viii. Herpophage
Harry Potter was flying through a field of dragons, not quite clear in his mind whether he was trying to escape or pursue them; when he tried to pursue, the dragon would be miles away in a beat of its wings, and when he tried to escape he found his broom refusing to obey his repeated commands to get moving.
"Dragons don't hunt humans," Terry said to him reassuringly, reading from a book in the library. Harry pulled up a chair next to him. " 'For thousands of years wizards banded together to kill dragons who did, so the human-hunting instinct faded out under selection pressure, as it did with wolves who tried to prey on Muggles--"
"Terry, don't say that," Harry said in panic, "They might hear you, and then they'll try to prove you're wrong." Sure enough, a Fireball immediately poked its head through the wall and swallowed Terry whole. The creature gave a long, reptilian laugh, and Harry threw himself at the murderer in a rage. "You think this is funny? YOU THINK IT'S FUNNY? I'LL TEAR YOUR FUCKING THROAT OUT!" He leaped down the dragon's throat and started punching holes in its tongue, its cheeks, its gullet from the inside until there was nothing left around him but a kind of wide-woven basket of dragon scales. "ARE YOU LAUGHING NOW, YOU MISERABLE PRICK? YOU LAUGHING NOW?"
"Potter!"
"YOU WANT MORE, DO YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHITE?"
"POTTER!"
The dragon kept on thrashing, Harry kept on stabbing and slicing, stabbing and slicing, the dragon was trying to shake him off...
"MR. POTTER!"
Harry opened his eyes and saw Madame Pomfrey looking down at him, shaking him by the shoulders.
He was in bed in the hospital wing. He took a deep breath. Madame Pomfrey looked like she needed a few moments to recover also.
"Sorry, sorry," Harry said. "For making you come out, and... about the language."
"I'm not going to take points, Mr. Potter."
Pomfrey took out her wand and performed her diagnostic spells, tracing the injured hip area with particular care. Harry took the chance to glance over at the other beds. He stared at Zacharias, who was lying immobile in what looked like a translucent cocoon. Pomfrey saw where Harry was looking.
"Mr. Smith is doing as well as can be expected. He may be out of there in ten days to a fortnight." Harry nodded with relief. The Matron continued her examination.
"Madame Pomfrey," Harry asked, "why didn't the dreamless sleep potion work?"
Pomfrey said, "The brain needs to dream to maintain itself, Mr. Potter. Ordinarily, it can do without them for a day or two, but apparently in your case the need was so overwhelming it overrode the effect of the potion. I would have to guess your brain is struggling to adapt to the flood of memories it received from, from your classmates. Were you dreaming about one of them?"
"Yeah. About Terry. It was actually a scene from one of his memories, part of the dream was anyway, him doing research on dragons in the library."
"I presume the dream wasn't confine to a library tour."
"No, some real dragons -- well, not exactly real dragons, but--"
"Yes, I understand. The problem is, Mr. Potter, that your reaction was so strong it undid the effect of the bone-binding solution you took after your injury. To put it bluntly, your hip is in pieces again. The effect of the pain-relief potion hasn't worn off, thank goodness, or we wouldn't be able to have this conversation. You'll have to spend another night here."
"But... won't the same thing happen again? I've been having these dreams pretty much every night."
Pomfrey stared at Harry. "You've been screaming and thrashing like this every night, and nobody has noticed it?"
"Two-way silencing charms in each bed, except for mine."
"Why do you need-- Oh." The matron shook her head disapprovingly. "In any case, you'll need to be sedated and immobilized when you're given the next bone-binding potion, to give that hip a chance to heal."
Harry considered this for a few seconds. "If these memories are coming through so strong, that the dreamless sleep potion didn't work, then-- won't the immobilization charm get over-ridden too?"
"There's a chance of that, yes."
"Then you'll have wasted two doses of bone-binding potion. How much do we have left? The students might need it, after the next battle--"
Madame Pomfrey's face darkened.
"--they might be injured more badly than I was," Harry finished.
"You were injured quite badly enough, Harry," said Pomfrey, "and you are one of the students who need it, if you haven't forgotten, and it isn't your place to worry about the allotment of medical supplies, it's mine."
"Of course it's my place, I'm the-- I'm in charge here," Harry said. "Oh, don't give me that look, like 'Oh, really, how precious,' I know it's ridiculous, but it's the truth, you want me to resign?"
His temper was starting to boil over, and Pomfrey quickly moved to appease it. "No, Mr. Potter, I know the students look up to you. And you are performing quite... you're doing everything Professor Dumbledore could possibly have asked, and more. I'm sorry if I haven't said that earlier."
"Well thanks, that's... don't worry about it. But I've got to be in on this kind of decision, and I can't be taking potions in limited supply for myself, especially if they might end up getting wasted on me, captains can't do that, I can't do that."
Pomfrey shook her head again. "And how are you going to perform your duties as captain without a functioning right hip?"
"I can still fly. I can control the pain. Ginny or Hermione can do a temporary bone-knitting charm to carry me through for a couple of hours at a time."
"Each time you do that, Mr. Potter, you do further damage to yourself, and very soon that damage will not be reparable. If that happens, you will never walk normally. Not to mention other hip-intensive activities, like the ones that require two-way silencing charms."
