Seven Drops and Asphodel Blooms
Summary: When Harry blows up his aunt during the summer, Dumbledore is much quicker to react. Snape finds him far before the Minister does, but his plan of dropping him off with a lecture and half a dozen additional summer assignments doesn't work out.
In which Harry spends the summer at Spinner's End.
Chapter 22
Snape finally agreed to the first of their after-class lessons, and did so in the most obnoxious way possible: by dishing out a detention for the heinous crime of having sliced his salamander liver the wrong way. Luckily Harry was used to it from their Patronus lessons last school year, so, while annoyed, he wasn't seriously bothered.
After giving it some thought, Harry and his friends had accepted that Occlumency as a defense against mind magic would be more useful against Voldemort than fancy spellwork Harry might take months to learn.
"Do keep in mind that Occlumency does not – and is not meant to – look impressive," Snape said after he'd made his decision. "It is a subtle, complicated art that requires impeccable mental discipline, not wand movements or incantations."
Harry tried not to look disappointed. "I understand."
Occlumency quickly proved to be the most frustrating thing Harry had ever attempted to do, including staring at a crystal orb for hours, trying to see anything other than swirling fog. Snape made him read pages upon pages on the topic written in miniscule writing, only to quiz him on the contents of the first few chapters until Harry could answer every of his questions correctly.
The lesson didn't become any easier once Snape deemed him ready to move on from the theoretical introduction.
"Hold on." Harry stared at Snape incredulously. "You're saying the only way for me to learn this is by letting you read my mind?"
"The goal is to prevent me from doing precisely that." But Snape's expression looked grave, not taunting.
Even though Harry felt more comfortable around Snape than ever before, letting the man rummage around his mind was something else altogether. He wouldn't feel comfortable with that even if it were Ron or Hermione.
But if there really was no other way for him to learn... Harry swallowed. "Is this how you were taught?"
A muscle at the corner of Snape's mouth twitched. "Yes."
Harry tried to brace himself for what he was about to agree to. "Fine. Let's try it."
If Snape had expected a few chapters of reading and some vague instructions to prepare for the real thing, he was solely mistaken. It was far more disorienting than the pensieve. It was worse, because these were Harry's memories, taken from him for somebody else to view instead of the other way around.
Harry was 10-years-old and crawling in the mud at the edges of a pond in search of frogs.
Harry was 12-years-old and trying to ignore the whispers accusing him of being the heir of Slytherin.
Harry was 5-years-old, alone on his first day at primary school while the Dursleys were off with the other kids and parents, having their pictures taken.
Snape didn't linger on any memory for long, but it didn't make some of them any less mortifying. By the time Harry emerged from the flood of memories, he was clenching his jaw so tightly that he felt his teeth might crack.
"We'll try again," Snape said after an awful pause, mercifully not mentioning any of what he'd seen. "If you cannot keep me out of your mind, try to force me somewhere harmless. Ordinary, mindless memories that will do no harm if extracted."
It sounded easy when he said it, but Harry had no clue how he was supposed to do that. As soon as Snape's mind brushed his own, the control was ripped right out of Harry's hands. Images unraveled so rapidly that by the time Harry tried to seize and suppress one of them, Snape had already moved on and was viewing another.
The day Hermione had become his and Ron's friend after beating the mountain troll.
The day the Dursleys had forgotten to unlock his cupboard before leaving for a weekend trip and returned a day later to scold him for making them cut their trip short.
The day Snape had taken him away from Privet Drive for the very last time.
Again and again they tried, but instead of improving, Harry felt like his control was only getting worse. Soon he was trembling and breathing heavily, having been forced to relive the night they'd all almost died at the hands of an army of dementors. It wasn't a consolation, but by the end Snape looked just as ruffled as he felt.
"I will not force you to continue, should you change your mind," he said, laying down his wand on his desk. "I've told you last year that many grown wizards are not capable of conjuring a corporeal Patronus. Far fewer wizards have even a passing knowledge of Occlumency."
"Voldemort can do it, though," Harry muttered.
