CHAPTER 35
Back At Privet Drive
"Transform, Harry." he said.
Harry did as he was told.
Severus pulled him into a hug and they remained like that for a moment. Then Harry let out a sob, broke away from the embrace, turned around and emptied the contents of his stomach.
Severus supported him until Harry could stand straight and then vanished the vomit away. Then he conjured a damp cloth and wiped Harry's face with it.
"Voldemort's back." Harry stated shakily.
"Yes. He is." Severus said pulling him back into the hug.
"Pettigrew did it." Harry continued unevenly. "I was stunned the moment I reached there. When I awoke I was tied to that grave! Crouch was there too! Told me that he'd changed places with his dying mother in Azkaban. She died in his place and his father and elf looked after him. That was her last wish and Crouch senior couldn't say no. She took Polyjuice till she died."
"Yes." Severus said. "That tallies with a part of Crouch Senior's confessions."
"I saw Pettigrew put that baby form of Voldemort into a large couldron. Then he put the powders of Voldemort's father's bone in it. Then Pettigrew willingly chopped off his own hand into it. Then Crouch took my blood and handed it over to Pettigrew who put that in the cauldron too."
Severus hummed and tightened his hold on the boy protectively, just relishing the feeling of having the boy safely tucked away from danger. Merlin! If it had been any other boy tied to that stone, he would have been dead! But Harry wasn't dead. He was alive! He was safe!
"It was awful, Prof!" Harry said.
"Yes, it was. I know."
"The father's bone was supposed to be unknowingly given. Pettigrew's flesh willingly sacrificed and my blood forcefully taken... I think that's how t-that ritual worked. And then he got a body and Crouch clothed him and then he put his wand on Crouch's mark and then hit me with the Avada Kedavra! And I-I survived!"
"You were very lucky, child." he said and Harry let out another sob.
Now that the adrenaline levels were receding, the reality of the situation seemed to have finally dawned on him.
"I almost died." he whispered. "Ethan and Blaire would have been alone."
"But you didn't and you won't any time soon. I'm not letting you out of my sight ever again."
Severus placed his arm firmly around the boy's waist and Harry hissed in pain.
"What's wrong?" Severus asked withdrawing his arm.
"The curse hit me with a lot of force." Harry managed to say, his eyes screwed tight, the pain effectively distracting him from his previous thoughts.
Quelling down the rapidly rising rage and intense hatred for the monster, Severus immediately conjured a stretcher and got the protesting boy to lie down in it and leviated him up the stairs to the front door. An unlocking charm and and a staircase later, Severus opened the door to the guest bedroom, that the Evans' and even he used at times and placed Harry on the bed.
There, he cast a diagnostic charm. The parchment noted down the locations of various cuts and scratches, mostly obtained from the ropes, a stab wound on Harry's arm, a big bruise on his chest and two cracked ribs.
Without wasting another moment, Severus set about healing the ribs and cast the diagnostic charms again.
On the parchment, the cuts, scratches and wound appeared again, but nothing was mentioned about the ribs. Even Harry's breathing, Severus noted, had eased. Guiltily, he realised that he hadn't noticed him struggling to breathe earlier.
"It's better, Prof." Harry said with a small smile.
Severus nodded.
"You'll feel a lot better once those other injuries are healed and perhaps once you've had some dinner."
"I don't think I could eat anything, Prof."
"You've just ejected your lunch. You need to eat something...how about some soup? And perhaps a couple of sandwiches?"
"Just the soup, Prof. Could you heal my other injuries?"
"I don't want to heal them until I know that they have been through cleaned. And you've been digging through the mud. Mud that contains the remnants of decomposed corpses."
Harry grimaced but nodded and gingerly got off the bed, painlessly breathed in a lungful of air and smiled at his success.
Severus led Harry to his room.
Ethan, Blaire, Neville, Draco, Dudley, Narcissa, Petunia, Black and Lupin were there sitting at the table anxiously waiting. Blaire's face was swollen and her eyes were red. The boys on the other hand were pale with worry. On seeing them enter, Narcissa and Petunia jumped into action, fluffing up the already fluffed up pillows of Harry's bed and stirring up some hot chocolate. Severus didn't spare Black or Lupin or the Potter portraits much of a glance.
