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Chapter Twenty-Six—Star Bright

Andromeda opened her eyes and turned her head, blinking in annoyance. There was something vibrating in the back of her head, and she didn’t know what it was. It didn’t feel like a ward breach, but she didn’t know what else would have tugged her out of a sleep laden with honeyed dreams of vengeance.

The feeling went on tugging, however, so Andromeda sighed, stood, and made her way out of the bedroom to the drawing room.

Her second thought had been one of Peverell’s crystals, but they were all still. She stared when she finally made out what had been pulling on her magic. It was a chart on the wall that she had inherited from her mother, depicting all the constellations and prominent stars used by the Black family for names down the centuries.

Andromeda had nearly forgotten she had the damn thing. She had seized it from her mother’s effects when Druella died mostly because she knew Narcissa would have wanted to have it. She certainly hadn’t known there were—what, alarms or wards, built into it.

She walked a little closer, and saw the midnight-blue parchment rippling towards her, as if stirred by some unfelt wind. Andromeda’s wand was in her hand before she had time for another thought. She flicked off a spell at the chart that should tell her who it was being influenced by and tell her, too, the name of the spell.

The cone of light that extended from the chart was blank of any words. Not a person or a spell, then.

Andromeda turned and strode over to the window next to the star chart, looking out. Perhaps it was reacting to the presence of someone close to her wards, a presence so subtle that the wards themselves hadn’t picked up on it.

Nothing.

“Sirius?” Andromeda called out, although she thought Sirius would have revealed himself by now if he was there, especially if he thought her allegiances lay with Narcissa and Lucius. “Narcissa?”

Silence.

Andromeda frowned and walked back to the chart. It was bulging and rippling now as if something was underneath it. She cast a detection charm, which came back with nothing dangerous, and then reached out and put her hand deliberately flat in the middle of the chart.

She could almost hear Ted laughing at her—dangerous, darling, that’s how you like to roll—and didn’t close her eyes only because she heard his voice so often.

The chart at once calmed, and silvery light illuminated the parchment around Andromeda’s fingers. She pulled her hand back and stared hard at the stars there, the familiar constellations that shouldn’t be causing any disturbance. As far as Andromeda knew, there had never been anything magical about the chart, apart from whatever magic might have been used to translate a clear picture of the night sky onto it or change the color of the parchment.

Nothing was there.

And then, finally, she noted that the constellations were no longer familiar.

Andromeda kept herself from jumping backwards, but only barely. Her fingers snapped into a fist, and she stared down at the constellation that filled the center of the parchment. It was hers, Andromeda of the skies, and next to it was one that she had never seen before. It looked like nothing so much as the outline of a large, starry wand.

Andromeda blinked slowly, sorting through her memories of Astronomy lessons and family history as a child as fast as she could. No, there was nothing like this, not even among the constellations that wizards and witches had given different names to than Muggles had.

A soft twinkle of light drew her attention to the upper left-hand corner of the chart. There was a single star there, glittering, and since it was more familiar to Andromeda on its own than as part of a constellation, it didn’t take her long to identify it as Sirius. Next to it was another unfamiliar constellation, one that she frankly couldn’t make Knuts or Galleons of. It just looked like a circle.

She glanced at the upper right-hand corner of the parchment, and paused. This time, both constellations there were unfamiliar.

The first one looked like a wide-mouthed jug or jar. The second resembled a triangle. As Andromeda watched, the triangle skimmed forwards to envelop the jar and wrapped around it until Andromeda couldn’t see anything of it, then pulled back abruptly and retreated to its former position next to the first constellation. Then it repeated the movement.

Andromeda shook her head slowly. She had no idea what was going on, or why her mother’s star chart, of all things, would have registered it when it had never shown any real magic before. She would, however, write a report about it and send it to Peverell.

Perhaps he would be able to make better sense of it.

*

The crack of Apparition sounded sharper to Tom than usual as he came out of it.

He waited a long moment to see if anyone had noticed anything. The village of Godric’s Hollow had been mixed magical and Muggle for a long time, which meant there might be wards set up around the place to catch any unwanted visitors and report them to the Ministry. But nothing moved or vibrated or screamed, and after ten minutes of waiting, Tom was fairly sure that no Aurors would be Apparating in.

