Lesson 7: The Crowned Palace

June to July 1997

Harry would never be able to look at Draco the same way again. Harry couldn't even bear to look at Draco at all as it was. He had done that. He was responsible for Draco's death. It might have been an accident but this was worse, so much worse than the prisoners Professor Totengräber had instructed him to kill.

Draco had not deserved this.

He was so … different, now.

You wouldn't notice if you hadn't known him well, but Harry did.

Professor Totengräber had told Harry this was part of what it meant to die and return. She was of the opinion it would have been the perfect opportunity for Harry's first personal Inferius. She said it would have been easier that way. But, alas, the timing had not been right. A personal Inferius was special, after all, and Harry was not yet experienced enough to create one all on his own – or at all, for that matter.

Harry didn't think it would have helped, but Harry also had to admit he couldn't possibly know that, having only watched the process the one time.

It did not help matters that Snape had died the very same day Harry had m– the same Draco had died. Of course, no one outside the little group of necromancers actually knew about his death, for the ones to find the body had been Fawley and Lémure (having sensed it, Harry assumed) and they had brought Snape back the very same day.

When asked, a dead Snape reluctantly told them about the Unbreakable Vow he had made to protect Draco. In which he had ultimately failed because of Harry. Which meant Harry was indirectly responsible for his death, too.

It was somewhat absurd to look at the man who had tormented Harry half his life, who, unlike Draco, acted almost exactly like he had in life – and imagine him dead by his own hand.

He didn't know whether the guilt he felt was justified or not.

The guilt he felt over Draco was worse.

Draco would never be able to grow fully into adulthood, now. At least Snape had already been well past his youth.

The reason Snape showed no change whatsoever was not because he remained unchanged by death, but because Lémure was apparently excellent at giving specific orders to make the man act like his former self. Harry did not quite understand how this worked so well, but he didn't want to, either. Seeing the differences in Draco no matter how much Harry avoided him was bad enough. He didn't need to witness how death had changed Snape of all people.

On top of all of that Dumbledore's health had worsened further.

Harry had gone to his office shortly after Draco's death to tell the headmaster that Voldemort was blackmailing Draco into killing him. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop, but the moment he had opened the door a slit, Professor Totengräber's voice had reached his ears, making him pause.

(He had forgotten to knock, idiot that he was.)

"This has been going on for too long already, Albus. Did you not call me here to give you a peaceful death? Does clinging to this painful, cursed existence not defy the very reason I am here?"

Professor Dumbledore's voice had sounded so incredibly tired. "It is only for a few more weeks, Sephoneia. Only until the end of the school year."

"You should have succumbed to it months ago, Albus. This unnecessary agony is bad for your soul. At least tell me you paid Gellert a visit. You owe him that much."

"I did. Of course, I did. How could I not?"

Harry had quietly closed the door after that and left. He was fairly sure Professor Totengräber had known he was there, though Dumbledore, surprisingly, must have been unaware. Surely, he would have later asked why Harry had been meaning to see him, had he noticed.

What would happen to the school after Dumbledore's death?

Harry couldn't imagine Voldemort would let an opportunity like this slide. It worried him – the thought of Death Eaters roaming the halls of his first true home.

Suffice it to say, Harry's last month at Hogwarts was utterly miserable.

o

Albus Dumbledore died just before the last days of the school term, at some point during the final exams. It seemed he hadn't made it until the holidays, after all.

A group of Death Eaters somehow managed to use the ensuing chaos to sneak into Hogwarts, but they had the misfortune of running into Professor Totengräber. Harry, having likely been the intended target – or so he thought – could only stand back and watch in fascinated horror as the Death Eaters metaphorically buried their own graves, not realising the old woman was clearly playing with her prey.

One of them even had the audacity to send the Killing Curse her way.

Sephoneia Totengräber merely tilted her head and languidly raised a hand to casually flick the spell away.

Harry stared at her.

The Death Eater stared at her.

Everyone else was probably staring at her, too.

"You look like someone with an incredibly high fear of Death," Professor Totengräber said, her tone curious. "Just like your vol de mort, hm? But you needn't be afraid of Him." Her mouth widened into a smile. "He will welcome you with open arms."

