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Harry Potter and the Unexpected Visitor | ||||||
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Category: Post-OotP Characters:All Genres: Action/Adventure, Comedy, Fluff Warnings: Disturbing Imagery Story is Complete Rating: R Reviews: 223 Summary: Harry James Potter has come back to Privet Drive after his abysmal fifth year at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, as Albus Dumbledore asked him to do. There, he mourns around everything that happened the last months, especially his Godfather's death, but all will change when someone he did not expect comes... The author has stated this story will not be continued. SIYE Hitcount: Story Total: 176755; Chapter Total: 6763 Author's Notes: Summary: Harry battles Voldemort in the latter's mind, and an interesting view is the one there after thirty minutes of mental fight. Thanks to this, nothing happens on Halloween |
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Trick or Treat: A Nice Way To Pass Halloween Harry turned around, and was surprised to see that, instead of the putrid snake-look-a-like, he was looking at the handsome face of Tom Riddle, the young man that had, fifty years ago, turned into a path that would make him the ugly old man that he normally was. Harry was still incensed at Voldemort’s plan for his Ginny, so when he saw him he wasn’t able to resist the possibility of cracking a good joke over the change of appearance of Tom. “Oh my God, it’s Tom Riddle,” he shrieked. “You really have changed since the last time I saw you, when you were hardly a little walking corpse! Please, do tell me which doctor you went to, I know a few people who would kill for the same treatment you got!” Riddle’s eyes flashed red. “Do not call me by that foul name! I am…” “I see your lips moving, but I only hear Blah, blah, blah,” Harry mocked him. “Frankly, your made-up-name is really bad. There are people in the Muggle world that have more imagination than you. I remember this singer with a symbol…” “I don’t care about Muggles, Potter!” “It doesn’t surprise me, although I suppose that having a Muggle daddy would have made you think a bit before starting to kill them. Did you tell your girlfriend Bella that you are a half-blood, Tommy-boy?” Harry taunted him. Recklessness and Problems were — as well as James — Harry’s middle name, after all, and pissing off his archenemy was very funny, especially when he had been both infuriated and out-witted by a sixteen-year-old boy he had tried to kill five times and had failed every time. “I’ll kill you, Potter!” Riddle screamed. OK, that’s my cue to leave, Harry thought. The first thing he had to do was to search the way out of Voldemort’s mind by means of following the rope that tied him to Fabian. However, Riddle had other ideas in mind, and wasn’t exactly about going to let Harry get out so easily, so he tried to close the doors that led to the ‘grounds’, but Harry was fortunately able to jump out, because if the doors had closed in front of him, he wouldn’t have been able to go back to his own mind. When he was in the middle of the grounds, Tom appeared in front of Harry, and all hell broke loose with the fight that started between the two wizards. Tom had obviously the advantage of his experience, having used the mind magic for much more time than Harry, and the fact that the fight was being done in his mind which he could control, but Harry had a few more advantages than Tom: he was able to do more unorthodox and unexpected things, did not underestimate his enemy, and did not have to be careful with what he used to fend his enemy off. That was why, after what seemed to be half an hour, the outer wall of the castle had been half destroyed with all the pot-shots Harry was throwing to destabilize Voldemort’s mind. The latter was doing his best to mend all the damage, but Harry’s ability to concentrate on two different things at the same time, the trick he had first used last summer against Fabian and Dumbledore in their joint attack, wreaked havoc there, attacking Tom so that he had to defend his representation within his mind and breaking as most as he could. He knew that, if he somehow managed to destroy the main protections of someone else’s mind, then he could provoke all kind of uncomfortable (for the mind’s host) effects: disorientation, fatigue, constant headaches, migraines, partial loss of magic, temporal amnesia, temporal anterograde amnesia (that is, the inability of remembering things that have just happened), magical coma and, in very extreme cases, death. Harry didn’t know if he would be able to kill Voldemort that way, but he was going to do his best to cause the maximal inconvenience for Voldemort. “Just surrender, Potter!” Tom shouted. “You’ll never be able to reach