Harry looked up in surprise at that last comment, and gathered himself, fighting the urge to giggle at the combination of Madame Pomfrey's elegant euphemism and her stern look. "If I get out of here with no more damage than that," he said, "don't you think I'll be pretty lucky?" And the Matron had no comeback to that.
-------------
The end of October approached, and with it the day of ill omen, Halloween. Nobody mentioned the horrors and crises this day had brought in so many years previous, but Harry was not the only one convinced that Voldemort would not let the occasion pass. After so many embarrassments, he would be looking for an opportunity to retake the stage triumphantly. The anniversary of the day that had made Harry an orphan and Voldemort a wandering ghost, that had bound them as prophesied rivals... what could be a more dramatically appropriate moment for the Dark Lord to announce himself at the last stronghold defying him?
October 31st came. The Army of the Forbidden Forest told themselves they weren't the green kids who had trembled before at the thought of Voldemort's wrath, they were the victorious veterans now of four battles (if you didn't count the fights against the Giants and the Dragons each as two-parters with a loss followed by a win, but rather saw each as one long battle ending in triumph). They were ready for Tom, old Tom, Snakeface, Moldy Voldy--
"Chil-dren!"
The students in the Great Hall looked around to see who had said that.
"Children, you will come out now!"
This wasn't like the Surrender Chorus, a Sonorus-amplified sound coming through the walls; it seemed to be coming, deadly level, from inside the Hall. Only Harry could recognize it from experience; he nodded in confirmation at those who turned questioningly towards him.
"You have had your moment of mischief, children. You all knew the time to pay for it would come. It has come now."
"Oh, yeah?" Ron shouted to each corner of the wall, "how did Lucius and Bella and a hundred or so of your arse-kissers like our mischief?" A few students started a cheer at this, but it faltered into the silence around it. Some of the younger ones began with hysterical giggles that morphed into cries: heh, heh, hah, ho, oh, oh no, oh no.
"Weasley. Shall I take my payment for that childish insolence out of your sister's flesh, or your girlfriend's?"
After a few loud curses, the hall was quiet again.
"There will be more pain," the voice intoned, "and more death, for every second I need to waste on your willfulness."
The grim-faced officers were on their brooms now, and rest of the Army of the Forbidden Forest were fumbling for theirs, waiting for the signal from their captain, but Harry had them wait for a moment. They're looking for me to give them something to rally around, he thought, and called back:
"Pain and death sounds good to me, Tom! You really ready for yours?" Now the students laughed and shouted "That's right!" or "Tell him, Harry!"
"Harry Potter. You will be allowed to walk silently towards a quick death, but that is all the charity I will give. Every word from you, from this moment, will be the death of one of your friends."
Harry was in a state of stymied fury when Ron stepped forward. "Give him a word on my behalf, Harry. Make mine a good one."
"One for me, too!" Ginny said. "You have to make mine a long one!" Hermione said, to general laughter. "And me!" "Yes, I think I'll take one also!" There was a roar throughout the hall of volunteers begging to be part of the Word of Death game. Harry felt his heart swelling. We all know it, it's win or die, and we're all pledged to do it together; no point trying to squirm out of anything. He held up his hand again for silence, cleared his throat and began... to sing:
'Moldy Voldy came to Hogwarts, riding on a Snorcack
'Stuck a wand in his back pocket, Crucio'd his asscrack!
And as Lord Voldemort attempted to express his lack of amusement, the A.F.F. chorus came in over him, singing:
Moldy Voldy keep it up! You're an inspiration
Kids can use your poster as a cure for masturbation!
To the rhythmic clapping of the students of Hogwarts, Harry continued:
'Moldy Voldy drank a potion for some extra power
'Brewed it out of Malfoy piss and asked why it was sour!
And the chorus picked it up with:
Moldy Voldy keep it up! Pop that pus-filled canker!
You'll be in the Hall of Fame--for Biggest Wizard Wanker!
Harry sang:
'Moldy Voldy went out shopping for some talcum powder
'"Take a bath in shit" they said, "that might just hide your odor."
And the hundred soldiers and reserves, who had been keeping careful track of the word count, chanted: "ninety eight, ninety nine, one hundred! READY OR NOTHERE WE COME!"
There was no enemy in sight as the hundred broomriders came rushing out of the castle: no Death Eaters, no magical creatures, and no Voldemort. The A.F.F. were all following Harry, and Harry was flying like a hawk for the Forbidden Forest itself, following the thread from his scar. As they passed the wards, they could see a huge clearing in the forest, a circle surrounded by flame, in the center of which stood their most dreaded adversary, wand at his side, alone.
Harry came diving towards the Dark Lord, with the officers right behind. Before Harry could cast a spell he was assaulted by blasts of hot swirling wind and sent tumbling backwards. He was able to right himself in mid-air and went to return to the attack, but when he recovered from the disorientation, he could see that there was nobody behind or around him. Outside the hemisphere whose circumference was the fire-circle, the students could not pass. Some were lying dazed on the ground, and many fliers who were trying to come through the barrier now joined them after being thrown back off their brooms by the invisible force. Others were trying without success to disspell or counteract this magic, and within the circle... there were five figures, bound and immobile, lying close to Voldemort.
