o─-o─-o─-─-─-─ WITHOUT THORN THE ROSE ─-─-─-─o-─o-─o
Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.
Notes: The semester and my exams are finished, so I now have a lot more time to devote to writing. For some reason I had a lot of trouble with this chapter. Probably it could be a lot better, but I just want to keep pushing forward. I really wanted to end this chapter on a cliff-hanger (you can guess where), too, but couldn't manage it. Don't forget to check out my Pinterest (under the same name), for more background info, if you're interested.
o─-─-─-─-─ 11. CHARNEL GROUND ─-─-─-─-─o
Yule¹ came and went without much to-do. There were no logs to be had on the island, and neither Potter felt much like toasting or feasting. James worked right through the holiday, in fact, and only belatedly remembered to give Harry a present, which wound up being some galleons. Remus sent Harry a muggle book of philosophy and a ring that produced wisps of glowing Patronus magic in the presence of dementors. Harry sent the book to Luna and the ring to Neville, who would probably die of fright if he ever met a real dementor. For Sirius and Rab, he swiped a veritable feast from the mess hall. For James, Remus, and Bjorn, Harry carved figurines from iridescent sea-shells: a wolf, a stag, and a bear. Bjorn gave Harry a sack of home-made reindeer jerky in exchange.
Despite his rather lacklustre Yule effort, Harry was actually spending most of his time working on a rather more grand present. Progress was slow, however.
Glamours had been a complete disappointment. At best, they were nothing more than mental razzle-dazzle that wouldn't hold up to close scrutiny, and, worse, could not be maintained remotely. Medimagic was right out. Suspended animation spells were best left to the wand of a mediwizard, unless Harry fancied brain damage. Runes, too, had been a dead end. The subject was bafflingly complex, so much so that Harry could scarcely begin to comprehend how much he did not comprehend. Not to mention the danger of unpredictable interactions with pre-existing runes. Complete disfigurement was a tempting option of last resort, but regrettably implausible.
No, in the end, it simply had to be a potion. As weeks of frenzied research passed, and his bedroom became ever more cluttered with esoteric texts, Harry found himself uncharacteristically sympathetic to the tawdry concerns of Omnivision script writers. Plotting a perfect crime was harder than it looked, and Harry was not above resorting to a cliché.
That decided, he turned his efforts to obtaining the potion. Hackneyed premise though it might be, the precise list of ingredients was always carefully concealed from the audience, and Harry could ill afford to be on record as having requested any restricted items from Diagon Alley. He would have to resort to another incognito mission during his next week with Remus.
In the meantime, Harry busied himself with the other half of the plan. If this had been an Omnivision comedy, he would have been trying to dispose of a dead body. There was little humour to be found, however, in trying to obtain one. Bjorn had been surprisingly knowledgeable about how remains were disposed of when a deceased prisoner's family did not want them, and Harry had been taken aback by the antiquated nature of the interment, if it could be called that. Given that the fortress of Azkaban had been constructed in the days of Merlin, however, Harry supposed that it was natural enough to take advantage of the pre-existing facilities.
So it was that Harry found himself, at the break of dawn on a foggy morning in January, creeping along the side of a cliff like a salamander. The sticky spell he was using on his hands and feet worked best on bare skin, so his boots were slung around his neck with the laces tied together, and Harry had already stepped in more than one pile of fresh bird leavings. Despite Harry's confidence in his magic, cliff-scaling was a perilous enterprise, which was his reason for waiting until daylight. Between the damp mist and the continual spray of sea foam, the rough stone was treacherously slick with moss, lichen, and water.
This particular cliff was not far from the grotto beneath the waves, but given Harry's nocturnal habits, he had never noticed anything peculiar about the openings in the cliff. In daylight, and from close range, however, they were clearly manmade. Harry passed the first aperture ten metres up, and there were a dozen more scattered about the rock face. The cavities might have been rectangular, once, but they had long since been worn into smooth, oblong ovals by centuries of wind and rain. Each was long enough for a man to lie down in, but low enough that his head would brush the ceiling if he sat up. Their depths held impenetrable shadows, and although Harry knew that they connected to a system of caves beneath Azkaban, he could not help thinking that the apertures resembled portals into Hades itself.