my level of magical power!” “Riiight,” Harry said, derisively, while launching bolts that utterly destroyed the wall that separated the Great Hall from the grounds. “That’s why I’m winning here, because you have more magical power, no?” Harry’s smirk infuriated Tom even more, so he just decided to forego the rebuilding of his mind and just went all forward to attack Harry, but he again underestimated the young man, because he managed to protect himself with a mind shield that reflected all the attacks towards the castle, causing even more destruction to the castle. Five minutes into the attack, Harry was sweating profusely, but so was Tom, who had been behaving erratically for the last three minutes, proving that the attack was taking a high toll to his mind. This is enough, Harry told himself. I should be coming back to my body. “Well, Tommy-boy, it’s not that I don’t enjoy your company… who cares, I really hate you, but I just need to go home. Bye!” And, with a few more bolts, which pushed Tom out of the way, Harry was able to cross the scar that signalled the bridge between his mind and Voldemort’s. hpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrw hghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrw hghpgw “Welcome back, Harry,” Fabian said when Harry woke up from the trance in which he had entered before the attack on Voldemort’s mind. Fabian had left Harry’s mind as soon as they had perfectly warded the surroundings of Harry’s inner scar, and then Harry had made sure nothing inside was out of order before waking up. “How did it go there, Harry?” “It wasn’t very bad. I just managed to learn everything Hogwarts teaches, more kinds of potions than you could imagine, and all his short and long term plans.” Then, he grinned. “Plus, I managed to piss him off royally, and I sort of destroyed his defences.” “WHAT!” Fabian shouted. “Apparently, I was right. His mind defences were really bad, I managed to get inside without a problem, Voldemort didn’t detect I was inside until I had seen all his plans and he didn’t see me until the moment I was getting out.” “Give me a second, Harry. Albus should know about this.” Fabian took a pinch of Floo Powder, which he threw into the fireplace and shouted, “Albus! Come here, please, we have some news to tell you!” Soon, Professor Dumbledore had come through the fireplace, brushing the soot away from his robe. “What is it, Fabian? I was a bit busy with the budget report for the next term, but if it is such important news, then I think it can wait.” “Harry, tell us what you did during your ‘walk’, please,” Fabian asked, Conjuring three chairs and a table while Dumbledore asked the elves for some tea and biscuits. Harry sat down and told Albus of everything he had encountered within Voldemort’s mind. Dumbledore seemed sad at hearing what Voldemort had planned to do with Hogwarts, and Fabian had been impressed at seeing both the caution with which Harry had infiltrated the Dark Lord’s mind and the arrogance the latter had shown by his inability to better organise his memories within his own mind. When Harry arrived to the part where he remembered the plans Voldemort had made, Dumbledore Summoned a parchment and wrote down everything Harry remembered. Harry said a few words about the plan Voldemort had for Ginny — which both scared and angered him — and after a fast summary of the mind fight, he ran away, with the intention of making sure Ginny was alright, in spite of the fact that he had seen her a few hours ago. “What do you think, Albus?” Fabian said, once Harry had gone out of the office. “The plan Voldemort had for Miss Weasley must have really disturbed him. The idea of him having an heir seems strange to me, but it may be that he intends to possess the body of whomever he deems his heir. When I saw his body last June, the one he created at that ritual the night of the Third Task, it was in decay, and he may wish to have a younger body on which he will be able to perform a series of charms that would conserve the body. Anyway, I expect Harry manages to recover from that mind attack.” “The thing that really surprised me was the fact that Harry was able to get into Voldemort’s mind without him finding out, as well as the ability Harry demonstrated when searching the correct memories. And nearly destroying all his mental defences before coming back!” “You have been a very good professor for Harry, Fabian,” Dumbledore said, smiling. