lomonaaeren

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Chapter Three

“Headmaster, have you seen Harry? Ron says that he never came back to Gryffindor Tower after he left your office, and I haven’t seen him, either. We even asked Dobby to look for Harry, and if Dobby can’t find him…”

Albus sat back with a long sigh. He had hoped to find out what had happened to Harry before he involved either Mr. Weasley or Miss Granger. They had been under stress this year, too, and would have to suffer more if he didn’t have answers for them.

“I don’t know, Miss Granger, I’m afraid. I wish I did.”

Miss Granger’s eyes widened, and looked as if she was about to cry. Then she took a deep breath and forced the tears away. “Okay. Okay, sir. Can you tell me what happened before he left your office? I know it’s—it’s very important when you’re searching for a missing Muggle to be able to track their last movements.”

If it was that simple. If someone had sneaked into the school and grabbed Harry, or convinced him to leave the shelter of the wards, then it would have been easy to grab him and Apparate in any direction, and Harry’s last movements wouldn’t matter much.

Still, Albus had asked the portraits, and they had seen Harry make for the Room of Requirement. He told Miss Granger that. She sat still with a frown for a moment.

“Why do you think he would go there, sir? It’s not like there was anyone to meet him…”

“He was very upset over Sirius’s death,” Albus said softly, which was true enough. “He might have gone there to seek objects to break or an opponent to fight that would let him take his anger out on them or it. I know the Room can conjure such things.”

“Did you look around the entrance to the room, sir?”

“Yes, Miss Granger. I asked a few portraits, but there are few near there, and none of them had seen Harry pass. There is one more thing.” He hesitated, but Miss Granger just nodded, as if bracing for a blow. “His owl is missing.”

“Hedwig?” Miss Granger had a tone of wonder in her voice. “That’s strange. It does indicate that he’s been taken out of the school, but she’s so smart—I think she would be here bothering us to search for him and rescue him if he was in danger.”

Albus blinked. That wasn’t a conclusion he had come to, but then again, he didn’t know Harry’s owl well. A regret.

“You really think so, Miss Granger?”

Miss Granger nodded earnestly, leaning forwards to the edge of her seat. “I wouldn’t say that Harry was safe, sir. It’s possible that he’s got taken by someone so dangerous that they managed to fool both him and Hedwig, or maybe Hedwig thought she had to go and scout out the situation before she could come back and fetch someone. But it makes me feel a little better.”

Albus relaxed with a long sigh. If that was the case, there was the possibility—

Abruptly, one of his silver instruments on the other side of the desk, the one Albus had whimsically fashioned to resemble Fawkes in the middle of his burning day, shattered. Albus started to his feet, wand out.

“Professor? What is it?”

Miss Granger sounded terrified. Albus made himself turn and face her with a smile as reassuring as he could make it. His purpose was not to scare children.

Even if his own heartbeat was racing with fear, and he had to speak the words that would dismiss her from the office without showing that, one of the hardest tasks of his life. “One of the protections that I put on an Order member has broken. Will you excuse me, Miss Granger? I must immediately Floo and examine the scene.”

“Of course, sir.” Miss Granger started to her feet, eyes fixed imploringly on him. “But you will work to try and find Harry?”

“Of course, Miss Granger. I shall make it a priority.”

When the girl had left, Albus took a moment to draw a trembling hand across his face and straighten his robes. This was—this was disastrous. The instrument shattering meant that the wards had broken around Harry’s home.

Albus did not know how someone could have kidnapped Harry and struck at the Dursleys at the same time, but it spoke of organization. Of the Death Eaters.

I hope to Merlin I shall not find Harry’s body there, Albus thought grimly, and cast the Floo powder into his fire, calling out the address of Arabella’s home. “Kneazle Place!”

*

“Why are we here?”

Harry shivered as they walked towards what seemed to be an old, abandoned shack on the road to a Muggle village. It wasn’t cold, but they were in the shade, and there was a chill in the air that he didn’t think came from the clouds.

Hadrian darted a glance at him and then waved his wand. Harry sighed gratefully as magical warmth flooded over him, and smiled at Hadrian. He had never had someone who could practically read his mind like that and use magic to soothe him.

Well, maybe you did when your mum and dad were alive.

But the point was that he hadn’t had anyone like that for a long time, Harry thought somewhat crossly at himself, and glanced at the shack. “You said this was the place where one of the things was hidden?” Hadrian had cautioned Harry not to speak the word “Horcrux” too close to one of them. At least one of the Horcruxes had had wards that would come alert when someone said that, he’d told Harry.

