lomonaaeren

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Chapter Fifty-One—Flames in the Mirror

Harry opens his eyes in a dark red room that he’s never seen before. He promptly crouches low, staring around, ready to fight or run.

But the only person in the room doesn’t seem to see him. It’s a tall man with slicked-back dark hair that sort of reminds Harry of the way Draco used to wear it, and dark eyes. At the moment, he’s bowing before his fire.

“Master.”

Harry looks in bewilderment at the fireplace, expecting to see someone’s head hovering there. The Minister? But the man spoke with so much reverence in his voice, and Harry can’t imagine someone giving that to Fudge.

Then he wrinkles his nose and barely manages to avoid snarling as he sees that there’s a dark smear in the air between the man and the fireplace. A smear that eddies back and forth and hisses sounds on the edge of Parseltongue.

“Caelum.”

Harry doubts that this Caelum can understand the language of serpents, but he kneels and looks up at the mist in devotion anyway. “I am yours to command, my lord,” he says, and then shuffles around so that he’s kneeling in a different posture. Maybe it has some significance to it, but if so, that’s lost on Harry.

What is significant is that he can see the man’s face differently from this angle, and it strikes Harry like a hammer blow who he looks like.

Pansy.

Is this man her father? A cousin, perhaps? But Harry can feel a certainty low in his gut that says it’s her father, and that whether or not her father was ever a Death Eater, Harry is about to watch him get possessed by Voldemort.

“You are my faithful servant.”

“I am, my lord! I am!”

“Then accept me.”

Voldemort’s nasty black fog billows forwards and envelops Caelum Parkinson’s head. Harry finds himself holding his breath, as if it were smoke that he could breathe in. But all that happens is Caelum screaming and falling over. He’s twitching now, his hands lifting up and falling back, his heels drumming on the carpet. He looks as if he’s caught somewhere between ecstasy and a seizure.

Then he falls still, so abruptly that Harry finds himself drawing his wand. Caelum turns his head to the side and locks eyes with Harry for the first time. He smiles. Harry sees the red edge to those eyes as his scar bursts into fire.

“Hello, Harry Potter.”

Harry calls up a mimicry of Fiendfyre, and sees the way that Caelum flinches back from it in the moments before he leaps free of the dream.

“Shit,” he whispers into the darkness, and lies still for a moment, before adding another burden to the mental pile accumulating on his shoulders.

*

“Pansy.”

Potter’s voice is slow and uncertain, as if he doesn’t think he has the right to call her that. Pansy turns around, shivering, her arms folded around herself. At the moment, whether Potter calls her by her first name or not is the least of her worries.

“You know.”

Potter gives a shallow, choppy nod. “I’m—linked to him in my dreams, and I saw him possessing your father.” He hesitates. “I’m so sorry.”

“I got the owl,” Pansy whispers. She remembers feeling a little anxious as the black owl her father favored, Nimbus, winged towards her, but she never could have anticipated opening the letter and finding what was actually inside. “He didn’t—he didn’t even pretend that he was doing anything other than inviting me home to my death.”

“I don’t think he can actually imagine himself into writing a convincing letter like that. The empathy is beyond him.”

Pansy blinks and stares at Potter, who is staring at the far wall with burning eyes. “You know him that well?”

“I think most people who fought him probably do. But I was the one who disembodied him, so I’m the one who was responsible for him possessing your father.”

Pansy laughs. She doesn’t mean to, but it slips out, and Potter looks curious instead of offended. Pansy tucks her arms closer to her still and takes a deep breath. “How much do you know about how possession works, Potter?”

“I know it can be willing, and it can happen through artifacts. That’s about it.”

Pansy resists the temptation to ask him why he knows even that much. Possession isn’t common, and that level of knowledge sounds like more than someone should have—but she’s not here to talk about that. “It can only happen either willingly or if there’s a similarity in magic between the subjects.”