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Harry was able to enter both of our minds and defeat us without exhausting himself, and by the rhythm he is picking up things, he will be able to use Mindspeech before Christmas starts. And, talking about Harry’s finding of the memories in such a short time, I have to say that he is one of the very few people who truly understand Voldemort, what things drive him and what things he hates. Probably that’s why he managed to mock him with such effectiveness,” Dumbledore said, chuckling. When Harry had arrived at ‘I see your lips moving, but I only hear Blah, blah, blah,’ he had outright laughed, knowing Voldemort really hated when people didn’t pay attention at him or mocked his penchant of theatrics whenever he faced someone he wanted to kill. “Yes, he has a good sense of humour. And who else would be that understands Voldemort so well, Albus?” “One of them is me, since I taught him when he came to Hogwarts. I was the one who delivered his Hogwarts letter fifty-eight years ago, and I watched him closely during the seven years he was at Hogwarts. The thing that really pains me was that I wasn’t able to stop Hagrid from being expelled after the incident with the Chamber of Secrets. I knew that Tom had to do more with the Chamber’s opening than everybody thought, and that it was rather fishy that he supposedly found out about Hagrid and his Acromantula pet just right after he was told by the then Headmaster Dippet that he wouldn’t be able to stay at the castle during the holidays, but nobody else believed my suspicions, and I didn’t know the whole truth about that fact until recently.” “And the other?” Fabian asked. “That would be Miss Weasley. Maybe you remember that three years ago I was fired because I wasn’t able to stop the petrifications. After he opened the Chamber of Secrets, Tom created some kind of diary that he charmed so that he could possess an eventual future owner of the diary and keep killing Muggle-borns. Voldemort gave the diary to Lucius Malfoy to keep it safe, but after so much time without a Voldemort sighting, Lucius decided to use it for his own personal gain. That’s why he gave it to Ginevra Weasley, to disgrace the name of the Weasleys and to sink Arthur Weasley’s career. Miss Weasley was possessed by Tom Riddle and used to open the Chamber again. Fortunately, Harry was able to save her when she was taken in an effort from Tom to resurrect himself. From that connection, Miss Weasley learned a lot about Tom Riddle, but I wouldn’t suggest asking her that.” “I won’t do it, Albus. Onto something more important: what do you fathom of the destruction of Voldemort’s magical defences?” “That will have to wait until Severus comes back from his next meeting. Until then, there will be nothing we can do but hope.” hpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgw rwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgw Harry ran upstairs towards Gryffindor’s common room, where he knew his friends and his girlfriend were studying. That afternoon they had the Animagus classes with Professor McGonagall, that was why they were doing their homework at that moment. Harry had managed to do all the homework thanks to his elementals (who were able to write the essays in his handwriting and with his knowledge), so that was why he had gone to Fabian that morning to make the attempt to attack Voldemort’s mind. “Victory,” Harry told the Fat Lady, who opened the entrance to the common room. Harry saw his girlfriend sitting down on a sofa, and went straight to her, enveloping her in a bear-hug worthy of Mrs. Weasley and kissing her in ten places on her face and then hard on her lips, desperate for the taste and feeling of her. “Wow, Harry,” Ginny said when her boyfriend freed her. “It’s not that I complain about this, but why are you doing this?” Then she noticed the sombre face he had. “I’ve visited Voldemort’s mind,” he replied in a whisper, “and I saw many things that were not pretty at all.” “Will you tell me, please?” Ginny asked in a low voice. I’d rather not, Ginny, Harry thought. It was truly awful. Harry? Ginny thought, also. hpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwr whghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgw “I still think there is something we did not tell them,” Godric said, in an increasingly impatient tone. “Oh, Godric, why are you so sure?” Salazar said. “I’m sure we told those eight miscreants everything that we had to tell them for their work.” “Don’t mind what you believe, Salazar. I’m sure there was something important that we never got to tell them about.” 