Chapter Twenty Five
There exists a special kind of shame that is hard to explain, unless one has experienced it themselves. It is a mixture of futility and degradation and acquaints one with a sense of utter defeat.
As I stand in the haphazard mess that constitutes my drawing room, it is this sense of shame that descends upon me. I feel the entirety of my past, with all its pretty, painted accouterments, vanish into nothingness: I am at Hogwarts again; I am helpless; I am forced to watch the people I love suffer through cruelties that no child ought to endure.
A frenzied work ethic had brought us salvation then.
But what salvation can there be against the strongest Dark Lord in history?
It is Daph who moves first.
She shambles towards the piano and supports herself against the lid. She grasps her wand between trembling fingers and unfreezes her sister. Then, with a sob, she springs forward and buries her face against Astoria's shoulder. They cling to each other; and, as I watch them, I feel like an outsider, intruding upon something sacrosanct.
I collect my wand in silence. I bow my head and leave the room.
They don't stop me.
They don't even look in my direction.
Outside, I trundle through the slush. I ignore the rain that lashes against my face and the retort of thunder that shakes the roof of my cottage. I slip my wand into my palm. It rejoices at our reunion. But the warmth of magic spreading up my arm is as yet cold comfort.
I have a definitive aim. The desperate urge to do something, anything, has taken hold, so I pace the warded boundaries of the cottage, muttering incantations under my breath. Wards, invisible to the naked eye unless provoked, flash into life. They circle through all the colours of the rainbow in rippling sheets at my prodding.
As far as I can tell, nothing has been damaged, except for the anti-apparition ward, which has fallen. The enchantments for the intruder alarm are intact, as are the layered spells which were meant to mete out retaliation.
After an hour of futile probing, I move away from the perimeter. Move towards the flowerbed of enchanted hellebore and winter hyacinths. The delicate petals drip in the dark. I drop to my knees before a patch of earth next to the flowerbed, then dig up the wardstone. It is supposed to be the last line of defence in case the other wards are breached. It is a small rock, the size of my fist. As I thumb it, and as I watch it pulse with centuries of encrusted goblin magic, my despair starts to give way to irritation. To anger. This, too, has been left untouched.
So that's it, then. One final act of mockery.
Lord Voldemort bypassed some of the best familial wards in this country.
And I have no clue how he did it.
I am soaked to the bone as I make my way back to the porch. Mud streams down my cloak, and my hair clings to my forehead in wet clumps. My glasses have misted over. I take them off and wipe them against the inside of my sleeve. Then I pull up an armchair and sink into it. I knot my fingers and glare into the lidless night, wanting nothing more than to be left alone.
The storm has abated by the time Daph comes looking for me. The first thing she does when she sees the state I am in is to cast a drying charm. Then a warming charm. She puts away her wand; and, as she observes me, she sways against the doorframe. Her face looks ghastly in the wavering candlelight.
"Come inside," she whispers. "We need to talk."
"Tori?" I ask.
"Asleep. I sedated her."
"Will she be okay?"
"I don't know, Harry." Daph's voice trembles. "I don't know."
The exchange peters out. Words feel like clumsy masks we adorn to hide our terrors from each other.
"Come inside," she repeats.
I toss my cloak and take off my boots and push past her, into the light.
She has repaired the windows in the drawing room. The sheets I had dropped have been stacked atop the teapoy. The settee is vacant. The Christmas decorations are still intact. The fire crackles in the hearth, uncaring. The only evidence of his presence is the reek of his magic, which clouds the room like stale ash. It licks at my nape, a slimy, prehensile tongue.
We sit facing each other. We don't speak, not for a while. Then Daph's words puncture the silence.
"You must take the mark," she says. "There is no other choice."
I rake my fingers through my hair.
"I'd rather die."
A sharp intake of breath.
"You must not speak like that. He'll kill us all. He'll kill my sister."
"I'd like to see him try. We can flee the country before that. We can—"
"But he can also save her," Daph says softly, halting my tirade. "He said so, and the Dark Lord has always been kind to his servants . . ."