“But one of the people I knew who was possessed…they’re not the kind of person who would do…”

“I said similarity in magic, Potter, not temperament, or desire to practice Dark Arts.” Pansy shakes her head. “I know my father. He’s weak and wouldn’t be similar to the Dark Lord in any capacity.”

“So it was willing.”

“Yes. And he had to have known what would happen to my mother, to me if I was stupid enough to come home. He didn’t care. He must have decided that the Dark Lord’s power was worth sacrificing his family for.”

“Maybe he was so afraid that he didn’t know what he was doing.”

Pansy lets her resounding silence speak for her. Her father is weak, magically, and Pansy was stronger than him when she was six years old. He would look at the Dark Lord’s spirit and see a chance to get some of his own back.

Pansy can only be glad that she inherited her intelligence from her maternal line.

“I can’t go home,” Pansy whispers into the silence that follows, since Potter seems to be waiting for her to say something. “Because my father is an idiot and my mother probably a prisoner or under the Imperius by now.”

“I’m sorry.”

Potter really sounds like he wants to make it up to her. Pansy stares at him with narrowed eyes, and then nods. “Do you know what the Diamond Dust Ritual is?”

“No.”

Potter is back to sounding cautious, but too late. He really shouldn’t have let Pansy think he owed her a debt. Pansy gives him a sharp smile and says, “It’s a ritual that can strengthen the magic of the person performing it so that they can become much better at a certain field—Runes, for example, or Divination. But it needs blood from someone who agrees to be a willing sacrifice.”

“All right.”

Pansy almost continues speaking, to define the ritual for him, but then pauses. That didn’t sound like someone asking for more information. It sounds like someone who is already agreeing to the ritual.

“What?” she whispers.

“I said all right.” Potter looks at her consideringly. “I don’t know for sure what field you’re going to choose, but I can see why you would want to do something to keep yourself safe. And I did play a part in putting you in danger, so I’m willing to donate my blood.”

Pansy bites her lip so hard that she starts from the pain of it. Then she swallows and asks, “Even if you have to give a lot of blood?”

“I assume there are such things as Blood-Replenishing Potions allowed in this ritual.”

Pansy nods, intrigued despite herself by the dry tone in Potter’s voice. “There’s no restriction on that. But I have to cut you with an iron athame, and…some people who are willing to play their part otherwise don’t like that.”

“I assume it’s a symbolism thing.” Potter shrugs, his eyes going past Pansy to the far wall. Pansy doesn’t turn around to see what he’s looking at. She’s sure that she won’t see anything herself. “But I didn’t grow up with that kind of pureblood—belief, and I don’t care.”

Pansy wonders what he would have said other than “belief,” but lets it go. “Thank you, Potter,” she whispers. “I don’t know how to say thank you enough.”

“Tell me when you want to perform the ritual, and when you have the athame.”

“I have the athame already.” It was a gift from her mother when Pansy was eleven. Pansy will be doubly glad to have it now, considering that she might never get any gift from her mother again. “And we need the new moon.”

“Next new moon, then.”

“At midnight.”

Pansy doesn’t know why she’s pushing, really, trying to come up with some boundary Potter won’t cross. But she doesn’t succeed this time, either. Potter looks at her with calm opaque eyes and inclines his head. “That’s fine with me.”

“Thank you,” Pansy repeats, and turns and walks away, so that she’s the one who won’t look weak.

She wonders what Potter will say when she tells him that the field she wants to perform the Diamond Dust ritual on herself for is Runic Divination, technically a combination of the two. But Pansy, while good at Runes, doesn’t plan to devote her life to their ordinary uses, and she also knows how finicky and unreliable true Divination is.

She will, instead, select the field that will allow her to see into the future and avoid another attack by the Dark Lord, and also perhaps see a way to free her mother and punish her father.

Caelum Parkinson will suffer for what he’s done.

*

“I need to do something. Let me do something.”

Harry eyes Ron. Ron ambushed him the moment Harry entered the Room of Requirement for their latest study group session, and led him over to a far corner of the room. Right now, he’s clasping his hands in front of him as if he wants to shake or throttle Harry, and his eyes are bright with desperation.

