The Potter Brand
Chapter 5
"Rejuvenation"
Hermione stood slowly, and Harry rose with her, a smile of pure happiness on his face at seeing her again. She was smiling, too, though tears streaked her face, for they were tears of joy. As she watched, Harry's gray, dusty features changed, filling with life and color as he gazed at her. Within moments he again looked fully alive. Behind Hermione, he saw Dumbledore looking at him too, in surprise and delight. Harry nodded to the headmaster. "Hello, Professor," he said, a smile quirking his lips. "You're a bit late for our appointment with the Wizengamot."
Dumbledore might have chuckled if the circumstances hadn't been so grave (literally), but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as well. It was several moments before he composed himself, and replied, "I do apologize to you, Harry. This might have been avoided, had I anticipated such a move from Cornelius. Or from Voldemort, for that matter." Dumbledore shook his head, angry with himself. "It's all the more galling, in hindsight, realizing that I might have detected his presence in that decapitated head, yet failed to perform the spell that would have done so!"
Harry gave a small shrug. "No problem, don't worry about it — though I thought the Wizengamot would have more sense than to let Fudge take over the hearing like that."
Hermione, who'd been staring raptly at Harry from the moment he'd risen from the coffin, now gave him a puzzled frown. "Fudge already had, taken over, Harry — Professor Dumbledore was removed as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot at the beginning of August. I suppose you didn't see it in the Prophet back then."
"I guess I didn't," Harry replied, shaking his head. "I was looking for front-page news about Voldemort's return, not something like that."
"Just as Miss Granger and I came here looking for a moment of quiet reflection regarding friends and family lost, and found something that we dared not hope for, come true. It is very good to have you back, Harry." Dumbledore gazed at him with undisguised affection.
Harry stepped out of the coffin, then took Hermione's arm gently and walked over with her to stand before their headmaster. "It's good to be back, sir, though I didn't expect to be, to tell you the truth. For a while, I didn't know where I was, either alive or dead."
"What matters is that you're back now," Hermione said, putting an arm around him and pressing herself against his side.
"What do you remember, Harry?" Dumbledore asked. "Do you recall anything at all about where you were?"
"I don't know, exactly," Harry shook his head, trying to remember. "Somewhere dark and cold, I think."
"Were you inside the coffin?" Dumbledore asked.
"Not at first, I don't think," Harry replied. "It seemed like I was sitting somewhere, not lying in that box — I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next. That seemed to go on for a long time.
"Suddenly, I heard a voice, like someone talking to themselves." Harry turned to look at Hermione. "It was you," he said to her. "I could hear you wishing I could come back. When I looked around to see where you were, I found myself in that box. I started thumping the lid, to see if someone could hear me. And, you did," he finished, smiling at both of them.
Hermione smiled blissfully back, but suddenly grimaced as a gust of cold winter wind swept past them. "Aren't you freezing?" she asked, shivering; while she and Dumbledore were wearing heavy winter coats, Harry was clad in only the robe Dumbledore had conjured for him.
Harry looked down at himself, then at them. Both Hermione and Dumbledore were feeling the effects of the cold, he could see, though the professor had as yet made no complaint. Harry himself had paid no attention — the chill didn't seem to affect him at all. "I hadn't thought about it," he said, with another shrug. "But we can go somewhere where it's warm, if you like."
"My office," Dumbledore said quickly, bringing up his wand. "I will enchant a Portkey—" but Harry shook his head.
"I'll do it," he said, but first he turned back to the open grave. "After a bit of cleanup," he added. Harry gestured and the coffin lid, still floating nearby several inches off the ground, flew back onto the coffin, then slid over and dropped into the open pit. Soil and frozen grass appeared on top of it — in a few moments the grave appeared exactly as it had before Dumbledore and Hermione arrived.
"Harry —!" Hermione gasped, amazed at what he just done, even without the Star Brand, but before she or Dumbledore could say anything, the three of them disappeared in white flashes, appearing a moment later in the headmaster's office. It was cool and dark there — the fireplace was nearly extinguished, but with another gesture Harry reignited it, bringing up a roaring flame that filled the office with light and dancing shadows; warmth began flowing back into the room.
"That's better," Harry said. He looked down at himself and the black robe changed into a black T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and Harry's favorite pair of trainers. He did not conjure a new pair of glasses, however.
"Much better," Harry said to himself, smiling. Dumbledore and Hermione glanced at one another, for in fireplace's brighter light they had both noticed how different Harry now appeared: he stood several inches taller than before, nearly as tall as Dumbledore. His body, thin and wiry before the Ministry hearing, was now much more solid and muscular. He looked as if he'd spent the past four months exercising and lifting weights — not at all like a man who had just stepped out of his own grave.
Harry looked up at them. His facial features had changed as well — he was more mature-looking, more handsome, than his earlier self had been. "So, what have I missed?" he asked, casually, as if he'd merely stepped out of the room for a moment, instead of spending four months buried in a graveyard in Godric's Hollow. "It's colder now, so obviously some time has gone by. I suppose we could start with how I ended up dead —" he smiled, wryly, shaking his head "— at the end of that hearing.
