Chapter 2:
Hermione lay thinking in her bed at St. Mungo’s. Well, that’s all she’d been doing really. Sleeping, eating and thinking, interspersed with occasional tests to make sure the curse wouldn’t make a recurrence while the treatments were trying to drive it from her system.
Hermione had been thinking a lot. There was a war starting, one in which she could be a central figure and not only because of her status as a smart Muggleborn witch, but because she was best friends with Harry Potter. He was the real center of this war even though she didn’t yet fully understand why. She had a pretty good idea it had something to do with the prophecy, the one that caused the situation that landed her in this bed. To be honest, she didn’t really want to be a part of this war. She loved Harry, she really did. But was it enough to sacrifice her happiness and safety? What about her family? If she stood with Harry, they would be dragged into the war and likely be tortured and killed.
She hadn’t told Harry or Ron, but she was looking at Muggle universities and was thinking about doing independent-study for her last year of Hogwarts. She told herself that she hadn’t made up her mind yet, but she already had. She would be there for Harry emotionally as long as she could, but she wouldn’t… she couldn’t… involve herself in this war.
She hated herself for her decision, but she just didn’t have Ron’s emotional attachment to the wizarding world and she didn’t have Harry’s obsessive hatred for everything to do with Voldemort. She didn’t have a stake in this battle. Her world was the Muggle world.
It had been a wonderful experience finding and learning about her magic, but that was all the wizarding world could offer her. It wasn’t something she would give her life for. It was a bigoted community. Even if she was one hundred-percent committed to it, she would probably never be as successful as she wanted to be simply because of her status as a Muggleborn. She would be constantly fighting against the stereotypes. Of course, this was all dependent on the idea that Voldemort wouldn’t win.
Yes, this was the right decision. She just hoped it wouldn’t hurt Harry too much.
* * *
At the same time, Ron was also thinking. It wasn’t something he was really used to. He generally followed Harry and Hermione and just took cues from them, but he had changed more than anyone would realize for some time to come. Two Unspeakable agents from the Department of Mysteries had come to him several nights earlier. They had asked him swear an oath of secrecy about their visit and what they were about to tell him, that the Brain had caused an odd side effect that was just starting to show.
The previous owner of the Brain had been a Muggle man who lived in 16th century France during the Wars of Religion. He didn’t fight in the conflict, but he witnessed its effect on his country. He was not in the upper class, but was just influential enough to avoid being forced into anything he didn’t want to be a part of. His name was Jean-Paul Malfois.
All they told him about the man was his name and Ron laughed when he heard it. Out of all the people the Brain could have belonged to, it would be one of Malfoy’s ancestors. The other information Ron had already figured out from searching his new memories, those that the Brain had left with him.
He didn’t have every single memory that Malfois had. As the Unspeakables had explained, when memories get older they have less and less resemblance to the factual and historical events. They squish together into a jumble of feelings and images associated with the person’s life. Ron had feelings from the man’s childhood and he could tell that it wasn’t a pleasant one.
He felt that he finally understood, at least slightly, what Harry had gone through in his life and, all of a sudden, he was able to sympathize with Harry in a way. He hadn’t ever experienced this kind of mental trauma.
Malfois’s memories themselves weren’t too much of a problem. The problem was that the instincts and feelings of a man who lived in the 16th century were fighting with Ron’s own instincts and feelings.
The Unspeakables told him there were two paths he could go down. He could learn Occlumency so he could separate his memories and feelings from those of Jean-Paul Malfois and bury them deep within his subconscious. Or he could integrate them into his own and become a mix of himself and Jean-Paul.
Ron considered the two choices. In the few days he had been aware of these memories, he had come to know Jean-Paul and begun the process of integrating this second personality into his own. He didn’t think he could stand the idea of boxing this new part of him away.
“Well, that settles it then,” he thought.
* * *
When Professor McGonagall arrived at St. Mungos to pick up Hermione and Ron, they had just entered the lobby from their separate wings, each escorted by a nurse. Their greeting shocked Professor McGonagall. She had expected rather raucous hellos when they saw each other, but their reaction was neither excitement nor happiness that they were both safe and together again. For heavens’ sakes, they had fought standing next to each other and nothing creates a stronger bond than facing death together. Sure, they seemed happy that the other wasn’t hurt, but they seemed distant.
“Ronald. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Hermione. I have to take potions everyday for the rest of the summer and I have to continue rubbing a salve into the scars for a little while, but it’s not as bad as it could have been. How about you?”
“I’m alright. I didn’t get hurt nearly as bad as you were. It was only because I was at the Ministry that I got taken to St. Mungo’s. Otherwise, I would have been okay with Mme. Pomphrey.”
