The Beginning of the End
Weeks passed. Winter turned into spring, and spring was well under way before anything changed again.
They were all in a state of limbo now: Leah and her friends; McGonagall, Thomas and Mr Weasley; and Masen. They floated around each other, passed each other in the halls, saw each other in class, but nobody actually acknowledged what everybody all ready knew. Masen – Leah couldn’t quite bring herself to think of him as either Potter or You-Know-Who just yet – seemed to be waiting for them to make the first move, playing cautious, and that was strange in its own right.
On the other hand, McGonagall, Thomas, and Mr Weasley ran around the school like madmen from January through to March. They skipped their own classes, and Transfiguration and Charms had never before seen such a large rotation of substitute teachers in all their years. They left meals early. And there were several occasions in which Leah spotted them shut away in deserted classrooms and corners of the school grounds talking in hushed tones with Hagrid or to other Order members.
She wanted to talk to them ... but she didn’t know how. Harry Potter had been their friend, their student; and she didn’t have much right in pushing them to get a move on when they could be the ones who would save him.
“You just do it,” Gwen told her one day several months after the conversation in McGonagall’s office as they sat high up in the spectator stands of the Quidditch Pitch, watching as Athos and Chiron battled it out for the snitch down below.
Was it that simple, though? Her friends seemed to think so, but Leah wasn’t as sure.
“We’ll go talk to them after the game,” said Cory.
And they had. While the cheering crowd waved their banners and threw yellow confetti into the air in support of Athos’s win, Leah, Gwen and Cory fought against the mass of bodies to catch up with McGonagall and Thomas as the two professors left the stadium.
They must have anticipated the trio’s question as soon as they saw them approach, for neither of the adults slowed down in the slightest as McGonagall said tightly, “We do not know how to help him.”
“We’ll let you know,” Thomas called over his retreating shoulder.
“They won’t though, will they?” Leah had murmured quietly, standing in the melting snow. She watched them leave, hating herself more than a little for feeling so useless.
“Nope,” answered Gwen, “I doubt it.”
It was not the last time they tried for information, far from it in fact. But each time after, they received even less than before, until soon enough they stopped asking all together and could almost believe, deep down, that everything was really okay.
“Who do you think he is today?”
Leah looked up from her notes on the Full Body Bind curse. The rest of the class was still scratching away with their quills, with Masen pacing impatiently in front of them, but Cory was looking at her and Gwen with not even a single word scrawled upon his parchment.
“Cory, be quiet!” Gwen hissed. She glanced furtively at the professor, ducking her head quickly when his black gaze swept across the room and met hers.
“He’s right there,” Leah agreed in a low whisper.
But Cory continued on as if he hadn’t heard. “I think he’s the ... bad one. He usually is.”
“Now really isn’t the time to get into this again.”
Just then, the bell rang to announce the end of class. “Although, it’s not like the other teachers are doing anything about it,” murmured Gwen. She began to shove her notes and writing supplies into her large canvas shoulder bag before picking it up and following Leah out the door, cautious of the professor’s eyes following them every step of the way.
“Should we try asking them again?”
“You can’t push adults,” she replied knowingly. “They’ll only clam up more because they think you can’t be patient. They won’t do anything. To them, the war ended a long time ago.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Leah sneaked a momentary look back over her shoulder toward the retreating classroom door. Students were still spilling from its depths in small groups. But when she looked toward her friends, she realized that something was wrong.
“Gwen ...” she asked slowly. “Where’s Cory?”
“He was right behind –” She followed Leah’s gaze back down the hallway. “That’s weird. Where is he?”
“Do you think he’s still packing up at the table?”
“No. I could’ve sworn I saw ... well, he couldn’t have gone far!”
They both looked at each other at the same time, fear pooling in their guts. “You don’t think ...?” Gwen whispered at the exact moment that Leah said, “He wouldn’t ...”
“Masen!” they shouted, and they turned their backs and ran.
They were nearly halfway back to the classroom, having sprinted at a dead run, when a new voice filled the castle. High and cold, coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once, it seemed to bleed out of the very stone and mortar of the walls that were meant to keep it at bay.
“This is Lord Voldemort.”
Immediately, there was a shocked silence and then students everywhere started to scream. They covered their ears with the palms of their hands. Some stood frozen in place with fear; others ran chaotic circles around their friends. Their voices rose in a deafening crescendo until they could almost hope to drown out the interloper’s as well.
“This is Lord Voldemort,” the voice continued. It was the voice of Professor Masen; the voice of Harry Potter and You-Know-Who, excited and smug. “Too long I have let you, my adversaries, be. I have allowed you blood traitors and Muggle-lovers to squander away in secret, belittling yourselves, while the magical community should have stood together, known and united under a single leader. Too long, I have allowed this to go on.”