"I also need to talk to Connell," Harry mused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, before either of them could reply. "I didn't think it would take so long for me to come back from being dead — in fact, I thought he meant that I couldn't even be killed while I had the Star Brand. But that's obviously not true."
"Don't you remember?" Hermione asked, shocked. "Harry, you don't have the Star Brand any more!"
"Of course I do," Harry grinned, holding up his right hand, palm out toward her. "Look."
His palm was bare. Hermione shook her head. "It's not there," she said, insistently. "Have a look." Harry glanced at his palm, frowning in surprise when he saw there was nothing there.
"I still feel it," he said, almost to himself, touching his palm. "I can still feel the power, inside me. Maybe it's on some other part of my body —" a wardrobe divider appeared between them and Harry, hiding him from view for several moments. Flashes of light came from behind the wardrobe as Harry's clothes vanished and reappeared, searching for the Brand on his body.
"I don't understand," he muttered, as the wardrobe disappeared again. He was dressed in the T-shirt and jeans again, but his trainers were gone. He looked at the soles of his feet, one at a time, shaking his head. "It has to be somewhere!"
"Do you recall what happened after you left the Ministry, Harry?" Dumbledore asked, quietly, as socks and trainers appeared back on Harry's feet.
"Some of it," Harry answered, rubbing one of his temples, trying to remember. "Mr. Weasley and I talked to Lucius Malfoy for a few moments. He was with Fudge — they were going to his office to discuss 'private matters' — Mr. Weasley thought it would be about money.
"We were going to go back to Grimmauld Place, but Mr. Weasley wanted to stop by the Burrow on the way there, to help Mrs. Weasley with something. She was…happy to see me," he recalled, looking uncertainly at Dumbledore and Hermione.
"Do you remember what you did next?" Dumbledore pressed him.
"It — gets fuzzier," Harry's brow furrowed as he tried hard to remember. "I was talking to — to Ginny, I think. And drinking some tea she'd gotten me. And… I — I don't know…" he said at last. "I should be able to remember!" He looked up at Dumbledore, his expression full of apprehension and doubt. "I think…I…touched something…"
"Do you remember what it was, Harry?" Dumbledore asked, calmly.
"It was — it was…uh, Ginny's boob, I think," Harry stammered, at last.
"You think?" Hermione said, archly. "You don't remember that?"
"There was something wrong —" Harry began.
"Well, I should think so!" Hermione snapped, but Dumbledore raised a finger, forestalling her outburst.
"Hermione, I think Harry means something other than inappropriate touching," the headmaster said thoughtfully, though his blue eyes were twinkling behind his half-moon spectacles. "Harry," he continued, "think very carefully. Do you remember anything unusual when you were drinking the tea?"
Harry considered for a time. "I don't know," he said at last. "I sort of remember thinking it smelled funny, somehow."
"Can you remember in what way it smelled funny?"
Harry shook his head. Delving back into these memories was harder than it appeared. Did it have something to do with him losing the Star Brand? If he still had that, Harry thought, he could simply imagine that he remembered everything that had happened at the Weasley house —
And suddenly, he did. "Oh!" Harry said, his head snapping up, his eyes wide as he recalled everything that had occurred there.
"What is it, Harry?" Dumbledore asked, seeing the change in his demeanor.
"I remember it all," Harry said. "Ginny put Amortentia in the tea, then tricked me into closing my eyes and transferring the Star Brand to Voldemort's head, pretending it was on her chest."
"And you fell for that?" Hermione said, wide-eyed with astonishment.
"Give me a break!" Harry snapped. "I didn't know I'd been dosed with love potion!"
"So Voldemort is alive again, and has the Star Brand," Dumbledore said, his worst fears confirmed.
"Yeah," Harry said. "Well, fuck."
"Harry, please do not use that word," Dumbledore said, mildly.
"Sorry," Harry shrugged, "but what else can I say? At least I still seem to have some of the Star Brand power left in me, if I can still imagine things and make them come true."
"Perhaps," Dumbledore suggested, "if you were to extract the relevant memories, we could examine them in my Pensieve. Studying them from an objective viewpoint may help us come up with some way to combat Voldemort. We may also find out why you still have a remnant of that power."
Harry nodded, and Dumbledore retrieved the large, stone bowl from his black cabinet, placing it on his desk. "Harry, if you would place the memory into the Pensieve, please?"
Harry reached up to touch his temple, rubbing it once again. This time, however, a silver thread appeared between his fingertips, and he tugged gently at it, extracting more of the silvery material, then held his hand over the bowl and let it settle into the swirling contents of the bowl, mingling with it. Dumbledore nodded, and the three of them bent their faces close to the surface of the silvery material, until the tips of their noses touched it.
