still shorter, he was steadily growing taller and catching up with Draco, who was also hitting that awkward stage of a boy's life where his lanky limbs were growing faster than his brain could keep up with. On Draco, however, puberty could do little to diminish his graceful airs.
"I can't believe we have to alter both of your robes again," Narcissa said, sighing, as she watched Madame Malkin and an assistant fuss over the hems of Harry and Draco's new school robes. "I should have known better than to buy them so early and to think there's still nearly a month left before start of term. You two can't grow anymore, please. You'll wear poor Madame Malkin's fingers to the bone."
"Nonsense, darling," Madame Malkin said through a mouthful of pins, "your business keeps me on my toes. They're growing boys and you never know when a growth spurt will hit." She made a few more adjustments and waved her wand to zig zag stitch the hems to rapid and flawless completion. As they left the store, Harry noticed more eyes on him than usual and Narcissa shepherded them quickly to the nearest fireplace to floo home, pausing only to grab a copy of the Prophet before Harry could see what was on the front page.
"What was that all about?" Draco asked his mother after he stepped through the fireplace. Narcissa only gave him a wary look and handed him the paper. Draco's eyes widened minutely as he read before he passed it to Harry, suddenly as quiet as Narcissa.
"Who's Sirius Black?" Harry asked, eyes still trained on the screaming mugshot on the front page. Narcissa gently took back the paper and sat him down on a nearby sofa and told him the story, not in the least surprised that nobody had bothered to tell him.
"He was my godfather and he betrayed them?" Harry's voice shook, hitting that deep, dangerous octave that he'd only recently been able to achieve.
"There's one more thing," Narcissa said, still patting Harry's limp hand. "He's my cousin. We got along well enough when we were young because we were family, but once he left home and refused the dark lord's ideals, I had to cut off all ties with him to protect this family."
"So he wasn't a Death Eater?" Harry was so confused and he wished he could rip the man in the paper out of his little picture so that he could interrogate him himself.
"Not as far as anyone knew, Harry. That's why it's so unusual that he would betray them. Either way, he's dangerous and you have to be careful, Harry." Narcissa took one of his hands in both of hers, but knew better than to touch him any more than that. Draco sat on the back of the couch looking at his hands. Later that evening, Lucius came storming out of the fireplace with auror Shacklebolt and Solicitor Lawson at his heels.
"Lucius, I've tried negotiating with the Minister and the head of the Auror Office, but I'm afraid my hands are tied," he said, voice steady despite Lucius's stormy demeanor.
"What Harry deserves is a full protective detail, not a dementor patrol, Shacklebolt," Samantha said, voicing Lucius's discontent with more civility than he was capable of displaying at the moment.
"We can't spare the resources, Lawson. Our numbers just aren't what they used to be and we need the aurors to lead the search for Black as well as maintain our current caseload. I'm sorry, but a dementor patrol is the best I can do."
"Dementors are dangerous and unreliable. I'm sure you understand why we're fighting you on this," Lucius said, taking a moment to pinch the bridge of his nose.
"What's a dementor?" The three adults turned, surprised at the sight of Harry standing there in front of them.
"Hello, Mr. Potter," Shacklebolt said, flashing a big smile at him before stepping closer to give Harry a manly, but companionable slap on the back. "You look well. Much better than the last time I saw you, taller too. They must feed you very well here." Harry smiled up at the large man before him, craning his neck to see his face.
"Thanks partly to you, Mr. Shacklebolt."
"Just Shacklebolt will be fine, Mr. Potter. Let me tell you. A dementor is like a very large and scary guard dog. They can make you feel as if everything good has gone out of the world and then suck your soul out of you. The ministry's got these beasties on a leash and we use them to guard Azkaban."
"Except that dementors don't really take orders from anyone, no matter how much the ministry might wish they did," Lawson said, both hands on her hips. The withering look she shot Shacklebolt made her seem like the six foot two warrior in the room.
"While I don't confirm or deny that," Shacklebolt said, clearing his throat, "I don't want Harry to be alarmed. The dementors are good guards even if they are prone to mutiny. They want Black's soul as reparation for his escape and that at least will ensure that they get him."