He consulted the map he had brought along, then tucked it away, cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, and strode up the narrow street that led towards the graveyard.

The houses remained mostly silent around him. Tom looked at the houses that did hum behind wards, and noticed that more than half of them were empty. He smiled grimly. People who had died recently or who had managed to flee Britain and had left behind manned wards to fool their pursuers for as long as they could, then. He wondered idly if Lucius had done any research on how much his ruthless Hunts were stripping down the magical population of the British Isles.

Probably one reason for that intensive research into creating as many pureblood children as possible.

Tom came to the graveyard and turned slowly, looking over the houses that stood close to the low stone wall. There was a hum of old, almost drained wards, ones that were probably sufficient to prevent Muggles from seeing or claiming the property, but not much else. Tom nodded and walked into the garden of the small cottage.

There were broken cobblestones under his foot. It could have been time, nature, or a remnant of the Hunt that had destroyed James and Lily Potter, if it had begun here.

Tom stepped through the wards, ignored the way they sparked at him, and opened the front door of the cottage.

The inside shocked him with its bright cleanliness. Perhaps the wards had more strength than he’d anticipated, then, and that strength had been used here. Tom glanced around and called, “Potter house-elf?”

No response.

Tom nodded and began to search through the rooms.

Careful inspections revealed nothing except some dust in far corners, old food still under Preservation Charms, and a book that might be a diary which Tom collected for Harry. Then he turned to the stairs, and the moment he placed his foot on the bottom step, something snarled and dashed at him.

Tom twisted to the side, crouching so that he could lift his wand more easily. However, the thing had already dissolved against the far wall.

Tom blinked for a moment, and then smiled. It was a ward that would, when fully animated, conjure a protector in much the same way that the Patronus Charm called one forth. The creature would attack whatever unauthorized thing came up the stairs, person or otherwise. But because it was so old and faded now, there was nothing left except the illusion of the creature.

“Bravo, Lily and James,” Tom murmured beneath his breath, and began to climb.

The first floor held the nursery, the master bedroom, a bathroom, and a small library. Tom stepped into the nursery and looked around. There was nothing there except an old cot and a dusty shape on the floor near it. Although it wasn’t what Tom was looking for, he approached the dusty shape and crouched down beside it.

A plush dragon. The wings waved lazily at him, its magic almost gone as well. Tom scooped the thing up and used a charm to strip off the dust as it hovered in front of him.

Harry would want this.

Tom cast several charms of increasing complexity to search the nursery, and then the other rooms, for anything that might conceal a powerful magical artifact. He cast spells that would enhance his eyes to see the least, tiny spark of magic. He even tried Summoning Charms, for all that he thought what he was seeking would be spelled against that.

In the end, he stood near the head of the stairs with the books from the library floating behind him, the plush dragon under his arm, and the diary tucked into a pocket of his robes, and frowned at the walls.

It seemed impossible that the Potter Invisibility Cloak would be missing, and yet, Tom hadn’t heard any rumors of anyone finding it or using it in the years since the Potters’ deaths, either. He had thought he might find it mostly because of the vision in the star chart that Andromeda had reported to him. To him, at least, it clearly showed the Deathly Hallows coming back into play, and the constellation representing a jug or pot was being enveloped by a cloak-like constellation. If that wasn’t the Invisibility Cloak, Tom honestly had idea what it could be.

Then again, he had not the least idea what Sirius Black would be doing with the Resurrection Stone, if that was what it was. And he didn’t know why Andromeda herself would be associated with the Elder Wand. Perhaps he had misunderstood.

But even if he had, he was glad that he had come and would have a few artifacts from his parents for Harry.

Tom strode down the stairs, stepped back outside the decaying wards, and vanished with a crack back to Fortius.

*

“Excellent, Miss Granger.”

Hermione shivered and opened her eyes. She had finally managed to reach into the middle of Professor Elthis’s mind and extract a shining memory like a silver coin. The memory was of Professor Elthis lying on her back in a green meadow, staring up at the sky that was spread out over her. A pale blue spring sky, with a sliver of moon down near the horizon.

Of course, Hermione knew she had found that memory only because Professor Elthis had permitted her through her Occlumency barriers. But it was a start.

Hermione pulled herself back up into the seat. She’d slumped over sometime during the last few minutes when she was impressing that memory into her own, making it her own.

