Chapter XX

Naught More Terrible Than Truth

Moonsickness - assuming that was all it was, because as madam Pomfrey kept reminding him, they would not be certain until the next full moon - was not the relief it had seemed. The symptoms had started out benign enough, or else as pains which promised to fade as had the burning in his veins, but as the week progressed Harry learned the truth of his affliction.

First had come the nausea. Nothing he ate could he keep down, to the point he threw up more than once in the Great Hall, drawing even more looks than he was already receiving, and prompting all but his most steadfast friends to seek more distant places to sit. In the end only Hermione, Luna, and Ron Weasley had the stomach or determination to ignore his frequent heaving.

"Are you sure? Maybe a potato?" Hermione had suggested on the fourth evening out of quarantine, as he batted his food around his plate, trying to distract himself with the swirls of red his steak was leaving. He had traded the perfectly medium one he was served with Hermione's near-raw abomination, since she didn't like the blood, and he hardly cared what went in when it would so shortly be coming back up.

Then again, that blood looked… appetising. And the smell: Tangy and full-bodied, it was doing a number on his starving stomach. With a shrug of resignation for what was to come, he lifted the whole steak to his mouth and tore a chunk from it.

Ten minutes and as many ounces of deliciously pink meat later, his stomach was more settled than it had been in what felt like forever.

If he could only find a cure for the raging hot flushes; fitful sleep; muscle cramps; rapid and itchy hair growth; sudden aggressive urges; and constant headaches flaring out from his lightning-bolt-scar, it might all become bearable.

With all that out of the way, maybe he would feel steady enough to talk to Hermione about just what it was she was keeping from him - what had taken her from his side when he needed her. He wasn't mad; he wasn't even disappointed, not once he'd mulled it over and reminded his intrusive angry thoughts that this was Hermione, who never did anything without good reason. He hadn't forgotten how much of a mess he had caused last time he didn't trust her. Mostly, he wanted to know if he could help. Helping her would take his mind off his own problems.

That evening, however, there was something else which served to distract him. Partway through the desserts he dared not partake in, a spectral figure - a patronus, surely - slipped into the hall to whisper (who knew a patronus could talk?) in the headmaster's ear.

Dumbledore already had the attention of the hall when he stood to make an announcement.

"Attention. Your attention, please, students. I have just been informed that Professor Lupin is to be escorted to the ministry for questioning in regards to his role in the defence of the school against Sirius Black. Given that the questioning may take some time, and the professor has, as you know, elected to resign from his post, this may be the last time we see him within these hallowed halls. As such, I have requested that he leave through this hall, to receive the proper send-off befitting such an heroic individual."

The side door opened as he finished, almost as if he had planned it to a tee, to admit the professor, flanked by two aurors who by their demeanour had been told very different things about the man they were 'escorting'. The respectful silence afforded the headmaster lingered and turned conflicted. Most Slytherins appeared smug and triumphant, though none saw fit to air their feelings vocally. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw emitted an aura of deep sadness at the loss of such a kind and intelligent teacher, though Harry was disheartened to see plenty casting fearful looks at his father's old friend.

Gryffindor fumed. Harry had been sure to spread word of Lupin's good deed, and make everyone aware that the ministry would be seeking the man's death for his part in saving several of their own. He made to rise, to stand for the man he had played an inadvertent part in damning, and found he was beaten to it by half his house - the other half not a second behind him.

A few others rose amongst the other benches; he recognised Cedric and Patricia, but there were a dozen others he couldn't put a name to, older students the lot of them. Not that he looked at them too closely - his eyes were for Remus, who returned the attention with a sad smile.

The aurors were unmoved by the display, jostling their charge across the head table and down the centre of the hall. Right before they passed Patricia, the girl raised her wand high in the air above her head - almost earning a reflexive spell from the nearer auror - and cast.

"Expecto patronum."

Silver-blue light shone from her wand-tip, then burst free as it flowed into the form of a giant eagle, soaring over the heads of the Hufflepuffs, taking a lazy lap about a hall which suddenly seemed so small before coming in to alight upon Remus' shoulder. The calmness pulsing from it served to soothe Harry's thundering heart a fraction, and inspired much more from a select few of his peers. Six more of the standing students raised their own wands and spoke the same incantation. From four there was only a bright and cheerful light, but two more animals - a goat and a tiny crocodile - joined the solemn procession.