Instead he directly Harry to the bathroom and told him to transform.
"The germs in graveyard soil is enough to cause the most severe skin diseases."
Severus bathed the embarassed fox and lathered his coat thrice and scrubbed him each time, until he was certain he got off every bit of infection causing microbe from him.
He dried him up and told Harry to transform back and he left him to take a bath.
When Severus exited the bathroom, he raised his hands in order to avoid being assaulted with questions.
"Harry will be fine. He's had quite a shock, and will take some time getting over it, I will be dousing him with a dreamless sleep potion for the night. And tomorrow if and only if he is upto it, he will tell you about it. Right now, all you need to know is that Voldemort is back."
Narcissa let out a horrified gasp.
Severus ignored her.
"He used Harry's blood in some kind of ritual to obtain a body for himself. He's been seen by aurors, but managed to escape. Some of his followers have been captured and some killed, yet there are others who have escaped and we all need to be exceedingly careful.
"Narcissa ask for some soup from the house-elves for Harry. And see if you can wheedle him into eating a sandwich or two... You will have to excuse me for a few minutes. I need to get to my office to get the potions for Harry's injuries and have a few words with Dumbledore... Harry will be fine. All he needs is a good night's rest and a few sessions with Madam Pomphrey. Black, Lupin, you better come too. Dumbledore will be waiting in my office."
Severus flooed to his quarters followed immediately by Lupin and Black. He led them to the door opening into his office, nodded at Dumbledore who had been patiently waiting for him.
He didn't waste time in preliminaries nor did he give the two men time to be seated. He briefly recounted to them what he had witnessed in the graveyard, carefully evading the animagus transformation and repeated what Harry had told him outside Number four Privet Drive.
"How did you get Harry to escape without being noticed?" Dumbledore asked in the end.
"That, headmaster, is between the children and me."
"But it may be important."
"It's not." Severus said flatly. "And he won't have to testify to Voldemort's second arrival thanks to the fifty or so aurors that got a good look at Voldemort. Harry's name will be kept out of this."
"I wish you'd let me interview him." Dumbledore said sadly.
"Perhaps after he's recovered from the ordeal, I will. Until then, you will be communicating with him through me." Severus said firmly leaving no room for any argument.
Dumbledore sighed and said, "Very well. Voldemort's going to kick up a right fuss when he realises that Harry's alive."
Severus hummed in agreement, hoping that he wouldn't be at the receiving end of all that rage.
Dumbledore pulled out a thin narrow box from his robe pocket and opened it to reveal a flashy red feather.
"This," he said, "is a phoenix feather that fawkes gave me just a few minutes prior. He had given two other feathers that had been used as wands... One, on infusion with yew, came into the possession of a boy called, Tom Marvolo Riddle over fifty years ago... the other, on infusion with holly, came into the possession of one Harry Potter three and a half years ago."
Severus nodded, "I was aware of that. Ollivander mentioned it. I wasn't aware of the involvement of Fawkes."
Dumbledore smiled and closed the box and handed it over to Black and said, "If you would hand this over to Ollivander and ask him to make a new wand for young Harry."
Black nodded grimly and accepted the box. Severus then nodded at them all, grabbed his emergency satchel and hurried out of his office, hesitated and turned around.
"Tell me Dumbledore, do you know how that boy survived the killing curse again?"
Dumbledore smiled a little and said, "You say Voldemort took his blood?"
Severus nodded.
"What does Harry's blood contain?"
"Lily's sacrifice!" Severus, Black and Lupin exclaimed at once.
Dumbledore chuckled and the black haired men glared at each other.
"Yes. Voldemort took Harry's blood, thinking Lily's sacrifice would make him stronger, and being ignorant of the works of love, he overlooked the fact that nothing in this world could be more powerful than love, specifically the love a mother has for her child. Lily's sacrifice now not only lives in the triplets, but in Voldemort as well.