There was the sensation of being pulled forward into the Pensieve and falling through darkness, until the three of them landed next to the image of Harry standing with Ginny, in her room in the Burrow. They watched as she returned with the tea and Harry drank, then the conversation that followed, with Harry squirming uncomfortably as Hermione and Professor Dumbledore observing his fatuous behavior under the Amortentia potion.
As Ginny led him, his eyes closed, toward her bed, she pointed toward the pillows at its head and from beneath them Voldemort's head rose, silently, and floated into her left hand, which she held in front of her, then placed Harry's right hand on its forehead. She smiled as he transferred the Brand to Voldemort, then pushed him away, leaping onto her bed as she drew her wand and pointed it at him.
"So Ginny has been under the Imperius Curse since then," Hermione said, her voice almost a whisper. "I knew it! But Ron wouldn't hear of it!"
"What's been happening?" Harry asked, concerned.
"Ginny, Fred and George have all been acting, well, out of sorts, I suppose you could say," Hermione explained. "Professor Dumbledore warned Ron and some of us that there were discrepancies between what Mr. and Mrs. Weasley said about being at the Burrow when it burned up —"
"The Burrow burned up?!" Harry exclaimed, but then subsided. "Oh, that's right — Voldemort destroyed me with fire, didn't he?"
"Fiendfyre, in fact," Dumbledore amplified. "Though it did not completely destroy your body, as it normally does. But the Burrow was reduced to ashes — only a few stones, near the outer edge of the blaze, were spared."
"What happened to the Weasleys?" Harry wanted to know.
"Arthur and Molly are now living at number twelve, Grimmauld Place," Dumbledore told him. I have asked Sirius and Remus to keep me informed of any of their activities, and of any potential attempts to isolate the younger Weasley children. I have also appraised Bill and Charlie of the situation as well."
Harry nodded, satisfied things were covered. Then his features hardened. "What's Voldemort been up to?" he asked.
"Nothing, apparently," Dumbledore replied. "Voldemort has not been seen nor heard from since his return at the Burrow. Many of his followers are being watched, either by the Ministry or by the Order, but a number of them have disappeared completely from the Wizarding community."
"Disappeared?" Harry repeated. "Do you mean, like I 'disappeared'?"
"No," Dumbledore shook his head. "In your case there was clear evidence of your murder. In theirs, they have simply removed themselves, and no longer walk among us. In itself, this is not remarkable, since witches and wizards often go on long journeys, singly or in small groups, called 'Grand Tours,' though this had become more of a post-matriculation exercise by the turn of the twentieth century."
"Huh?" Harry said, not understanding, then "Oh," as Hermione explained that "matriculation" meant "attending school." "You don't think these Death Eaters did anything like that," he guessed.
"No," the headmaster said, "though a few of them tried to make it appear so, either leaving notice with the Ministry of their departure, or making arrangements with Gringotts for remote withdrawal of their gold."
"So, where are they now?"
"We do not know," Dumbledore shrugged. "But in a sense, my concern is more about Voldemort than his followers. My primary line of investigation, since your apparent death, Harry, has been to locate either Voldemort, or the person responsible for giving you the Star Brand in the first place, Kenneth Connell.
"The second is a continuation of my efforts to locate Voldemort's Horcruxes, aided by select members of the Order. This issue, however, was a mere contingency, since Voldemort, in possession of the Star Brand, as I assumed he was, may believe himself to be immortal, as you did, Harry."
"I have to ask this, then," Hermione broke in. "If Harry no longer has the Star Brand, how was he restored to life?"
"I thought I did have it, when I woke up," Harry shrugged.
"But that wouldn't have been sufficient to bring you back to life, Harry," she argued. "If people could just wish they had the power to come back to life, there'd be a lot more people alive today!"
"I believe I can answer that," Dumbledore said. "And it is due, in part, to Voldemort himself." At Harry and Hermione's quizzical looks, he elaborated, "when Voldemort had Peter Pettigrew perform the spell that restored him to life last June, he used Harry's blood as one of the ingredients. Again, a moment of arrogance that worked to his detriment. By binding the two of you through your blood, Harry, he became an anchor for you in the living world, and at the same time unknowingly released the portion of his soul trapped inside you, when he destroyed your body using Fiendfyre."
Harry reached up to his forehead. "A portion of his soul?" he said, repulsed by the thought. "Is that why my scar —" he stopped, suddenly, and stared at them in amazement. "It's gone!" he said, lifting his bangs. "Look!"
With the hair covering his forehead pushed back, they both saw the lightning scar that had been on Harry's forehead for the past fourteen years was no longer there.
"Incredible!" Hermione cried, excitedly. "It must have disappeared when your body regenerated, inside the coffin!"
"But how would my body have regenerated without the Star Brand?" Harry blurted.
Dumbledore shook his head. "That I cannot say, Harry, but that does underscore my primary line of investigation, which Miss Granger here has been helping me with. I have asked her to read several newspapers and periodicals, with an eye toward finding any indication of activities by either Voldemort or Connell."
