Chapter 35 – The light at the end of the tunnel...
"Are you sure about this?" asked Harry, peering into the tunnel that stretched away in front of him. A few meters in it faded to complete darkness and even the torches they'd brought with them didn't provide much in the way of illumination.
He looked up at the raven haired woman beside him, who was twisting a long loop of thick black thread between her fingers in the manner of a one person version of cat's cradle. Blue eyes flicked up to his face and soft lips curled into a smile.
"Don't you watch the news? 'Course I'm sure."
He frowned and looked at Hermione, who shrugged and said: "She's got a point. If the horcruxes corrupt things...well, I can't think of anything else in London that stands out more."
"How about the Houses of Parliament?" asked Robert Avery with a distracted look on his face. "I'm sure I read something about civil unrest in that paper you keep reading." This last comment was directed at Katherine, who sighed heavily.
"Governments are perfectly capable of corrupting themselves without any help from a fraction of Tom's soul, Robert. Just look at our Ministry."
"Yes, but I still don't see why-" Robert began, and this time Katherine pulled one hand out the tangle of twine she was twisting around her fingers and gave him a weary look.
"That's because you've never used London Underground in rush hour. If you had, you'd understand."
"Look, the fact that public transport in London is a bit iffy-" he held up a hand to stem Katherine's protests and continued doggedly "-does not mean that Voldemort planted a horcrux in it."
Katherine shook her head and shared an exasperated look with Hermione. "Firstly, it's not public transport that's the problem – the buses are fine, it's the trains that are a shambles. The highest fares in Europe and quite probably the worst service – delays, break downs, strikes, the wrong kind of snow, commuters packed into carriages like sardines with no air conditioning for hours – seriously, Robert. 'Iffy' doesn't quite cover it. There's got to be something else behind it – it can't just be the product of human incompetence – no one's that stupid."
Robert gazed at her, unimpressed, as she continued in a voice that clearly implied she thought they were wasting time. "Secondly, Tom spent a large majority of his life here in London – first at the Orphanage and then again after Hogwarts when he worked in Knockturn Alley. At the time he was making the horcruxes, this city would have been an important part of his life – he was born here, he got his magical awakening here and he would have used the trains to get to Kings Cross – his route to Hogwarts – probably the only place he's ever been happy. London is very important – the trains especially so."
"Well that's all well and good but you're missing one very important factor here, Katherine," said Robert, leaning against the grimy brick wall of the tube line, and looking dubiously at his old friend.
"Yes?"
"The reason he liked Hogwarts so much was because he was miserable here – he hated London."
To his eternal bemusement, Katherine grinned.
"All the more reason to corrupt the trains. Think about it – making people's lives hell for a couple of hours every day of the working week for their entire working life – that's clever. He can't be out slaughtering muggles all the time, but this-" She gestured around the darkened station, that one movement of her arm encompassing the gloomy, enclosed platform and the dirt that permeated everything, product of a thousand peoples' sweat and frustration from the past century, ingrained into the very essence of structure. "-this is genius. He's killing thousands – a tiny bit at a time.
"Besides," she added, shrugging a little and assuming a lighter tone of voice. "Hate is basically the same as love when you get right down to it. It's indifference that's the worst – that hurts most, because it means that you don't care – that you don't even notice. At least if you hate someone you're recognising that they exist."
"Somehow I don't think the muggles would object to him being indifferent," remarked Robert, shaking his head. "Something tells me they'd prefer it."
"Of course they would," agreed Katherine. "But the fact is that he does care what happens to them because he hates them, and that means he wants to harm them, which means-"
"-he's put a horcrux under London," finished Hermione, firmly. "Because if he lived here most of his life then muggle Londoners are the ones he has most reason to hate because they're the ones he knows." She smiled faintly at Katherine. "The rest of them he hates on principle but is pretty much indifferent to."
Katherine grinned, dark eyes showing admiration. "Smart girl. I knew there was a reason I liked you." She looked over at Robert, eyebrows raised. "Convinced yet?"
"No," he said softly. "Because like I said back at the house, why here? London, ok – trains, maybe - but why here? Why not Kings Cross?"