"Even if they take down other people in the process? Their blood will be on the minister's hands, Shacklebolt," Lucius warned.
"The point is," Shacklebolt continued, "having at least the dementors there is better than having nothing. An Auror will be posted at Hogwarts alongside the dementors as an extra security measure, but that is all I can spare."
"A security measure against who-" Lawson started before Harry cut all of them off.
"I'm not afraid," he said, "of either of them." The adults stopped talking and looked down at their shoes, remembering that he was in the room.
"I'm not afraid," he said again. "If I've stayed alive this long, I don't think any of that would make a difference. My life's not any more at risk than it usually is," he said.
"While I don't blame you for thinking that way, Harry," Shacklebolt began after a beat of silence, "Black is a very experienced wizard and dementors are very tough creatures to beat."
"Then I'll learn how to beat them," Harry said, crossing his arms almost obstinately. "That's the only way I've been getting on recently anyway. I can protect myself if things go wrong." Given the events of the last two years, nobody could argue with that.
"I wish it weren't so, lad," Shacklebolt said, rubbing his huge hands together. "It's a sad day when a boy your age has to fend for himself. While I will send along some reading material for you, I really hope you can trust us to protect you."
"As do I," Lucius added. "Harry, don't try to confront any of these things by yourself. Please, if you feel uncomfortable or unsafe at any point at school, you come home and you'll be safe here."Harry nodded gravely, accepting the embrace that Lawson felt she needed to give him as the other two spoke. The very next morning, Harry was awake early enough to see a small fleet of dementors fly into the manor's airspace, rippling the air as they passed through the mansion's wards. They flew in a loose formation lead by the biggest dementor of the group and Harry felt them usher in a chilly gloom that passed as the group flew out of sight to start their wide patrol of the grounds. Watching them shook Harry's nerves because he could see souls that looked like mere husks of human beings with hollowed out eyes in their translucent, bony heads. Each pulled and gnawed at their bindings, which tethered them to the dementors. The biggest of them all had so many tied together in an angry tidal wave of spirits, Harry couldn't count their heads. He shivered involuntarily and watched them warily until they floated out of sight.
"How do you kill a dementor?" Harry asked one day during his lessons with Draco and Snape. Both of his companions froze and fixed Harry with frightened gazes.
"You don't kill a dementor, you dill," Draco said, thwacking Harry good naturedly on the arm. He chuckled a bit, clearly thinking Harry was joking, only to find that Harry was dead serious.
"Harry," Snape began, "for just this instance, I agree with Draco. You can't kill a dementor."
"Well what are you supposed to do about them?" Harry had the ministry's pamphlets on dementors spread across his lap. "These ministry pamphlets basically say that we don't know anything about dementors other than using expecto patronum. What's that, anyway?"
"It's a difficult spell that acts like a shield against the effects of a dementor and keeps them from getting close to you."
"Show me." The rest of the afternoon was devoted to learning the spell and neither Harry or Draco could manage it by the week's end.
"I just can't do it," Harry said for perhaps the first time since he started using magic.
"That's something I never thought I'd hear you say," Draco said, looking menacingly at his own wand. Snape, however, looked relieved, rolling his eyes up and mumbling to himself something that sounded suspiciously like "finally".
The spell you seek to learn is essentially giving happiness a physical form, the floaters offered. This is unlike the manipulation of souls and other things that have no form. The happiness must exist first within yourself before it can exist in the world.
"So I'm not happy enough?" Harry asked aloud, making both Snape and Draco flinch. He looked up at Snape.
"Is it because all of my memories aren't happy enough? Will I ever be able to do it if none of my memories are really happy?"
"No way, mate," Draco said, "I can't do it either. I'm sure you just haven't found the right one." Snape didn't say anything, only looked at Harry with a strange expression in his eyes. Later on, when Draco had gone out with his mother, Snape found Harry walking by himself on the manor grounds.
"Harry, I want you to know that producing a patronus is a very difficult thing," he started, "and even I couldn't do it until my fifth year at Hogwarts. The memory I found was of meeting your mother for the first time and I never realized how happy it made me until I was much older. These things take time."