Harry was unsurprised when Hermione's wand joined them, but shocked to see nothing come from it; nothing but a glimmering mist so thin he could have been imagining it. She had muttered the incantation on the first attempt; on the second it came through gritted teeth, louder, determined, yet still garnered nothing. Further down the Gryffindor table a girl - Madeline, wasn't it? - was having trouble of her own, not settling for the light she had already produced, her jawline the mirror of Hermione's as she poured more and more into her spell, until something finally broke free and took to the air; a twisting cobra, flaring its hood with a silent hiss.

Madeline looked alarmed at her patronus' nature for all of a second, before a manic grin and satisfied sigh took the forefront. The cobra slithered upon thin air, but it did not go straight to Remus; Madeline had noticed Hermione's struggle, and it was to Harry's friend her snake gravitated, confidently wrapping itself about her shoulders like it belonged there.

A Gryffindor really shouldn't look that good with a snake always around her neck… right?

The snake gazed at Harry with a cocked head, flicking its tongue, and though it could not speak even to him, he caught a powerful sense of the emotion powering its existence. The sadness there, burning out from behind its eyes, had his arms trembling. It made him want to seek out the person who had taught its master such despair and tear their throat asunder with his teeth - he couldn't even say if that was the infection talking.

It also told him he didn't have to, because it was going to be alright; the pain would pass, and the wounds would heal. The wounded would not be a victim again.

Hermione apparently didn't get that part of the message, or else knew something Harry didn't; her soft lips contorted into a vicious snarl, her wand jabbed forward, and her voice rang out, refusing to be denied.

"Expecto patronum!"

What came from her wand still did not take form, roiling from the tip as a cloud, but by Merlin did it roil! The snake leapt up, passing ethereally through Hermione's neck to dive into the cloud, and the two spells joined together in a winding dance of sadness and rage - a perfect testament to the injustice taking place.

The aurors flinched as the furious pair descended upon them, but they were ignored. Hermione's cloud burst in a flash of light, and when the dazzle left Harry's eyes the snake was twisted about Remus' wrist, held up before his face. Madeline's cobra nuzzled the man on the cheek; he drew to a halt, sobbing openly.

"How moving," Snape drawled, and Harry wished for the hundredth time already the man had been forced to quarantine, if only to keep his nasty nose out of the moment. Stupid bloody protective charms…

The unwanted comment drew the lines of battle clearly; those who laughed and grinned and nodded in agreement on one side, skewed heavily to green; those who scoffed and glared at the bat on the other. Gryffindor against Slytherin, as it always seemed to be, with the Puffs and Claws torn in the middle.

Harry wished he could cast a patronus of his own; wished he could show his support as explicitly as Hermione, and rub his magic in the face of the jeering snakes; wipe the hateful sneers off Draco Malfoy and his ilk. If the rumour mill were to be believed, half the neutral students coming down against Remus were doing so because he had harmed their precious Boy-Who-Lived, no matter what Harry actually had to say about it. Those who supported him were mostly following their champions - the likes of Cedric Diggory and Patricia Stimpson, paragons of their house values - rather than forming and acting on opinions of their own. Something about that was more sickening than the Slytherins' bigotry; at least the snakes knew what they were about. At least they had the perverted courage to express how they felt; to make themselves worthy opponents, ripe for sinking his claws into and-

Gah! Fucking wolf!

Harry forced the violent thoughts from his mind, but the emotions behind them remained steadfast, baying out for release. He ached to follow after the aurors all but dragging Remus from the hall, to raise his wand against the injustice and curse them all into sticky oblivion for daring to target the man whose actions had saved him and his Godfather and Nev and Ginny and Hermione. His fingers rolled the wand he did not recall palming; his leg bounced his heel against hard stone, every tremor resounding through his clenched jaw.

Only cold logic stayed his hand: The irrefutable knowledge that to act would be to damn the man he wished to defend; the unshakeable sense that beside him his best friend was feeling every bit as much anger, and yet no reckless action would come from her. If she could do it - if she could restrain that smouldering inferno he could still feel crackling in her patronus' wake - then so would he.

But I will not do nothing.

He gripped her hand - without a second thought on how far he had passed such silly concerns as hand-holding - and started moving, following the objects of his ire, unwilling to let them leave his watchful eye. She said not a word against him, nor did any other Gryffindor. The headmaster might have called out to him, but it did not register above the rushing and pounding in his ears. He saw Ginny's lips move as he passed her; caught the glint in Neville's eyes as they briefly met his. There was a motion on the edge of his vision, but it was not until he reached the hall door that he identified it as Patricia, marching in the same direction with half her house falling into step at her back. Cedric was there too, a sea of yellow thronging about him.