"I was going through some papers earlier tonight," Hermione mentioned to Harry. "Just before Professor Dumbledore asked me to accompany him to Godric's Hollow, to visit your grave. I'm very glad now I went with him."
"I am, too," Harry smiled at her, and she blushed. "Do you mind if I have a look at what you've read?"
Hermione looked toward the door of the Dumbledore's office. "Well, the latest stuff I was reading is in the common room, but —"
"No," Harry interrupted gently, putting a hand on her shoulder. "May I touch your mind, to see everything you've seen in your reading so far?"
"You can do that?" Hermione's eyes widened in wonder.
"I believe so," Harry nodded. "For whatever reason, my body still feels like I have the Star Brand." He closed his eyes for a moment, and Hermione suddenly swayed, nearly falling until Harry steadied her.
"Sorry," he said, letting her go, as she recovered, holding her head. "It seemed easier when I read the thoughts of the Wizengamot members. Maybe I haven't fully gotten over being in that box, yet."
"It's okay," Hermione said, waving off his apology, though her head was throbbing from whatever Harry had done.
Harry was quiet for several moments, going over information he had gleaned from Hermione's mind. It was Christmas Day, he'd learned; over four months had passed since the hearing at the Ministry — four months for Voldemort to plan whatever it was he was going to do, though inexplicably, he had seemed to vanish completely rather than declare himself ruler of the Earth, which the Star Brand's power would have made it simple for him to do.
Instead, all the news items Hermione had gathered over the past four months showed no Death Eater activity, not even an increase in Muggle-baiting activity, a perennial pastime of less enlightened wizard-kind. It was as if Voldemort and his Death Eaters had vanished off the face of the planet, which was possible but surely not Voldemort's style. Dumbledore had realized that as well, of course; that was why he was having Hermione read all the different wizarding and Muggle newspapers and periodical, to try and determine what he was up to.
In all of the reading Hermione had done, Harry also realized that much of it had been articles in the wizarding literature about Harry himself, something Dumbledore hadn't asked her to do. She had missed him terribly while he was gone, Harry realized, and had withdrawn from many of her other friends as she immersed herself in her task. She'd even gone so far as to pick a fight with Ron, just before the Christmas break, so she wouldn't have to go back to the Burrow with him. Now she believed that he had returned to the living, at least in part, to be with her.
In fact, that idea wasn't unappealing to Harry, but it also wasn't something he could handle right now, what with Voldemort now in possession of the Star Brand and representing a danger to every living person on Earth, not just wizard-kind. He would have to be careful not to give her any encouragement about there being anything between them.
"Some interesting stuff, there," Harry said, keeping his voice businesslike. "When did Pius Thicknesse become a citizen of the Netherlands?"
That caught Dumbledore's interest. "He resigned his position in the Ministry several months ago, just after Rufus Scrimgeour, along with several other Ministry members. It seems unlikely that he would leave Wizarding society altogether for a position in a Muggle government, however," Dumbledore finished.
"I was just reading that article earlier this evening," Hermione added. "It said he had been nominated for the position of Secretary-General of the United Nations due to the unexpected death of the current Secretary. He's expected to be elected; the only uncertainty is whether the United States would veto him, because of their new President."
"Their new President?" Harry repeated. He searched the information he'd absorbed from Hermione. "Oh, I see. Another accident involving an important political figure — the President of the United States was killed when his plane, Air Force One, crashed in a freak accident in October. The Vice President assumed office and appointed someone from their Senate to be the new Vice President."
"It was a bad time," Hermione said, "but not much notice of it was taken in England, and certainly almost no one in the wizarding world paid much attention to it."
Harry turned to Dumbledore. "Has there been any follow-up on these items, Professor?"
"I have discussed the various resignations with Order members," Dumbledore said, a tinge of impatience in his voice at being questioned so closely. "We have considered sending someone from the Order, perhaps Miss Tonks, on a mission to determine whether Thicknesse has been cursed or is acting on his own. It may also be prudent to examine the American President and Vice-President as well, but such a mission must undertaken with the utmost discretion —"
"I can handle that," Harry said, and vanished, even as Dumbledore started to raise a hand, to stop him.
"Oh, drat," Dumbledore muttered. "Sometimes, I fear Harry's impulsiveness can be quite exasperating."
"Tell me about it," Hermione said.
***
Harry appeared a moment later in a darkened bedroom in The Hague, the current location of Pius Thicknesse, the first stop on Harry's itinerary this Christmas morning. Magical protections were set up in and around the room, but Harry had imagined himself transparent to all such enchantments; none of them could detect him. His eyes, enhanced to see in near-total darkness, easily discerned the wizard, asleep in his king-sized bed. There was also a woman in bed with Thicknesse —his wife, Harry assumed, but it didn't matter — he had no business with her. Though his examination of Thickness would take only a few seconds, Harry removed her to another, empty bedroom, in case something unexpected happened.
