- Chapter Twenty Six -
Harry and the Master of Death
The masked men also disarmed Hermione at Ulatov's command, and then tied all three of their hands so tightly that they nearly broke their wrists. Harry's invisibility cloak was also taken from him and handed to Ulatov. The witch was no longer frantic, but she still looked as if she could barely contain herself from killing them.
'Bring him too!' Ulatov pointed to the lifeless body of Dawlish, who was also lifted from the ground and bound. Dawlish groaned, but was still unconscious.
'Let's go!'
Ulatov gave the order, and for a long time afterwards, all that could be heard was the monotonous scuffling of the hundred masked men's footsteps, the pained gasps of Harry, Ron and Hermione, and the laughter of the hooded boy. Harry was now certain that no one else but himself could sense the mysterious stranger's presence, or else one of the masked men would surely have knocked the annoyingly fidgeting boy over by now. The boy was now pretending to box their heads in front of the two wizards who were holding Harry. They showed no sign of seeing any of this, even though the boy's fist was whizzing inches in front of them. Harry stared at him with his mouth agape, and felt that there was something of Fred and George in his manner.
'What are you staring at?' one of the masked men snapped at Harry with a heavy accent.
Harry turned his head and did what his two friends had done: he lowered his head and staggered where he was led.
The road led back to the Durmstrang tower. They emerged from the woods and descended the hillside, following the path that widened into a stone road as they neared the elaborately carved tower. It was then that Malfoy appeared on Harry's left, holding his own wand and the one he had been given (the hooded boy stared at the wand openly). He carried his latest acquisition, the round golden shield that had saved him from Marius' murderous curse, slung over his back. With a wave, Malfoy sent one of Harry's guards back and leaned closer.
'Why did you give me your wand?' he asked quietly.
Harry had expected the question, yet he answered belatedly, because at first he was not satisfied with the explanation that this was the only way they could survive.
'So they can't disarm me. So they can't use the Wand of Destiny, even if they steal it,' he said.
Malfoy frowned.
'What if they kill you?' he asked anxiously.
Harry didn't know if he really heard concern in his voice or if he was just imagining it.
'That won't do them any good either,' Harry shrugged. 'I am not resisting – they cannot defeat me. The wand doesn't change owners.'
'But you won't be able to escape that way either,' Malfoy pointed out.
Harry took a deep breath.
'I'll have time to think about that later.'
They arrived near the Durmstrang tower, the carvings imbued with magic were clearly visible. Harry looked up at the beautiful building. The windows were just dark holes, no lights were on in any room, not even in the teachers' offices. The entire tower was shrouded in darkness, as if no one were inside, the only light coming from the lazily glowing stadium, which wove a ghostly halo around the tower.
'What did you do with the students?' Harry asked Malfoy.
'Look around,' was the reply. 'They are the students.'
Indeed, there were some shorter ones among the masked people, although the little ones were waiting outside the school, their masks shining brightly, waiting for their beloved teacher...
So that's why all the students hated Moloh, Harry thought. Because everyone here was already into black magic, as Krum had said. Harry wondered where Ciaran Diggory was now. He must be among the young pupil proudly wearing their masks, among Ulatov's young students, drinking in their mistress's every word. He shuddered to think that Hogwarts had almost suffered the same fate...
Harry soon realised that they were not being taken to school – the road led away from the high tower, but the procession had thinned out considerably in the meantime. Obeying silent orders, most of the masked men parted from them and trudged up the stairs to the school, as if returning from a field trip.
'Where are you taking us?' Harry turned to Malfoy, but by then his former classmate had disappeared and joined the other masked men.
Harry saw Ulatov call Malfoy to her and take his wand from him. Ron and Hermione both watched Ulatov as well until their escorts gave them a good shove in the back, encouraging the three to step up their pace. Harry's guard also returned, and perhaps to make up for lost time, he urged his prisoner on almost by the minute.
Ron got tired of being poked and turned back to his companion.
'Where are we going?' he shouted at the owner of the metal mask, who stopped, and the unconscious Dawlish floating behind him slammed into his back.
'Go on!' the woman's voice crackled. 'And don't ask questions!' and then added a knockback jinx that sent Ron skidding forward several metres in the dust.