He needed not look back to know his own house outnumbered theirs both. The quidditch team and prefects had been spreading word and marshalling support since the outset and now, in the moment, it was a given that the lions would rise to the occasion. Minerva's scathing words from the last year had burrowed deep in the psyche of the house, and if the injustice were not enough… Remus Lupin was one of theirs.

His concern for Hermione's footing was all that slowed him; but for that, Harry would have led those two-hundred-odd students after the professor, down the winding path to the main gates. Instead, Patricia took the fore as Harry was engulfed by the crowd.

It was a long march through the grounds. When the students behind the patroni started to falter, stumbling under the strain of their magic, they were swept up by wordless agreement and carried forward by those around them, held aloft to keep their wands clear and proud. Hermione stumbled too, unable to navigate the crowd, and without hesitation Harry lifted her into a bridal carry, ignoring the protests of his ever-aching muscles. She rolled into him, clinging to his shoulder and burying her head into it.

"This is not fair," she murmured.

"It'll be alright," he whispered back, not knowing what else to say. It felt like a lie as he said it; the words dirtied his mouth.

"The world is so broken. Why is it like this? Why? How do we fix it?"

He looked out through the throng of people to catch a glimpse of the far side of the valley, to where he now knew his Godfather was residing in a damp cave, wanted for yet another crime he did not commit, all to possibly save his best friend from execution for something he could not control. Something Harry had come so close to being himself.

In those musings, the fire in him settled into something calmer - something more sustainable. His emotions buckled down and dug in for the long fight.

"I don't think it wants to be fixed," he sighed.

Hermione clawed at his back, scrunching his robes up like he was her personal stress-ball.

"I was not asking permission."

Harry was not particularly surprised to be pulled into a meeting with the headmaster immediately on returning to the castle. What did surprise him was that the old codger thought to invite Hermione along without any prompting or forcing on their part. It may have had something to do with how fast their hands were clamped together, but then again… by the way he wordlessly accepted Luna including herself, perhaps not.

Can the old dog learn new tricks after all?

There were several minutes of small talk and more than one offering of lemon drops before they got to the meat of the conversation. Harry let it be, because he was still cooling down from his earlier feelings himself, and letting those loose on the headmaster would be as unproductive as it would be gratifying. He also hadn't asked for Minerva to be present. Yet.

"I suppose," the headmaster sighed, clacking a sweet between his teeth, "you are wondering why I have asked to speak to you."

"It did cross my mind," he replied, laying back in his chair to hide his tense excitement.

"The reason, is that there is a piece of information I must share with you. I would ask you to remember, on hearing it, that until very recently this was only speculation, and as such I saw no need to trouble you with that which you could not, and may never need to, do anything about."

"Oh, that doesn't sound promising," Luna stage-whispered from the rafters. (Harry was still unsure how she got up there.)

"It is not." Dumbledore agreed. "It relates to the reason Voldemort-" the headmaster paused, as though expecting some sort of response from speaking the dark lord's name, only to get nothing - "chose to seek out your parents. I believe it is also relevant to your recent affliction, and to the continuing disappearances we now know not to be the work of your Godfather."

"Nothing too heavy then," Harry quipped - to buy himself time to wrap his head around what the man was really saying.

"So much like your father, to find the humour in all things. Such a loss… I had hoped I might shelter you from having to face this pain, but alas, I fear I have exhausted all other options. The truth… The truth is a terrible and beautiful thing."

The headmaster took a moment to rest his head in his hands, his air of strength and calm buckling.

"There are things you cannot yet know, and reasons why I must keep them from you. The only assurance I can give you that I truly act in your best interest, is that Minerva knows some part of what I do not say, and she agrees that, for now, it must be kept hidden. As for what I can say…"

He raised his head and stared directly at Harry, as though scared to break the contact. "Voldemort targeted you and your parents because of a prophecy, one which he knows only partially, but of which he heard enough to strike fear into his black heart. He sought to avoid fate, and in doing so only ensured it come to fruition. You, and you alone, were his target that night. I have it from a most trusted source that he would have let your mother live, had she given you up to him. I believe it is that which allowed her sacrifice to shield you from his killing curse - an act of magic and love, too light and pure for the dark lord to understand or overcome."

"So my mum saved me from the curse… with love?"

"That is the only conclusion I can draw, and I have given the topic much thought these past years."

"Is that why the werewolf cruse didn't take? Did this 'protection' save me from that too?"

"No. No, your mother's love shields you only from Voldemort, and to an extent those who do his bidding. What saved you from the curse, if I am correct, is a side-effect of a more complicated matter."

"It sounds like you aren't going to explain that."

"Not entirely. Not yet. That information is dangerous, and you are prepared neither to handle or protect it. Which," he said, raising a placating hand, "is something I intend to work with you to rectify. In the meantime, what I can tell you, may be more readily believed coming from a friend."