"Because horcruxes radiate dark power and Dumbledore would have noticed it. Besides, he doesn't want to harm Hogwarts or Slytherin students. Where would his recruits come from?" shrugged Katherine, unperturbed.
"And the diary was his link to the school in terms of location," said Harry quietly. "It was the key to opening the Chamber of Secrets and unleashing Slytherin's monster on the muggleborns. The locket marked where he first terrorised his muggle companions. There's definitely a connection with making people suffer."
"But why Ihere/I? Why this station? It's not even the nearest to his orphanage."
"No, but it's got the highest suicide rate of the entire network, so I thought it might be a good starting point," said Katherine without a trace of insincerity, resuming her methodical weaving of the black thread between her hands. Harry saw Hermione blanche and look uneasily around her, clutching at Ron's arm, and gaze the metal tracks on which she stood as though expecting to see some trace of the lives lost here.
He looked down at the tracks too, and then at the rubber soled shoes Katherine had insisted they wear. She's assured them the electricity would be switched off at night for track maintenance, but he was still wary of the two live lines that ran parallel to the metal coasters the trains travelled along.
The dark hole that was the mouth to the tube gaped menacingly in front of him, a black abyss that beckoned like Pandora's box, drawing him in.
"Dumbledore had a scar on his left knee that was a map of the London Underground," he said suddenly, surprising even himself. Katherine paused in the middle of pulling a section of black thread through a diamond shaped hole she'd managed to create with the loop of string to look strangely at him, a bewildered expression on her face and Hermione gave a half laugh, glad of something to distract her from the oppressive knowledge that people had died on these tracks.
Ron just stared at him and asked carefully: "How do you know that?"
"Sirius told me," answered Harry, tearing his gaze away from the mocking darkness. "He said he thought he was joking but Lupin heard him, and said it was true." He looked back at Katherine who was considering him critically. She gave a small smile and shrugged.
"Probably was. Surprised that fact didn't make it onto the Chocolate Frogs cards, though."
"Do you think Voldemort knows?"
"He might do," said Katherine, appearing to think about it. "That kind of thing would be right up his street – Dumbledore's a got a map to his horcrux on knee and he still can't find it. It'd make him feel he'd got one over on his old teacher."
"Now that," said Robert deliberately, disengaging himself from the wall he'd been leaning against and smiling lazily, "Is a reason."
Katherine cast him a look that was somewhere between exasperation and scorn. "Now you think it's a good place to find a horcrux? I give you plenty of perfectly grounded reasons for Tom hiding a horcrux here, and only now that you find out Dumbledore had a weird scar do you think I might be right?"
Robert smiled enigmatically. "Everything you said made perfect sense, but nothing about your reasons marked this out as special. The Dark Lord's hatred for muggles is powerful but generic – his desire to get one up on Dumbledore, on the other hand - that is something I can believe in."
Katherine gazed at him for a while, aristocratic face studiously blank, then she rolled her eyes, making a few final deft movements with her fingers, and grinning with satisfaction. She caught Harry's confused frown and winked, disentangling her hands from the knotted mass of black thread and pocketing it.
"Well?"
Harry's gaze switched from Katherine to Robert at the sound of the man's voice. What on earth did he mean by that? Katherine nodded towards the tunnel to Harry's right.
"Down there. About half a mile along. Not sure which side, but there's definitely some sort of dark magic down there." She dug two torches out of the bag that was slung over her shoulder and threw one to Robert who stared at it, looking a little lost. "Press the button on the top," said Katherine softly, shaking her head slightly. Robert threw her an irked look and did so, directing the powerful beam into the dark of the tunnel.
"Come on, then," said Katherine, looking over her shoulder at the trio. "Only three hours before the next train comes along and I don't know how long it's going to take us to find the entrance."
Reluctantly, the three teenagers switched their torches on and trudged after the two retreating figures. Harry glanced at his watch in the dim light before the tunnel and saw she was right – it was gone 2 am already.
There was silence in the tunnel save for the sound of dully echoing footsteps and Harry took the opportunity to try and sort through the last few hectic hours in his head. He'd been upstairs with Ron when the note had arrived, the paper she'd given him glowing gold to get his attention.