She reaches for the hem of my sleeve.
"Harry," she whispers, "Harry, please."
". . . Daph?"
I have never seen her like this before. She looks demented in the firelight— demented and desperate and ready to damn both herself and me to the deepest pits of hell.
"She's my baby sister." Daph's voice cracks. She slips off the chair. She goes to her knees. She crawls forward and presses her forehead against my arm. Her fingers clamp down on my wrist. I try tugging my hand away but she refuses to let go. Her skin is feverish and slick with sweat.
"Daph—" I try again.
"Astoria is all I have in this world. I have spent all my life looking for a cure, and the Dark Lord is giving us that. Please, Harry. Please, please, please. You must listen to him— you must!"
Her despair twists around my innards. Leaves its own visceral footprint. The tear-tracks around her pale blue eyes. The tremors that wrack through her frame. The heat of her breath wafting against my arm. The backbreaking burden of all her hopes and dreams, thrust upon me— mine to carry, mine to uphold.
"He's lying, Daph." I struggle against the desperate madness in her grip, yet fail to free myself. "He'll never let us have that panacea. He'll hold it out of reach. He'll use it to control us till the war is over."
She shakes her head, not letting go, not wanting to hear it. Her nails dig into my skin, drawing blood.
"If you have ever considered me a friend . . ." she begs, "if I have ever meant anything to you at all . . ."
"I don't want to serve him, Daph," I mutter weakly, feeling my resistance leaving me even as I say the words. "You've seen where it got my father. And Voldemort threatened to feed Tracey to Greyback. Do you not care about that?"
But faced with her hysterics, her incoherence, the scrabbling of her nails and the bitterness of her tears, I give in, as I always do. I wrap my arms around her. I stroke her hair. I soothe her, as I would a child.
I kill my conscience.
"We'll figure something out," I mumble. "Go sleep now. We'll talk about this tomorrow."
Daph nods against my chest. We separate. I watch her make the slow trek to her room, then put out the firelight and climb up the stairs. Upstairs, I root through the closet and find my notes on Occlumency, made last winter and left here to gather dust. I leaf through them, attempting in vain to clear my mind.
It is thus that I fall asleep.
I sleep badly, and I sleep very little. My dreams are tainted by the sinuous wreaths of Voldemort's serpent. The caresses of its forked tongue. The clasp of its coils. Asphyxiating. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.
I stir from my bed at the crack of dawn, a million pains condensing upon my body.
Downstairs, in Astoria's room, the candlelight is faded gold. Daph has bunked with Tori, who is still asleep. Daph herself, however, is wide awake. When she spies me, she kisses her sister on the brow, then slips off the blanket and tiptoes after me.
We pause at the foot of the stairs.
"Have you decided?" She asks. Measured, now. More in control of herself. As if the last of her tears have been shed.
As I reply, I feel like I've aged a hundred years.
"I'll take the mark, damn you."
Daph's relief is palpable. She staggers forward and embraces me.
"Thank you." This, a fervent whisper. Her lips brush against my ear. "I'll pay you back someday, Harry. I don't know how, but I will."
The muggy morning trickles by. Once Tori wakes up, Daph and I go to great lengths to re-establish a sense of normality. We do not discuss plans; instead, I sit down with Tori and fine tune the wizarding wireless. We listen to a pre-recorded Weird Sisters concert, while Daph scurries about in the kitchen and busies herself with making Tori's favourite delicacies: marmalade cakes, treacle tart, bread pudding, frosted chocolate glacé.
It is of no use. The girl is off colour, and with each shrug and shake of the head seems to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss of her own thoughts.
With afternoon swiftly approaching, and with no improvement in Astoria's mood, I suggest going out.
"To tour the muggle world," I offer; but really, it is to escape the tightening net around us. We suffocate here, in this accurséd house; we look and act like convicts, bound together by the fetters of silence.
