Chapter 3
Ring a ring o'roses
A pocketful of posies
ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo
We all fall down.
Next morning, there was no sign of Snape either. But in the afternoon, Harry thought he heard voices on the second floor. He went upstairs and peered around the doorjamb.
Who could Snape be talking to? He poked his head deeper into the hall. There's no one there but…
"… just reads your old Potions text and forgets to eat for days. It's rather sad, the way he wanders about like Mum's old kneazle, the one that never got fed."
… portraits!
…Portraits, and Snape, looking as dark and worn-out as the curtains. His head was turned away from Harry, facing the canvas on the very back wall. "Have you noticed anything unusual," Snape asked softly, "Anything at all?"
That spying sonofabitch! How'd he get past me?
The bloke Harry always talked to (at least, when he was in his frame), perched on a tall stack of books and tossed back his wild mane of hastily painted hair. "Nothing really unusual. But I'm waiting for him to start gnawing on my library books. Or for the books to gnaw on him if he gets too weak."
Harry held his breath and sunk deeper into the shadows, fuming. It was infuriating, how Snape just showed up and won over all the portraits' trust before Harry even got the chance. Sirius' mum, I can see. But why would that portrait help Snape? How would they even know each other?
"Why are you even teaching him?" the portrait muttered, as grumpy as if he was echoing Harry's mood, "He doesn't like you." He pouted and flipped another painted page in his lap.
"I promised someone."
"Is that all?"
"Besides the fact that I don't want another young man to die a horrible death on my watch, yes. That is all."
"Like me?" the portrait asked softly.
Tension filled Snape so that his whole bony body looked unforgivingly hard and brittle; but his expression – or what Harry could see of it past his lank hair – was softer than Harry had ever seen it. Even his voice was soft as he whispered, "Exactly."
"Then you'd better keep an eye on him. You were always good at that."
"Not good enough."
The portrait gave Snape a look of exasperated fondness. "I've told you before, it wasn't your fault." A critical glance, "You know, you ought to start watching out for yourself too."
"I always do," Snape huffed.
"Yeah? I suppose that's why you're as pale as a petrified elf bum, and just as miserable," the portrait declared with the superiority of a Pureblood know-it-all. "Grimmer than this Auld Place."
Snape snorted and declared, "I'm not surprised you know what a petrified elf bum looks like." Frighteningly, Snape's manner was just as teasing as the portrait's.
Painted shoulders shrugged, "Mum keeps about a dozen of them in the cellar, half with wiggling tails, half without: she wanted to replace Gran's old head collection, but Dad wouldn't let her. The only argument I've ever seen him win." The two of them shared grins, then the portrait murmured, "So, look after yourself for once, all right?"
"I'll consider your advice." Snape replied tersely, cutting him off.
"When?" the portrait persisted, "Next century?"
"For your information, this century is almost over. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an idiot to teach."
A snicker. "You sound even more like our professors."
Snape drew himself primly upright. "I was a Hogwarts professor. How else am I supposed to sound?"
"Like someone who isn't about to take points just for stating the obvious."
Snape hmphed. "I never took points from Slytherin without good cause, and I'm not about to start now…" he paused, sniffed, and growled without even raising his voice, "Potter, stop eavesdropping this instant and get over here. With a spare day to wander about, I expect you finally gave your homework the attention it deserves."
Harry bit back a sarky reply and stepped out from the shadow of the doorway. Even the portraits aren't to be trusted. First thing I should've done is turn the lot of them to face the wall. That would've kept the spying sods in the dark. Who knows what secrets they've already babbled?
oOo
There were times when Harry still hated Snape, but unfortunately he hated Voldemort much more, so he had to put up with Snape in the meantime. I reckon we've made a deal. He hasn't turned me over to the Death Eaters, so I probably shouldn't kill him during lessons. He stepped forward, accepting his fate and expecting another unpleasant trip down the pensieve, yet as soon as he faced Snape's piercing stare, he felt that annoying, probing invasion. Without any warning! That's not fair! Bloody cheat!
Snape smirked. A flash of Cedric's body lying on the cemetery grass was dragged up from the depths of his memories, vivid down to the last painful detail. Ooh, poor Potter, the already familiar mental whisper taunted snidely, did you expect the Dark Lord to play fair
How is he, by the way? Harry taunted right back. Did he give you detention for being late?
