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Chapter Forty-Four—Preparing
"How sure are you that you succeeded?"
"Very sure."
Lyassa studies him in silence. Harry just stares back. He's sure that he healed Theo halfway, and that's the only claim he made to her.
Lyassa abruptly stretches one arm out and grasps a handful of the air inside Severus's quarters. Harry wouldn't be surprised to see her holding a congealed Potions fume, honestly, but when she turns her hand over, he sees a golden, squirming snake there, covered with a skull-and-crossbones pattern like a Muggle logo.
"Do you know what this is?"
"I assume the snake is venomous. But no."
Lyassa nods and puts the snake on the floor. Harry moves out of the way as she points one long finger at it and gives a complicated hiss that seems to snap back and forth like her tail when she's agitated. The snake bites helplessly at the air as it dissolves in a puff of smoke.
"Why do you think I did that?"
Harry thinks about the answer, for all that he wants to snap back. Then he looks up at her and speaks what he is sure is the answer. "So that I would think about how you could eliminate me, if you wanted to. You can conjure a snake from thin air and kill it with a word. You could kill me the same way."
Lyassa's eyes widen as she stares at him. "That is not—that was not my purpose with this," she whispers.
"Then why did you choose that demonstration?"
Lyassa sways back and forth in place for a long moment, her eyes bright with indecision. Then she snaps her tail forwards and beats it once against the floor. "Because I thought it the best one. I seem to have been mistaken."
"Please just tell me what you mean."
Lyassa slithers a little closer to him and reaches out to lay her hand on his shoulder. It's not the one that Lion is on, and Harry thought Lion might be comforted to have a Speaker in the room anyway. But his little snake hisses unhappily, tongue darting out in a fluttering motion that Harry feels against his ear.
"I want you to know how powerful our magic is," Lyassa says. "How much we can help you. I don't want you to turn to other methods of help when this one is available, and we are all—the Speakers—willing to aid you."
"That's not the only message."
"No." Lyassa presses hard with her hand, driving the claw-like nails home for a moment. When she pulls back, her face is blank in a way that Harry hasn't seen it before, even when she was a snake. "We cannot abide the existence of a corrupt Parselmouth in the world, not when we have already endured one for long years. If you fall to the same kind of corruption that took Voldemort, we will destroy you."
Harry feels something deep in himself calm. It's not the kind of reassurance that would help anyone else, he thought. Severus and Theo would probably panic on hearing it.
But Harry thinks of it as reassurance, because it means that if the leopard does succeed in corrupting him, then someone will stop Harry before he can cause too much damage.
"Thank you."
Lyassa regards him with ancient, solemn eyes. "You are welcome."
"Theo! Theo, wait up."
Theo turns around and watches Draco rush down the stairs from the dormitories with mild curiosity. He knows that at one time, that curiosity would have been much stronger. That's part of the price he's paid for falling victim to the Soul-Breaker. He's not fully recovered, and some of what makes him himself is still missing.
But he can endure it.
"Yes?" he asks, when Draco comes to a halt in front of him and stands there panting. Draco flushes as he realizes that he can't immediately speak due to his panting and perhaps shouldn't have run like an idiot.
But he shakes it off and says, "I just want to know if you're completely back to normal or not."
"No," Theo says. He doesn't mind people knowing this who are close to both Harry and him and thus capable of falling victim to one of them before they can spread the news around.
Draco starts back with his mouth open. Theo looks at him, calmly, eyes sweeping up and down Draco's body. There's his wand, tucked in a holster near his right hand. Theo will deal with him if he draws it.
"Oh," Draco whispers, and takes a long gulping breath. "I'm sorry. I thought you were."
Theo leans forwards, more interested now than he has been since his partial recovery in anything except himself and Harry and his magic. "Why are you saying that? I don't remember everything, but I know that we weren't exactly friends in the past few months."
Draco shuts his eyes and stands there as if silently asking himself the same question. Theo waits. There's no one else in the common room, and he's not worried about someone else intruding into the conversation, either. He'll just wait, and Draco will answer, or not.
Finally, Draco swallows and says, "I know that you don't think much of me. You haven't had reason to think much of me. But I wouldn't want anyone to die of the Soul-Breaker and lose their mind and memories the way you were. It's a horrible way to die." He opens his eyes, and there's something shining far back in them that isn't familiar. But Theo thinks it wouldn't have been familiar before he lost some of his memories, either. "I'm not my father."
Theo smiles. "That's all I need to know to consider you an ally."
"What? Why?"
"Because that means that you're never going to serve Voldemort, unless you have no choice." Draco starts back at the sound of the name, nervous as a thestral foal, but he's not retreating any further. "And that means I can consider you an ally."
