Chapter 8
Hogwarts, A Mystery
Harry showed up at Hogwarts later in the day, looking extremely rough; his hair windswept, hands blistered, hobbling on a raw and tender ankle and holding a bound, gagged and thoroughly pissed off Padma Weasley. On the other side of the scales, he was accompanied by two immaculately dressed witches in matching pastel dresses; one blue, one grey.
"Tori and Tonks are with Romilda in the infirmary – it's... well it's not good but she's stable. No – don't you dare, Harry," Daphne said, putting an arm up against his chest as he unceremoniously dropped Padma and started to turn toward the Grand Staircase, the bounded woman falling gracelessly to the floor in a painful and undignified heap.
"Hoggy will let them know you're back, but Astoria doesn't need the added pressure just now. Let them work in peace and we'll deal with..." she looked down at Padma, grimacing and poking at her gingerly with one booted toe. "With this. The dungeons?"
Harry shrugged, then after another thought shook his head. "No, Filch's old office. It's less a pain to get to and I'm pretty sure the chains are all still there. Good a place as any, no need for theatrics."
Daphne gave him a tight lipped smile, then looked him over again; her expression thawing. "Sit down love, you two as well. Merlin, you look frozen half to death, Harry. What on earth happened?"
"I rode up the length of the country with a sticking charm on my back to the roof of a train carriage," he grumbled, then grabbed one of four cups of tea, already poured, that appeared in front of them. The two girls giggled and Harry shot them an annoyed look. "They rode first-class. Not like I could take Padma inside, even with notice-me-nots; couldn't risk it."
"Nothing we didn't deserve, Wight was dreadfully dull."
"I'd rather not go back."
Daphne wrung her hands, and her eyes kept drifting out of the Great Hall, off in the direction of the hospital wing. Harry took a breath – Daphne had been right to tell him to let Astoria and Tonks work in peace, but apparently she had a harder time taking her own advice.
"Sit down, dearest," He said softly, pushing one of the cups in her direction. "Hoggy!" The elf appeared. "Please take our...guest to Filch's old office... you do know which room that is? It's on the sec-"
"On the second floor, next to the western landing before the girls' toilets," Hoggy finished with a low bow. "Hoggy is knowing all the names of rooms from before Hoggy's time, Headmaster."
"Very good," Harry replied, admittedly impressed. "Use the chains, and keep an eye on her – if she so much as wriggles out of a single loop I want to know at once."
The elf disappeared, Padma in tow with one last impotent glare before she popped away. Harry ran a hand gingerly through his worse-for-the-wear hair. "I'll need the sword, and probably need to take a crack at Legilimency, but bugger if I'm doing that right now." He took a deep gulp of tea, then looked back at Daphne. "I almost splinched myself you know; my feet – you were right, no more apparition for me without a good night's rest."
"At least we didn't get burned to death by the Fiendfyre," blue dress pointed out not-at-all helpfully.
But Daphne was staring at him in shock, warnings of splinches forgotten in the face of this new revelation.
"I didn't think you could? Oh, goodness!" She sounded more awed than upset.
Harry looked away. "Not alone, I didn't. We didn't have many options. 'Twin Magic' was a bust – no offense –" he turned to his other two companions, who didn't seem to care one way or the other, then continued, "whatever George knew or did wasn't repeatable. Anyway, they summoned it, I just controlled it when it got too much."
Daphne raised an eyebrow at the two witches. They shrugged. "Auntie taught us."
"We were supposed to use it on Harry, not for him. But close enough."
"Does Newport even exist anymore?" Daphne asked, looking a little ill. "I mean, I didn't precisely like anyone there, I'll grant you, but even so." She sounded quite faint. Harry quickly shook his head. "Newport's fine. We hit The Burrow. Got Mrs. Weasley out first though, although that reminds me."
Harry rummaged around for a minute in his robe pockets and eventually pulled out something about the size of a matchbox. With a swish and flick, a battered and charred grandfather clock stood beside Harry, with an assortment of bronze clock hands on its face mostly pointing to 'mortal peril'.
"I didn't keep it in my pocket the whole ride up, not with how sloppy my charm was after everything," Harry defended before anyone could ask. "Stuck it to the carriage roof as well – shrinking charm still held up the whole way though," he finished proudly.
"Why don't we start from the beginning, Daphne suggested, finally sitting down and holding her mug in both hands in front of her, like a shield against the inevitable incoming insanity.
"Right, so..."
The distance from Newport to Yarmouth wasn't particularly far; only about ten miles, but more than far enough that Harry wasn't going to be apparating there - certainly not if he needed to be fit for a fight not long after. Instead, he had hailed one of the few muggle cabs in town and made the drive, looking out the window at the mundane muggle seaside town blissfully unaware of the madness that lurked beneath it.