But Snape's mental voice was triumphant as he replied, Responding to provocation will only allow me in deeper. No matter how Harry struggled against it, the flashes and noise of Diagon Alley rose from the depths of his memory. The winding streets and the sunlit shop windows; the world seemed to shine again like the Wizarding marketplace as Harry, Ron, and Hermione, strolled down the street, delighted after their first victory.
"Disappeared? Rubbish!" the broad-shouldered bloke at the door of Quality Quidditch Supplies declared heartily. In the afternoon light, his sunburned bald head shone like a polished quaffle. "All last summer, he talked about taking a holiday, spending some time with his family. Son, I think."
"Do you know where he might've gone then?" Harry ogled the Cleansweep Thirteen: Dirty Dozen advert in the window.
"Old family property, I reckon. Wandwood Glade. The Spanish oak for the Cleansweep line all comes from there."
"Thank you. Come on," Hermione elbowed Ron and dragged them both across the street.
"A pleasure, miss," the man beamed after her. "Do come back."
"Oi, wait!" Harry protested. "We didn't even get to go in!"
"Harry, something's very wrong – and would you forget Quidditch for one second! – Ollivander hasn't got any children."
"Yeah," said Ron. "I doubt they made many improvements since their last release – mind you, there isn't much to improve, the Cleansweep Eleven's perfection! Er, I mean," he glanced at Hermione, "Dad always said he was the last Ollivander in the long Wizarding line. We oughtta look into it."
"Wandwood Glade, then," Harry said. "Shouldn't be too hard to find." Who'd've thought, with school closed, this is almost like taking a term-long holiday. All that's missing is a Florean Fortescue's famous sundae. He stared longingly at the boarded-up windows of the ice-cream parlour.
"Might be even easier to find that place on a new broom!" Ron chimed in. "OW! Hermione, what'd you do that for?"
Harry laughed at his friends, but then a dark, taunting voice broke his carefree reminiscence into a million shards.
Still treating life like a game of Quidditch, I see. And Harry was back then, back in the hall at Grimmauld: scrambling up from his knees just like he had in Snape's dungeon in fifth year. Snape pressed deeper and Harry was a moth, pinned down for study.
He gritted his teeth. With all the mental defences he had, Harry shoved. Sod off! "Occlumens!" he hissed aloud like an insult.
Snape just snorted and slid his slimy thought tentacles deeper inside Harry's mind, and no matter how much Harry didn't want to think exactly what Snape wanted him to think, that particular memory overwhelmed his senses like a flood. The crisp, earthy smell of Wandwood Glade's branches, the creak of the open door leading into the dusty shack, the bowtruckles buzzing from the treetops against the night sky.
The wand glistened in the moonlight. Carved with runes, it looked almost as brittle and sharp as the bowtruckle corpses strewn in a wide ring around it. Several still twitched.
"Just look at this! Is it… Rowena's?" Hermione reached past the twiggy bowtruckles. "A Founder's wand, here! Imagine that!"
"Maybe we shouldn't…" Harry intervened. Who knows what happened here. Even the forester's hut is empty. Only this one wand's left out on the table. The dead bowtruckles' limbs stuck out at unnatural angles, like broken twigs. Something was terribly wrong. "Wait! Let me handle this part."
"No offence, Harry, but I think a Ravenclaw wand needs a more… bookish touch!" Hermione stared, mesmerised by the relic. "How fascinating: all those sigils."
"Then let's all try, the three of us together!"
"Harry!" Ron pointed somewhere past him. His face went pale. "Look!"
Harry spun. Ollivander was standing in the doorway: watery, moonlight eyes shone from a face as worn as oaken bark. His arms were outstretched like a bird's wings protecting its young. When he raised his wand, hundreds more slid out of wand cases lining the walls all around them. Moving as one, they trained themselves on Harry, surrounding him, as menacing as stakes pointed at a vampire.
Instinctively Harry stepped between their attacker and his friends. "Get the Horcrux," he hissed at them. Ollivander's eyes went as wide as an owl's.