Harry walked to the bed and stood silently over the former Ministry official, now pretending to be a Muggle — that must surely gall a pureblood like him, Harry thought. He touched Thicknesse's shoulder, drawing images and memories from the wizard's mind into his. Thicknesse moaned and twitched, and Harry realized that, without the Star Brand his mental incursions must lack fine control — he must've hurt Hermione as well, when he read her mind, he thought, though she hadn't complained. Well, it wasn't as if he cared much how much he hurt Thicknesse, as long as he remembered the experience as nothing more than a bad dream.
Thicknesse was under the Imperius Curse, but Voldemort's plans weren't far from his own desires for Muggle-kind — it was only that the former official lacked the will, the drive, and of course, the power to bring about such changes in the world. Documents and records had been magically altered, showing Thicknesse as a natural citizen of the Netherlands and giving a detailed but completely fabricated history of his life here. The woman who'd been asleep next to him was an actual citizen of the Netherlands, born and raised here, but her memories had been changed so she believed herself married to Thicknesse, as part of his cover. Various other people in his memories had been reprogrammed as well, to remember him from a past that had never occurred.
It didn't take Harry long to see that Thicknesse was a pawn; he knew only that the Dark Lord wished him to occupy a position of power in Muggle government, and while he believed himself a valuable asset in his plan of world domination, he did not even understand how that was to be brought about. It gave Thicknesse enough satisfaction to be a follower in the plan for control of the world, if not a leader. From his standpoint, it was also safer.
Harry sighed inwardly. There was nothing more he could learn here — Thicknesse was not a part of Voldemort's inner circle — he was just a cog in the machine, playing only a minor role in whatever the Dark Lord was up to. He withdrew from Thicknesse's mind, returning the woman to the bed, wishing he could free her from the false front that had been imposed on her, but for now, there must be no trace of his visit. Harry disappeared from the room.
The next leg of Harry's journey was much longer; He appeared in the dawning skies over Washington, D.C., several thousand feet above the American White House. He floated for a moment, disoriented and weak, but the sensation passed after a few seconds. That was the furthest he'd ever traveled at one time. There might be limits to what I can do, Harry thought, without the Star Brand in my possession. When he had the Brand, everything he did had come effortlessly, limited only by his imagination. Now, it seemed, he was no longer omnipotent.
Harry examined the layout of the White House below closely, locating the private residences of the President and Vice-President. The President, as he remembered from the pictures in the articles Hermione had read, was a tall, dark-haired man who might've resembled an older Harry if he wore round glasses (and if his hair was a bit messier).
Interestingly, there were magical protections, even though both the President and Vice-President were supposed to be Muggles, but there was nothing Harry couldn't handle; just some personal wards around the President's and VP's offices and residences that would send out warnings when magical folk were nearby. It was morning here, almost time for the day to begin. He would have to be quick about this…
An intuition warned Harry to scan the President's room again before he entered, this time with the Homenum Revelio spell, and it showed positive — there was someone else in the President's bedroom! He had detected two wizards, stationed in corners of the room, probably Disillusioned, as well as the President and his wife, who were both asleep in bed.
The question was, where they there protecting the President, or guarding him? The President was a Muggle, his scan had shown, as was his wife, and Harry wondered if it was more the latter than the former. Whatever they were there for, it wasn't going to stop him from paying a visit. Harry made himself invisible to the protection spells in the room, then invisible to the guards, and vanished from the skies over D.C., reappearing in the room between the two men. A moment later both guards were stunned and immobilized by Harry's power. He left them standing in their corners, frozen and unconscious — the Stunners would wear off in an hour or so, as would the Body-Bind Curses, and they'd be left wondering how they'd fallen asleep standing up.
He approached the bed and made sure the blonde-haired woman who lay next to the President would remain asleep — there was nowhere to move her, anyway, with as many Muggle guards as he had detected throughout this part of the White House guarding the corridors. Harry then laid a hand on the shoulder of the dark-haired President. The man moaned in pain as knowledge flooded Harry's brain.
He had been Imperiused as well, Harry discovered, and was being kept highly controlled by regular applications of the spell by the man who was now Vice-President. That person, Harry learned from the President's mind, had been the junior senator from the state of Connecticut. His history in the government went back a long way, and Harry realized that the man sleeping in the Vice-President's quarters was probably not the Muggle the President remembered. The President knew nothing of Voldemort's plan — he knew only that there were important steps that must be taken to protect the security of the country and the safety of its people, and that he, the President, should trust the Vice-President's wise counsel. Harry released his mind and vanished from the room, reappearing next to the Vice-President's bed.
The Vice-President was sleeping alone. Unlike the President, there were no wizard guards stationed in the room. He reached for the man's shoulder, but as he touched the sleeping form, there were several soft whooshes, and before Harry could turn, several magically-propelled blades penetrated his body. At the same time, the form he had touched dissolved beneath his hand, and something invisible rolled off the bed. Ignoring the metal penetrating his flesh, Harry imagined his vision could see into the infrared, to track whoever was in the room with him.