Tori, to my surprise, accepts. Daph does not.
"I didn't sleep yesterday," she explains. "I'll try and sleep a little now. You go enjoy yourselves."
We do. Or as much as we can, under the circumstances. I apparate her to the nearest town. We visit a theatre, a botanical garden, a clothing store. At the store, despite her protests, I insist that she try out everything. I pull out my purse to pay for the frocks and sweaters that she rather reluctantly selects.
"Hey! Lemme count the funny looking paper." She points at the notes I bring out. "What's that one called?"
"A tenner."
"And that?"
"That's a twenty."
"Why do they look so cheap?" She demands, tapping her foot. "Why is the colour scheme so bad?"
"Not everyone has your eye for design." I pat her head. "Not the British Government, at least."
Afterwards, we camp out on a park bench, watching the sunset together.
"The spider lilies in that garden were nice," Astoria informs me. "I've never seen anything like it before."
"I preferred the Chrysanthemums."
"You have no taste, Harry." She tuts and turns up her nose at me. "Say, is it time to go home yet?"
"Soon. Are you all right now?"
"Not really." Tori stares at the outcropping of verdure fringing the park, and at the broad spines of mountains rising beyond them. "But thanks anyway. It means a lot to me that you tried."
"Hm. Want to talk about . . . you know?"
She rubs her arms self consciously.
"No."
We listen to the drifting twitters of redwings and fieldfares; we watch the joggers complete their circuit, dogs on leashes trailing behind them, tongues lolling like flickering, fire-bright candles. A group of children have a kickabout to our right, and Astoria follows the ball with her eyes before huffing and leaning back on the bench.
"I'd outplay 'em all if I could run," she declares.
"You've never kicked a ball in your life."
"I'd kick their shins. That one first," she says, pointing, "then that one. Oh, and that one too, 'cause he looks funny. Then I'd take the ball when they're limping and fwoosh!" She makes an aggressive kicking motion.
"Right into the top corner," I suggest.
"Mm. No one would stop me." She sighs moodily.
A beat of silence.
"I really wish I could join 'em, you know," Tori mutters. "I want to play, too."
With a quick swipe of her hand she brushes aside a lock of hair that touches her eyelid and tucks it behind her ear. It strikes me how much she reminds me of Daphne: her wrists are equally delicate and their movements equally elegant. Yet it also strikes me, at the same time, how dissimilar she is: Daphne would decree the muggle sport as third rate filth.
"You could," I tell Tori, "when you get better."
"I'm never getting better."
"Oh?" A briar of nettles presses down on my heart. "Has it been worse recently? You can tell me, I won't tell Daph."
"She knows." Tori picks at a frayed thread in her skirt. "She just won't accept it."
"Accept what?"
"I'm dying, Harry." Flat. Matter of fact. "My health's been deteriorating for months, though every time I say it to Daph she gets angry. I don't know how long . . . she won't tell me. Three, four years, I dunno. But that's it. That's all I have left."
"Don't—" I begin, but I cannot bring myself to voice the thought. The rest of the statement is lost to the void.
Tori's lip curves.
"See? You're like her as well. But I'm happy, you know? Happy I have Daphne. Happy that I have you. I know you'll both be there for me when the time comes. What else can I ask for?"
She goes back to watching the game.
"Whatever you want," I mumble. "The world is yours if you want it."
I love you, I think, resisting the urge to reach out and hug her, but giving in to the fervor of protectiveness that overwhelms me. I'll never let anything happen to you.
She squints at me.
"Oh," Tori says slowly, sensing what turn my thoughts have taken, "so it's about yesterday, is it? I know what you're thinking. And it won't work."
"What do you mean?"
She hums contemplatively and stares at the reddening sky.
"Do you know what I felt like, with that snake around me?" Tori asks. "I felt unclean. Like I wanted to die. If you choose him, that's my life everyday. I'll never be safe. I'll always be scared. I don't want that. I want to be happy for the little time I have left. He is not the answer."
