Previous Chapters:
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003804769
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003805533
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003806102
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003806803
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003808304
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003810956
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003811902
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003814653
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003816806
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003819557
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003821422
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003822967
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003823601
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003825124
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003826708
Tags:
@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972
Chapter Sixteen: Bathilda’s Secret
‘Stop, someone is watching us,’ said Tracey very suddenly.
‘There is?’ responded Theodore.
They had only just reached the grave of the unknown Abbott.
‘Yes, they’re over by the bushes.’
All three of them stood quite still, holding on to each other, gazing at the dense black boundary of the graveyard. Harry could not see anything.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘I think so, I saw the bushes move and I swore it looked like a person…’
She broke from him to free her wand arm.
‘We look like Muggles,’ Harry pointed out.
‘But we also just laid flowers in front of a grave that only you or someone with close to connections to you would lay them,’ said Theodore, now starting to become nervous to. ‘Maybe we should Apparate out of here.’
Harry thought of A History of Magic, the graveyard was supposed to be haunted, what if—? But then he heard a rustle and saw a little eddy of dislodged snow in the bush to which Tracey had pointed. Ghosts could not move snow.
‘It’s a cat,’ said Harry, after a second or two, ‘or a bird. If it was a Death Eater we’d be dead by now. But let’s get out of here, and we can put the Cloak back on.’
They glanced back repeatedly as they made their way out of the graveyard. Harry, who did not feel as sanguine as he had pretended when reassuring the other two, was glad to reach the gate and the slippery pavement. They pulled the Invisibility Cloak back over themselves. The pub was fuller than before: Many voices inside it were now singing the carol that they had heard as they approached the church. For a moment Harry considered suggesting they take refuge inside it, but before he could say anything Theodore murmured, ‘No, let’s go the other way,’ and pulled him and Tracey down the dark street leading out of the village in the opposite direction from which they had entered. Harry could make out the point where the cottages ended and the lane turned into open country again. They walked as quickly as they dared, past more windows sparkling with multicolored light, the outlines of Christmas trees dark through the curtains.
‘Do we still want to find Bathilda Bagshot? How are we even supposed to know which house is hers?’ asked Tracey, who was shivering a little and kept glancing back over her shoulder. ‘I’m starting to agree with Theodore, we should maybe go and come back another day. What do you think Harry?’
She tugged at his arm, but Harry was not paying attention. He was looking toward the dark mass that stood at the very end of this row of houses. Next moment he had sped up, dragging Tracey along with him, Theodore close behind him.
‘Harry, where are you g—‘ Theodore half-shouted.
‘Look...Look at it guys...’
‘Sorry I don’t understand…oh!’ said Tracey, her eyes widening.
They could all see it; the Fidelius Charm must have died with James and Lily. The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Remus and Hagrid had taken Harry from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been blown apart; that, Harry was sure, was where the curse had backfired. The three of them stood at the gate, gazing at the wreck of what must once have been a cottage just like those that flanked it.
‘How come it hasn’t been bought and rebuilt?’ thought Tracey out loud.
‘Maybe you can’t rebuild it?’ Harry replied. ‘Maybe it’s like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can’t repair the damage?’
He slipped a hand from beneath the Cloak and grasped the snowy and thickly rusted gate, not wishing to open it, but simply to hold some part of the house.
‘Harry,’ said Theodore in a warning tone, ‘I know you want to go inside, but doing so combined with what we did in the graveyard our cover would be—oh look!’
His touch on the gate seemed to have done it. A sign had risen out of the ground in front of them, up through the tangles of nettles and weeds, like some bizarre, fast-growing flower, and in golden letters upon the wood it said:
“On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, Lily and James Potter lost their lives. Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse. This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family.”
And all around these neatly lettered words, scribbles had been added by other witches and wizards who had come to see the place where the Boy Who Lived had escaped. Some had merely signed their names in Everlasting Ink; others had carved their initials into the wood, still others had left messages. The most recent of these, shining brightly over sixteen years’ worth of magical graffiti, all said similar things.
“Good luck, Harry wherever you are.”