"You see, Potter, I learned from your device against Bella's group. I can also choose who, and how many to let in. They should all be honored, Potter, your group from the Ministry expedition. I am giving them their execution personally."
Harry tried to fly close enough to cast Finite Incantatum on the magical binding, but once again faced a whirlwind of such power he could not control his flight, could not stay on his broom. The broom tumbled down and away, and Harry felt himself being thrown back, down, back, up; then the whirlwind disappeared, and there was nothing supporting him in the air. Once again, he reached inside his magic, trying to find the transformation he would need to survive. He calmed his mind, saw time slowing around him...
You must be able to see your form in the mind's eye, and recognize yourself in it, Sirius's diary had said. The legs, the talons, those were old hat by now, they came quickly, it was the upper portion of the bizarre creature which had always stopped him, something so large he couldn't see how it could be a raptor, with its long, ungainly, winding neck like that of some mutant swan, its outsized, sharp-pointed beak. But he had seen it, he had been that bird, in the strange vision Bandhit had put him under last year. And in that vision, he had battled to the death with another Dark Lord -- ripped nineteen of his arms off with those talons, bitten clean through nine of his necks with that beak -- coming to the rescue of a helpless...
The words he had spoken then returned to him. He needed only to change one pronoun:
You will not take them. Not while I live. You will not have them.
And the next moment he was flying again, now under the power of his own wings.
The winds and flames Voldemort was sending towards him seemed now to glance off him or flow through his feathers. The deadlier curses he could smell in advance of their leaving Tom's wand, it required only a twitch of the tail or a quick bank -- good, my hip is perfectly fine now -- to evade them. He soared down towards his target, landed within meters of striking distance, and approached, alert to any movement. The fool isn't making any effort to avoid his fate. Good prey!
Voldemort seemed amused; there was more of his high-pitched laughter, more of that ugly rictus grin. Such tiresome cackling. It will be a relief to be rid of it. He began his speech of gloating. "So, Potter, you are a Death Eater after all." He must think I'm just a large vulture. Amusing. "You must know, the Animagus won't survive unless it eats of its natural food soon after its first transformation. I'm going to extend my generosity and help you now, Potter. Which of your friends would you like for your first meal? I can even speed their putrefaction so you can dive right in after I kill them. Who looks tastiest now?"
"Oh, you stupid Dung Lord," the raptor replied, "don't you know that I also eat snakes?"
On hearing those words, a look of utter shock and panic come over the Dung Lord's face, but Harry hardly took a moment to enjoy the spectacle. His long winding neck uncoiled and lashed like a whip, sending his head at Voldemort's wand hand, and in one impossibly rapid strike he had bitten that hand clean off its arm, and swallowed it down. The taste was better than butterbeer.
The raptor quickly crushed the wand with one talon as his prey screamed in pain. Voldemort was able to cauterize his wound, to stop himself from bleeding to death. Performing such wandless magic while going into shock was a feat that Harry almost had to admire, but it also reminded him he needed to follow up and put his prey down quickly before it could pull any surprises. The raptor lept unto the Dark Lord's chest, beat him down to the ground, and struck at his mouth, ripping out the tongue to prevent any spoken wandless spells. Then he used his beak as a spear against Voldemort's torso (the largest target; the throat could wait for the coup de grace until the prey was too weakened to struggle and toss), punching gaping holes in the chest and stomach. The raptor leaned back to get leverage for another strike, then suddenly his wings and beak were gone and he was tumbling awkwardly to the ground.
Harry lay on the ground a couple of meters from Voldemort, just a teenaged boy once more, dazed and confused, and immediately felt a wave of nausea so powerful he thought his insides would have to expel themselves. Nothing came up, though; whatever was in his stomach was staying in his stomach... the parts of Voldemort that I swallowed, he thought. Why in God's name did I do that? The idea that such a thing could have seemed delicious only moments ago was as repulsive to his mind as the thing itself was to his body. He was paralyzed with pain, helpless, and looked towards Voldemort to see if his foe was any better off. Riddle was still lying on the ground, wounded and hardly moving, but standing next to him, pointing his wand at Harry, was Peter Pettigrew.
Pettigrew, Harry realized, must have been a rat in his master's pocket; he had come out and transformed when Voldemort was in trouble, then performed the spell on Harry to end the Animagus transformation. Now Voldemort stared at his servant; he was unable to speak without a tongue, and too weak to perform dark magic, but he was obviously giving a mental command, one that brought a shake of the head from Pettigrew.
"Please, my lord, I've saved your life, but I can't... not with my own wand."
Voldemort's face clouded even deeper with fury, and his mental assault brought a bolt of pain to Pettigrew which sent him clutching at his head. "Yes, my Lord, I am sorry. I will... now..."
Harry started crawling towards Pettigrew to grapple with him, but realized he wouldn't make it, and was too weak to do anything. As Pettigrew raised his wand and pointed it at Harry's chest, Harry stopped his crawling and looked up into the eyes of his parents' betrayer, trying before he died to stare into them with all of the disgust he could bring out. To his surprise his own stare seemed to be bringing as much pain to Pettigrew as had his master's. Pettigrew tried to look at Harry's face, looked away, tried again and again, and was forced to look away twice more. He finally lowered his wand.
"No, my lord. I can't. I won't."
