"A child who's lost everything
sits on the doorstep of a home
that's no longer there."
•
HARRY'S MIND WHIRLED as he stood with Hermione, Polyjuiced as two old muggles, at the entrance to the graveyard. With just one Horcrux left, and no feasible ideas to get it, he had managed to convince Hermione to accompany him to Godric's Hollow, a place Dumbledore had told him to visit at least once. Hermione believed that he might find some clue relating to the Horcrux there. He didn't care much. He just wanted to visit his parent's graves. Hermione had told him that Skylar had mentioned in the Journal that in the foretold, they wouldn't be visiting the Hollow before Christmas. But he knew things were moving faster now. His sister-he knew she was his cousin but she had become more family to him than anyone else could've been-had saved many lives that were meant to be taken and also taken many lives that were meant to remain. He still believed that there was a large possibility that all the Death would come following them soon, but he liked to dwell on the thought that everything was different now. Everything was better now.
Ron had come down with a fever moments after the murder of Yaxley. Although it had been a few weeks since that event, all of them were pretty shaken up about it, except Draco Malfoy, who had seen murder and committed murder and had learnt to shut off his feelings just like Skylar. So Draco had stayed back at Grimmauld Place with his healing supplies with Ron-Harry agreed completely when Fred and George had said he'd be a great healer-and Hermione had accompanied him here.
"Keep your wand ready," he told quietly to Hermione, as he shifted his sight from the war memorial that materialized in front of them. It was a statue of three people: a man with untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and a baby boy sitting in his mother's arms. He had looked away.
There was a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. Hermione pushed it open as quietly as possible and they edged through it. On either side of the slippery path to the church doors, the rainwater glimmered. It was October, with the onslaught of European showers. They moved off through the puddles, carving deep splashes behind them as they walked around the building, keeping to the shadows beneath the brilliant windows. Behind the church, row upon row of snowy tombstones protruded from a blanket of pale blue that was flecked with dazzling red, gold, and green wherever the reflections from the stained glass hit the water. Keeping his hand closed tightly on the wand in his jacket pocket, Harry moved toward the nearest grave. "Look at this, it's an Abbott, could be some long-lost relation of Hannah's!"
"Keep your voice down," Hermione begged him. They waded deeper and deeper into the graveyard, stooping to peer at the words on old headstones, every now and then squinting into the surrounding darkness to make absolutely sure that they were unaccompanied.
"Harry, here!" Hermione was two rows of tombstones away; he had to wade back to her, his heart positively banging in his chest.
"Is it -?"
"No, but look!" She pointed to the dark stone. Harry stooped down and saw, upon the frozen, lichen-spotted granite, the words Kendra Dumbledore and, a short way below her dates of birth and death, and Her Daughter Ariana. There was also a quotation: Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
So Rita Skeeter and Muriel had got some of their facts right. The Dumbledore family had indeed lived here, and part of it had died here. Seeing the grave was worse than hearing about it. Harry could not help thinking that he and Dumbledore both had deep roots in this graveyard, and that Dumbledore ought to have told him so, yet he had never thought to share the connection. They could have visited the place together; for a moment Harry imagined coming here with Dumbledore, of what a bond that would have been, of how much it would have meant to him. But it seemed that to Dumbledore, the fact that their families lay side by side in the same graveyard had been an unimportant coincidence, irrelevant, perhaps, to the job he wanted Harry to do.
Hermione was looking at Harry, and he was glad that his face was hidden in shadow. He read the words on the tombstone again. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. He did not understand what these words meant. Surely Dumbledore had chosen them, as the eldest member of the family once his mother had died.
"Are you sure he never mentioned-?" Hermione began.
"No," said Harry curtly, then, "let's keep looking," and he turned away, wishing he had not seen the stone: He did not want his excited trepidation tainted with resentment.
"Here!" cried Hermione again a few moments later from out of the darkness. "Oh no, sorry! I thought it said Potter." She was rubbing at a crumbling, mossy stone, gazing down at it, a little frown on her face. "Harry, come back a moment."
He did not want to be sidetracked again, and only grudgingly made his way back through the slippery, moss-strewn path toward her. "What?"
"Look at this!" The grave was extremely old, weathered so that Harry could hardly make out the name.
