Sectumsempra!
”He made seven horcruxes?” Harry exclaims against the backdrop of horrified gasps from most of the portraits in Dumbledore’s office. ”But they could be anywhere in the world — hidden — buried or invisible even—!”
”I’m glad to see you appreciate the magnitude of our problem”, Dumbledore says with a calm that is frankly bordering on arrogance considering the circumstances.
But then again, Harry figures, the older wizard have had a lot of time to contemplate their problem by now, although he needed Slughorn’s memory to confirm it, Harry is sure that he’s suspected for quite a while and there’s no saying how shocked he felt when the idea first struck. He might even have struggled through a bout of despair similar to the one Harry is experiencing now.
Feeling suddenly lightheaded, Harry sinks down on the nearest surface, which happens to be the edge of Dumbledore’s desk, but if the Headmaster minds he makes no show of it. Instead he peers at Harry over the rim of his halfmoon glasses, his eyes shining with sympathy and kindess.
”Firstly, though, Harry”, he says after a moment’s silence. ”Not seven horcruxes, but six. The seventh part of his soul still resides in Voldemort himself, however maimed. That was the part of him that lived a spectral existence for so many years and that latched onto Professor Quirrel like a parasite… and that seventh piece of his soul has to be the last that one who wishes to kill Voldemort must attack.”
”Fine, six horcruzes then”, Harry says hoarsely and grips the edge of the desk, the mild sensation of vertigo still assaulting his senses and even with the sturdy oak desk supporting him he sways slightly. ”How are we supposed to find them?”
”You are forgetting, you have already destroyed one of them”, Dumbledore says. ”And I have destroyed another.”
”You have?”
”Oh yes. The ring, Harry. Marvolo’s ring… and a terrible curse there was upon it too…”
Dumbledore lifts his blackened, burned-looking hand and studies it calmly for a moment, as though fascinated by it. Harry glances at it as well, but feels slighty sick to the stomach and has to look away again.
”Yes, not a pretty sight, I’m afraid… but a thrilling tale. But maybe we should save that for another time, when it isn’t quite so late. However, suffice it to say, that had not been for my own prodigious skill — if you’ll forgive my lack of modesty — or Professor Snape’s timely action when I returned to Hogwarts—”
”Snape?” Harry says eagerly, before he can stop himself.
”Professor Snape, Harry”, Dumbledore corrects him with a look admonishing from over the rim of his glasses. ”And yes. When I returned to the castle I was desperately injured, in fact it was touch and go for a moment, but Professor Snape managed to stop the curse from spreading… and, I trust you will agree, a withered hand is indeed a small price to pay for a seventh of Voldemort’s soul.”
Harry nods numbly, the images of Dumbledore’s story rushing through his head.
”Well”, Dumbledore says briskly. ”We should not congratulate ourselves too heartily. You destroyed the diary and I the ring, but four horcruxes remain. Now, I can only guess what they might be but I believe that Lord Voldemort would prefer objects that, in themselves, have a certain grandeur.”
”The locket! Hufflepuff’s Cup!” Harry says, feeling a jolt of excitement as he it all clicks into place, all the memories that Dumbledore has shown him throughout the year.
”Yes”, Dumbledore says with a smile. ”My thoughts exactly. I would be prepared to be — perhaps not my other hand, but at least a couple of fingers — that the locket and the cup became the third and fourth horcruxes. The remaining two — assuming he did indeed make six — are a bit of a bigger problem, but I would hazard a guess that, having secured objects from Slythering and Hufflepuff, Voldemort would want to track down something of Gryffindor’s and Ravenclaw’s as well, to complete the set, as it were… I can’t tell you whether he managed to find something of Ravenclaw’s, but I can tell you for sure that the only known relic of Godric Gryffindor remains quite safe.”