“Yes. At least, it was the place in my world, and we don’t really have any proof that your Dark Lord is different.” Hadrian also hadn’t wanted to say Voldemort’s name too near to the Horcrux.

That made a little more sense to Harry, even though he also remembered Dumbledore’s point about just being afraid of a name.

But he was wrong about a lot of other things, so maybe he’s wrong about this, too.

Hadrian cast a spell that made the door turn into thin smoke and then just float away into the air. Then he glanced at Harry and chuckled.

“What?”

“The look on your face.”

“That was brilliant,” Harry insisted. “I want to learn that. Why do you think they never teach us anything like that in our classes?”

“It’s rather complicated magic, and Dark, since you could use it to break into someone’s house pretty easily, even if they were behind simple wards. Hogwarts doesn’t teach magic that it doesn’t think all the students can grasp.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I never said it wasn’t.”

They stepped into the house, and Harry lost his smile. The windows were only empty holes in the walls, letting plenty of light in, but nonetheless, it felt gloomy. He shifted closer to Hadrian and eyed what looked like the skeleton of a snake nailed to the door.

“Why would he want to leave a piece of himself here?” Harry whispered.

Hadrian shook his head. “This is where his mother’s family grew up. He probably assumed that most people wouldn’t come looking for it, and its very obscurity is a sort of defense.” He nodded to a stretch of what looked like regular floorboards. “It’s under there. Can you feel the compulsion?”

Harry shivered and crowded closer still to Hadrian. He did. It was an odd song in the back of his mind, and until Hadrian called his attention to it, Harry hadn’t even realized that he wanted to walk over to the spot Hadrian had identified and get—

“It’s a ring, isn’t it?”

Hadrian blinked, the only sign of surprise that he ever seemed to show, and nodded. “I didn’t realize that you would be able to feel that.”

“I didn’t know that I could, either.” Harry winced, and his hand went to his scar. He hadn’t got any emotions or visions from Voldemort in the last day, but that didn’t mean that—

“Should I have learned Occlumency?” he asked.

“I think you should have, but you sound urgent about it.”

“I mean, what if he learns that we’re after his—things—or that you’re here from me? I can’t guard my mind, and he already knows how to send me visions.” Harry clenched his fists tighter. He hadn’t thought of that, and maybe Voldemort had even come in and spied and Harry hadn’t felt him and now Hadrian was in danger—

“Hey. It’s all right.”

Harry blinked and focused on Hadrian, who was crouched down in front of him, brow wrinkled a little. Hadrian put his hands on Harry’s shoulders, and Harry swallowed and nodded. Hadrian gently massaged his shoulders.

“It’s all right,” Hadrian repeated quietly. “I’ll start teaching you, but I do think that he won’t attempt it on you for a while. The last vision worked, but now you know that he knows, and his tricks won’t work like that again. Do you know if he ever saw anything important last year, like how to get to your relatives’ house?”

“No,” Harry said, and frowned. It was true. Grimmauld Place had been under a Fidelius, of course, but Harry had discussed plenty of things, like who was in the Order, with Ron and Hermione outside that, and he had had plenty of thoughts about Snape maybe obeying Dumbledore and maybe obeying Voldemort. But those Order members were still alive—

Except for Sirius, and grief stabbed him.

Harry swallowed and forced his way past that thought to others. Snape was still alive, too, and hadn’t been tortured or whatever it was that Voldemort would have done if he had thought that Snape wasn’t loyal. Harry reared his head back and looked up at Hadrian, a little skeptical.

“Do you really think that you can teach me Occlumency? Snape kept saying that my mind was a mess.”

“Snape should never have been near your head,” Hadrian said sharply. “Who told him to do it? I doubt you asked him.”

“Dumbledore.”

Hadrian sighed in exasperation. “Right. Well, there were probably few other people who could have taught you, and you told me Dumbledore was guarding his mind from the Dark Lord. But he still should have known better.”

Harry nodded fervently. He could at least agree with that, he thought.

“We’ll teach you,” Hadrian said, and squeezed Harry on the arm before he pulled back and stood. Harry missed him immediately, even though the Warming Charm Hadrian had cast was still active and clinging to his clothes. “I need you to step back. I can’t take the chance that the ring’s compulsion will make you try to put it on, because then it could curse you.”

“Won’t it affect you?”

“I’ve already faced it,” Hadrian said simply.

Harry felt a stab of envy instead of grief this time. Hadrian was so much stronger than he was, older and wiser and cooler.