Hermione showed him the symbol beneath it. "Harry, that's the mark in the book! The Deathly Hallows!"
Hermione lit her wand and pointed it at the name on the headstone. "It says Ig-Ignotus, I think. That's what Skylar said, the name of the youngest brother. . ."
"I'm going to keep looking for my parents, all right?" Harry told her, a slight edge to his voice-he blamed the murder-and he set off again, leaving her crouched beside the old grave.
Every now and then he recognized a surname that, like Abbott, he had met at Hogwarts. Sometimes there were several generations of the same Wizarding family represented in the graveyard: Harry could tell from the dates that it had either died out, or the current members had moved away from Godric's Hollow. Deeper and deeper amongst the graves he went, and every time he reached a new headstone he felt a little lurch of apprehension and anticipation. Somebody inside the church had just turned off the lights. Then Hermione's voice came out of the blackness for the third time, sharp and clear from a few yards away. "Harry, they're here. . . right here."
And he knew by her tone that it was his mother and father this time: He moved toward her, feeling as if something heavy were pressing on his chest, the same sensation he had had right after Dumbledore had died, a grief that had actually weighed on his heart and lungs. The headstone was only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana's. It was made of white marble, just like Dumbledore's tomb, and this made it easy to read, as it seemed to shine in the dark. Harry did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it.
"'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death'. . ." A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. "Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"
"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means . . . you know. . . living beyond death. Living after death."
But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents' moldering remains lay beneath concrete and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick ground hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the concrete with them.
Hermione had taken his hand again and was gripping it tightly. He could not look at her, but returned the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady himself, trying to regain control. He should have brought something to give them, and he had not thought of it, and every plant in the graveyard was barren. But Hermione raised her wand, moved it in a circle through the air, and a wreath of orchids blossomed before them. Harry caught it and laid it on his parents' grave.
"Harry," Hermione whispered. He caught her eyes through his haze of tears and then looked where he was looking. Behind his parents' grave was one more-sleek obsidian and polished grave. Someone had visited it recently to keep it clean. There was also a wreath of sunflowers-what a strange choice of flowers to offer to someone's grave-on it, and narcissus flowers scattered around. It read, in intricate white engravement:
Meredith Potter
Born: March 27, 1960
Died: August 22, 1981
Alakay Firegold
Born: December 27, 1959
Died: August 22, 1981
Harry's heart contricted feverishly as he eyed his sister's parents' graves. He wondered who had buried them, who had loved them enough to take care of the grave, who had cared enough to put flowers on them. Beneath it, remained a quote:
"Darkness exists
to make Light
Truly Count."
"Harry," Hermione whispered. "Harry is that-"
Hermione's voice hitched in her throat as a spell hurled towards them from the shadows of the night. Harry barely had the time to duck, Hermione in tow as it collided with one of the many tombstones around.
"Get away from her grave, you filthy Half-blood!" a deranged voice shouted through the night, chilling Harry's bones. "Get-Away-"
More spells hurled towards them as Harry and Hermione ran as far as they could, casting shield charms and stunning spells behind them, all of which Bellatrix Lestrange dodged with the agility of a beast. Hermione and Harry reached behind the church building, Hermione's breathing heavy and Harry's brain worrying.
"I have an idea-"
"No-"
"Hear me out-"
"No-"
"Do you trust me, Hermione-"
"NO-"
"Come on-"
"Jesus, Merlin we're going to die!" Hermione wailed through panicked breathing as Harry rushed back out, with Hermione in tow, and ran straight towards Bellatrix Lestrange with the fury of a monster.
"Cruci-"
"Immobulus!"
Bellatrix had been blindsighted by Hermione's spell, rendering her slow and fabricated for a moment, as Harry hurled straight into her, ignoring all the horrible outcomes that could happen, grabbing a fistful of her black hair and plucking her wand from her outstretched hand, before grabbing Hermione's hands, Disapparating away. They landed on the first step of Grimmauld Place, immediately opening the door and stepping in.
"I didn't kill you!" Hermione shrieked at the imposter charm that appeared before them, before tilting dangerously on the wall next to the entrance, heaving for breath. "Harry Potter what the fuck was that!"
