Chapter Forty-Seven of 'Leopard's Choice'- Limits of the Possible

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Forty-Seven—Limits of the Possible

Harry wakes to fire.

He scrambles to his feet, choking, one hand over his nose, staring around in horror. It seems as though everything is burning, the stone walls and the doors of the small houses and the people running in circles—

Wait.

This isn’t the Slytherin dormitory he went to sleep in, or even the Slytherin common room. This is a village that seems to be near a line of low hills. Harry is once again sharing Voldemort’s dreams.

Harry grits his teeth and forces himself backwards, emotionally and intellectually, from what’s going on here. If this is happening right this moment, he can’t save anyone who’s burning. If this is an illusion, there’s no one to save.

“What will you do, Harry Potter?”

Speaking Parseltongue even with the leopard feels less filthy than speaking it with Voldemort. Harry turns around with his teeth bared. “Think that you’re an incompetent idiot,” he says. “What does burning random villages do? Nothing except make people afraid. And sooner or later, when people are tired of fear, they fight back.”

Voldemort laughs, and the air rips aside, as if it were a parted curtain, to reveal him. He’s standing in the middle of something that might have been the village square, his wand in his hand and a wide smile splitting his face. “They never resisted me when I was gathering terror in the first war. They will not this time.”

“The names Lily Potter and James sound familiar? Sirius Black? Dumbledore?” Harry doesn’t like Dumbledore, but at least the man did something, and resisting haphazardly is more than the Ministry managed.

“They are dead.”

“Yeah, last time I saw Sirius, he was pretty lively for a corpse.”

Voldemort hisses, and Harry’s scar explodes in pain. He heaves his thoughts without really understanding what he’s doing, drilling down to a single focus, the way he has when he’s acting in his conversations with the leopard, only this time focusing on putting the pain aside.

Abruptly, Voldemort screams.

Harry looks wildly up and around, wondering if one of the monster’s victims managed to get a curse in after all. Then he realizes that Voldemort is holding his own forehead, babbling what seem to be nonsense words in Parseltongue. Harry stares at him with his mouth a little open, although that makes the pain flicker out and Voldemort straighten back up, his hands curled in vicious claws.

I can—I can make him feel the way I do?

Well, why not? The Horcrux connection is something strange even by the Speakers’ definition, and they’re a lot older and know a lot more about magic than Harry does. Maybe he can force the pain back the other way.

“You dare—”

Harry doesn’t waste time thinking about what Voldemort’s saying. He drives the pain towards him like a bucking horse, and Voldemort screams aloud, one hand rising to clasp his forehead and the other trying to cast a curse at Harry with his wand.

Harry smiles grimly and grabs hold of the pain. He knows exactly what it feels like. Maybe more than Voldemort does, given that he usually inflicts pain and he spent so many years as a wraith. Maybe he’s not used to it.

Feel it! Harry practically shouts at him, hurling the agony along their link. Feel this!

Voldemort screams again, and the wand wavers out of his hand and drops to the ground. Harry nearly loses hold of his link with Voldemort in surprise, but he grits his teeth and flings more pain like a fireball.

“You cannot do this! It is impossible!”

“Is it?” Harry taunts, and then has to concentrate as he feels the dream or vision wavering around them. Voldemort is trying to escape. Harry rips at him, claws at him, and holds him there.

The fire around them disappears, the screams of the villagers become muffled, and Harry drills down into the memory of the pain that assaulted him in first and fourth year, pushing, pushing, shoving, shoving, trying as best as he can to mingle it with the pain of the basilisk bite that he also suffered because of Voldemort and the endless fear of not knowing how he can save Theo. He blends it with his worries for his friends, and Voldemort screams hard enough, hands rising to claw at his eyes, that Harry loses control of the dream altogether.

Suddenly he’s sitting up in his bed, panting, and staring at the curtains. Lion winds around his neck, hissing worriedly.

“You are well?”

“Yeah,” Harry whispers back, not caring that his smile hurts his lips. “Yeah. I think I found another weapon against Voldemort. I’m better than well.”

*

Theo sits with his eyes closed and ignores the way that Professor Vector is scolding him for not finishing his Arithmancy equation. He already finished it. This was one of the things that his hands and voice cooperated in doing, for some reason.

He breathes, drifting, stalking a memory like the leopard he hasn’t been since the Soul-Breaker hit him.

There’s a thought. An idea. Something that’s important. Theo has tried waiting for it to come to him of its own free will, but that’s not happening, so he concentrates, and reaches, and hunts—

And at last it drops into his claws.

Theo’s eyes fly open, and he starts scribbling on the parchment in front of him. The problem is that he can’t trust the memory will stay with him, not with all the breaks and cracks still in his mind, so he has to do his best to make sure it will be safe and someone else can retrieve it if he forgets.

“Mr. Nott! Five points from Slytherin!”

Theo ignores Vector. Does she think it matters, does she think he cares, when this is the only memory that he’s been able to pull back to himself since the curse?