The first few openings he passed held only birds and their nests, but halfway up the cliff Harry had his first sight of the real purpose of the excavations. A red, gore-coated skeleton was splayed carelessly in the aperture, one hand dangling over the edge. Most of the meat was gone, but gobbets of flesh hung from its cage of ribs, and crows pecked hungrily in the eye sockets. Even as Harry watched, a large, black rat scurried from the shadows and began to gnaw at a finger with its skin and nail still intact.²
Harry clung to the rocks, transfixed for a moment by the macabre tableau. That'll be me someday—nothing but gore and bones. A feast for rooks or rats or worms. With that in mind, he got to work.
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¹ Yule or Yuletide is a mid-winter religious festival observed by the Northern European peoples, later being absorbed into and equated with the Christian festival of Christmas.
² There is strong evidence that this method of disposal of bodies, called excarnation, was used in Iron Age Britain, and it is still used in some parts of the world. See my Pinterest for more info.
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It was another week before Harry's next visit with Remus on the mainland. He spent his days, as ever, studying and practicing, and his nights visiting his two relatives atop the highest tower of Azkaban. Sirius remained a silent, brooding enigma, scarcely acknowledging Harry's presence, and the animagus' sour mood seemed to have rubbed off on Rabastan, who was more volatile than ever. Harry, too, became grouchy and glum as the days dragged on. He was playing a waiting game, and Harry had always been the sort of player who would far rather lose in a blaze of glory than win by playing it safe.
At last, the day came. Once Remus was snoring on the sofa in a spell-induced stupor, Harry slipped into his cowled cloak and flooed quickly to three different locations in succession, ending finally at Diagon Alley. He hoped that his deep hood would once again suffice to keep him anonymous, but, if not, he had taken further measures this time. Harry's glamours tended to slip unpredictably without the constant use of a mirror, so rather than disguise himself, he had opted for total obfuscation. A black mist surrounded his head under the hood, allowing Harry to see out, but no one else to see in. He had often used this spell, even whilst sleeping, to block the light through his window, and was confident in his ability to maintain it.
The next day was Imbolc¹, and Diagon Alley was more crowded than usual, as wizards and witches made last-minute preparations for their feasts and ceremonies, and the more than usual amount of litter, squalling children, and arguing families served to darken Harry's mood and spawn a headache.
Even Knockturn was more crowded than usual, though its occupants seemed to move more furtively and eye each other more warily than their more respectable counterparts. Harry had never been more than a couple of metres into Knockturn, but he had always thought it appropriate that one had to descend a flight of steps to enter the dodgy little district. There was a definite sense of lowness down there, in more ways than one.
Some of Knockturn was above ground, but most of it was underneath Diagon. Down there, where the refuse of Diagon was swept to keep it out of sight, rats squabbled over the leavings of wizards, and wizards squabbled for the choicest begging spots and the softest rag piles. Knockturn was where the trash of the wizarding world came to rest—the burnouts and the dropouts, the wandless and the luckless, the addicts and the deviants. Harry guessed he was one of the latter.
As he made his way down the grimy, unevenly spaced stone stairs, Harry self-consciously tugged his hood a bit lower, and checked his darkness spell. At the bottom of the steps, a grungy shape, which had seemed to be only a pile of refuse, reared up before Harry. It was a wizened crone with a mole the size of a knut on the end of her nose, and she shoved a tray of fingernails into Harry's face. He recoiled in alarm and disgust.
"Got human an' hag," she shrilled in a nasal voice, squinting into the pitch black of his cowl. Harry realized that the mole was moving. It was not a mole at all, but rather a beetle. The contents of his stomach lurched, but he managed to keep it down. As he watched, the beetle began to crawl down the crone's nose and across her cheek. Harry reeled away from the woman and continued down the alley.