He points one of his blackened fingers to the wall behinf him where a ruby-encrusted sword sits in a glass cage. The sword of Gryffindor. Harry remembers the weight of it, how heavy it had been when he first pulled it out of the Sorting Hat down in the Chamber of Secrets four years ago, but when he’s swung it at the Basilisk, just before the creature lunged at him, it had suddenly been as light as a feather.
”So assuming he found something that belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw”, Harry says, feeling a bit funny about how much of this conversation seems to rely on his and Dumbledore’s assumptions, but he tries not to dwell on that, at least not right now. ”The sixth horcrux… it could be anything.”
”I think I know what the sixth horcrux is”, Dumbledore says. ”I wonder what you’ll say when I confess that I have been curious for a while about the behaviour of that snake, Nagini?”
”The snake!” Harry says, startled. ”You can use animals as horcruxes?”
”Well, it’s inadvisable to do so”, Dumbledore says with a conceding tilt of the head. ”For obvious reasons. But if my calculations are correct, Voldemort was at least one horcrux short of his goal that night when he entered your parents’ house. And since he seems to reserve the process of making horcruxes for particularly significant deaths — which yours surely would have been, had he succeeded in killing you that night — I am sure that he had intended to make his final horcrux with your death. But, as we know, he failed… Years later, he used Nagini to kill an old Muggle man, and it might then have occurred to him to turn Nagini into his last horcrux. Being a serpent, she would underline the Slytherin connection. Also, I think he is as fond of that snake as he can be of anything.”
”Sir, if we find all these horcruxes and destroy them… Voldemort can be killed?”
”Oh yes, without the horcruxes Voldemort will be a mortal man with a maimed and diminished soul. Never forget though that, although his soul is damaged beyond repair, his brain and magic both remain intact. It will take uncommon skill and power to kill a wizard like Voldemort, even without his horcruxes.”
What little hope Harry might have felt sinks like a boulder again and he swallows down a hint of bile, before opening his mouth to protest that he doesn’t have uncommon skills and power… It became apparent to me very quickly that he had no extraordinary talent at all, Severus voice slithers into his mind, cold and cutting… Potter has fought his way out of a number of tight corners by a simple combination of sheer luck and more talented friends. He is mediocre to the last degree…
”You have a power that that Voldemort has never had, Harry”, Dumbledore says firmly, as though having read his thoughts.
Harry shakes his head impatiently, ”Yeah, I know, I can love…”
”Yes, Harry, you can love”, Dumbledore says sharply. ”And that is not a trifling thing.”
”So when the Prophecy says that I’ll ’have power the Dark Lord knows not’ that’s all it is, love?” Harry says, trying — and failing — to let the disappointment he feels to seep into his voice.
”Yes — just love”, Dumbledore says. ”But Harry, never forget that what the prophecy says is only significant because Voldemort made it so. He singled you out as the person who would be the most dangerous to him, and by doing so he made you the person who would be most dangerous to him!”
So what, Harry thinks feeling more and more exasperated by the second.
”Sir, with all due respect, it still comes to the same —”
”No, it doesn’t!” Dumbledore cuts him off, for the first time ever and Harry marvels at having made Dumbledore impatient, something he’d been sure was impossible. ”You are setting to much store by that prophecy! Harry, think about it, if Voldemort had never heard of the prophecy, would it have been fulfilled? Would it have meant anything? Of course not! Do you think that every prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy at the Department of Mysteries has been fulfilled?”
”B-But”, Harry stutters, bewildered. ”Last year you said one of us would have to kill the other—!”
”Only because Voldemort made a grave error and acted upon Professor Trelawny’s words! If Voldemort had not murdered your father he would not have imparted in you a furious desire for revenge! And if he had not forced your mother to die for you, her love would not have given you a magical protection he could not penetrate! Don’t you see, Harry? Voldemort himself has created his worst enemy, as tyrants everywhere do!”