Harry shuddered; if what he had done was so infuriating that Hermione Granger was forced to use a curse word at him, he truly didn't wish to see the end of it. He kicked his shoes off, stepping into the doorway, avoiding Hermione at all costs.
"What is going on?" Draco Malfoy peeked from the sitting room at the end of the hall. He was impeccably dressed in a black shirt and jeans and still managed to look posh and irritable. He held a cup of English brew in his hands as he eyed Harry and Hermione like they were the dirt on his shoes. "Did you two bring back another Death Eater?"
"No!" Hermione shouted, bounding by Harry, stomping next to Draco and disappearing inside the living room. "Harry had an idea!" she shouted from within.
"Merlin, that can't be good," Draco frowned. "Potter I told you not to use that rusty brain too much. Can't you just listen to Granger?"
Harry rolled his eyes. He didn't want to listen to any of the criticism being hurled at him when in his hand he held a bunch of specimen to enter Gringotts. He held it up right in front of Draco Malfoy's face. Draco scrunched up his face and stepped back.
"Is that hair!"
"Yes!"
"You look way too happy to be holding a fistful of hair, Potter," Draco said, sneering.
"It's your Auntie Bella's hair!" Harry said loudly. "The Helga Hufflepuff's cup is in her vault! We can-"
"Polyjuice into Bellatrix Lestrange AND enter!" Hermione appeared at the doorway again, her hair in a messy bun, as she eyed the bundle of hair. "Harry you're brilliant!"
Harry grumbled again, glaring at the girl in front of him. "Now I'm brilliant? When I told you to trust me you said 'NO'," Harry said in a horrible mimicry of Hermione's voice. She rolled her eyes.
"You know I love you," she laughed. "Draco-do you have any more of that Polyjuice?"
Draco eyed the hair in Harry's hand and said, "I have the bases ready. It'll take about a week to stew up properly again. And Potter," he turned up his nose at Harry and his glimmering eyes. "Kreacher says dinner's ready. Please wash up before dinner and keep that hair away. Thank you."
•
It wasn't fun-the magic. It was painful. It gave me nightmares. I was down with a horrible fever the second I stepped foot into the Malfoy Manor. My theory is that the adrenaline and excitement of having been at my home made me feel so ecstatic and high that I didn't realize how painful that magic was in my bones. When I stepped into Malfoy Manor and-surprise, surprise-relief washed over me for being in a familiar terrain, I collapsed instantly. The reason my head isn't cracked open is because Lucius Malfoy was just in time to grab me. He could've levitated me, but he didn't have a wand.
And then I went down like a marionette whose strings were cut. My skin started boiling as I felt the Magic underneath it, crawling through my bones, threatening to spill out of me any moment. Now that I was down, dressed in cotton nightgowns, being tended to day and night by Narcissa Malfoy, having healers come in from St Mungo's to check me out, I felt like maybe it was horrible idea to siphon the Magic out if the walls. What if it was a curse? What if it was a magic so dark that my body rejected it? What if whoever out it there in the walls did so because it was deadly to them too?
The trust remained- I was reckless and rash at making this decision and now I was suffering for it. Three weeks had gone by as I remained in my state of semi comatose, falling in and out of nightmares-mostly involving me falling off the broomstick, or my mother going batshit crazy over innocent people, or my father marking my mother with the spell, and the most terrifying of them all, me turning dark and to dust because of the magic. Cold washcloths were continually dabbed onto my forehead and a variety of medical potions were fed. None of that worked. They all tasted horrible and made me irritable if anything. And in my awake state, I was a chaotic mess, shooting Magic like bullets everywhere.
Until on the eve of the second week of my sickness, a familiar face walked in. He looked the same-same shoulder length black hair, same pursed lips, same hooked nose, same hard lines on his face. I hadn't seen him in so long it physically hurt me to see him again.
"Professor-"
"What have you done, foolish girl!" he snapped as he sat on a chair next to me.
"Don't you have a school to take care of?" I asked weakly,before doubling over as a sharp electrical pang resonated from the pit of my stomach. Snape brought his hand forward and touched my forehead. "I think I fucked up," I said once the current ceased to a dull, chronic cramp.
