Chapter 67: Things Fall Apart
Harry awoke on Monday morning and realized that he was going to be late for class.
He jumped out of bed, threw on a pair of robes, and, as an afterthought, tucked the Resurrection Stone ring in an inside pocket; Albus had asked him to keep it safe.
He teleported directly to his office next to his classroom, glanced around habitually to see if there was anything he might have forgotten. Once he was sure he had everything, he made his dramatic entrance into the classroom full of…
Nobody was there. He scratched his head and looked at his watch. He was exactly on time, which made every single student exactly late. This had never happened before. Few people had ever been late to his classes, and when they were, they always had good reasons for it.
Harry strode to the classroom door and stuck his head outside only to get a face full of ink, completely obscuring his vision.
"Crack-Pot Crockett! Crack-Pot Crockett!"
That voice was so familiar—a voice Harry hadn't heard in years. Harry quickly wiped ink off of his glasses with the sleeve of his robes and there, zooming up and down the hall and cackling like mad, was Peeves the Poltergeist.
Harry suddenly realized that he hadn't seen Peeves at all since he fell back in time. He hadn't even noticed Peeves was missing.
"Peeves!"
"Crack-Pot Crockett, Crack—Crack-Pot knows Peevesies's name?" said Peeves, wheeling around in midair in surprise.
"Yeah…why—where did you come from?"
Peeves grinned. "I got out, I did! Crept back out of the dungeons, I did."
"You've been in the dungeons all this time? For how long?"
Peeves began bouncing himself off the ceiling over and over. "A thousand years, Peevesie waited, trapped. Ever since the Forest with Helena—that Bloody Baron killed Peeves, he did. So I came back here," he sang, "—Peevesie's been locked away so long, but now Peeves is free!" He started zooming down the hall away from Harry, occasionally bouncing off a wall. Harry ran to catch up.
"Wait…wait! The Bloody Baron killed you?" Harry asked. Well, that would explain why Peeves was so afraid of him. "When? In the forest in Albania with Helena Ravenclaw after she stole the Diadem?"
"I was her guide in the forest!
"Every day she needed me,
"To find some food or climb a tree,
"Got killed by the Bloody B,
"And now I'm out, completely free!" he sang.
Peeves wasn't mischievous, Harry realized, he was mad. Raving mad from a thousand years trapped in a dungeon.
"Which dungeon were you in? How come nobody found you?"
"I was deep, I was. The deepest dungeon vault of them all! Crack-pot Crockett! Crack-pot Crockett!" Peeves zoomed around a corner and Harry lost him.
But what he saw when he rounded that corner was enough to make him forget Peeves entirely, and he skidded to a stop just before he crashed into a crowd of students.
He had entered the giant room where the moving staircases hung, but instead of hanging, all of the flights of stairs were smashed against the ground in front of Harry, now a twenty foot high pile of stone rubble. Harry gasped in horror and looked up at the empty room. Students were crowded on the edge of each of the landings, looking down to see the mess and muttering to one another. The portraits were gossiping madly, quite shaken themselves.
Harry elbowed his way through the students. "Homenum Revelio!" he incanted immediately, not bothering to pull out his fake wand.
There was nobody trapped under the pile of rubble staircases—nobody alive, anyway.
"Could I have silence, please." All of the echoing conversations came to an abrupt halt.
Harry looked up to see that Albus had appeared on one of the top landings, all the way up at the top of the room, and it was he who had spoken.
"It was not my intention," continued Albus, "to distract you from your classes by announcing this unfortunate happening. I will say again; no one has been injured by the staircases, and I, and the rest of the faculty, will do all that we can to find out why this has happened and make sure it does not happen again. In the meantime, please go about your day. There are plenty of other stairways. Pip pip! Off you go." The students slowly started reluctantly shuffling off.
Harry teleported up to the seventh floor landing where Albus was standing.
"When did this happen?" he asked.
"Some time in the early morning, is my best guess," Albus responded. "It was after I retrieved my ear muffs from the Great Hall at three in the morning, and before students are allowed out of their dormitories at six, and for that I am grateful. This would have been catastrophic had there been anyone here."
Harry shook his head in disbelief (more at Albus's need to fetch his ear muffs from the great hall at three in the morning than at the Grand Staircase falling).
"Do you have any idea what happened?" Harry asked.
"Ah…well…there's…no," said Albus. "Do you have any theories?"