"First time here, then?"
"Yes."
"Thought so. Nice day for a lookabout – won't be a long drive though."
Harry nodded, his thoughts chaotic as old feelings of protectiveness flared up and dare he say even some nostalgia for the early days of the death curse, the last time his life had been such a whirlwind. When, in unlikely lurches, what had come to be his family had formed, leading him down to this blasted place to defend it.
Harry was well aware that Ron and Hermione had raised more than an eye between them upon their discovery of Harry's living arrangements. Which, to be fair, had been the point when he'd dumped it on them like a bucket of cold water, appearing in the Great Hall with a Greengrass on either arm. He had intended to keep Tonks a secret for awhile longer truth be told, to really hit them with a double whammy right when they thought they were back on an even keel, but Hermione's declaration that she knew he had a son and that said son was being targeted with dark magic had made him play that card a little earlier than hoped.
He suspected by now that the rest of the Weasleys, and soon enough the rest of the magical community on Wight would be treated to stories of what a colossal pervert Harry had become, master of his hedonist Hogwarts harem.
The truth, as it always was, had been a bit more complicated. Even if he could admit he didn't have much to complain about with the results.
Harry's experiences with the Greengrass girls at school had been one where he had done his best not to think about them at all; they were both unpleasant but so far down the list of people to worry about that in truth they had hardly ever even registered. Like complaining about the weather being a bit chilly after taking a third bludger to the face during an early morning Quidditch practice. With Snape's day-to-day unpleasantness to deal with before the big buildup to whatever Voldemort had planned for the year, and Malfoy worming his antagonistic presence into any remaining space... whoever was cackling behind Parkinson's robes simply didn't register as anyone to get het up about.
Then about four months after the death curse had hit, at a low point where he and Romilda were doing their best not to think about how the new Hogwarts term should be starting now but never would, Daphne had come to him. As sick and off-putting as she had been as a school girl, her clothes had at least always been perfectly pressed and cleaned but were now wrinkled and foul, her hair not just stringy and brittle but matted and unkempt, face hollowed out beyond the worst of her worst spells in the hospital wing and most astonishing of all: on bent knee begging Harry to take them in.
Her parents, with a keen grasp for their own well-being and sensing that the second order effects of magic in Britain falling would be very bad indeed, had decided to skip the mad rush down to Wight and go straight for refuge on the continent. A rather precognizant decision, given that not three days after they came to that conclusion, the metaphorical walls had gone up; walls that not so metaphorically had been maintained to this day, barring a few shady opportunists in various foreign bureaucracies who saw a chance to work outside the confines of official policy to rake in an absolutely obscene fortune of abandoned British wizarding wealth in exchange for criminals and trinkets.
With so little time to spare, however; there simply hadn't been time to make the escape and bring along two sickly girls, bedridden at best and their overflowing trunks of expensive potions now failing one after another. Instead, they had been left behind with the less portable familial heirlooms and the old Greengrass House Elf and left to die. What had been at least a fairly peaceful and pampered decline to death had come to an abrupt halt when two moons later dear old Mopsy had disappeared, leaving the two girls dying an inch at a time in their own home with nobody but themselves for company and care.
Then, cursing her lot beside her sister with every oath she knew, Daphne had caught a glimpse of a figure out her window, a very familiar boy who was flying over Hogsmeade. She had tried to get his attention, struggling to open the window and croak out into the void. It had not had any effect. But crucially, she had seen him fly off back in the direction of Hogwarts.
And so three days later, she had all but crawled from Hogsmeade to the castle gates, asking him to help her or at least help Astoria, or if failing that then just please, by Merlin, kill them.
Harry had not known all of that at the time but found out over the coming weeks, when he had at first against his judgment taken Daphne in. Hoggy had alerted him of her arrival and she had made her oath at the gate; by the time Harry had carried her back into the castle and marveled at how she weighed next to nothing, he had actually checked for a feather-weight charm. But it had not been an elaborate ruse, so reduced to skin and bones she had been. He had carried her to the infirmary, and it had been the first time he had actually sought out Romilda, asking her to look after the girl while he went to find Astoria.
Daphne had not actually told him which house had been hers, but the Point-Me spell was one he had plenty of use with and he did know who he was looking for. And so, still half-suspecting this could in fact all be one last ditch trick by any remaining Death Eaters, he had found Astoria: half-comatose and looking more like a broken bird than even the frail girl he had left back at Hogwarts. The house, once clearly one of the more grand estates in Hogsmeade, ranged between abandoned to filthy, stocks of potions reduced not only to impotent but to befouled.