"Did you siphon the Magic from the Firegold Manor?" he asked quietly, after casting a few muffiliatos on the doorway. I blinked up at him.
"How do you know there was Magic in the Manor?" I asked quietly.
"Because," he said quietly, leaning closer so that no one could make out anything. "I put it there."
"What the fuck?" I sputtered. "What kind of magic is that-"
"It's your mother's," he said quietly, pulling out a pouch-I guess extension charms are in fashion right now-because he pulled out a few huge bottles of potions and placed them on the bedside table. "She siphoned out her strecromancy to put on the house for protection," he continued. "It was a few weeks before she defected. She didn't put out all of it, just majority of it-because the Order was on the rise that time and they were hunting the Death Eaters down."
"How did she put it there?" I asked, wincing as the chronic pain started hurting in my chest now, constricting my heart muscles. I saw him mix a filthy greenish looking frothy potion to a clear purple one.
"It was dark magic," he sighed. "A long time ago, many forms of magic were considered a taboo. To stop them, a group of wizards had come together with an intricate book of Dark Magic that can strip a witch or a wizard from any form of magic apart from simple wand magic," he said. "Of course that form of magic is banned now, seeing how dark it is-"
"How dark is it?" I asked.
"It involves blood magic," he said. "Sacrifices and Eldritch Magic."
"Wow," I murmured. "That's pretty fucking Dark. Why couldn't they just use a protective enchantment or something? Good old Protego Totalis, Salvio Hexa-"
"Meredith didn't want to leave any loopholes. Her magic wasn't just to protect the Manor. . . It was also to protect you,"he sighed. "Of course she knew she was pregnant with you long before the Prophecy, and long before she told us. And she didn't want to pass on her magic to you."
"Why?" I wailed. What would I be without my magic? Hermione Granger? No, thank you.
"You have to understand, Meredith was a victim of prejudice against the magic. Of course, she indulged herself in a form of magic that allowed herself to express it. But she didn't want the same for you," he sighed. "She wanted to raise you differently, without infliction of her powers. She thought that if she stripped herself of the magic, she wouldn't pass it to you, but before she could channel all of her magic out, the Prophecies happened and your parents defected. And now," he motioned vaguely towards me before raising his wand over the Goblet of mixed Potions he had just made. "You've acquired what your mother wanted to protect you from."
"But I've used my strecromancy for a good cause," I frowned. "I had been given a chance to freely manipulate my powers. And I did. So there shouldn't be anything wrong with me having this siphoned magic-"
"It's more than you can take, Skylar," he said, pushing towards me the ready-made potion. "It's two people's worth of strecromancy in the body of a sixteen year old."
I blinked at the clear liquid in his hand, managing to sit on a potioned feasible enough for me to drink the Potion. I handed him the empty Goblet and saw his quirked eyebrow at me.
"What?" I asked, licking the sweet tasting liquid off my lips. It reminded me of graipe water the muggles fed to their children.
"You drank the Potion without asking me what it was."
"I trust you," I shrugged. "What was it?"
"It is called Clear Potion," he said. I blinked.
"I figured that much, considering it was clear. What does it do?"
"Well," he said, packing up his supplies. "I created it when Meredith first wanted to rid herself of her magic-it dulls the pain of acceptance or removal of magic-"
"I don't want to remove it!" I said immediately, thinking I really should have asked him before gobbling down the potion.
"Acceptance," he repeated. "It works both ways. Soon, your pain will dull and your body will morph itself to adjust to the Potion-"
"Morph?" I started feeling sick. What if I lose my nose? What have I done!
"Not physically," he added quickly. "Like, an extramundane morphing. It exists in all of us, that houses the magic. When you release or accept any other form of magic-in your case, doubling of your existing power-that house needs to morph itself to fit the change. It'll happen in the next few hours."
I slumped back on the bed. The pain seemed to have dulled into a nothingness. I felt numb all over and my mind felt foggy. Next to me, Severus Snape got up, turning to the door to leave. I felt myself collapsing back into my dreams, seeing Eldritch creature clawing from the abysmal voids, coming towards me, as my mother stood before me, creating the strongest shield I had ever seen, eyes burning golden, burning anyone who came near to dust.