He rose and stepped around his desk, in a practiced motion he must have made a thousand times; a man in his domain, in control, even as Harry felt he was falling to pieces.

"Miss Granger. I am told you have achieved some ability in the Visus Magicae - the somewhat misnamed 'Sight of Magic'."

"That is right, sir."

"Remarkable for one so young. Would you be so kind as to focus on Harry here. Specifically upon his fabled scar, and tell us what you can feel there."

Hermione turned in her seat and leant toward Harry, frowning with concentration.

"Only what I've felt before, headmaster. A lingering trace of intent - cruel intent."

"Merely a trace?"

"A strong one, but yes."

"And, if I cast a small spell upon the area, only to provoke the magic…?" Dumbledore flicked a finger at Harry's head, casually - whatever he cast was minimal.

Hermione's reaction was not. She threw herself back in her chair, almost toppling it, and covered her mouth with one hand while the other came up to shield her… from him? The gasp escaping her lips was near a shriek, and ended only when she retched into her mouth.

"Hermione? Hermione, what is what… what is it? Headmaster?" Harry's breathing was quickening to match his pulse as he watched his friend recoiling and the headmaster standing there, placid as anything, like a nightmare wasn't playing out in front of him. "Would someone tell me what's wrong with me!"

"It's ok, Harry," Luna called in her singsong fashion from above. "There's nothing the matter with you." She slipped off the beam and dropped ten feet to the floor like it was nothing, and came to kneel next to him, looking up at him with a reassuring smile. "Give her time."

Hermione was heaving in her breaths, hands now in claw-like grips on the arms of her chair. But, just as Luna said, as the seconds ticked by indescribably slowly, his friend came back to herself. He saw the exact moment concern overcame revulsion, and in the next he was being crushed by her fearful embrace.

He lost himself in her familiar frizz and whispered to her. "What did you feel?"

"I was wrong."

"What?"

"I was wrong. All this time, I thought… Harry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Just tell me."

"It was so... It felt… black. Like it was sucking on… Like there was no… Oh Merlin they're right. They're right. That magic is Dark."

Hermione slid down him until she was collapsed across his lap. Luna ran a comforting hand through her hair, which Harry appreciated because it left him not entirely guilty to focus his attention on the headmaster.

"What is going on?"

"The darkness in your scar is more than a mere trace, dear boy. When Voldemort cursed you, he inadvertently created a link between you and him - one which manifests in your scar. You and he are bound by a magic most foul."

"But he's dead."

Dumbledore gave him a kindly look which made him want to die.

"I vanquished him," Harry persisted. "He died that night. My mum's protection… The spell backfired. He's dead."

Hermione mumbled from his lap. "…which he knows…"

"What?"

She used his robes to pull herself out of her slump, revealing a familiar set to her jaw.

"Which he knows. That's what you said, isn't it?" she seethed at Dumbledore. "Not knew. Knows. Voldemort is not dead."

"I'm afraid not."

"And the disappearances?" Harry asked, recalling more of the man's confounding words.

"I suspect he is behind them. In his current state, he likely has need of… hosts."

"How long? How long have you known?"

"I have suspected ever since that night that things were not over."

Harry picked up the closest thing on Dumbledore's desk - a shiny widget which whirred and spun and drove people to distraction - and threw it across the room to smash against the wall. "Fuck 'suspected'!" he yelled. "When did you know?"

"Two years ago, professor Quirrell returned from a sabbatical in Eastern Europe. He was… a changed man. The cause of this change was a certain dark lord living, quite literally, in the back of his head."

"Quirrell?"

"He taught Defence," Hermione explained. "The whole year. Except he disappeared a few days before the leaving feast. Which means the Dark Lord was in Hogwarts for a year! And you knew?" she accused, standing to round on Dumbledore. "You let it happen? Are you mad? He could have killed us all! It's a miracle no-one was hurt!"

"Someone was." He looked at Hermione, even more kindly and regretful than he had just then looked at Harry, and Harry had the prescience to slide a restraining hand over Hermione's wand, even as he itched to go for his own. "A student was quite viciously attacked by a dangerous creature - one Professor Quirrell let into the school as a distraction for achieving his real motive."

Hermione froze. For the longest time she did not even breathe. Luna slid a chair behind her not a moment too soon, as the stupor suddenly broke and Hermione fell back into it.

"You," she whispered, defeated and murderous. "You let this happen. You knew he was here, and you let… Why would you do that? No, no let me guess, because you saw it in the stars, or the cups, or you pulled the wrong card on the wrong day?"