He and Romilda had taken care of them, which had been an accomplishment and a half in its own right. And the girl who had been the overzealous fangirl who he probably would have been (and should have been) a little more annoyed about over the previous love potion attempt if her affections had not been so one-dimensional in their transparency, competency, and purpose... had become the person he had to rely on to do something that actually mattered. Romilda to her credit had stepped up beyond all expectations. She had become he suddenly realized one day, his friend.
But Daphne and Astoria had been something else; the near death experience and the sudden driving impetus to be doing something good had forged a bond between him and them; and Romilda and them, such that the dynamics of the four of them for a time almost felt like the Greengrasses were the glue to their band of survivors, a higher purpose around whom Harry's and Romilda's friendship, while growing, was centered upon. Dependent upon. The Greengrass girls' sickness had forced them to confront their vulnerability as a proxy for the initial building blocks of trust and eventually they told Harry about their Blood Curse. Thus the beginning of Harry's studies into the subject which occupied much of his time in the library and thoughts of spell creation to this day.
Ironically, the curse whose existence had defined the course of events over six months began to alleviate for no apparent reason that they could figure beyond the death magic, and the Greengrasses' path to recovery became one of overcoming their physical and emotional neglect than an unsolvable magical malady. When Romilda had eventually decided she needed to try and find her family, Daphne had come to him in a panic and begged that he not consider offering the same to them.
For one, the desire to see her parents – who were likely not even in Britain anymore – was simply not there. And two, for all the problems caused by the death curse; it, along with Harry's and Romilda's care had given them a new lease on life. A second chance that did not like much of how she had spent her first one. By now they knew Harry was special, and who could say if losing proximity to either him or the magics of Hogwarts or even proximity to where the death curse had started would simply lead to their relapse? Best not to risk it, and what a burden that was to endure!
None of them truly needed outside reasons to stay together. If not love yet, fondness certainly had crept into his heart, and theirs. Months passed, one thing led to another. Perhaps a natural growth of the mutual holes they filled in each other's lives, perhaps simply an opportunistic result of having nobody else, they had grown closer. And eventually, the two sisters who had shared a curse, a death, and a rebirth, brought up sharing Harry, too. If this was really to be their future, marooned on an island in a sea of death, then let them at least all live it together.
But by then, there was a complication. A Tonks-sized complication.
Tonks had been at the battle of Hogsmeade of course, had witnessed Remus cut down by her mad aunt; Bellatrix howling in delight at killing "Sirius' nasty mutt" and who had been gaining the upper-hand on a shell-shocked Tonks when the death magic had roared through Hogsmeade, an invisible wave that had physically thrown her to the ground, followed by the awful sensation that something beyond her comprehension was sucking her down into the center of the earth. Or at least taking everything that made Tonks, Tonks.
She had come to, head ringing like a bell and feeling very shaky to the sound of Bellatrix letting out a pained shriek and clawing savagely at her own arm, alarm ringing out even above the choir of groans that filled Hogsmeade now, the dying and the – she would soon learn - death magic'd.
Tonks' recollections were blurry after that she had recalled to Harry, and the penseive – even when working – did not do well with memories surrounding The Event. She only recalled the general sense that everyone assumed – correctly, as it turned out – that Voldemort had obviously done something. That the Death Eaters had somehow borne the worst of what was a thoroughly unpleasant experience for everyone. And that in the land of the incapacitated, the merely tremendously inconvenienced are kings.
Someone had finally had the wherewithal to try and actually curse the Death Eaters before they recovered. The spell hadn't just failed, it had simply ceased to be: the wand as dead as a twig. A second wave now rippled throughout Hogsmeade, of fear and fury as more wands were waved at their tormentors and all proved to be as useless as a muggle child brandishing a stick.
Centuries of magical tradition and – even among those who were not Death Eaters – sense of superiority compared to mundane muggle methods of solving problems – went flying out the window in two seconds, as the crowd lurched towards the Death Eaters and then began to pick up steam and simply tore them apart limb for limb. Only Bellatrix had managed to escape, because only Bellatrix had managed to fire a single killing curse into the crowd before fleeing; her own shambling attempt to flee successful for the fear it inflicted when the witch leading the charge against her had been cut down by the curse.
But soon after, the bloodlust began to dim as the obvious targets were removed from the mortal coil and magic still did not return. Fury turned to panic. Not all at once: on day one, the response had been to play it off for laughs; there was no real belief the loss could be permanent, just some dirty trick that would disappear when they woke up the next morning, all of it gone like a bad dream. The second day had been tenser, nobody wanting to speak aloud about the fears now wafting through the denizens of Hogsmeade like a thick fog.
