1995 to 1996, 5th year
Harry was still reeling from the run-in with Neville and his grandmother. He had known – He had known about Neville's parents, but to be confronted with the reality of what it actually meant like that …
Ron and Hermione and the others were still saying goodbye to Mr Weasley. Harry had quietly left, unable to shake the unease he felt whenever he was reminded of that vision, of being in the snake's head, of attacking –
He shook his head.
Harry looked around. The entrance area of St Mungo's was as full as always – full of curiosities, full of strange people with even stranger afflictions. It was a great way to distract himself from his own thoughts.
The man with the dog's head was probably a transfiguration gone wrong – perhaps he had even cats it on himself and now couldn't undo it, because barks were all that came out of his mouth. The person with the roses growing out of their ears and mouth and from between their fingers might have been a spell accident – or a curse? Or perhaps something related to magical plants?
He skipped the next two people in the queue – two didn't have any obvious afflictions and the third – it certainly looked highly unpleasant.
The next person in line appeared to have hands coming out of his chest and Harry realised after a moment of silently gazing at him that he had seen that same man with the same hands coming out of his chest the first time he had visited St Mungo's. There was a witch with green and purple splotches all over her skin behind the man, then a very depressed-looking couple talking to a young girl with salt-and-pepper hair, then a short man with a –
Harry did a double take.
"Lémure?"
The girl paused on her way past him, gesturing for the couple she had been talking with to go ahead. She was wearing black gloves even though they were indoors.
"Hello, Potter."
"What are you doing here?"
"Coming back from my break."
"No, I mean – Oh. You work here?"
He hadn't expected that. She didn't seem like the type. But it wasn't as if Harry knew her very well, even if he had been spending quite some time with Lémure and Nott in the library.
(Harry had at one point asked about their relation, because they kept behaving like a Slytherin version of the Weasley twins. Lémure's reply had been, "We're distantly related by marriage – Theo's aunt married my mother's cousin.")
"It's more like volunteering?" She looked past him and raised her voice, "The door to the left, please! Yes, that's the one. Healer Than will take you to your son." Then she turned back to Harry. "I'm lending my services to the hospital. There's always an increase in accidents around Christmas and New Year's. Are you here to visit the reason you and the Weasleys had to leave the school early?"
"What? Oh, er – yeah. What do you mean by 'lending your services'?"
Lémure furrowed her brows. "Exactly what I said. My family is always understandably busy around this time as well, but we always make sure to send someone over to St Mungo's. I believe they actually had a Necromancer in their employment at one point, but whoever it was must have left one way or another a few decades ago. I don't mind, though."
"I'm sorry – did you just say they had a Necromancer in their employment?"
Lémure blinked at him. Then her lips formed a quiet 'oh'.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realise – Everyone knows, usually. Even the Muggle-borns do, somehow. It always makes me want to ask them, but they tend to be even more afraid than the rest." She shook her head. "The Lémures are infamous for being Necromancers, Potter."
Harry had not known the Lémures were Necromancers, what the bloody hell?!
"Isn't that illegal?"
"Partially?" Lémure shrugged. "The Ministry labels it under the Forbidden Arts, but it's not like they ever stopped us from practising. And St Mungo's always welcomes us with open arms." She glanced at the clock at the wall to their left. "I must really go now. Don't trust anything any outsider tries to tell you about Necromancy, Harry. You really need to verify the reliability of your sources in this case. I will see you at Hogwarts."
Harry watched her leave for the nondescript door the depressed-looking couple had left through, catching a glimpse of stairs leading downwards just behind it.
When the Weasleys finally came down, ready to leave, Harry was still feeling as if someone had pulled the rug from under his feet.
o
Just for a little bit. He needed – just a few seconds to collect himself.
"Harry? Are you alright?"
Shit.
It took more energy and willpower than Harry would have liked to admit to push himself off from the wall and face Lémure. How had she – Right. He was still in the dungeons. The Slytherins lived in the dungeons.
He couldn't read the look on her face. She reminded him of Nott, in that moment.
"You look … drained."
His head was still pounding from yet another failed attempt at keeping Snape out of his mind, his scar was tingling, the back of his hand kept throbbing painfully even though he hadn't sat through a detention with Umbridge for several weeks now.
Drained was putting it mildly.
"Since you will likely not appreciate my help, shall I fetch Theodore instead? Would that help?"
Harry had been avoiding her. Nott had never commented on it, but Harry knew he had noticed.