Snape must have started getting used to him saying Voldemort's name, because he didn't comment beyond a brief, tired glare in his direction. "He has not yet returned," he said, though since both of them knew that it was only a matter of time, Harry didn't feel comforted. "There is no harm focusing on honing other skills before returning to this one at a later time."
Snape usually had strong opinions about quitting without putting in all of one's effort. Harry narrowed his eyes, exhaustion momentarily forgotten. "You knew it was going to be like this, didn't you?"
"I considered the possibility."
Harry huffed. "You could've told me you didn't think I stood a chance," he muttered.
"No need to be dramatic." Snape sounded unapologetic. "We could not have known until we tried. And you hardly 'stand no chance' of mastering the skill. It will merely take more effort than you've anticipated."
At least with the Patronus charm, Harry had felt like he had something to work with. The thought of sitting in this exact chair week after week, trying desperately to hide his worst memories from sight, was awful.
"As I've said, if you decide to change our focus now, I will not try to prevent you."
In the end, Harry, perhaps cowardly, decided that all the other things he could learn from Snape were far more exciting than what they'd been doing today.
They'd spent (or wasted) much of the evening on Occlumency, but Snape agreed to show him his wandless trick where he cast a Lumos with a hippogriff feather again before sending him off to bed.
Harry gave it a shot, but the closest he came to doing it himself was setting his feather on fire. Had it not been for the fire-resistance charm Snape had cast on his hands (gloves made the magical transfer trickier, or so he said), Harry would have probably sported a spectacular burn.
But in stark contrast to his depressing failure at Occlumency, Harry didn't feel discouraged at the rocky start. This was something he could practice. This was something he could figure out.
Something Harry had noticed right from the start of the school term was just how much more present Hermione was in their day-to-day lives. Maybe it was a weird realization to have about one of his best friends, but with her huge workload from all the additional subjects she'd picked up last year, Hermione had spent more time buried in homework than she had hanging out with them.
Even with two subjects less, she still had more to do than any of them, but she had significantly more freetime than she'd had just before the summer.
Less fortunately, she had much more time to focus on her crusade fighting for elf-rights, one she did her best dragging Ron and Harry into.
"Come on," she said with a glint in her eyes, sweeping the two out of the common room during one of their rare free periods. "I made the twins tell me how to get into the kitchens. We can see for ourselves how the elves are treated."
She hurried ahead, blindly expecting them to follow. They did, even though it had been bad enough when she'd made them buy her stupid badges.
Ron gave him a fondly-exasperated look as they idly followed after their friend. "At least she's in high spirits."
But while it seemed easy for Ron to humor Hermione while not actually taking her seriously, Harry had started feeling uncomfortable whenever house-elves came up in conversation.
His next letter to his godfather took a long time to write. He kept going back and forth on whether to ask about Sirius' brother and his connection to Voldemort, but in the end he decided that it wasn't the kind of conversation to be had over a letter.
"Welcome, Harry." Dumbledore gave him a kind smile. "I trust your time back at school has been pleasant?"
"Uh. Yes, thank you, professor." Harry stole a glance at Snape. Following Dumbledore's inviting gesture, he stepped further into his office. "Is something the matter?"
"Right to the important things then, shall we?" Dumbledore's smile twitched. "We will have time for pleasant conversation at a later date, I'm sure."
Harry would have felt chastised, if his eyes hadn't fallen on the locket laid out on Dumbledore's desk. He instinctively moved towards it, but held himself back. "Is this about the locket? Have you found a way to destroy it?"
"Does the locket look destroyed to you?" Snape asked.
"Not obviously." Harry shrugged. "I thought maybe it was no longer a horcrux."
"I'm afraid it is quite intact." Dumbledore walked up to his desk to join Harry. "Eliminating a horcrux means, quite literally, to destroy it beyond the possibility of mending. Only with no container to return to is a horcrux truly gone."
Harry tried not to let his disappointment show in his voice. "So you haven't figured out how to open it?"
"I have high hopes that you will help us do exactly that."
At first Harry thought he'd misheard. "You want me to help?"
Dumbledore – utterly unfazed by the incredulity in Harry's voice – kept on smiling.