A tall, gaunt, and well-dressed man passed Harry as he continued down the Alley, and Harry felt a light flutter as the man's magic patted him down, making the few galleons in Harry's pocket clink. Harry hissed in the man's direction, and flexed his power of frost slightly, making the man's breath turn white. The man, who had been walking quickly as though he intended to brush past Harry, suddenly veered away on a different course, averting his eyes.
Ahead, the stone arch where Knockturn burrowed beneath Diagon loomed. Beyond it was darkness broken only by torches and what little sunlight filtered down through cracks and grates. Harry wrapped his black wool cloak tighter about himself. The aboveground part of Knockturn sold items that were darker and more dangerous than any found in Diagon Alley, yes, but the truly dark goods were traded only in places hidden from the light. Or so Harry had been told. Harry had persuaded Rab to give him directions to a suitable establishment, though he had not revealed his purpose.
As Harry passed him, a drunk sitting propped in the mouth of a side-alley dropped his bottle and scrabbled into a deeper patch of shadows. His mouth stretched wide, but only mist issued forth. Harry realized that he was unconsciously continuing to freeze the air around him from anxiety. He forced himself to relax. The last thing he wanted was to give anyone cause to remember his presence.
Harry slowed as he stepped into the shadows at the mouth of the tunnel, glancing around avidly. The subterranean portion of the Alley gave the impression of being abandoned; many of the doors bore no signs, and their windows were often as not obscured by grime or drawn shades. If not for the dozens glowing souls nearby, Harry might have thought he was quite alone. He steered well clear of a narrow passage in one wall, where two human souls lurked, and picked up his pace.
Harry passed Borgin and Burke's, and glanced longingly at a few antique grimoires in the window. One was Oulden Rygts, a book Harry had tried to acquire through legal channels, what seemed an age ago. It surprised him to see a banned book flaunted so openly, but Knockturn abided by its own rules, and the Aurors left it alone, for the most part, so long as no one from down below tried to come up above. Occasionally, beggars and pickpockets did sneak into Diagon, tempted by the galleons, but they were swiftly shown their place again. There was little mercy in the wizarding world.
Finally, Harry came to the door Rab had described. It was short and squat, hardly fit for humans, with only the crude cauldron symbol scratched into the paint giving any indication of its purpose. Harry opened the door gingerly, and slipped inside, ducking his head slightly. He did not see the glowing line of runes etched around the inside of the doorjamb until he was halfway through. For a moment, he paused, checking that his hood was down and his darkness in place, and then proceeded. The runes were a security measure, he supposed, and if they were not, he was still well capable of defending himself, with his magic or without it.
Inside, the smell of caustic potion fumes assaulted Harry. He sneezed, and a small, leathery little man lifted his head from atop the cash register, which he had been hugging as he snored. The man's eyes were rimmed with red, and he squinted at Harry with undisguised curiosity. Harry gave the man a curt nod and ducked down an aisle.
The shelves were lined with jars and boxes, each packed to the brim with potions ingredients, and, in a few alarming cases, spilling over. Something squished under his leather boot at the end of one aisle, and Harry wondered what sort of potions had been accidentally mixed by customers' boots. Some of the ingredients were alive, kept in murky tanks along the back wall; one greenish fungus followed Harry with stalked eyes as he passed. The last aisle contained premade potions, and Harry perused these carefully, but the one he required was not present. Disappointed, Harry approached the storekeeper.
"How much to have a potion made up?" he asked the little man at the register.
The leathery little man stared at Harry for a moment, his eyes seeking to penetrate the gloom obscuring Harry's face. "Depends on the potion," he wheezed at last, and then bent over to hack something foul into a handkerchief.
"How much for the Draught of Living Death?"
The man snuffled wetly, and tucked his handkerchief away again. "What concentration are ye wanting?"
Harry hesitated. "Concentration?"
The small man eyed Harry askance, with his red-rimmed, watery orbs. "Aye. Will ye be killing the blighter, or just putting him to sleep?"
"Just to sleep. But I want him to seem dead."
