Chapter Eighty-One of IAATB: Back From the Abyss
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Chapter Eighty-One: Back From the Abyss
Harry waited until they were back in their bedroom before he yawned. It was such a massive, jaw-cracking yawn that Draco would not have been surprised to see it travel around the sides of his head and split the top half from the bottom.
“I’m tired,” Harry said, opening one eye.
Draco nodded gravely, and then dragged him towards the bed. “Do you want Dreamless Sleep?” he asked. He could only imagine what Harry’s nightmares would look like if he didn’t take some kind of potion.
“No,” Harry said, and twisted somehow, so that when he fell onto the sheets, he looped his arms and legs over Draco and Draco fell with him. “I want just to rest. And I want you to stay with me.”
Harry probably wouldn’t understand why the tone of his request-sweet, gentle exhaustion, without a hint of apology-made Draco’s throat tighten and his eyes spark with tears. At least, he wouldn’t understand right now. But Draco was more than amenable. His own muscles still shook with aches, dirt felt ground-in to his pores, and his hair dangled in his eyes from sweat, but next to the relief of having Harry back, he could ignore them for a while. He rolled over so that he lay next to Harry, head resting on his chest, arms around him. Harry gave a little sigh at him, and then closed his eyes.
If Draco was any judge of his breathing-and he should be-Harry was asleep on the instant.
Draco did stay awake himself long enough to consider what people would probably demand over the next few days. Explanations of how Voldemort had died, proof that it had happened, proof of Connor’s death, information on the Horcruxes and why Harry had taken so long to locate the last ones and destroy them-
I don’t care. They can demand whatever they like. It doesn’t mean that either one of us has to answer until we’re ready.
And with that in mind, Draco closed his eyes and gave himself to sleep.
*
It was hours before Snape could take a seat in an armchair, lean back, and close his eyes.
To him had fallen the task of telling the others in Silver-Mirror that, at last, Voldemort was truly dead; Peter had been too overwhelmed by the loss of Harry’s brother. Stares had followed, then innumerable questions, and then a celebration that the others had tried their very best to drag him into. Snape had resisted. He wanted to find a room where he could be alone and think about all that had happened.
Strangely, with as much as he had to think about, his memories tended to dance like hurricane winds around one central point: the moment when his Dark Mark had torn and burned with light, and he had understood that the monster he once sold his soul to was, finally and completely, dead.
Snape’s hand moved lightly, tracing his unmarked left arm, and the skin there, which looked unaffected other than a small bare patch where the fire had also burned hair. No matter how many times he touched it, he could not believe it. The black snake and skull had been part of him for so long he had adapted his movements to them, learned how to act so that the sleeve always covered them, learned to ignore the bitter, biting pain that arose in them when Voldemort felt angry, learned how to turn away from the stares that resulted when people learned he was Marked. And now-gone. Now he could shed those instincts if he liked, and the people still staring would be the ones society judged rude for it.
He did not know what to think, how to feel. It was as though he had died and opened his eyes expecting an afterlife of torment, only to find that he had been allowed into a world of tests and trials identical to the one he left behind.
Tests and trials. Do not forget that.
It would have been easier if Regulus had been with him now.
Snape frowned and opened his eyes. He did not like the feelings that assaulted him: loneliness chewing a hole in the center of his chest, and regret keener than he had felt since Regulus died. Yes, he knew now that he should have acknowledged Regulus’s love while he still lived. But he had known that for more than two months. Why should the feeling reoccur so strongly now?
Because now I have a life worthy of sharing with him.
Snape leaned his head back again, and was still for a long time. When he rose, it was to brew.
*
The depth of his grief made Peter feel as if he were made of rotten ice. Now a weight had shattered the surface of him, and he stared into the cold water beneath, and mourned.
Not James’s son, after all, nor Lily’s. He was more than those, his own person. And Harry’s brother.
