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Chapter Forty-Three—Wake the Dead

Blaise stares in fascination as Harry bends over Pettigrew's body. He told Blaise a little about his family Gift, but not enough for Blaise to know exactly what will happen. And that sends uneasiness throbbing through him.

He's not sure how much of that is worry, though, and how much is disbelief that the Potter family could have had such a Dark Gift and hidden it from everyone.

"And you're sure that this will work?" Blaise asks, as Harry steps back and conjures transparent flames that leap around his arms. Blaise squints, but he can't see any difference in the way Harry looks through those flames.

"I don't know, but I think it's the only chance Theo has," Harry says absently. "Can you check the ward and make sure no one can bother us?"

Blaise turns to check the ward that he's already checked like five times. But it's imperative that no one disturb them, he can agree on that. Not that Blaise thinks it's likely to happen in this out-of-the-way dungeon corridor, or he wouldn't have hidden the corpse here in the first place.

"Ah."

Blaise spins back around. Harry is smiling at Pettigrew's corpse as he moves his hands in gentle spirals, and the flames imitate him. Blaise doesn't see much decay in the corpse, given that he cast Preservation Charms pretty much right away, and no difference through the flames, either. But Harry seems to see something, because he turns to Blaise with an exultant smile.

Blaise thinks immediately that he would walk through flames for that smile, and as immediately that he might not want to let Harry know that.

"Can you bring me your cauldron and the ingredients that that book mentioned?" Harry asks softly. "Bring me the book, too."

Blaise nods and takes off at a run. If this can heal Theo, who's been his friend for years…if it can bring Harry out of the despair that's consumed him at the thought of Theo dying…if things can go back to the way they used to be…

Blaise would do anything.

"This is dangerous, yes."

Lion doesn't sound like he's complaining, more like he's stating a fact. Harry still reaches up to stroke his pet as he watches Pettigrew's hands dance above the cauldron, scattering in chopped ingredients and then turning back to chop more. Harry ended up Transfiguring a Potions table himself and sending Blaise for a knife, too. Now Blaise is sitting in the corner of the corridor and watching the preparation process with eyes as wide as an owl's.

"Yes, it is," Harry finally says, when Lion keeps swaying on his shoulder and doesn't seem satisfied with the petting. "But it's the best chance we have to bring Theo back to himself."

"You promised you would commune with the Speakers."

"I did, remember? They didn't like my plan, but they didn't know anything else to do."

"You have not spoken with them about this one."

Harry shakes his head absently, eyes fastened on Pettigrew. His hands keep rising and falling, manipulated every second by the strings that Harry is tugging through the flames. Now and then his eyes blink, his chest heaves with a breath. It's all that Harry can do.

Maybe he would be able to do more if he waited and gained further control of the flames that right now are spinning through the air around him and Pettigrew like a cascade. But he doesn't want to wait. Theo's mind is decaying further every day.

If this attempt fails, it fails. But it's better in every way than sitting around and doing nothing.

"Harry? Will you speak to the Speakers?"

Harry blinks and glances at Lion. It's rare that Lion addresses him by his name. He seems afraid that that's somehow out of bounds for him. Harry hesitates and then reaches up to stroke down the back of Lion's spine, head to tail. Lion flutters his wings. "I'll do it, but only when Pettigrew finishes preparing the potion."

"That is afterwards."

"I know."

"But they might not be pleased."

"They're not actually in charge of me," Harry says dryly as he watches Pettigrew uncap the flask of lavender petals Blaise brought him. The task is delicate, and Harry has to narrow down both the flames and the concentration to do it. When the petals are falling into the potion, he goes back to the conversation with Lion. "If you want me to talk to someone who's in charge of me, then it should be Severus."

"He does not speak."

Harry feels a tremor of laughter dance through him. It seems strange, and he decides that it might be the first one he's experienced since he learned about the Soul-Breaker Curse. "Yes, but he's still my guardian."

"He is not a Speaker."

Lion sounds like he wants to solve the puzzle, so Harry says, "I am not a Speaker, either. I can speak Parseltongue, but I'm still a human, and I need another human to tell me when to go to bed and make sure I eat." There are other things Severus does, of course, but Harry's honestly not sure Lion will understand them no matter how clearly and slowly he identifies them.

"Then speak with him." Lion still sounds a little doubtful about whether Severus can use any kind of language at all.

"I will."

"When?"

"When this is done."

Lion gives his hiss that sounds like a sigh. Harry ignores him and keeps concentrating on Pettigrew.

"Theo."

For a terrible, tumbling moment, Theo can't remember the name of the boy who's speaking to him. He turns around and stares at the pale face, the mussed and falling black hair, the green eyes that stare at him as if everything that matters is his name. It takes the golden winged snake on the boy's shoulder to remind him. Theo digs the word out of his soul like an emerald from a void and says, "Harry."

"Come with me."

"Harry" spins around and strides away. Theo stands there, thinking idly and sluggishly, before he follows.

