November 20, 1997 (Harry)
Sunlight crept in through the nearby window in lazy rivulets, throwing the grungy room into sharper focus. Harry hadn't slept a wink all night, eyes glued towards the door through the darkness, ready to fight, ready to flee. Certain that Voldemort would somehow find them again and burst down the door to claim them. Certain that their daring escape of a few hours before would end in their capture. But that moment had never come.
Hermione stirred in his arms, breathing lightly in his ear. She had been in and out of sleep herself, Harry could tell, pretending to sleep himself as she silently sobbed and trembled with fear. But he kept her firmly held tight in a protective grasp, as a comfort to himself as much as her. He would have gone mad with worry by now if she hadn't been by his side. And any time the despair of what lay ahead of him got too much to bear, he focused on the steady beating of her heart against his chest, the slow cadence of her breathing, and felt perhaps it was bearable just a bit longer.
He would have loved to lay here for hours more, but knew they had to get moving. They had taken great care to Obliviate and Confundus the desk clerk of the tiny motel they'd selected for lodging, but they oughtn't push their luck and wait around for someone to double-check the logs or a cleaner to enter. So he gently extricated himself from Hermione's grasp and gave her a light shake of the shoulder.
"Hermione?" he whispered. "We have to move."
She responded at once, sitting up with a heavy sigh and beginning to gather her things. Perhaps her sleep had been just as restless as his after all. They silently got dressed and picked up their meager belongings, as the sounds of other motel tenants streamed past their door, speaking in rapid Italian as they headed to the lobby for breakfast. Harry badly wished to join them, to indulge in one last warm meal before embarking on their journey. But it was far too risky.
"Ready?" he asked once they had gathered everything. Hermione nodded forlornly, clutching her magically-enchanted handbag to her side. Harry threw the Invisibility Cloak over the two of them, took her hand, and Disapparated.
They reappeared somewhere in the countryside, atop a hillside Harry had spotted some miles away from the village they'd stayed in. Hermione swayed weakly on the spot, and Harry steadied her. "You okay?" he asked her.
"Fine," she muttered matter-of-factly. "Where to next?"
Harry had no earthly idea what they ought to do. He'd been pondering the question for months at Krum Manor and come up with no proper answer. But the last thing he wanted was to seem indecisive, like they had no plan. "Let's find a quiet spot to set up camp," he asserted. "We'll set up some wards and make a proper plan."
They walked down the hillside through a small forest, which luckily didn't appear frequented by Muggles. Harry selected a quiet clearing and began to set up their tent as Hermione set up the defensive enchantments around them. Moments later, they sat within the magically-enlarged interior of the tent, as Harry set about starting a fire.
"I nicked some coffee grounds from the front office last night," he announced, trying to sound chipper. "Want some?"
"Yes, please," Hermione muttered. Her face remained blank and expressionless, but Harry knew her well enough to be able to tell when she was distressed. Clearly she felt ill at-ease with their new situation, and the way their stay at Krum Manor had ended. Harry had escaped Voldemort's clutches on numerous occasions by now, but Hermione had yet to come face-to-face with the Dark Lord herself, so he could only imagine how traumatic the previous night's events had been for her.
Harry brewed a cup of coffee for each of them, and handed Hermione hers, along with two small packets of sugar he'd also stolen from the front desk. They sipped the steaming beverage in silence, neither acknowledging their dire situation aloud. Harry considered how to best break the ice. But when he spoke aloud, Hermione spoke at the exact same time—
"So what d'you reckon we should—"
"Do you think Viktor is okay?"
"Huh?" said Harry. "Oh! Yes, I'm sure he is. He's a better flier than I am, and I'm sure he has connections to keep him safe."
"B-but his own government betrayed him!" Hermione protested. "And now they k-know he was harboring us...and his house…"
"Hermione," Harry said, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze. "Krum is extremely wealthy and has friends in high places outside his own government. Not to mention he's a Triwizard Champion who was personally trained by a dangerous Death Eater. He can fend for himself."
"You're right," Hermione exhaled sharply. "Of course you're right. I doubt You-Know-Who will waste resources chasing him across Europe anyway."
"Exactly," Harry agreed. "Tell you what. Our first destination can be a wizarding village so we can find a newspaper to figure out what happened."