Of course, Peter did not yet know the whole story, only what Draco and Snape had managed to surmise from the Switching Potion Harry had taken into Voldemort’s lair and the state of Connor’s body, which Peter and Snape had gone to fetch while Draco took Harry away. But it seemed likely. Harry had gone down, seeming to obey his old training after all, and intending to die as a sacrifice for Connor-save that Peter was sure this had been his own choice, however much it might not seem like it to someone else. But Connor had died as a sacrifice for him instead, and not just because he wanted to spare Harry’s life, or Peter doubted the prophecy would have been fulfilled.
And now Peter stood in the room where they had placed Connor’s body, under preservation spells to keep it from decaying until Harry was well enough for the funeral, and stared at it, and could think of nothing equal to this.
I intended to die in the garden. But I didn’t intend to die for something so much as think that I should use my death for good, because my life was less precious than someone else’s.
Peter closed his eyes. And that would have been an empty sacrifice next to knowing that I was loved, seeing with clear eyes how much people would miss me, and laying down my life anyway. This was a gesture of love. Mine would have been a gesture of-emptiness.
In silence, as if he and Connor were the center of a wheeling galaxy, Peter stood there, and watched. Connor’s face bore perhaps a dozen trails of blood, springing from eyes and ears and nose. His eyes were shut, and, to hear Draco talk, had been since he found him. He had a faint smile on his lips, a smile of farewell that Peter hoped Harry had seen before he departed and killed Voldemort.
And somewhere, in the early hours of the morning, the transition came.
Peter put one hand over his face, and took a deep breath of the kind he last remembered heaving when he broke through his phoenix web and realized the extent of the Marauders’ betrayal.
Even if no one else cares for me as much as they do for others, even if I think I could die and no one would miss me, there is still good that I can do if I live which I can’t if I die.
That was the vow he had given himself when he chose to escape from Azkaban and help Harry, another victim of the phoenix web and Dumbledore’s sacrificial training, instead of simply squatting where he was and meditating bitterly on how wronged he’d been.
He could make that vow again now, couldn’t he? And it wasn’t true that no one needed him. Harry did. Connor had. There were the students he had taught during his tenure as Defense Against Dark Arts professor, and the students of Gryffindor House whose tears he had dried and whose triumphs he had cheered. The idea he’d formed of himself as someone without human connections when he decided to die for the Ravenclaw Horcrux was as limiting, in its own way, as the idea the other Marauders had formed of him when they thought him only fit to act as a traitor so that no one else would find out Dumbledore had exposed the Potter children to danger.
I’m not just that. I’m more than that. And if, by some chance, that idea was true, I can be more than that in the future.
We labored so long to make Harry consider the future instead of just the present. And now I’m going to be so much of a hypocrite as to forget that?
For the first time since Voldemort had stolen Connor away, Peter smiled. And if the hand he reached out to touch Connor’s hair trembled, well, no one but Connor and him had to know that.
*
The world had darkened.
He was dead.
Parvati had told Padma, lightly enough, that the marriage ritual she and Connor used had bound their souls, but didn’t require that they be endlessly faithful to each other if one of them died. And that was true enough. She could marry someone else with another kind of ritual, or take lovers.
At the moment, though, she wished they had used a ritual that would drag one partner into death immediately after the other. She wanted, so badly, to just be gone. Not really into death, not permanently, but to end the pain, and a ritual that dragged her away would have been one solution.
She sat in a corner of their room and cried, her hair shielding her face, her nose so swollen that it felt as if it would burst any moment. The tears would not stop coming. She hadn’t prepared herself for this.
Every moment since Connor’s capture had been a nightmare. But, somehow, she hadn’t faced up to the ultimate nightmare at the end of it. She had believed that he would return to her, that Harry would rescue him and bring him home. Yes, Voldemort was a monster, but heroes always faced and fought monsters in the stories, and they always won in the end. When Parvati listened to the history songs and the tales her mother used to tell her, that was the part she loved most, the happy ending. She had felt sorry for the people who died in the pursuit of the ending and thought they were very noble, but, well, the story wasn’t about them, really; it was about the heroes. And since Connor filled the position of hero in this story, she hadn’t thought he would die.