Voldemort raised himself and raised his one good hand to throttle his servant's throat, and found himself holding air; Pettigrew had transformed and was dashing away. Voldemort was recovering rapidly enough to give chase, trying to stomp the fleeing rat, with Harry temporarily forgotten in the Dark Lord's rage at this betrayal. When he finally given up the pursuit and returned his attention to his true enemy, his chance for a quick victory was gone; by the time Voldemort could summon up the magic for a wandless and non-verbal spell against the boy, Harry was now revived enough himself to perform the transformation once more. The raptor launched himself at his prey again, talons extended...
Voldemort took one look at the figure flying towards him, turned pale, and Disapparated.
The raptor came down on the ground, the prey out of his reach, and gave a long screech of anger. He flew upwards to see if he could find any trace of Voldemort either by sight or smell anywhere in the landscape, but had to return disappointed. He cautiously returned to human form, ready to retransform if overcome by pain and nausea, but it was tolerable this time. Harry rushed over to where his friends were lying and quickly unbound them. The wards seemed to have come down also, with Voldemort's Disapparation, and the rest of the A.F.F. came rushing into the circle. They kept their distance from Harry, though, as he stomped back and forth in bitter disappointment.
"I had him, I had him--"
"Harry--" Ron was following his friend back and forth, trying to get his attention
"Pettigrew. If Pettigrew hadn't been there--"
"Harry--"
"Or if I had gone for the throat earlier, he was probably a goner by then--"
"Harry," Ron cried, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him around. "Harry, you-- you just kicked Voldemort's arse!"
Harry looked at his best friend, who was smiling, along with the rest of the officers, and looked around at the rest of the Army of the Forbidden Forest, who were looking on with more awe than anything he had ever seen. He quickly looked back at the quintet.
"I guess I did," Harry said, feeling a bit of awe now himself
----------------
A sign was posted outside the Headmaster's Office, declaring:
STRATEGIC REVIEW IN PROGRESS
PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB
Inside, the six officers were reviewing the day's events with the strategic aid of one bottle of butterbeer and two bottles of Ogden's. (The butterbeer was for Ginny, who stayed away from Firewhiskey. She didn't like the effect, the not feeling in control of herself.) The feeling of relief among them was almost palpable, and their breath was quickly becoming almost palpable too. The topic turned to the strategic advantages of Harry's new form.
"Don't be offended, Harry," Ron said, "but you are really, really ugly. I think you could take years off a Death Eater's life just by showing yourself to him like that."
Harry smiled back, but he was actually just a little miffed by that comment. He was becoming quite at home in his feathers.
"For a moment, you know," Hermione said, "while we were lying there... it sounded like you were actually talking to Voldemort. I imagined you were saying something like 'I eat snakes'." Everybody but Harry laughed at this.
Harry was puzzled. "That's what I did say. I didn't think it was that good a line, but Voldemort stopped…" Harry stopped himself, as he realized everyone was staring at him, especially the portraits.
"That's impossible, Harry," Hermione insisted. "Even in the wizard world, animals don't talk."
"Well, I talked the first time also."
"The first time?" Ginny asked. "I thought today was the first time you'd completed the transformation."
"Yeah, the first time for real, but, last year, after all that--" Harry shook his head, took a breath and a swallow, then put down his glass.
"It really starts back at Grimmauld Place, or just before that, so -- Luna, Neville, you've probably wanted to know the story behind that, and you deserve to, so now is as good a time as any..."
----------
"You remember when Dennis was abducted," Harry began his tale. "Voldemort sent a letter to me saying he would release Dennis if I gave myself up to him. Well, I couldn't do that--"
"He means he was prevented from doing that," Ron interrupted. "The letter was a portkey but Harry couldn't get his hands on it."
"Because my roommate here was expecting something like that and staying up by the window to intercept strange owls. By the time I realized what was going on, Ron had already eaten the letter."
"You ate a portkey from Voldemort?" asked Neville.
"That way, Harry wouldn't be tempted to try Accio."
"Ah."
"And it was just a couple of hours till breakfast time."
"So," Harry continued, "they tried to keep me locked in the castle. And they did. And Dennis's body got deposited in Hogsmeade with the note attached about what happens to friends of Harry Potter, which they also tried to keep from me, but I read the description in the Prophet, and anyway, Colin, Colin was--"
"Colin was a madman to Harry," Ginny finished. "I know he was grieving, I know he thought he'd been 'let down', but he was impossible."
"You know all that stuff already though," Harry said. "Well, at that point, I'd had enough. I just kept thinking to myself, I have to end this, I have to end it. I started really looking for a way to get around the watch on me, but I also had to think of some way of taking Voldemort with me. And I thought, two things are really overlooked or underestimated in the wizard world: Muggle technology, and house elves.