Harry didn't get a chance to see if Hermione took the wand. Branches of every wand wood imaginable – holly and yew, cherry and willow, ash and elm, ebony and birch – reached down from the log-covered ceiling like anacondas. They whisked Harry off his feet and upside down, coiling around him all in an instant as if intent on making him the core of one gigantic wand. They trussed him so tightly that he could barely breathe, much less raise his own wand. He dangled in midair, helpless to do anything but watch the scene unfold below.
He was just as helpless here with Snape, and just as before no spells came to mind, only a mindless litany of getoutGetOutGETOUT! And suddenly Snape's presence was gone: in the world outside their minds, he stumbled back, as if he'd been physically shoved.
Harry fell to his knees. But still, he raised his head with a defiant glare. Whew! "Stay out of my head!"
"Pathetic," Snape sneered.
"Pathetic?" Harry roared. "Kicked you out, didn't I? So who's the 'pathetic' one now?"
"Pathetic…" Snape repeated pointedly, "is your constant habit of not paying attention! Ollivander's older than dirt! Your reflexes have to be faster than his! Once is sloppy, twice is a pattern of error, and that's suicidal!"
The words stung. Perhaps because Snape wasn't telling Harry a damn thing he hadn't already told himself, over and over again. "We're still alive!" he flung back, which was the only way nowadays that he could silence his conscience long enough to sleep.
"Yes," Snape stated bluntly. "Only now both of your friends are squibs, all because you behaved like a careless cretin."
Smug prick! Where the fuck does he get off, breaking into my mind and then slagging off at me like that? He wasn't even there when it happened! "You think you know everything, you bastard, but you DON'T! It WASN'T my fault!"
"I know one thing: we'll have to rid you of that unfortunate weakness before it kills you. Hexumbrae!" Snape hissed the unfamiliar incantation quickly and then there were shadows: six of them, rising all around Harry in a circle. The shadows grew and gained form: Snape's billowing robes and his pale features. Each one glared at Harry. "You need to learn to focus on the right target."
The shadowy figures slid and wove and stalked around him and in a moment Harry had lost track of the real Snape in the prowling crowd. "How's that supposed to fix things?"
"Stop whining and focus," one of them sneered. Harry spun around trying to figure out which one of them spoke, but they all spun like a kaleidoscope in front of him. "Seven targets, only one is real," they said in unison, drawing their wands. "Figure it out."
Spells of different colours and brightness went off at once. Harry ducked. Four hit the ground around his feet. Two went over his head. One hit his wand hand and went right through it. An illusion! Yet Harry almost dropped his wand.
"Next time I won't miss on purpose."
Ohshit, which one of them said that? One Snape's more than enough to deal with. Seven of them? The world's not ready!
"Come on! Do you think you can fight the Dark Lord by spinning around and making faces like a gibbering idiot? A mere squib could do better than this!"
Harry glared at the seven identical figures and clenched his fists. He's mental! He'll kill the pair of us, trying to teach things that can't be taught. Ever since his first year, Harry'd thought Snape was a horrible git. That certainly hadn't changed. In fact, in this Place, where nearly everything reminded Harry of Sirius, he seemed to feel a new depth of hatred: hotter, more prickly and personal. He wanted so bad to march up to Snape, shove his wand in that ugly mug and say the Killing Curse with less remorse than swatting a fly; only there were seven of the bastard and they all circled Harry, surrounding him with identical sneers. No way to tell which is real. "Give it your best shot. Now!" all seven snarled.
Harry swung.
oOo
Snape's face collided with something solid and as heavy as the impact of a falling brick. He felt his nose crunch and, it seemed, indent itself through his skull, smashed with brute force. His vision flashed brilliantly white and went dark. Dull, throbbing pain flooded his brain; there was a blood-red blur behind his eyelids and a piercing ringing in his ears.
He gasped for air. His nose felt as if it'd swelled up twice the size in seconds. Snape blinked and forced his eyes to stay open, just to make sure that there wasn't a second blow coming any time soon.
Potter stood there gaping at the illusionary doubles as they dissipated one by one.
"This," Snape inquired waspishly as he waved the blood away with a nonverbal Tergeo, "is your brilliant tactic for defeating the Dark Lord?" Crass little sod! He gave Potter yet another cold glare.
"Yeah! And why not?" the brat replied with smug satisfaction. "Like you said, he won't play fair. He'd mind read any hex coming a mile away, but maybe he'd be so busy watching for curses, he'd miss me punching him in the face!"