Hermione went over to help him up, but when she bent down to him, the third guard's boot knocked her on her bottom and she fell on top of him. The masked men laughed gleefully, and Harry became enraged. Yet there was nothing he could do, for if he attacked them and they defeated him – as they surely would – he risked losing the Wand of Destiny. So he could only watch helplessly, with grim despair, as Ron and Hermione were dragged from the ground and kicked further down the road...
Their invisible companion was standing beside Harry, but he was not clowning – he too was watching the pointless cruelty from under his hood. Harry looked down at the boy's hand, and saw that he was holding it stiffly clenched in a fist beside him – just as he had done...
The stone path ended at a rocky ridge, where they had walked with Viktor Krum prior, and from where they had a beautiful view of the fjord. Harry was unable to enjoy this fantastic sight, his attention now riveted by the flickering lights on the horizon and one of the masked men standing on the edge of the cliff, who now held his wand aloft and shot red sparks into the sky. It wasn't long before the same signal appeared in the distance. The sorcerer stepped away from the ledge, as one who had done his work, and went back to Ulatov, who was waiting patiently behind them.
Minutes went by in silence, and the three good friends did not dare to risk asking questions again. The sorcerers stood motionless on the cliff-top, the sea-wind tearing wildly at their robes. Hermione leaned against Ron wearily and rested her head on his shoulder, her brown hair twirling around her, hiding her sad face.
Harry looked around, and spotted eight masked men around the three of them and the sleeping Dawlish; at some distance from them stood Ulatov, and behind him – whom Harry had only just noticed – stood Ciaran Diggory, holding a more modestly made metal mask. The boy looked back at him with undisguised anger as he noticed Harry watching him.
'That little bastard...' a gruff voice said as Harry looked over.
The boy in the hood walked between them, but his manner was not as casual as before. He walked about with his hands in his pockets and his head down, and on one occasion, just as he was coming alongside Harry, there was a strange noise from the sea. Everyone looked north, and Harry watched as the sea churned and foamed in a wide, endless band. The phenomenon grew stronger, as if something large and heavy were rising to the surface.
At first only the tops of columns emerged from the water, evenly spaced, then chains rose up between the columns...
The water foamed and sizzled even more wildly as the road in the distance rose up from beneath it. As the long bridge stretched higher and higher, the water flowed off it back into the sea with a loud noise. The bridge, reaching the top of the cliff, stopped, and like a serpent of fire running along, the torches on the pillars flared.
Harry, Ron and Hermione looked with dropped jaws at the road stretching to the horizon, which could stretch for hundreds of kilometres over the sea. The hooded boy shuddered and answered Harry's unspoken question:
'This is the road to Nurmengard, Grindelwald's town,' he said, pointing to the flickering lights in the distance. 'It's the only way there and back... You can forget about apparating... Portkey and brooms are inoperable there. It's some kind of weird spell they put here for Grindle...' And with that, he ran off across the bridge, ahead of the masked men.
'Grindle?!' Harry looked at him, but he couldn't think any longer, because his zealous guard immediately started pushing him.
The path was made of large stone slabs, with runes carved into the railing, and every second slab was decorated with the sign of Deathly Hallows. The stone barrier was so high that Harry could not see the sea from here as they made their way in single file to their final destination.
They had been marching for barely ten minutes when the end of the bridge appeared, and the torchlight was cast on a vast black wall ahead. Harry and his two friends stopped involuntarily. How could they have reached the end so soon, when hundreds of kilometres of water separated them from their destination?
'Stop staring, you worms, you can do that later!' one of the wizards snapped at them.7
'Yeeeeeees' another mockingly stretched the word. 'Fooooor the reeeeest of your liiiiiiife, hi-hi-hi!'
Ron swallowed hard and Hermione turned so pale one could be afraid she was going to collapse. Harry was weighed down with more despair and fear than ever. Never to see Ginny again, never to return home, never to eat Mrs Weasley's cooking again... He thought of Ron and Hermione, who had such a bright future back home, and now it was all ruined because of his stupid cloak... No, it wasn't the cloak, it was his insatiable thirst for revenge and his stupid arrogance... He thought that after Voldemort, no one could surprise him anymore.
The gigantic, mirror-like stone wall had a sturdy gateway with bars raised, waiting for their arrival. Above the gate was a thickly engraved inscription:
Für das Größere Wohl
Harry knew the meaning of the inscription he had read in Rita Skeeter's book: For the Greater Good...