He had. She had known it from the expression on Professor Pettigrew’s face when he Apparated back in, even before she saw him holding Connor’s body. She’d rushed forward, and tried to shove him aside. If he wasn’t breathing, they should make him breathe. Didn’t they know that? You used a spell that would remove a block if someone was choking, and you used a spell that would guide air in and out of their lungs if someone wasn’t breathing. It was simple magic, something that every Light pureblood child learned from the time she was six years old or so.
Parvati had pointed her wand at Connor and said, “Creo aurae!” It was the spell to make someone breathe. She’d known it for such a long time, but she’d never had cause to use it. Now she did, and it was a relief to know that something she had learned in childhood, something so simple, could be the means of bringing her husband back from the dead.
But Connor’s chest refused to move. Parvati frowned.
Professor Pettigrew spoke in a horribly gentle voice that Parvati knew would break her if she listened. “Miss Patil-Parvati-“
“Patil Potter,” she said, not looking at him, but at Connor. “I took his last name like that, and he took mine. He’s Potter Patil now. It’s part of the ritual we used.” She aimed her wand at Connor again. “Creo aurae!”
Nothing. No movement.
Parvati turned fiercely on Professor Pettigrew. “What did you do to him? If the preservation spells are keeping him like that, take them off!” She stamped her foot. “He needs air, you know.”
“He’s dead,” the professor said quietly.
“No, he’s not,” Parvati said.
“Yes. He is.” And the professor held a hand out towards her, as if that would comfort her.
Parvati had darted away from it, and then she had looked back at Connor, and then she had run. Because, obviously, if he was dead, she could not stay there.
She had wept since then. Vague thoughts about contacting Padma and her parents drifted across her mind, but before she could have their sympathy, she would have to explain what had happened. The effort that would take was wearying just to think about.
So she sat there, and cried until she could cry no longer, and then simply slumped against the wall, drained and dead in her own right.
The door opened. Someone crossed the floor to her, grasped her chin, brushed her hair aside, and held a Calming Draught to her lips. He never spoke. As Parvati swallowed the potion, she realized it must have had a sleeping draught intermixed, because her muscles relaxed at once and her mind slipped away, into the temporary cessation from pain she had wanted.
She told herself, when she woke the next morning, still leaning against the wall, that grief had done strange things to her memory. Professor Snape might have been the one who brewed the potion, but he would never have been the one who brought it to her.
*
Ginny wondered for a moment why she had to be the person to pull her brother out of depression.
Then she remembered. It’s because I’m stronger than he is, some of the time.
“Well, I want to go see him,” she said. She could perhaps have been less bossy if she tried, but coaxing rarely worked on Ron. Bossing did the trick, perhaps because he was so used to it from Mum and five-four-older brothers. “So, come on, Ron. The funeral can’t be more than a few days away, and this might be the only private hour that we’ll have with him.”
Ron just closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. “I never thought he would die,” he whispered. “Out of any of us. He was Harry’s brother. That was supposed to make him safe.”
“Percy was our brother, and the Minister’s assistant, and it didn’t make him safe,” said Ginny quietly. The reference to Percy made Ron open his eyes and glare at her, as she had hoped it would. She put her hands on her hips and stared him down. “Besides, Hermione wants to see Connor, too. So get on your feet, and let’s go to the room they set aside for him.”
That was, perhaps, playing more than a little dirty, because Ron still had the lingering remnants of a crush on Hermione, but it made him grimace and get to his feet, so Ginny didn’t really care how fair she had to play it. “I swear, if that prat Zacharias makes one comment about Connor he shouldn’t-“ Ron started.
“Zacharias won’t be there,” Ginny cut in. It was true. Zacharias had spent some time comforting Hermione, but he had also gone home to his mother now, probably to discuss what the Light purebloods were going to do in the wake of Voldemort’s fall. Ginny grimaced in turn. She supposed it was necessary, and, after all, Zacharias hadn’t been in Gryffindor and hadn’t known Connor like the rest of them. But, since she was not interested in being fair right now, she didn’t think he should have left Hermione alone to grieve, either.