And after that they just fell into a polite silence. “They’re so young,” McGonagall thought. “They’re probably still trying to comprehend what they’re getting into. And once they do, they will be even stronger friends than they were before.” It wouldn’t be until the start of the next term that she would realize how wrong she was.
* * *
Many students had a vision of what the Slytherin common room looked like. The Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors in particular expected it to resemble a cold and damp dungeon full of torture devices and books on the darkest magic. This was because the Slytherins had the reputation for being dark Death Eater-wannabes and truth be told many of them were. The kids who thought this forgot the little fact that Dumbledore ran the school.
No, despite popular belief, the Slytherin common room was a perfect image of wealth and luxury. Its high ceilings were supported by dark stone walls hung with rich patterned tapestries that were matched by ornate rugs covering the slate floor. Against the eastern wall was an enormous fireplace of obsidian. When the fire was lit, the light glittered off the intricately carved snakes engraved into the rock. The room was a legacy to the Slytherins from the founder of their house and had been added to and refined by rich Slytherin graduates since then.
Draco sat staring at the coals from a fire that had died hours earlier. The glow from the coals reflected off the obsidian, causing shadows and flashes of light to dance around the room
“Who are you, Potter?” he whispered, his eyes flashing with the light from the coals.
Potter had performed the most stupid amount of complicated magic. “Why bother stealing the girl’s book and expending all that energy to do it when he could’ve just asked her for it,” he thought. “He was the boy-who-lived. Of course, she would let him use it. He obviously didn’t want people to know that he wanted the information in that book. So he took it without anyone knowing or seeing, apart from myself of course. He went about it like a Slytherin would, though in a stupid Gryffindor way. He did it in front of almost the entire staff in a room where it is forbidden to use magic. What could have been so important that made him do that.”
The glow of the coals lit Draco’s tense face. “What to do,” he thought, “what to do?”
* * *
Harry walked out of the Great Hall, his heart pounding in his chest. He tried to look calm and not draw attention to himself, waiting for a teacher to stop and ask what he was doing by stealing the girl’s book. As the door shut behind him, he looked down at what he was carrying. His knuckles were white from gripping the two books pressed against the inside of his forearm. Releasing a breath, he relaxed his grip on the books and forced his heart to calm down as he walked toward a small statue several yards from the doors that had just closed behind him. He made sure nobody was around and then ran his fingers along the edges of the square top of the short marble pillar holding the statue. He squinted at the wall on the left side of the statue and then walked through it, appearing in an unused classroom on the seventh-floor corridor.
Several months earlier, for various reasons, he had stopped using the Room of Requirements for his personal use. The DA knew about the room. And after Marietta Edgecombe told Mme. Umbridge about the DA, not only did Umbridge know about the room, so did the entire Inquisitorial Squad. That didn’t include any of the nonmembers who were told about it by their DA friends.
He had needed to blow off a lot of steam over the last several months and he hadn’t wanted Ron or Hermione knowing about it. He thought maybe he was experiencing some of Voldemort’s emotions. It certainly seemed that he was feeling emotions that were not proportional to the situations that caused them. The frequent bouts of intense happiness and anger that occurred periodically throughout the day had almost driven him insane. So he would sneak away to the classroom using various hidden passages that he had discovered on his own and with the Marauders Map. Ron and Hermione hated when he went anywhere without telling them and the Room of Requirement would be one of the first places they looked.
Harry sat down in the middle of the plain classroom facing the door leading to the hallway. All of the desks were pushed to the back of the room. The morning light shone through the windows despite the fact that the room was actually in the interior of the school.
He placed the books in front of him. “Draw the rune with your wand while focusing on the image of the rune, then push your magic into the rune to power it.”
He opened the small journal to a random page toward the end of the book. The top of the page displayed a rune with a caption underneath that read simply, “To Block”. It was followed by a brief description of how the rune was often used to describe walls and its first documented use. Harry flicked his wrist and his wand shot into his hand. Thinking of his encounter with Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets, he drew the rune. It hung in the air in front of him in what looked like thin ropes of flame.
“It looks exactly like the one in the book, but how am I supposed to push my magic into it?” he thought. Acting from instinct, his eyes shut and he cleared his mind. He tried to feel his magic inside, to find the feeling of power he had experienced when he first picked up his wand in Diagon Alley or when he accidentally apparated onto the roof of his primary school.
