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Chapter 17: Light Is Cast
“Many potions require adaptations in their concoctions before they can be administered effectively to non-humans. A good number of these necessary adjustments are rather simple, even for the least talented witches and wizards “ however, there are quite a few that are rather difficult and necessitate a more delicate handling. Today I will be talking at length about these exceptions, and you will need to take extensive notes.”
Snape waved his wand across the blackboard, where ‘Adaptations For Non-Human Consumption’ wrote itself in a bright-green scrawl, and the students begrudgingly pulled out their quills, ink and parchment.
“The most complicated of all these situations is when one is concocting a potion for intake by an ethereal being “ most specifically, a ghost.”
Harry felt that this sounded like it might be mildly intriguing, but as he had already undergone a month’s worth of Snape’s seemingly eternal lectures, he found his interest waning rather than peaking.
“Because of their incorporeal nature, it is difficult for them to drink any tangible substances. In some cases, this is less of a problem. For instance, a ghost requiring Mandrake Restorative Draught because they have been petrified is more able to consume the needed potion. The strength of the compulsory adjusting ingredients will depend on the intensity of their petrification…”
Snape must have taken lessons from Professor Binns on how to administer a boring lecture, Harry thought to himself wearily, wondering how some teachers managed to put an entire classroom to sleep with even the most interesting lessons, and vowing never to subject his own pupils to such misery when he was a teacher.
Continuing to mechanically scribble down notes, Harry’s attention wandered back to second year and the basilisk attacks. Nearly Headless Nick had been one of the petrified victims; the troubled second-year had never wondered how Nick had been cured despite his ghostly state.
Now I know, Harry thought with a mental yawn.
“…even in the instance of a petrified, or in general, a more concrete spirit, certain spells will need to be cast over the said being in order for the potion to be administered successfully. These spells are equally complex…”
By the time Snape wrapped up his lecture and had assigned eighteen-inch essays to the class, Harry had copied at least three feet of notes without having consciously paid attention to the lesson, while Hermione seemed to have written down more information than they had actually been given.
“Eighteen inches? Is he serious?” Siobhan complained as they left the dungeons for lunch. “As if I haven’t enough to do. I don’t think I’ll do it “ the class is no use to me anyway…”
“Why are you taking it, then?” Harry asked with a grin. Siobhan muttered something about ‘broadening intellectually.’
“It really is something new every day with you, isn’t it?” he replied in amused wonder.
She rolled her eyes at him, as though in feigned exasperation. Harry had gotten used to this reaction from his new Slytherin friend, and had quickly gathered that she was still uncomfortable being friendly with fellow students. Giving her the distance she needed, he turned his attention to Hermione, who had been silent since Potions.
“Alright there, Hermione?” he asked.
“What? Oh… yes…” she said, pulled from her distant daze.
“Something up?” he asked.
“No. Nothing too important,” she sighed.
They reached the Great Hall, and Harry quickly took a seat and grabbed the nearest plate of what appeared to be assorted sandwiches; his stomach was rumbling, as he hadn’t eaten this morning. Hermione, who had sat down quite forlornly, gave him a small grin.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“Quidditch practice,” Harry said quickly, readying himself for another bite.
“Oh, yeah…” Hermione said unhappily, quickly betraying her thoughts to Harry. Ron had scheduled team practice early that morning “ their first match of the year was, yet again, versus Slytherin, and so the red-haired captain had once again become the maniacally-driven leader they had grown used to the year before. Though it was good for the team’s conditioning, Harry remembered that it was the same behavior that had caused the fight between Ron and Hermione, subsequently causing them to split briefly.
“It’s Ron, isn’t it?” Harry asked her quietly.
Hermione returned him a hopeless nod.
“I promise I won’t let him get carried away with the Quidditch this year “ ”
“No “ it’s not that…” Hermione said, surprising Harry slightly.
“What then?” he asked in confusion.
“Just… stuff…” Hermione said, shifting uncomfortably.
“I think I’ll go ask Professor Alchemina about something,” Siobhan said subtly, eying them both and vanishing quickly.
“Hermione “ you can tell me you know “”
“’Lo, how was Potions?” Ron’s voice interrupted, taking a seat next to the pair of them and taking an apple from a nearby fruit bowl.