"I am quite certain that as long as Voldemort lives, Harry is stuck in the land of living. Lily's love in Voldemort's veins has anchored Harry onto this realm whether he likes it or not. I am not quite certain about Ethan or Blaire, considering that the blood was taken from Harry, and I most certainly don't want to risk finding out."
Dumbledore hesitated very conspicuously and then said, "Harry shared another connection with Voldemort, do you remember? The one because of which he could understand and speak Parceltongue?"
Severus nodded.
Dumbledore beamed and stated very positively, "The connection has been broken, I believe this has something to do with the killing curse that was thrown at him... Now hurry back to that boy and cure him, Severus. And whenever he is ready, do ask him to drop by my office for a mug of hot chocolate."
Severus nodded at him and rushed back to the Potter Alcove, his mind trying to grasp whatever he'd just learnt.
Harry had just appeared out of the bathroom, dressed in his pyjamas, an expressionless look on his face. Blaire rushed forward and pulled him into a hug. Harry hugged back and they remained like that for a long time.
"Blaire, darling," Petunia said apologetically, "Harry needs to be healed."
Blaire nodded and led Harry to the table.
Ethan got him to finish the soup and half of the chicken sandwich before Harry refused to take another bite. Severus got him into bed, gave him the dreamless sleep potion, sent the children downstairs, spelled the Harry's clothes off and got to work.
The raw painful marks all over Harry indicated that the ropes that had tethered him had mercilessly dug into his skin. Pettigrew and Crouch had better be glad that they were dead, Severus mused darkly. It was too bad that he couldn't resurrect them as they had done of Voldemort, or he would have tortured and flayed them within the inch of their new lives and sent them back to the land of the dead.
Severus dealt with the bruise first. It took one and a half of the bruise paste jars to get the bruise to receed. Once the diagnostic charm no longer mentioned the bruise, Narcissa and Petunia began working of the cuts and smaller bruises, while he dealth with the deeper still bleeding cut on his left arm, the stab wound. They must have taken the blood from that cut.
Severus cleaned the cut with a antiseptic potion. The grime collected in the wound were smoked away as purple fumes and Harry hissed inspite of being deep in sleep. Not one of the other injuries gave that much of a reaction.
"Imagine how filthy that knife was." Narcissa stated grimly.
Severus scowled helplessly and dabbed more potion on the wound. It emitted lesser fumes this time and Harry didn't react. Severus kept applying the antiseptic until he declared the wound clean and then sealed it up with a few drops of the essence of dittany.
When they finished, Severus checked in with Dumbledore, who was feverishly tinkering with some glass phials and flooed back to Privet Drive where he spent the night.
...
Slowly two weeks had passed without a trace of Voldemort. Severus's dark mark hadn't bothered him again after that night. Harry, who had spent a whole week in Little Whinging, was gradually improving under Poppy's daily councelling. The nightmares were consistent partly due to Severus's refusal to give him any more doses of the dreamless sleep potion. He explained to him how dependant one's body could get reliant on the potion. Harry unhappily agreed.
Pamphlets were being provided along with the Daily Prophet every day with tips on how to remain safe. Every second article on the newspaper carried warnings and messages and pleas asking everyone to be on the alert. Over twenty students had already been withdrawn from Hogwarts by stupid parents who preferred to doubt Dumbledore's protection around the school.
The number of Fidelius charms put up by various households all over Britain in the past couple of weeks had nearly exceeded the ones that had been put up during the last two years of the previous nationwide emergency over a decade ago. The culprit behind the crisis, unfortunately, remained the same but this time, dutifully remained out of sight.
So had Karkaroff for that matter as well as Lockhart. The Order of the phoenix were on high alert, but nothing could be uncovered. It was a veil of suspense in whichever direction Severus's thoughts travelled.
The actual Moody, who Dumbledore wheedled into staying and teaching, stomped up to the old man's office thrice a day demanding that the headmaster cast detection charms on him each time. Dumbledore had gotten quite weary of it and took to hiding in Severus's quarters for a major part of the day much to Minerva's annoyance, who had become Moody's immediate target. Severus just hoped she didn't decide to camp down in his office as well. He had enough of problems of his own to deal with.