Tonks, hearing nothing from London and deciding keeping an eye on things in town was the best thing she could do, had stayed behind, feeling the pall falling down upon them. She had found and recovered Remus' body and finding nobody else taking charge of such things, buried him herself. She had wept, and turned in early. On day three, a trickle of early birds heading southward quickly turned into a flood; accusations had turned away from the dead Death Eaters and were now lobbied towards anyone in throwing distance, toward the other living denizens of Hogsmeade, and when one wizard loudly declared his intention to apparate at once to the Ministry and get an answer, only to fall down splinched to death in the exact same spot he'd started in, any sense of good order had vanished. Someone managed to get a flame going in the floo of the post office and things might have gone alright then, until later that afternoon two witches stepped in and simply burned to death when the flames flared green. By day four, the living population of Hogsmeade was two sickly witches, although Tonks had been unaware of that.
Tonks, her father a Muggle-born, was one of the few who had been in Hogsmeade with such parentage – the enclave was fairly self-selecting towards isolationist Pure-bloods and her presence in town was fluke rather than fortune. In the pack of wizards and witches reduced to fleeing on foot, she had headed straight for the nearest muggle road, and by a stroke of luck was able to hitchhike in the back of a muggle lorry to Fort William. She eventually arrived in Oxford to find her mother's house dead and deserted. Unlike Romilda's family though, Andromeda and baby Teddy had not been waiting on Wight – or anywhere else, apparently – ready for a happy reunion.
A widow, an orphan, a bereaved mother, and lost within herself without her bodies, Tonks had not lasted long on Wight. She had gone back to London just long enough to regret doing so, then she had headed back north; struggling against the headwinds of the curse but eventually making it into the highlands, the instinct to solve what had happened stoking a need within her. At least she was still an Auror, and that's what Aurors did.
Without floo nor apparition, getting back to Hogsmeade was not an easy task – as Ron and Hermione eventually found out years later. She had been tramping around in the highlands all around the town without finding it until on Christmas Day, Harry had seen her from the air and after realizing who it was, had rescued her from frustrating weeks of aimless wondering around at the edge of Hogsmeade's protections. Of course Harry Potter had survived and been up here the whole time, Tonks had laughed without humor. Hogsmeade had aged a decade in mere months and Harry had explained that he had buried the remaining corpses and – somewhat guiltily – admitted to doing quite a bit of pillaging, but could offer little more in the way of explanation as to what had happened.
Then Romilda left shortly after. Harry was lonely and goodness knows Tonks was. Grieving and lost, feeling removed from her own self and as she had admitted to him later, dare she say it was going a bit mental. He was a friendly familiar face, all that remained of the world she had left behind. And the relationship he was developing with the Greengrasses was still in its infancy; both girls far too vulnerable physically and emotionally to seriously consider anything more than careful flirtations and gentle affirmations of growing affection.
She'd brought a bottle of Ogden's best that she'd found in McGonagall's office with her to Madam Pomfrey's old quarters, where Harry had been sleeping while the Greengrasses were still staying in the infirmary. She – they – hadn't needed it. It hadn't been a particularly earth-shattering experience for either of them; had in more ways than one been extremely awkward the next morning: he was an adult now but she still felt skeezy about it, and the ghosts (metaphorically at least, all the ghosts having gone the way of the House Elfs) of two of the Marauders didn't help matters... but this was the closest to alive she'd felt in some time, even with the guilt, and it was clear to Harry she wasn't going to stop now if he didn't put a stop to it himself. He didn't put a stop to it.
Then, he'd accepted he'd fallen in love with the Greengrass sisters, because of course he had. And alone with three witches who encompassed his world, he'd delayed and searched for ways to be greedy and get away with it.
In another world, none of this would have happened at all. In another, he'd have had to make a choice and someone would have ended up heartbroken. But in this shattered place and time, where all the hearts had already been shattered at least once, there was an opportunity for a third way. And, one night when Harry had gone to bed to plot his next move, Tonks snuck out and had it out with Daphne and Astoria, all of them knowing full well the dilemma Harry had built for himself, and decided that they might as well solve it for him.
She suspected, though only confided to Harry once many months later, that they'd been more or less ready to share Harry with a third anyway; although it was only by sheer dumb luck that it was she who now held that coveted spot, and not Romilda. Daphne and Astoria loved Romilda as much as they loved Harry, and her departure had left a Milly sized hole that Tonks had had the opportunity to make whole. She had leapt for it without looking back.