Well. Suffice it to say, they didn't tell anyone about it. Harry got to watch first-hand how one raised Inferi without the necessary preparations, even got a lecture about all the differences it would make short-term and long-term and then the other teachers and some curious students that had noticed the racket arrived. The Ministry was informed. The Death Eaters were arrested and Professor Totengräber didn't even have to do anything to convince the Aurors no trials were necessary, send to Azkaban immediately, thank you.

Once there, no one would bat an eye at some slowly decomposing, animated corpses that would soon stop working as Professor Totengräber hadn't even bothered making them long-lasting. (She certainly could have, even with the limited time and tools available.)

As far as last-minute lessons went, this one had been fairly eye-opening on so many levels.

The entire incident was unsurprisingly swept under the rug and the funeral for Albus Dumbledore was held as scheduled on the last day of school at the Lémures' cemetery. There had been talk of burying Dumbledore on Hogwarts grounds, but the Lémures had graciously offered their services – a privilege granted to only a selected few.

Harry felt oddly detached from it all. He wasn't part of the preparations (thank someone!), but he could picture it all in his head – from the first stasis spells down to the last ritual to ensure a safe passage into the afterlife.

No one would ever be able to raise Albus Dumbledore from the dead.

A great many people attended the funeral. More would have come, surely, had the Lémures not limited the invitations. Harry recognised only a few – the Minister, some members of the Order of the Phoenix, the Weasleys, Madame Maxime, a couple of shopkeepers from Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade.

There were no seats, so they all assembled in a loose half-circle around the casket in which Albus Dumbledore lay. As expected of the Lémures, his body looked to be in perfect condition, healthy, peaceful, as if he were merely asleep. Even his blackened, dead hand had been restored.

Harry could feel the magic lining the casket's wood, even though the spells had been masterfully hidden from any casually observing eyes.

Fawkes was perched on top of the open lid, head bowed.

A Lémure stood next to it – the sister of Professor Totengräber's son-in-law Harry would later learn, Fawley and Lémure's great-grandaunt – and held a tasteful eulogy.

There was another speech from some tufty-haired man Harry barely paid attention to, for it was so bland and impersonal, it paled in comparison to the carefully prepared eulogy that had come before.

Then the lid was lowered, the casket closed securely and an orderly procession formed.

"He would have preferred to be buried next to his sister and his mother," Fawley commented as they followed the casket down to the tomb that would henceforth house Albus Dumbledore's remains, Fawkes circling above them, singing a mournful tune.

"But people think he deserved more prestige?" Harry asked.

Fawley nodded. "It's why they were so insistent on Hogwarts until the Lémures offered."

"Why not let that happen?"

Fawley gave him a look. If not for the circumstances making her act in an appropriate matter, Harry was sure she would have laughed at him. "How presumptuous that would have been." She turned her gaze back to the procession. "Hogwarts has seen many great headmasters in the thousand years it has been standing. Albus Dumbledore was just one of them."

Having only the portraits from the headmaster's office for comparison, Harry had nothing to say to that.

After, Harry and Theodore and Fawley and Lémure remained behind with Professor Totengräber and her Grim while the other guests all left one by one.

This was their last lesson, after all.

Harry didn't know why he had been instructed to bring his Invisibility Cloak. (He didn't want to wear it. He hadn't touched it since that day in the bathroom.) He didn't understand, either, why Professor Totengräber handed him a small, black stone with an eye-shaped symbol and what looked suspiciously like Dumbledore's wand.

Theodore did not receive any special objects.

"These rituals are best conducted under lunar eclipses, but that is not a necessary requirement," Professor Totengräber told them as she walked with them up the hill towards the big house overlooking the cemetery on one side and a dark, ominous forest on the other. "This is a lesson I will not teach you, myself, so there is not much I have to say. Just remember that Death decides which parts of His Realm you have to traverse before reaching the throne room – the Endless, the Abyss, the White Tomb – and no words shall be spoken in Death's Realm unless He addresses you directly."

For a short moment, Harry thought their teacher was telling them they were going to die. But then he realised what was actually going to happen was a ritual to safely send them to Death's Realm and back.

"This is where we will part ways," Professor Totengräber said at the top of a staircase hidden behind a bookshelf in the impressively large Lémure library.

"You're not going to participate in the ritual?" Harry asked.

The old woman shook her head. "I am returning home. I believe we won't see each other again." She smiled. "Unless you come to visit, of course."

"It was good to learn under you," Theodore said, bowing his head.

"I – Yes," Harry said, "I'm grateful for the lessons. I – Before you leave, there was a question I wanted to ask."