7 Rick, honey, could you come to our room? I have a problem, Gabrielle told her husband by means of their telepathic connection. I’ll be there soon, Godric sent back. He stood up when he suddenly remembered — or was reminded — of the exact thing they had forgotten to tell Harry and his friends. “Crap!” Godric shouted, and then he made a mental connection with all his friends. We have a problem. We did forget to tell Harry something, he sent. Oh, Godric! Rowena said with a mental ‘eye rolling’. You have been saying that for more than a month since the kids left! Are you still obsessed over that? Hale said. I’m NOT obsessed, thank you very much! Godric said with a clear tone of impatience. We didn’t tell them about the Mind Hub! If a pin had been dropped in the whole Founders’ Lair, the eight of them would have been perfectly able to hear it. Crap! Seven minds said at once. My thoughts, exactly, Godric said. Meeting in the Octagonal Room NOW! Helga said with urgency. The eight friends sat down in their respective seats, prepared to deal with the problem that their oblivion of the ability Harry, Ron, Neville, Draco, Ginny, Hermione, Luna and Susan were going to share was going to cause a few problems when any of the teenagers suddenly activated it. “I think that it is a bit late,” Helga said first. “In order to work again, the special charm we put on the weapons would have to recharge the equivalent to ten years, unless Harry and the others manage to find how to recharge them on their own.” “Rowena, what do you think that will happen when they stumble over the Mind Hub that will be kept between them?” Selena said. The witch that gave name to the Hogwarts House of the more intelligent people reflected about it. “It will be a very strange feeling for them,” Rowena replied. “If you remember, when we formed our own Mind Hub, we were prepared for all the things that would happen to us, because we had studied everything related to the Hub, but since they didn’t know about it, they are very likely to find it one by one, and every time that happens, the person who finds the Hub will be able to talk with others and to reach his memories, but they won’t be able to do the same until they reach the Hub.” “Godric,” Gabrielle said, “I hope that you put the book about the Mind Hub in the library before you died. It’ll be the only way those boys will be able to understand what is happening to them.” “Yes, dear. It’s in the shelf between Ravenclaw’s Corridor and Slytherin’s Room,” Godric said. “I just hope that they find it soon, or it will be a mess.” hpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgw rwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgw “Harry, why did you say it was awful?” Ginny asked. The black-haired boy raised his eyes and looked at hers. “I didn’t say anything, Ginny. I just thought it,” he replied. “It’s true, he didn’t say anything,” Hermione said. “Well, somehow I managed to hear what you were thinking, then,” Ginny insisted. “Maybe he used that Mindspeech thing he is learning with Fabian,” Ron suggested. Harry shook his head. “Mindspeech can only be used if you wish to use it, and you also have to concentrate on the person you want to talk with. I may be able to do magic without a wand, but I’m sure that this was nothing like Mindspeech.” Hermione was thoughtful. “It’s been a month since we met them. Maybe there was something they forgot to tell us.” “It could be. Do you know where Neville is?” Harry asked. “He is at the grounds, I think,” Ginny said with a giggle. “Luna told me that she wanted to have some good time with him, well far away from the Amperdings that live at that closet in the fourth floor, which she added she had a very good time with the prank my brothers pulled on you,” she grinned wickedly. “Poor Neville,” Ron said. “What do you mean by that, Ron?” Hermione said, the tone clearly showing that Ron’s health would be compromised if he said something out of line. “Well, if Luna was as passionate on Neville as you were on me, it would have been something near a miracle that he was able to survive the lack of air,” he replied, winking at his girlfriend. Hermione blushed when remembering the events of that day, but at least it had not gone further than some kisses and… touching… over the clothes. “Thank you very much, Ronald,” Ginny said, groaning. “I would have lived happier if you hadn’t reminded me of THAT!” “Changing matters,” Harry said, before any of the siblings told the other something that would result into an all-out sibling-brawl, “I think we should try to do some investigation in the Lair. Maybe they left something there that could answer our questions.” “Not now! We have to finish the essays!” Hermione said. “We can do it this afternoon, after dinner,” Ron proposed. “If we tell the others, we may be able to find whatever we are looking for faster.” “Sure!” Hermione replied. hpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghp gwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghp gw That night, after everybody had dinner, the eight teenagers joined each other at the Founders’ Lair through the different passages that connected the Common Rooms to the Octagonal Room, the room where the group had met the Founders. “OK, this is the problem,” Harry addressed the others when they sat down. “This morning, I took a special walk into Tommy’s