“What have you learned about safely walking through someone’s mind?” Professor Elthis asked, flicking her white braid over her shoulder.

“I’ve learned that I need a much more delicate touch,” Hermione said ruefully. That had been her mistake with Professor Lupin. She’d basically acted like a battering ram, which could have wrecked his mind if he hadn’t been a werewolf.

Professor Elthis nodded. “And yet, at the same time, you need power enough to enter through someone’s Occlumency protections. You see now why I find so few students with the potential to accomplish much on this path?”

“Yes,” Hermione breathed. “It’s almost like you need to be a—a hawk. You have to be able to kill something, but you also have to be light enough to fly.”

For the first time since Professor Elthis had heard what Hermione had almost done to Professor Lupin, she gave a true smile. “Yes. Indeed. Quite well-put. And I wanted to know if you had completed the essay on Legilimency ethics I assigned you.”

“Yes, Professor,” Hermione said, and stood up to get it out of her satchel.

“And you have thought further on whether you want to pursue that darkest path I mentioned to you?”

Hermione took her time removing the essay from the satchel, smoothing it down with her hands and staring at the floor. Professor Elthis waited. She was maddeningly calm and patient, Hermione had found. She just waited, and there was silence within her as well as all around her, which meant she couldn’t be hurried.

“Yes,” Hermione finally whispered.

“And? What did you decide, Miss Granger?”

Hermione turned to face her, sweeping a hand for a moment across her eyes. She wasn’t really crying, but it felt almost as if she was, wetness prickling around her eyelids. Or maybe she thought she should have been.

“I really want to take the darkest path,” she admitted hoarsely. “It sounds like something I’d be good at. But I don’t know if I should. I don’t know if I would be able to hold back from crushing someone’s mind the way I almost did with Professor Lupin. And part of me still says that it’s wrong.”

Professor Elthis nodded, as if she had anticipated this conversation and was willing to have it anyway. “One thing you need to think about, Miss Granger, is whether you believe you cannot learn the discipline to avoid crushing a mind, or are simply afraid of going too far.”

“What’s another thing I need to learn?”

Professor Elthis’s smile was slow. “Whether those morals are yours in truth, or simply something that you think you should think, without actually thinking it.”

Hermione handed over the extra essay she’d been set, and accepted Professor Elthis’s dismissal with relief. It seemed she did have some thinking to do.

*

“I don’t understand what’s wrong.”

“Neither do I.” Professor Johnson squinted at Harry’s wand, and then at him. “You haven’t been casting too many of the kinds of spells that could strain your magic, I hope?”

Harry felt his face burn as he shook his head rapidly. The only kinds of spells he cast that could fit that category were the war wizard ones from Disaster’s book, and he only ever cast those spells under Professor Riddle’s supervision on the grounds of his safehouse. He’d sworn not to do them at Fortius, and he wouldn’t.

“Then it must be something else.” Professor Johnson stepped around her desk and handed his wand back to him. “Try casting the spell again. Take as long as you need to get your mind and magic ready for it.”

Harry nodded and closed his eyes, relaxing both his mind and his body as much as he could. Professor Riddle had begun teaching him meditation. Harry had to admit that he wasn’t that great at it yet, but he could at least shove some of the more confusing emotions, like his anger, away, and concentrate on one thing at a time.

When he was sure he was ready, he raised his wand and aimed it straight at the large history book on Professor Johnson’s desk. He saw her lean forwards slightly from the corner of his eye, but he was really busy concentrating on this charm.

“Moveo librum!”

The book shuddered—and didn’t move. Harry tasted blood and realized he had bitten his tongue in his intense disappointment. The charm to move a book was one of the simplest, one of the first he’d learned, and he’d used it time and time again in the library. And now it seemed that he was losing control of his magic.

Despair gripped him and crushed him in an enormous claw. All he’d wanted to do from the day that Professor Riddle told him about his potential as a war wizard was to study, to become stronger, to become useful to the revolution that Professor Riddle wanted to unleash. And now he was losing control of his magic.

“Mr. Potter. Harry.”

Professor Johnson sounded concerned. Harry blinked back tears—he wasn’t a baby—and turned to look at her as she stood up from behind her desk.