Amateur. Fortunately it was far from the first time – and it almost certainly wouldn't be the last – that Snape had a broken nose to deal with. He waved his wand and muttered three rapid-fire charms. The first one reset the bones, with a wrench that was every bit as bad as the initial blow, and the second dulled the pain somewhat. Both were strictly temporary stopgaps, until he could dose himself with healing and pain-relieving potions in private, out from under Potter's overly judgemental eye. The third charm was a glamour to hide any swelling or bruising that might show between now and whenever he might eventually manage that moment in private.
The joint result, however, did look like an instant healing charm: pretty impressive for someone like Potter who surely wouldn't know any better. He stood up, as dignified as he could manage, and squared his shoulders, refusing to succumb to Potter's crude provocations. "Potter the Pugilist," Snape spat. "At least the alliteration lends itself to an Heroic Title." He studied Potter narrowly, reading his expression without quite crossing the line into covert Legilimency. "How did you identify who to hit?"
Potter rubbed his knuckles with a wince. "Lucky guess." Unlucky's more like it, his glare added mutely.
"The Wizarding World really ought to have a backup plan. At this rate, all the Felix Felicis in the world won't help you defeat the Dark Lord."
"It wasn't all luck." Potter narrowed his eyes.
"Then what was it?"
"They were all…" he waved his hands. "Lifeless, like shadows. But your cloak billowed. And that bloody chemical smell. Like the Potions classroom. Ugh."
Perhaps the lesson wasn't a complete failure, after all. Snape's own nose, unable to detect any scent at the moment, nonetheless felt better.
"And then I looked around again, and your nose stuck out just the right way. I wanted to punch yours the most."
Smug whelp. "Marginally acceptable. However, hit me again, and you'll end up with far worse than bloody knuckles."
"Fine," Potter mumbled, gaze falling from Snape to his hand; he flexed his swollen fingers. "What the hell did you do, stuff a brick up your nose?"
Something about Potter's right hand seemed wrong. "Let me see."
"What?"
"Your hand. Show it to me." Snape seized his wrist and turned it.
"Oi, what the hell? Lemme go!"
At a first glance the nitwit's hand looked as normal as a starved scarecrow ever could look. An old scratch stretched from wrist to palm across the – as Snape looked closer his heart sank – life line which wasn't there.
Divination might never have been Snape's strong suit, but he knew enough to know this was Trouble With A Capital Fuck. He drew an unsteady breath. "Give me your other hand. Now!"
"What is it?" Harry asked, worry ringing through his frustration.
On Potter's left hand, the life line stood out wide and long, curving into the pulse point. Snape compared the two. The right palm looked empty, only the scratch against the smooth skin. "When did you get this?"
"Oh that," Potter shrugged. "S'nothing. Just a scratch. Almost gone by now. What'd you think it was?"
"Nothing," Snape muttered.
"Whew!" Potter breathed. "From the look on your face, I thought I'd caught the plague, or leprosy or something. Could you not… look like that any more? And can I have my hands back now?"
Snape fought the impulse to smack the brat upside the head, just to see if his skull really was empty enough to echo. Instead, he lifted both of Potter's hands, palms up. "Your life line." he informed Potter, slowly and clearly enough that even he should understand, "Is. Missing."
"…What?" Potter squinted. Blinked. "Wow!" he finally said, flexing his hand. "You're right! Now you mention it, it does look weird. Doesn't feel weird though. Why'd it vanish like that?"
Oh, just brilliant. Even Legilimencing the idiot won't tell me anything, if he doesn't even know what happened. Snape traced the line – or the smoothed out skin where it should be – with his wandtip. "Finite incantatem," he grumbled without hope, and eyed the lack of change without surprise. "I'd say, because of a Curse: something potent enough to affect you directly. When did it first disappear?"
Potter's face turned white. "Y'mean, like a Horcrux Curse. Like from the cup. C-cirrhosis?" His eyes were wide, his palm shook.
"Much stronger," Snape examined the palm again. "Enough to change the course of your entire life. And cast subtly enough to go unnoticed. How did you get this scratch?"
