Lovely Lie

Harry is totally unsurprised to find himself immediately standing beside Aleksei and gazing at the child portrayed on the image.

Well, it may be just his imagination, but that little form practically oozes fear to him.

In fact, if the child were human, he would have been almost sure that the child is deathly afraid of something.

And such fright would sadly, horribly be understandable, if the child was still aware – if the stasis hadn’t set in yet – when their probable guardian was chopped up like kindling right on top of their sanctuary.

This thought urges him to act, and… well, here he is, with Nada’s deathly glare burning holes on his back despite his dragonhide outers and sturdy inners, watching closely as Aleksei goes through incantation after incantation after incantation.

The man looks sicklier and sounds feebler than Abdul before the latter got bullied by the former to stop, at the end of it all, and the only reason he is still standing is because Rangga is supporting him up along with Najib the fourth sorter. But they all know now that the blood ritual is only mostly complete, that it has been powered by willing sacrifice of a magical sentient but marred by the unplanned murder of the would-be self-sacrifice, that ambient magic has not only maintained but also strengthened it since its inception, that it has been meant to not only power the stasis and keep the box and those inside safe but also to keep the latters safe after they are out of the box.

And that the last variable that will complete and lock the ritual as well as allow the box to be opened is the willingness of another magical sentient to be bound for life to keep the sentient elements in the box safe, by adding their magic and blood to any part of the box’s surface.

After this long soaking in the ambient magic, the ritual is immutable, too!

Suffice to say, Harry is unsurprised to hear the fearsome and rather inhuman if low-toned growl coming out of Nada, after knowing that. None of the others is the least pleased about it, too, judging by their seething mutters.

But… that child trapped inside that box….

Well, up close like this, the wooden chest stands as high as his shoulders, as wide as the farthest span of his arms from fingertip to fingertip, and as long as twice that. It would actually be a rather generously sized temporary shelter for a tiny little child, if the aforementioned shelter were not also stuffed with large eggs and other things. And let’s not forget about the stasis field that Hermione said is not good for sentients for long!

Now the questions are: Can he live with himself if he never acts to free the child – or children, if those eggs contain the child’s siblings – inside this box after so long in stasis? Can he afford to leave Teddy and these people that are already his responsibility alone in this miserable space that is at least tens of kilometres down from ever seeing the sky? Can these two points be combined without sacrificing one another?

He can’t bear to contemplate what if the answer to the third question is “No.” not now and perhaps not ever.

Both are precious to him in their different ways.

…And his life thus far has taught him that he might be able to keep one but not the other.

It’s a very painful realisation, one which sees him turning round and bowing deeply to the nine individuals huddled nearby.

His eyes are streaming buckets, but theirs aren’t dry, either.

And then he returns to facing the box, with his people standing at his back and watching, closes his eyes, deliberately relaxes his muscles, and takes deep breaths to settle himself.

It’s just like learning how to cast Patronus for the first time, really. He tells himself that, anyway. Better to remember that than Snape’s awful, awful Occlumency sessions.

`Damn. Focus, Harry! Don’t think about the greasy git!`

He starts again. But it’s harder to concentrate and gather his will, now. Thoughts of Patronus and Snape’s lessons have made him think of DADA lessons with Remus, which then make him think of Tonks, and then Teddy, and how he might have to leave the baby guardianless again if this doesn’t work.

`Teddy-bear, I’m sorry.`

It’s not fair to Teddy, and this particular thought refuses to leave him for a long, long moment.

In fact, it begins to burn in his chest, brighter and hotter by the seconds that tick by.

`Teddy got first dibs on me.`

But he can’t forget all the fun days running round and flying on the grounds of the Burrow with the Weasley children, and the nights spent in a warm home amidst a large family that accepted him.

That warm holiday at the Burrow before the World Cup, before the Triwizard Tournament, before the very last remnants of his nearly nonexistent childhood were burnt alongside Cedric’s death and Voldemort’s resurrection, he wants that for Teddy. He wants that for himself, too: to be more than just a short holiday before everything goes bad.

And the key is in front of him, as well as inside the trunks guarded by the nine people standing at his back.

Children. Children and loving guardians. The more the better.