"Oh...I don't know if that's wise," Hermione sighed. "We're sure to be recognized if we visit a wizarding village. The whole world will know who we are by now, and who's after us. We're better off staying with Muggles and keeping our heads down."
"Fine by me," Harry nodded. "Anywhere in particular you'd want to settle? Italy was just the first place that came to mind when I Apparated us away from the manor."
"Let's solidify our plan before we decide that," said Hermione. Then, she fixed him with a concerned look. "We do have a plan, right?"
Harry had wracked his brain for an answer to that question over the past hour and finally settled on a response. "I think we should look into this Path that Krum mentioned," he said. "Maybe we can find this 'Pool of Knowledge' or whatever it's called."
"Oh, Harry, you can't be serious!" Hermione said, dismayed. "You heard Krum – better wizards than you and I have lost their minds on this so-called 'Path'! It's not what Dumbledore would've wanted—"
"Who cares what Dumbledore wanted?" Harry groaned. "He was raising me like a pig for slaughter! His only plan was for me to sacrifice myself for the 'greater good' and let someone else finish off You-Know-Who!"
"You don't know that, Harry," Hermione said soothingly.
"Actually, I do," Harry retorted. And he recounted his encounter with Dumbledore's spirit the night before, just before Voldemort's attack on the Manor had begun. He expected Hermione to be shocked by this news, but she merely looked perplexed when he wrapped up his story.
"But that's impossible, Harry," she muttered. "No magic can bring back the dead, even temporarily. You must have imagined—"
"It's the ring, Hermione," he said, brandishing the black rock fastened on the gold band around his finger. "The Resurrection Stone. From your story, remember? It's real."
Hermione gently took the ring from Harry, still looking skeptical. "It does match the symbol in the book," she muttered begrudgingly.
"That means I have the stone and the cloak," Harry said, brandishing the silvery fabric before her. "And if The Path can give me a hint on where to find this Elder Wand, I can become Master of Death!"
"But Harry," Hermione said exasperatedly, "you know The Tale of the Three Brothers is a cautionary tale! The second brother was driven mad by the Stone and committed suicide to be with his lover!"
"Well, there's no love lost between me and Dumbledore," Harry said with a hollow chuckle. "Not much danger of that happening—"
"But you said it yourself!" Hermione cut in. "Dumbledore wanted you to die! What if the Stone is enchanted to make the user seek death? To lure them towards their own doom?"
"All the more reason to ignore what Dumbledore told me!" Harry said defiantly.
"But we know the real Dumbledore didn't want you dead!" Hermione argued. "He cared about you, Harry...he protected you…"
"Just long enough for me to throw myself in harm's way at the proper moment," Harry said bitterly. "He didn't teach me any magic, Hermione! I had to learn it all on my own! He wanted me to stay weak and innocent and face my end like a good boy...well, I'm not going to give up like that!"
"I wouldn't expect you to," Hermione said carefully. "All I'm saying is, the Hallows seem really, really dangerous…"
"Of course they are," Harry shrugged. "So is You-Know-Who, and I know I'll have to face him again eventually. So I really have nothing to lose at this point."
Silence fell as the gravity of these words hung between them like a heavy weight. Finally, Hermione sighed. "I'm with you no matter what you decide, Harry," she said. "I may not like it, but I will help you prepare however you think is best."
"Thanks, Hermione," Harry said with a small smile. "Why don't we take the day to organize the books we took with us and research anything we can find about this 'Path' Krum mentioned?"
Hermione was more than content with the prospect of a day of research. An hour later, they sat side by side on the floor of the tent with dozens of heavy tomes strewn about the space around them. Hermione buried her nose in European Magic of the First Millennium while Harry leafed through a biography of an old German sorcerer named Stefan the Steadfast, known for his pioneering research in the field of sacrificial magic. He even found a passage in which he theorized on the protective properties of a so-called "sacrifice pact", which sounded eerily similar to the conditions by which his mother had fallen to Voldemort.
They spent the next three days like this, poring over book after book for any scrap of information they could find. They only paused a handful of times to fill their canteens at a nearby stream, and once to venture back into the village under the Cloak to steal a few loaves of bread from a market. At night they slept side by side in small sleeping bags; Harry privately missed her warm touch during the night, but still took solace from the sound of her breathing right next to him.