“I have a theory about this,” Professor Johnson said. She tapped her wand on the book, duplicating it, and removed the original from the desk, leaving the copy in its place. “Can you burn the book? Just cast a simple charm, but do it with all the force and power you know.”

Harry had more than enough of those, after his disappointment over the simple charm not working. He swung his wand up and aimed. “Incendio!”

The fire that flashed into being was so brilliant a white that Harry had to shield his eyes, and so hot that he could feel the heat on his skin from where he stood. When he opened his eyes again, not only the book but the desk were crumbling ashes.

“Um. Sorry.”

Professor Johnson laughed and cast a silent spell that lifted the glittering ashes from the floor and spun new wood between them, restoring her desk. “It’s quite all right, Harry. And it did prove diagnostic of the problem.”

“How?” Harry blinked at her.

“I thought that you might have been practicing so much offensive magic that your power had tilted towards that, and away from basic charms and what we might call, hm, not so much defensive as non-offensive magic.” Professor Johnson hooked her fingers together and grinned at him. “The more we practice a certain kind of magic, Mr. Potter, the more prone we become to using that. It doesn’t normally have as pronounced an effect as I see in yours, but then, not many people have the potential to become a war wizard and start casting so many powerful spells so young.”

“So I can get the charms back?”

“Oh, yes. What you will need to do is make sure that you practice them in tandem with, ah, the much stronger spells that it seems your magic prefers at the moment. Otherwise, your magic, as you have seen, will simply align itself with anything that could be considered an offensive spell, even when, as with Incendio, it was designed for something else.”

Harry exhaled with relief. “Okay. Thanks, Professor. I’ll try to do more brewing and more charms casting.”

“And I will be having a word with Professor Riddle.”

Harry looked up, suddenly worried. “You will?”

“Only to remind him that, as anxious as all of us are to have a war wizard in our ranks, your education matters more than that. And it needs to be more well-rounded than just war magic.”

“I didn’t think it did,” Harry said, startled into honesty. “Matter more than having a war wizard, I mean.”

Professor Johnson paused for a long moment. Then she shook her head with enough force that one of her braids lashed her cheek. “No, Harry. I can see how you might have come to believe that, but…no. I promise you. I shall speak to Professor Riddle both about cutting back your drilling in offensive magic and about emphasizing your value beyond being a war wizard.”

Harry shuffled his feet. “You don’t have to, Professor Johnson. I’m not a little kid. I get it, you know.”

“Do you?”

Harry didn’t know what the right answer to her question would be, and ended up looking away under her steady gaze.

“It’s all right,” Professor Johnson said softly. “I’ll do some of the speaking for you, and I can promise you that Professor Riddle will listen to me and not punish you for it.” She waved her fingers. “I think Professor Gallin wanted to see you for extra battle practice on brooms, if I’m not mistaken. Dismissed.”

Harry bobbed his head and trotted off towards his next lesson, overwhelmed both by his relief that he wasn’t going to lose control of his magic and by the fact that someone was willing to speak back to Professor Riddle for him.

It was…unexpected.

*

“What’s this, sir?”

Harry’s voice was odd, strained. Tom cast him a sharp glance as he held out the diary that he had retrieved from the Potters’ cottage at Godric’s Hollow. “A diary that I think might have been kept by one of your parents.”

Harry swallowed, and his eyes got large. But he said, “Why do you have it, sir?”

“I went to the cottage your parents were living in before they were murdered because I wanted to see if perhaps they might have hidden a powerful magical artifact there,” Tom admitted. He didn’t lower his hand that still extended towards Harry, holding the diary. “An Invisibility Cloak that doesn’t fade with the passage of the years. Your father was the last one known to be in possession of it. But I didn’t find it.”

“You found other things?”

Harry’s eyes were definitely locked on the diary, no matter how much he might want to pretend that he didn’t want it. Tom smiled and gave it to him. Harry opened it and stared down at his parents’ handwriting for what might be the first time.

“Yes. The diary, and this.” Tom took out the dragon plush, and renewed the charms on the toy with a thought. The wings flapped faster, and the dragon hissed softly. No words, since Tom would have been very surprised if the person who had created it had been a Parselmouth, but still, it was more realistic than he had expected.

“I’m not a baby,” Harry said softly, but his eyes were locked on the dragon, too, and they were round with yearning.