As for Nott …
Harry was used to being the focus of all the rumours and all the whispering and pointing and talking behind his back. Things had been different since the mass breakout had changed the mood slightly in his favour – but it was still, always, suffocatingly oppressing nonetheless. A mass breakout from Azkaban wasn't good news in any shape or form.
The only place where Harry could escape from it all – from the judging, calculating looks, from the whispers following him everywhere, from Umbridge and from Snape, with their detentions and lessons and their sneers and unhidden disdain for him – was the library. With Nott.
The library had always been a quiet place, but Harry had never seen it as a place of refuge before. He had never found the same peace there as he did now, with Nott. (It was the opposite with Hermione, more often than not – bubbling with excitement in this place full of knowledge ready to be gained – but that was part of her charm, in a way.) Not even the DA meetings could bring him such respite.
"I'm fine," he said, trying his best to keep his voice level. "I was just on my way back."
Harry couldn't shake the feeling that there was something knowing in Lémure's gaze as she watched him go.
o
Lémure wouldn't stop laughing and Harry couldn't decide whether to feel exasperated or join her. He didn't even know what she thought was so funny about the interview he had given, finally telling his truth about the night Voldemort had returned.
Feeling at a loss, Harry looked to Nott for help.
Nott watched Lémure for a moment longer, before turning to Harry. "Perhaps she thinks it is hilarious that your article has turned out to be so effective thanks only to Professor Umbridge's interference."
"The pink toad doesn't deserve all the credit," Harry grumbled, feeling wrong-footed for some reason. "It would have been effective regardless."
Lémure only laughed harder. Sometimes Harry wished she wasn't so good at her silencing spell, just to get the satisfaction of watching her get thrown out of the library by Madam Pince.
"You chose to publish it in The Quibbler, Potter."
"So what? The Quibbler's great!"
Nott's eyebrows rose. "I thought you said you weren't the lunatic the Daily Prophet's making you out to be."
"Because I'm not! Look, the important part is that people finally believe me, now."
"Slytherin House hasn't changed its mind."
"What, as a whole?"
Lémure wiped her eyes. "Why, obviously. We all share the same opinions and thoughts, after all. Didn't you know? Just ask Draco, he'll tell you."
"You're pulling my leg."
"Am I?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "Aside from the fact that I had it published in The Quibbler – what did you think about it?"
"Why would you need our opinion on it? I thought you were proud of the thing."
"I wasn't asking you. I was asking Theo."
"Ohhh, it's Theo now, is it?"
"Shut up!"
"It was certainly insightful," Nott said quietly. "Quite different from my father's retelling."
Harry sobered immediately. "Your father was there that night."
Somehow, he had managed to completely forget that fact.
To his credit, Nott did not avoid his eyes. "I am not my father."
"I know that."
"How noble of you," Lémure commented.
When Harry looked at her, she was resting her cheek on one hand and there was amusement sparkling in her eyes. Harry had learned by now that the girl was really only ever not amused when it came to her duties as a Necromancer.
(And hadn't that been a revelation – learning all about the 'duties of a Necromancer' as the Lémures understood them. Harry still didn't quite get it, but the only really important part for him had been the 'murder is bad' part. He didn't need to know whether they brought people back from the dead. He didn't want to know, because if they did, then he –)
"So what's next?" Lémure asked. "Proof that the Dark Lord really is back? Chaos and mass panic? Or are you going to secretly go after him and then bring his corpse before the Ministry? That would certainly be proof enough and only cause some mild hysteria."
Harry gave her his best incredulous stare. "How would I even do that?"
She twinkled at him, the insufferable brat. "Oh, I don't know. Acquire a gun and shoot him in the head?"
Harry wondered, not for the first time, why he willingly hung out with them.
"How do you even know what a gun is?" Harry asked.
Lémure gave him a look. "We bury the dead, Potter."
"And here I thought you were against murder."
"I never said that. Honestly, Potter, you need to pay better attention to the way people phrase things. We do not take from Death what is not rightfully ours to take. If He were to tell us to take a life, then we would gladly follow His command."
"And if someone else commits murder?"
"Then we take care of the dead, as is our duty."
"So you wouldn't go after the killer?"
"Depends on the situation. As anything does, really." Lémure gave him a dark smile. "You could start small and practice on our lovely High Inquisitor first."
"Now, there's an idea," Nott muttered.
For a moment, they all looked into the distance, dreaming about the impossible.
"Wish I could have used a gun on the damn Basilisk," Harry muttered. "Would have solved a lot of problems." He shook his head. "Where would I even legally acquire a gun in the first place?"