“How do you think?” Harry replied unenthusiastically, stealthily pushing aside his conversation with Hermione.
“More boring lectures, eh?” Ron asked.
Harry, with a mouth full of bread and corned beef, merely nodded.
“What were you up to while we were in class?” Hermione asked.
“Oh, just drawing up some Quidditch strategies…” Ron shrugged. “Didn’t get much done, though…I decided to get a quick nap.”
Hermione gave an all too interested ‘Oh, that’s nice,’, while Ron turned a meaningful eye to his bespectacled best friend, who interpreted it to have something to do the red-head’s unconscious investigations of Aurora. The entire situation conveyed an underlying tension, which caused Harry to feel incredibly awkward.
“Transfiguration, next…” Hermione sighed, finally helping herself to lunch. Harry and Ron murmured in concurrence, and the three of them finished their food silently.
“So “ what’s going on with Ron?” Harry asked, later that evening as the two sat in the common room working on their most recent Potions assignment, Ron being out on corridor patrol for the next two hours.
“He’s acting oddly again, like at the very beginning of term,” Hermione confided in a worried whisper.
“Oh, really?” Harry answered uncomfortably.
“Yes. Except it’s different. He’s not tired… so I know he’s sleeping…” she said, her brow furrowed.
Harry gave an internal sigh of relief; he realized that the one aspect of Ron not taking his potions was that this time around he was actually getting his rest. Though, Harry was not comforted that his best friend’s nights were being open to frightening visions from someone else’s past.
“He’s just being distant, and I think he’s hiding something,” Hermione continued dejectedly. “And ever since Ginny died… he’s been snappish with me, too. It’s just too much…”
“I’m sure he’s just going through a rough spot,” Harry said, guilt nagging at his conscience for the part he was playing in Hermione’s troubles.
She heaved a sigh and looked back to her essay.
“Have you found anything on ‘Spells To Solidify Specters’?” she asked, and the subject of Ron’s secretive behavior wasn’t discussed any further.
Harry managed to finish half of his essay that night; Hermione had finished about three-quarters of her own, which he noted was not up to her usual standard. Exhausted, Harry trudged up to bed before Ron had returned from his duties. He was beginning to look forward to bed more than any year before, and sank into his covers with a pleasant restful feeling. He removed his glasses and closed eyes, slowly drifting off to sleep, with Snape’s lecture still running in his mind, accompanied with all the random facts he had acquired in his evening’s research.
“…a ghost requiring Mandrake Restorative Draught because they have been petrified is more able to consume the needed potion…”
Harry scribbled notes quickly “ he had only a few minutes before the pumpkin juice would run out.
“Subsequently, I have a very tiny brain…” Snape continued. “And I like to make people feel inferior.”
The castle corridors twisted, as though Harry were traveling through the writhing insides of a great snake, the flames on the wall flickering as murderous hissing sounds echoed all around a young black-haired boy and his best friend.
“…Nick got the full blast of it… but he couldn’t die again…”
Time moved forward, and the boy found himself sitting alone in his dormitory, smothered in his own frustrated misery and grief. Soon he was running to an old ghostly friend, a glimmer of hope shining through the darkness that clouded his entire being.
“I know nothing of the secrets of death, Harry, for I chose my feeble imitation of life instead…”
In the graveyard, before the menacing figure of his mortal enemy…
“…it will be quick… it might even be painless…I would not know…I have never died…”
He watched from under a transfigured statue as Dumbledore moved in upon the dark wizard who feared him…
“Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness “ ”
And once again, he returned to the corridors of Hogwarts, where he stood before the late figure of Nearly-Headless Nick
“I was afraid of death…”
Things worse than death…
Immortality.
Harry groaned as he awoke and rolled over onto his back to stare up at the canopy of his bed, before letting his head roll to the side to take in the view from the nearby window. It was still early morning, judging from the colour of the sky and the sun’s position on the horizon.
He closed his eyes, feeling befuddled as fragments of his dreams floated around in his mind. As many do when they awake, Harry tried desperately to remember the imaginings that had occupied him during his sleeping hours.