“No one who’s cast the spells I’ve watched you cast could be referred to as a baby,” Tom said, with a snort. That seemed to relax Harry, and he grabbed the dragon and held it close. “I also found some books that you might want to have.” He got the books from the library out of his satchel and handed them over.

Harry occupied the next few minutes by looking through them. Tom leaned back and stared out the window of his office. The quiet around them was thick and unbroken except by the sound of gently ruffling pages and the hissing from the dragon, and he enjoyed the sounds as he wouldn’t have expected to enjoy anything but solitude.

“Um, Professor Johnson talked to you?”

Tom turned back, nodding. “Yes. My apologies, Harry. I didn’t mean to make you think you should only cast offensive magic, or that your education didn’t matter next to my desire for revolution. I promise you, there are many options available to you, and becoming a war wizard shouldn’t be the only thing you do with your life.”

Harry watched him with wide, shining eyes, and Tom had the impression that he had earned Harry’s loyalty now, if he hadn’t already had it.

And that was important, of course it was, to the forthcoming effort to destroy the pureblood regime. It would be disastrous if the only war wizard Tom knew of decided to turn against them, or even to sit back and stay neutral.

But Tom also had the impression that here was a student he could mentor, and enjoy spending time with.

It was a feeling as heady as discovering that Harry was a war wizard in the first place, and Tom smiled back at him.

*

“It’s nothing, sir.”

Severus resisted the impulse to pinch his nose, or do something else equally foolish or childish. He was, in fact, sure that it was not nothing, that the first Weasley in history to Sort Slytherin needed more from him than a brush-off.

But all of Severus’s attempts to get the boy to speak had backfired. Weasley hadn’t said anything of his own free will about his grief over his sister, or how the sight of her dying in hospital had affected him. He hadn’t asked to spend time with his family. He hadn’t even presumed on his friendship with Draco to go over to the Malfoys’ house, or home for a few days, a week, or more.

So Severus had been reduced to asking the boy to come to his office, and that hadn’t worked, either.

Weasley stared up at Severus with bright eyes and answered all his questions. No, his marks weren’t suffering. Yes, it was difficult to lose his twin sister, but they hadn’t been particularly close since their Sorting into different Houses. Yes, he found his friendship with Draco a source of support. No, his parents hadn’t asked him to come home for the rest of the term, the way they had done with his brothers.

Not once could Severus get to the suffering he was sure was actually underneath, or convince the blasted boy that he could help.

“Very well, Mr. Weasley,” Severus said at last tiredly. “I trust that you will come to me if you need—help of any kind, if your marks start to suffer, or if you want to spend time at home?”

“Of course, sir.” Weasley stood up and then hesitated. “Sir, what is it like being a half-blood?”

Severus blinked once. Then he said, “It is in many ways a limited life, Mr. Weasley. Of course, we know that we shall never achieve as much as your own kind, and we know that our Muggle heritage taints us. But at the same time, we are grateful to have magic at all and to be permitted to live in the magical world.”

Weasley nodded as if that had confirmed something for him, and then left the office quietly. Severus stared after him.

*

Ron closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath once he got outside Professor Snape’s office. This was only the first of many questions he needed to ask, he reminded himself sternly. He couldn’t give up or trust that he was right just because he’d got an answer he expected from Professor Snape.

He was doing research to see if Draco was right and Mudbloods really polluted and poisoned real people. He wasn’t stupid. He knew Draco might not be right, or his father.

But the problem was, Hogwarts only had a few Mudbloods, and Ron didn’t want to get too near them in case they corrupted his magic like Victoria’s. So he was asking half-bloods instead what their lives were like, and listening to their answers.

So far, he was hearing things he expected to hear. Their lives were limited. They really didn’t have the kinds of opportunities that a pureblood did. It might have been a kindness to them if they had never been born, or at least if their pureblood parents hadn’t decided to marry filthy Mudbloods.

Ron shook himself briskly. At this point, he thought he would probably find out that Draco was right. But he wanted to keep investigating. He would go to the library and read some books on pureblood history, and then he would go and ask Professor McGonagall, another half-blood.

If he was going to make sure that Mudbloods were out of Hogwarts entirely by the time he was in his fifth year, he was going to do it right.