Mutely, Potter stuck his hand in his pocket. He brought his fist up, then opened it to reveal a key of heavy bronze, fitting into the hollow of his palm like a keyhole. Snape looked closer: it was really only the handle of a key, broken off mid-shank. The design of the handle was distinctive, an ornate 'G'. It was an all-too-familiar sight to Snape, even after all the years that had passed since the last time he'd seen it: in Wormtail's hand (ironically, the same hand the rat would later sacrifice in another offering to the Dark Lord).
"No, please! NO! My lord," Wormtail cringed. "I bring you a gift. A key, to the house where your enemies hide. In Godric's Hollow."
Voldemort's eyes flickered as he examined the offered object. "Something of Gryffindor. I give you another chance and this is how you repay me?"
Wormtail desperately tried to occupy even less space.
"Get him Marked and get him out of my sight!"
Instinctively Snape pulled back, wary of touching the object Potter held so trustingly.
"There." Potter said, gravely. "It scratched me when it broke. And yeah, it was a Horcrux! Satisfied?"
Calm. Be calm. Focus. The Horcrux is broken, though how the whelp managed that is beyond me. Broken, yes, but will it break him in turn? No wonder he's been looking half-starved and half-mad lately, even for a scrawny whelp like him. He examined Potter critically. Lifeless eyes that had almost lost their colour. Pallid skin. Nervous and easily irritated. Snape pinched the bridge of his nose to ward off the headache he could feel building. "And you've only informed me of this NOW after how long?"
"Look!" Potter waved his arms. "I didn't know! But now I do, and you do. So tell me how to fix it."
Potter, you bloody idiot! "You can't."
Potter scowled like a firstie denied a chocolate frog. "So that's your brilliant advice, is it? Just give UP?"
"I said you can't fix it," Snape corrected him calmly. "Curses like this one sink their claws too deep. You'll have to fight it, every day of your life."
Worry – almost an intelligent reaction, for once – flickered in Potter's glare. "What happens then?"
"Eventually, you'll get tired of fighting it, and 'give up'." Dumbledore's blackened hand came to mind too easily. "And then you'll die."
"Well, that solves everything," Potter sneered, his face pale. "Is that what you told Dumbledore too?"
"Dumbledore did a damn sight better job fighting than a loudmouthed, arrogant brat like… Potter!" The boy staggered as if Snape's harsh words had been physical blows. His legs juddered under him; before they could fold completely, Snape seized him by the upper arms, tried to haul him back onto his feet.
"Let go!" Potter exploded, stumbling out through the door. "Y'know what? Get out! NOW! I don't want you here."
Odds are the curse won't kill him after all. I might just do him myself.
oOo
The portraits in the corridor cringed as Harry slammed the door. "It's all his bloody fault! I never should've listened to him to begin with!"
He stormed down the corridor at full speed, and by the time he rounded a corner and saw the row of candles waiting for him, it was too late. He tripped over one and sent it flying, into a corner with a mouldy tapestry. It immediately began smoking where the flame hit.
"Fuck!" Harry snarled. "I oughtta snuff the lot of you before you burn the whole Place down!" He rushed forward to smother the flames with his sleeve before they really caught hold.
The flock of candles cowered in the corner, accepting the shaking, thrown one into their midst. They heaved a deep sigh in unison, and one by one dimmed their lights and stilled.
"Wait!" Harry cried. "I didn't mean that!"
The candles didn't respond, turning stiff and still as their wax cooled.
oOo
He retreated into Sirius' room. Even now – when the whole Place turned grimmer and felt older than usual – in this one room it was as if a shadow of Snuffles loomed right before the doorway, keeping everything bad out. Harry pictured him, all bared teeth and growls, lunging and biting Snape, and it left him satisfied.
It's all Snape's fault. The spying, lying, slimy bastard showed up here all 'perfectly normal' and convincing, and somehow he slipped back into teaching as if I was still at school. Only he taught me loads more than he ever did at school and somehow he lulled me into thinking that things'll work out OK, and I should've known
When the door slammed shut, Sirius' bedroom felt just like the cupboard at the Dursleys'. Harry didn't have any light. He had his wand, but casting Lumos just seemed like too much effort. Instead he climbed onto the windowsill and stared down into the dark street below. Every crack in the old wood creaked. White chips of peeling paint stuck to his hands and trousers. He sat on the grimy windowsill and looked outside over the roofs and the narrow streets where only the streetlamps marked the way. Occasionally a car went by: a Muggle car on a Muggle road with its unsuspecting Muggle driver.