mind thanks to the connection we share.” Everybody else — save Ginny, who had a slight idea of what had happened after the comment Harry had made — gasped at the shock it had been. “The main goal of the ‘walk’ was to see all the plans he has made for any attack he has decided to do. I’ll show you what happened with my Pensieve.” Harry had put his Pensieve over the table and added the memory of Harry’s attack to Voldemort’s mind. Then the eight teenagers touched the silvery substance with a finger and entered the world of Harry’s memories. Harry knew, from earlier experiences, that a memory about the use of Legillimency would show all the memories that the Legilimens managed to watch during his or her attack, so his friends would be able to see everything Harry had seen. He really dreaded the fact that they — Ginny especially — would see the plan Voldemort had for her, but he hoped that, if she broke down — which he doubted, because she was really strong — he would be able to comfort her before things went out of control. The eight boys and girls saw — or remembered, in Harry’s case — how Harry’s representation entered the decayed and destroyed Hogwarts that represented Voldemort’s mind. They followed him to the Great Hall, the dungeons, the library and then the Chamber of Secrets. They saw as Harry copied the memories of the spells and the potions, and they saw him watching all the plans with care. The problem was when the Harry in the memory saw Voldemort’s most hateful plan. The girls gasped, the boys were both paled and angered, and Ginny’s face was one of pure hate towards the one that was daring to think of her as a breeder for him, although Harry could see the shock in her eyes. “At least the next part is better,” Harry told them while he hugged Ginny carefully. “I really managed to piss him off a lot.” The eight teenagers had some fun watching as memory-Harry beat the crap out of memory-Tom, really pissing him off and destroying all his mental defences, but Harry still could see that Voldemort’s plan for Ginny had shaken them a lot, and when they went out of the Pensieve, they went towards her to try and comfort her, efforts that ended in a group hug centred around the red-haired girl. “I swear that Tom will not touch a hair of yours,” Harry promised to Ginny when the group hug ended. “In fact, I promise to serve him on a silver platter so that you can kick him where it hurts the most in vengeance of that.” “If he is not human, I doubt that the place where it would hurt him the worst is the same as anybody else,” Luna said with a smile. All the boys trembled at what Luna was suggesting. “Damn, that’s spooky,” Ron said. “OK, now that’s out in the air, what happened that warranted such an important meeting?” Draco asked. “Well, after I came ‘back’ from Tom’s mind, I went straight to Gryffindor’s tower, because I needed to hug Ginny. When she asked what had happened, I only thought of something about it, but Ginny was able to hear it anyway. We think it’s something that has to do with all this,” Harry said, twisting his hand to point at everything in the Founders’ Lair. “Do you think that the answer may be in this room? There are a lot of books here, and all of them are written either in Latin or in Old English, both of which are really hard to understand,” Draco said. “My aunt made me study Anglo-Saxon when I was younger,” Susan claimed. “We had a lot of old documents and manuscripts in our house, and, since I’m the heir and future Head of the House of Bones, she made me study everything about the language, either written or spoken.” “And I think that the rest of us have a bit of understanding in Latin. Nearly all the charms and spells we use have a Latin root, so we could just extrapolate from…” Hermione said. “Extra-what?” Ron asked. Hermione looked at her boyfriend. “Let’s put it this way. Do you remember Legilimens, the charm you can use to read someone’s mind?” “Yes.” “That charm is in Latin, and it’s divided in two parts: Legili, which comes from Legere, read; and Mens, mind.” “Ahh,” Ron said, understanding. “So we should find a book that says something about Mens, since Harry used his mind to ‘talk’ with Ginny. Correct?” “Correct,” she replied. “Let’s start to work, there are a lot of books in here and it’s going to take us a lot of time.” Hermione was right: few books of the lot had any title on the spine or the cover, so each of them had to be opened carefully and read before being put back on its place in the shelf. Each of the teenagers was tackling each of the shelves in the room, always hoping that the next book would have the answer to the problem that Harry had encountered. When Harry’s watch announced it was half past ten in the evening, Susan said: “I think I have found it!” Everybody rushed to the table, where Susan had