On the fourth morning, Hermione called Harry over to look at a heavy tome in her lap. "I may have found something," she said cautiously. "Look here."
Harry squinted at the text she was pointing at. "Hermione, I can't speak Greek!" he protested.
"Right, sorry, I forgot you didn't take Ancient Runes," Hermione muttered. "I only know bits and pieces myself, but this passage stuck out to me. It's an account of an old Greek wizard who survived months in the wilderness, by 'drinking knowledge in the footsteps of the gods'."
"Okay…?" Harry said slowly, trying to understand. "Is that a metaphor?"
"That was the assumption at the time," said Hermione. "But if we're looking for something called the 'Pool of Knowledge', maybe this is a hint?"
"Maybe," Harry said skeptically. The idea of 'drinking knowledge' seemed like a common enough expression, and perhaps something was lost in translation. "But even if he was being literal, how are we supposed to find it based on that vague description?"
"Well, it got me thinking," said Hermione, flipping several pages in the heavy Greek text. "You're familiar with ancient Greek mythology, right?"
"Erm...you mean like, Zeus and all that?" said Harry. "You're not saying it's real…?"
"Of course not," Hermione chuckled. "But the ancient Greeks have long held superstitions around Mount Olympus as a sort of holy site. In fact, there used to be a magical school at the summit, and even with an abundance of wards around the site, it's entirely possible that the Muggles in the area noticed magical occurrences and ascribed religious meaning to them."
"Huh," said Harry, looking at an old sketch in the book of a castle sitting atop the regal mountaintop. "Is the school still there?"
"No, they had to relocate it centuries ago," said Hermione. "But Mount Olympus has long been regarded as an important magical site. Some historians even theorize there is a leyline somewhere beneath the mountain."
"A leyline?" asked Harry.
"A site with a high concentration of magical energy," said Hermione breathlessly. "Doesn't matter. But the point is, perhaps it could be a good place to look around for clues. It would be as good a place as any to hide a significant magical destination."
"I suppose it would," Harry mused, still sounding skeptical. But he didn't have any better ideas. "Let's do it."
They spent the remainder of their day doing as much research on Mount Olympus as possible, which wasn't easy with their limited resources. Harry wasn't much help in parsing through the various Greek books in their tiny library, and even the few they possessed didn't have much to say about the mountain itself. But the next morning they awoke early and packed the tent, before donning the Invisibility Cloak and Apparating to their third country that week.
They emerged in the valley of a vast mountain range, the sun just peeking out over the summits to the east. It was fortunate they were under the Cloak; a group of nearby Muggle hikers looked wildly around for the source of the loud crack that heralded their arrival, but fortunately saw nothing. Harry and Hermione crept into the cover of a treeline before removing the Cloak and discussing their plan.
"Unfortunately, this mountain is a popular tourist destination," said Hermione, as they watched yet another group of hikers stroll by. "Luckily it's almost winter, so it won't be as busy as usual, but we still have to be careful."
"It's not the end of the world if a few Muggles see us, right?" Harry offered.
"Certainly not," said Hermione. "But keep in mind this place has magical significance too, and there may be witches and wizards among the tourists. We have to be careful."
They spent the next hour or so Apparating to various locations around the mountain, looking for a spot that Muggles would be unlikely to frequent. They settled on a small plateau overlooking the valley below, with only a single treacherous point of access to the south. They set up the tent there as Hermione began putting up the wards, adding additional anti-Muggle deterrents to the south just to be safe.
Then they were off again, hiking up and down the steep mountainside. "What are we looking for, exactly?" Harry asked, panting from the physical exertion. He'd grown too comfortable in the cozy confines of Krum Manor and needed to build up his stamina again.
"Anything out of the ordinary," Hermione shrugged. "Runesigns, wards that don't belong...magic always leaves signs." Harry felt a shudder at this; he recalled Dumbledore saying something very similar when they entered Tom Riddle's cave last spring. But he held his tongue and joined Hermione in their search of the mountainside, still not truly sure what he ought to be keeping an eye out for.