"I might still be—I might still be forced to serve him against my will someday."
"That's why I said can."
Draco smiles after a long moment. It's shaky, but Theo thinks, without being able to remember for sure, that it's also stronger than it's been for months. "Thanks, Theo," he says, and they walk down to breakfast together talking about Ancient Runes, one of the classes that Theo will need to work hardest to catch up in.
It's almost like friendship.
Minerva narrows her eyes as she watches the owl winging its way towards her. It's an ordinary bird, a tawny owl like any number of the ones that live in the school. But she also knows that something's wrong with it. The wards whispered that to her even as they let it through.
She stands up, drawing her wand and casting wards around the table. She won't need the anti-Howler ward, at least. The letter isn't red, and the flood of Howlers has largely died off because people have got used to Tom Riddle being Voldemort's real name.
Or they're distracted by the latest Quidditch player scandal.
The owl lands near the edge of the ward and fluffs its feathers out, staring at her. A few of the other professors at the table are starting to turn around, but none of the students appear to have noticed yet.
They do when the bird explodes.
Minerva flinches back amid the screams, but the blood and feathers that she expected don't shower her. Instead, she sees particles of magic flying away from the place where the owl crouched. A construct, then.
The bits of light and power coalesce into a sparkling, deep green shape. The Dark Mark, of course. Minerva stands up and curls her lip a little as she stares at it.
"You will envy that owl's fate, when I come for you," says a voice from the mouth of the skull, a voice that rasps and hisses and scrapes fear up Minerva's spine. "Already I have passed your wards. What will happen when I desire to pass them again?"
The skull hovers for a second, and then dissipates. The snake takes longer, turning its head towards Minerva to show the gaping mouth, the bared venom-dripping fangs, and the tongue flickering between them.
Then it's gone.
That leaves her with the wailing students, some weeping in fear, and Poppy trying to get to her through the wards. Never mind that Minerva suffered no injury; Poppy's first instinct is always to check someone for them.
Minerva gestures sharply with her wand, and sets a flash of white light loose in the middle of the students. They jump back and flinch and scream and squeak as it bounds through them. It forms into a cat-shape, identical to her Patronus, sitting on air near the doors of the Great Hall. It stares at all the students, unimpressed.
Minerva manages to hold back a smile as they turn to face her. There are times that she's wanted to do that in front of her Transfiguration classes, too, but transforming into a cat herself is generally more effective.
"That was a trick from Tom Riddle," she says calmly to the people who are now staring at her with pale faces. "Yes, he's threatening. And yes, he's frightening. But consider this. If he wants to silence me, and it is so easy to pass through Hogwarts's wards, then why didn't he simply send me something that would kill me instead of make his Mark appear?"
"He wanted to warn you!" shouts Miss Vane. She hasn't been much trouble for the past few months, and has avoided Mr. Potter, which is all to the good as far as Minerva is concerned. "He wanted to make an example of you!"
"And making me explode in gobbets of blood and flesh, as well as having a Mark that spoke, would do that more effectively." Minerva glances from face to face. Already, her resolution is having an impact. Some people are sitting down in their seats, and others are looking thoughtful. "He should have done that if he wanted to. If he were able to. He has no reason to preserve me, no fondness for me. Tom Riddle was in Slytherin, not Gryffindor, and hates my House."
"You're supposed to be neutral now, Headmistress," Miss Granger says, her eyes a little narrow.
Minerva can't smile at the girl the way she wants, not without disrupting her careful act, but she does nod. "True enough, Miss Granger. But Tom Riddle will never see me that way. I will always be the Head of Gryffindor to him, and someone he will hate and attempt to control."
"Then why did he send it?" Mr. Creevey the elder demands, leaning forwards a little.
"An attempt at intimidation. That much is true, of course." Minerva sits down, but keeps the wards up, despite Poppy's glare. There are people here who will lose confidence in her if they watch the matron fussing over her right now. "But that does not mean that we must allow it to succeed."
"The Dark Lord is powerful!" calls Alcyone Flint, a distant cousin of the ones who served as Voldemort's Death Eaters, from further up the Slytherin table. Her voice is shaking, but there might still be more arrogance than fear behind it. She must think of herself as someone Voldemort would spare. "Why should we think there's anything he can't do? If he chose to spare you for the moment, it's so he can toy with you further."
"Well-reasoned, Miss Flint. Five points to Slytherin."
Well, that shuts the girl up, and leaves her blinking uncertainly. Minerva leans back in her seat and glances around in interest. "Well-reasoned," she repeats. "But not true. Can anyone tell me why?"