Ron’s eyes brightened, a bit, and he moved down the hall in the direction of Connor’s room-the funeral room, as Ginny had started to call it in the privacy of her mind, though for all she knew, they would move Connor’s body out of the room before the funeral. Ginny kept at his heels, just to make sure he couldn’t turn his back and walk away at the last moment.
There were wards on the door, but they slid apart the moment Ginny held out her hand. She managed a small smile, then. Professor Pettigrew had set the wards to make sure no merely curious bystander could wander in to gawk, but he’d created them so that they would recognize sympathy in someone who really wanted to enter.
When they opened the door, the first person Ginny saw was Hermione. She stood with her eyes tightly shut and her hands clenched, as though she didn’t want anyone to see her crying. Then Ginny’s gaze went over Hermione’s head and to the body on a cot in the middle of the room.
Absurdly, her first thought was, They could have cleaned his face. It still bore trails of blood.
Then she came closer, telling herself that it was probably because Peter thought such decisions should be left up to Parvati or Harry, and forced herself to look at his silent face.
He was smiling. Were people supposed to be smiling when they died? Of course, the only dead people Ginny had ever seen close at hand had died in battle-including Percy, really, of a thorn through the heart-and so she had no experience with someone who knew his death was coming and had time to arrange his face however he liked.
Ron made a choking sound beside her. Ginny reached out and clasped his hand, without looking away from Connor.
She’d had a varying relationship with him, really. The first two years she was in school, she hadn’t liked him much. And then he was suddenly a Triwizard champion, and he’d won the Cup. After that, he was all right, her slightly older brother’s best friend, prone to taking part in the pranks Ron played on her. But he didn’t always agree with Ron when he and Ginny had arguments, and he’d come up to Ginny on occasion and told her that he appreciated her supporting Harry when the school turned against him and when half the world appeared to want him dead for denouncing Dumbledore.
So he’d been-a friend. Ginny didn’t consider him a friend in the same way Hermione had been, or Neville, but he had always been there. And, as Ron said, she had never given a thought to his dying. He could be captured, but Voldemort would keep him alive to torment Harry, and he would come back in the end.
And now he was gone.
“It’s just not fair,” Hermione whispered.
For all her own unfairness, Ginny found herself nodding. Connor should have lived longer. He shouldn’t have suffered before he died. He should have had more of a chance to be Parvati’s husband than he did. All sorts of things should have happened differently.
But would I want that, if it meant that Harry died instead?
Ginny shifted uncomfortably. Her mind tended to work like that in the last few months, taking situations she should feel simply about and twisting them around to look at from different angles. She could even understand her parents’ desire to protect her better than she had at first, even though she intended to ignore their desperate advice and go on to be an Auror in the new Ministry. But she didn’t think it was right to talk about this right now, when Ron was mourning his best friend and Hermione was mourning someone who had been a friend, if not as close to her in the last few years as he had been during their first few.
Hermione at last bent over and gave Connor a kiss on a part of his cheek that was free of blood, and then turned and left the room. Ron reached out, slowly, and grasped Connor’s shoulder. He squeezed so hard, Ginny saw his knuckles turn white. The silence was so thick it choked all the words in her throat.
“I’m going to miss you, mate,” Ron said at last, and if that wasn’t as full a mourning as Ginny thought would be good for him, it was much better than the brooding he’d done in the hall.
She reached out, for her part, and flicked the fringe on his forehead away, exposing the heart-shaped scar. That was the scar that had once announced him as the Boy-Who-Lived, and which she had stared at even after she knew that wasn’t true, in wonder that a curse could have carved something so perfectly shaped.
“Goodbye,” she said softly.
More words would have to come later. Ron was on the verge of a breakdown, so Ginny put an arm around her brother’s shoulders and led him away.