Hermione spent much of her time waving her wand lightly around her, muttering something under her breath. None of her spells seemed to be producing any kind of effect, but Harry didn't ask questions; he just followed a few paces behind her, pretending to know what he was doing himself. A couple times they crossed paths with hikers, but luckily they were all Muggles, who simply greeted them politely and went about their business. Harry hoped they found whatever they were looking for soon, before a witch or wizard encountered them…
Their breakthrough came when they strayed off the beaten path into a more thickly overgrown section of the mountainside. After a few minutes of searching, Hermione paused with a gasp, causing Harry to stumble to a halt behind her. "Harry, look!" she exclaimed, pointing at the ground. At first Harry couldn't see what she was referring to. But as he looked closer, he could see a faint glow eminating from beneath a tangle of vines. Hermione waved her wand to push them aside, giving them a clearer view.
A symbol was carved into the mountain itself, glowing white as though it had been activated by their presence. "Is that a rune?" Harry asked, suddenly very disappointed that he had decided to skip the subject while at Hogwarts.
"Yes, I think so," said Hermione. "Though I think it may be in Greek; I don't recognize it." The symbol took the form of a semi-circle with a jagged right edge. Harry certainly had no clue what it represented, and knew he would be of little help to Hermione if she didn't know it.
"D'you reckon it's protecting something?" Harry suggested.
"Protective runes are typically much more complex than this," Hermione muttered, dropping to one knee to examine the rune closer. "This is rather basic...almost elemental in nature…"
Hermione was so preoccupied with the rune before her that she didn't notice the danger until it was too late. Harry himself noticed it in the corner of his eye, a split second before it happened. "Hermione, watch out!" he bellowed.
Hermione turned, but did not have time to react before the vines had wrapped their tendrils around her legs. She shrieked, slashing her wand down at the vines, yelling, "Relashio!" But nothing happened – if anything, the creeping vines were moving higher up her body, encasing her torso and wrapping their way up towards her head.
"Harry, do something!" Hermione screamed.
Harry tried a variety of spells, from Diffindo to Evanesco to even Sectumsempra, but nothing seemed to affect the vines. There was only one more thing he could think of – he didn't want to hurt Hermione, but it seemed he had little choice. Fire.
"Incendio!" Harry bellowed, aiming his wand at the base of the vines. He expected the flames to engulf the plant, including the tendrils surrounding Hermione – she would get badly burned, but those wounds would heal. Instead, he was nearly blinded by the brilliant white glow of the rune, which seemed to swallow his spell whole. For a moment Harry thought he had failed; but then the vines began to retract, releasing Hermione and disappearing into the mountainside itself. But they left something else behind – or rather, exposed something that may have been there all along.
Harry helped Hermione to her feet, and together they stood staring at the black pit that had seemingly opened up before them. They peered down into its depths, unable to see what lay at the bottom. But it was clearly their entrance into whatever secrets the mountain held for them.
"Are you okay to keep going?" Harry asked Hermione firmly. "I can go on alone if you're not able to—"
"I'm fine," Hermione snapped, though her voice sounded shaky. Harry could also see thin red marks on her arms and legs from where the vines had tightly wound themselves around her. But he wouldn't argue the point with her.
"On three, then," said Harry, taking Hermione's hand and inching towards the edge of the pit. "One...two...three!"
They jumped. Harry expected to fall quite a ways, prepared to use a Cushioning Charm once they neared the bottom. Instead, as soon as they entered the pit, he felt an odd sensation of being tilted to one side, then immediately found himself flat on his back in the darkened space. He gingerly sat up, looking around; the entrance to the pit was just a few feet away, but he was staring at the sky as though it was tilted on its axis, the 'pit' they had jumped into suddenly a horizontal tunnel.
"I'll never fully get used to magic," Harry muttered bitterly, turning to help Hermione to her feet. With a quick glance behind them, they lit their wand tips and proceeded forward into the darkness.
The tunnel twisted and weaved itself deeper into the mountainside – or was it actually burrowing straight down into the ground? Harry's sense of direction was thrown off by the altered gravity, and he decided not to think too hard about where they were going. Instead he focused on every step forward, keeping an eye out for any kind of trap or warning.
After several minutes of slow progress, the tunnel opened up to a vast, cavernous space. It was pitch-black all around them, and Harry had no sense of scale for where they had found themselves. He and Hermione shared inquisitive looks.
Harry raised his wand into the air and shouted, "Lumos maxima!" A great ball of light erupted from his wand and shot out across the cavernous space, illuminating it fully for the first time. Hermione gasped at what they saw.