"Figured that," the man snorted disdainfully, rummaging around under his counter. "Says that on the tin, don't it?" He drew out an unlabelled black vial and set it on the counter.
"Are you sure that's it?" Harry asked sceptically.
The man lifted the bottle and showed Harry the symbol etched on the bottom: three zeds and a skull.
"So?" Harry asked sharply. "How much?"
The man tapped the glass vial on the counter absently, thinking. "A hundred galleons."
Harry exhaled sharply. The man must think him a fool. "Try again," he replied shortly.
The leathery storekeeper snuffled again and gave Harry the stink-eye. "Make me an offer."
"Five." That was half of what Harry had in his pocket, and more than his research indicated it was worth.
The man grumbled, and they negotiated a while longer, but after Harry made to leave, the man backed down and sold him the potion for five. Something about the way the man's soul spun was making Harry queasy, and by the time he had his hand on the knob to leave, his lunch was threatening to make a reappearance.
"Ye won't be wanting the antidote, then?" the man called after Harry.
Harry spun, his cloak fluttering, and glared venomously at the man. The storekeeper grinned, a grotesque expression on his leathery face. Harry resisted the urge to yank the man's nauseating soul out through his teeth.
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¹ Imbolc is a Gaelic festival associated with the goddess Brighid, held 31 Jan-1 Feb. Traditional celebration activities would have involved offerings, special foods, bonfires, divination, holy wells, etc.
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By the time Harry left the shop, both vials stowed safely in his pocket, which no longer contained any galleons, his head was pounding, and his mouth tasted of bile. So it was not until he was halfway back to Diagon that he realized he was being followed. The dark figures ducked into shops or alleyways whenever Harry glanced back, but they were after him. That much he knew, though the reason eluded him. He ducked into an alleyway of his own and stood flat against a brick wall, covering himself with the light-bending invisibility spell that he still had not perfected. It would camouflage him if he held still, but any movement, or a strong light, would reveal him.
Two men, one tall and thin, one squat and fat, entered the alleyway with wands drawn. The twigs that Bjorn had taught Harry to sneer at did not seem so worthless when they were aimed at him.
"Homenum Revelio," the short man hissed, and Harry ducked instinctively, knowing his cover was blown. The next instant, a bolt of red light shot over his head and gouged half a brick out of the wall.
Harry lifted his coral-pierced hand and sent three metal rubbish-eating bins flying toward the men. They were knocked aside mid-air and flattened against the walls of the alleyway with a crunch. Harry could have pulled the men's souls out, or frozen them solid, but, much as he had come to love the island of Azkaban, he didn't know that he wanted to stay there forever. Instead, he ran.
Harry blasted both men with magic that was half deliberate and half accidental as he darted between them. The tall one cursed and recoiled, but the short one shielded himself and continued to shoot red bolts at Harry. Ahead of them, the patrons of the Alley fled into shops or dove into alleyways rather than lending a hand. Harry was disgusted, but not surprised. His magic had formed a shield behind him instinctively, and the red bolts ricocheted off it and into buildings. A rain of shattered bricks and wood chips fell at Harry's heels.
Then a bolt of leaf-green struck ahead and to the side of Harry, slicing through the edge of his shield, and his heart seized up with raw, unadulterated terror. What kind of men kill in broad daylight?
Another green bolt struck. Harry threw wave after wave of magic behind himself—razors of air, walls of fire—but his pursuers were never deterred for long. He was just steps from rounding the corner and dashing up the steps to Diagon Alley and safety when it happened.
Something struck him between the shoulders like a finger of ice, and then, all around him was—
Green light.
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The light, like the summer sun through leaves, swayed all around Harry, and it seemed that rather than being rocked by the waves, he undulated with them. A clear, sweet, soprano melody drifted to him, along with the far-away chiming of bells. The swirling tendrils of light swayed, shifted, and began to rotate gently. Harry watched with a dream-like fascination as a vortex spun into being before him. Its centre seemed to stretched impossibly far away into the distance, and Harry tried to move forward, to peer deeper, but then he was being drawn away, like falling into space, and—
Something was striking his head rhythmically, making it throb and pound. Harry opened his eyes. A strip of bright blue sky moved past between dingy buildings. Harry tilted his head slightly, flinching at the pain, so that he could see where he was. A dark-cloaked figure, squat and fat, was dragging him by the ankle through a filthy alleyway full of puddles, broken glass, and refuse.