"I used Kreacher first; they'd blocked Floo travel or Floo conversations for me, but Kreacher still had Sirius's mirror, and nobody knew I'd had mine repaired. So I said to it, wouldn't you like to do a favor for your old mistress, and all of her nice old friends, invite them to Grimmauld Place; I'm the owner of the house so I have the authority to ask him and to let them in past the wards. And tell them that I'm throwing a late Christmas party for them, I'll be there on this date at this time, no presents needed, just bring themselves. Then I told Dobby he could help me bring down He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. He could help transport meout of Hogwarts when the time came, help me get to Grimmauld Place. But first he had to get me this special potion ingredient, lots of it, he could find it in Muggle military bases..." Harry smiled in reminiscence. "Dobby always pronounced it 'see-for', like I was getting something to give me X-Ray vision or something--"
"It wasn't funny then, and it isn't funny now!" Hermione shouted. Harry looked abashed, and Ron put an arm around her. Hermione turned to Neville and Luna. "When Harry disappeared, we were running frantically around, and when we came to the kitchens, Dobby looked surprised to see us. 'Dobby thought the great Harry Potter was taking his Wheazy and Hermione with him.' We flattered and pleaded and lied the story out of him, but he was just bursting to tell anyway. 'Today Harry Potter will vanquish the Dark Lord with the see-for Dobby brought him, Dobby is so honored!"
"So what exactly is see-for?" Neville asked.
"Capital 'C', number '4', C4," Hermione answered. "It's an extremely powerful explosive, even in Muggle form. If you perform compacting charms on it, one man can carry enough under his robes to level a city block."
"So I did," said Harry. "And I put another charm on it, based on--" Harry was about to say "Dead Man's Switch," and explain how it got that name, but thought better of it. "This charm," he went on, "would set off the explosive if I lost consciousness, so if I lost the duel to Voldemort--"
"Don't try to pull that 'if' bullshit, Harry," Ron broke in. "You had no chance of beating Voldemort and everybody he brought with him. You had no plan whatsoever for doing that."
"No... No, of course, you're right. But I still didn't think of it that way. I mean, the simplest thing to do would have been, go in and just Stupefy myself as soon as I see Tom's face and get it over with. But believe it or not, I didn't think of that. I was still thinking in terms of a duel. I really don't know what I was thinking."
"Another form that Luck comes in," said Luna. "Thoughtlessness can be a very powerful force."
"So..." Harry tried to regain his thread. "I get to Grimmauld Place, and there's the usual suspects. Lucius Malfoy, he's the spokesman, and he says nyah hah hah, we will not kill you now, Potter, that's for our master. I say well, good, I think I'll get something to drink then, anybody want anything? That seemed to shake them up a bit.
"Tom apparates in, everybody gets on their knees. I take another drink. Tom turns to me and says... I don't remember exactly, something like 'cackle, chortle, caw caw caw,' and I say, yeah, yeah, are we here to duel or are we here to fuck around? He stops crowing and grinning now and stares at me. He's trying to enter my mind, find out what I've got up my sleeve, and I'm not letting him, though it's getting hard."
Harry took another sip of his Ogden's.
"I really didn't take that into account, how hard it would be to keep him out. Idiocy.
"But I'm holding out. I can see how nervous everybody looks, including Tom, and that gives me a boost. I don't know what would have happened, but, but then--"
"But that's when Hermione and I showed up with our portkey," Ron said.
There was a pause in the storytelling: Harry, Hermione and Ron remembering the scene, Ginny, Neville and Luna trying to imagine it.
"That," Harry said, "was, so awful, so... indescribably horrible. I think I'd rather die than go through another moment like that--"
"Harry, are you listening to yourself? How did you find yourself in 'a moment like that'? What is it going to take--" Hermione stopped talking, shook her head and bit her lip. Harry looked sheepishly at her.
"I'm sorry, Hermione. And I hate saying this because I know it sounds... despicably ungrateful, but--" Harry paused, struggling to get up the nerve to come out with it, but Ron saved him the effort.
"But you still keep thinking 'If only they hadn't shown up, it would have worked, Voldemort would be dead'."
"Yeah. Don't worry, I'm not trying it again."
"I can't imagine it would have worked anyway," Luna said. "Powerful wizards don't die from Muggle devices. Don't you remember, Harry, you told us how Hagrid said it was ridiculous to imagine your parents dying in a car crash?"
"What are you talking about, Luna?" Hermione asked. "Are wizards immune to-- if somebody dropped a hydrogen bomb on London, would the wizards all just walk away from it?"
"No, Hermione, don't be silly. They would all just happen to be somewhere else at the time. The strongest ones, anyway. And of course Voldemort is an enormously powerful wizard, so his luck in these things would be very hard to overcome."
Harry thought this over for a while. "But Luna, Voldemort wasn't 'somewhere else at the time' when I was going to use the C4 on him. So how would he have escaped it?"
"Oh, there are an infinite number of things that could have happened to save him, some of them commonplace, some of them very far fetched."
"Like what?"
"Like Ronald and Hermione portkeying in at exactly the right moment."
The room turned quiet for a few seconds. Finally, Harry shook his head. "Well, maybe you're right, Luna, but..." He really didn't want to consider the idea that Ron and Hermione had, in some sense, come not just to save him but to save Voldemort, so he decided to extricate himself from this digression and return to the main thread. "Where were we -- right, just after Ron and Hermione came in.
"Voldemort broke through what was left of my barriers in a second. Then the cackling really started. He Accios Hermione's portkey and comes up to me and starts gloating in my ear."