`No,` he decides, in the end, and he shan’t be moved. `No, I’ll take both. I already have mine to guard and cherish, but I’ll take more, so they are also safe.`

He takes off his gloves and channels his magic to his off hand, then, and uses his wand to make a small cut on it.

He watches as the blood wells up on his skin, and watches as it drips, drips, drips on the ancient bloodstain atop the box closest to him.

Seven times it drips, and magic wells up greater and greater round him and the box just like how the blood firstly did.

On the twentieth drip, the gathered magic falls on him like what he would imagine a tidal wave might feel like to a hapless individual caught on the previously safe sandy beach beyond the tidal line.

It sweeps him away, just so.

It seeks to change him according to its will, too, but he fights with all his might, this time.

`I am me,` he tells it, and himself, and the universe. `I am nobody else. I am me.`

It seeks to chain him, next, and he fights this, too.

`I spent so long steered here and there. No more. No more. No more.`

It seeks to rewrite him, burn itself into him. He shies away.

He is only partly successful in this.

Something in him is burnt away. Something he never knew he had. Something he never knew he was enchained in.

It’s as if the magic – the ritual would say, perhaps rather mockingly, `You were already in chains,` and he can’t deny that. But no chain, no more, no more, no more.

The magic slips in, when he is busy feeling relieved, and it imprints on him knowledge, experience and instincts not of his own before he manages to drive it away.

He is himself, but also a taung named Kar, dead at twenty years of age to an axe wielded by a zhell who covets taung children to take and brainwash and send to kill their own kind later on.

He is a refugee from another universe who turns out to have brought a thousand more people with him, but also one sharman among a few belonging to a defeated people who is tasked to cover their last retreat and safeguard the eggs that they cannot bring with them.

He is dead exhausted… and he is also dead.

He doesn’t think he will ever wake up again… but he does.

Not in the corridor outside his tent, too, nor slumped bloodily over a large, rough but sturdy wooden chest.

He is lying neatly in his bed in his bedroom in his tent, instead, also in a pair of pyjamas rather than his dragonhide attire, which he calls his “outside clothes” by now.

And he hurts all over and inside out like nothing he ever did before. Not even the two subsequent Crucios courtesy of the newly resurrected Voldemort hurt this much and thoroughly!

But then, the Cruciatus curse hurts someone physically, perhaps mentally if applied for too long and too much. He certainly never heard that it could touch someone’s soul, except for the one belonging to the sick creature who enjoys inflicting it on someone else, while now his mind and soul feel like they’ve been flayed open and raw by it.

And now he’s just noticed that he is not alone in his bed, nor in the bedroom itself.

A small, solid but not completely hard form is curled up under his arm, its… head?… butting up against his armpit and ribs. It feels… bony, and… different, though he can’t say what’s different about it.

But, at the same time, this position is so familiar.

And this realisation sends his head into a greater amount of slicing, stabbing, throbbing, burning agony. `Damn it! What happened?`

Well, who even is he? What is he?

He curls his fingers into the sheets, the most that he can do right now other than breathing shallowly, but it’s not clawtips that dig into the decadently soft, silky surface, just blunt fingerpads.

It works to alert his not-abed companion, though, or at least prompt them to speak, thankfully softly, “Don’t move too much, Lord Potter.”

`Oh. Nada,` he thinks, fuzzily.

Then, when the thought fully registers in his terribly, terribly slow mind, panic sets in. `Oh! Nada! Why is she here? Where are the others? Are they all safe? Did it work? What about Teddy?`

It makes his head feel like it’s being fried. So it’s quite a relief when Nada leans over, swaps something cool on the crook of his arm, and inserts a small needle that pinches but a little. Because then the world gradually falls away into blissfull, peaceful, painless oblivion.

When he resurfaces again from the depths of his subconsciousness, the pain is thankfully of a far more manageable level. Nada is still there, surprisingly, humming something that feels… odd… but so very soothing not only to his body but also to his mind and the healing tatters of his soul, and he lets himself be buoyed by the wordless melodies for a long, long, long while.

The small form is also surprisingly still tucked snugly against him, he notices after some time, as he begins to have the urge to move once more. And, with the near-absence of the all-encompassing pain from before, he is now curious about it.