“Stay after class, Mr. Nott.”

It’s all right, Theo mouths to Draco when he catches Draco anxiously watching him. Draco nods and turns around to say something to Blaise, who’s sitting on his other side and might not have seen. Theo folds the parchment he was writing on up neatly and sticks it in his pocket.

“Mr. Nott, you cannot fall asleep in class no matter how tired you are! You need to finish your equations—”

“I did, Professor Vector. Here, see?”

Vector’s dark eyes widen as she stares down at the parchment. Then she stares at Theo for a moment. Theo just looks back. If his equation had something really wrong with it or he’d made some terrible mistake, she would have said something about it by now.

“How—you did finish—” Vector falls silent and then shakes her head. “Why did you fall asleep in class, Mr. Nott?”

“I don’t know if you heard about what hit me, Professor Vector. The Soul-Breaker Curse. It’s very difficult for me to maintain a normal routine and level of concentration when it comes to that.”

Vector flushes brightly. “Mr. Nott, of course I heard about that.”

“Then why be surprised that I’m falling asleep in class, Professor?”

“You produced a good Arithmancy equation, Mr. Nott. I must assume that your concentration is somewhat back to normal.”

Theo lets his eyes widen. “It comes and goes unpredictably, Professor. I’m sure that you heard about that, too.”

From the frustrated expression on Vector’s face, she has. She blows out her breath and abruptly switches tactics. “Mr. Nott, you could be a great Arithmancer. The work you did today is still better than most of the class does.”

Theo isn’t accustomed to such praise from his professors, even though he does fairly well. He’s too quiet, too odd, too distant. He tilts his head and lets curiosity spill into his smile. “Really, Professor Vector?”

“Yes. What you have always lacked is dedication, not skill. Tell me, where do you see yourself in five years?”

Dead, or in Harry’s service.

That isn’t the kind of truth he can share with anyone outside Harry’s inner circle, though, so Theo smiles a little and says, “Able to perform whatever kind of magic I want, whenever I want.”

“I hope you don’t mean the Dark Arts, Mr. Nott.”

“Oh, of course, Professor! I didn’t mean illegal magic. I meant anything I was able to have the skill level for.”

Theo doesn’t mean that at all, but Vector isn’t a Legilimens like Professor Snape and can’t sense the lie. She relaxes. “Good. I think that you could be doing Arithmancy at a high level if you would concentrate in my class.”

“Sorry, Professor. I’m just interested in too many other things to make Arithmancy the sole thing I concentrate on.”

“What could make Arithmancy more interesting to you, Mr. Nott?”

Well. This is a different discussion than Theo expected. He decides to be honest, and see what it gets him. “A way to use it to defend myself, Professor.”

Vector watches him with sad eyes. “Are you so convinced that someone will attack you, Mr. Nott?”

“Me, or my family and friends.” Theo smiles with only his lips. Maybe she has missed that he’s friends with Harry and one of his closest followers. Vector isn’t a Head of House, and she teaches classes that only third-year students and up take. So there’s the chance that she’s missed the important House rivalries and revelations that have followed Theo around the last few years.

Vector sighs. “I can direct you to some books on battle Arithmancy. But it is theoretical only, Mr. Nott.”

“Why’s that, Professor?”

“It takes so long to set up beforehand that it’s not practical to use in the middle of a duel, the same way that you can’t start brewing a potion then.”

“So you couldn’t start writing an equation ahead of time and then only complete it when the spellfire started flying?”

Vector smiles a little. “Would you know exactly where all your duels would take place, Mr. Nott? Could you predict ahead of time what equation would be most useful? No, Arithmancy is best reserved for calm situations.”

We’ll see about that. But it’s true that Theo hasn’t felt this focused in the middle of a conversation since the Soul-Breaker struck. He nods. “I’d still like to see some of the books you’re talking about, Professor.”

“Of course, Mr. Nott. Let me give you the titles, and a pass for the Restricted Section, since some of them are there…”

*

“Here, Harry.”

Harry blinks and glances up. He’s been working listlessly on a Charms essay in front of the fire. Honestly, he doesn’t see the point of writing most essays and doing most homework. It won’t help him with what matters to him, saving Theo and defeating Voldemort.

Hermione said something to him the other day about sitting his OWLS and how important they were, but she did blush a little when Harry gave her an incredulous look.

“Harry.”

Harry shakes his head and focuses on Theo, who’s holding something insistently out to him. Harry takes it, curious. It looks like an ordinary small scroll of parchment, but it’s covered with hurried notes in Theo’s handwriting.

“What is it?”

“Something I remembered during Arithmancy.”

Harry starts to unroll the parchment, and then he jumps and looks up at Theo. Theo smiles at him, eyes brilliant with triumph. He looks more like the leopard that hunted and killed Pettigrew than he has any time since then.

“You remembered,” Harry whispers, feeling as though his heart is beating in his hand instead of inside his chest.