The Vice-President was standing across the room from him, in a defensive pose, pointing a wand at Harry. Harry concentrated for a moment and the blades transfixing him vanished. He then healed the damage to his body. They had been painful, but compared to the Cruciatus Curse Voldemort had used on him last June, they had been no more than a minor inconvenience. While he was thinking of it, Harry imagined himself impervious to any further physical assault.
"You can drop the Disillusionment Charm," Harry said evenly, staring directly at the invisible wizard. "I know where you are."
The wizard appeared, still pointing his wand at Harry. "Who are you?" he asked, tensely. "Why are you here? Have you been sent to test me?"
"Silence!" Harry snapped commandingly. The wizard hadn't recognized him. He could use that to his advantage, he hoped. "I'll ask the questions here. Drop your disguise, and be quick about it — we don't have much time."
The wizard didn't lower his wand. "Give the password!" he demanded.
"Lord Voldemort," Harry replied. It had been in the mind of the President, who'd known it in case he had to wake the Vice-President for some emergency. It was the perfect password, too — no one would expect Death Eaters to use the Name in such a way.
The wizard hesitated a moment, perhaps disarmed by Harry's quick response to his challenge, then nodded and tapped himself with his wand. Immediately his features began to flow and change, until the Vice-President's features and form returned to the image of — Rufus Scrimgeour. Harry hid his surprise — Scrimgeour had been a top Ministry official — he was nearly picked for Minister of Magic, and only barely edged out by Amelia Bones! Had he joined Voldemort before or after he left? Scrimgeour's demeanor also changed dramatically, along with his appearance. "Forgive me, my lord!" he said, bowing low before Harry. "A thousand apologies! I followed all of your instructions to ensure that no one attempted to impersonate you!"
This was running a bigger bluff than Harry had counted on. Did Scrimgeour think that he, Harry, was Lord Voldemort? He looked nothing like the Dark Lord! But now was not the time to argue whether Scrimgeour was right or wrong about his identity. "I will overlook your tone this time, Scrimgeour," he said, trying to emulate Voldemort's attitude and mannerisms. "You have performed…adequately."
"Thank you, Master!" Scrimgeour bowed again, almost groveling. "To what do I owe the honor of your presence, my lord?"
"Just — making sure of my preparations," Harry said, trying to say something that sounded plausibly Voldemort-like. "Give me... your … status." It was the first thing he could think of.
Scrimgeour nodded, slowly. "Yes, m-my lord. The President has been discussing certain sensitive issues with the European Union, including France, Greece and Romania, as well as the Russia Federation and the People's Republic of China. Special emissaries have been dispatched and are currently in negotiations with the leadership of those countries.
"When will we see some results?" Harry tried to sound impatient, the way he had seen Voldemort act in the graveyard in Little Hangleton.
"Soon, my lord," Scrimgeour said quickly. "Very soon! Avery is on his way to Greece — he will bring the President there under our control, and we will install one of our men as the Prime Minister afterwards. After we do the same in Russia and China, we will be in control of the United Nations Security Council. Then, we may bring your plan to completion!"
Harry nodded, thinking rapidly. He couldn't simply ask Scrimgeour to repeat his plan back to him — that would raise too much suspicion. Indeed, Scrimgeour would have to forget this entire conversation. He gestured to the Death Eater to approach him. "Come here. Rufus — you have done well in controlling the American president," he said, reaching out a hand toward the Death Eater, who walked forward slowly.
Scrimgeour winced as Harry touched him. There was no Imperius Curse here, Harry quickly realized, but something even deeper — Voldemort must have used the Star Brand power to make Scrimgeour totally loyal to him. But before he could learn more than a few scraps of information from the former Ministry official's mind, a keening wail like a banshee's scream pierced Harry's mind, and he broke contact, covering his ears. The sound went on, however, inside his head, and Harry gasped, unable to think as the unearthly wail clouded his mind.
Scrimgeour stepped back and redrew his wand. "So it is you, Connell!" he rasped, pressing the tip of his wand against his left forearm. "Now you'll have the Dark Lord himself to deal with!" There was no Dark Mark on Scrimgeour's forearm, but the gesture was unmistakable.
Harry heard none of this — the banshee's wail filling his brain had drowned out all other input. Touching Scrimgeour had set off a trap, and he had fallen for it! But he saw, through the haze of pain of his overloaded senses, the gesture Scrimgeour had made, and he knew who that would bring. He fought back against the wailing in his head, willing it to silence. At that same moment, there was a flash of light, and Voldemort appeared. But it was not the Voldemort Harry had expected.
He saw now why Scrimgeour had believed he had been the Dark Lord — the man who had just appeared in the room was not the white-skinned death's mask who had emerged from the cauldron in the Little Hangleton graveyard, with glowing red eyes and lipless, snakelike mouth. Even so, Harry recognized him immediately — this was Tom Riddle reborn. Tall, handsome, with smooth hair, darker than Harry remembered from the Riddle of the diary, he looked quickly around the room, hesitating only a moment when he saw Harry — they might have been twins, so similar were their forms.