"I know," Harry huffed, "it's just that not being able to do it makes me feel like everything I thought felt like the happiest moment of my life really isn't. I've tried everything. Getting my Hogwarts letter, meeting the Malfoys, getting rescued from the Dursleys. Nothing seems to work."
"Well, true joy isn't something a boy your age is supposed to understand." Snape cleared his throat. "If you could cast the spell on your first try, I would have retired and given you my job."
Harry snorted and muttered a wry, "gee, thanks."
The last few weeks of holiday passed and neither of them made very much progress at all with the patronus. Harry could produce a light mist of white, but it was nothing like Snape's fully corporeal doe. Harry was so obsessed with learning the spell, he practiced it wandlessly all the way until he made it onto the train and didn't notice the sleeping man in the only empty compartment left on the train. Hermione pulled him away just in time to keep him from sitting on the man.
"Who's he?" Draco mouthed to Harry, who shrugged in response. Hermione whacked Draco on the chest and pointed to the man's suitcase.
"The new Defense professor," Pansy hissed. By some miracle and a sneaky expansion charm, they managed to fit Blaise, Neville, Ron, Hermione, Pansy, Harry, Crabbe, Goyle, Ginny, and the sleeping man into the one compartment. It was a little bit of a squeeze, but it was worth it. Harry was still mulling over the damnable spell when the train screeched to a stop and a growing sense of impending doom passed over the train. Before anyone could figure out what was going on, a dementor appeared at the door, wrapping its thin, stick-like fingers around the compartment's sliding door and pushing it aside with deliberate slowness. Harry pounced, leveling his wand at the thing and trying and failing to cast a patronus. When his third thin, translucent shield dissipated, Harry gave up and tried other spells, any he could think of. He sent blazing infernos at it, tried ripping it to shreds in all directions and the dementor brushed each attack off, suffering only tears to its robes and scorch marks that did no damage to it at all. Harry began to lose focus and his limbs shivered too violently for him to stand up straight. He gripped his head, involuntarily remembering something that made his stomach roil. In his mind's eye, he saw flashes of green and a splay of red hair accompanied by a deafening scream in his ears he could only remember from his worst nightmares. The world went black, mercifully muting the scream.
"That's a good lad," and unfamiliar voice said as something waxy and sweet was pressed against his lips. "Eat. It will help you recover." Harry blearily sat up and face to which the voice belonged to came into focus. He was on one of the seats with his legs dangling off the side at an angle that suggested someone had hauled him off the floor and put him there. He opened his mouth and grabbed whatever was being offered to him between his teeth. His friends were all on their feet, staring worriedly at him, each nursing their own piece of Honeyduke's chocolate.
"It's just chocolate," the man called Remus Lupin said, chuckling. Harry rubbed a hand over his face and sat up, feeling better, but still slightly like he was going to be sick.
"I'm Remus Lupin. Pleasure to meet you. That was an admirable patronus for someone your age," Lupin continued, "though I can guess you haven't quite found the right memory."
"I'm Harry," Harry said, taking the hand Lupin offered by way of greeting.
"A pleasure," Lupin clipped, gripping Harry's hand in his own pale, dry one. The man looked haggard with a permanently grim expression on his face, though he'd slept the whole train ride. He swept out of the compartment soon after, suitcase and all, to tell off the conductor for letting dementors on the train.
"Nervous looking," Ron said, popping the last bit of chocolate in his mouth, "though any man who keeps a five pound bar of chocolate in his robe is good in my book."
"Think with your brain and not with your stomach, Ronald," Hermione snapped.
"Yeah let's just cross our fingers and hope he's not possessed by you-know-who like the last two," Blaise said, crossing his arms broodily. "Can't buy me with sweets."
"Well, you're not a Weasley," Draco said, trying to laugh.
"Hey, don't lump me into this," Ginny snapped. "It's only Ron whose gullet is a black hole, not all of us." The compartment erupted into soft giggles, which Harry joined in on, if only to avoid the worried gazes all of his friends were turning on him whenever each thought another wasn't looking. He also ignored his shaking hands that wouldn't warm no matter how hard he rubbed them.