Chapter 13
The next morning dawned grey and gloomy. Black storm clouds loomed over the mountains circling Hogwarts Castle and matched the mood of Harry Potter perfectly.
Holidays had always been awful growing up, and since entering the magical world, Halloween had taken firmly taken its place as the worst.
Trying to distract himself with normalcy, Harry trudged down the stairs from the Tower with Neville. They were headed to the classroom their study group had commandeered earlier in the year after one too many stink-eyes from Madam Pince, the dragon masquerading as the Hogwarts librarian. At least they hadn't been banned outright.
Harry remembered the second week of class when Hermione had tried to bully her way into their study session and started ranting louder and louder at Harry about spending time with Slytherins and Hufflepuffs. Madam Pince had marched the bushy haired girl out by her arm to the astonishment of, well, everyone. The story later had been that Hermione Granger, Student Extraordinaire, had been frog-marched to McGonagall and banned for the rest of the semester from entering the Library. At All. Any book requests were to be made in writing by a teacher and they would be delivered the next class period. No exceptions. And not even Albus Dumbledore was able to make her budge.
Madam Pince was terrifying.
Harry was pretty sure that Theo Nott had a bit of a crush on her after that. He had Draco had taken the brunt of Hermione's attitude after he started joining them for Arithmancy help.
“Harry?”
“Yeah, Nev?”
“I think McGonagall and Percy are going to kill me.”
That caught Harry's attention back from musing about Slytherins crushing on ancient librarians.
“What?” He pulled Neville to a stop on the landing, out of the way of others going up and down.
“well, I have a list…” the taller boy stammered.
“A list of what?”
“The passwords? You know that I can't ever get in because the Fat Lady makes me nervous. So, well, I may have started writing them down so I didn't forget?”
“Merlin, Neville.” Harry sighed. “Okay, don't freak out, alright? I just hope this works.”
Neville nodded frantically and then went pale and his eyes bugged out a bit when Harry took a deep breath and hissed “Accio Neville Longbottom's Password List!”
They waited. Nothing.
“Sorry, Nev. We can talk to McGonagall at lunch, see about changing the password so that the list isn't an issue.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Harry.” Neville slumped as they finished heading down to the study room. He hated talking to McGonagall, she scared him almost as much as his Grandmother.
Hours later, after a subdued lunch and forcing Neville to fess up to McGonagall about the list of passwords, a flying piece of smudged and crumpled parchment slammed into the side of Harry's head as they sat around the cluster of desks with their friends. Neville's list. Both boys had sighed with relief, even if the password was being changed.
***
The Halloween Feast passed as usual. Conjured bats, floating pumpkins, too many sweets and almost everyone teasing Harry for being gloomy and antisocial. Even Ron and Hermione had ragged on him about not being festive. Icing on that cauldron cake of an evening was a group of Slytherins shouting “The dementors send their love, Potter!” Only Neville, and oddly the Weasley twins, provided a buffer between the small boy and his boisterous housemates.
Harry absently planned his escape from Gryffindor Tower as they walked back up for curfew. It should be fairly easy, since this year there hadn't been a troll or a death-day party that ended in bloody messages on walls. A commotion ahead of him on the stairs had him running into the back of Neville. Great, he'd jinxed it.
“Why isn't anyone going in?” shouted Ron's voice above the rest of the confusion.
Harry helped Neville balance so he could peer over the heads in front of them. The portrait seemed to be closed.
“Let me through, please,” Percy Weasley pushed his way through the mass of Gryffindor bodies. “What's the hold up here? You can't all have forgotten the password – excuse me, I'm Head Boy –-"
And then a silence fell over the crowd, a chill spreading down the corridor before in a sharp voice Percy turned down the stairs toward one of the prefects “Get Professor Dumbledore. Quick.”
“What's going on?” asked Ginny Weasley, who had just arrived with Hermione.
Harry tried to adjust so that Neville was in the way of the girls seeing him. After the disaster that was last school year, he wanted to get as far away from the youngest Weasley as possible. The awkward hero-worship she'd started the year with had only gotten worse after he and Ron had saved her at the end of the year.
A moment later, the Headmaster was there, sweeping toward the portrait in a blaze of orange robes; the Gryffindors squeezed together to let him through, and Harry and Neville tried to inch farther from where Ginny and Hermione were standing with Ron just behind them.
“Oh my! Harry!” Hermione grabbed at Harry's arm.
Startled, he missed dodging her fingers and after wrestling her grip off of his bag where she'd latched on, succeeded in his escape. Slytherin self-preservation was the better part of valor and he ducked behind Neville's larger frame. Neville just snorted in wry amusement as the tiny boy tried to disappear into his shadow.