They entered the gate, passing another line of wizards, and Harry began to wonder how many more servants Ulatov had. The masked men all bowed to the witch as she entered after her captives, but here she overtook them and hurried off towards a house, coughing.
Harry couldn't see much of the prison town due to the darkness, only the square, massive buildings of incredible strength and timelessness that rose up in a cluttered mass in front of him, with little alleys winding between them. The whole place was saturated with the mingled stench of mould, excrement and blood...
'Cool place, eh?' the hooded boy said with his hands on his hips, as if they were on a pleasant little sightseeing tour of the countryside. Then he looked back at Harry and added:
'I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it's the worst place on earth. Let me give you a piece of advice...'
'Piss off,' Harry growled under his breath.
The masked men didn't hear, and the boy let the comment slip past his ear.
'Do not, under any circumstances, eat any of the green-haired hag's food.'
The huge lattice descended behind them, and the rushing water indicated that the long bridge had also sunk into the foam. Most of the procession stayed behind with the unconscious Dawlish, but three of them led Harry and his friends on towards the nearest black building, which grew out of the city wall, with walls of stone as smooth as mirror, as if carved from a single rock. Its trapezoidal windows had bars, but there were no guards at the entrance, the iron door standing wide open.
Harry, Ron and Hermione entered in silence and made their way up a narrow spiral staircase to one of the top floors of the building. Here they came to a dark corridor, with massive steel doors with runes on them to the left and right.
'Stop here,' one of the wizards ordered them, and all three stopped.
With a wave of his wand, the person behind Hermione opened one of the doors and poked her in the back with his finger.
'Get in!'
She took a deep breath and looked at Ron. He was murmuring her name, but no sound came out of his throat. Hermione then turned to Harry, who dared not look at her face. He didn't want to see...
'Get moving, bitch!' the man snarled, and pushed Hermione through the door, knocking her to the floor. Ron gnashed his teeth as he slammed the cell door shut on the girl and locked it with a few charms. It was the thirteenth cell down from the stairs, Harry remembered this well as they continued to nudge them.
The corridor turned, and here you could hear the roar of the sea closer than in the other part of the building. From around the corner, the ninth cell became Ron's, and he didn't stop without a word.
'An ocean view suite, what an honour!' he growled to his captor.
'Shut your trap!' came the reply, but Ron dodged the blow to the back and slipped into the cell, holding up the middle finger of his tied hand to wave at the masked man as he slammed the door shut. Harry could not look at his friend now either.
'Your turn, Potter,' the wizard grabbed Harry by the arm and practically pushed him on the spiral staircase at the end of the corridor.
They went up one more floor, and here they found a cell in the middle of a corridor that was exactly the same as the one below. Harry's heart pounded in his throat as he crossed the threshold and was pushed into the stifling atmosphere of the pitch-black, foul-smelling room. He'd never been afraid of confined spaces – he'd spent half his childhood in a cupboard – but this prison room only made him feel powerless and weak. It was like being ten again...
Hours passed. The sun once again cast its light over the dark waters of the Arctic Ocean, tracing an elongated trapezoid on the wall opposite the window. In its dim light, Harry could see every inch of his cramped cell. The smooth stone walls looked as if they had been carved out of the rock a few days ago, and the floor was perfectly fitted, with not a crack or a scratch in it. But one was inclined to forget this engineering precision, given the decades of grime that covered everything, and the foul-smelling, questionable materials that accumulated in the corner furthest from the heated bed.
On the floor, a large pool of blood had seeped into the paving, a dark stain that marked the fate of the previous occupant of the cell. The puddle stretched in two long strips towards the door, as if someone had been dragged through it. The ceiling was low, and if Harry had been a few inches higher he would most certainly have hit his head. Even so, he walked crouched so that his hair would not touch the cobwebs and the path of other ceiling-climbing, many-legged, segmented-bodied insects. Without anything to do, he walked in circles between the window and the bunk, but his mind was elsewhere.
He never thought he would end up in prison. Dead, yes, but not in a cell. It was a new feeling for him, and he wondered what Hagrid and Sirius might have felt within the walls of Azkaban, or Grindelwald himself here in this city, perhaps even in a cell next door... He, Harry, didn't know what he was feeling at the moment. He was desperate, tired and angry, but loneliness had not yet touched him. He knew that his two friends were not far from him, and he trusted that he would be able to free them.