“Yes, I did.” Theo’s smile deepens.

“How did you remember it?” Harry demands, leaning forwards. “Did it slip out of the cracks in your memory? Is this a sign that you’re healing? Do you think it’s not necessary to—” The words tumble out of him, and his chest aches as he wonders whether his ritual with the leopard is going to be necessary at all.

But you know why it is.

Theo shakes his head a little. “I didn’t remember it in the usual way, Harry. I imagined myself hunting down the memory, and there it was.” He nods towards the scroll. “And as you’ll see, it’s a simple memory. There’s only so much detail because I was thinking that Lyassa might have some trouble finding it.”

“But you think if you hunt down memories…”

“I stand at least a chance of recovering some of them, yes.”

Harry does his best not to bounce in his seat as he opens the scroll. Yes, it’s a small thing, but after so long with no sign of hope except the ceremony where he managed to animate Pettigrew’s body, it feels much larger than it is.

There are only a few details on the parchment, before the words start to repeat themselves. It’s directions to the location of a book that Theo says is in his father’s library. There’s no title. But in the middle of the parchment is a description that makes Harry’s arms and the back of his neck tingle with goosebumps.

This book, sacred to the Nott family, explores the concept of living Horcruxes.

Harry swallows and lifts his eyes to Theo’s face. “If it’s sacred to the Nott family, will we be able to take it?”

Theo tilts his head. “Lyassa won’t be able to take it from the shelf. She’ll have to have my father do that. And I’ll have to be the one to hold it once we have it, or I’ll have to shed my blood and keep it fresh with charms or a potion so that you can have your hands covered with it when you hold the book.” The thought seems to entertain Theo.

This time, Harry swallows back the idea that he doesn’t really know Theo at all. That’s not true, for one thing, and for another, he should be happy that his friend is gaining back some of his real personality. “That seems like a fairly simple safeguard to get past.”

“My ancestors weren’t able to picture that someone might feel more loyalty to someone outside the Nott family than they did to them. That one of their children would willingly bleed for someone else like that, or be controlled by something deeper than the Imperius Curse to take the book from the shelf.”

Harry thinks that’s pretty stupid, but then again, he’s not a pureblood wizard overwhelmed by the fumes of his own bigotry. He goes back to looking at the scroll. “And you think that an owl can carry it?”

“The prohibitions against someone who isn’t a Nott touching the book doesn’t extend to animals. What would they do? It would extend to someone like a house-elf or a Speaker, though. That’s why my father has to fasten it to the owl, and he’ll have to send it to me.”

Harry nods. “Why did—why would anything about living Horcruxes be in that book?” He lowers his voice, even though he already saw Theo cast a Silencing Charm.

“It’s something I remembered, part of the memory I had to hunt down. My father showed me the book long ago, trying to impress me with the bollocks that my ancestors got up to.” Theo lowers his voice, too. “I really didn’t remember much of it, but now I do recall that there was an incantation for placing more than one soul in a living being.”

Harry blinks. He can understand why Theo thought that might be a reference to a living Horcrux. On the other hand, it might not be. But they don’t exactly have books brimming with leads, even with the Room of Requirement producing books on Horcruxes for Theo and Hemrione.

“Do you remember anything more about the passage?”

“No, my lord. Sorry.”

Harry makes a sound of distress before he can stop himself, and Theo freezes with his mouth open. Lion hisses gently, and Harry stands up, puts down the stupid half-finished essay, and grips Theo’s arms with both hands.

“You are doing extraordinarily well to remember as much as you have,” Harry says fiercely. “Please don’t worry about it. I only asked to see if you did know, not scold you because you didn’t.”

“I—yes.” Already Theo’s feelings are retreating behind a mask that flickers like cold lightning, and Theo is biting his lips as though that will keep him focused in the way he wants to be. “You—don’t scold. I remember that.”

It sounds as though he’s telling himself that instead of remembering it, though. Harry steps back and lets his friend go. “You did well today, Theo.”

Theo gives him the fleeting, confused smile that’s been his most common expression in the last little while, and turns to stumble up to their dormitory. Harry settles back down by the fire, but reaches for the parchment and ink to write a letter to Lyassa instead of for the stupid essay.

“You have found something that you think will help? You are writing to the Speakers?”

“Yes,” Harry hisses back, and explains to Lion as well as he can. Lion understands the Horcrux connection, more or less, but he doesn’t really understand why Harry would want a book, or how a book can only be opened by members of a certain family. Then again, Harry doesn’t know the detail of the Notts’ protection spells, either.

He doesn’t need to. He just needs that book.

He ignores the flicker of shadow on top of the mantel. The shadow-leopard is welcome to spy on this all it likes. Harry doesn’t think that it will interfere in his efforts to remove the Horcrux. That’s not the kind of corruption it wants to unleash on him.

And it has no way of spying on the conversation that he’s only having with himself, inside his head.