An unlikely tale. An outcome that relied on the currents of time, the threads of fate to wave and weave in some very unexpected ways. But it was where they were. Needless to say, there were mixed feelings all around regarding the death magic.
The last two members of their little group though were a stranger tale, because although they didn't not, not love Harry – and he could admit he was getting a bit of a big head for treating that like some guaranteed expectation – but rather they openly appeared to reject the lifestyle the rest of the group had fallen into at Hogwarts, even if they never did anything so bold as to actually leave. Or for that matter, even request an invitation to stay in the first place.
"I'm not giving up the greenhouse, I put a lot of work into it," one would say.
"You'll never get anywhere with reinventing potions without me," the other would declare.
"Here we are, Quay Street, Yarmouth."
"Ta."
Harry stepped out the cab, paying the driver with notes he barely glanced at, then walked briskly into the seventeenth century townhouse-turned-hotel. He didn't bother knocking, he simply swept open the door to the ocean-view room Tonks had given him the number to with an Alohamora on his lips and a casual flick of his wand. Inside came two indignant yelps, identical except one half a second later than the other.
Two mostly identical girls lounged in the room, both with mostly identical expressions of annoyance. One was lying on her stomach on one of the two twin beds, legs swinging in the air and reading a magazine, and wearing a pastel grey dress. The other, sitting primly next to the window overlooking the sea, in a matching dress of blue. Both dresses were brand new, and if Harry had to guess came from one of the seaside boutiques whose boxes and bags haphazardly filled the room.
"It's very rude to just waltz in like that," the girl on the bed sniffed. She turned back to her magazine, idly flipping a page, dismissing him. A giant pile of clothes were scattered all around her.
"What's all this, then?" Harry replied, gesturing vaguely to the pile and somewhat surprised by the mess. He knew that they considered muggle money to be make-believe, but he hadn't thought Yarmouth – or even Newport – would have had the shops for indulging them.
The girl by the window shrugged, still staring out at the sea. "Muggle nonsense, mostly. We didn't have anything better to do. It's been boring. You can vanish it away if you like, I don't care for any of it."
"Me neither," the girl on the bed agreed. "The dresses are fine I suppose. But everything else, I feel silly having even bought it. Muggle junk. Really."
"Knock it off, both of you," Harry snapped, then took a breath. They didn't know just what the hell was going on. "Did you get my Patronus?"
"Yes, we're here aren't we? Haven't left the room all day."
"We didn't even go down to the water. What was the point of even coming here?"
"They hurt Milly. She's – Daphne and Tonks are rushing her back to Hogwarts, but it's really bad."
That got their attention, two almost identical heads snapping towards him, ennui melting off them in an instant like an ice floe before a dragon's breath.
"We have to go, but I need to capture Padma or George Weasley first – they've done some ritual with each of their twins' corpses to create some sort of four-bodied immortal monster, and I need to know how to kill it." He paused. "Well, I probably already know that. I just need to know what I need to kill."
He took a breath. "George mentioned Twin Magic. That he could sense you were here because he should be able to see you but he couldn't, if that makes sense. Does that make sense to either of you?" His gaze shifted between the two of them and getting no sign of confirmation, he continued. "He called you the three-eyed snake."
Twin hisses at that.
Once upon a time, Hestia and Flora Carrow had been more than almost identical. More than the Patils, or Weasleys, or Spencers or Morgans, they had been the most difficult to distinguish twins at Hogwarts, made all the more difficult to tell apart for being so blandly pretty. Blue-grey eyes but not piercingly so. Pretty faces but perhaps a little too long, noses just a little too sharp to be truly breathtaking and not distinguishing enough to bring particular attention to themselves; just a Slytherin witch in a sea of green that happened to sometimes appear twice.
They had been quiet too, excelling in their preferred fields but hardly prodigies, nor were Herbology nor Potions the type of fields most students cared for much anyway, nothing a fellow student could grasp onto to really tell them apart at the acquaintance level.
They were significantly more distinguishable now. Flora wore an eye patch. It was not worn as a statement of taste.
"So, can you find them? I did a pretty good job wrecking both the already dead ones, but I need to get Padma or George alone. I assume they're at their shop – they had a real house of horrors under it, but I need to be sure and I need one of them gone."
Flora got up from the her seat and went over to the bed, whispering something very quickly to Hestia and softly enough that Harry couldn't catch it. Hestia tossed away her magazine onto the floor and responded in the same nonsensical whispers, the two in deep conversation made up of mumbles and puffs of air; Hestia's two eyes staring into Flora's one. Eventually, they both turned back to Harry.