Lémure's head snapped around. "Did you say Basilisk?"
Harry could hear Nott groan in exasperation.
"Er – yes? That's what I said."
"Show me!"
Harry felt rather flabbergasted, faced with her sudden burst of enthusiasm. "I'm not sure you'd really want to see that – I mean, it's just a rotting corpse now."
He swore her eyes started to actually sparkle at that.
Oh, shit.
o
"You have a gift, Harry. Truly. A gift!"
Harry wondered, absently, when he had turned from 'Potter' to 'Harry' as he tried his best not to slip on the slimy ground and animal skeletons. He even had to brace himself on the wall once and, to his horror, it was just as slimy as the ground. In that moment, Harry really envied Lémure for her gloves. (He didn't remember seeing her wearing them everywhere before the holidays. Must have been a Christmas present.)
"You really couldn't just have left me behind?" Nott asked not for the first time.
"You'd regret missing out on this forever, Theo. Don't dare to deny it!"
"Yes, yes."
"Hey, Harry, do you know why there are so many dead rodents down here?"
Harry glanced back over his shoulder, watching her walk with way more grace than he could ever muster, least of all down here. (Nott, at least, was having as much trouble keeping his balance as Harry.)
"The Basilisk probably ate them all."
"Funny."
Harry blinked.
Lémure blinked back. "Oh, you were serious. Sorry to disappoint you, but no snake would leave the floor littered with bones like this. They swallow their prey whole."
"Perhaps they all fell victim to the Basilisk's deadly eyes," Nott said quietly.
"And it didn't eat them?" Lémure returned sceptically.
Nott shrugged. "It might not have liked already dead prey."
"That doesn't make any sense, why would – ohh, that looks like a fortune and a half!" Lémure skipped past Harry to get a closer look at the Basilisk skin. Harry was surprised to find it in such good condition still. He wondered if the Basilisk's actual body might perhaps not be a smelly, rotting corpse after all.
"But why is it green? Snake don't shed their dermis … Theo, help me collect some of this. Harry, you must let us come back later, so we can collect more!"
"… Why?"
Lémure beamed at him. "Because there are so many experiments we can conduct with this! Do you know just how many potion recipes use snake skin as an ingredient? Ohhh, the possibilities!"
Harry felt a headache beginning to form. And they hadn't even reached the Chamber with the actual Basilisk corpse, yet.
A hand briefly squeezed his shoulder and Harry turned his head to look into Nott's sympathetic gaze.
"Just go along with it. It's the only choice you have."
Why did he voluntarily keep their company again? Oh, right. Because with Nott and Lémure, there never was any judgement – about anything. There were no expectations. They didn't think he was a raving lunatic, telling lies about Voldemort's return. They didn't look at him strangely for all the weird things that had happened to him over the years. Neither of them cared about his history with Voldemort. They didn't care that he was the Boy Who Lived, nor that Voldemort was after his life. They didn't care whether he was good enough to one day defeat the Dark Lord. To them, Harry was simply … Harry. Just Harry.
"Here we are, then," he said when they finally reached the wall with the snake carvings that would open to the actual Chamber of Secrets.
"Oh my," Lémure said.
"You should feel right at home," Harry joked. "Looks just like your common room, doesn't it?"
"Sure it does," Nott returned sardonically.
Lémure, on the other hand, didn't seem to be listening. She had stopped right by the entrance, eyes wide as she stared into the shadows of the dimly lit chamber. Like a cat stalking her prey, Lémure began to slowly, carefully step forwards, keeping her eyes fixed on a particularly large shadow that Harry suspected was the Basilisk's cadaver
Harry shared a hesitant look with Nott before they both began to follow her. It didn't seem to reek as badly as Harry had feared, so that was a relief. But it was not a very pleasant sight in any capacity.
"Lumos."
Harry tore his gaze away from the grotesque husk of the gigantic, dead snake.
Nott met his eyes evenly. "This will probably take a while, we might as well look around."
There wasn't much to see apart from the big statue of Salazar Slytherin and the many pillars with their snake carvings.
It did indeed take a while for Lémure to finish examining the dead Basilisk. Harry didn't know what she had been doing, exactly, but when she finally called out to them, the girl's face was flushed – the colour on her pale cheeks making her look almost healthy – and her entire body appeared to be vibrating with newfound energy.
"Thank you," she told Harry in a soft tone while she put her gloves back on. "Truly, thank you."
Harry gave her a helpless smile. "You're welcome?"