A surge of rage rose within Harry, and before he knew quite what he did, his breath was frosting and all the dirty grey puddles had frozen solid. The man shrieked, just once, and then he fell, frozen as solid as a stone, to the ground, and shattered.
Harry scrambled to his feet, head spinning like a top about to fall over, and stared about him wildly, searching for danger. The tall, thin man did not appear, however, and at last Harry let his gaze fall to what had become of the short, stout one. The man's head had cracked right down the middle, and his brain was dribbling out onto the pavement. One hand had snapped off and skidded several metres down the alleyway. Much of the torso had shattered into finer pieces and was now an undifferentiated mass of gore, but the legs were largely intact, though split into several segments.
Harry leaned over and vomited at length.
He had to get away, but staggering into Diagon in his current state would be disastrous. Harry cast several cleaning spells over himself first. The spells were better suited for furniture than humans, but a careful examination of his hands and cloak revealed no blood. Harry pulled up his hood, and left the alleyway at the fastest pace he could manage without running. As he started up the steps to Diagon, something pulled at his cloak, and Harry whirled, blasting raw magic at whoever had touched him.
The crone with her tray of fingernails slid shrieking down the Alley, clutching at her horrid beetle, which had been crushed along with her nose. Harry ran.
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Remus took one look at Harry's face when he came to the table for dinner, and knew something was wrong. He forced Harry down onto a chair and knelt before him, feeling his forehead and casting diagnostic spells.
"What's the matter?" Remus questioned in a soft yet firm tone.
"Nothing," Harry muttered, unable to meet his uncle's eyes.
"Harry."
Harry hung his head and covered his face with his hands. He wanted to scream, cry, and hit something, all at once.
"Are you ill?"
"No."
"Did something happen while I was asleep?"
"No."
"You're still hopeless at lying, Harry, you know that?"
Harry choked on a small sob, then shoved past Remus and ran to the guest room, where he slammed the door and barred it with his magic. When the beating on the door grew too much, he silenced it with a wave of his hand. Then he waved his hand again, and the desk chair flew across the room and splintered against the wall. Another wave, and the desk followed. Again. Again. Until nothing remained but quivering shards of woods stuck into the walls and ceiling.
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"Remus told me something…happened…while you were at his place," James tried hesitantly, the night Harry returned from his visit at Remus'.
Harry shrugged, wondering why his father even cared.
"So? Anything I need to know?"
Harry stared blankly into space for a moment. I murdered someone. Oh, yeah, and I died. Again.
"No."
James favoured Harry with a long, disbelieving look, then dismissed the matter with a grunt. They never spoke of the incident again.
That night Harry dreamt of being chased through a nightmare version of Knockturn Alley, where the buildings twisted into obscene shapes, and demented faces leered at him from yawning doorways. As he ran, the street became steeper and steeper, until he was inching along it on his hands and knees, clinging to cracks in the pavement with bloody fingernails. Behind him, his pursuers plodded toward him at a slow inexorable pace. Their faces were smooth ovals devoid of features. Terror choked Harry, he could not get away, he could not breath, and all around him were the sounds of guttural screaming…
…Someone was stroking his hair. Harry gasped, and the screaming stopped. For a moment he did not know where he was or what was happening. Then he realized that James had woken him from the nightmare. He must have heard Harry screaming in his sleep. A surge of gratitude flooded Harry's body, like some palliative potion.
"Thanks," he whispered hoarsely.
James said nothing, only continued to stroke Harry's head until his son fell back to sleep.