Care for the living first, because they need it more than the dead.
Yes, sometimes Ginny really didn’t like her own mind.
*
Rita smiled slowly. There were advantages to persistence-or perhaps for staying away for two days after Voldemort’s defeat and then asking, politely, for an interview. She’d been admitted to Silver-Mirror. Now she waited in the same anteroom where Harry had once made her wait, surreptitiously using an Aura-Reader that looked like another quill to check the level of magical power in the house. If Harry had been Voldemort’s magical heir, as she’d started to suspect, then his strength should surely have increased.
Draco Malfoy walked through the door in the opposite wall.
Rita quickly dropped the Aura-Reader into her pocket and gave him a majestic nod, sitting back in her chair. “Mr. Malfoy,” she said. “I’m glad you’ve decided to talk to me. The wizarding public of Britain deserves to know what happened to the Dark Lord so many of them were frightened of, don’t you agree?”
Malfoy’s smile was slow, too, and sparked with winter. He regarded her as if she were an insect-which, while it might be her Animagus form, didn’t mean Rita couldn’t occasionally be human-and shook his head. “What makes you assume that they deserve to know?” he asked. “Or that they shouldn’t be asked to wait another few days, when Harry feels well enough to tell them himself?”
“I assumed he did feel well enough to tell them himself,” said Rita mildly, while her instincts began to scream at her. Harry was wounded? How? How bad was it? “I thought I would be talking to him.”
“You should have asked beforehand.” Malfoy’s cold smile remained, but his eyes were distant, which made him look bored. “You’ll be talking to me, and you can accept my words or leave now.”
An interview with his partner is better than nothing. And if their words don’t match, that’s an article in and of itself. “I have no aversion to talking to you, Mr. Malfoy,” Rita said, and readied her quill. “First, of course, the question everyone wants to know the answer to. Is You-Know-Who really dead?”
“He is.” Malfoy continued to look at her from behind his mask. “So you might as well print his full name, and not that ridiculous moniker. He can’t come back and hurt you.”
“Malfoy,” Rita chided, even as she scribbled. “You know, of course, that it will take some time to sink in.”
“Then why did you want an interview today, instead of waiting for a time when people could be more rational?”
Rita shook her head. He would make a terrible reporter. No sense of what the public needs, at all. “And was Harry wounded in the battle? Is that the reason no one’s seen him since then?”
“Harry is physically whole,” said Malfoy, and now his smile was very obviously just a carved line in snow. “But he lost his brother in the battle. He deserves the time to recover from that, don’t you think? As much time as he wants.”
“I was unaware Connor Potter was dead,” Rita said, though she had heard some confused rumors to that effect. Of course, all the reporters who’d tried to gain entrance to the Black house in the past two days had been summarily removed by Severus Snape or Peter Pettigrew, so the rumors had amounted to no one seeing Potter so far. “What happened to him?”
“He died nobly, fighting to keep the world from Voldemort.” Malfoy’s eyes were focused on her now, but every word was touched with mockery.
“Some more detail than that would be appreciated,” Rita commented. She didn’t know how to construct an article out of the scattered bits of nothing Malfoy was giving her. Oh, she could if she must, but in a situation like this, when the meat of the matter had to be rich and thick and full? She didn’t want scraps.
“You won’t get it until and unless Harry feels like telling you.” Malfoy gave a slow lizard’s blink. “He probably will. He’d want his brother to be honored for his sacrifice. But, for now, those are the two pieces of information that most matter: his brother is dead, and so is Voldemort. Those should explain well enough why Harry doesn’t feel like celebrating, I would think.” He turned his back on her, as if the interview were done, and started to walk towards the door he came in by.