Hadrian gave him a small smile, as if he could sense what Harry was thinking about him but didn’t really agree, and then stepped forwards and gestured with Voldemort’s wand. The floorboards shook and parted, curling back like strips of skin from a wound. Harry started as a small box rose into the air, and then the lid flipped back and the ring Horcrux blazed at him.

And Harry did want to touch it.

It made no sense. He knew exactly what it was, and he knew that it would curse him, and he trusted Hadrian when he’d said all that. But Harry found himself taking a step forwards anyway, reaching out.

Hadrian body-checked him back, like they were playing Quidditch. Harry stumbled. And then the compulsion stopped, and he realized that Hadrian had Transfigured the box that had held the ring into some kind of dull grey metal.

“What’s that?”

“Cold iron. Stops all kinds of enchantments.” Hadrian conjured a bag to drop the box into, and slipped it into one of the many pockets in his heavy robes. Then he turned around and came up to Harry, putting an arm around his shoulders again. “Are you all right?”

“You don’t need to do that, you know.”

“Do what?”

“Check on me all the time. I’m not a baby. And you warned me, so I didn’t get anywhere near the ring.”

Hadrian smiled, his eyes warmer than they had been since he appeared in the Room of Requirement. “But I like doing it. And I think you like it, too.” He reached out and smoothed one finger across Harry’s lip. “We’ve had precious few people to check on us, down the years.”

Harry caught his breath sharply. Yes, he did like it. He didn’t understand why, but he did.

Confused, he barely paid attention as Hadrian pulled him out of the shack.

*

His naivete is charming.

Hadrian knew himself well enough to realize that he was most looking forwards to delicately flensing that naivete away from Harry, teaching him better about the world and the way that it always aimed itself at Harry Potter, and how to resist that and protect himself. But right now, it was charming.

Hadrian could picture the way Harry would blush when Hadrian took him to bed the first time, how he would cry out and clutch the covers. It made Hadrian smile.

Right now, he was standing behind Harry with his hands wrapped around Harry’s holly wand, atop Harry’s. He was nuzzling behind Harry’s ear, and Harry was making small confused shifts, obviously understanding that he felt something, but not what.

“Why can’t you just cast it?” Harry whispered. The ring was lying on the ground in front of it, and at least part of the reason Hadrian was embracing Harry was to keep the compulsion from grabbing him. Hadrian was more distracting to Harry than any compulsion, and he knew it.

“Because I want you to have the practice. And the prophecy might not apply to me. Better if you destroy the Horcruxes, just so that there’s no way for Voldemort to come back.”

“Should we be saying the words so near one?”

“I was only really concerned about the wards that Voldemort might have had around the shack. Not that I sensed them.” Arrogant fool. “But you’re putting this off, Harry.” Hadrian slid his hands delicately up Harry’s arms before putting them back atop Harry’s hands, and Harry’s face was the color of flames. “Come on. Cast the Fiendfyre. We’ve practiced the incantation and wand movements long enough.”

There was a long silence when Hadrian thought Harry might not obey. He had plans for that contingency, but he bowed his head and inhaled the warmth rising from the back of Harry’s neck and waited.

Finally, Harry whispered the spell.

The flames gushed forwards from the end of the holly wand, immediately catching on the ring and the grass around them. A horrible shriek arose. Harry flinched, and Hadrian pulled him closer, whispering, “It’s okay, it’s all right.”

“It didn’t sound like the diary.”

Hadrian froze, eyes on the Fiendfyre to make sure that it didn’t get out of control. Harry had worked on controlling it, but it was a delicate, difficult spell. The holly wand remained steady in his hand, though.

Hadrian waited until the flames went out before he whispered, “The diary?”

“I—destroyed Tom Riddle’s diary in my second year.” Harry pushed tangled hair out of his eyes as he turned to face Hadrian. His face was red and pale with distress at the same time. Hadrian’s hand twitched with the desire to reach out and touch his cheek. “It was possessing someone else in the school, and it made her open the Chamber of Secrets and let the basilisk loose. I stabbed the diary with a basilisk fang. It shrieked, but not like that.”

Hadrian touched Harry’s cheek, but his hand was the one that was trembling. “You killed a Horcrux in your second year?”

“I didn’t know what it was, then.”

“But still.”

“Yeah.” Harry hesitated. “A basilisk, too.”

Hadrian stared at him. Harry ducked his head, and his cheeks turned redder. Hadrian vaguely remembered what that was like. Before his first year, he’d been embarrassed by attention, too, and part of his misery when he was eleven had been everyone staring at him, whispering, judging him.

“You fought a basilisk and survived?” Hadrian whispered.