Harry knows that Ron is his best friend, and he knows Ron is grieving. But at the moment, Ron looks like he’s on the edge of doing something he can’t come back from.

“Ron?”

“I need to do something to hurt Voldemort for what he did to Dad. Something big.”

Harry frowns slowly. At the moment, all he can do is counter Voldemort when he takes some action in Parkinson’s body, and prepare for the ritual that will restore Theo’s sanity. He can’t think of anything that Ron would—

“Please,” Ron whispers.

Harry swallows. He always knew that he would end up making decisions he didn’t like. He just thought that those decisions would be confined to things like fighting for some people and not for others.

Right now, he has to make a decision that could put Ron in danger to save Ron’s sanity.

“Okay,” Harry says abruptly, and raises a Privacy Charm around them so intricate that it distorts the air. A couple people give them curious glances, but Ron doesn’t seem to notice, eyes fastened on Harry, and Harry doesn’t let himself really notice, either. “I can give you something to do. But you have to be careful, okay? It’s going to require study, and possibly sacrifice.”

Ron’s skin turns a little green, and Harry holds his breath, hoping Ron will give up on the notion. Then Harry can hopefully point out to him how just fighting Voldemort is taking revenge.

But instead Ron says, “I can do that.”

Harry swallows and nods. He does need someone to do this, and Ron has apparently volunteered. Harry was going to find someone else and ask them to do it without telling them why. Blaise would have, and maybe Draco.

But now he can take out the scroll of parchment from his pocket and say, “I’m preparing a ritual to restore Theo’s sanity. It’s going to draw Voldemort to me because of the—connection between us. I need someone to research a circle that would contain him.”

“You said that he’s a wraith?”

“Not any longer. He found someone to possess.”

He thinks for a second that the way Ron’s eyes widen mean he’s about to give up on the process of researching the circle because he thinks it would be too hard. But then he says, “I could kill him.”

“I need you to bind him.”

“But if he’s in a body…”

“It would still be risky to kill him while he’s in the circle. There aren’t any circles that would contain both a wraith and a possessed person. He would be able to escape if he went from one state to another in the circle.”

“I could find a circle that would contain them both.”

“I would rather you work on finding one that binds.”

There’s a long, silent moment when Harry is pretty sure Ron won’t listen to him. Then Ron slowly dips his head. “If you think it would help.”

“It would help a lot. Thank you, Ron.”

Harry can’t keep the relief out of his voice, and maybe that’s what convinces Ron. A small smile lifts the corner of his mouth, and he reaches out to clap Harry on the shoulder. “I’ll do my best,” he says, and his voice is warm. More like his own.

Harry claps Ron on the shoulder, too, and watches him walk over to the far side of the Room of Requirement, where a bookshelf is already materializing. He shakes his head a little.

I don’t need Ron to be Theo or Blaise or Hermione or Daphne. I just need him to be himself.

Even though, Harry has to admit, who Ron is might have been forever changed by his father’s death.

*

Minerva sighs a little as she waves Kingsley to a seat. “Sit down, please, Professor Shacklebolt.”

“Thank you, Minerva.”

From the way that Kingsley grips the edge of the seat, he wants to launch himself into a round of pacing, but he manages to stay sitting. Minerva waits, but Kingsley seems reluctant to begin, even though he was the one who asked for this meeting.

“You are concerned about young Mr. Potter?” Minerva prompts finally.

“Not just him. The rest of the fifth-year Slytherins, and several of the fifth-year Gryffindors.”

Minerva blinks. “Why is that?”

“They don’t seem to have any intention of trying to pass their OWLS!”

Minerva holds back a laugh. After all, if she were still a professor and not involved in the war effort the way she is, she would probably agree with him. “That is concerning. However, I believe that Mr. Potter, targeted as he is by Voldemort, has greater problems to worry about. And his friends wish to aid him.”