From farther up the stairs whispers grew: The Fat Lady had vanished from her portrait, which had been slashed so viciously that strips of canvas littered the floor; great chucks of it had been torn away completely.
Dumbledore took one quick look at the ruined painting and turned, his eyes somber, to see Professors McGonagall, Lupin, and a haggard looking Snape hurrying toward him.
“We need to find her,” said Dumbledore. “Professor McGonagall, please go to Mr. Filch at once and tell him to search every painting in the castle for the Fat Lady.”
“You'll be lucky!” said a cackling voice.
Peeves, the castle's Poltergeist, bobbed over the crowd looking delighted, as he always did at the sight of wreckage and mayhem, regardless of who had caused it.
“What do you mean, Peeves?” asked Dumbledore calmly, and Peeves' grin faded just a little. He didn't dare taunt Dumbledore. Lesson learned on that one. Instead he adopted an oily voice that was no better than his cackle.
“Ashamed, Your Headship, sir. Doesn't want to be seen. She's a horrible mess. Saw her running through the landscape down on the fourth floor, sir, dodging between eh trees. Crying something dreadful, too.” He said happily. “Poor thing,” he added unconvincingly.
“Did she say who did it?” said Dumbledore quietly.
“Oh yes! She did, indeed, your Professorhead,” grinned Peeves, with the air of one cradling a large bombshell in his arms. “He got very angry when she wouldn't let him in, you see. Nasty temper he's got. Right nasty temper that Sirius Black.”
And with that, chaos erupted as Gryffindor House was ushered back down the stairs to the Great Hall.
Quarter of an hour later and every student in the school had joined Gryffindor, and everyone looked confused and exhausted. Leaving Head Boy Percy Weasley and the house prefects in charge, with mounds of squashy purple sleeping bags, Headmaster Dumbledore and the assembled teachers locked the entire student body into the Great Hall and headed off to search the castle for the intruder.
Clusters of students settled around the floor of the Great Hall. Harry and Neville managed to find a quiet corner away from the rest of their House.
“Lights out in ten minutes!” Percy's voice announced above the buzz of chatter as Gryffindors excitedly shared what had happened with their friends from other houses.
“Do you really think Black's still in the castle?” Ginny's voice carried from where she was bedding down with Ron and Hermione. Apparently they were on a break from the War of the Pets.
“Dumbledore obviously thinks he might be,” said Ron.
“It's very lucky he picked tonight, you know,” Hermione's pragmatic tone rose above whatever response Ginny had started to stammer out. “The one night we weren't in the tower … do you reckon he's lost track of time, being on the run? Didn't realize it was Halloween. Otherwise he'd have come bursting into a full common room.”
Harry froze where he was spreading out his sleeping bag next to Neville's. The whispers around them grew as the lights in the Great Hall dimmed : “How did he get in?”
“Lights out! No more talking.” Thank Merlin for perfect Percy. Harry wasn't sure he could take more of the excited chatter about Sirius Black. His head was spinning. Between the terrifying image on the wanted posters and Muggle news, and the name on his Gringotts' test listing the man as a father, he wasn't sure how to feel.
Slowly, whispers quieted into the even breathing of sleep. Harry lay nestled into his corner, Neville's larger form blocking the rest of the Hall from view. The comforting weight of Ember coiled over his arm, resting his head on Harry's throat.
Safe in his purple cocoon, Harry tried to keep his breathing even as Percy made his hourly rounds. Every so often a teacher would knock and check on them as the search continued. This wasn't how tonight was supposed to go. He was supposed to be able to collect his father's cloak and his bag from Neville and sneak back down to the Chamber. He was supposed to…supposed to…
Harry's breath hitched as tongues flickered against his damp cheeks.
::Hatchling. Rest.::
::I can't. I… I was going to get to see my mum tonight…::
::The nest-mother sent you a sharp fang so that you could see her?::
::What? No, my…:: Harry choked out, unsure how to explain the difference to the serpent. There wasn't a word for “Mum" in parsel. But was there a difference? Was Ember right? Yes, Lily and James Potter had given birth to him. Loved him for a year, enough to sacrifice so much to keep him safe and alive. But they weren't there and he didn’t know them. He barely knew anything about them. Nothing real or personal about them, anyway.
But Miss Ana. Nënë. His Nënë. She'd gifted him the means to finally meet them. To finally meet them. With a family ritual.
He sniffed quietly as bittersweet tears poured down the sides of his face at the realization. Bittersweet for missing the possibility of parents with James and Lily. And because for the last two years he had counted the castle as HOME, as a connection to his family. But that night, more than any other since the beginning of that term, all he felt was homesick for the cozy, eclectic house in Surrey that was filled with love and the messy chaos of young children, and the way that, so easily, he had belonged.