Leah and Gwen stopped running. Around them, teachers were beginning to shepherd the students into the Great Hall, shouting loudly as they tried to be heard over the increasing ruckus.
“But no more!” Voldemort cried triumphantly. “No longer! Together, we may still receive the honour that we as the superior race deserve!
“But I will not wait forever. Just outside your gates, my dementor and a few loyal followers are awaiting upon my word.” Here his voice dropped into a soothing, yet deadly, lilt. “I have taken Cory Weasley and I will not hesitate to harm him if you do not listen closely to me now.”
“Oh, god,” Leah said. Blindly, she reached for Gwen’s hand. She could feel the horror spread throughout her, from the top of her head to her toes.
“I do not wish for a bloodbath; only to have an audience with just one of you. Take this hour to evacuate your students and staff and when you are done, Charlie Weasley will meet with me in my office – I believe that you know to which I refer. You have evaded me for a long time – I applaud you for that – but I, too, wish for this game to finally be done. Harry Potter is alive and it is past time for him to see the rest of his precious Weasleys wiped right off the face of the earth. I repeat: Charlie Weasley ... my office ... in one hour.”
“Now what?” exclaimed Gwen. She was jittery, uneasy in her panic, and she let go of Leah’s sweaty hand only to flap hers erratically in the air at her side.
“Leah! Gwen!” Professor Thomas called. He was sprinting down the hall toward them, a determination clouding his eyes that was both mesmerizing and terrifying, and as he reached them, he grabbed both of them by their wrists and began to drag them in the direction of the rest of the student body. “Come on, to the Great Hall. Now. You have to go.”
“Wait! We can’t leave!” Leah cried, fighting against him. Beside her, Gwen was doing the same.
“He has Cory!” shrieked Gwen.
“And right now,” replied Professor Thomas impatiently, “the safest place for the two of you to be is away from here. Think, why don’t you? We are talking about Lord Voldemort, here. Cory wouldn’t want you to be hurt because of some misguided attempt at bravery!”
But all that Leah could think about was that Cory was their friend and he was in trouble ... if he was still – No. She couldn’t think like that, either. She wouldn’t. She needed to find a way to help so that the worst wouldn’t happen. They were almost to the Great Hall now; she could see the double doors swung open wide, everybody crowded inside. And then a thought came to her – a crazy thought, but if this wasn’t the time for crazy thoughts than she couldn’t imagine what was – and she jerked the three of them to an immediate stop and screamed: “We need to see McGonagall!”
“We do?” asked Gwen incredulously.
“Yes,” she said, “because I just remembered something.”
“What if I know a way that we can save Harry Potter?” Leah proclaimed as soon as everyone had taken their places around the Headmistress’ office.
McGonagall took in a deep sigh as if to rein back her frustration. “Excuse me?”
“To save Harry Potter,” she repeated breathlessly. “Because if we can save him, then we can save Cory, too.”
A deadly silence fell upon her audience. Leaning against the far wall beside one of the many bookcases, Professor Thomas crossed his arms against his chest. In one of the hard-backed wooden chairs that McGonagall had conjured upon their arrival to her office, Charlie Weasley ran a rough and calloused hand through his greying red hair.
Minerva McGonagall just sat up straighter behind her desk and Leah took that as an invitation for her to continue.
She wrung her hands nervously as she paced back and forth in the center of the room. Sucking in a deep breath, she held it for a long moment before she exhaled. And then she spoke, the words sputtering off of her tongue, and Leah couldn’t tell how much sense any – let alone all of them – made at all.
“What if it’s like the on-off switch on an electrical appliance?” she said, ignoring their perplexed stares.
Thomas looked ready to interrupt but McGonagall silenced him with a single, stern shake of her head. “Go on,” she said.
“If You-Know-Who had taken over Harry’s soul completely,” Leah continued, “then I don’t think that he would be able to be him for any amount of time. I think that then Harry and You-Know-Who would be one, would be the same person. Does that make sense?”
“But you don’t think that he has,” interjected McGonagall curiously.
“No,” Leah said. “Because we know that sometimes, Harry can be in control too, right?”
“But what does this have to do with Muggle electricity?”
“Because something has to be there to flip the switch,” she explained, her voice rising in her excitement. “Sometimes it’s You-Know-Who that’s turned on, and sometimes it’s Harry. But if Harry is able to be in control sometimes, then they are obviously not one. Inside that body, there have to be two souls fighting each other: both of theirs at the same time. Only ... I think ... Harry being the one in control is a bit rare, because something has to allow the change, like a switch, so for the most part it’s stuck to You-Know-Who. So, if this is true, than couldn’t we permanently switch You-Know-Who off and Harry Potter on, and save Cory at the same time?”