“If you read this, Harry, we’re all behind you! Long live Harry Potter.”
‘That’s really risky but brave of all of them,’ said Tracey, it almost sounded like hope was in her voice.
‘It’s good to know more than just Potterwatch is on our side,’ said Theodore confidently.
But Harry beamed at both of them.
‘It’s brilliant. I’m glad they did it. I…’
He broke off. A heavily muffled figure was hobbling up the lane toward them, silhouetted by the bright lights in the distant square. Harry thought, though it was hard to judge, that the figure was a woman. She was moving slowly, possibly frightened of slipping on the snowy ground. Her stoop, her stoutness, her shuffling gait all gave an impression of extreme age. They watched in silence as she drew nearer. Harry was waiting to see whether she would turn into any of the cottages she was passing, but he knew instinctively that she would not. At last she came to a half a few yards from them and simply stood there in the middle of the frozen road, facing them.
He did not need Theodore’s warning of stepping on his foot. There was next to no chance this woman was a Muggle: She was standing there gazing at a house that ought to have been completely invisible to her, if she was not a witch. Even assuming that she was a witch, however, it was odd behaviour to come out on a night this cold, simply to look at an old ruin. By all the rules of normal magic, meanwhile, she ought not to be able to see the three of them at all. Nevertheless, Harry had the strangest feeling that she knew that they were there, and also who they were. Just as he had reached this uneasy conclusion, she raised a gloved hand and beckoned.
Theodore moved closer to him under the Cloak, Harry could hear both his and Tracey’s uneasy breathing.
‘How could she know we’re here?’
Harry shook his head. The woman beckoned again, more vigorously. Harry could think of many reasons not to obey the summons, and yet his suspicions about her identity were growing stronger every moment that they stood facing each other in the deserted street.
Was it possible that she had been waiting for them all these long months? That Dumbledore had told her to wait, and that Harry would come in the end? Was it not likely that it was she who had moved in the shadows in the graveyard and had followed them to this spot? Even her ability to sense them suggested some Dumbledore-ish power that he had never encountered before.
Finally Harry spoke, causing Tracey to gasp and jump, ‘Are you Bathilda?’
The muffled figure nodded and beckoned again.
Beneath the Cloak, all three friends looked at each other. Harry raised his eyebrows; the other two gave a tiny, nervous nod. They stepped toward the woman and, at once, she turned and hobbled off back the way they had come. Leading them past several houses, she turned in at a gate. They followed her up the front path through a garden nearly as overgrown as the one they had just left. She fumbled for a moment with a key at the front door, then opened it and stepped back to let them pass.
She smelled bad, or perhaps it was her house. Harry wrinkled his nose as they sidled past her and pulled off the Cloak. Now that he was beside her, he realized how tiny she was; bowed down with age she came barely level with his chest. She closed the door behind them, her knuckles blue and mottled against the peeling paint, then turned and peered into Harry’s face.
Her eyes were thick with cataracts and sunken in folds of transparent skin, and her whole face was dotted with broken veins and liver spots. He wondered whether she could make him out at all; even if she could, it was the balding Muggle whose identity he had stolen that she would see.
The odor of old age, of dust, of unwashed clothes and stale food intensified as she unwound a moth-eaten black shawl, revealing a head of scant white hair through which the scalp showed clearly.
‘Bathilda?’ Harry repeated.
She nodded again. Harry became aware of the locket against his skin; the thing inside it that sometimes ticked or beat had woken; he could feel it pulsing through the cold gold. Did Dumbledore leave her the sword or a basilisk fang, did the Horcrux know, could it sense, that the thing that would destroy it was near?
Bathilda shuffled past them, pushing Tracey and Theodore aside as though she had not seen them, and vanished into what seemed to be a sitting room.
‘Harry, I don’t think this is safe,’ breathed Theodore.
‘Yes, what if Bathilda isn’t as trustworthy as we thought?’ whispered Tracey.
‘Look at the size of her, I think we could overpower her if we had to,’ said Harry, ‘Listen, I should have told you two, I knew she wasn’t all there. Muriel called her “gaga”.’