The confidence he seemed to have in Harry was flattering, but... "I couldn't possibly think of something you haven't tried already," he protested. "There's no way I'd know any – I mean, I'm still just learning. None of the spells I know would do anything."
"You're quite right," Dumbledore said, still as cheerful as he'd been at the start. "Please do not think I intend to be condescending, but I have not called you here for your undoubtedly exceptional spellwork."
"What then?"
"Would you be so kind to remind me how you managed to find the Chamber of Secrets two years ago?" Dumbledore went on, his smile widening. "An endeavor, I might add, countless wizards and witches – myself included – have pitifully failed at for decades."
"Do keep flattering him for breaking rules and risking his life," Snape muttered. "I'm certain it will not rise to his head."
The sudden flood of excitement was too strong to let himself be bothered by Snape's comment. "You think it'll open with Parseltongue?"
"It certainly will not hurt to try." Dumbledore stepped aside and made a beckoning gesture with his arm.
Blending right in with the blinking, swirling and buzzing instruments covering every inch of Dumbledore's office, the locket gleamed in the light of a few dozen candles. A snake formed the letter 'S' on the front, inlaid with magnificent green stones.
Harry tried to remember what it had felt like to speak the snakes' tongue and said, "Open."
He couldn't always tell when he switched from English to Parseltongue, but he didn't think he'd done it this time. Nothing happened. The locket stayed closed.
"Sorry," Harry muttered. "This isn't really something I practice."
"Not to worry." Dumbledore at least did not seem discouraged. "Please try again. Take your time."
Harry frowned at the snake, trying to imagine it being alive. He wasn't having much luck. "It always worked better with a real snake."
"Oh?" Dumbledore pulled out his wand and made a quick, lashing gesture.
At first Harry thought he'd only made the candles flicker, but when he looked back at the locket, the light twitched over its serpentine gems in a way that made the snake look like it was squirming – much more realistically than through a simple trick of light and shadow. Harry could almost hear it hissing and spitting.
"Open," he demanded, hardly more than a breath pushed through his teeth. The word tasted sharp on his tongue.
The locket quivered and sprung open. Something shot up out of its depths – something large, almost person-shaped that didn't sound human at all – but before Harry caught more than a glimpse, a grip on his upper arm had him stumbling away from the desk.
Something was in the room with them, hissing, screeching, sounds Harry could almost make out as words, but the grip around his arm wouldn't buckle, even when Harry drew his wand and tried yanking himself free.
A scream, the most haunting sound Harry had heard in his life.
Then silence like cotton over his ears, so sudden that Harry froze instead of trying to free himself from whoever was holding him back.
The hand – Snape's hand – fell from his arm, and Harry could finally see what had happened. Only there wasn't much left to see. Whatever had risen out of the locket had gone. Merely the broken remains were left, the two pierced halfs and the golden chain that connected them. Above them Dumbledore stood, wielding not his wand, but a large sword covered in rubies.
"Is that Gryffindor's sword?" Realizing that not all the red came from the rubies, Harry blurted out, "Professor, you're bleeding!"
"Ah." Dumbledore looked at his arm as if surprised by the large cut trickling blood down his wrist. "How unfortunate. Yes, I'm afraid my reflexes are not what they once were."
He sounded way too casual for somebody who'd just slain a piece of Voldemort's soul with a sword.
"Shall I?" Snape offered, taking a step towards Dumbledore.
"Not to worry." Dumbledore waved him off and used his wand to mend the tear in his sleeve. Whether his magic had also healed the cut or at least bandaged it, Harry couldn't tell. "More importantly, I feel celebration is in order."
A grin broke out on Harry's face. "So it worked?"
"I should say so." He picked up the once-magnificent locket with its gold chain. "Which proves a theory of mine. You see, Harry, a regular sword should not be able to destroy a horcrux irreparably."
"So this one's special?" Harry guessed.
"Yes and no," Dumbledore said. "If I'm right – and I rather believe I am – then we have you to thank for making it an effective weapon."
"Me?" Harry frowned. "Because I pulled it from the Sorting Hat?"