And these words, Harry thought, didn't just pass through my mind as a set of caws, I remember these words very precisely and vividly:
'I see you are just a lucky half-blood, Potter, as I've always suspected. Here is what is going to happen. I will Disapparate with however many servants I can't spare for now. The ones left behind will kill you and your friends. Of course they'll die with you. No, you won't set off your filthy Muggle device now, Potter, because you are still listening to a voice of hope saying 'this can't happen, something will prevent it.' You actually know it's a false hope, you know you should just kill us all now, but you won't. You will keep hearing that voice until a moment before you and your friends die from your cowardly bomb, then you will realize that you have lost everything, even the opportunity to gain a weakling's revenge.'
"Then he turns away and calls out to the Death Eaters, says 'Crabbe; Goyle' -- they were, were, you know, the fathers of... our Crabbe and Goyle -- 'Fellowes; Mallory; Selfridge; you will have the honor of disposing of Harry Potter and his friends, and earning the eternal gratitude of your Lord. The rest of you, come back with me'."
Ron continued: "I didn't see any point in waiting for them to start throwing curses at us. We had to get that bomb off of Harry and get the hell out of there. So Hermione took out the portkey--"
"Wait a minute," Neville said, "I thought Voldemort had taken your portkey."
"I had two of them," Hermione said, "one for getting there, another for coming back. I was gambling that if we were holding the one out conspicuously, that would keep Voldemort's mind focused on it, and he wouldn't stop to think of there being another one. Muggle magicians do that sort of thing all the time," she added, looking at Luna with at least a hint of smugness. Luna smiled back placidly.
"Before I could do anything," Ron said, "the curses were coming at us. Just as one of them gets Harry, and he's starting to black out, I cast Divestio Totalis and Hermione presses the key into our hands. And you know what happened to the house. All that was left of it was ashes and toothpicks. And what happened to Crabbe, Goyle and the others." Ron grimaced. "I'm glad we didn't have to see that."
"Divestio Totalis, I don't know that one," Neville said.
"Removes all your clothing. I picked it up from one the magazines Fred and George subscribe to."
"Oh, is that one of their product research journals?" asked Luna.
"Err, no not exactly--"
"He got it from Playwizard, Luna," Hermione said.
"Well, we all know you can sometimes find useful information in unusual publications," Luna insisted.
"So... Harry," Neville continued, "that's what happened when you went missing, and that's why Crabbe and Goyle went after you in second term."
"Right."
"But what does that have to do with being able to turn into a talking... whatever you are?"
"OK," Harry responded, "here's the part after that, that I didn't tell any of you because it just seemed too weird."
----------
"After we all got back, and after Madame Pomfrey had checked me out, Professor Dumbledore asked me to talk to Bandhit again."
"But Harry," Neville said, "If he had been giving you counseling already, and you ended up... you know... then maybe he isn't really helping you."
"Yeah, well, I asked Bandhit about that actually, and he said it reminded him of a joke he once heard, about a man who got hit by a car, then got set on fire, then, you know, on and on, and the punch line was 'his condition was listed as 'Not Bad, Considering.' Bandhit finished telling the joke, then he said to me, 'After everything I've learned about you, Harry, I think your mental condition should be listed as 'Not Bad, Considering'."
"Can't argue with that, mate," Ron said.
"Anyway, I did agree to talk to Professor Bandhit, but I wasn't exactly in a receptive-- OK, I was a total snot to him." Harry then described the conversation they had.
"I've spoken to Professor Dumbledore," Bandhit said. "I've known him for many years, and I've never seen him like this."
"Like what, sir"
"Distraught, helpless…. Do you know about 'wizard debts'?"
"Yeah, when one wizard saves another's life."
"It could be other, even greater services. I owe Professor Dumbledore one. And he said if I could help you, the debt would be repayed."
"Well sure, if you help me beat Voldemort--"
"No no no!" Bandhit was uncharacteristically upset and agitated. "Nothing to do with Voldemort! He wanted me to help you get out of this cycle."
Harry felt a certain satisfaction at being able to get under the monk's skin, and decided to follow up on it. "I thought I was doing a pretty good job of getting out of the cycle," he said. "I was almost into my next reincarnation, wasn't I?"
Bandhit glowered, then visibly made an effort to calm himself again. "Harry, you know by now neither this world or the next works like that, that you blow yourself up into peace or enlightenment... It's a path you keep walking, you keep working."
Harry was not in the mood for any more philosophical discussion or talk of never-ending paths; it was starting to remind him of Bandhit's interrogation of his Uncle Vernon... "Why don't we skip to the part where you turn me into some animal?" he said.
Bandhit paused at this, then began to smile, and the smile rapidly broadened. "That's a good idea," he said, and raised his wand.
"And then," Harry said, "He cast some kind of illusion spell or dream spell on me. And in the, dream, or whatever it was, I was this giant talking bird; the bird you saw. And I was fighting against a demon king with ten heads and twenty arms. He'd abducted this woman and I wasn't going to let her get taken." You will not take her, not while I live. You will not have her. Harry unconsciously glanced in Ginny's direction, then realized what he had done and turned away.
"I know that story!" Hermione said. "That's from the Ramayana, it's an ancient Indian epic."
"Yeah, Bandhit said that after he broke the spell."
"How about the fight with the demon?" Ron asked, "How were you doing?"
Harry laughed. "Pretty damn good, actually. I was tearing off those arms like I was working an assembly line, but they just grew back. So did the heads."