But the way things turned out, they would've been better off without knowing me.
"Don't touch it!" Ron had yelled at Hermione. "What if…"
"I know what I'm doing," she'd cried, "Let go…"
Ron had tried to take the wand from Hermione before she could be hurt. "No, you let go! Fuck, it's burning!"
Harry, suspended at the ceiling in a cocoon of branches, had seen it first: on the moonlit wall, from their joined shadows, another shadow had arisen. In the Glade, the tick-tock rattle of live bowtruckle swarms had faded into a deafening silence. And the shadow had grown taller and more distinct, until it had taken on a familiar, frightening form.
There was Ron's muffled groan, Hermione's strained breathing, but they seemed to be in a trance as the shadow broke away from the wall and gained form and flesh. That horrible, handsome face was impossible to forget, though Harry had only seen it once before in person. Tom Riddle stepped forward.
Harry wanted to scream at his friends to do something but there was a branch between his teeth along with a mouthful of oak leaves. Ron and Hermione's faces were pale and frozen, almost like Ginny's in the Chamber. They still held onto the Ravenclaw wand.
"Tom," Ollivander murmured from the corner, his owlish glare absolutely wild.
Riddle turned.
"I know… son, I know how much you want to live again. But not like this, not through them."
Riddle tilted his head toward Ollivander with all the fascination of a spider watching a fly.
"Through me," Ollivander continued, "You promised. You were… I've never met anyone else with such craving for life, such power, such potential for greatness," the old man's voice was soothing, lullaby-soft. "And you deserve it all. Take me."
There was a spark of interest in Riddle's eyes, an odd thrill on his face. "Say 'please'," he hissed.
Ollivander's form grew tense and for a moment Harry wasn't certain if he'd lunge or scream like a lunatic. Then his lips barely moved. "Please, Tom."
"Ahhh. Right then." Riddle shook his head, smiling like a child who'd been given a long-desired toy for his birthday. "Anything you ask…" He lifted his hands to grip Ollivander's shoulders and leaned in, resting his forehead against Ollivander's chest like a boy nestled against his father. "Fool… you sentimental old fool! Don't you understand?" Riddle looked up so suddenly, Ollivander's gnarled hand twitched where it lay, cradling the back of Riddle's dark head. "I don't want to harm you, you stubborn old man!" Riddle cried sharply, shaking him. "I never did! But then you beg me so sweetly, I have no choice!" Tom fixed Ollivander with a maddened, wild stare.
Ollivander's gaze was soft with sorrow. "Hush, son," he murmured tenderly, drawing Riddle's head back down to rest on his shoulder. "Nothing to be afraid of," he sighed. "It's only death."
And with that, Ollivander's pleading gaze settled on Hermione's shocked one, over the top of Riddle's bent head. 'Break him!' he mouthed silently.
'Sacrifice,' Snape had said. Is that what it takes to break a Horcrux as well as make one? Harry had stabbed Riddle's diary with the fang of a dead basilisk, the first time he'd intentionally, deliberately killed another living thing. It was all about giving away something large, important, precious. Ron and Hermione gave away their magic. Snape took a life. What did Dumbledore give up to break the Gaunts' ring? What did I give up, when I broke the key at Godric's Hollow?
Harry concentrated, and to his horror, realised that he did not know. He only knew that something important had slipped away; he hadn't even noticed when it had happened, but without it he felt empty and alone. The only company he could count on was Grimmauld Place and the collection of broken relics in his pocket. He clung to them and counted them in turn. The fake locket: its chain tangled in Dumbledore's ring. No wand pieces, Hermione kept those. The key from Godric's Hollow. He didn't have to guess whose hand had placed it into the keyhole last. What better way to break the Fidelius charm than the key to the house? This key must've led Voldemort right to Mum and Dad. All he'd've needed then after he got into the house was a final sacrifice to make this thing into a Horcrux. And everyone, even Dumbledore, was so occupied with saving me, they never even noticed that key in the door.
What did the key take from me when it broke? What curse did it leave me with instead? Harry was too scared to guess.