put a small red leather-bound book, with golden and silver linings on the spine and three bronze words in Latin: Inter Mentis Communicatio. “It has a Latin title, but the inside is in Anglo-Saxon,” Susan explained. “It’s really hard to understand, but from the first few things I read on this, it says that the eight Founders somehow managed to make a special kind of communication that only worked between them, but also allowed them to talk to each other instantly, independently of the place in which they were or if there were any wards between them. I can’t understand the mechanics of it, though; it’s written in mostly some jargon.” “Isn’t there some translating charm in a book, Hermione?” Harry asked. “And a copying charm?” “Yes,” Hermione said. “But I would need you to conjure eight books like this one. I need one of them to pass the translation and other one to copy the writing.” “OK,” Harry said. Within seconds, and a wave of his wand, eight leather books stood around the first. Each of them had the same title as the original one, but the back cover had been given an engraving that stood for their respective Animagus forms. “Oh, thanks. Give me a few minutes and I’ll pull it off,” Hermione said with a smile. She brandished her wand and made a complex wand movement and ended pointing it at the old book while whispering something Harry wasn’t able to catch. Something like smoke that kept changing between red and blue colours went out of the book, going into the book in front of her. With other movement and words, the smoke went to the other books, one by one, this time in solid blue colour. “That’s it,” Hermione said when the smoke disappeared. “Now, all of us have a copy in English of the book. It may be difficult to do all this, but I suppose we could manage to make some of this between us.” “Why don’t we meet here every Saturday?” Harry proposed. “That way, we can watch our progress with this.” The suggestion was fast accepted by everyone. hpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhgh pgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhgh pgw “Headmaster, there is something of the utmost importance that I have to tell you,” Snape said through the internal Floo that connected the main rooms at Hogwarts and all the professors’ offices. “I suppose this has something to do with Voldemort, no?” Dumbledore asked rhetorically. “Yes. I’ll come through the Floo in a few moments.” “Take your time, Severus. You must be tired.” Indeed, he was. The Dark Lord had called all the free Inner Circle Death Eaters to a meeting in which they were to discuss the plans for Halloween. He had devised five different attacks to mark the fifteenth anniversary of his first — and, hopefully (for him, that is), his last — death: one that would attack the Ministry, another one to Diagon Alley, the third would strike the magical town of Hogsmeade, a fourth that would travel to Azkaban in order to free the rest of the Inner Circle and the last would go to a randomly chosen city to do some Muggle-hunting. When he was in the process of assigning the leadership of the attacks, he had shut up and muttered something about ‘the Potter brat’. After half an hour, he had started to pant and sweat profusely, and a few minutes later, he had screamed bloody murder, fainted, and a magical backlash had soared through all the Dark Marks, making them bleed profusely and rendering all the bearers (including Snape) unconscious. Snape had been the first to wake up, possibly thanks to his custom of waking up sooner than normal and the fact that, somehow, the backlash had been slightly less hard on him than on the others (he didn’t know that it was a side effect of the many anti-Cruciatus potions he had drunk in the last year) and saw that everybody else was still knocked out. The first thing he tried to do was to wake up his Lord, but not even his most powerful Ennervate would work on him. He decided to turn to the others, so that they could help him determine what the hell had happened to them. While he used the Waking Charm on Rabastan Lestrange, he pondered about what the Dark Lord had been talking about when he mentioned Harry Potter. He supposed that Potter had gotten himself into other vision, but Dumbledore had told him that Voldemort had never realised when Harry was able to see either him or through his eyes. The dark wizard had managed to turn that ability into his benefit, showing Potter the ‘capture’ of Sirius Black so that he picked up the prophecy, but the plan had gone awry when Potter’s friends had gone with him and they were able to defend themselves from the Death Eaters, and their only victory (Sirius Black’s death) had been short-lived when Black had been returned from the Other Side, as he had explained him in a private meeting in which he had apologized for