Hestia's expression was sour. "We don't know what this so-say George of yours can or can't do," she admitted, as if she hadn't spent years at Hogwarts with the fairly unforgettable pair of Gryffindor twins.
Flora continued. "Maybe they have some unique power, maybe they did something to themselves in this ritual of theirs but we can't do anything like that."
"Maybe we could after a while," Flora pondered, scratching idly at her cheek where the edge of the eye patch rubbed against it. "But we haven't hardly been here, we don't know what to look for at all."
Harry sat down heavily on the bed next to Hestia, earning an indignant squeak from the girl. "So nothing then." He thought about it. "Well, I guess we can just attack the shop. Three against two, or three against four... three-and-a-half? Maybe I can get one of them alone long enough to use Legilimency."
"You know Legilimency?" Flora asked, sounding quite surprised.
Harry shrugged. "Not really, no. I've had it used on me though. I'll probably just turn my prisoner into a vegetable – what, do you know Legilimency?"
Hestia and Flora shared a look. "Only with one another," Hestia said after a moment. "We can... sort of push memories and thoughts into one another's heads, and if we're not careful we get flipped as to who's seeing what out of whose eyes."
"It's very disconcerting, with Flora's condition," Hestia added. Flora shrugged, rolling with that in surprisingly good grace.
Hestia elaborated further. "Even when we use it, we talk – we can't do it silently."
Harry stared. "So is that the weird whispering thing you do?"
Flora frowned. "We whisper? When."
"When you talk to each other, you did it just a few minutes ago."
"Oh... well yes then, I suppose. I had no idea, did you, Hestia?"
"No."
"Wait, wait we're getting ahead of ourselves – so you can do it, then. So if I were able to get Padma, could either of you look into her head?"
"No, we literally just told you we can't, you oaf!"
"We tried it once with a Hufflepuff third year. Nothing."
Harry suspected the third year hadn't been a volunteer. He let the oaf comment slide.
"Are we going somewhere with this?" Harry asked, irritably. Okay, maybe not slide entirely. He waved a hand. "Sorry. Sorry. It's just time is a bit crunched right now and I need information and then we need to get out of here. And we're supposed to not be doing anything that will make things harder for Susan Bones – long story, she just took over the island and we're sort of supporting her coup in the shadows."
"Your time here hasn't been dull then, unlike ours."
"Why don't we just kidnap Padma, then?"
Harry paused, shaking his head to try and clear the cobwebs. Why didn't they just do that? He could solve the tricky bits of the puzzle later, but getting Padma away from George would make interrogating her a lot easier. And, bonus, if he took her back to Hogwarts then he'd have the Sword of Gryffindor on hand, too.
"You know what? Yeh, let's do that. Two points to Flora. Still, would be better if we could get them apart."
"Is there anything that George would risk Padma for?"
"No – well, maybe. His mum."
Harry had felt very silly crouching behind the crumbling stone wall of The Burrow in his makeshift Death Eater robes, transfigured from a dress that one of the Carrow twins had purchased but insisted it must have been the other one. He suspected the Susan would know exactly who had done this anyway, 'Death Eater' robes or not. Hopefully they would at least give her enough cover to not undermine her fledgling, fragile rule too much and their shaky alliance would hold in spite of it.
And so operating on the premise that forgiveness can be negotiated more easily than permission, Harry had first run through a series of Point-Me spells to get an idea of who was inside The Burrow, and the on the admittedly incomplete knowledge that it was only Mrs. Weasley, he had set The Barrow on fire; easily enough destroying the protections around the house to then smash the window glass to ribbons, before finally lobbing balls of flame through into the vulnerable rooms full of wooden furniture and flammable linens.
But – and this was key – just regular fire. Step one, done.
He had summoned the Weasley grandfather clock; in part to offer a possible red herring to any investigation – not that after what they were about to do anyone would even have known it was missing, and half because he knew how precious it was to the Weasleys, Molly in particular, and he didn't want to see it needlessly destroyed. With a bit of luck, one day he'd have a plausible story with which to return it to them. It had come to him like a battering ram, and unfortunately on fire, something he had put out with an Augamenti and some choice curse words that were if incendiary at least not magically flammable.
And speaking of Molly Weasley, a minute later she rushed out the house, screaming in fright and desperately trying to cast a rather feeble stream of water from her wand.
Harry incarcerated her from across the garden and then summoned her to him, her eyes widening as she found herself flying towards three people in the infamous garb of Voldemort's followers.
"Is there anyone left inside the house?" Hestia had demanded. Harry, they had agreed, should keep silent.
Molly Weasley shook her head.
"Are you sure?" Hestia repeated. "It won't go well for them if they are. Best to tell us now."