Meet us at Kings Cross in half an hour.
Wear rubber soled shoes.
When he'd asked why, her answer had simply been:
We've found one.
He had the feeling she'd thought it was obvious.
She'd explained at Kings Cross, handing them all orange rimmed tickets and they'd followed her onto the last train, hoping she knew what she was doing. When he'd asked her why she was so keen to find it tonight she just shrugged and asked 'why not?'. He pointed out that they could have had a good nights sleep and prepared and she'd smiled slyly and asked whether he would have been able to sleep knowing what might face them the following day.
"Besides, how were you intending to prepare?" she'd added, drawing long black hair into a pony tail as the train slowed down approaching the next station. "If it's skill you want, me and Rob have it in buckets. You don't have to worry on that score."
He was well aware of that fact, thought Harry as he cast the beam of light from the torch over the curved stone wall. He just wasn't entirely sure she intended to use it to help him. He wasn't planning on telling her that, though; she seemed to approve of him distrusting her – another example of her seemingly fragile grasp on sanity, because for all her intelligence and beauty and fierce loyalty, she was mad, bordering on insane, and he kept wondering why no one else seemed to notice.
Maybe she'd been like that before Azkaban, he mused, or maybe they just mistook the look in those inimitable eyes for something else.
Or maybe, he thought, looking at the indistinct figures ahead of him, they knew and just didn't mention it. For some reason, this theory seemed to fit best with the way people acted around her, but he could for the life of him work out why. If Ron or Hermione had ever looked at him with eyes like hers he'd have been seriously worried, but even Remus didn't seem anxious about her state of mind.
The figures ahead of him had stopped, and as the trio drew nearer, Ron and Hermione talking in low voices, he saw them examining a stretch of wall intently.
"Here?" asked Robert in a low voice and Harry saw her run her hands over the wall and nod.
"You can feel magic?" asked Hermione, watching her intently. Katherine grinned, and fished the black loop of string out of her pocket again.
"What is that?" asked Harry, frowning deeply. He'd never seen anyone else use anything like that at Hogwarts.
"This?" asked Katherine, holding up the loop. "This is black twine, Potter. From the kitchen drawer." She hooked the string over her fingers and pulled it into a pattern, examining it with narrowed eyes.
"You're using twine to try and find a horcrux?"
"Well it was a little short notice to find any dragon heartstrings," murmured Katherine, in a voice that made Harry think she was being sarcastic. He frowned again and looked at his friends who were standing just behind him.
"It does work," whispered Hermione softly. "It's a form of scrying – using thread to locate magic, but humans don't usually use it."
"Why? Is it unreliable?" he asked, glancing back at Katherine and starting to doubt that she had been joking.
"No, it's hard," answered Hermione. "Centaurs do it sometimes when stargazing fails, but it's really difficult to see the patterns. It's supposed to take years of practice to even be able to see the obvious ones and if this is dark magic, it's going to be very complicated."
"Yeah well, she's had years, hasn't she?" put in Ron, surveying Katherine dubiously. "She was in Azkaban for over ten years – that's plenty of time to learn something."
"Don't be silly, Ron, she wouldn't have been able to learn in there, would she? Her cell was bricked up and everyone thought she was dead. How on earth is she supposed to have learnt anything in there?"
Ron conceded this point but Harry said softly: "Yeah, that's another thing that doesn't fit."
"Another thing?"
"She's mental," Harry pointed out. "You can see that, can't you?"
"Well yeah, but it's not the kind of crazy that harms anyone but her," said Ron and Harry stared at him, considering this insight. Ron went red and shrugged self consciously under the gazes of his friends. "Well it's not, is it? She's just kind of balanced on the line between sanity and lunacy but I think it'd take something huge to push her over it."
And that, thought Harry, was what he'd missed. That was reason no one said anything – they did know, of course they knew, they couldn't miss it, but they kept quiet because however thin the line she was treading, Katherine wouldn't fall off – she wouldn't let herself and her friends knew that. Which rather begged the question of how.