how bad the Marauders had treated him when they were students. This time was more like as if Harry had voluntarily gone into the Dark Lord’s mind, something so… recklessly Gryffindor to do! However, the fact that Potter was able to last so much into the Dark Lord’s mind spoke highly of him, he reflected, and managing to knock him out… Before leaving the Dark Lord to the other Death Eaters’ ministrations, he risked himself and casted subtle Legilimency on the Dark Lord. The Potions Master was astonished at the complete destruction that had come upon the mind. He even managed to find Lord Voldemort’s representation within his mind, completely incoherent and jabbering. He had quickly left after that and had Apparated to the town of Hogsmeade, from where he run to the castle’s dungeons where his living quarters and office were. Once he had changed robes and had drunk a pain-relieving potion to reduce the effects of the magical backlash on him, he went through the internal Floo network and landed in the Headmaster’s office. “It’s been long since you left this morning, child,” Dumbledore told the younger wizard. “How many times do I have told you that you are not to call me ‘child’?” Severus asked angrily. “Higher than I can count, I suppose,” the older wizard said, his eyes twinkling. “Lemon drop?” Severus didn’t accept the sweet. “Pity,” he replied, popping one in his mouth. “Would you mind to tell me what happened that retained you with the Death Eaters?” “The Dark Lord was discussing with us the plans he had for Halloween’s day, since it is fifteen years after he was first vanquished. In one moment, he said something about Potter and after some time he, as well as all in the room including myself, fell unconscious to the floor. I woke up first and, after waking up the others, I risked some Legilimency on the Dark Lord.” “How did it look, Severus?” “Astounding! Potter really did a good work with his abilities. I think twenty points for Gryffindor are in order. And don’t you dare to tell anyone about this, Albus!” Severus growled at the old wizard. “My lips are sealed, Severus,” he replied, wishing that he could tell someone that he had witnessed a miracle: Severus Snape, Head of the House of Slytherin, willingly giving points to Gryffindor, and not only that, but he gave them to the son of his biggest school enemy! Probably nobody would believe him, but he would treasure the memory until his dying day. “How much time do you think Voldemort will be out of commission? I honestly have to say that I have never faced something like this, although I had been told about the effects of something of this caliber, and if I have to trust both you and Harry, the damage was quite severe.” Severus nodded grimly. “Severe is just a mild understatement. Potter was able to completely wreck the whole mental defence system the Dark Lord had put in his mind. A five-year-old boy with a faint grasp in Legilimency would be able to reach nearly all his darkest secrets. I just would like to know how Potter outdid the Dark Lord in something in which he has just a few months experience in Occlumency and Legilimency against more than thirty years in both those and many Dark Arts practices and rituals.” “You must remember that time when Fabian and I showed you what Harry had been able to do to stop both of us at the same time, no?” Dumbledore asked, and Snape nodded. “Apparently, Harry has instinctively developed the ability to concentrate on two things at the same time when using the Mind Arts. While he was telling me what he had been doing, he said that he was able to protect himself from the attacks as well as attacking both Tom — since Voldemort’s mind representation is that of his former body — and the protection he had set around his thoughts, which coincidentally was his own twisted version of Hogwarts. You can now imagine what Harry had to pull to destroy all that, and I feel that I should also tell you that Harry was able to infiltrate Voldemort’s mind, inspect all his memories and found all the plans he had made before being caught, which was caused by one plan Voldemort has made for Miss Weasley.” Severus scowled. “I had heard some rumours about a plan he had for Miss Weasley, too, after Lucius presented the diary to the Dark Lord. I did not report those since I thought it was just some gossip Lucius had fed a few of the lower Death Eaters, but if it is his plan about having an heir…” “It was.” “Then I sincerely hope Potter kills the Dark Lord. Miss Weasley has way too much potential just to be wasted in that way.” “Indeed. So, how much time do you think will pass until Voldemort completely recovers from that ordeal?” “With that level of destruction, even with the power he has, I wouldn’t give him less than a week before he is able to rebuild enough to wake up from