AN
Character Death & graphic description of a violent death crime scene.
You know what that means.
March to April 1994, 3rd year
"Lynea?"
Lynea hummed to signal that she was paying attention, but didn't avert her eyes from the letter she was reading.
"Lynea," the voice said more insistently.
She sighed and put the letter away. "Yes, Harry?"
Harry bit his lip. "I was wondering … Well, your reaction to the Dementor on the train seemed to be just as awful as mine. So why isn't your Boggart a Dementor?"
He kept averting his eyes and wringing his hands in a way that made Lynea think he thought this was a rather insensitive question – or an extremely intrusive and personal one – and he didn't want to be rude. It probably was.
"Because the things we experience when we are facing a Dementor are different," she answered truthfully. "You hear your mother dying – a person you never met. Someone who is dead. Someone who has never been anything but kind to you. And I live through a memory of my father burning me. My father is still alive and would probably do it again if he could. I am not afraid of Dementors, I just greatly dislike them."
"So you are not afraid of fear?"
Lynea blinked and tried to make sense of that. "Because Dementors represent fear, itself? Then I suppose not. Fear itself can't harm me in the way my father can."
Harry nodded. "I can understand that."
They lapsed into silence for a while until Harry asked warily, "What are they doing?" And Lynea looked up from her letter again to see him eyeing Draco and Pansy, who were huddled together in the corner, whispering excitedly.
"Planning petty revenge on some Gryffindors."
Harry frowned. "Which Gryffindors and why?"
Lynea shrugged. "I only heard them muttering angrily about 'the rudeness of those lions' earlier."
"And you're not stopping them?"
Lynea blinked. "Why should I?"
Harry's frown deepened. "Then I suppose I will have to." And he stalked towards Draco's and Pansy's corner and Lynea watched him start a quiet argument with the both of them.
She shrugged and returned to her letter, not particularly caring about the outcome. (But she did notice Draco and Pansy sulking all throughout dinner later that day.)
Once Harry was finished with his little argument, he came back to Lynea and sat down next to her. "Am I allowed to know what that letter is about?"
"An apology of sorts," Lynea said, but nothing more, and she finally put it away.
There were no actual words of apology in it, but Lynea hadn't expected that from her grand-aunt anyway.
Harry accepted her answer and then started a conversation about the sheer amount of homework they would have to do over the approaching Easter holidays. He was a bit sad that he couldn't practice the Patronus charm with Lupin more intensely, because there would be a full moon right before the break, and Lynea was a bit sad, because they had to celebrate Ostara inside again today. But she hoped that the Rites of Balance would help them all out a bit and smooth the tempers that had flared because of the confining situation. If only Black let himself be caught …
But he didn't and a week after Ostara, on the weekend before the break, Lynea went to the Slytherin versus Hufflepuff Quidditch match with the knowledge that the Dementors were still lurking nearby and that they were all buried in homework and would spend their whole holiday in the library and mournfully watch the sun shine outside.
Pansy kept swooning over Diggory during the whole match and Harry kept insisting he saw the Grim, although he eventually admitted that it could just have been a shaggy black dog and that he had seen if a few times before but never told anyone. Because he knew they wouldn't believe him if he told them. Lynea didn't pretend to understand the logic behind that.
After that it was homework, tutoring, preventing Hermione from going mad over the exams (still two months away) and more homework. The only interesting thing happening was in the second week of their break, when Harry came back from the lavatory with Draco and Gregory and told them all about the weird encounter he had had with Professor Trelawney just then. Something about the Dark Lord being alone and returning with the help of a servant or something.
They all dismissed it as the usual weirdness of the divination teacher, but Lynea found it curious that it had occurred on the one day she had been feeling rather restless. She knew that feeling. She had experienced it often enough to be aware that it meant she had to stop for a moment and listen to what He had to tell her. But not yet. She would have to wait until the time was right. She wondered what life He would claim tonight.