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Bjorn's little ship tied up at the jetty while Harry was throwing stones from atop the nearby promontory into the dismal sea, but for a long while, Harry ignored it. He wasn't ready to talk yet. Not until the scent of freshly brewed tea wafted up to him did Harry deign to dislodge himself from the muddy grass. The scent was as good as a written invitation, considering the breeze was going the opposite direction.
Harry slouched down to the pier and climbed the rope ladder aboard, then let himself into the tiny cabin. At his usual spot, the Prophet was folded to an article on the back page of the news section.
VIOLENCE IN KNOCKTURN ALLEY
Knockturn Alley was the scene of a violent exchange of dark magic shortly after 4 p.m. Saturday, leaving two dead and one on the lam. Aurors were alerted by dark magic detectors, which indicated the Killing Curse had been cast. Witnesses reported seeing a small figure being chased by two larger figures. None of the three could be identified by witnesses. One body was found in an alleyway, having been mutilated and slain by dark magic, while the other body, felled by the Killing Curse, is presumed to have been taken by the remaining suspect, who fled the scene. The known deceased, Roger Porpington, was a repeat petty offender, known by the DMLE to be a potions addict. He was a graduate of Hogwarts, '81, and is survived by his estranged wife.
Harry scanned the article's contents in a few seconds, then shoved it aside so forcefully that it fell to the floor.
"I thought you might have been a witness," Bjorn explained, setting a cup of steaming tea in front of Harry.
Harry laughed humourlessly. "Yeah. I guess you could say that."
"I found the wording of the article rather intriguing. For example, what do you suppose they meant by 'mutilated'?"
Harry's stomach flopped like a fish in air, and he pushed the cup of tea away. "Does it matter?"
Bjorn shrugged. "Not really, just thought it might get you talking."
"I don't want to talk. Unless you have any idea how they saw through my disguise."
Bjorn's lips quirked into a slight smile, as though he were satisfied with himself. Then he shrugged casually. "Charms, runes, potions…there are plenty of ways to find out a person's name or see through their veils. You used a glamour?"
Harry shook his head, biting one of his nails. "A cloak and a bit of darkness, that's all. I did step through a rune circle, though."
Bjorn raised his eyebrows. "You stepped into an unfamiliar rune circle? You might have come out in the middle of the North Sea, or with an extra head, for all you knew."
"It was a shop," Harry defended, though without much vigour. "He wouldn't stay in business if he did that to his customers."
"And what did this shop sell?"
"Potions."
Bjorn nodded. "You know there are potions that let you see into the infrared and ultraviolet range?" Harry looked puzzled. Bjorn rolled his eyes. "Colours that are normally invisible to humans. Your darkness spell probably only blocks visible light. He probably made your identity twice over, and sold it for a sack of coin."
Harry looked dejected, remembering the red-rimmed eyes of the shopkeeper. "All right, I get it, I was stupid. I already knew that."
"Well, you survived, so you must have done something right."
"I didn't."
"What's that?"
"I died. They got me with Avada Kedavra."
Bjorn just blinked a few times. "Well, you survived it once, why not twice? But why do you say you died?"
"There was this…light…" Bjorn cocked a bushy eyebrow, and Harry flushed, feeling ridiculous. "Oh, I don't know," he said, hanging his head. "Maybe it was just a dream. It didn't feel like a dream, though."
"Just because it's a dream doesn't mean it's not real," Bjorn offered, nudging Harry's untouched cup of tea back toward the boy.
Harry waved the cup away. "I guess. I wish it was all just a dream."
"Want to tell me about it?" Bjorn's tone was gruff, but with an air of sympathy.
Harry shook his head vehemently. "I don't even want to think about it," he muttered.
A heavy silence hung between them for a moment.
"The only thing you did wrong," Bjorn said finally, "was not killing them both while you had the chance."
Harry nodded slowly. Next time, he would not hesitate.
"So, did you get the potions?"
"Yes. I have everything I need now."
"Except the agreement of the principle figures involved, I take it?"
"They'd only try to stop me," Harry replied dismissively.
"This time next week, then?"
Harry nodded, and smiled for the first time in several days. "This time next week, Sirius Black will be on his way home."