From the stairs the thirteenth cell, and from the corner the ninth...
Footsteps sounded in the corridor, and Harry instinctively turned away from the window, where he had been leaning on the sill, looking out at the endless sea. Instinctively, he felt they were coming to him, and he was not disappointed: the lock clicked, the protective charms fell, and the door opened. Two figures entered the cell: one was the boy in the hood, the other was someone dressed in a bright red, richly embroidered robe, wearing the most beautiful, imposing mask Harry had ever seen. Tiny jewels covered the whole thing, and where the eye socket was, there were two diamonds the size of hen's eggs. Harry couldn't imagine how its wearer could see through them.
'Comfortable in your cell, Potter?' The voice immediately betrayed its owner.
'Ulatov...' Harry muttered, shaking his head.
The witch closed the door behind her. The hooded boy leaned lazily against the dirt-covered wall, his arms folded across his chest, clutching the sign of the Deathly Hallows beneath them.
'Don't call me Ulatov. I am Nameless,' said the witch.
Harry couldn't help himself:
'What a nice name. Your mother must have thought about it a lot...'
There was a moment's silence, and Harry expected the wand in the witch's hand to rise and torture him again, but it did not. The wand did move, but it only untied the bandage that had been clutching Harry's wrist. The Nameless sighed deeply, then coughed a little.
'I believe you have some questions,' she said finally. 'I'm sure there's a lot you don't understand.'
Questions? Harry wasn't exactly expecting that. He thought Ulatov was going to ask him where the second Hallow had been put or maybe try to force him to take his wand back.
'Well, I certainly don't understand anything,' Harry finally agreed, and he put folded his arms, as did the silent boy. If he is offered the opportunity like that, he'll take it: 'Explain this Fourth Tower!'
'But you already know everything about us,' the Nameless tilted her head to the side, 'We protect and practice black magic, just like Grindelwald did. He was the founder – and Dumbledore, of course, who a few days after the founding, had got out and persuaded some of his associates not to follow Grindelwald. Neither side knew that the other would continue with the plan as they saw fit. Until Dumbledore came for Grindelwald.
Harry nodded. So there were indeed two Fourth Towers...
'Is that why you killed Scamander and Mrs Parker?' he asked the witch.
Ulatov didn't answer, just nodded. Harry was ready with his next question.
'Who are you? Who are you really?'
Harry could have sworn the witch smiled behind her mask.
'I am a mistress of the Fourth Tower.'
'A?' Harry repeated. 'Are there more?'
'The Tower has many leaders, one for almost every ministry. Voldemort was one of ours, but when he first disappeared...' she nodded towards Harry, 'someone else took his place. Then, when he came back, he came again to the Fourth Tower's Circle, killed the usurper, and re-consolidated his position.' The Nameless tsked annoyed. 'He was a very ambitious boy... When a chair became vacant, Voldemort took it, and made his word count for two. But now that Voldemort is dead – thanks to you – the seat is empty again, ready to be occupied by someone. The Prince brothers have agreed to take Voldemort's place and to follow my orders in all matters, for a price.'
'Why do they need to be paid for that?' Harry frowned. He couldn't see why a power-mad black wizard wouldn't want one of the Fourth Tower's top jobs.
'Because Octavius and Cerberus, with their magic, are no match for the Lords and Ladies of the Tower,' explained the Nameless, 'they would have them murdered to put their own men in their place – but I promised them I would protect them. I can say without modesty that my magic is as great as that of the late Dark Lord. You'd better remember that, my boy...'
Harry took an annoyed sigh, and heard the hooded boy join him in expressing his disdain. Like Marius, the Nameless noticed that Harry was not looking at her and turned away. She looked right at the hooded boy, but gave no sign that she saw anyone there. The boy, however, gave a nod similar to Ron's when the Nameless turned back to Harry.
'If you're as strong as Voldemort, why didn't you take him out?'
To Harry's surprise, the Nameless only waved a hand.
'Oh, it's true that I was annoyed by the boy, but I was curious to see how far he would go. I wanted to know the limits of his magic. Even in the last days of his life, Voldemort was still growing and getting stronger, and I, as a good teacher, wanted to know what the student would achieve.'
