lomonaaeren

*

“I think I found something.”

Adrian’s voice was low, his eyes averted. Harry turned around and took a deep breath, both because of the look on his boyfriend’s face and because of the crackling leather-bound book in Adrian’s hands. It all but exuded a miasma.

“But it’s not good, right?”

“It’s not easy.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

Adrian met his eyes, and then cast a pointed glance around the library. Harry nodded and stood up to put the books he’d taken out back on the shelves. Obviously, they should have a conversation in a different location.

*

They ended up going to the dungeon corridor they’d met up in so many times last year after Umbridge’s detentions. Harry didn’t think that either he or Adrian wanted to desecrate the Quidditch pitch with what they might say.

Adrian turned around and leaned against the wall. Harry stood opposite him, eyes flickering from the book in Adrian’s hands back to his face.

Adrian finally breathed out and said, “This book talks about transferring souls that have gone into portraits. It’s fairly clear that the soul can be transferred, but only between portraits of the same kind.” His hands tightened on the book. “You couldn’t put the soul of a wizard or witch into a painting that only contained a landscape, or animals. It would have to be a portrait that contained another—another painted person.”

Harry didn’t normally feel this smart, especially with the fact that he still couldn’t beat Ron in chess, but his mind made the leap this time. “The Horcrux I’m carrying could be transferred into another person,” he whispered.

Adrian gave a choppy nod. “Only.”

Harry stared blindly at the wall for a moment. He hadn’t felt the intense revulsion at the thought of hosting a Horcrux since the night he’d found out, maybe because he hadn’t really allowed himself to think about it. But the nausea he’d experienced then was nothing compared to his nausea at the thought of inflicting this burden on someone else.

“I did have one idea.”

Harry looked back at Adrian. Adrian’s face had gone completely blank, which was startling. For the first time since second year, Harry felt unable to read him at all.

Adrian moved a slow step forwards. “Dumbledore.”

“I—I can’t do that to him just because he kept the secret from me, Adrian.”

“No. Because he’s dying, and when he dies, the Horcrux will die with him.” Adrian took a slow breath. “And because he should feel guilty enough about what he did to you that he’d agree to the transfer.”

Harry gaped at Adrian for a moment. Adrian stared back, his face set but uncomfortable shadows in his eyes.

“This is—sort of a new manifestation of your idea of fair play, isn’t it?” Harry asked, with a smile that he knew looked manic.

Adrian took a long breath and drove a knuckle into his eye for a moment. “I can be ruthless when it comes to you, Harry. Your safety. You’re the only person I love.”

Harry had to close his eyes for a moment, both because of the overwhelming force of the declaration and because of what it said about Adrian’s relationship to his family. He nodded a little and reached out a hand blindly. Adrian grabbed it.

“Let’s talk to Dumbledore and see what he says,” Harry murmured, and Adrian pulled him into a desperate, smothering kiss.

*

Dumbledore heard them out in silence.

Harry let him have it. He would want the same courtesy if he was dying and someone had spoken to him about taking advantage of his death. He leaned against Adrian; he’d moved his chair enough that he could do that. Adrian sat with an arm around Harry’s shoulders and his eyes fixed on the Headmaster.

Dumbledore finally stirred and said, “I had thought to use my death in a different way.”

“You still could,” Adrian said, before Harry had thought of what to do with that objection. “The Horcrux itself wouldn’t kill you, any more than it has Harry so far.” His hand tightened around Harry until he thought he would have had trouble breathing if Adrian had maintained the hold, but Adrian was going steadily on. “We could do the transfer, and then it would die when you did.”

“That was not my understanding.”

“What was your understanding?” Harry said sharply. “And I thought you hadn’t really looked into transferring the Horcrux because the thought of me having it depressed you too much?”

Dumbledore glanced back and forth between them for a moment and then, inexplicably, began to smile. Harry felt Adrian flex in a way that suggested his free hand was dropping to his wand holster.

“I am humbled,” Dumbledore whispered. “I had looked into it enough to think that the Killing Curse from the hand of Voldemort himself might slay the Horcrux and spare your life, Harry. I confess, I did not want to tell you that because I thought the hope might be more painful for you than the despair.

“But you figured it out, and you humble me with your courage and your strength, Harry. You are still here instead of running away. I know many people who would have tried.”

Harry shook his head, dazed from the rush of emotions through him, and leaned harder against Adrian. “It wouldn’t work. Voldemort would have just tried to follow me anyway, and the Horcrux would still exist, so we couldn’t kill him.”