Hary just stares at Dumbledore for a moment. Gone is the exhausted old man that greeted him when he knocked on his office door about an hour ago, and in his place now stands a quite invigorated and excited man who is all but salviating at the curious coincidences that happen to be Harry’s life, and in the near-ish future possibly also death, and Harry still don’t see the difference. So what if Voldemort made the prophecy come true by acting on the assumption that it would come true? The fact of the matter is, it came true.
It’s not like I can do anything to change it now, Harry thinks. So what does it matter?
”It is essential that you understand this!” Dumbledore exclaims suddenly, now agitated more than anything. ”By attempting to kill you, Voldemort himself singled out the remarkable person who sits here in front of me now, and he gave him — that’s to say you — the tools for the job! It’s Voldemort’s own fault that you are able to see into his mind, read his thoughts, his ambitions, and that you can understand and speak Parselmouth, the very rare language in which he gives orders, and yet, despite your priviledged insight into Voldemort’s world, Harry, you have not once been seduced by the Dark Arts, never for a moment have you even toyed with the idea of joining him!”
”Of course I haven’t, he killed my mum and dad!” Harry splutters indignantly.
”Exactly! You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!”
*
The next morning, during Charms, Harry casts a Muffliato spell on those nearest him, Ron and Hermione and then tells them everything about his lucky night and then the meeting with Dumbledore. Ron is so awed by the end of it that he moves his wand absent-mindedly, pointed as it is towards the ceiling.
”Ron, you’re making it snow”, Hermione says patiently and gently grabs him by the wrist to guide his wand-hand down, but immediately lets go of him again after recieving a death glare from Lavender sitting a few desks over from them.
”Oh yeah”, Ron says, looking down at his own shoulder in surprise. ”Sorry… looks like we’ve all got terrible dandruff now…”
He brushes some of the snow from Hermione’s shoulder, then startles when Lavender breaks out into tears and starts sobbing into Parvati’s braid where it lies draped over her chest, as the other girl embraces her before glaring over at Hermoine, who looks slightly guilt-ridden, Harry notices.
”What did I miss?” he says, looking between his two best friends in apprehension.
”Lavender and I broke up”, Ron says quietly. ”Well, she kind of saw us when we came down from the dorms yesterday, only since she couldn’t see you, since you were under the Cloak, she thought it was Hermione and me… and well…”
”Ah”, Harry says, filling in the blank for himself. ”But you don’t mind that it’s over, do you?”
”Nah”, Ron says. ”I mean, it was pretty bad when she was yelling, and even worse when she started crying, but you know… at least I don’t have to come up with a way to break up with her now, right?”
”Coward”, Hermione mutters, but there’s a hint of amusement in her voice.
*
A few weeks later, just a few days days before the match against Ravenclaw that Gryffindor might actually be able to win now that Katie Bell was back from St Mungos and Ron was fit for play again, which would give them a shot at the Quidditch Cup after all, Harry finds himself walking down to dinner on his own — Ron had rushed off into a nearby bathroom to throw up again, a more and more common occurence as the day of the match drew nearer, and Hermione had gone to see Professor Vector about a mistake she thought she might have made in her last Arithmancy essay — and out of habit more than anything, Harry pulls the Map out to check on Malfoy.
At first he can’t spot him at all, and assumes the other boy must have skipped yet another meal in favour of visiting the Room of Requirement, but then he suddenly spots the little dot standing in a boy’s bathroom on the floor below, accompanied not by Crabbe nor Goyle, but by Moaning Myrtle.
Harry’s heart flutters quickly in its cage, as he remembers his last encounter with the depressive ghost.
He’s sensitive! People bully him too, and he hasn’t got anyone to talk to about it! And he’s not afraid to show his feelings and cry!
There’s been a boy in here crying?
Harry taps the Map and mutters Mischief managed as he turns on his heel and starts running towards the nearest staircase leading to that particular corridor. He pulls up short just outside the bathroom, cursing himself for leaving the Cloak in the dorms, he sneaks up to the bathroom as quietly as he can and presses his ear to the door.
He can’t hear a thing.