"Then what is?" I demand hoarsely. "How else can I save you?"
"You can't." She smiles and places her hand on top of mine. "Oh, Harry, you're so silly sometimes! You've always had trouble with the obvious. And the way forward . . . it is obvious, is it not? Turn him down. Go to Neville. Tell him everything. Do what's right, not what your heart tells you. I'm a weight around your neck— I'll only drag you down. You need to learn how to let go."
Blue eyes, like Daphne's. Curious. Carefree. Aglow with warmth and kindness in the waning sunlight.
"I'm sorry," I say quietly, pulling my hand away. "I can't let you go."
Sadness ripples through her countenance.
"I know," Tori replies. "But it was worth a try."
A return to our gilded cage— our cottage at Godric's Hollow— brings with it neither safety nor comfort. I am reacquainted with that claustrophobic sense of the walls closing in. We do not speak much; we look around, as if expecting him to break into our cottage again. We twitch at every sound, the crack of twigs, the hooting of owls, the frosted breath of winter against the window panes. Tori eats two spoons of dinner, then pushes away her plate; she lets Daph fuss over her and obediently gulps down her quota of dreamless sleep. Then she bids us goodnight, well before her usual bedtime.
"Will you come sleep with me?" She asks Daph. "Like you did yesterday?"
A note of yearning in the question, as of an infant frightened of the dark.
"Of course. Anything for you."
"Thanks, sis'. Don't stay up too late."
She departs. The candles are blown out in Tori's room. Daph and I are left alone in the dining room.
Daph looks healthier. Her bedtime clothes are unlined, unwrinkled. Her hair, which was a crow's nest this morning, has been brushed up, and cascades neatly around her ears. Only the tension around her eyes betrays any hint at all of the emotional crisis she underwent last night.
She paces around the room after Tori leaves, hands behind her back, her eyes in turn flicking from the plush carpet to the brocaded wall hangings to the rhomboid corners, where lie decorative ornaments. Up and down she goes, up and down, her chin pressed against the hollow of her throat. Abruptly her steps putter out— she has paused before the wall behind me. I do not have to turn to know what she is looking at. Yet I do so anyway.
Daph's hand reaches out and brushes against the photo frames lining the wall. It is us, in our various guises, her, me and Trace. The photos are all magical— we wave from each of them. There we are, in the school photograph from the end of our First Year; there, scoping out a bookstore in London at the end of our third. Trace winks at me and sticks her tongue out and raises two fingers in a victory sign; Daph, the Daph in the photograph, huffs and looks to the side, looking at the lens only out of the corner of her eye. And there's me in the centre, long faced, long suffering . . . yet it was all an act, all in jest, I swear; I did not know at the time how guileless we were, how unclouded our horizon. I did not appreciate it enough.
Daph seems to be having similar thoughts. She traces her thumb across the photograph and elevates her hand till her fingers trail across various duelling portraits, taken at innumerable tournaments.
"This . . ." She begins.
"Minsk," I supply.
"Last year. I remember. And this— Zagreb?"
"Yeah. I got knocked out in the first round, and—"
"We spent the entire tournament sightseeing," Daph finishes. "It was a humiliation. You were so upset after it, Harry. Why did you keep this one?"
I point to Trace in a canoe. She's midway through cresting a wave whilst whooping at the camera. Her hair glints in the silver spray, a waterfall of copper coils.
"She had fun," I say.
A writhing worm of disquiet.
"And that one—" I clear my throat and point to the photo adjacent, desperate to not let the silence fester—
"Paris," Daph fills in. "We went shopping, like we did in Milan. Was that before or after the Veela?"
"After. I saw her everywhere, in every single face. I was devastated over being dumped."
Daph spins around, her lips widening, an open wound.
"I knew it! So you did get dumped. You went around telling everyone that it was you who left her."
"My memory's foggy," I hedge, answering her unnatural smile with my own.