So, tilting his head to the side, he gives the woman seated primly and calmly in his swivel chair a small smile and murmurs, unsurprisingly croakily, “Thank you for the serenade and the company, Nada. You don’t need to tuck a stuffed animal with me when I’m sleeping, though.”

Well, the secretive smile she returns him is slightly worrying. But at least she’s amused?

He is not amused, though, when the small form practically welded to his ribs suddenly moves, if slightly.

Wide-eyed, he hisses to his self-titled assistant, “Hey, what actually did you tuck in with me?”

And the toothy grin she now gives him is worrying, indeed!

Also worrying is how whatever it is that’s been glued to him moves some more, as if a person or an animal about to stretch after waking up, and now it’s letting up a tiny little purr – that nonetheless doesn’t sound like a cat – against his ribs.

It sounds quite like a contented little taung, though, from… his? No, Kar’s memory.

And, when the realisation sets in, he becomes aware that his mind is… crowded – for lack of a better term! – with… one – no, two – no, three – no, four! – other presences that are not his. One is Kar’s imprint; it’s easy to identify, after how it invaded his mind during the ritual; but the rest…?

The panicked look turns into a pleading one, just so. He doesn’t know how – or if – Nada can help him with all these new people crowding his mind, but he wants some help – any help – please, and she’s the only possible available source of help here.

And she knows it, it seems. She’s anticipated it, even, most likely, for the wordless song then gradually fades into background humming, and she tells him in the same soft, calm, sedate tone as the melodies, “The ritual worked, Lord Potter, perhaps also as you intended. You are bound to it, but you are not wholely beholden to it. The body of the taung vanished in its completion. The axe transformed into a chain necklace with a wooden medallion for a pendant, but it failed to attach itself to you.”

He shudders. `It tried to collar me!` he realises, and how thankful he is that it did not happen! This entirely unnerving state of his head is more than enough for his new reality!

But, well, Nada’s giving him a questioning look, pausing in her narration, perhaps noticing his diverted attention. Her awareness of him is yet another unnerving thing, so is the mystery of the wordless song that still plays at the back of his mind while she talks – but no, he shan’t think about that, not right now. He’s not going to borrow more trouble on top of the existing ones!

So he just shakes his head and tilts his chin towards her, all apologetically and with the hope that she will continue, even as the form nestled in his arm now uncurls a little and purrs harder, attaching itself even closer to him if it were even possible.

And, again thankfully, she obliges him.

She tells him that, after he fell unconscious – fortunately not literally, as Najib “rushed recklessly” ahead and caught him – and the box’s heavy, complicated latch clicked open, she erected the tent in its former space and warded it for safety and concealment. He and the box were brought inside, then, though the body of the “Mandalorian” was left outside, just within the ward bubble to the side of the tent, and Rangga as well as Najib were tasked to clean him up and dress him for sleep. He’s suffering from extreme magical exhaustion, apparently, as the post-multiple-rejuvenating-potion crash was combined with him fighting a millennia-old blood ritual on top of his pre-existing exhaustion. She refuses to tell him how long he’s been incapacitated, and he doesn’t want to contemplate that either at the moment, so he returns to one of the questions that never formed properly even in his mind, “What’s this thing beside me?”

She gives him a wry, deadpan look to that, and an even dryer, “Your child, of course. One among a handful of them, from what we have found in the box, in addition to Teddy.”

And all he can think of at first ish, `Oh,` followed with, `But Teddy is Remus’ kid! I’m just his godfather!`

He tells Nada that, and her censuring look is somehow more cutting than Professor McGonagal’s, and he would’ve recoiled in automatic shame if he could.

He looks away, as it is, and petulantly asks her to continue with her report, even as… the child?… at his side now truly stretches – `Oh! So small! I thought they’d be bigger.` – and shifts as if to… move away? Climb on him? – oh, climbing on him, it is, with – `Awww!` – those bony knees and elbows and clawed fingers and toes.

Maybe Nada is far too amused with his current plight to keep silently censuring him, for she softens a little and smiles at the little blighter, but does continue, “None of the eggs have hatched, but we have stored them safely according to Kondo’s specifications. We have been taking care of both Teddy and Kondo, as well. Teddy is now sleeping in the crib, but Kondo has refused a bed of their own, so they have been sleeping with you.”