Holding his breath, he gently pushes the door open and peers inside.
Draco Malfoy is standing with his back to the door, clutching the edge of one of the sinks, his white-blonde head bowed.
”Don’t”, the unmistakable voice of Moaning Myrtle coos from one of the cubicles, but it’s softer and gentler than Harry had ever heard it before. ”Don’t… tell me what’s wrong… I can help you…”
”No-one can help me”, Malfoy says quietly.
His whole body trembling now and with a jolt Harry realises the boy is actually crying, and even after making the connection with what Myrtle had said, and hearing him with Severus that time before Christmas, it still shocks Harry to witness the boy in such a vulnerable state.
”I can’t do it”, Malfoy continues in a small voice. ”I can’t… it won’t work… and unless I do it soon, he says he’ll kill me—”
Malfoy cuts himself off with a choked sob, then gasps for breath. Then suddenly, with a great shudder he pushes himself away from the sink and looks up — immediately locking eyes with Harry through the mirror — he wheels around, drawing his wand and Harry, acting on pure instinct, pulls out his own wand but not quick enough to counter the hex Malfoy shoots his way.
It misses Harry by inches, shattering the lamp on the wall beside the doorway instead, and Harry throws himself sideways while thinking Levicorpus and flicking his wand, but Malfooy is quick, really quick; he blocks the jinx and without missing a beat he swings his wand around for another hex —
”No! No! Stop it!” Moaning Myrtle squeals desperately, but both boys ignore her.
The bin behind Harry explodes with a loud bang when Malfoy’s hex hits it; Harry attempts a Leg-Locker Curse that bounces off the wall behind Malfoy’s ear and smashes the cistern beneath Myrtle. She screams. Water starts pouring everywhere. Harry slips in it as he tries to scramble to his feet and collapses on his back instead, his eyes fixed on Malfoy, whose face is now contorted with rage —
”Cruci—!”
”SECTUMSEMPRA!” Harry bellows from the floor, waving his wand desperately at the other boy.
The hideous scowl on Malfoy’s face fades into a vacant look of shock that gradually turns into a painful frown, before his eyes roll back into his skull and he crumbles to the floor. There’s blood everywere. Harry flips over and crawls across the floor to the other boy, reaching out to him with a shaky hand. Blood. Everywhere.
Oh God, what have I done? Harry thinks hysterically.
Malfoy is bleeding profusely, seemingly from everywhere, and the blood mingles with the water around them, turning it into a morbidly crimson pool.
Oh God, oh God, please no, please, Harry thinks and pats the other boy’s wet chest uselessly, as if to try and stop the bleeding somehow, except there is not one clear wound, instead he seems to bleeding from each one of his pores… maybe he is, Harry thinks numbly, oh God what have I done…
”N-No — I didn’t — Oh God — I didn’t m-mean —”
Myrtle suddenly lets out a deafening scream.
”MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER—!”
The door bangs open behind Harry and he looks up, terrified: Severus stands in the doorway, his face livid and after having taken in the scene in front of him for a spilt second, he’s suddenly right there, as if he’d Apparated between the door and the middle of the bathroom, pushing Harry roughly aside, he kneels next to Malfoy; he pulls out his wand and traces it over the slightly convulsing body before him, muttering some sort of incantation under his breath. It almost sounds like he’s singing, Harry notes numbly where he’s sprawled on the floor next to him.
The flow of blood seems to ease, Harry notices with relief so strong it almost makes him faint. Or maybe that’s because he’d held his breath for too long, waiting to see what Severus would do. Either way, the dizzy spell only lasts for a spilt second, as does the sense of relief, because even though Severus takes the time to gently wipe the residue of blood from Malfoy’s face before performing the incantation again, Harry can tell that it’s still touch and go; Even when the bleeding has stopped completely, Malfoy still looks more dead than alive.