‘Come!’ called Bathilda from the next room.
Tracey jumped and clutched Harry’s arm.
‘Um, Harry…’ said Theodore, sounding quite unnerved.
‘It’s okay,’ said Harry reassuringly, and he led the way into the sitting room.
Bathilda was tottering around the place lighting candle, but it was still very dark, not to mention extremely dirty. Thick dust crunched beneath their feet, and Harry’s nose detected, underneath the dank and mildewed smell, something worse, like meat gone bad. He wondered when was the last time anyone had been inside Bathilda’s house to check whether she was coping. She seemed to have forgotten that she could do magic too, for she lit the candles clumsily by hand, her trailing lace cuff in constant danger of catching fire.
‘Let me do that,’ offered Harry and he took the matches from her. She stood watching him as he finished lighting the candle stubs that stood on saucers around the room, perched precariously on stack of book and on side tables crammed with cracked and moldy cups.
The last surface on which Harry spotted a candle was a bow-fronted chest of drawers on which there stood a large number of photographs. When the flame danced into life, its reflection wavered on their dusty glass and silver. He saw a few tiny movements from the pictures. As Bathilda fumbled with logs for the fire, he muttered ‘Tergeo’; the dust vanished from the photographs, and he was at once that half a down were missing from the largest and most ornate frames.
He wondered whether Bathilda or somebody else had removed them. Then the sight of a photograph near the back of the collection caught his eye, and he snatched it up.
It was the golden-haired, merry-faced thief, the young man who had perched on Gregorovitch’s windowsill, smiling lazily up at Harry out of the silver frame. And it came to Harry instantly where he had seen the boy before: in The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, arm in arm with teenage Dumbledore, and that must be where all the missing photographs were in Rita’s book.
‘Ms—er—Madam Bagshot?’ he said, and his voice shook slightly. ‘Who is this?’
Bathilda was standing in the middle of the room watching Tracey light the fire for her.
‘Madam Bagshot?’ Harry repeated, and he advanced with the picture in his hands as the flames burst into life in the fireplace. Bathilda looked up at his voice, and the Horcrux heat faster upon his chest.
‘Who is this person?’ Harry asked her, pushing the picture forward.
She peered at it solemnly, then up at Harry.
‘Do you know who this is?’ he repeated in a much slower and louder voice than usual. ‘This man? Do you know him? What’s he called?’
Bathilda merely looked vague. Harry felt an awful frustration. With how much force had Rita Skeeter unlocked Bathilda’s memories?
‘Who is this man?’ he repeated loudly.
‘Shouting at her isn’t going to help, what’s so important about the bloke in the photo?’ asked Theodore.
‘This picture, it’s the thief, the thief who stole from Gregorovitch! Please!’ he said to Bathilda. ‘Who is this?’
But she only stared at him.
‘Why did you ask us to come here, Madam Bagshot?’ asked Tracey, raising her own voice. ‘Was there a message you wanted to give us, or an item from Dumbledore?’
Giving no sign that she had heard Tracey, Bathilda now shuffled a few steps closer to Harry. With a little jerk of her head she looked back into the hall.
‘You want us to leave?’ he asked.
She repeated the gesture, this time pointing firstly at him, then at herself, then at the ceiling.
‘Oh, right…guys, I think she wants me to go upstairs with her.’
‘Ok then,’ said Tracey. ‘Let’s she what she wants to show us.’
But when Tracey and Theodore moved, Bathilda shook her head with surprising vigour, once more pointing first at Harry, then to herself.
‘She wants me to go with her, alone.’
‘What?’ asked Theodore, and his voice rang out sharp and clear in the candlelit room; the old lady shook her head a little at the loud noise.
‘Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me, and only me?’
‘Harry, do you seriously think this ancient blind old lady knows who you are?’ whispered Tracey, her eyes screaming with apprehension.
‘Yes,’ said Harry, looking down into the milky eyes fixed upon his own, ‘I think she does.’
‘Harry,’ Theodore hissed, ‘I don’t trust this, something isn’t right…’
‘Theo, I’ll be fine…but if something goes wrong I’ll let you two know,’ said Harry, he then turned to Bathilda. ‘Lead the way.’