"You cut off his heads?" Neville exclaimed.
"Most of them. They were really starting to litter the forest floor. Wonder what the local animals made of them. But I ended up losing anyway. Got tired. Well, I was -- the bird was sixty thousand years old, so it wasn't really a fair test--"
"How do you know the bird was sixty thousand years old?" Hermione asked.
"You know how it is in dream," Harry said, "you just know these things. Like I knew the bird's name: 'Jatayu'. Well, after Jatayu got beaten, Bandhit brought me out or woke me up, and asked me 'Do you remember, now?' I guess wondering if the spell worked properly. And I remembered it all very vividly. You know he'd taught me how to tell a false vision from reality, but this one was so detailed I couldn't spot the flaw. He must be more skilled than Voldemort at those sorts of illusions."
"Harry," Hermione asked, "do you remember what spell he used?"
"Yeah, Dhayana. It was Sanskrit, he said; most of his spells are."
"So," Harry continued. "I described what happened, the fight against Ravana -- that's the demon's name -- and he especially liked the part about my biting off his tongues to shut him up because I was tired of his monologuing. He said, 'Oh, that's a new one!"
"I think he misremembered," Hermione said. "I'm pretty sure that's in the version I read."
Harry shrugged. "I asked him why he put me into that particular scene; was he sending a message that he thinks I'm going to lose, like the Centaurs think? And he said no, that wasn't it, but what if I did lose? It sounded almost like, 'So what? If you lose, you lose.' Which I thought was a strange thing to say, since he knew the prophecy. I said, shouldn't I be worried? About a murder-crazy maniac ruling the world, and nobody else who can ever stop him? And Bandhit said, 'The world is a big place, Harry. Forever is a long time. Voldemort is a little dirty spider. Ravana, now there was a demon king. Ruled for ten thousand years. Voldemort, I'd give him a hundred years. Two hundred, tops'."
"Oh, that makes me feel a lot better," Ron said.
Harry laughed along with the others. "Yeah," he said, "I know what you mean, but the funny thing is, I did feel better. And I realized, eventually, that I had felt better while I was having that long fight, even losing it, than I'd felt standing around Grimmauld Place, waiting to blow everybody up with one flick of a switch. I think that was the point, really, the point to casting that illusion."
The friends sat in a companionable and (mostly) drunken silence for a while, and mulled the day's events and revelations. It was a silence finally broken by Ron. "So you're telling us, basically," he said, "that the reason you're the only wizard in history who can talk in his animagus form, is because that form is... a talking animal in a Muggle fairy tale?"
"It's an epic poem, Ron, not a 'fairy tale'."
"It's a story with talking animals, that's a fairy tale."
"There are talking animals in parables and fabliaux also."
"Is that Latin and French for 'fairy tale'?"
" 'Parable' is Greek--"
Ginny raised her wand and set off sparks and firecracker noises. "As the only sober person in this room," she said, "I am declaring this Review session over. Ron, Hermione, put the argument to bed: literally or figuratively, however you like."
Ron and Hermione said their goodnights and filed out, followed soon by Luna and Neville. Harry was left with Ginny. He began helping to clean the office, Scourgifying the water rings from Dumbledore's table, putting the bottles back in their niches. This went on for a while before Harry spoke.
"I didn't know whether you would have wanted me to talk about you and me-- your helping me out, after Grimmauld Place."
"Up to you, Harry. I wouldn't have minded."
"Well, let's keep it between us, for now."
"That's fine with me, too." And the pair said their goodnights.
Back in his dorm, Harry went over that scene. Maybe the stupidest, most shameful thing he had done, after making the decision that he was going to blow up the forces of darkness (and himself) in late December, was to ask Ginny for a Hogsmeade date -- in February. He had thought of it as a parting favor. Pretentious prick, he called himself for the hundredth time. Harry recalled:
After he had made it back alive, he'd been put in the Room of Requirement for a while, on the theory that the Room would best recognize his needs. It had provided a bed, some music, some exercise machines, a Japanese garden, and a small library. (The highlight of the collection, in Harry's opinion, was The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, though it seemed a work whose logic only Luna might perfectly follow.) The Room also provided relative privacy, but of course he had no lack of visitors: Ron had come in to rage and bellow at him, Hermione had cried and pleaded, Dumbledore had counseled and assured. He desperately hoped that Ginny would be too angry or too upset to come see him, but he realized the odds were highly against it, that she would be there to confront him sooner or later. It turned out to be sooner.
The youngest Weasley entered the recovery room, walked briskly towards the bed where Harry was sitting up reading, pulled up a chair and looked at him calmly, impassively. Harry set his face in a deep frown that he hoped conveyed the message Don't you start in too, I've already heard it from your brother, and everybody else... Ginny took no apparent notice of this.
"Well, Harry," she said, "are we still on for Hogsmeade in February?"
Harry had braced himself for tears, curses, or some combination of both, but was quite unprepared for this question. He floundered for several seconds, and finally settled on the all-purpose response: "Sorry?"
"We had a date, didn't we?"
Harry could hardly deny that, but... "Um, yeah. But I thought..."
Ginny let the sentence stay incomplete for an excruciatingly long time, then finally replied.
"The way I was brought up, you don't break a date unless you have a good reason. Do you have a good reason?"