There. He let out a breath of amazement. It was like a small warmth inside of him, buried deep within his very being. He tried to bring it closer so he could feel the warmth better but it pulled at him instead. There was a jerk and he felt his mind strain. It was the most bizarre feeling Harry had ever experienced. It was like his mind was being forced to separate from his body. The warmth jerked again, this time with a sharp stab of pain at the center of his brain. He panicked and struggled as it tried to pull his mind from his body and encompass it. It had grown from a simple jerk to a constant pull. He could feel his throat tearing as he screamed. Blood streamed from his nose and he felt sweat dripping from his skin as his muscles seized. The inner battle was beginning to take its toll on his physical body. He couldn’t tell how long it had been since he had first closed his eyes. The pain was worse than that of the Cruciatus curse. That only caused physical pain. He felt this pain in his soul as well as his body. There was a sharp snap and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he passed out.
* * *
Dumbledore sat in his office with his eyes closed. It had been a very long week. He reached into his bright green robes and pulled out a lemon drop out of a pocket that was decorated with Nargles flying along the stitching. His tired blue eyes opened briefly and peered over the half moon spectacles to inspect it. After deciding that it hadn’t picked up any fluff or hair from the inside of his pocket, he blew on it and popped it into his mouth.
Yes, it had been a very long week and not even his lemon drops seemed able to lessen his tension. He paused, considering his position as headmaster and leader of the Order of the Phoenix. He wasn’t impressed with what he had done. He had made many mistakes the past year and now the chickens were coming home to roost. Dumbledore bit down on his candy and started chewing.
“Do you think he can forgive me?” he asked Fawkes, who chirped sadly in response.
The list of mistakes he had made about the boy’s affairs were too long to be forgivable. “I pushed him away thinking that Tom would use him to attack me,” he told Fawkes. “I had him take Occlumency lessons with Severus hoping they could both work past their issues. But, being a natural Occlumens, I overlooked the fact that in order for the lessons to work there had to be mutual trust from the start. The lessons failed and it put Harry in an even weaker state of mind. I wasn’t sure yet whether Tom was aware of the nature of his bond with Harry and I didn’t want to alert him by giving Harry more detailed information, so I didn’t. Tom was a step ahead of me the entire time. He already knew of the bond they shared and was experimenting with it even as I decided not to tell Harry about it.” Fawkes trilled gently, trying to comfort his friend.
“Headmaster, look!” whispered Phineas Black’s portrait from behind him.
Dumbledore lifted his head to see what the previous headmaster was looking at, a little silver instrument that was spinning so fast its metal arms were blurred. Dumbledore’s eyes stared uncomprehending as his mind played catch-up. The instrument detected large bursts of magic coming from within the castle walls. He quickly stood up from his chintz armchair, fearing that Voldemort had somehow managed to find his way into the school and was beginning his attack. He glanced at his other instruments. If it was an attack, they would show other evidence proving it, but they continued operating normally. He looked back at the first instrument to find that it was no longer spinning out of control and was running as it normally did. Dumbledore collapsed back into his chair.
“You’re getting slow, Albus,” Phineas said. “You must rest. It has been a long week and your body and magic are exhausted from your duel with the Dark Lord. You cannot continue at this rate. You must pace yourself, or at least entrust some of these devices to others so you do not have so much to keep your eye on.”
“Phineas, I will not place any of these burdens on anyone other than myself.”
“At least give some of them to Alastor. He ”“
“Alastor has enough to deal with already managing the Order’s operations. No, this is something I must do. I cannot trust the safety of our world’s students with anyone but myself.
Phineas made an exasperated noise and walked out of his frame. The other portraits whispered amongst themselves as he left. Dumbledore sighed, turning his attention back to the little device that been whirring around a minute before and wondering what could have caused such a large flux of magic and if it was a danger to the school.
* * *
His eyes slowly opened to see the ceiling above.
“Where am I?” Harry wondered.
He moved his head slightly to the right and the rest of the room went with it several times over. His stomach took a violent turn with the room and he vomited. Wiping his mouth, he carefully moved his head back to its previous position. The room spun the other direction and Harry threw up again. He closed his eyes and fell back into oblivion.
Harry’s first thought as he awoke a few hours later was how disgusting the room smelled. “The last thing I remember is how ” how what?” He sat up and his head throbbed in pain. Looking around the room, his eyes rested on the glowing rune hanging in the air. He pulled back his sleeve to check the time on his watch; it was close to dinnertime. His eyes slid from his watch to his feet. Disgusted, he stepped away from whatever they were standing in and picked his wand up from where it had rolled after he had passed out. He cleaned up the mess with a vanishing spell and then aimed a Scourgify at the floor and his robes.
Finished with damage control, he looked back up at the rune. It was pulsing with energy. Harry started walking around it, but when he was almost parallel with the rune’s edge, ran into a wall. It was completely invisible and extended as far as he could reach. He stepped back staring in awe.