Rita rapped her quill against her notebook. If Harry had been there, she would have been gentler, but then, Harry would have told her more. She decided it could do no harm to remind Malfoy that the public was not interested in Harry as a person, or his brother, either, but as fighters. They would ultimately be more sympathetic to Harry if they could swallow the truth whole. “Mr. Malfoy, not everyone will be as kind as I am. In the absence of information, some of the papers are printing lies.” She softened her voice when he turned around and stared at her. “Doesn’t it make more sense to give me your perspective on the story now, so that the Daily Prophet can spread the truth instead of rumors? I’m assuming you must know everything Harry does, since you’re so close to him.” A little judicious flattery never hurt.
Malfoy snorted at her, and then drew his wand. Rita fumbled for her own, but Malfoy had already murmured two words. She thought one of them was Exsculpo, but didn’t hear the other. A purple-red beam of light struck her and then faded into the faint touch of a chill wind along her skin.
“What did you do to me?” Her voice was unfortunately shrill.
“A variation on a spell Harry invented.” Malfoy shrugged at her. “He created it to turn people inside out. I simply altered it so that it’ll turn you inside out if you write anything more than the bare facts into your article.”
Rita shivered, and resisted the urge to hug herself. She would have thought he was lying, or joking, but the cold smile was back, and he watched her with eyes that were empty.
“I can’t always control what the Prophet edits my articles into,” she said weakly.
“Then I would tell them you didn’t learn enough to write a worthwhile article.” Malfoy put his wand carefully back in his robe pocket. “Just to be safe, you understand.”
With an effort, Rita met his eyes. “Harry wouldn’t like your using that spell,” she said.
“Harry and I are two very different people.” Rita had heard Lucius Malfoy speak in the past weeks about his candidacy for the office of Minister. His son’s voice gave even fewer hints of emotion away than his had. “I use-more direct methods than he does. And he’ll doubtless disapprove, but we’ll argue, and that’s all. I will risk an argument over protecting him.” One blond eyebrow arched. “I would risk much more than that, Skeeter, just in case you think about trying to get around this spell somehow.”
Rita slowed her breathing. Well. The tale that Harry’s partner had cursed her for daring to speak the truth would make nearly as good an article as the one about what had really happened in the final battle. She turned to leave. She didn’t see that she and Malfoy had anything more to say to each other.
Malfoy coughed, and, when she looked, his smile had widened. “And, Skeeter?”
She frowned at him.
“There’s a spell on the door that won’t let you tell anyone about the magic I used on you, or, in fact, any magic performed in this house.” The smile widened a bit more, and now the gray eyes saw her all too well. “Just in case you need an extra incentive to respect Harry’s privacy. Good day.”
*
Harry opened his eyes and blinked at the ceiling. There was a moment of pure white bliss, soft and pale as the pillows and blankets containing him, before his memories rushed back and put Connor in his head.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He missed his twin like part of his mind, but he had known he would, and that hadn’t stopped him from climbing back into sanity.
“Good morning.”
Harry looked again. Draco leaned against the bedroom door, watching him carefully. He straightened up when he met Harry’s gaze, but didn’t relax. He looked almost feral in his desire to protect, Harry thought.
Well, I’ll let him indulge that. For once, Harry was in the mood to be protected.
“What do you want?” Draco asked softly.
“Breakfast in bed,” said Harry. “And then another nap.” He thought of asking how long it had been since the beach, what people in the outer world were saying about him, and whether everyone believed that Voldemort was dead, and then decided all that could wait. If there was ever a time in his life when he would earn complete privacy and the right to leave people to their own devices, it was now. They would get along without him. They’d managed it for centuries before he was born, and they’d manage it for centuries after he died. One person just wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. “A nap with you.”
Draco gave him a flashing smile, and then stepped forward. He wore no smile when he kissed Harry, gently, returning the kiss that Harry had given him as they were about to depart Silver-Mirror for Godric’s Hollow.
“Good,” Draco breathed against his lips. “I’ll bring you toast and eggs and pumpkin juice. Sound tasty?”
“Yes,” Harry said, and snuggled back into the blankets as Draco vanished out the door.
He lay there, and remembered how to breathe, and remembered Connor, and hoped the breakfast would be good.