Harry remained silent.
"Being dead would have been a good reason, but that didn't work out for you. Are you planning on trying to kill yourself again before February?"
Harry closed his eyes, turned his head into the pillow and groaned.
"I think I deserve an answer."
"No. No I wasn't planning on it."
"Good. I'm very glad to hear that."
Another few seconds passed.
"Harry, do you believe me when I say I'm very glad to hear that? That no matter what you do, or what anybody does to you, and no matter whether... I end up being the mother of your children, or we end up never even holding hands, I'm never going to wish you were gone and out of my life?"
Harry felt his head swimming and throat vibrating, but managed to choke out a "Yes."
"Good."
Another few seconds passed. Ginny fiddled with her robes and resumed.
"You've known me for a while now. When you asked me on that date, and you knew what you were going to do... What was going through your mind? Did you picture me cheering myself up, thinking, 'Well, it's true that he blew himself into tiny bloody pieces, but he was going to buy me an ice cream cone in Hogsmeade, so all my-- affection was not in vain!' Does that sound like me?"
"When you put it that way, no."
"And if you were really even half-conscious of what you were doing, I think you'd have recognized that. So I've got to think -- it's better to think, and I think it's true, that you weren't really yourself."
"Why would I want to be?"
Now it was Ginny's turn to fall back on "Pardon?"
"Why would I want to be myself? What sane person would want to be me?"
Ginny's jaw was quivering now; Harry wasn't sure if it was with anger, or...
"You're the most unfortunate person on this planet, then? There's nobody in the world, Wizard or Muggle, who has it worse--"
"No, I'm not saying that."
"--than you? You can't think of anything you have that some people would think was worth having, worth living for, wished they had as much of?"
Harry fell into another embarrassed silence.
"I think you know that you do. I'm not going to make you get all mushy and say it, because I would hate that too, but I think you know."
"Right," Harry said with relief. "Yeah, I do."
"All right. Let's leave it at that for now, OK?"
"OK."
Ginny nodded goodbye, got up and walked towards the door. Before she got there, Harry called out:
"Ginny -- thanks for coming."
She turned back, and smiled for the first time in the conversation. "You're welcome."
----------
As it turned out, Hermione didn't take her argument with Ron back to their bed; she decided to make a late-night library trip to satisfy her curiosity about the Ramayana, and Harry's story of his dream-participation in that saga. Her first stop was the Sanskrit dictionary, to see what the effect of Dhayana would be, what kind of illusion or hypnosis spell Bandhit had worked. What she found was enough to give her something of a chill; it didn't seem like an illusion spell, quite the contrary...
Dhayana : 1) pointed concentration, a type of meditative focus; 2) to reveal the true nature of something.
She moved on, picking out the library copy of the Ramayana, a relatively new (1972) but readable translation. Her memory was confirmed; it did have the part about Jatayu ripping out Ravana's tongues. Out of curiosity, she performed a Palimpsest spell, showing the different layers of textual history. When the results come up, Hermione dropped the book in shock:
Sita's abduction: 600 B.C.
Jatayu challenges Ravana: 450 B.C.
Jatayu tears out Ravana's tongues: January, 1997.
Hermione flipped hurriedly back to the information page and confirm the date of this edition: Published 1972. She tried to wrap her mind around this. Even given the possibility of magical interference with the ordinary rules of time... would every edition of the poem now show itself to have retroactively added this episode, just because Harry... dreamed it?
She went back to that part of the story, the fight between Jatayu and Ravana, trying to see what exactly made Bandhit associate the bird with Harry. She came upon one passage and had to throw her hands over her mouth to suppress a squeal of surprise:
He looked at the demon king with his green eyes...
Hermione read impatiently through the rest: the fight, the death of Jatayu, and the words of the god Indra at the old bird's funeral:
"By the Gods," said Indra, "Jatayu has had a place in heaven for a thousand lifetimes, but he won't use it; he returns as a bird, for he loves the sky. Over and over, again and again he gives up his life for what is right, never once wondering should he do it or not, nor reflecting will it do any good, nor would it be better to live to fight another time."
Hermione put the book down with care. "Not this lifetime," she whispered fiercely. "You don't give up your life this time, Harry, not if I have anything to say about it."
A/N: The story of Jatayu is taken, with very little alteration, from William Buck's free translation of the Ramayana. Jatayu really does have green eyes, and only one word was changed from the speech by Indra.
In order to finish the main plot by July 21 (a goal which has become an irrational obsession for me), I'm going to do some radical abridging of the original outline, though I hope the resulting version doesn't end up having too much of a slapdash feel. In fact this chapter is a condensation of material I'd first planned to take up two or even three chapters. (The fuller version, with more magical developments, more schtick, and more H/G, will appear eventually on Phoenixsong dot net.) Chapter Nine should come up here on Monday or Tuesday (July 16 or 17) and Chapter Ten (the final duel with Voldemort) on Friday or Saturday (the 20th or 21st). I'm still debating with myself whether to change the ending from the original plan; if I do change it, it will no longer be compatible with the "Flourish and Blotts Hour" story on Phoenixsong dot net; a different character will die. I will gladly listen to suggestions, or threats, on this matter. :-) In any case, the future, longer Phoenixsong version will stay "F&B-compatible."