Molly Weasley shook her head, more frantically this time.
They waited another thirty seconds just to be sure, but nobody came out. Harry stunned Molly Weasley and then held his wand up and hissed, Morsmordre.
Voldemort's skull was much more faded and sloppy than Harry recalled seeing it live; though whether that was because of the death magic's influence or his own inexperience with the spell, who could say? He certainly had no intention to practice it and take notes. Flora and Hestia now turned to The Burrow and in unison, he gambled and they summoned Fiendfyre. Harry kept a firm grip on Mrs. Weasley with one hand and with the other he was ready to grab the girls and apparate as far as he could should the flames escape the twins' control.
Fire bellowed from both girls' wands. A roiling pair of snakes that spiraled around one another, snapping all the while, transforming into Gemini, transforming into a hound and a hare; whose fire the predator and whose was pray shifting from one to another as the flames roiled and devoured themselves and raced towards the Weasley house. The girls were soon trembling, sweat lining the top of Flora's eye patch, but the fire held firm and began to devour The Burrow.
Now, the tricky part. The part where Harry had to take his hand off the escape hatch just long enough that the fire could make some fatal problems for them if it wanted to.
Harry, wedged between the girls, pulled out the Elder Wand and slashed not one palm but both in succession, shoving the wand back into his robes as quickly as possible and then as the flames began to coil into the Weasley house, he clasped one hand to each of the girls' wands, above their own hands and perilously close to the twin font of flames.
Hestia and Flora let out identical breaths the moment his hands wrapped around their wands and his blood began to flow; Harry at once felt his magic being sucked greedily in two directions, only to be burned and infused with sulfur and then re-enmeshed back together in a double helix of hellfire. His eyes shut tight and his jaw clenched, and inside Harry Potter began to count. One. Two. Three. His hands felt like they were being seared. Four. Five. His arms were being torn off, such was the strength of the torrent within him as the flames in their greed gorged themselves on his magic. Six. Seven. Twenty-three to go and then he would quench them. Eight.
He only got to Twenty, hopefully it would be enough. Blearily now, he could see The Burrow, almost shimmering as the air itself sizzled and wavered. He focused his will, slid his hands down to cup over the girls', felt Flora on one side and Hestia on the other, and as one they willed the Fiendfyre not to burn, but to extinguish.
It did, a dragon roaring in triumph against a multi-headed monster made of roses before a final flame tore through its throat, a great final spout of flame that was fed by the rest of the Fiendfyre until all had been spent in a final defiant roar, a charred corpse of a cottage left in its wake.
The plan had been that presumably, the Weasleys had some way of knowing if their home were under attack. Otherwise this was just a needless bit of arson and he'd have to make an awkward apology to Susan. Ideally, George would respond to the call, and Padma would remain where she were with the presumably extremely vulnerable corpses of Parvati and Fred; a triangulation of Point-Me spells on their way to The Burrow had given him a fair guess they were as expected still at their shop. Then when George and whoever else were here, Harry would be there and engage Padma alone while the other two got away. Harry would beat Padma, they would all make out like bandits and rendezvous for the trip North where they'd live happily ever after.
So for now, they waited, invisible, in a gully, The Burrow's remains in sight but not too close, and Molly stunned and bound but otherwise no worse for the wear.
What Harry had not expected but really should have been was for the entire Weasley brood to come down on his ears like an overturned hornet hive.
Arthur arrived first, with a dozen wizards and witches on the Axminster that Harry and Daphne had ridden the day before; given that said rug had last been in the possession of the Minister, who at the time had been Shacklebolt, Harry took this as an ill omen. He'd either managed to stick his wand right back into an open civil war, or even worse these were now Susan's team of people he was going to go to war with while the ink was still drying on the metaphorical parchment. They hopped off in a good show of order, wands out and eyes alert, Arthur barking orders while he choked at the sight of his house.
Percy of all people was next, coming up the hill looking quite out of breath despite riding a bicycle that was peddling itself at an impressive pace; given his position in the blood prison it made sense he enjoyed some perks as nice as that clever bit of enchantment. Ron and Hermione were running up the hill not long after, Ron's eyes wild and Hermione's suspiciously clear and, well, suspicious.
Bill was next, he came by foot like Ron and Hermione but with a supernatural speed and Harry was stunned at his first look at Bill – who should have still been a young man, if with unnatural quickness – looked even more ragged than he remembered Lupin looking at the end of sixth year. He had suspected that Bill and Fleur were somewhat estranged from the rest of the family; no details had been given but the subtext hadn't been precisely difficult to read and he assumed a situation similar to Percy's in fifth year had developed over something on Wight, himself being the most obvious flash point.