Lynea went to bed still feeling uneasy and when she awoke a few hours before dawn, she knew. So she silently got dressed, took Harry's Invisibility Cloak (frowned at how right it felt to wear the thing) and left the castle.
There was a moment where she wondered whether she would have to go past the Dementors and how ever she would manage that. The mere thought made her shudder. But then she took out her athame, made a deep cut on her hand and let her blood dissolve into a scarlet mist and while she waited for the wound to heal, the mist formed a familiar glowing band that did not lead her to anywhere the Dementors were roaming.
Instead, it brought her to the Whomping Willow.
Lynea stared at the tree for a while, wondering how she could avoid the wildly whipping branches to get to what she assumed was a tunnel underneath its roots. She did not, even for a second, consider that the blood mist was leading her into a dead end.
Neither the blood nor Death, Himself, had an answer for her.
Her first idea was the Stunning Spell, but the Slytherins had only just started teaching that spell to themselves in their weekly training sessions and she wasn't confident that she could manage a powerful enough Stupefy to stun a whole magical tree. The Patronus Charm was coming along fine – Harry had even nearly managed a corporal one last time – so they had resumed their usual duelling training. Professor Lupin was a good teacher, but his schedule for the third-years was not up to what they had been teaching themselves during the last two years.
Immobulus was certainly too weak for a being like the Whomping Willow and Petrificus Totalus was generally more effective on living beings. Although the tree technically was a living being …
What Lynea did end up doing was to use all three spells on the tree and then quickly grabbed a few branches and turned them to stone with the Hardening Spell, before running to the base of the trunk and slipping through the hole between the roots. Above her, the tree was whipping its branches around again. Lynea was fairly sure it had already reversed the Hardening Spell, as well. There had been no need to extent her senses to know the thing was bloody powerful.
Lynea's blood mist let her through a low, earthen tunnel, providing enough light to avoid the sharp stones and the roots sticking out here and there. The tunnel went on seemingly endlessly and by the time she emerged on the other end, dawn was nearly breaking outside.
She found herself in a dirty room, full of broken furniture and pieces of the peeling wallpaper. The windows were boarded up, but Lynea had a good guess of where they were. At least now it was a proper haunted house – the foul magic that was practically oozing out of the ceiling would keep people away for generations.
Lynea let the blood mist disperse and sighed to herself. The logical thing would have been to alert a teacher, preferably Professor Snape, and then maybe contact Naenia. She knew she wasn't in danger, at least. Death had led her here only after the murder had taken place. She hadn't even thought to question His motives in bringing her here.
So she cleaned herself up, threw the cloak over herself again, just in case, and slowly ascended the stairs to the first floor. Navigating without the soft glow of the blood mist was rather difficult, but she didn't want to take the risk of a potential threat waiting ahead. She needn't have worried. The only other living presence in this house was a small flicker of life in the room she was about to enter, unconscious and weak, certainly not a threat.
That's new, Lynea thought, wondering why Professor Lupin was lying on the floor, covered in blood. There had never been anything else other than the remains of the victim left at the scene before. She supposed the victim was Sirius Black, but there was no way to be sure just from standing in the doorway and looking at the mess in front of her.
It looked just like the scene father Wilson had described, so many months ago. Naenia had briefly mentioned some of the other scenes and they had not much differed from it.
There was blood literally everywhere and it was still surprising how effectively the magic masked the scent, because every surface was covered in blood – even poor Professor Lupin lying off to the side. The torso, ripped open and emptied out, was arranged in the middle of the room, empty eyes sockets facing Lynea. This one's eyes had neither been put into the mouth, nor been smashed with the skull. The eyes were carefully placed among the other organs, including the brain, in the shape of a magical circle around the torso. And, of course, there were the bits of skin and flesh hanging from the ceiling, which was so high that Lynea had to crane her neck to see them.