We continue in that vein. We reminisce. For ten minutes, fifteen. We laugh— we ease into our laughter, rather. We spurn the mudded lanes of despair; and, momentarily, everything is as it used to be, before Lord Voldemort, before his foul, proliferating, corrupting rot.
But we return at last to the matter at hand, for respite can only be brief when you're staring down the barrel.
"What did you and Tori talk about?" Daph asks, sitting down in the chair opposite.
"She knows. She guessed I was going to offer myself to his service. She tried dissuading me."
Daph's expression is complicated. Hard to describe. Half anxiety, I think, and half guilt.
"You have not changed your mind, I hope?"
"No."
"Good." Daph leans forward. "I understand how difficult a position I have put you in, Harry. I don't want you to think I'm not grateful. I thought about this all day, when you and Tori were gone. And . . . I think I have found a solution that works for us all."
"Pray tell."
"I do not mean for you to sacrifice yourself permanently to the Dark Lord."
My eyebrows climb to my hairline.
"You told me to take the Mark," I say.
"Yes, but only briefly. Only till the Dark Lord trusts us enough to give us the cure."
He won't trust us, though, says a small voice in my head. Not after what happened with my father.
And there flashes through my mind, like the downward thrust of a dagger, the searing, white hot image of my father's final moments. Steeped in blood and guilt. Let down by all sides. Abandoned. Alone. Warring to mutual annihilation against his best friend. To get to me, Lord Voldemort said. To take me and run.
I push away the grisly image.
"And then?" I ask.
"Then we remove your Mark." Daph draws an imaginary line on the dining table with her finger. "After that we run. We do what you said— we leave Britain. We go under the Fidelius. It will take me some time to learn that charm, but I will learn it, and we can sit out the war."
This is a climb down from what I had intended, since just a few seconds ago I was willing to sell myself to Lord Voldemort, body and soul. The idea is tempting, though not without its issues.
"Interesting." I scratch my chin. "But this relies on so many ifs. If he trusts us. If he gives us the cure. If we can remove the Dark Mark. If we can hide from him forever. I dunno, Daph. Rumour's that the Dark Mark enslaves you for life. No one who has taken it has defected from his service and lived to tell the tale."
"They are not us," is her defiant answer. "We are the best witch and wizard of our time— or do you disagree with that?"
I give her a non committal shrug.
"So we will succeed where the others have failed," Daph continues. "You will take the Dark Mark. You will win the Dark Lord's trust, because you are Harry Potter, and you have never failed at anything when you have put your mind to it. And, after we have used the Dark Lord to achieve our ends, I will remove the Mark and we can defect. But, for that, we'll need to find out how to break the Dark Mark . . ."
Her face is ashen, her knuckles white around the table cloth. She is terrified, I realise; frightened out of her wits, and astounded at her own audacity.
"To find that out," Daph continues, her voice wavering, "we need to study the Dark Mark first."
"How?" I ask, though by then I have an inkling of what she wants.
"We need a test subject," she breathes. "We need someone who has already taken the Mark. I need you to find me a Death Eater to experiment on."
Endnotes
A few quick observations:
1) If Harry were to actually join Lord Voldemort, this would be a very short work. I can happily confirm that this is not going to be a very short work.
2) This is my attempt to subvert my least favourite trope in all of fanfiction: the one where Harry and *insert romantic interest* (but usually Hermione) literally and metaphorically waterboard the secrets of the dark mark out of some poor hapless sod. This leads to prizes and goodies. I have something different in mind.
3) In terms of narrative, this was a desperate throw of the dice on Harry and Daphne's part, because they are 15/16 year olds who are proactive, overconfident, lacking a support system, out of viable choices, and suddenly in this way over their heads. This is a feature for parts of the second half. Characters are stuck in lose-lose situations sometimes, and try doing the best they can. Only you, the reader, can say if that's what you wish to read. If not, I once again implore you to find something else to read instead. Something happier, full of sunshine and rainbows. Something written by, say, Hollow Body. And link it to me as well: I could do with some fluff. Because this arc ain't it, chief.