The next development was the inability of the Swarm to communicate through their mind chat. They realised that the very next day and were devastated. It was as though the Avada Kedavra killed the connection between them. Severus concluded that it must have indeed been the killing curse that broke the connection. And since Harry had been the origin of the connection, the break at his end and affected the others, Harry being the trunk and the others, branches.
Perhaps if one of the others had been the one to lose their connection to the rest, it wouldn't have affected the rest of the lot, unlike Harry's. This mode of communication certainly had its benefits, and the children were terribly disappointed.
And it was on his insistance that they started using Draco's stone device as their novel means of communication. It wasn't as advantageous as the mind to mind connection they had all shared, but it certainly would be handy, just as soon as Severus found the time to tweak it a bit.
It was the thought of the killing curse, along with the killing of the Swarm's mindchatting that woke Severus up one night. This was one night that he'd willingly gone to sleep. Other nights he spent pacing his room worrying about Voldemort's eerie silence. But that one night, the mix of the two thoughts brought his mind back to the problem Harry had when his leg had been unmoving.
The first thing he did that night was to sneak into Harry's cubicle, the cubicle Harry had rarely used that year and began casting diagnostics over Harry's head and chest. In the back of his mind, Severus was aware that if the curse had modified itself just as the last one had thirteen years ago, the boy would have been dead, considering how close it was to his heart and other major organs. But he couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief when the dreaded indicatory lines failed to make an appearance.
Slowly, Severus let himself out of the boy's dormitory, breathed out another sigh of relief and headed back to bed.
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Dear Dee,
Christmas day has finally come to an end. It has been... eventful. We were just a few of us spending Christmas at Hogwarts. Well, it's just us and the champions and their dates and the delegates of the other school and a few of our schoolmates who really wanted to attend the ball.
The decrease in students over the holidays did decrease the staring we get daily. And that's the bright side of it, given how frustrating it is to be stared at (Not as upsetting as losing our ability to mindchat, but still frustrating). I don't even get why they need to stare! Just what is anyone accomplishing by staring at the live version of a person mentioned on the Daily Prophet? Well, if they think that staring at us will get Harry to somehow stop Voldemort again, then they're sadly mistaken.
Anyway, with the decrease in students though came the decrease in dates. Well, Harry had asked Tilly to be his date before the vacation and she remained. Blaire took Draco and Neville took Ginny. I had asked Susan Bones to go with me, she's a girl in my house and in my year, but her aunt insisted that she went home. I thought of asking Hermione, but Ron had asked her out. And so here I was attending the ball alone.
Just today morning, Prof proclaimed Harry to be 'mentally and physically healthy' and handed him a box that contained his new wand. Then Prof gave Harry the egg he'd retrieved on the twenty-fourth of November and told him to open it. Harry opened it and from inside came a brilliant golden glow along with the worst screech-like sounds we had ever heard. And just as Harry was about to close it, a small bit of parchment fell out of the egg.
Then before Harry opened the note, Prof told Harry to dunk the egg into his bath tub open it and dip his ear into the water. Harry did it immediately and Harry jumped back up a couple of minutes later saying something about the Black Lake and mermaids and Victorian flower meanings. We all got a chance to listen to a beautiful melody coming from the egg and in conclusion, this task involves gathering of specific flowers from the Black Lake.
The roll of parchment carried specific notes in regards to the competition for the judges felt that if the second task was going to be based on intellect, the task might just have to be all about it.
I won't tell you the rest now, Dee. Otherwise, it would be rather anticlimactic when I decide to sit and read you one day, and read about the task before I reach the page dated February 24, 1995. Anyway, if you are really reading this Ethan, in the next fifty years or so, I'd like to say, 'Hi!'. And I hope these pages bring back nostalgia. I wonder what's become of the rest of my family. Are we still happy? Do we have joyous new additions? Or tragic subtractions? Oh, I don't want to know. I'll get back on track.