Clearly though, there was more going on with Bill than he'd thought, not all of it good. Still, just as clearly, when the chips were down, Bill was present in his family's presumed darkest hour (or rather, most recent darkest hour in an unfortunately long string of them).
And then finally, soaring in on a single broom and looking truly mad and murderous, George Weasley all but Wronksi Feinted himself into the dirt, leveling off at the last moment and dismounting in a single step; Padma, curse her thrice for being here as well, had been riding with him and debroomed a moment later far less gracefully when the broom came to a proper stop.
"Bugger," Harry whispered. Plan A was wrecked. Plan B was right out. Time for Plan Zed.
He cast a sonorous charm on the stupefied form of Molly Weasley and then enervated her. As was often the case, it took her a few seconds to realize she had been stunned in the first place, and a few more still to recollect the events that had occurred leading up to that.
Then, quite predictably she screamed.
Everyone turned toward the little gully that the invisible trio had been hiding in. They began to charge towards Molly's voice, even as Bill screamed out to be careful, that it could be a trap.
It was, but it wasn't an ambush. At least not for those coming towards them.
Flora and Hestia clung tightly to Harry, any aura of bored indifference long gone with almost a score of wizards and witches now looking for a fight. He focused on the spot he needed to go, on his target. Destination. Determination. Deliberation. Crack. Like clockwork. His positioning had been perfect and Harry landed directly on top of Padma, the combined weight of Harry and the Carrows knocking Padma down with little more resistance than a shocked oomph.
Molly's magnified screaming and the yelling of the would-be rescuers should have ensured they went unnoticed but George, with his sixth and possibly even seventh sense about all this, turned. His wand lashed out, face twisted in anger and then terror.
Team Harry had not been idle. Flora threw a blasting curse at the broom, which splintered at point-blank range. Hestia shot a ball of fire – real, mundane fire, but even so – at the old and patchy flying carpet. And then Harry apparated again, George's spell sizzling uselessly into the ground.
"A double apparition," Daphne murmured, taking another gulp of tea. "I understand, Harry, I do," she said, "but you really are lucky you weren't splinched." She reached out for his hand, stroking the tops of his fingertips. "I couldn't bear to lose you, even a part of you."
"We could have gotten side-along splinched, you know." Hestia pointed out, not particularly helpfully.
"I can't really afford to lose any more body parts," Flora added.
Daphne turned to the two of them, an approving smile brightening her face. "That was good thinking too, taking out the broom and carpet." Her expression turned a little sad. "It's a shame you couldn't have taken the Axminster as well – we could have all ridden it together on the weekends."
Harry shrugged, as much as he loved flying he had not been keen on the carpet. "Sorry, Daph. Maybe next time. But yes – after that madness it was fairly straightforward. I got us as far as the B&B from last night and I had reversed my feet even if not splinched them away entirely, thank goodness. Hestia fixed them but probably wouldn't hurt to have Astoria look at them, when she has the time. Then we hightailed it back to Portsmouth and got onto the first train heading North. In my case, on top of. Was around Sheffield that I was banging around on top of the train next to our... whatever Padma is now. When who should be running along side me but the bloody Knight Bus? Had no idea it could do that."
"Harry Potter, First Minister of Magic for Scotland and with a double decker bus for a familiar."
"Yes well it's the most wonderful bus in all the world," Harry said fondly. "I'd still be rattling along towards Glasgow right now without it."
Any further discussion on such topics was halted as Hoggy popped into the room. "Miss Hestia, Miss Flora, your beds have been prepared in the tower. Headmaster, the Lady Astoria Potter of the Scottish Royal House of Potter would like to see you at once."
"Oh, really." Daphne huffed. Harry put down his long since empty cup and stood up, letting out an indulgent chuckle.
"Today. Maybe tomorrow. But I'm not listening to any of that nonsense any longer than that." Daphne insisted. She stood up with him and pecked his cheek. "I'll go on up with the twins," she said.
"You can be Lady Slytherin, if you like?" Harry offered, lips quirking. Daphne scrunched her nose in distaste.
"Are you sure you want to go up? You can come with me if you like." Harry offered.
Daphne nodded. "Astoria needs you. I'll just be in the way." She touched his cheek as he made to protest. "I don't mean it like that – and you know it. Go on, be with your Lady Astoria, she's probably a wreck worrying about you. And I know you're beside yourself wondering about Milly." She made to push him towards the Grand Staircase. "We'll be fine. I have to check on James anyway. Be where you have to be, my love," she finished softly. Harry kissed her, tasting her lips one last time before he headed to the infirmary.