Once, he knows, he would have done anything "Harry" wanted. That seems like enough reason to follow him now, even though Theo has less than no idea what will happen or what Harry wants with him.

Harry seems a strange name for someone with green eyes…

The thought falls apart and vanishes.

On they hurry, and on, through twisting corridors that maybe he knew at one time, but now the knowledge has vanished between the cracks. Corners they circle, stairs they go up, cracks they leap over in the floor, like the cracks in his mind. Theo is wandering mentally long before he sees Harry suddenly stop, so he stops, too.

Harry is breathing hard. Theo wonders if he should be concerned about that, thinks he would have been at one time, and loses both the memory and the wondering.

"Now!" Harry spins around to face him, eyes wide, hands clenched. "Now!"

"Now…what?"

Harry bites his lip hard for a moment, as though concentrating, and then jerks his head to the side. Theo looks with him. Someone else he thinks he once knew is standing there, holding a flask of some potion that sloshes back and forth. It's crystalline, and it smokes, and it smells awful.

"Will you drink it?" Harry whispers.

"What does it do?"

"Would you remember by the time you finished drinking it, if I told you?"

Theo has to admit that's fair, as little as he wants to think it. He reaches out and clasps his hand around the flask. It's hard and heavy in his hand, and the potion feels hot through the crystal. He balances it, then drinks it when "Harry" repeats the request one more time.

It's like swallowing a mouthful of stars.

Suddenly, there's light pivoting through Theo's head, and some of the cracks are closing, and he knows his name and he remembers fully what happened and what he planned to do and he remembers Harry and he falls to his knees and he weeps.

Then it stops. Some of the cracks have closed, but not all.

Theo swallows and looks up. Harry's face is terrible; he looks like he's hovering over a cliff on his broom and contemplating diving off it without one. Theo reaches a hand out, and Harry rushes over to clasp it.

"Did it work? Did it work?"

"Not—all the way," Theo whispers. "Partially, but I can still feel the cracks. I'm partially healed. I don't know why it didn't work all the way," he babbles, which he can now remember isn't like him at all, wincing when Harry turns ashen. "But that's the way it is. I wanted to tell you so you would know it's the truth and can decide what to do from here."

Maybe Harry will abandon him and decide it's not worth trying to find another solution. Theo knows that's possible. Even as the rest of him, waking up from a long nightmare, knows that Harry is the kind of person who would never agree to that.

"No," Harry whispers.

"No?"

"No, I can't stop now. And if the solution that I tried didn't work completely and I have to do something else…" Harry clasps Theo's arms and hauls him to his feet. Theo stumbles; he feels like he hasn't been standing for ages. "I'll do that something else."

Theo leans close to Harry and says nothing for long, silent moments. He owes him his sanity, as well as his loyalty, and the knowledge that he can never repay back something like that gnaws at him with teeth sharpened by the household he grew up in.

But he also knows that Harry will never demand repayment of the debt, and that makes him blink, step back a moment later, and say, "I'll help you."

You have reconsidered my offer.

Harry didn't think it would take long to attract the leopard's attention, and it hasn't. All he did was go out to the common room, sit down, and stare into the flames. The shadow formed on the wall and leaped to loom above the mantel. Although Harry can see no actual eyes in the shadow, he's sure that the beast is staring at him.

"Yes," Harry hisses in Parseltongue. Theo stayed up for a long time beside him before he went to sleep. The last thing Harry wants to do is wake him up or worry him if he sees Harry dealing with the creature who hurt him.

Harry does have a plan. He's not making a bargain with the creature who hurt Theo. But he can't explain that at the moment without the leopard overhearing.

He's not sure he would try to explain it to anyone, anyway. The leopard could be anywhere, hiding in every shadow. And it knows Parseltongue, so even just trying to explain it to the Speakers would be rife with difficulty.

Tell me.

Harry lifts his head and takes a deep breath. "I managed to do something that slowed the progress of the curse on Theo, but it didn't heal him all the way. So I need to pursue the path that you were talking about to make sure that he is completely healed."

The leopard laughs, an awful sensation that makes Harry feel like insects are chewing through his brain. I knew that it would come to this in the end. Mortals are so weak.

Harry just sits there and bears it, which is the truth, anyway.

The shadow of the leopard stretches and leaps from the mantel, prowling across the common room towards him. Harry manages not to flinch, but it's a near thing. The leopard is his enemy the way it's the enemy of the Speakers. He must never forget.

The creature sits down in front of him and yawns, displaying enormous jaws with fangs that seem to shine for a moment in the light of the fire. The way that I was talking about involves a jewel of sufficient value. And a sacrifice.

Harry doesn't swallow at those last words. I knew it. I knew it. Relief tears through him like claws.

But he only asks, "What sufficient value? What kind of sacrifice?"

I will tell you.

"What did you do?"