”N-no, no… I- I didn’t mean”, Harry stammers, staring wildly, hopefully, please please please, at the tip of Severus wand as it moves over Malfoy’s body, even as it blurs beyond recognition when tears well up in Harry’s eyes, fat useless tears that he refuses to blink away, Oh God so much blood, oh please, please, ”please, please, please—”
”Shut up, Potter!” Severus snaps at him after having finished the counter-curse for a second time, and then starts up again.
After the third time, he half-lifts Malfoy into a standing position and props him up against his own body. Harry scrambles to his feet as well, but even as his body twitches with the impulse to help, he stays rooted to the spot.
”You need the Hospital Wing”, Severus murmurs in such a gentle tone of voice that, despite his guilt and fear, Harry feels a twinge of something else, something petty that leaves a sour taste in his mouth, but it’s gone again just as soon as it flared to life as he watches Malfoy’s head roll onto Severus shoulder.
”There may be a certain amount of scarring, but if you take dittany immediately we might avoid even that”, Severus continues. ”Come…”
Malfoy clings to Severus, weak and small, his eyelids fluttering. Severus hugs him close and supports him across the bathroom. Pausing only briefly in the door and without turning to look at Harry he says in the coldest voice, ”Potter, you wait here for me…”
It doesn’t occur to Harry for a second to disobey. He shivers violently and hugs himself, looking around at the blood and water flooding the bathroom. He tries not to think about the wetness of his own clothes, and how much of that is Malfoy’s blood. He presses his eyes shut and counts down from ten, Myrtle’s wails and sobs a constant chorus in the background.
Severus returns ten minutes later, but it might as well have been ten days. He strides into the room, his black robes billowing around him, and slams the door shut with a deafening bang that echoes in the silence left after Myrtle makes herself scarce after merely a quick glare from Severus, who then turns his glare on Harry, who feels himself go slightly weak in the knees, but for once it isn’t the effect of his stupid crush, it’s genuine fear.
”I didn’t mean for it to happen!” Harry says at once. ”P-please Sev—”
Harry catches himself and gulps down the rest of the man’s name, aware suddenly, with an awful heavy certainty, that he’s now forfeited the right to use the man’s first name, possible forever.
”Snape, Sir”, he corrects himself. ”I really did not mean for that to happen, please, please believe me…”
”I should hope not”, Severus replies in a tone of voice made of pure acid and with a dark, furious look in his eyes to match it. ”Or maybe I’ve underestimated you, Potter. Clearly you know some seriously dark magic.”
”No!” Harry exclaims. ”Please. I didn’t even know what that spell would do—!”
”Who taught you that spell, Potter—?”
”I — I read it — in a book…”
”Go and get it—”
”I don’t have it!” Harry lies immediately, because even under the circumstances he still feels extremely protective of the Prince and his copy of Advanced Potion-Making. ”I don’t remember what it was called, it was in the library, I think—”
”Be quiet!” Snape hisses. ”You will go and fetch your school books, all your books, and bring them to me, Potter. Now.”
”O-Okay, yeah, fine”, Harry mumbles hastily.
He sprints past the other man and slips through the door, the harsch light outside in the corridor blinding him momentarily and he almost trips over his own feet. Fuck, he thinks desperately. He starts running toward Gryffindor tower, his heart hammering so hard in his chest it’s physically painful. He yells the password at the Fat Lady who startles at first but then begins to splutter indignantly, but the magical lock on the portrait has already opened and Harry wrenches the portrait open.
He thunders up the stairs to the boys dormitory and grabs his book bag from the top of his trunk. He rummages through it until he finds Advanced Potion-Making and grabs it, then stares around wildly trying to think of what to do… He spots Ron’s book bag on the floor next to his bed and has an idea…
He turns the other boy’s bag over and then fishes the Potions book out from the small pile and stuffs it into his own book bag. He sprints out of the dorm again and takes the stairs two at a time, silently counting the seconds as they tick by, knowing Severus is doing the same… if he’s going to do this, he needs to be quick, or Severus will know he didn’t run straight to his dorm and then straight back again…
He’s so familiar with the differemt short-cuts between Gryffindor tower and the corridor on the seventh floor by now, that he makes the detour in record time. He runs down the corridor thinking furiously, I need a place to hide something so that no-one will be able to find it… He turns on his heel and runs back again, thinking the same… The third time, he hears the unmistakable sound of the wall rearranging itself… He spins around and stares in triumph at the door that’s suddenly appeared there: the Room of Requirement.