“I see where you’re coming from, Miss Andrews, but what you’re suggesting is –”
“What? Don’t you want them back – either of them?” she shouted. Hot, angry tears escaped and made a beeline straight down her cheeks. "What if it was possible, if there was even the slightest chance?”
Then Mr Weasley stepped forward, his face struggling to remain blank. “Never think that we don’t want it, girls, because we do. We care about Harry more than you can imagine. But think practically – what if it caused more harm than good and we only made the situation worse for him?”
“Hasn’t he paid long enough?” whispered Gwen. “Isn’t he worth the chance?”
McGonagall, Thomas, and Mr Weasley all shared a calculating look.
“He is,” sighed Professor Thomas finally from his corner. “And these past few months we have examined Dumbledore’s memories thoroughly, searching for what we missed in the past so that we may fix it; and frankly, some of them were ... disturbing, to say the least.”
“After the first battle,” said McGonagall reluctantly, “I was briefly able to re-enter my office and retrieve the pensieve and the memories that Dumbledore had left behind. However, I noticed that sometime between the last time I’d seen it and the end of the fight, somebody had been in to use it. The pensieve was set out on the desk and there were still memories inside of it. I didn’t have much time though, and so I quickly put the memories into an unlabeled vial, took them, and left. I’d never looked at them and had nearly forgotten about them entirely until our last conversation in here.”
“What we are about to tell you is highly classified information,” said Mr Weasley sternly. His blue eyes locked on to theirs. “No one outside this room knows about it, and it should stay that way.”
“These memories belonged to a person called Severus Snape: an Order spy throughout the war and previous Potions Master and headmaster of Hogwarts. We thought he had turned traitor, too – he was the one who murdered Albus Dumbledore,” said Thomas.
“Turns out he’d been on our side all along.” Mr Weasley grimaced, shaking his head.
“It is unclear for whom these memories were intended,” continued McGonagall. “Although we have reasonable proof to believe that they were for Harry to see. They detailed Professor Snape’s childhood and his growing love for Lily Evans, Harry’s mother, and his motives for his actions in the war. There was one particular part ...” She took out the stone pensieve once more and set it on her desk. A silver memory was already inside. With a single tap to it with her wand, it stirred, and two smoky figures emerged, hovering over the top of the basin, in the midst of what appeared to be a heated argument.
"For Nagini?” said the first man. He had shoulder length greasy black hair and a long, hooked nose.
The second man was unmistakably Albus Dumbledore. He appeared exactly like the stone statue that guarded the entrance to the common room, in perfect detail, right down to his snowy white beard and twinkling eyes.
“Precisely,” said the memory-Dumbledore. “If there comes a time when Lord Voldemort stops sending that snake forth to do his bidding, but keeps it safe beside him, under magical protection, then, I think, it will be safe to tell Harry.”
“Tell him what?”
“Tell him that on the night Lord Voldemort tried to kill him, when Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the Killing Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort, and a fragment of Voldemort’s soul was blasted apart from the whole, and latched itself on to the only living soul left in that collapsing building. Part of Voldemort lives inside Harry, and it is that which gives him the power of speech with snakes, and a connection with Lord Voldemort’s mind that he has never understood. And while that fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to, and protected by Harry, Lord Voldemort cannot die.
“So the boy ... the boy must die?”
“And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential.”
The figures shivered and disappeared. McGonagall tapped her wand again, and another fragment of the past rose up above them. “There is also this.”
“Lord Voldemort’s soul, maimed as it is, cannot bear close contact with a soul like Harry’s,” said Dumbledore. “Like a tongue on frozen steel, like flesh in flame.”
McGonagall sat back down. Her gaze remained fixed on her hands. “We believe that Harry watched this and then willingly walked to what he thought would be his ... death.”
“In the forest,” whispered Leah.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But Albus was only theorizing when he thought that that would kill the piece of Voldemort’s soul inside of him. Knowing Harry, he would have gone to the Forbidden Forest to meet Lord Voldemort during the battle, meaning to make it one step easier for somebody else to defeat him later. Neville Longbottom, a friend of Harry’s, said that he saw Harry walking toward the forest just before he disappeared. We talked to Hagrid, and know that he too saw Harry alive, one year after his disappearance. So then if Voldemort attempted to kill Harry in the forest like he was meant to, instead of Harry dying, the curse may have rebounded again like it did nearly seventeen years before, destroying Voldemort’s body and causing what remained of his soul to once more attach itself to Harry’s.”
“The pain must be excruciating,” added Thomas grimly. “There is so much more of Voldemort’s soul in Harry now than before; there must be enough to somehow ... override ... what remains of Harry’s so that instead of remaining mostly dormant, it is almost like he is truly being possessed.”