"Well…You probably figured this out, but I think it's probably related to the other time that staircase fell, and maybe all that other stuff that's been happening," he said referring to the ceiling of the Great Hall going out, and the kitchens not working, and the Room of Requirement turning into a howling abyss.
Something moved across the room, and Harry's eyes immediately tracked to it. It was Peeves.
"Have you met Peeves yet?" Harry asked.
"I'm sorry?" asked Albus.
"Peeves the Poltergeist. He…er…that's him over there. Says he was just let out of the dungeons—I knew him when I was a student…called me the same nickname then, too… 'Crack-Pot Potter…'"
"Is he dangerous?"
"Not really. He makes a mess…he's sort of a pain, but he's never done anything much worse than drop ink pots on people's heads and make a lot of noise…"
He trailed off, then had an idea.
"Oi, Peeves!"
Peeves zoomed over to Harry just to blow a raspberry and fly away again.
"See what I mean? I was going to ask him what time he escaped, because it might be related to all of this," he gestured to the rubble. "I'm not going to get anything out of him now. I have class. Maybe you could try. He always respected you…"
"'Scuse me," said a voice from their left.
Harry and Albus turned to see a small portrait of a young boy in a messenger cap and tatty clothing.
"Hello," said Albus.
"'Scuse me, 'fessor, but I couldn't 'elp but over'ear, but it was 'round four thirty this morn when the staircase fell," said the little boy.
"That is very helpful, thank you."
"'Enry," he said.
"Thank you, Henry." Albus nodded. "Have a nice class," he said to Harry.
Harry teleported off, back to his classroom, now full of first years (wow! How did you do that! Does the fire burn you?").
He taught his lessons as normal, and went about his day.
At dinner, though, came another shock. When Harry entered the Great Hall, he noticed that the students were whispering rather than talking boisterously. He looked up to see that the magical sky-ceiling had once again gone out. High above them were merely…stone arches. A grand castle ceiling, so ordinary when compared to the night sky.
Harry jogged up to the front table. "And when did this happen?" he asked Albus, who was already half way through his meal.
"Forty three minutes ago, according to the Friar" said Albus, "and I still only have theories…"
"Care to share?"
"Something or somebody is interfering with the castle's natural magical field," he said. "Or the enchantments that were originally put into place to move the stairs and make our ceiling the sky are just now wearing off. It has been a thousand years, after all, and I don't know of them ever being updated."
"Has the stairway started working again?"
"No," said Albus.
"Is there anything else that might stop working soon? The kitchens? That could be bad…"
"I should alert the kitchen staff to that possibility and get them ready for the necessity to leave the castle to buy food."
"How does it work, normally?"
"The castle has sources all over the world; that's why we have fresh fruit and vegetables year round. Sources put the food into lockers, and it appears in our lockers and ice chests. When the kitchens stopped working before, the house elves said that there was no more food in the lockers. If that happened again, we would have enough food for a few meals. I would need to ask the elves exactly how many."
"Is there anything else that might be dangerous?"
"I know parts of the castle have been held up by magic. I will search the school and reinforce these areas…perhaps I should enlist the assistance of Filius."
"I'd be happy to help, but I don't think my magic's up to architectural enchantments yet."
"How is your magic coming, by the way?" asked Albus.
"I cast Homenum Revelio earlier. Magically, I may be almost where I was when I finished school. I'm still having trouble with occlumency, though. I've been keeping my…er…"
"Soul objects?"
"Yeah. I've been keeping those in my room so that I don't accidentally give my students a blast of paranoia or uncontrollable joy in the middle of class."
"There were seven parts of your soul, yes?"
Harry nodded.
"One of them has always been your body, and the one from the broom, the wand, and Fawkes are all in you?"
Harry nodded again. "Which leaves me with the hat, which is sort of my happy feelings, the bowling ball, which is anger and vigilance and stuff, and the record, which I'm pretty sure is instincts like 'run, eat, sleep,'…and things."
"Where has Fawkes been?"
"He comes by occasionally, but I think he's traveling most of the time."
Albus nodded. He grabbed Harry's hand from under the table and gave it a squeeze.
"You'll have to excuse me. I should find Filius." He gazed into Harry's eyes, and Harry felt color flow to his cheeks. Albus twinkled at him, and Harry couldn't look away.
"Oh, get a room," muttered Minerva from behind Albus.
Tuesday was subdued. The effect on the mood of the staircase falling and the ceiling going out—and staying out—reminded Harry of when Tom Riddle's Chamber of Secrets messages were written on the wall in his second year. The students were talking about it, but in whispers. During the five minute break in Harry's afternoon double second-year class, Harry overheard a conversation between three Ravenclaw students sitting on the floor:
"I heard that the muggles found us and are shutting off all the magic," said one girl.