Dumbledore nodded slowly. Even though his eyes were fixed on Harry, Harry had the impression that he was really seeing something else. “Yes. But there would be people who would hope that Voldemort would give up on finding them or conquering them if they were not immediately available to be found or conquered.”

That idea seemed stupid to Harry. He just shrugged.

The Headmaster took a deep breath and clasped his hands together, the whole one and the withered one. “The Horcrux I destroyed was a ring that, unfortunately, bore a flesh-wasting curse that began to kill me when I touched it. The best efforts of our dear Potions master have only confined the curse to my right hand—”

Adrian coughed, and buried in the cough was a sound like, “Dear?” Harry laughed a little.

Dumbledore paused, faintly smiling, and then went on. “I believe that, at the very least, my original plan would not fail with the addition of the Horcrux to my own body. I still plan on taking a Killing Curse.”

“What?” Adrian blurted. “Are you going to go out and battle Voldemort face-to-face, then?”

“No,” Dumbledore said cheerfully. “Not quite. I was going to have Severus kill me so that he might establish his position in the Death Eaters as superior and his loyalty to Voldemort as beyond doubt. But it can still work this way. We will only need to make sure that we conduct the Horcrux transfer in the next few months, as the end of the term is rapidly approaching.”

“What?”

“What?”

“Surely you didn’t think I would let the curse on the Defense post simply destroy Severus? This way, he will leave, and you will be assured of future help as you work to destroy the Horcruxes, Harry.”

Harry exchanged a glance with Adrian. His mouth was twitching in a way that could turn into either a smile or a scowl. Harry had the distinct impression that he didn’t know how much to trust Dumbledore.

Well, neither did Harry. He took a deep breath and leaned forwards. “Let’s talk about that and the spells we found that could transfer a soul from one portrait to another, Headmaster.”

*

“Harry. Are you ready?”

Harry opened his eyes and gave Adrian a soft smile. Adrian and Dumbledore’s conversation had become so theoretical that he hadn’t been able to follow it, and he was still exhausted from the hours that he and Adrian had spent researching in the library, and the nights he’d spent lying awake worrying about the Horcrux.

“You’re ready to cast the spell?” he asked, yawning and standing up. The chairs in Dumbledore’s office were really comfortable, at least when he Transfigured them to be so.

“Yes.”

Adrian had a tight grip on Harry’s hand as he led him into the middle of the ritual circle that he and Dumbledore had spent a night laying out in the middle of the Headmaster’s office. But Harry walked calmly and confidently beside his boyfriend. He knew that Adrian wouldn’t have let him near the ritual circle unless he was sure the spell would work.

Or at least wouldn’t hurt Harry. Harry supposed it wouldn’t technically be pain if the Horcrux was left in his soul.

Even though his heart beat hard with the hope that this would work, the hope Dumbledore had been afraid of giving him.

Dumbledore stood in the middle of one half of the ritual circle, which was cut in two by a chalk line. His gaze was soft as it fell on Harry. “I should have researched and suggested something like this myself,” he murmured. “Please forgive me not doing it, Harry.”

“It’s not your fault, sir,” Harry mumbled, more than a little uncomfortable. He took his stance in the other half of the circle. This half had scatterings of black gems, obsidian and onyx and others Harry hadn’t heard them name, along the outside of the circle. Dumbledore’s had green gems, like emeralds. Something about the color of receptivity, but Harry had nodded off when Adrian was in the middle of trying to explain that.

“May I say, Mr. Pucey,” Dumbledore said, twinkling at Adrian, “that you deserve a high mark on your Arithmancy NEWT.”

Adrian nodded, but didn’t smile. His hand was shaking as he pressed it to Harry’s back.

“You’ll be fine, or I’ll know why not,” he mumbled, and then he stepped back and away from the circle.

Holding those words to him like a talisman, Harry turned to face Dumbledore.

“I’m ready to begin, sir.”

*

Most of the work in the ritual circle was sort of boring. Dumbledore chanted something long and in Latin, and then Adrian chanted something long and in Latin, and in the meantime, Harry had to close his eyes and concentrate his attention on the memory of the diary, the only Horcrux of Voldemort’s Harry had encountered close up.

Harry wasn’t really sure why he had to do that, but he concentrated harder and harder on the image of the shade from the diary, its laughter, the way it had told him they were alike, how Tom Riddle had become more solid as Ginny faded, the black blood that had spilled from the diary when Harry pierced it with the basilisk fang—

And then he could feel it.

There was a slimy stain on his own magic, and Harry could suddenly see it in the middle of himself like a black bug on a silver flower petal. He stared at it, revolted. He wondered why he’d never felt it before, when the diary Horcrux had been powerful enough to possess Ginny and release a basilisk.