“What can be done?” murmured Gwen.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “But if there is a way to make this right, than we have to find it. We owe it to him.” He looked around the room as if daring anybody to contradict him.
The headmistress remained silent. Leah, Gwen and the other two adults waited for her acceptance. Her lips visibly thinned and her brow creased; her eyes were both silently worried and determined. “How?” she whispered.
“A dementor,” said Leah.
And now they all turned to face her, and she felt warm blood rush to her cheeks. They were all sharing similar looks of shock and disgust, but she had thought this through over the past weeks, and she wasn't going to back down now. Besides, they didn’t have the luxury of time anymore to second guess.
“We use a dementor,” Leah repeated firmly. “Precisely, You-Know-Who’s dementor. They suck a person’s soul from their body, right? We know that You-Know-Who’s soul is the dominant one, so I think it’s safe to say that it’ll come out first. So we trap them and the dementor together with a strong patronus, and wait until all of You-Know-Who’s soul is safely out, then somebody separates the two souls, or captures the one, or whatever it is you have to do to make sure that only Harry’s soul can return after the dementor is gone.”
Professor Thomas looked thoughtful. “You know, that actually could work. It’d be extremely risky – we don’t exactly know the extent of what we’re dealing with here – but I can’t see any other choice.” He smiled at Leah. “You are a very bright witch, Leah Andrews.”
Leah smiled too, although it was more like a forced grimace than anything else. “I just think that if his place were switched with one of you, he would do everything in his power to change that.”
“Indeed he would,” said McGonagall softly. “Indeed he would.”
“This is all very nice and all,” said Mr Weasley loudly all of a sudden, standing up. He had stayed silent through most of the explanations until now and the burn scars on his face and arms stood out in stark contrast against his tanned skin. “But we’re running out of time.” He gestured at the clock hanging from the wall. It was all ready ten minutes to the hour.
“Try for a bit of patience, Charlie, please,” McGonagall said as she rose to face him. “We cannot just leap into action. We must strategize; formulate a mode of attack that will not end with a body count.”
His eyes flared and his shoulders tensed. “Do not tell me to be patient!” he roared. “That is my son out there, Minerva! My son! And I will not sit back and twiddle my thumbs while he hurts him! I’ll kill him, right now if I have to, before I let that happen.”
He went to draw his wand, probably thinking he’d blast his way out of the office if they made him. But Professor Thomas just placed himself calmly between McGonagall and Mr Weasley, both of his palms facing out and said, “Stop. Stop! Nobody is suggesting you do anything of the sort, Charlie, but if you go out there unprepared you could get both you and Cory killed, and I know that’s not what you want.”
Mr Weasley glared at his opposition for a few more minutes and then backed away silently. Thomas nodded his approval. And McGonagall rolled her eyes, pursed her lips, and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “rash Weasleys, the lot of them,” before she turned back to Leah and Gwen who stood leaning against one wall, watching anxiously, forgotten for the moment in all of the confusion.
“Right.” She clapped her hands once and approached them. “Miss Andrews and Miss Seward, to the Great Hall as fast as you can, you should have left long ago. The three of us will come up with ... something and then make our way to the Defence classroom, together. Charlie, you will not have to go there alone. Come on.” She pushed Leah and Gwen out the door. Her voice shook ever so slightly. “Hurry! It’ll be no good for the two of you to be any more involved in this than you all ready are.”
Leah and Gwen raced down the stairs that lead to McGonagall’s office, through the secret entrance in the brick wall, and emerged out into the deserted second floor corridor at a dead run.
“We’re not seriously going to leave, are we?” huffed Gwen on Leah’s right. Her breaths were coming in short gasps and she clutched at her ribs below her breast where an ache had begun to form.
“What else we can do!” shouted Leah in answer. “Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but if you have a better idea than feel free to let me know.”
“How about not abandoning Cory to the evil maniac that has him on a hit list, for one?”
“We’re not abandoning him,” said Leah, pushing her rising doubt back as far as she could make it go. “Just ... leaving him in more experienced hands... I think.”
Gwen resigned herself to a scoff and ran even faster.
They skidded around a corner, almost losing their balance upon the slippery floor. They were only able to remain upright because of the strong arm which caught them as they started to fall.
When they looked up it was not to find Masen’s small black eyes, but Voldemort’s red-tinted ones staring down at them. Not Masen’s pale, bony face, but one with a stronger jaw and hollow cheeks and a pink lightning bolt scar on his forehead. And when they tried to scream, it was not Masen’s skeletal fingers, but rougher, more calloused hands, which clamped themselves tightly over Leah and Gwen’s open mouths.