They were standing on the edge of a vast underground lake. But unlike the one Harry and Dumbledore had visited last year, the water was crystal-clear, gently lapping at their toes. And emerging from the depths were four massive stone statues, each rising some twenty feet out of the water, and each carved in the likeness of a different man. Only their heads and upper torsos were above water; the rest of their bodies extended down to the murky bottom of the lake, where Harry presumed their feet rested on the lake bed, some hundred feet or so beneath the surface.
"In the footsteps of the gods…" Harry repeated, marveling at how literal the quote had been after all. "D'you reckon these statues represent the ancient Greek deities?"
"No, Harry!" said Hermione, pointing at the nearest bust. "Can't you recognize them? That one's Merlin...surely that one is Salazar Slytherin...I think that might be Grindelwald there...but I'm not sure who the last one is."
Harry knew exactly who the fourth statue represented. He'd seen that face only twice before, but it was burned into his mind...the first time was in a memory given to him via a diary; the second was as an apparition in the Chamber of Secrets. It was Tom Riddle – slightly older than his Hogwarts self, but certainly much younger than his current, deformed state. His regal features and handsome good looks were clear, even from this impressionistic stone effigy.
"That's You-Know-Who," said Harry. Hermione stiffened at the thought.
"I don't like this, Harry," she said cautiously. "These were all powerful wizards, but quite dangerous too. This place could hold some really Dark magic…"
"You heard what Krum said," Harry dismissed her. "Dark magic may be dangerous, but it's powerful. If I'm gonna get stronger, I have to stop being afraid of it."
"B-but look at who these statues represent!" Hermione protested. "All Slytherins, besides Grindelwald of course...all did great, but terrible things...you notice there's no Dumbledore here, for instance—"
"Dumbledore never came here," said Harry. "Or if he did, he wasn't vain enough to erect a statue of himself. Of course Tom Riddle wouldn't be able to stand having three older wizards lord over him – he wanted to fashion himself as their equal." And now that he mentioned it, the fourth statue looked a bit set apart from the others, as though its creator had disrupted the natural triplicate pattern of the prior statues and inserted himself roughly into the fold.
"But what are we meant to do?" Hermione asked. "Swim to the bottom?"
"Good a guess as any," Harry shrugged. He drew his wand and pointed it at his own head. "Caput respirare!" The Bubble-Head Charm formed itself around his head, but a moment later, it popped violently, its magic dissipating into the air. Harry frowned.
"Looks like this place is warded to prevent such breathing aids," Hermione noted. "So what now? Go steal some gillyweed?"
Harry studied the four statues, which seemed to be mocking him with their blank expressions. Think like a Slytherin, he willed himself, wracking his brain for a solution. There must be something obvious he was missing. He didn't think the place was a trap, nor did he think any kind of complex magic was needed to proceed. The answer must be right in front of his face...there must be some kind of trick to pass through the water…
Struck by sudden inspiration, Harry walked forward, wading out towards the deeper part of the lake. "Harry, wait!" Hermione called after him from the shore. But Harry pressed on, the water rising past his waist, past his shoulders, until he was fully submerged. He opened his eyes; the water beneath the surface seemed just as crystal-clear as the air above it had been. He looked up at the surface above him, and got the sudden impression that the horizon had flipped, and now he was the one above water while Hermione was submerged behind him.
He took a tentative breath, and found that he could breathe quite easily, as though there was no water whatsoever. He grinned. "Come on, 'Mione!" he called behind him. Hermione cautiously strode forward after him, soon fully submerged as he was, but she kept her eyes and mouth glued shut, face slowly turning red from the effort. Finally, she peeked at him through one eye, saw his laughing face watching her, and took her first shuddering breath.
"This feels wrong," she said shakily, looking up at the surface above them.
"Try not to overthink it," Harry said. "C'mon."
They appeared to be on a winding dirt path that led down into the depths of the lake. But it felt no different than traipsing down the mountainside outside this cave; it was as though the water around them was as light as air, or didn't even exist at all. Harry could not see their destination ahead of them, but the darkness was slowly lifting as they got closer to the lake bed and their eyes adjusted.