“By making a mess of their own futures?”

“You feel so certain that they could not pass the OWLS after the war is done?”

“When will the war be done?” Kingsley slumps back and runs a hand over his bald pate. “How much will people have to sacrifice to help Potter do what he needs to do?”

“You are suggesting that Harry should be the only one worrying about this and that he should fight Voldemort alone?”

Kingsley hesitates for the first time. “Not alone. But the others are school children.”

“Harry is a schoolboy.”

“He could do it.”

Minerva shakes her head. Kingsley has been a better professor than she thought he might be, when she also thinks he’s still following the trailing shadow Albus left behind, but he sounds half-delusional now. “He’s still a child, Kingsley. Whether or not he could do it, he shouldn’t have to do it alone. And if you think Voldemort would leave the others alone, you’re mistaken. He’s already struck at me, at Mr. Black, and at others he could reach. That reach will intensify.”

“Minerva…I heard…”

“Yes?” Perhaps they’re coming to the heart of what Kingsley really wants to talk about.

“I heard that Potter burned You-Know-Who to death.”

“He survived. That is, they both did.”

“No. I mean. Potter burned You-Know-Who out of his body.”

Minerva nods. “Yes, that is true.”

“How can—how can someone who’s meant to be our hero do that sort of thing?”

Minerva can’t help the way her lips twitch. “You want him to defeat Voldemort by himself but also only to do it with first-year spells?”

“Fiendfyre is no first-year spell, and you know it.”

“No,” says Minerva. “I do know it, but you won’t get the purity that you’re looking for, Kingsley. No one will. Anyone who believes that Harry can be as pure as the infant they all think of when they hear the words Boy-Who-Lived is going to be sorely disappointed.”

“That is a problem, Minerva,” Kingsley says, and now he looks irritated with her. “I understand what you’re saying, but there are people who will expect that purity from Potter, and need it, even. You can disparage people’s expectations all you want, but Potter could at least not shoot a Killing Curse at them.”

“You think he should have thought about that when driving the Dark Lord who had just killed his best friend’s father from his body?”

“I would have thought about it.”

“Kingsley. Once again, you are an adult, and Harry is not.”

“You need to realize what people will think, Minerva!”

“And you need to realize how Harry is likely to respond.” Minerva leans towards Kingsley. “He has already suffered from people believing he was the Heir of Slytherin in his second year, and that he cheated to enter the Tournament last year, and that he should be expelled from Hogwarts because he supposedly brings danger to the students. That he is a Dark Lord because he is a Parselmouth, untrustworthy because he is a Slytherin. If too many people bring down the force of their disappointment on him because he fails to fight a clean war, when there is no such thing, he may simply stop fighting the war for anyone but his closest friends.”

“He would do such a selfish thing?”

“He would respond to selfishness with selfishness. And he would be right to do so.”

Minerva keeps her voice cool and her expression stern. In reality, she does not think that Harry would abandon magical Britain, or leave innocent people to Voldemort’s wand, no matter how much they irritated him. But she thinks that it would be just as well for Kingsley to believe that.

Kingsley closes his eyes, then opens them. “I’m just trying to explain what the public reaction’s likely to be if he did that.”

“The reaction is already bad. I will do what I must to protect my student.”

“Including condoning his use of Fiendfyre.”

“He did what he needed to do.”

Kingsley climbs to his feet in a way that makes him seem much older than he actually is. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Minerva.”

“I hope you know what you might awaken if you insist on acting against Harry Potter, Kingsley.”

Kingsley gives her an ancient look, and leaves her office. Minerva listens long enough to be sure that he’s going down the moving staircase and not lingering outside the door.

Then she reaches for parchment and ink. It seems it’s time for an “anonymous” letter to find its way to Harry, and warn him that if he’s trusting Kingsley, he shouldn’t.

Minerva hates the politics of this fight. But she has made it perfectly clear to Kingsley where she stands—with her students, first, last, and always.