his coma. From there, it would be a matter of if he searches for help or if he goes on his own, but before three weeks he would be back.” “Thank Merlin for the small favours in life,” Dumbledore said, smiling. hpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghp gwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghp gw Halloween passed and went without anything of importance happening that day. Dumbledore had told Harry what had happened to Professor Snape, and he relayed it to the others that Voldemort would more than likely be out of business for three weeks, but that it wasn’t an excuse to stop their training, so they kept practising all the magic they could reach. The eight teenagers had started to make contact through their own Mind Hub, which was the name Hermione had found in the book for the mental communication the Founders had passed onto them. They were able to send some thoughts if they concentrated a lot, and a few ideas were exchanged between the group. For some reason, each person had the best communication with their respective couple: Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione, Neville and Luna, and Draco and Susan. The latter two had admitted to their friends that they had been seeing each other since two weeks after the Weasley Family Prank, and they had gone together to Hogsmeade on a date. Harry was glad that Draco had someone important out of Slytherin: he remembered that Parkinson was still behind his heels, and she certainly was in league with Voldemort. If Draco had started to go out with a Slytherin that was against Voldemort (Daphne Greengrass, for example) she would have certainly done “something” that could have been potentially lethal for her. Fortunately, her membership of the DA had helped her with her knowledge of Defence, and she could hold her own very well. The first match of the Quidditch season, Gryffindor versus Slytherin, was to be played the Saturday of the week after Halloween, and it would be a big showdown of Slytherin’s brute force against Gryffindor’s fast playing. Harry had heard that the replacement for Draco was a third year called Malcolm Baddock, whom he remembered to have seen in the Sorting of the Triwizard Tournament year. From what he had been told by Blaise Zabini (who had spied the Slytherin tryouts on his own volition) Braddock had been chosen because he was the only one in the group that could turn the broom on one hand and was small enough to go easily against the wind, but he would have to work hard just to reach Harry's level, who was by far the best Seeker at the school, and probably one of the best in the world, in par with Viktor Krum and Josef Wronski, inventor of the dangerous Wronski Feint. Harry knew that the match would show that Gryffindor’s Quidditch Team was the best team in the whole school, and that Slytherin would rue the day they decided to kick Draco out of the team (well, they had also decided to admit Draco on the team, which hadn’t been a good idea, but it was the principle of the idea). hpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgw rwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgwrwhghpgw There it is! Chapter 19! And I have to tell you that it has been difficult to write everything for this! Obviously, the Muggle Harry mentions as having a symbol as his name is Prince, formerly known as the “Artist Formerly Known As Prince”. The Mind Hub is a concept I invented (I believe: maybe someone used this before). It’s not a physical object, as it may sound, but rather an abstraction of the ability the Founders (and now Harry and the others) have that allow them to communicate mentally with each other. The Founders do not make use of the ability to reach the others’ memories because: a) They already know the important things that happened to each other; and b) They are polite enough so as not to take a peek to search for the most private memories. The title of the book roughly translates as Communication Between Minds. Of course, I’m sure that it’ll be grammatically incorrect, due to the fact that I’ve never studied Latin or any ancient Language (Spanish is my maternal language, I’ve studied English for a lot of time, throw in there some conversational French and a few words in Italian and German, and you know my knowledge of foreign languages). OK, now there is a contest you can join! I need you to send me the titles of songs that you feel fit the four protagonist couples (Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, Neville/Luna and Draco/Susan). The ones I deem the best will be used in the future of this fic! Finally, I want to thank my wonderful beta, Fiery Angel, for her most excellent work when correcting my grammar and vocabulary mistakes. |
| Reviews 223 |
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