"The bastard's gotta be wrong!" Harry whispered, staring at the ornate handle. "We destroyed you, didn't we? And no one had to die. Soon it'll all be over, I'll break the last of you and then I'll kill Voldemort and I'll never have to see Snape again!"
He sat in the dark for a long time, until he heard a movement, then saw a ray of light stretching up from the keyhole and the same flickering light underneath the door.
"Snape?" Maybe he hasn't left yet. But all was silent.
When he opened the door, a single candle – its flame tremulous and wan – was waiting for him in the middle of the dark hallway.
Never before had a candle looked so good. Harry beamed and opened the door wider, welcoming it in. The candle toddled closer to Harry, its flame brightening, and at that, another six hurried in from the hallway, all rushing through Harry's door like a flock of ducklings to their mum.
Harry ran his fingers over their flickering flames, petting them, just as he'd seen Dumbledore do so many times before. And as he did so, the inevitability and the loneliness that seemed to have taken over his life retreated back into the shadows, if only for a little while, until the candles dimmed again one by one.
oOo
Hermione stared at the Horcrux in her hand as if it was that and not her palm that bled. Ron sprawled lifelessly on the table, yet he still stubbornly held onto the wand with his last strength.
"Break it!" she whispered.
"I'm trying. How?"
But Ollivander only stared blankly past her. In Riddle's embrace he turned as pale and non-existent as a shadow, as the spectres of Cedric and Harry's parents that came out of Voldemort's wand after Priori Incantatem. Tom held him up now, the shine of life in his eyes and the tint of blood in his skin. Blind and deaf to everything else, he stared aghast at the body in his arms: a young viper, faced for the first time with what his venom has done.
"How do we break it?" Hermione breathed, her face pale, resolute.
Ron's other hand closed on the wand tip and his arms tensed. And then, with the sickening crack of a breaking bone, the wand snapped in two.
Frozen, Harry heard Riddle's forlorn wail, watched the filaments of raven-black feather falling out of the two broken halves, twirling on the breeze and gone, disintegrating to dust. Wind sprung up in their wake: stronger, wilder, coiling in a whirlwind around Riddle and Ollivander. The gale was so strong it made Harry's eyes water; he could hardly breathe for its suffocating force. Harry looked on, helpless to do otherwise, as first Riddle, then Ollivander with him became more and more insubstantial, as if they were being swept away by that wind out of reality. It was as if Harry was hanging onto the edge of a cliff, watching the two of them fall forever, dwindling down and away, plummeting to their deaths. Dizzying to watch. There one moment and gone the next.
Harry didn't know how long he continued to stare in shock, after the whirlwind had finally died.
"That's it? All we had to do to break it was… break it?" Hermione stared in disbelief at the snapped half of the wand in her hand.
"You tell me, Miss Know-it-all." Ron examined his burned hand, then his half of the broken wand. "Ow! I've got a feeling we really shouldn't spellotape this one together."
It's finally over. Harry thought. It's all over. Hermione let out an unsure chuckle, then tossed her half of the wand on the table and pursed her lips. "Ron, you really are an idiot." She took a step closer then simply lunged at him, hugging hard. "Such an idiot."
Ron froze, pale and shaking, almost looking more scared of her than he'd been of Riddle. Awkwardly he reached out to pat her shoulder. "Y'meant idiot in a good way, right?"
Harry spat out a mouthful of oak bark and sap, and asked in a still-somewhat muffled voice, "I don't mean to interrupt, but will someone get me down from here?"
Ron and Hermione chuckled in unison, "Finite Incantatem!"
Nothing.
Dread spiked cold through Harry's chest at that moment.
It hadn't really stopped since.
oOo
Harry roamed Grimmauld until all of its doorways and staircases and hidey-holes seemed like one giant funhouse with mirrors and spooky things lurking in the dark, spinning like a merry-go-round. As if stumbling into a newfound exit, he found his way back to stillness, in the hall with the tapestry and the sleeping portraits.
Harry sat, then moved into the corner, keeping still so he wouldn't disturb the walls into spinning again. He leaned against something soft and fuzzy with dust.
He fell asleep there, or thought he did. Maybe he just lost track of time.
oOo
A voice startled him.
He stared at black boots in a rectangle of morning light.