As he stood there, he realized he could feel his whole body humming. The warmth he had been struggling with earlier felt as though it encompassed him. “What is this?” Harry asked himself breathlessly. It was as though his entire body was alive with energy. He put his hand up to touch the rune, but as he did, it fell apart. The thin ropes of magic that once were the rune dispersed into the air around him. He pushed his hand further. The wall that had been there had disappeared as well.
Harry grinned. “I have an advantage now, maybe not against the Voldemort or Bellatrix Lestrange, but certainly against the average Death Eater,” he thought, eyeing his two new books with glee. He reached down to pick them up and headed for dinner. He had spent almost the entire day in the classroom and he didn’t want anyone to worry he was missing. “Though,” he thought, “I don’t know who would notice or care since Ron and Hermione aren’t here.” His mind was going a mile a minute thinking of all the things he had discovered over the past couple days and the impact they would have on his future.
“Something happened today, something that changed me. I feel so much more alive than I did before, like I could do anything.” Harry mulled it over. “Magic tried to pull my mind from me, but I won. So logically, that would mean that I pulled the magic into my mind. But what does ‘pulled the magic into my mind’ mean? It’s not like magic works in a logical way, most of the time anyway…” His mind continued to think about the possible ramifications of what had happened as he walked into the Great Hall.
“Harry!”
He heard it faintly behind all of the theories and plots churning around in his mind.
“Harry!!”
Startled out of his thoughts, Harry turned to the source of the voice shouting his name.
“Hello Hermione,” he said smiling, quickening his pace as he approached her and Ron.
“Ron,” he said as he nodded to him. “How are you? How are your, umm…well, your injuries? I’m so sorry. I almost did to you what I did to Siri “”
Hermione interrupted him. “Harry, we don’t blame you for any of it. We went with you of our own free will. You didn’t force us. Our injuries were caused by Death Eaters who were twice, almost three times, our age and experience, not by you.”
“Yeah, mate,” added Ron, “It’s not your fault and neither was Sirius. It was Vol- Voldemort that caused it and Bellatrix who did it. Don’t worry we’ll get that bi““
“Ouch! What was that for, Hermione?” He looked at Hermione who had just kicked him under the table.
Hermione glared back at him. “Anyway, Harry, you mustn’t blame yourself. We don’t. We never will.”
Harry nodded. If they weren’t going to blame him for their injuries, then he wasn’t either. He couldn’t help but feel something was different about his two friends. The both seemed tense and nervous and wouldn’t make eye contact with him or each other.
It didn’t matter. He had other things to think about, like Sirius. He wasn’t injured; he was dead. Nothing could bring him back. Harry thought, “I will avenge your death, Sirius. I’ve lost a lot of people and indirectly caused many of their deaths. But, I will not sit by and feel sorry for myself this time. I will find you, Lestrange, and this time it won’t be a failed Cruciatus curse that I hit you with.”
“Harry?” Hermione said a little nervously. “Are you alright?”
“Sorry, I was distracted. What were you saying?”
Hermione hesitated a little. “I asked how you had been the last couple days?”
Harry debated taking the two of them away to tell them about the book he had taken… well… stolen from the Library, and about his fight with his magic or about the prophecy.
He smiled. “I didn’t really do anything. I just kind of sat around, slept a little. I was worried about both of you. I’m just glad you two are alright.”
Dumbledore sat at the Staff table watching Harry with curiosity. Harry’s aura had changed in the past day. Snape leaned in to speak to Dumbledore.
“He’s found his core, Headmaster. You see it in his aura too, don’t you? Don’t ask me how the boy worked up the mental ability to do that when he could never clear his mind during the entire time he worked with me. He is as arrogant and as stupid as his““
“Yes, I noticed. Though I hadn’t yet come to that conclusion,” Dumbledore said. Could that have been the cause of the power surge that occurred this morning? It was possible, but that would mean that Harry possessed a large amount of magic. Though the boy is an amazing person, he had always displayed mediocre magical ability both in his classes and the tests we’ve performed. But, maybe we missed something. Albus’s eyes began twinkling like crazy.
Severus pulled away in disgust. “What are you so excited about? You can’t possibly be thinking that your golden boy is somehow surpassing “ ah…” Snape stopped mid-sentence and sneered as he turned back to his meal.
Beginning Again by Epicurous
Chapter Notes: Disclaimer: I do not and am not trying to own any of the works or ideas of J.K. Rowling. She is the sole owner of that material.
Chapter Endnotes: Thanks for reading everyone :) please review.