She seemed to understand, because she shuffled around him toward the door. Harry glanced back at his friends with a reassuring smile, but he was not sure they had seen it; both were looking at the different books and pictures in the room. As Harry walked out of the room, unseen by both Theodore, Tracey, and Bathilda, he slipped the silver-framed photograph of the unknown thief inside his jacket.
The stairs were steep and narrow; Harry was half tempted to place his hands on stout Bathilda’s backside to ensure that she did not topple over backward on top of him, which seemed only too likely. Slowly, wheezing a little, she climbed to the upper landing, turned immediately right, and led him into a low-ceilinged bedroom.
It was pitch-black and smelled horrible. Harry had just made out a chamber pot protruding from under the bed before Bathilda closed the door and even that was swallowed by the darkness.
‘Lumos,’ said Harry, and his wand ignited. He gave a start; Bathilda had moved close to him in those few seconds of darkness, and he had not heard her approach.
‘You are Potter?’ she whispered.
‘Yes, I am.’
She nodded slowly, solemnly. Harry felt the Horcrux beating fast, faster than his own heart. It was an unpleasant, agitating sensation.
‘Have you got anything for me?’ Harry asked, but she seemed distracted by his lit wand-tip. ‘Have you got anything for me?’ he repeated.
Then she closed her eyes and several things happened at once: Harry’s scar prickled painfully; the Horcrux twitched so that the front of his sweater actually moved; the dark, fetid room dissolved momentarily. He felt a leap of joy and spoke in a high, cold voice:
‘Hold him!’
Harry swayed where he stood: The dark, foul-smelling room seemed to close around him again; he did not know what had just happened.
‘Have you got anything for me?’ he asked for a third time, much louder.
‘Over here,’ she whispered, pointing to the corner. Harry raised his wand and saw the outline of a cluttered dressing table beneath the curtained window.
This time she did not lead him. Harry edged between her and the unmade bed, his wand raised. He did not want to look away from her.
‘What is it?’ he asked as he reached the dressing table, which was heaped high with what looked and smelled like dirty laundry.
‘There,’ she said, pointing at the shapeless mass.
And in the instant that he looked away, his eyes raking the tangled mess for a sword hilt, or a fang, she moved weirdly: He saw it out of the corner of his eye; panic made him turn and horror paralyzed him and he saw the old body collapsing and the great snake pouring from the place where her neck had been.
The snake struck as he raised his wand. The force of the bite to his forearm sent the wand spinning up toward the ceiling; its light swung dizzyingly around the room and was extinguished. Then a powerful blow from the tail to his midriff knocked the breath out of him. He fell backward onto the dressing table, into the mound of filthy clothing—He rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding the snake’s tail, which thrashed down upon the table where he had been a second earlier. Fragments of the glass surface rained upon him as he hit the floor. From below he heard Theodore and Tracey call, ‘Harry?!’
He could not get enough breath into his lungs to call back. Then a heavy smooth mass smashed him into the floor and he felt it slide over him, powerful, muscular.
‘No!’ he gasped, pinned to the floor.
‘Yes,’ whispered the voice. ‘Yesss…hold you….hold you…’
‘Accio...Accio Wand...’
But nothing happened and he needed his hands to try to force the snake from him as it coiled itself around his torso, squeezing the air from him, pressing the Horcrux hard into his chest, a circle of ice that throbbed with life, inches from his own frantic heart, and his brain was flooding with cold, white light, all thought obliterated, his own breath drowned, distant footsteps, everything going…
A metal heart was banging outside his chest, and now he was flying, flying with triumph in his heart, without need of broomstick or thestral…
He was abruptly awake in the sour-smelling darkness; Nagini had released him. He scrambled up and saw the snake outlined against the landing light. It struck, and Theodore dived aside with a yelp; his deflected attack hit the curtained window, which shattered. Frozen air filled the room as Harry ducked to avoid another shower of broken glass and his foot slipped on a pencil-like something—his wand—
He bent and snatched it up, but now the room was full of the snake, its tail thrashing; Harry heard Tracey scream ‘Vipera Evanesca,’ but nothing happened to Nagini. Theodore was nowhere to be seen and for a moment Harry thought the worst, but then there was a loud bang and a flash of red light, and the snake flew into the air, smacking Harry hard in the face as it went, coil after heavy coil rising up to the ceiling. Harry raised his wand, but as he did so his scar seared more painfully, more powerfully than it had done in years.