Lynea still missed the smell. It made it all seem so surreal without it.
But there was no denying it and so she closed her eyes and took a deep breath and Death guided her, let her harness all His power without touching the sinister magic tainting the scene.
Dawn broke and in the slowly brightening room, Professor Lupin began to stir. Lynea carefully walked to his side, keeping Harry's cloak from touching the ground and grimacing at the wet blood sticking to her shoes. Once there, she bent down and gently touched Lupin's temples and willed him back to sleep. Then she left the room, cleaned her shoes, and went looking for an exit. There wasn't one, but that just meant she had to make one for herself.
It was good, for once, that the muggleborn students so often insisted on implementing their world into the magical world, because that meant that there was actually a telephone box in Hogsmeade.
o
Naenia observed the scene intently for a minute or so and then swept her hand across the room to clear away all the blood (including the blood on Professor Lupin). It was easier to navigate the room and assemble all the pieces of the body after that.
It had probably not been a lucky guess on Lynea's part to call the mortuary instead of the house. Naenia had no need for sleep, but she was usually working in her lab during the night. Lynea had just followed her instincts and not called the house. It would have woken up her mother and she was glad that hadn't happened.
"Why did they leave Professor Lupin behind like that?"
Marin raised its head out of the hood of Naenia's travel cloak and looked at Lynea with dead eyes.
"I imagine they didn't want to keep him confined until it was his turn," Naenia said, without turning away from the body.
Lynea knew her grand-aunt could see her just as well through the eyes of the undead mink that was now climbing onto her shoulder. Naenia barely ever let her familiar out, probably to avoid unwanted people seeing it, especially when she had to interact with Muggles so often. Lynea honestly forgot it even existed sometimes.
"Or maybe they didn't want to use a Werewolf as a sacrifice", Naenia continued. "They need to be very careful about the victims they choose."
Lynea thought about that for a while. "How many of the victims were of magical blood so far?"
"A seventh."
Twenty-one victims and three of them magical. Lockhart was one of them.
"So I assume there will be four more?" Lynea asked and Naenia nodded.
And forty-nine victims in total. Lynea wondered who was willing to wait four years for a ritual to be complete … Someone – or several someones – who was willing to mutilate forty-nine people like this, apparently.
"I wonder what Professor Lupin was doing here in the first place," Lynea said quietly.
Naenia smiled. "Let's find out."
She gently touched Lupin's temple and the man abruptly sat up, wild eyes roaming around and finally settling on the neat pile of body remains Naenia and Lynea had assembled. They had not dispelled any magic – which was starting to make Lynea feel nauseated, even though Naenia had helped her withstand the tainted magic – so there was still nothing to smell. But Lupin didn't seem to register that.
"It was Peter," he said, staring at the body remains. "It was Peter. It was Peter all along. It was Peter, it was Peter, it was Peter."
"Peter Pettigrew?" Lynea muttered. "The one that was murdered by Black?"
Naenia didn't answer, watching Lupin repeat the same sentence over and over again. Eventually, she sighed and put her hand to his temple again. She didn't say anything, but Lynea was fairly sure her grand-aunt was using Legilimency to look into Lupin's memories. There was nothing for Lynea to do, so she sat down on the mostly intact (and now clean) four-poster and watched the two unmoving figures – three if you counted Marin – until Lupin's shoulders slumped and Naenia lowered him back onto the ground.
"So?" Lynea asked carefully.
"Peter didn't do it," Naenia said, not rising from her position. "But he was here."
"So he is not dead?"
"No. He must have fooled everyone by faking his own death and then he probably hid as a rat – apparently, James, Sirius and Peter found out their friend Remus was a Werewolf during their time at Hogwarts and then decided to become illegal Animagi to help him out. I assume Sirius used his Animagus form to break out of Azkaban and Peter used his to live unnoticed as a rat."
Lynea remembered Ronald Weasley losing his rat to Hermione's cat. She wondered whether that was a coincidence.