Harry closed his eyes and sighed deeply. This is crazy, he said to himself. She is as mad as Voldemort. Hagrid had once said, "When a wizard turns to the dark side, he knows neither god nor man..."
The Nameless had a cough, and this time it wasn't just a few coughs like a few hours ago – it made her body shake.
Harry asked his next question:
'Did Marius curse you with the Blight?'
It took longer than before for her to reply, but finally the witch forced herself to answer.
'He hasn't achieved much with it...' she said. 'The Blight is not enough to defeat me.'
It seems that pomposity goes hand in hand with being a lord, Harry thought mockingly, but he didn't dare say it.
'I just want to ask you one more question,' he said after a pause, which the Nameless waited patiently for. 'Why are you playing with me? Why do you answer everything now? What do you expect from all this?'
The answer came almost immediately from behind the mask, as if the Nameless had been expecting the question:
'I want you to be my student.'
Harry was not sure he had heard her right, for he could not have imagined such nonsense even from Xenophilius Lovegood.
'I want you to take Voldemort's place. I'd rather have you than the Prince brothers. You can even have the gold, it's anyhow Peverell legacy...'
Only one thing came to Harry's mind:
'You are insane.'
The Nameless was not embarrassed.
'It's what I always wanted. I spread the word that you were a powerful black sorcerer before you even came to Hogwarts. Many Death Eaters believed you would take the place of the Dark Lord...'
'Never!' said Harry.
'Why not?' the witch asked, as if she were asking what Harry was doing on Saturday night. 'Voldemort was just your age when I took him under my wing,' she explained. 'But he ran away from me before I could get to know him better. And he stole from me, that bastard...'
Harry knew he was talking about Karkaroff, who had important information about other wizarding schools when Voldemort kidnapped him and took him back to Britain. There, he erased his memory of his former mistress, only to take him as his own Death Eater...
'Well, well!' cried the Nameless, so suddenly that Harry flinched. 'This is not the first time you're hearing this!'
Harry quickly closed his eyes, but this only confirmed the Nameless' suspicions. He hadn't realised that such a powerful witch must also be a very skilled Legilimens.
'Now that's interesting!' the Nameless stepped closer to him, and he backed away from her all the way to the dirty wall. 'From whom did you hear about me, Potter?'
The hooded boy lowered his arms and stepped up behind the Nameless; Harry saw his nose and mouth wrinkled in an angry grimace.
'No answer?' the witch's voice rose, and with it she raised her head proudly. 'And I have readily answered all your questions...'
'Who the hell asked you to?' Harry exclaimed, backing away in alarm from the wand pointed in his face.
'Oh, you are so rude!' The Nameless tsked. 'It's not polite to behave like that... Now show me what you know! Legilimens!'
The effect was the same, or even more powerful, than what Harry experienced in Snape's office in his fifth year. The image of the prison cell disappeared from his mind's eye, and flashing images flashed before him. The Nameless searched purposefully for memories of herself, so that it was as if she were replaying backwards the hours, days and weeks that had passed.
They cross the bridge to Nurmengard... Ulatov's curse leaves him writhing in agony on the ground... McGonagall's terrified face as she disappears into the blue whirlpool of the portkey... Mr Prince and the masked men bowing to the Nameless...
'Let's dig a little deeper!' he heard the witch's voice echoing in his head. 'Legilimens Maximus!'
The images faded before his eyes, he saw only patches of colour. Then suddenly they slowed again, and Harry could see Riddle sitting on the bed in Dumbledore's bedroom, his muddy body slowly decomposing, talking about Marius and the Nameless...
'You have summoned Voldemort with the Stone?' The witch's voice showed her astonishment. 'I wouldn't have thought you of all people would...'
The Nameless had seen the memory, every detail of it, and there was nothing Harry could do about it. He could never learn Occlumency properly, though then he could have prevented the next memory...
He saw his hand draw back and then throw the Resurrection Stone – away into the distance, but where, he could no longer see. Hermione's spell was working, and the Nameless dared not dig any deeper. Instead, she searched for more memories, older ones, until she stopped at one of a figure in a black hood in a bright room, and beside him on a bed Ginny slept like a log...
'Who is that?' whispered the Nameless rather to herself, and Harry felt that through his own eyes the witch was looking at the golden locket hanging around his neck, the Deathly Hallows...