`Oh. Kondo, huh? Nice name. I wonder what it means,` he muses, even as she tells him that another group has taken over clearing up all the clutter in the main space of the tent, and she herself has taken over copying and synchronising the various catalogues with both each other and the reality.

And then Kar’s memories intrude on him again, and he inadvertently blurts out, “Oh, no, it’s not Kondo!”

“Lord Potter?” Nada pauses and looks at him inquiringly.

He sighs and explains, chagrined with himself and Kar and apologetic towards his very, very patient assistant, “Kar – the creator of the ritual and the one sacrificing themself for these children – sent me memories.” `Oooh. That displeased glare of doom. She doesn’t believe my claim outright. Good for her.` “The details about their charges were included in that… package. And ‘Kondo’ is actually just a… nickname of sorts, like if you’d call a boy ‘young strong handsome and smart man’ or something like that, ‘sept the taung don’t really bother about genders, or looks, so ‘Kondo’ is more like… a perfectly formed and proportioned person, but said in a cute way? Well, there’s no direct translation for it, anyway. But ‘Kando’ is the word you’d use for an adult, though mostly if you want to praise your spouse or fiancé or romantic partner or something like that. So, different angle, different meaning, something like that. But this little climber’s name is actually similar. It’s ‘Kan’, after ‘Kando’, and it used to be a popular name, back then.”

Well, Nada seems… unsurprised with his explanation. Now he wonder if she knew more about the ritual and its effects on him.

And that reminds him again about the still-unexplained presences in his mind.

One of which now exudes a jumbled mix of burgeoning relief, fading anxiety, lingering uncertainty, increasing curiosity and tentative… hope?

And when he extends a figurative hand and tentatively pokes at it, little Kan lets out an admittedly very cute – if very alien – little chirp of acknowledgement from somewhere round his belly, even as the presence in his head… pokes back?

`Oh,` he mutters dumbly to himself, utterly stunned. `Oh. Oh. Oh! It’s them! But how? Kar never quite had this with them. Did that memory not transfer to me? Or did the ritual form it for us? Does it mean there’s a few more eggs that’s ready to hatch, then? Will it hurt them if I poke at them now?`

Before he can do anything either way, though, tiny, little, bony, thankfully – or not? – light Kan crawls up his supine body and seats their sharp little bottom high up on his chest, with their two little, spindly, leggy legs spread at either side of his face and resting lightly on his pillow.

And their eyes meet, bright green to rich, solid gold, framed by short, messy green-and-black-striated grey locks that might be hair but might also be something else.

And his breath stutters in his chest, because a pair of minuscule hands now land on his cheeks and press down gently, repeatedly on the thin layer of fatty flesh there, which is indeed different from the protruding bone structure of the little one’s own cheeks.

Then he realises, `Huh. A little one.`

A small child is willingly, consciously touching him. Playing with him, even, or at least parts of his body.

Innocently, curiously, happily, and fearlessly knowing full well that they are doing something to their guardian, if the feeling broadcasted by that specific presence in his head is to be believed.

And what cause would he have not to believe it?

Still, wat cause would he have to believe it, too? None of the neighbours let him play with their children, growing up, let alone children younger than he was. Once, He played peek-a-boo with a baby in a basinet that Missus Number Five brought along when visiting Aunt Petunia. Just once. And the lady shrieked in fright when she found out, and it never happened again.

Not until now.

Not until this alien child on an alien planet.

Not until the Ministry Veiled him for the crime of fighting back against one who would see them all ruined. Not until a magic user belonging to an alien race millennia ago had the desperate, desperate idea to snag another – any – kind-enough, caring-enough magic user to care for their little, helpless charges.

It’s surreal, it’s stupid, and his stuttery breath has turned into an equally stuttery laugh now, and Kan pokes at him both mentally and physically with childish confusion and concern, and Nada is teaching them to play with his nose by leaning over and guiding one little, trusting hand onto it and pressing down.

Suffice to say, it’s a long, long while before he stops crying and laughing.