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“Fawkes—the Headmaster’s phoenix?—brought me the Sorting Hat, and the Sword of Gryffindor fell out. Fawkes blinded the basilisk, and I stabbed it through the mouth with the sword. It bit me, and the fang broke off in my arm.” Harry gestured towards the scar on his arm that Hadrian had noticed a few days ago in the Room of Requirement, and hadn’t recognized at the time. “It hurt.”

“I’ll bet,” said Hadrian dazedly. Something was stirring low in his gut, and he didn’t recognize it any more than he’d known what the scar on Harry’s arm was. “How did you survive?”

“Fawkes cried on the wound. Then I used the fang to stab the diary.”

Hadrian moved closer again. He reached up and framed Harry’s face with hands that still trembled. Harry blinked at him, looking suddenly cautious. Hadrian wanted to drive the expression away from his eyes. He wanted to fold Harry closer and tell him how great he was, how strong.

He wanted to kiss him.

But that really would drive Harry away, and he wasn’t ready. Neither of them was ready, probably. Hadrian eased back, shaking his head. “You’re a wonder,” he said.

Harry flushed again. “Not half as smart or strong or brilliant as you are,” he muttered.

“Yes, you are. I never killed a basilisk. And I used the ritual that claimed my name to kill the Horcruxes all at once, but not when I was twelve.”

“When you were fifteen!”

Hadrian stroked Harry’s cheeks with his thumbs. “All that I am, you are,” he said hoarsely. “Or the potential for it, at least. Stop shaking your head,” he added impatiently, because Harry was doing that and it was ridiculous. And it was also jarring loose Hadrian’s hands, which he wanted to keep in place. “I promise, Harry, you can do anything you want. Killing a diary and a basilisk at twelve. How big would you say the basilisk was?”

“I—don’t know. Ten meters?”

“Nearly a thousand years old, if it was Salazar’s basilisk.” Hadrian wanted to howl at the moon. He wanted to pull Harry in close and snog him. He had to content himself with holding Harry tight and trying to send his urgency and awe through his hands. “Do you understand what you did?”

“You’re making it sound like something bad.”

“Of course not.” Hadrian softened his voice. He could understand why Harry would make that association. That was what raised voices meant, at the Dursleys’. “I promise, Harry, I’m just—astonished.”

“Yeah?”

Harry looked shyly pleased. Hadrian took a deep breath and managed to raise his hand and ruffle Harry’s hair affectionately instead of squeezing him the way he wanted to.

Merlin.

“Yeah. I promise, Harry, anything that you want to learn—rituals or Occlumency or Dark Arts—I promise, you can learn.”

“I don’t know if I want to learn Dark Arts.”

Hadrian managed to smile. “Then you don’t have to. But you should consider that Fiendfyre is a Dark spell, and you performed it well, and it’s not like it turned around and tried to bite you.”

“Yeah, I reckon it didn’t,” Harry said, sounding surprised.

Hadrian leaned closer again—he couldn’t help himself—and glided the backs of his fingers along Harry’s cheek. Harry jumped a little and took a step back as if to put space between them. Hadrian mustered an easy smile and stepped away with a shrug.

He had to control himself. This. He couldn’t lose the chance of being with Harry after this, and not just because Harry was a version of himself or because they might have to kill Voldemort together.

He wanted Harry with a ferocity that surprised him.

“We’ll do whatever you want,” Hadrian said softly. “After we’ve killed Voldemort, we’ll go wherever you want. Would you like that?”

“Yeah.”

Harry’s smile was balm to Hadrian’s soul.

*

Albus sipped from the glass of Firewhisky and sighed.

Arabella had told him the wards around Harry’s house had fallen, and she had already heard the sounds of Apparition in the area. Albus couldn’t be sure whether they were from Order members or Death Eaters, and he dared not wait to find out. He had set up temporary wards of his own, although they were nothing like as strong as the ones that had been there before. They would mostly warn him of someone’s attempt to cross. He was contacting some Order members and arranging a place where the Dursleys could be taken into hiding.

He had peered into their minds, just to make sure, and had confirmed they hadn’t seen Harry.

Where is he? If Voldemort has him, why hasn’t he—done something?

The silence puzzled Albus and made him feel almost ill.

Fawkes crooned and flew over to land on the arm of Albus’s chair, rubbing his head against Albus’s cheek. Albus stroked the phoenix’s elegant, bowed neck and exhaled slowly.

“I have failed him, Fawkes,” he whispered. “I can only hope that I will find Harry before it is too late.”

And before he had to break the bad news of Harry’s death to Miss Granger or Mr. Weasley.

And hopefully, before Voldemort figures out that Harry is a Horcrux.