‘He’s coming! He’s almost here!’
As he yelled the snake fell, hissing wildly. Everything was chaos; It smashed shelves from the wall, and splintered china flew everywhere as Tracey jumped over the bed and Harry followed her as they both seized the dark shape they knew to be Theodore.
Theodore cried out with pain as the two friends pulled him back across the bed. The snake reared again, but Harry knew that worse than the snake was coming, was perhaps already at the gate, his head was going to split open with pain from his scar.
The snake lunged as he took a running leap, dragging the other two with him; as it struck, Tracey scream, ‘Bombarda Maxima!’ and her spell flew around the room, exploding the wardrobe mirror and ricocheting back at them, bouncing from floor to ceiling; Harry felt the heat of it sear the back of his hand. Glass cut his cheek as, pulling the others on with him, he leapt from bed to broken dressing table and then straight out of the smashed window into nothingness, their screams reverberating through the night as they twisted in midair.
And then his scar burst open and he was Voldemort and he was running across the fetid bedroom, his long white hands clutching at the windowsill as he glimpsed the bald man, the little woman, and the young teenager twist and vanish, and he screamed with rage, a scream that mingled with his vanishing targets, that echoed across the dark gardens over the church bells ringing in Christmas Day.
And his scream was Harry’s scream, his pain was Harry pain…that it could happen here, where it had happened before…here, within sight of that house where he had come so close to knowing what it was to die...to die...The pain was so terrible…ripped from his body…But if he had no body, why did his head hurt so badly; if he was dead, how could he feel so unbearably, didn’t pain cease with death, didn’t it go—
The night wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square, and the shop window covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trapping of a world in which they did not believe…And he was gliding along, that sense of purpose and power and rightness in him that he always knew on these occasions...Not anger...that was for weaker souls than he...but triumph, yes...He had waited for this, he had hoped for it...
‘Nice costume, mister!’
He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face.
Then the child turned and ran away…Beneath the robe be fingered the hand of his wand…One simple movement and the child would never reach his mother…but unnecessary, quite unnecessary…
And along a new and darker street he moved, and now his destination was in sight at last, the Fidelius Charm broken, though they did not know it yet…And he made less noise than the dead leaves slithering along the pavement as he drew level with the dark hedge, and peered over it...
They had not drawn the curtains; he saw them quite clearly in their little sitting room, the tall black-haired man in his glasses, making puffs of coloured smoke erupt from his wand for the amusement of the small black-haired boy in his blue pajamas. The child was laughing and trying to catch the smoke, to grab it in his small fist…
A door opened and the mother entered, saying words he could not hear, her long dark-red hair falling over her face. Now the father scooped up the son and handed him to the mother. He threw his wand down upon the sofa and stretched, yawning…
The gate creaked a little as he pushed it open, but James Potter did no hear. His white hand pulled out the wand beneath his cloak and pointed it at the door, which burst open.
He was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall. It was easy, too easy, he had not even picked up his wand…
‘Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off!’
Hold him off, without a wand in his hand..?He laughed before casting the curse...
‘Avada Kedavra!’
The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it made the banisters glare like lightning rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut...
He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear…He climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in…She had no wand either…How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments...
He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand…and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the last sight of him, she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead…
‘Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!’
‘Stand aside, you silly girl…stand aside now.’
‘Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead—‘
‘This is my last warning—‘
‘Not Harry! Please...have mercy...have mercy...Not
Harry! Not Harry! Please—I’ll do anything—‘
‘Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!’
He could have forced her away from the crib, but it seemed more
prudent to finish them all...