The hooded figure in the memory took a step towards Harry and Nameless.
'It's none of your business who I am, you old hag,' he said, looking them straight in the eye, his hand slowly rising. 'Impedimenta!'
Harry didn't know how the wand ended up in the boy's hand, but the beam of light that shot out of it hit him right between the eyes...
He fell back, and suddenly he was back in the cell, his back against the wall by the window, and he saw the Nameless fall back, too, across the small room, and crash against the cell door. Smoke billowed from under her mask, her robe hanging off to one side. The "real" hooded boy was standing where Harry had last seen him, watching the Nameless, waving his index finger warningly.
'How did you do it?' the witch moaned to Harry, and scrambled to her feet.
Her gaze caught her own fingers, which somehow looked very different from what they had looked like a few moments ago. They were longer and stronger, as if they had been a man's hands.
'Damn it...' she growled, and Harry only now noticed that her voice had changed. It was a soft-sounding man's voice, not at all suited to Ursula Ulatov.
'What happened?' asked Harry, alarmed, but he got no answer. The Nameless flicked up her wand, and with the movement Harry was struck by a terrible force that knocked him against the wall as if he had been a light feather.
His head banged on the wall, he heard the eerie crack of his ribs, and felt the blood rushing in thick rivulets down the back of his head...
'What happened?' hissed back the Nameless in his new voice. 'You transmuted me back. The effects of my Polyjuice Potion have worn off. I'm dying to know how you did it!'
'And I want... to know...' Harry coughed, struggling with nausea, 'what you did with Marius?'
The Nameless hesitated for a moment, then said:
'No more questions,' he said, and with that he briskly opened the door, stepped out into the corridor and locked his prisoner inside. His footsteps were soon drowned out by the silence of the prison.
Harry slumped back on the dirty floor. He couldn't find a bone in his body that didn't ache, hurt or sting. He couldn't even move his hands, he gasped, and when he opened his eyes, the image collapsed before him. He found it alarmingly likely that he had suffered a concussion.
A dark shadow swam over him, and Harry saw a face under a dark hood, just for a fraction of a moment, and the image was gone.
'You're hurt,' the boy said, stating the obvious.
'Thanks for the diagnosis... Are you a healer...?'
The boy laughed and the world spun around Harry. He turned sideways and threw up on the wall.
'I failed at Potions,' said the boy, 'but I don't need to be a healer to see that. He did a good job on you. I've never seen you in such a lousy state...'
Harry turned back on his back and looked up at the boy again, but he had already turned away from him, his pale hands adjusting the edge of his hood.
'Then you don't know me...' Harry groaned. 'This is just a little... scratch...'
Harry tried to stand up, but he couldn't. He put one hand on the edge of the bunk and pulled himself up, but he was so weak that he couldn't hold on.
'Wait, I'll help you,' said the boy, and stepped back to him. 'Don't exert yourself!'
All the while, he was careful not to let Harry see his face as he helped him up onto the bed. The wooden board was hard and rough, with only a torn, mouldy sheet hanging from it. Harry hissed painfully as he lay on it. The boy then let go and immediately moved away to the other end of the cell. As he did so, he walked through the beam of light streaming in through the window, and it illuminated the edge of his face for a moment.
'Marius is not dead,' he said suddenly, as he came arrived in the shadows. Harry opened his eyes.
'What?'
'She couldn't kill him,' he repeated. 'The stupid bitch thought she'd found the Claymore of the Spirits.'
Harry found it too difficult to think, so he watched the boy with little interest.
'What's that?' he asked, breathlessly. Looking to the side, he saw that his companion had also sat down by the wall, his hands clasped together in front of his upraised legs.
'It was the only weapon that could kill a dementor,' he said.
In other circumstances, this would have made Harry alert, but now he was unable to be. He buried his face in one hand and breathed deeply.
'Was?'
'Yeah,' replied the boy in a careless tone. 'It broke. It's useless now.'
Tired and nauseous as he was, Harry still asked:
'How do you know all these things?'
'My father told me about it.'
Harry remembered something else, and it came out of him again, but he did not fight it, and was resigned to the fact that his invincible curiosity could control him even under these adverse circumstances.
'Today I also saw the golden shield you took from Malfoy. I just don't understand how it ended up in a chest that was supposed to have been locked for fifty years...'