But there’s no time for celebratory thoughts or to even catch his breath. Harry wrenches the door open and stumble inside. The room is now the size of a large cathedral and literally packed with stuff. Harry squeezes past the broken Vanishing Cabinet in which Montague got lost last year, and then turns left by an enormous stuffed troll, looking around wildly he spots a cupboard… He hesitates for a second, then opens one of the cupboard’s creaking doors and placed the book inside, confident that no-one will find it.
But will I be able to find it again, he thinks and looks around. Spotting a chipped bust of an ugly old warlock, he decides to place it on top of the cupboard, just to be sure. And, indulging himself for a moment, he puts an old wig on top of the warlock and as a final touch, a tarnished tiara.
Enough, he thinks to himself. Snape’s waiting…
Harry flat-out runs the entire way back to the bathroom, ignoring the stabbing pain in his side and the sting in his chest. He bursts through the door of the bathroom and comes to a stumbling stop right in front of Snape who doesn’t even bat an eye when Harry doubles over, wheezing, merely holds out his hand — for a second Harry thinks he means to offer some assistance, but quickly realises that No, he wants the book bag, of course he doesn’t want to help me — and Harry hands over his bag.
Snape extracts Harry’s books, one by one, examining each with intense scrutiny until finally he holds up Ron’s Potions book. He doesn’t flip the pages of it, like he did with the other books, just gazes at the front cover for the longest time. Then gently opens it up to the first page and glances inside before quickly shutting it again. He looks up and pins Harry with his intense stare.
”This is your copy of Advanced Potion-Making, is it, Potter?”
”Yes”, Harry says, still catching his breath.
”You’re quite sure of that, are you, Potter?”
”Yes!” Harry exclaims again, slightly more defiant this time.
”This is the copy of Advanced Potion-Making that you purchased from Flourish and Blotts?”
”Yes!”
”Then why”, Snape asks in his silkiest voice. ”Does it have the name ’Roonil Wazlib’ written inside the front cover?”
Harry’s heart skips a beat, Ah shit, he thinks furiously, but no, wait, it could be worse… if Ron hadn’t been using one of twins’ joke quills by mistake at the start of the year, it would have said ’Ronald Weasley’ and then it would be impossible to keep pretending, but as it is…
”It’s my nickname!” Harry blurts.
”Your nickname”, Snape repeats, with an unimpressed curl of his mouth.
”Yeah — That’s what my friends call me, somtimes, as a joke, actually, not very often either, but yeah —”
”I understand what a nickname is”, Severus snaps, his cold dark eyes boring into Harry’s once more, reaching reaching, Harry feels the familiar tingling sensation in his mind, and immediately concentrates, close your mind, close your mind…
”Do you know what I think, Potter?” Snape continues quietly. ”I think that you are a liar, and a cheat, and I think you deserve detention every Saturday from now and til the end of term. What do you think of that, Potter?”
”With you?” Harry asks before he can stop himself, the note of hopefulness embarassingly evident in his voice and judging by the way Snape blinks in surprise, he must have noticed it too.
”You can report to Filch at ten o’clock on Saturday—” Snape says firmly, and then thrusting the book bag and Advanced Potion-Making into Harry’s hands, he swirls around to leave the bathroom again.
”No!” Harry blurts out. ”Severus p-please don’t…”
The other man freezes with his hand on the door handle, his shoulders taut with tension.
”Please”, Harry says again. ”Don’t push me away again…”