"Yes, Headmistress."
Harry is on his feet, and he ignores the way that some people give him ugly looks. Not all of them come from Slytherins. Minerva marks them. She thinks that some of them might be potential Death Eaters, others are upset at Harry for supposedly drawing the wrath of Voldemort upon the school, and others simply seem to resent Harry's existence.
"Tell me then, Mr. Potter." Minerva's voice softens a little despite herself, but she hopes that no one notices.
"Because he's not already killing and toying with anyone he wants to," Harry says. His eyes are glittering wildly, as if reflecting a source of light not in the Great Hall. "What's he done that's so great? Send an owl like this. Stage a few raids. Try to assassinate the Minister and fail. Because I was there."
People begin to murmur, their attention focused on Harry. His mouth quirks as if he's unhappy about that, but he lifts his hand to his shoulder and then off. His snake flutters his wings and hisses with his mouth open.
"I have more impressive magic than he does," Harry says. "I have a winged snake. I've healed people and helped people and protected people. What does he do? Destroy. That's all. And if he has Death Eaters that have gathered around him and started obeying his will again the way he had during the first war, I haven't heard about it."
"He could have all the people he wants!" yells Miss Flint.
"Could he? Lucius Malfoy is dead, and so are a lot of the other Death Eaters from the first war, or in prison. He hasn't sent the Lestranges raiding the way that you might have thought he would, given how much they're feared." Minerva wonders how many other people notice Harry's quick glance of apology at Mr. Longbottom. "How many of the others are rushing to join up with him? I promise you, only one was there at my resurrection, and he died."
Mr. Malfoy the younger is sitting with his head down on his hands near the end of the table. Harry doesn't glance at him, but Minerva thinks his head twitches a little. He's probably sorry for inflicting this on Malfoy, as well. But he does it anyway.
Harry has become very hard in some ways. Then again, their world has not given him much choice.
"He could do whatever he wanted," Miss Flint says, but she sounds a little less certain.
"He could," Harry says. "Supposedly. But what he's doing is lurking around, and sending threats. Not even a real owl. He sent a magical construct. He can't even sacrifice a real bird. What does that tell you about his resources?"
Of course, that's probably not true in and of itself, but it does make a lot of people exchange glances and nod, and Harry sits back down with that hard smile on his face.
It will do, Minerva thinks, as she swishes her wand through the air to lower the wards and allows Poppy to sit down next to her and start questioning her in a low, furious voice. It will do very well indeed.
"I will tell you nothing. Nothing!"
Sirius stares at Bellatrix where she shakes the bars of the cage he put her in. It's a silver-wrought cage that his family once used to contain werewolves. The nice thing about silver, the really important thing, is that it also imprisons other creatures who use Dark Arts so much that it's woven into their beings.
Fancy thinking of Bellatrix as a creature.
Well, at the moment, Sirius is fully prepared to think that way about every person in the world except his godson.
Remus has left the room. Sirius can't blame him. The old silver cage upstairs in the drawing room of the Grimmauld Place drawing room probably smells like ancient agony. And Remus is gentle, for all that he transforms into a beast on the full moon. He would be upset by what's going to happen here.
Sirius isn't. He nods and steps back from the cage. Severus approaches with the vial of Punishment Potion.
The thick dark green liquid is recognizable, at least to Sirius, but Bellatrix is so mad that it's hard to tell what she actually thinks as she looks at it. She grasps the bars, screams, and grasps them again and shakes them.
"You cannot make me drink it! I am loyal to my Lord!"
"That is about to change," Severus says, his eyes glinting in a way that makes Sirius tense in anticipation. Severus waves his wand lazily, and the potion gushes into the air and hangs there for a moment, in shining green droplets.
Then it flows forwards and fastens itself around Bellatrix's neck like a chain. As she gasps and chokes, it slips easily between her teeth, and down into her stomach.
Sirius clenches his fists.
"Wait a moment," Severus whispers, his eyes locked on Bellatrix. Sirius is more than willing to. This is more revenge than he ever thought he would have on his mad cousin.
The green potion flares with light from within Bellatrix's body, for a moment. Sirius grinds his teeth and waits some more. He can see her expression smoothing out, her eyes widening. She does look more aware than someone under the Imperius Curse, but barely.
"There," Severus says abruptly, and gestures again with his wand. Sirius watches as a shimmering green light rises and envelops the cage, and then settles back. Severus steps back, watching intently, before he nods.
"Bellatrix," Sirius says. "Tell me, do you know something that can counter the Soul-Breaker Curse?"
"Yes."
Sirius closes his eyes, fighting not to collapse to the floor with the intensity of his relief.