No answer.
The boy was silent, and there was nothing to be heard but the steady roar of the sea as it crashed against the black rocks. The light of the sun was not growing stronger, and Harry could not tell what time it was. He did not press his visitor for an answer, for he knew it would be useless...
He felt himself slowly being swallowed up by fatigue. His chest ached like someone put a weight of lead on it, his legs throbbed, and he longed to sleep. If he slept, he wouldn't have to think about what might be happening to Ron and Hermione at this very moment... The Nameless might be in their cell now, trying to get the whereabouts of the second Hallow out of them.
Then his mysterious companion suddenly spoke.
'Guess what, I've figured out why we see each other,' he announced with a single splutter, as if he had just come to some serious decision and was afraid he might change his mind in the middle of a sentence.
He could now expect little interest from Harry:
'Really?' he muttered and yawned.
'It's all because of the Deathly Hallows. The three objects that make the collector the Master of Death.'
Harry forced himself to open his eyes again. He was pleased to see that the image was no longer blurred, and through his glasses he could clearly see the centipede insect crawling on the ceiling.
'I see you, because I have collected them?' Harry squeezed out the question. 'Who are you, Death? I can't see your scythe...'
The boy didn't laugh now, whereas Harry was quite amused by his own words, which had turned into a stubborn cough.
'We meet because I have collected them as well,' was the reply. 'I am also a Master of Death, just like you.'
Harry frowned. He found this more than a little odd, given that the Resurrection Stone had been in the ring's socket all along before Dumbledore, and the Cloak had rested with him and his father. Could it be...?
No. He better get that out of his head.
'How did you do it?' Harry was immensely tired of the guessing game, and had already made up his mind that if he didn't get a satisfactory answer, he would simply go to sleep and let his conversation partner do what he wanted.
'I had it easy, actually,' said the boy quietly. 'The Cloak was a present to me a long time ago. I got the Wand like everyone else: by force. And I called the Stone to me with it. And that was all. The Hallows were united, and I received all their power...'
Harry still didn't understand anything, so he didn't ask another question, just lay back on the bunk and watched a fat spider feast on its prey, curled up in a web in the corner.
But then the question came out of his mouth:
'How can we both be Master of Death at the same time? You cannot have two owners of the Wand of Destiny at the same time. Or can you?'
'Not at the same time,' said the boy. 'But I never said we were from the same time...'
Harry thought the concussion was making the world go round again. He tightened his arms and pushed himself into a sitting position, but the movement was interrupted and pain ran through his body. His companion continued to say his piece, slowly drawing out the words as if unsure what to say and what not to say.
'The Hallows somehow connect us. I don't know how...' he quickly added, 'but when we are in the same area, the same place, but at different times, we can see each other... Only in our dreams, when we are unconscious...'
Harry took a deep breath and sat up, swinging his legs off the bunk and throwing his back against the wall. The process was more painful than he had imagined, he could feel the agony in his ribs, but he ignored it.
'I want to know who you are!' he snapped, his chest beeping painfully. 'I want to know why I know you!'
'The thing is, you don't know me...' the boy shook his head, sadness in his voice, 'But I know you well. Very well...'
Harry could have sworn he had just heard the boy's voice trail off, and he might have been fighting back tears.
'I am so sorry that I was so careless... I wish it could have turned out differently...'
Harry's eyes widened in shock. In an instant, the realisation burst into his mind like a carelessly thrown idea that you might not notice at first. But now the answer was there, Harry felt it, knew it, though he did not understand it, yet he could think of only one person who would tell him such a thing:
'D... Dad...?', Harry murmured, but when he said it he knew it was nonsense, for his father could not have had access to the Stone or the Wand, both of which were in different hands at the time, and both of which were guarding the secret.
Then the boy took off his hood, and stepped out of the shadows hiding his body, into the light coming through the window. And Harry could finally see the familiar features of his face, the black locks of hair standing out in a hundred directions, the familiar nose, the mouth that seemed to be his own. But something was wrong...
'No,' the boy replied, and gave a faint, sad smile that made his emerald eyes squint playfully over his thousands of freckles. 'My name is Albus Severus Potter. I am your son.'
THE END
BOOK 2 of the Nurmengard Trilogy: Harry Potter and the One with a Thousand Names
ID: 14023755
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