"Partly. But even more importantly, you used the sword in your fight against the basilisk. And basilisk venom, I can say with certainty, is one of the few reliable ways of destroying a horcrux."
Harry digested this information. "I don't understand. What does the venom have to do with the sword?"
"Gryffindor's sword is goblin-made," Snape explained quietly. "It absorbs that which will strengthen it."
He'd destroyed the diary with basilisk venom, too. Harry didn't want to think about what would have happened, had he not had the basilisk fang when he'd needed it. Ginny might have never made it out of the Chamber.
His eyes kept being drawn to the sad remains of the locket. He thought of Kreacher, who'd been so distraught at finding it gone. Had he known what he'd been guarding all these years?
"It isn't dangerous anymore, is it?"
"No. The part of Voldemort's soul that inhabited it no longer exists."
Impulsively, Harry asked, "Can I keep it?"
Dumbledore looked surprised, but the corner of his mouth tugged upwards. "You've asked me the exact same thing after you brought me the remains of Tom's diary."
Back then, Harry had used it to trick Mr. Malfoy into freeing Dobby. This time... "Do you still need it?" Harry pressed without explaining himself.
Dumbledore considered this. "No. I don't suppose so." He nodded at the locket. "Go ahead then."
Avoiding both Dumbledore's and Snape's eyes, Harry slipped the ruined locket in his pocket.
Harry used Snape's fireplace to visit Grimmauld Place again that weekend. It took some convincing, as Snape reminded him that students weren't usually allowed to stray so far from school during the school year.
"Would you rather I tell Sirius to come visit?" Harry asked.
That settled the matter quickly.
Though Sirius was always happy to see him, his good mood quickly turned sour at the mention of his brother. He didn't try to keep what had happened to him a secret, but he recounted it only reluctantly. Harry couldn't blame him. It wasn't a happy story.
He didn't know which part of it he found worse: Regulus having joined the Death Eaters in the first place or him having died before anybody could have learned about his change of heart.
When Sirius reached the part of the story where Kreacher had been forced to go to the horcrux's hiding place twice – once to be tortured by Voldemort, once to watch Regulus die in the attempt to make up for what he had done – Harry felt like throwing up.
He pulled the broken locket from his pocket. Sirius' brother had sacrificed his life for this. No wonder Kreacher had gone berserk at the thought of losing it.
"Does jewelry count as clothes for house-elves?" he asked.
Sirius frowned. "It wouldn't free them, if that's what you're asking. Why?"
He held it out to Sirius. "You should give this back to Kreacher. So he'll know that what your brother did wasn't in vain."
Sirius gave him a long look. Harry thought at first he wouldn't take it, but Sirius finally held out his hand. "Sure. What the hell. Not like he can do anything with it now."
"Why do you keep him around, if you hate him so much?" It was the most harmless of Harry's thoughts about Kreacher and the way Sirius treated him.
Sirius grimaced. "He knows too much to be set free. We can't risk him running off to the next dark wizarding family and tell them all about Regulus and the locket."
Thinking of Dobby and Winky, Harry said, "Could you tell him to come to Hogwarts and work there?"
The thought seemed not to have occurred to Sirius before. "Maybe. I don't actually know, but I'll ask Dumbledore."
Harry wasn't sure if that was something Kreacher would want, either, but he figured anything would be better than Sirius and Kreacher making each other miserable here. Maybe they could give Kreacher the two options and let him decide for himself.
Hermione probably wouldn't consider it nearly enough, but Harry figured that even a small improvement was better than nothing.
A/N:
Snape, trying to figure out how to impress the importance of patience, a calm mind and mental discipline onto Harry for his first Occlumency lesson:
Snape: he'll last maybe 30 minutes
xxx
also Snape, later: do you think the school rules don't apply to you
Harry: I can give him the locket here :)
Snape, faced with the possibility of Sirius coming to Hogwarts: have fun at you godfather's, don't believe anything he tells you and don't bring back any strays
xxx
Huge thanks to my wonderful betas To Mockingbird, Igornerd, flyingcat and ethirielalways!
~Gwen