"What was it that didn't fit?" asked Hermione, bringing Harry out of his musings. He looked at her for a moment, trying to reassemble his thoughts then said:
"I can't see her sitting in a cell doing nothing for a decade. Can you?"
Hermione didn't get the chance to reply however, because at that moment a light flared behind them, shedding eerie purple light over the five figures and illuminating the tunnel. They turned to see what had caused it and Harry heard Hermione's sharp intake of breath as she laid eyes on the twisting line of violet that writhed above Katherine's hands.
"What is that?" she breathed, clutching Ron's arm unconsciously.
"The spell that's keeping this door shut," muttered Katherine, eyes narrowed to slits against the bright light emanating from the spell.
"But it's alive," said Ron uneasily. "Spells aren't-"
"No?" asked Katherine, casting a sideways glance at him. "Why'd you think they fade over time, then? They don't just disappear, they die."
"But-"
"But what? But you wouldn't have used them if you'd known? I said they were alive, Granger, I never said they could think. They're not sentient, they're just – there. Like a tree. You know it's a living organism but you don't have any qualms about chopping it into firewood."
"But you can't kill spells," said Ron quietly, frowning at Katherine.
"So this is just a figment of my imagination is it?" asked Katherine, jerking her hands apart and ripping the writhing line into fragments that seemed to go supernova and then wink out. "Nice illusion," she muttered in the darkness as Robert fumbled for his torch and switched it back on.
"Can we get in now?" he asked, peering dubiously at the nondescript wall, blackened by dirt and grime.
"Mmm," murmured Katherine, placing a hand on the wall, her forehead creasing in a frown. "Hope so."
Harry edged closer to her and cast a weary eye over the brickwork. She glanced at him, and he looked back at her defiantly.
"How can you tell it's there? Apart from that spell, I mean," he asked, curious despite himself. Dumbledore had managed to find that chain for the boat without being able to see it and he presumed Katherine was using similar skills here. Blue eyes studied him critically for a moment, then she grabbed his wrist and held his hand against the wall.
"Do you feel that?"
"A kind of thrumming?" he asked, feeling the bricks tremor beneath his fingers.
"Yes."
"That's magic?" he asked, glancing up at her.
"That's the reason the entrance is here," she replied, releasing his wrist and pulling out her wand with a look of deepest concentration on her face.
"So magic gives out vibrations, or something, does it?"
"No."
He frowned, letting his hand drop from the wall and looked at her in confusion. "But the bricks are trembling."
"It's not magic," said Katherine dully.
"And it's not just the bricks," said a small voice behind him. He glanced around to see Hermione, looking pale and worried in the torchlight. "I really think we ought to be getting in there now."
"Why?" asked Harry, though he thought he already knew. He could feel the ground beneath his feet shuddering even as he spoke and the constant air currents along the tracks seemed to have picked up speed. He looked in alarm at Katherine. "I thought you said trains didn't run at night."
"I said nothing of the sort. There are always maintenance trains in the shut down hours – when else are they going to repair the tracks?"
"But the power's not on," said Ron desperately as Katherine cast a few idle shapes with her wand, leaving small trails of light in the darkness. "Dad said trains can't run without electricity."
"They're battery powered – go about half the speed of the normal ones," Katherine murmured, flicking her wand with a decisive stroke and examining her handiwork. Harry had barely spared a glance for the glowing lines but now they were hard to ignore. The ancient letters flared gold and exploded, leaving afterimages on his eyes and a dark shadow on the wall behind them.
No, not a shadow – darkness.
Darkness where a wall should be.
He stood still before the mouth of a tunnel into the unknown and wondered how on earth he had expected to be able to hunt down horcruxes on his own.
"Impressive," muttered Robert and Harry saw Katherine grin and roll her eyes, having caught the sarcastic inflection in her friend's voice.
"Is it safe?" asked Hermione, looking nervously at the dark entrance, but no one had a chance to answer because at that moment the gloom to their right suddenly grew a lot lighter very quickly and the distant rumbling that had been growing steadily louder for the past thirty seconds burst upon their ears as the late night maintenance train rounded the bend in the track and bore down on them.
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