The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like her husband. The child had not cried all this time. He could stand, clutching the bars of his crib and he looked up into the intruder’s face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty light, and his mother would pop up any moment, laughing—
He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy’s face. He wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry. It had seen that he was not James. He did not like it crying, he had never been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage—
‘Avada Kedavra!’
And then he broke; He was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and he must hide himself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the child was trapped and screaming, but far away…far away...
‘No,’ he moaned.
The snake rustled on the filthy, cluttered floor, and he had killed the boy, and yet he was the boy...
‘No...’
And now he stood at the broken window of Bathilda’s house, immersed in memories of his greatest loss, and at his feet the great snake slithered over broken china and glass…He looked down and saw something…something incredible…
‘No...’
‘Harry, you’re ok, you’re going to be ok.’
He stooped down and picked up the smashed photograph. There he was, the unknown thief he was seeking...
‘No...I dropped it...I dropped it...’
‘Harry stop, it’s ok, you are safe, wake up!’
He was Harry…Harry, not Voldemort…and the thing that was rustling was not a snake…He opened his eyes.
‘Harry,’ Tracey whispered. ‘How do you feel, are you alright?’
‘Yes,’ he lied.
He was in the tent, lying on one of the lower bunks beneath a heap of blankets, looking to his side he could see Theodore unconscious in what was normally Tracey’s bunk. Harry could tell that it was almost dawn by the stillness and the quality of the cold, flat light beyond the canvas ceiling. He was drenched in sweat; he could feel it on the sheets and blankets.
‘We got away.’
‘We did,’ said Tracey, ‘but Theodore’s leg was broken and he fell unconscious from shock almost the second we arrived. I had to set up the tent and use Mobilicorpus to get you both onto bunks. Harry…you were…um…’
There were purple shadows under her dark hazel eyes and he noticed a small sponge in her hand. She had been wiping his face.
‘You were seriously ill,’ she finished. ‘Scarily ill.’
‘How’s Theodore?’ asked Harry, as he felt his own well being didn’t matter until he knew his brother was ok.
‘Theo is fine, I cast Brackium Emendo on him and gave him some Sleeping Draught, he’ll probably sleep until noon but he’ll be fine,’ she said, but her eyes never stopped focusing on Harry. ‘It’s you I was very worried about. I think, among other things, you were suffering from the snake’s venom, although thankfully it was no where near as bad as poor Mr Weasley…’
‘How long ago did we leave?’
‘About eight hours ago. The sun is nearly up.’
‘And I’ve been…what, unconscious?’
‘Er, not exactly,” said Tracey uncomfortable, ‘you were screaming, and shouting, and writhing violently…’ she added in a tone that made Harry feel uneasy. What had he done? Screamed curses like Voldemort, cried like the baby in the crib?
‘With how violently you were shaking I couldn’t administer any of my bottle of Antidote to Common Poisons, so the best I could do was cast Reparifor to try and mitigate any internal damage from the venom. I cleaned the bite, and because it was shallow I tried to use Murtlap Essence, but there must be some really dark magic in that snake’s venom because in the end I had to use the rest of my dittany to close the wound.’
‘Well thank you Tracey, I’m glad you were the one left conscious, I doubt Theo or I would have been able to-what’s wrong,’ as Tracey’s remorseful expression told Harry her story was not complete.
‘Th-the Horcrux, I couldn’t get it off, it welded itself onto your chest,’ she said, and Harry now knew she had seen something horrible while trying to heal him and she had to deal with it all alone. ‘I-I was only able to get it off using the Severing Charm, I used more Murtlap Essence and Burn-Healing Paste to heal and close the wound where the Horcrux had been, but I’m sorry Harry without anymore dittany it left quite a scar.’
He pulled the sweaty T-shirt he was wearing away from himself and looked down. There was a scarlet oval over his heart where the locket had burned him. He could also see the half-healed puncture marks to his forearm.
‘It’s ok Tracey, you did what you had to do. Where’ve you put the Horcrux?’
‘In my purse. I didn’t want to wear it while being the only conscious person here, and I think you should take a decent break from wearing it at all.’