Alright, we are presently on the Christmas Day of 1994 and by early evening, we had all changed into our dress robes and Ginny came up to me while we all waited outside the Great Hall and asked if I'd like to take her friend Luna Lovegood to the Ball. I readily agreed. Luna was a dreamy girl with long blonde hair. She spoke her mind and was never worried of what the others thought of her. I couldn't understand much about her Snorkacks or Nargles or Pimplies, though.
The Ball started with dinner. The champions and their dates ate with the judges at the high table. Anjelina Johnson's date was Fred Weasley, whereas Victor Krum's date was Fleur Decalour, both having no date due to their previously arranged partner's cowardice. Karkaroff's seat was left empty. The others, teachers and students included were to eat at tables for two (Later, Prof told us that it was due to the limited number of attendees). The house tables were nowhere in sight.
All we had to do was to pick up the menu that appeared on the table just as soon as we sat and call out the dish we wanted. And it appeared! Luna was quite disappointed she wasn't able to find fried river pilmpies on the menu, and ended up having the sticky toffee pudding for dinner! She's a strange girl and she happens to have a habit of speaking truths in a manner that is both comforting and uncomfortable.
When we were done, the tables were pushed to the side and the champions and their dates had the opening dance. Then we all joined in. Prof stayed out of it, scowling at anyone and anything he set his eyes on.
After about half an hour of dancing, Ginny insisted that we follow her out of the Great Hall. We met Blaire, Draco, Harry, Tilly, Neville, Ron, Hermione, Fred and George in the Entrance Hall. Ginny led us all to the courtyard and pointed to a dark corner. There, just next to the wall were Bill Weasley and Tonks. Snogging.
I may have lost two galleons to Blaire, but the look on their faces when George wolf-whistled just made my day.
...
It was the day after Christmas that Prof took the five of them to the seventh floor.
Casually he walked to the wall opposite that of a painting of a couple of trolls beating up a wizard who tried to teach them to dance. Then he walked across that wall three times and a door appeared out of nowhere.
Prof beckoned them and they followed him into a large room with a huge swimming pool occupying most of the floor. In a corner of the room was a stack of floaters and in a rack nearby stood a rack with swimming attire of every kind and size and beyond that were dressing rooms.
"Hogwarts has got an indoor swimming pool?" Neville heard himself ask in amazement.
Prof smirked and said, "It's got whatever anyone wants... This is the room of requirements, that few know of and even fewer speak of. To access it, you need to walk across it three times thinking fiercely of what type of a room you wish to use. I was thinking of a place where I could teach you to dive... Merpeople aren't seen by us because they reside deep down the lake. You understand the assignment, don't you, Harry."
"Prof," Harry said sheepishly. "I can't even swim, let alone dive. I don't think Blaire and Ethan can either."
"That's what we're just about to remedy." Prof said. "And what about you, Neville, Draco?"
"I know just a little." Neville confessed, thinking of all the times his Great Uncles would dump him into pools and rivers hoping he'd have bouts of magic. All Neville gained from this was a faint knowledge of swimming and perhaps a vicious cold.
"I'm not that good either." Draco said. "I really didn't think I'd need to learn."
"Definitely something we need to remedy." Prof muttered. And so their swimming lessons began.
All four of them spent two or three hours daily learning how to swim under Prof's infallible guidance all for the sake of a task Harry would need to undertake to ensure that his magic wouldn't be lost.
This task needed intelligence and quick thinking and that was right down Harry's alley. And from what Harry had interpreted from the mermaid's song, Harry needed to dive down into the lake to retrieve some particular flowers that were protected by the merpeople. The kind of flowers he needed to retrieve were to describe what he thought of a particular person whose identity he would have to guess in the form of seven sentences, each hidden in the pockets of some seven other people.
Harry would have to find these people first with a clue that would be provided to him at the beginning of the contest. And then, once the flowers were collected from the lake, Harry would have to make a bouquet out of it give it to the person the seven sentences described.
It had taken Neville a while to understand the entire thing, but he did in the end and everyday, he and the others helped Harry learn the Victorian flower language. And that was how they spent the next couple of weeks.
tbc...