"CONNELL!" Riddle roared, and a blast of white energy erupted from his outstretched hand toward Harry. Only the fact that Harry was already moving sideways, trying to disappear and discovering he couldn't, kept the bolt from striking him — Riddle had invoked some kind of ward or effect that was preventing him from vanishing! The wall behind Harry was blasted away as he spun to one side. With Riddle in possession of the Star Brand, Harry couldn't hope to win against him — he'd seen it, in the palm of Riddle's right hand as it extended toward him.
Seeing the wall behind him explode gave Harry an idea. He sent a blast back toward the Dark wizard, but aimed low, at the floor. The floor vaporized beneath Riddle, who plummeted through it, cursing. Even as Riddle fell out of view, Harry looked up, through the floors above him, and saw no one between him and the sky. He flew straight up, blasting through the roof of the White House and into the morning sky, accelerating hard to put distance between him and Riddle. In seconds the sky above him had gone from blue to black; he'd flown out of the atmosphere. Hoping he'd passed outside the influence of the dampening effect on his teleportation ability, Harry imagined himself back at Hogwarts, and disappeared.
A moment later he was back in Dumbledore's office, and he slumped to the floor, spent. "Harry!" Hermione cried, rushing over to where he had fallen. "What's happened to you!"
"Fought… Voldemort…" Harry gasped, looking up at Dumbledore, who returned his gaze with grave concern. "Too powerful… I couldn't — couldn't match him."
"Well, of course not," Hermione said, plaintively, looking up at Dumbledore as well. "He has the Star Brand, after all."
"I do not believe that is the reason per se why Harry can't match him, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said. He knelt down beside Harry. "Harry has said he believed he still possessed the Star Brand when he awoke, earlier this evening. Perhaps this Star Brand has permanently changed Harry in some way." Dumbledore took Harry by the shoulders, looking at him intensely. "Harry, will Voldemort be able to locate you using the Star Brand?"
Harry's eyes widened. "Yes," he said, through gritted teeth. "Damn it! I didn't think of that! I need to leave, right now —" He tried to rise, but Dumbledore kept him from standing. "Professor, let me go — I can't stay here…"
"Harry," Dumbledore said, quietly, "you do not have the strength to leave, if you cannot even prevent me from holding you down."
"That's my doing, Headmaster," another voice spoke, and Dumbledore, Harry and Hermione all turned to see Kenneth Connell standing behind them. "And don't worry about this Voldemort character — for now, I am preventing him from locating either me or Harry."
He walked over to Harry's side and knelt down beside him, opposite Dumbledore. Placing his hand on Harry's chest, Connell concentrated for a moment, and white light blazed from beneath his palm. Harry jerked as if he'd been hit with an electric shock, then sat up, looking at Connell in amazement. "What did you do?" he asked. "Did you —"
"No," Connell spoke over him. "I did not return my half of the Star Brand to you, Harry." He held up his hand, showing them the Brand, still on his palm. "I simply replaced the energy you had expended in your recent trips to the Netherlands and to America. Yes," he nodded, at Harry's look. "I also read your mind again — my apologies once more for the intrusion, but it was simpler than having you recount your adventures."
Connell turned to Hermione and Dumbledore, addressing them as well. "The Star Brand permanently changes everyone who possesses it, giving them the ability to make anything they can imagine into reality. The Star Brand itself is an energy conduit — it gives the possessor access to nearly limitless energy. Without the Star Brand to draw upon this energy, however, it is possible to overextend yourself and run out of reserves. That is what has happened to Harry; I restored the energy he expended, bringing him back to full power. He will need it, if we are to defeat this Voldemort."
He stood and held out a hand to Harry, who took it, pulling himself to his feet, and Dumbledore and Hermione rose to their feet as well. "Is he formulating a plan to take over the world?" Dumbledore asked, tensely.
"Of course," Connell said. "His kind always thinks in absolutes, and small-mindedly. "I wish now that I had not left Earth so abruptly, or that I had warned Harry that the power of the Star Brand does not automatically protect against mental attack or manipulation. This Voldemort was able to take over part of Harry's mind and trick him into believing absurdities. Fortunately, if you want to call it that, placing the Star Brand on Voldemort's Horcrux-enchanted head was less disastrous than if he had placed it on one that was actually dead."
"You told me that something very bad would happen," Harry said to Connell. "But you've never said what it actually would do."
"Without the control of a sentient mind, all the power of the Star Brand would be released at once," Connell told him, curtly. "Everything within about fifty miles would have instantly vaporized. The exotic radiation would have mutated many living things within several hundred miles.