…only, they weren’t imaginings…
They had been memories, he was sure of it. Slowly, Harry combed through his subconscious, as though using Legilemency powers on his own thoughts, and found himself retaining the night’s recollections of his past.
“…I would not know…I have never died…”
A revelation smacked Harry in the face, and he stumbled as he grabbed his glasses and leapt from his bed. He sped across the room to Ron and tugged his snoring friend from his sleep.
“Get up, Ron, now!” he said anxiously.
Ron murmured and opened his eyes, looking around blearily.
“Mmwhat is it?”
Harry didn’t wait to answer, but gave Ron’s arm another jerk.
“You’ll find out if you come with me,” he said, his heart thumping hard against his chest.
Ron seemed to gather some of his focus and he climbed out of his bed with a little more grace than Harry had shown.
“Downstairs, now…”
“What’s going on?” Ron asked.
“I might have an idea about why Voldemort didn’t die.”
“Okay, Harry “ calm down, you’re not making any sense…”
Hermione tried her best to soothe Harry into communicating his thoughts more coherently, but it didn’t seem to be working. Only a few minutes before, he had rushed downstairs to the common room, Ron tumbling after in his wake. Not wasting a moment, and ignoring his friend’s cautionary warnings, he proceeded up the stairs of the girls’ dormitory, deliberately setting of the screaming alarm that sent him sliding backwards to the common room.
Ignoring the packs of frizzy haired, irritated girls that had gathered at the stairwell to tell him off for causing a disturbance, he had desperately demanded that Hermione come downstairs until she had sleepily wandered from her own dormitory to his summoning call.
As the last of the crabby females at returned to their rooms, the three had taken seats in the dusty light of the quiet common room, still dressed in their night clothes, and Harry had began to ramble through his unorganized thoughts.
“What do you mean, ‘he never died’?” Ron asked, sharing a confused look with Hermione “ whose mane of bushy hair was so wild that it was distracting Harry slightly.
Harry took a deep breath, and tried to go through it all again, more slowly.
“Voldemort said that he would not know if death was painless, because he had never died,” he said, watching as his friends gave small nods of understanding. “In fifth year, Nick told me that he didn’t know anything about the secrets of death, because he chose another path.”
“I don’t see how the two are connected…” Hermione told him.
“Don’t you see? Nick is dead “ I mean, he’s no longer alive. Yet, he doesn’t consider himself truly dead, because he isn’t. Just like Voldemort never died…”
“Alright, that makes…a bit of sense,” Ron said. “But… what about the rest?”
“Dumbledore said there are things worse than death, and that Voldemort’s inability to understand that was his greatest weakness. So obviously, whatever is worse than death, Voldemort doesn’t exactly agree.”
Ron and Hermione looked like they were still following him, though just barely, and so Harry continued.
“Nick said he was afraid of death “ but… he seems sad about it. As though…”
“Remaining on earth forever is worse…” Hermione said slowly.
“Yes!” Harry said thankfully. “Immortality is one of the things worse than death.”
“So… Voldemort is immortal?” Ron asked in a hushed tone, his eyes wide with terrified amazement.
“Not exactly. He did take steps against a mortal death “ which is what Dumbledore meant about him not understanding that there are things worse than death…”
“And you said you have an idea of what it was he did to himself?” Hermione asked, now caught up and as equally anxious as Harry as the three of them sat on the verge of discovery.
“Remember in second year, when Nick was petrified by the basilisk?”
They both nodded fervently.
“A mortal would have died “ but Nick didn’t, because he was already dead…” Harry said, the words not seeming to spill from his lips quickly enough. “We know that potions and spells can affect people, even after death… as ghosts. So what if Voldemort never died, because he already did die…?”
Hermione and Ron stared back at him, agape, silent. Harry began to worry that perhaps in his mental state of being only half-awake, his logic hadn’t made as much sense as he had first thought. His words echoed against the walls of the common room, and against the inside of his skull.
You’re an idiot, Harry, he berated himself. A bloody moron!
“Harry,” Hermione said, recovering from her shock. “I think you might be on to something. Get your invisibility cloak, and meet me in the library.”
And then she rushed from the common room, nightdress and all.