Then again, that had been an active Horcrux, Dumbledore had said when describing them. This was “passive.” Maybe that was why Harry had never felt it.

“Are you ready, Harry?”

Harry shuddered and opened his eyes, the sense of the Horcrux still fluttering in his magic like a flame. “Yes, sir.”

Dumbledore nodded to him. The twinkle had faded from his eyes, and they were calm and solemn. “Very well. Then I want you to will the Horcrux to cross over into my body.”

“How, sir?”

“Will it to leave your magic. Will it to go elsewhere. You hate it, I would assume.”

“Yeah,” Harry whispered, swallowing. It wasn’t just that Voldemort had attached a piece of his soul to Harry, but that it had happened the night of his parents’ death, and also that it had been there all along when Adrian was holding and kissing and comforting him.

It was wrong. Harry wanted it gone.

As he thought that, a bell seemed to ring deep inside him, and Dumbledore began another chant in Latin, one that sounded calm and happy. Harry shuddered and stared towards the Headmaster in the other half of the circle, his hands clenching.

Get out! Leave me!

The Horcrux stirred. Harry abruptly had the sense of malevolent eyes watching him, and grimaced. He suspected the Horcrux had just become active.

Get out! Leave me!

Dumbledore’s chant soared at the same time, a song that Harry could only describe as welcoming. The words were blurring into each other and sounded more like pure birdsong than Latin.

There was a long moment when Harry thought he had to focus harder on rejecting the Horcrux. And then he felt the most slimy, disgusting sensation, and he opened his mouth and gagged.

The Horcrux slithered out of his throat, leaving a trail of slime behind. For a moment longer than any that had passed before, it hung in the air between him and Dumbledore, turning back and forth like a ribbon made of slugs.

Then it darted towards Dumbledore’s side of the circle.

Harry found it hard to watch as the Horcrux shard slammed into Dumbledore, but he did, because he felt he had to. The Headmaster bent over and shuddered. For an instant, it looked like his face was covered with a film of oil that was creeping around his eyes and into his ears.

And then it faded, and Dumbledore managed to stand up and smile a little, although Harry thought the skin on his cursed hand had darkened and cracked a little higher up the arm.

“Thank you, Harry, my boy,” he said softly. “Let me use Occlumency to settle and integrate the shard, and then you and Mr. Pucey should be able to leave.”

Harry found that it was harder, oddly, to watch the shadows of expressions that darted over Dumbledore’s face as he used Occlumency to make the shard into a passive Horcrux again. He turned around and looked at Adrian.

Adrian reached right across the border of the circle to drape an arm around Harry’s shoulders. Harry blinked, but he supposed that the circle wasn’t active anymore now that he had expelled the Horcrux. “How are you feeling?”

“As if I really need a drink of water,” Harry said, grimacing. It seemed the film the Horcrux had left behind in his throat wasn’t just metaphorical.

Adrian started and then reached for the glass of water he’d had standing by before the ritual started. He tipped it down Harry’s throat, and Harry drank as much of it as he could, grateful for the cold, cleansing nature of it.

“I have it.”

Harry started and turned around. Dumbledore was rising back to his feet, and the film of oil, or whatever someone should call it, was entirely gone from his face. He smiled at Harry and wiped away some of the sweat that was there instead.

“Your strength is greater than I knew,” Dumbledore mused, his eyes locked on Harry. “To have borne this every day for years and not have been corrupted by it? You are a wonder, Harry.”

Harry blushed at the praise, and leaned back against Adrian for a minute. “Do you—do you think that you’ll be able to hold it under control, sir?”

“Oh, yes. The Occlumency needed to control it is rigorous, but I mastered that level long ago.”

“Then,” Adrian cut in, his voice cool, “that means that you should be able to tell us about the prophecy and the secrets that you thought it was too dangerous for Harry to know now.”

Dumbledore opened his mouth, then closed it. “You know about the prophecy?”

“We deduced its existence last year. That’s not the same as knowing what it says, and I think Harry deserves to know that.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said slowly, now staring at Adrian as if he were the wonder, and not in an entirely positive way. “Yes, I suppose I should give it to you, that you deserve it…very well.”

He reached for his Pensieve, and Harry sat down next to Adrian on the Transfigured chairs again, elated and about to be enlightened. He kept his hand resting on Adrian’s so that he could give a comforting little squeeze now and then.

Adrian always squeezed back, even through their viewing of the prophecy and the discussion that followed it.