"It happened to me, once," Connell said, his eyes seeming to focus on something only he could see, as his mind drifted back. "It happened thousands of years ago in my subjective memory, but I remember it vividly. I had been traveling through intergalactic space, toward the galaxy I then thought was the Milky Way. However, it was really the Andromeda galaxy, and I could find no sign of intelligent life. I finally landed on a planet that seemed especially Earth-like, and wondered whether I should end my journey there.
"I had no reason to return to Earth," Connell said, with an unconscious shrug. "I believed my girlfriend was dead at the hands of aliens, and I had been flung millions of light-years from my home. What would I be going home to, I asked myself. Everyone and everything I knew would be long-dead by the time I got back. I resolved to stay, to create a New Earth with the power of the Star Brand, and to live out my life in peace."
Harry, Hermione and Dumbledore were all listening with rapt attention. "With the power to do anything, I quickly figured out how to create buildings, streets, power plants, water plants, and all the other comforts of civilization. I built up entire continents of empty cities, spread across that world, vast regions of farmland and pasture, and filled them all with animals I remembered from Earth — deer and other game, and predators in the wilderness, cattle, pigs and chicken in the farms and pastures, and birds and squirrels in the cities.
"And when all the cities were build, all the utilities humming along efficiently and self-sufficiently, I added the crowing achievement — people. I created thousands of beings to populate those cities — farmers and ranchers for the rural areas, every kind of person I could think of — each one with his own life, his own history, and each one believing that he was real and whole, not a creation of my mind and the Star Brand's power."
Harry stared at Connell, shocked to silence, then looked at Hermione. She was equally shocked. Dumbledore's expression was one of placid acceptance. "It is natural," he said to Connell, "to desire the company of others — sometimes, even if you know they are mere illusions. I understand your desire…"
"I wish I had," Connell said, flatly. "I might have avoided what I brought down upon myself, eventually." He looked back at Harry. "I had no one to tell me how the Star Brand worked, what I should and shouldn't do with it. After all the time I spent creating that world — certainly more than six days! — I wanted to set the power aside, to live in peace on the world I'd created, no longer a hero, or a wanted criminal — not even as some kind of god. I just wanted to be a man again.
"I had set up an apartment in the largest city I'd built. I wanted some peace, some tranquility, without worrying about the power that had so taken over my life. I picked up a trinket in my apartment, a picture of Maddy, and transferred the Star Brand to it."
"Oh, no!" Hermione gasped, realizing the implication of that action.
Connell nodded heavily. "Everything for fifty miles around me vaporized in a white fireball. Including me — without the Star Brand's additional protection, I was as susceptible to damage as everything around me, once my own reserves of energy were depleted."
Harry and Dumbledore looked at each other, both of them imagining something similar happening to London. It was unthinkable.
"How could you have recovered from that?" Dumbledore asked, ever inquisitive. "And wouldn't the Brand itself have been lost in such an explosion?"
"I think the Star Brand fundamentally changes anyone it touches," Connell said. "It makes them immortal, if not completely indestructible. While it's part of you, it can channel enough energy to keep your body intact under almost any condition — I've never been defeated while I've had it — but even vaporized to atoms, I retained some consciousness, and I desired to 'pull myself together,' so to speak, to understand what had happened to me.
"I do not know how long it took, but I eventually found myself alive again, and whole, more or less, in a pool of noxious liquid near the bottom of the crater created by that explosion. The Star Brand was still with me, somehow — I found it on the back of my thigh — and I flew up, out of that crater, to see what damage that had been caused." Connell shook his head, not wanting to remember. "I found horrors beyond imagining — people and animals had mutated weirdly and grotesquely, I could not bear to look upon them, they were so vile. They had spread away from the crater — the "Pit," I called it, it was like the pit of Hell to me! — and were attacking any other animals or people they could find."
"What did you do?" Harry asked.
"I managed to stop the largest mutations from spreading," Connell said, his eyes closed, as if shutting out his vision could push them from his memory. "But once the attacks on the cities stopped, and the people there had developed defenses for the smaller creatures, I left again, for home."
"You left all those people there?" Hermione cried, appalled.
"What would you have had me do?" Connell looked at her. "Kill them? Return them to the dust of the planet?" Hermione said nothing. "I had played God, and I had failed, nearly bringing Armageddon to my New Earth. I left them in peace, to their new lives, and resolved to play God no more."
"You may have done so once more, however," Dumbledore pointed out. "And in so doing, opened the gates of Hell as well."
Connell looked at him, pain in his eyes. "I know."
"What are you talking about?" Harry asked.
"Voldemort," Dumbledore said, "has the Star Brand. Based upon what Mr. Connell has told us, he is now fundamentally changed, just as you and he are, Harry. Even if you wrest the Star Brand away from him, he is now immortal, just as you both are, and that can never be changed." He looked at Connell. "Can it?"
"Not unless the Star Brand itself was destroyed," Connell said. "And I believe that to be impossible."
"Thus," Dumbledore concluded. "We have quite a problem on our hands."
"Well," Harry said, offering his own opinion on the matter. "Fuck."