"Hermione, you must-"

"Shut up. You have no right to say a singular fucking word to me, and you will never hold such a right again until the day you can look me in the eye as you apologise! Damn you to hell, you infernal bastard!"

The arms of the chair cracked in her grip.

"Miss Granger-"

"Hurry up and say your piece to Harry. Get it done so we can be rid of your sickening company and figure out what we are going to do about it."

"Harry, I am - "

"What she said, sir." In two years of potions with Snape, Harry had never put so much sting into that honorific. "Tell me how I get this thing out of my head, and what you plan to do about bloody Voldemort not being dead, and then kindly never speak to us again!"

Dumbledore, to his credit, proceeded to do as demanded. He spun a tale of prophecy - one he promised Harry would hear, 'in good time' - and magical mirrors and trapped corridors and how the dark lord had snuck in right under his nose and stolen whatever the Philosopher's Stone was, but that was fine because he probably hadn't been able to get it out of the mirror, which was why he was killing innocent people to sustain himself which was so much better.

Luna had to be the one actively listening and asking questions, as Harry and Hermione could do no more than fume and refrain from storming out. Much of it was hard to listen to. When the headmaster tried to justify placing Harry on his uncle's doorstep, Hermione's outburst of accidental magic set his desk on fire, much to Fawkes' amusement. When he admitted to knowing no way to remove the darkness from Harry's scar save for death - proper, terminal death, unlike his experience in the Chamber - Luna began to cry uglier tears than Harry thought her pretty eyes capable of. When he stressed the importance of teaching Harry occlumency, Harry demanded his teacher be someone else, anyone else; when the only other option was Snape, Harry accepted that lesser of two evils immediately.

By the time he was finished, the headmaster had well and truly torched any bridge as might have stood between them. Or rather, demonstrated they never stood to begin with.

Not that it matters. The man was clearly useless all along, so why would he be of any further help? Why would I expect to be able to turn to the most powerful wizard in the world for help against a dark lord who is not only alive, but actively invested in killing me?

Harry was gladder than ever to have such good and strong friends at his side, and ones who were so willing to face desperate odds at that. He considered sending them away or else running away himself, to spare them from what was coming, but knew they would only have lectured him for it as they stood beside him all the same. He wanted to run out in to the grounds, there to howl his anger and frustration and fear at the heavens; to see if anything up there had the heart to answer. Not that it would; there was nothing celestial watching over him. How could there be, if this was how his life had turned out? What divine being would let this stand?

"We will figure this out," Hermione insisted as they left, though she sounded uncertain herself.

"How? I killed him once, and he came back. My parents died for nothing."

"Don't you say that! They saved you, and they bought us time. And next time he comes calling, we will make his death stick."

Harry imagined that; imagined standing over the monster who had taken his childhood from him, levelling his wand, and severing the dark lord's head clean from his shoulders. It made his skin crawl.

"I don't think I can do it. He's the killer, not me. I don't want to be like him."

"That will not be a problem," Hermione muttered darkly. "No problem at all."

That night, sick of the omnipresent gossip concerning Remus, the trio retreated to the old classroom. They piled into the office, happy to sleep on nothing but a cushioning charm over the floor if it meant they could stay together. Hermione curled up on one side of Harry, Luna on the other, all sharing their warmth and simple presence against the harsh cold of the castle, and the cruel world outside.

Comforting embrace or no, Harry's dreams were plagued by visions: Murdered tyrants toppling onto baked earth; Hermione shaking with despair as she looked upon his cursed scar for the first time; a soft-spoken wizard holding conspiratorial discussions in a rundown manor-house, with a man whose tongue flicked out like that of a snake.

Even after he woke, those nightmares felt as true as the arms wrapped about his waist.

Here Ends Book Two: Hermione Granger and the Power to Overthrow Law

Book Three: 'Harry Potter and the Chains of Fate' coming... soon?

A/N:

Oh, hello Muse. Is that you, back after all this time, to help me write the second half of the last chapter of this book? How incredibly helpful, but might I ask, where the fuck have you been? Well, hopefully you'll stick around long enough to get book three fully underway, before inevitably abandoning me right when it should be getting good.

But yeah, that was book two. 94k words, 330 pages in standard book format. Way shorter than book one at 143k words over 497 pages, so I guess I learned to stop waffling somewhere along the way? Either that or there isn't much actually happens in the canon I was somewhat following. That can't be it, right? Either way: 250k down, ~ 450k? to go.

Wish me luck?

And another massive thank you to everyone who's kept reading to this point; especially those who have reviewed!