"Come, Theo," Lémure said. "We can start with you while Harry says goodbye."

Harry watched the two of them descend the stairs, then blinked as he realised he couldn't see Fawley anywhere. He hadn't noticed her leaving their side.

"Your question, Harry?"

"Oh, right." Harry blinked. "There is a Prophecy. About me and Voldemort."

"What kind of prophecy?"

"It says –"

"Ah, the 'spoken by a Seer' kind. Don't trust those. They're always self-fulfilling. Better to ignore them entirely. You are better off using literally any other kind of divination."

Harry blinked. Closed his mouth.

This shouldn't have come as a surprise, he thought. He remembered Dumbledore saying something similar to him once. When he had first learned about the prophecy, yes.

"I see …"

"Worry not about it, little one," Professor Totengräber said, putting a finger under his chin to guide his gaze up to hers, "for you are destined for greater things."

Then she patted him on the cheek and turned around to leave without another word, Inpu faithfully following on her heels.

Harry watched her go, then descended down the stairs into the basement that made up the so-called North Wing of the house.

Antheraea Lémure was waiting for him outside one of the many doors, waving him inside a large room housing too many undead Lémures for Harry's comfort (and no Theodore anywhere in sight) with only a large stone basin in the middle, carved with intricate symbols that spread out through the room.

"You will know what to do," Antheraea told him as she handed him a ritual dagger and a vial filled with purified water. For once, she wasn't wearing gloves.

Harry looked down at the blade, then up at the group of Lémures surrounding the rune circles on the floor.

Slowly, carefully, Harry stepped into the middle. He had never performed blood magic before, but he was fairly sure he did not need to do that. Spilling his blood on the floor, he watched it follow the pattern to the outer circles to where the other necromancers were standing, watching, waiting, offering their own blood.

Antheraea came forward to ignite the stone basin with blue flames and Harry fed it with some more of his blood before she wrapped a bandage around his hand. From the basin with the cold flames, Harry collected ashes and bones to scatter over the circles on the floor, adding a few drops of purified water.

Harry closed his eyes, listening to the necromancers chanting in a language long forgotten, feeling the magic rise and ebb all around him and come to greet and welcome Death in their midst.

When he opened his eyes again, Harry found himself in a realm of absolute silence and blinding white light. Surrounded by frost and snow on all sides, the air bitterly cold, all Harry could see were dead things. Dead trees. Unmoving skeletons. Lonely headstones peeking out from underneath the thick blanket of snow here and there and even inside the frozen-solid lake, between sharp stones protruding like spears ready to pierce you.

Not even his footsteps made any sounds. The ice didn't crack under his feet. The skeletons' bones did not rattle as they moved their heads to watch him pass by.

Harry was sure his lungs would have hurt from the icy air – had he needed to breathe in the first place.

There was no path for him to follow, but Harry somehow knew he would reach his goal eventually, no matter which direction he went.

He didn't know how long he kept walking through the winter landscape until he found himself in a forest of dead trees, leafless and old and gnarly, more headstones and a few crosses nestled between their thick roots.

Harry passed through a stone arch and found himself in an open field of nothing, the endlessly blue, cloudless sky above and the vast, hard-packed, dull grey earth below.

It might have taken him longer to pass through this endless space, it might have taken the same amount of time. Harry couldn't tell. He never even noticed the scenery changing until he suddenly stood at the edge of a deep ravine, a steep and narrow slope winding down, down, down in front of him, surrounded by skeleton creatures perched all along the earthen walls.

At the bottom of the slope, Harry found himself in a desert of sorts, a forlorn city with a crown-like, palace just visible on the horizon, painted white against the dark grey clouds.

The city was old and crumbled to the bare skeletons of what might have once been magnificent buildings and massive pillars reaching high into the sky. The palace stretched into all directions, simple and unadorned yet of an unrivalled splendour that didn't seem out of place at all surrounded by the ruins of a civilisation that had never been.

The massive wooden doors were as heavy as they looked, barely creating an opening big enough for Harry to slip inside into the labyrinth of corridors beyond.

The Throne Hall would be next, Harry reflected. The last destination on his journey.

I think not, whispered a voice in his ear and Harry took a sharp breath in surprise and opened his eyes in the world of the living.

End of Part 1

AN

And that wraps up year 6. Next chapter will begin part 2.