He lay back on his pillow and looked into her pinched gray face. ‘We shouldn’t have gone to Godric’s Hollow. It’s my fault, it’s all my fault, Tracey, I’m sorry.’
‘Harry it is not your fault, I advocated for us to go too. I thought it was important for you to visit your parents grave and that we might find something important there.‘
‘Yeah, well…we got that wrong, didn’t we?’
‘I know you’re tired Harry, but I need to know. What happened? What happened when Bathilda took you upstairs? Was the snake hiding and waiting for you and kill her before attacking you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘She was the snake…or the snake was her…all along.’
‘W—what?’
He closed his eyes. He could still smell Bathilda’s house on him. It made the whole thing horribly vivid.
‘Bathilda must’ve been dead a while. The snake was…was inside her. You-Know-Who put it there in Godric’s Hollow, to wait. You and Theodore were right. He knew I’d go back.’
‘Go back, the snake was inside her?’
He opened his eyes again. Tracey looked revolted, nauseated. ‘Remus said there would be magic we’d never imagined,’ Harry said. ‘She didn’t want to talk in front of you two, because it was Parseltongue, all Parseltongue, and I didn’t realize, but of course I could understand her. Once we were up in the room, the snake sent a message to You-Know-Who. I heard it happen inside my head, I felt him get excited, he said to keep me there...and then...’
He remembered the snake coming out of Bathilda’s neck; after all the body horror Tracey had already seen tonight, Harry decided she did not need to know the details.
‘…she changed, changed into the snake, and attacked.’
He looked down at the puncture marks.
‘It wasn’t supposed to kill me, just keep me there till You-Know-Who came.’
If he had only managed to kill the snake, it would have been worth it, all of it…Sick at heart, he sat up threw back the covers.
‘Harry, no, you should rest. I was about to give you some of the Sleeping Draught.’
‘You’re the one who needs sleep. No offense, but you look terrible. I’m fine. I’ll keep watch for a while. Where’s my wand?’
She did not answer, she merely looked at him.
‘Where’s my wand, Tracey?’
She was biting her lip, and tears continued to spawn in her eyes.
‘Harry...’
‘Where’s my wand?’
She reached down beside the bed and held it out to him.
The holly and phoenix wand was nearly severed in two. One fragile strand of phoenix feather kept both pieces hanging together. The wood had splintered apart completely. Harry took it into his hands as though it was a living thing that had suffered a terrible injury. He could not think properly. Everything was a blur of panic and fear. He held out the wand to Tracey.
‘Mend it. Please.’
‘Harry, I’m really sorry, but I don’t think that’s pos—‘
‘Please, Tracey, try!’
‘R-Reparo.’
The handling half of the wand resealed itself. Harry held it up.
‘Lumos!’
The wand sparked feebly, then went out. Harry pointed it at Tracey.
‘Expelliarmus!’
Hermione’s wand gave a little jerk, but did not leave her hand. The feeble attempt at magic was too much for Harry’s wand, which split into two again. He stared at it, aghast, unable to take in what he was seeing...the wand that had survived so much... The wand he had bought with Sirius by his side…
‘Harry,’ Tracey whispered so quietly he could hardly hear her. ‘It’s all my fault. When we were trying to keep the Snake away before we Apparated, the first charm that came to mind was the Bombardment Spell, but the snake is a Horcrux so it rebounded everywhere. My spell, it must have—must have hit—‘
‘It was an accident,’ said Harry mechanically. He felt empty, stunned. ‘We’ll—we’ll find a way to repair it.’
‘Harry, I don’t believe that we can,’ said Tracey, the tears trickling down her face. ‘When I took Ancient Studies we covered wand origins, wands are extremely complex and once they’re damaged it can’t be reversed. You’ll have to get a new one.’
Harry thought of Ollivander, kidnapped and held hostage by Voldemort; of Gregorovitch, who was dead. How was he supposed to find himself a new wand?
‘Well,’ he said, in a falsely matter-of-fact voice, ‘well, I’ll just borrow yours for now, then. While I keep watch.’
Her face glazed with tears, Tracey handed over her wand, and he left her sitting beside his bed, desiring nothing more than to get away from her.