"What form did they take?" Lynea asked. "James and Sirius, I mean."
"A stag and a black dog respectively."
"A black dog," Lynea repeated.
Hadn't Harry just told them about seeing a black dog every now and then?
Naenia watched her intently, but didn't ask. When Lynea didn't explain herself, she continued, "Remus thinks Peter being alive means that Sirius is innocent – that he and Peter switched places as Secret Keepers and it was really Peter who betrayed Lily and James Potter to the Dark Lord. But we won't know for sure until we call upon Black to ask him, ourself, or get our hands on Peter."
"Who is long gone by now."
Naenia inclined her head. "He left with the one who, I assume, performed the Mutilatio curse on Sirius. Remus wasn't conscious for that, but there were no other people present before or after the act."
"Why were they all gathered here in the first place?" Lynea asked.
Naenia let her eyes close halfway and then recited the memory she had just seen. "Remus noticed a stranger approaching the Whomping Willow during his nightly patrol of the grounds and followed them through the tunnel. Said stranger had already stunned and shackled Sirius to the bed in this room and had just returned with the necessary supplies to perform the curse. Remus was about to confront the stranger, when Peter attacked him from behind. Unable to move, Remus had to watch as Peter grovelled before the stranger, begging to be accepted back into the Dark Lords ranks again, grateful that the stranger had apprehended his nemesis Sirius. The stranger laughed and told him he had just the right task for him – perfect for the coward he was."
Naenia opened her eyes again and shrugged. "Everything after that is a chaotic mess. I think it would be best to erase Remus' memory and pretend he was never here."
Lynea blinked. "What? Why?"
Naenia slowly rose and came over to lay a gentle hand on her shoulder. "The mental strain would be too much. And the Ministry doesn't need to know there was a witness this time."
"What about Pettigrew?"
"They won't be interested to hear he is alive. All the Ministry will want to hear is that Sirius Black is dead. I assume they will spin his death as a success for the Dementors, make his death into a Dementor's Kiss. The public can't know about the twenty-one victims of a murder series they haven't been able to stop so far. There will be enough backlash about the ethics of the Dementor's Kiss."
Lynea couldn't argue with that. It was how the Ministry operated.
"Do you think I should tell Harry?" she asked. "About Pettigrew being the real traitor."
Naenia tilted her head. "He has a right to know, doesn't he? But I am unwilling to let your involvement be known. I do not want the old man questioning you."
"He will talk to Harry," Lynea said. "He already did it before. And Black was Harry's godfather."
"Do you think he would allow you to be present for that?"
"Probably not." Lynea sighed. "He has already made up his mind about me – which hopefully means he will leave me alone in the future – but I think he still hopes to have control over Harry, although I do not know why he needs to influence him."
"He is the Boy Who Lived," Naenia said. "That alone is reason enough. Harry's name holds power. And should the Dark Lord return one day, everyone's eyes will be on him. Dumbledore would never let such a valuable pawn out of his grasp. He may mean well and only have good intentions in mind, but," she sighed, "I just greatly dislike the old man."
Lynea personally did not like Dumbledore very much, but she wouldn't say she disliked him, either. It was his actions she disliked, not the man himself. She didn't care about the man – he was just another living being that did not matter to her on a personal level.
"But Harry is only a child," she said. "No one can expect him to face the Dark Lord of all people."
"Everyone with an ounce of sense can see that," Naenia said and then laughed. "But people are often blind to the most obvious things, blind to fame and reputation. Harry defeated a powerful dark wizard as a baby – why shouldn't he do it again as a teenager?"
"Why should he do it at all?" Lynea muttered.
"Now," Naenia said and there was an odd gleam in both her and Marin's eyes. "How about you show me that fascinating cloak you have been holding in your hands all this time?"
AN
Is there actually a reason for Harry to personally fight Voldy before the Prophecy gets revealed?