Harry turns and looks at Severus when he asks the question, after Potions class, and something wild is in the eyes that meet Severus's stare. Severus swallows, and swallows again. He knows that something has helped Theo Nott, even though he still paused halfway through the potion in this class and had to be brought back to himself by a quick whisper from Draco.

That is still better than two days ago, when he forgot what a cauldron was called.

"What I needed to do."

Severus wants to weep at the sound of Harry's voice, and he knows that he can't afford to, for either of their sakes. He swallows air with a long, careful sigh, and whispers, "I would help you. You know I would. I would be loyal to you no matter what happened."

Harry's eyes soften, then, and he raises a ward across the door of the classroom with nothing more than a hiss. Something the Speakers must have taught him, Severus thinks. "I know you would. Except if you thought I would die."

"You are—intending to?"

Severus is already measuring the distance between them with his eyes, wondering how to deal with Lion if he flies to Harry's defense. Harry sees it, and shakes his head. "No. But I will do everything I have to to help Theo. The first thing I tried worked halfway, but wasn't enough. And his soul might go on decaying if I don't do the other thing."

"Harry…what other thing?"

Harry looks at him, and says nothing.

Severus closes his eyes. When he opens them again, Harry and Lion have left the classroom, and Blaise is the only one lingering in the doorway of the classroom. He stares solemnly at Severus, mouths something, and leaves.

I will not let him come to harm.

Severus wishes he could believe that. Mr. Zabini is young, all of them are so young, and he might let Harry do something he truly believes is for the best but which will destroy Harry anyway. And he might do it all the more readily because he is loyal to Theo as well as to Harry.

Severus can only hope that Sirius's efforts with Bellatrix bear some fruit soon.

Harry opens his eyes in a dark red throbbing dream, full of pain from the Horcrux in his head, and snorts a little as he leans back against air that is solid because he wills it so. "Why did you bring me here again?"

"I wished to savor your despair."

"Do I look like I'm despairing?" Harry doesn't want to speak Parseltongue with Voldemort.

Voldemort manifests in front of him, staring at Harry. His body looks like it's made of slick marble, as if someone has carved him open and exposed white muscle under the white flesh. Harry tilts his head.

The leopard told him something about Voldemort's body, made as it was in his unnatural resurrection, and made as it was of flesh that Voldemort took from dead creatures before he made himself a permanent human one.

The leopard was right.

Harry doesn't necessarily want to think what other things the leopard was right about, so he simply cocks his head further and asks, "Do I?"

"There is no counter to the Soul-Breaker Curse."

"Yes, there is. If the person who cast it brews the right potion—"

"Peter Pettigrew is dead!"

But there's uncertainty in Voldemort's eyes, the kind that Harry can probably only see because he's spent so long talking to Voldemort, more than most of the Death Eaters probably did. He steps forwards with a low laugh. "Are you sure about that? He was a traitor once. Why couldn't he be one again?"

"I can no longer feels his Dark Mark!"

"Consider that I'm studying with the Speakers and that my foster father is one of the most skilled Potions brewers in recent history. Couldn't we hide him from you? If we wanted?"

"I have used Divination!"

"And that field, of course, never has any trouble with predictions that don't come true or the fact that—"

Harry's head explodes in pain. He's forced to slow and stop approaching Voldemort, standing there while he grimaces and rubs his brow.

When he can look again, Voldemort is gone, and Harry is lying in the middle of his own bed and staring up at the green canopy.

Harry nods slowly and sits up. Taunting Voldemort was the leopard's idea. It explained how unstable he was with so many pieces of his soul gone, and how paranoid he would be about someone he relied on betraying him. It worked. Voldemort will be hunting for some way to confirm that Pettigrew is alive, now.

And even if he can't find any evidence, he won't be sure that there's no evidence to find. That part of the plan worked perfectly.

The others…

Harry takes a deep breath, and then turns around sharply as the curtains of his bed sway aside. A shadow of a paw rests on his bed, and a muzzle thrusts through the gap it's made in the curtains.

It worked?

"It did," Harry replies in Parseltongue. He reaches out as if he wants to touch the leopard, then hesitates and retracts his hand. "Voldemort doesn't know for sure that Pettigrew is dead, and I've provided him an excuse to doubt everything he finds."

You may touch me.

"I…you're my enemy…"

Am I not working with you to find a solution to save your friend? I thought that would at least earn me ally status.

Harry can see why it was so easy for humans in the past to get corrupted and seduced by this leopard. It can sound charming and persuasive and feign human emotion really well. He hesitates one more time, then reaches out and lets his hand fall through the cool shadow that makes up its head.

He feels something, a hint of cold resistance against his fingers, before the leopard pulls back and the curtains of his bed fall closed.

Sleep.

Yes, Harry thinks, and curls up, and dreams of sacrifice.

I wonder, Theo thinks, lying where he's twisted sideways in his bed, feigning sleep, as the great beast who tormented him glides out of the room, what you think you are up to, my lord.