"Don't be stupid," said a boy. "Muggles could never find us."
"Well, I heard— from that big Slytherin fifth year—that it's because the castle's rejecting Dumbledore as headmaster. He's only been in since our first year, you know. Before that he did Transfiguration. You know, nobody really knows how Dippet died—he was the last headmaster. Dumbledore says he found him dead in the woods. I bet Dumbledore wanted his spot and offed him—"
Harry cleared his throat and the three students looked up. All three shrank downward when they saw it was Harry.
"Five points from Ravenclaw for each of you for slander and gossip," said Harry. Then he softened, "I know you're afraid, but Professor Dumbledore is who will keep you safe."
The students all looked down and didn't say anything. Harry nodded and paced back up to the front of the classroom to resume the lesson.
It was Wednesday morning before anything else happened, and when it did, it only seemed to amplify the feeling that the whole school was holding its breath before plunging into ice cold water.
Albus had noticed that Harry was ever an early riser, and consequently invited him to his tower for breakfast that Wednesday. Harry, naturally, was thrilled and accepted.
So Harry woke up early on Wednesday morning and went to Albus's office, where many of the portraits of old headmasters were still snoring in their frames wearing curlers and nightcaps. Harry and Albus sat together in an alcove in an oriel window away from the portraits, and watched as the sun rose higher and sipped tea and ate toast with raspberry jam and talked.
"So, how did your castle enchantment fixing go?" asked Harry.
"Filius and I found a number of places where the enchantments were weakening. We supplemented those places with new enchantments, but I'm afraid ours won't last nearly as long as the originals. Either enchantments are not what they used to be, or the old ones were powered by something and the power is going away."
Harry frowned.
"That's scary. It's like all of the magic of the whole castle's just…drying up."
"And I don't know how to stop it." Albus removed his glasses and was wiping his face with open palms. It took Harry a moment to realize how upset that thought made Albus. Harry got out of his chair and walked around behind Albus to massage his shoulders.
"Albus—don't worry. I know for a fact that everything will be alright." He squeezed a little harder, and Albus let his hands fall to his lap and his chin droop to give Harry more access to his spine. "This isn't permanent," Harry continued, working his hands up to Albus's neck. "It was never like this when I went to school. It'll all be fine."
Albus sighed. "What would I do without you?"
Harry tried to make some sarcastic reply, but he was too touched by the remark to come up with anything good.
"I know what I'd do without you," said Albus, picking up where Harry was unable to go. "I would be spending my whole year worrying about what Tom Riddle was teaching my students…No, I'd like to think I never would have hired him."
Harry was reminded suddenly and unpleasantly that he had a date, of all things, scheduled with Lord Voldemort, of all people, that very Friday, of all times. And he hadn't told Albus. He was just about to do so when Albus suddenly stiffened under Harry's hands.
"What? Are you—"
"Be quiet a moment, please, Harry."
Harry fell silent, listening with all his might, but he couldn't hear anything but his own heartbeat in his ears from the sudden rush of adrenaline.
He looked down at Albus.
"Do you hear that?" Albus asked.
"Hear what? I don't hear anything."
"Exactly. It's quiet—nearly silent in here."
"I don't—"
"The portraits, Harry." Albus was out of his chair and in the middle of the office before Harry could turn around. The stricken look on his face was enough to make Harry's blood run cold. Harry joined him in the center of the office and looked where Albus was looking.
The portraits had frozen.
Each headmaster or headmistress was frozen in one position—snoozing, pulling a curler out of her hair, blowing his nose, midsentence with a neighbor. All of them were still.
"They…they've stopped," said Harry. All of a sudden, it seemed horribly morbid to have these frozen paintings of dead professors on the walls. Harry tore his eyes away from the walls and looked back at Albus, who was still looking around horrorstruck. Neither of them had any doubt that it was somehow a continuation of the occurrences happening all over the school.
Harry faced Albus squarely, put his hands back on Albus's shoulders and kept rubbing until he relaxed. Albus looked down into Harry's eyes and smiled weakly, and Harry couldn't help but steal a kiss. When he tried to pull away, he found that Albus had snaked an arm around him to hold him in place. They gently rested their foreheads together.
"We'll work this," Harry reassured. He only wished he believed it himself, but deep down he knew it was going to get worse before it got better.
And he was right.