Then, they saw it: a small, glowing object at the very bottom of the lake. The four feet of the statues seemed to be facing inward towards it, as though standing guard. As he drew closer, Harry noticed that the ground itself seemed to be glowing, in a small circular patch about five feet around. And when he and Hermione arrived at the glowing patch, they found themselves looking down at what looked like another miniature lake within the lake bed itself. But instead of water, it was filled with a swirling bluish-green substance, with tiny white wisps of thought drifting in and out of view, as though in a Pensieve.
"If that isn't a Pool of Knowledge, I dunno what is," Harry remarked aloud. Hermione stared incredulously as the small pool of mysterious liquid, dropping to one knee to get a closer look.
"I think I know what this is!" she exclaimed. "They produce this in the Department of Mysteries, though it's synthetically derived and not naturally-occurring. It's called Essence of Thought."
"Hate to break it to you, Hermione, but this doesn't look naturally-occurring to me either," Harry quipped, joining her on one knee at the edge of the new pool. "Do you realize what this could mean? This could contain the memories of every great witch and wizard who ever visited this place!"
"Yes, it could," Hermione said slowly. "But Harry, Essence of Thought is extremely toxic and has a high fatality rate for the consumer. It's heavily regulated for that reason. You can't seriously be considering drinking it…?"
"I know the risks, Hermione," Harry said firmly. "It can kill me if my mind is too weak to handle the information. But I have to try, or else I'll be too weak to take on You-Know-Who anyway."
And before Hermione could protest further, Harry waved his wand and conjured two flasks from midair. He dipped them both cautiously toward the surface of the Pool of Knowledge, filling them both with the swirling greenish liquid. He stoppered them both and stowed them gently in his robe pocket.
"Right, then," he said, looking around. "You don't reckon it's that easy? It'll just let me take what we came for and leave that easily?"
"Why would it be more complicated than that?" Hermione asked.
"Not sure," Harry muttered. "Just a feeling. I feel like we're supposed to leave something behind. Some kind of tribute, perhaps. Or…"
And once again, the solution was so simple once it popped into his mind. He pointed his wand to his forehead and slowly extracted a thin, white strand of memory, then held it suspended over the Pool of Knowledge.
"Wait!" Hermione exclaimed. "W-won't that mean the next person who comes along will know you were here?"
"Sure," Harry shrugged. "That's the point, isn't it? Passing along your own knowledge for the next person to use?" It made perfect sense to him – if he was going to take advantage of the great sum of knowledge of Merlin and the other great wizards of yesteryear, he might as well let the next great seeker of knowledge learn something from the inner workings of the Boy Who Lived. Harry flicked his wand and let the silvery strand of thought float to the surface of the pool, which swallowed it whole and mixed it in with the others.
The effect was immediate. Harry choked on air, which he suddenly remembered was not air at all. He was a hundred feet beneath the surface of a lake, and the water was now filling his lungs as he desperately tried to suck in oxygen. He turned to Hermione, who was also experiencing the sensation, grasping at her throat as her legs desperately thrashed in the water, eyes bulging.
Harry grabbed her wrist and pointed his wand to the sky, thinking, Ascendare! They shot upwards towards the surface, racing up the length of the four statues, and burst through to open air, regurgitating water and gasping for clean air. Harry clung to the nearby arm of Salazar Slytherin for support as Hermione clawed her way over to Grindelwald and took in ragged breaths. For a minute or so their coughs and gasps filled the cavernous space as they regained their breath.
"That was almost as unpleasant as Gillyweed," Harry quipped.
"Ha, ha," Hermione deadpanned.
A little over an hour later, they were back in their tent, wet robes drying on a clothesline nearby. Though it was still early afternoon, Hermione took to an early bed, bundled up in her sleeping bag in the corner. But Harry was wide awake, sitting on his own bag, staring at the swirling green liquid in one of the vials, deep in thought.
What secrets can you teach me? he wondered. What kind of magic will I be capable of with what you can teach me? He did recognize Hermione's point: all of the statues had been notorious Dark wizards, and the thought of entering the mind of somebody like Grindelwald or Slytherin was a daunting prospect. But at the same time, the thought of his own statue one day joining the other four gave him a sick feeling of satisfaction. His memory enshrined for centuries to come: Harry Potter, the Chosen One. The Boy Who Lived. The Boy Who Won.
Now it was simply a matter of living up to the future he envisioned for himself.
