Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Unlikely
The Girl Who Stood Vigil
0 reviewsHuffleharry has a conversation with Filius, Ginny, and... something else.
0Unrated
April 16th, 1997
Most of the mourners had left already, but Harry was still standing off to the side of Snape’s brownstone tomb. Filius stood beside her, silent save for a few words that he had spoken half an hour ago.
“We still don’t know what the horcruxes were doing at Diagon?” Harry asked.
The grass was wet beneath her feet.
Filius shook his head. “Only guesses, and it’s possible that we couldn’t understand their motives if we tried. They’ve been among the craftier horcruxes, especially the homunculus with the eye, but the soul-splitting has taken a toll on all of them. Some of them have tried devouring the others in an attempt to repair the damage but that seems to have had other consequences for them. That’s how the original activation was finally destroyed, forcibly split and devoured by a gang of others, including the homunculus that you meant.”
Snape’s tomb. And Dumbledore’s, now that they’d retrieved what was left of his inferius.
“How many are out there?”
Harry still felt bad about that, now that she was able to think about what she had done. Even if she hadn’t really done anything to Dumbledore himself.
“A hundred or more,” Filius answered. “Maybe half that in Britain, and the rest scattered across the world. Those are mostly the older horcruxes, the ones that knew they had little chance of defeating versions of themselves that knew more magic and knew what they would have done in their younger years.”
But thinking about that had led to thinking about other things.
“I had trained for this,” she said. “You know that. I’m going to be a Knight. A Knight of Merlin’s Order. But I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t think about everything that I needed to think about. It wasn’t that I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t smart enough.” She paused. “The Headmaster could have done it with half of what I had.”
“You’re sixteen,” Filius told her.
“That’s old enough to cast a curse. I’d already be a Knight in older times.”
“Be that as it may, these are the times that you’re in.”
Harry didn’t say anything to that.
“You mentioned the hollow house to me recently, do you remember?”
Harry nodded.
“I spoke with Professor Bones— excuse me, Headmistress, Headmistress Bones, and in light of the situation we think that you need to see it.”
“What is it?”
Filius didn’t respond immediately. “It’ll be best if you saw it for yourself.”
Harry didn’t respond, and Filius left a little later, a pat on her shoulder to say goodbye. Ginny came over a few minutes after that. She sat down next to Harry and patted the ground beside her. When that didn’t work, she pulled on one of Harry’s sleeves until Harry finally sat down.
“Even if you’re not… my Harry,” Ginny said after awhile, “you’re still Harry. Somehow. And you told me when you didn’t have to, because you didn’t want to lie to me. That sounds like a friend. You’re a good friend,” she said, leaving no room for protest.
Harry understood, and leaned against her.
“Professor Snape wouldn’t have liked it,” Harry said.
“I still appreciate it.”
“Should I tell his family, you think?” She looked at Ginny. “How would I do that, anyway? Do they live in Surrey in this world? Professor Snape looked upset when I asked about them.”
Ginny looked at her oddly. “They wouldn’t care… They used to hurt Harry. They’d do anything that didn’t leave a mark. It only stopped when Snape found out. He told Dumbledore that either Harry would be staying at Hogwarts or Snape would be staying at the Dursleys, and I guess Dumbledore thought the latter might result in some dead Dursleys. I think there were some protections on the house, but then Snape went and talked to them and then… they were gone? Or they didn’t work anymore or something. Harry only told me a little bit. But Dumbledore gave in after that and never talked about the protections anymore,” Ginny finished.
“Oh…” Harry choked back a sudden sob. She tried to make it sound like a cough, but by the look that Ginny gave her the other girl hadn’t fallen for it. “I was hoping to see them before I left,” she said in a flattened tone.
“Why?”
“I miss them. They died a long time ago. When I was nine.” As if it were happening to someone else, Harry only distantly noticed as her cheeks became wet. “And they weren’t like that at all. They were nice. Dudley was my best friend. And then— and then they died, and there was nobody else left, nobody who was alive. I became a ward of the state.”
“Who did you go to after that?”
Harry didn’t answer.
“Thanks for being friendly, Ginny.”
“No problem.” Ginny paused. “Hey, um… I’m sorry for trying to kiss you that one time, by the way. I hope that wasn’t too awkward. I just thought you were, well, you know, my Harry was being silly.”
Harry shrugged. “There were worse ways to have had my first.”
April 17th, 1997
Oh, Harry was already familiar with the hollow house, as it turned out. Very familiar.
“Riddle Manor,” she said, suddenly out of breath. It was so old looking. So dilapidated.
It was a ruin, she thought.
Filius paused. There was a need to recover from the stress of apparating past the decaying wards here, but more than that… “You know this place?”
Harry nodded as she slowly ascended the steps. “Headmaster Riddle took me here sometimes.” She knocked on the door once, then realized how foolish it was to knock at an empty house and simply went inside. “I went here first when the Dursleys died. The Headmaster had a room set up for me but I wanted to sleep on the couch.” She smiled. “They found a place for me the next day, but the Headmaster had wanted to make sure I was safe in the meantime.”
Filius followed close behind her as she wandered the halls. His eyes seemed to cover every inch of the house, looking everywhere and nowhere all at once, but for Harry every tarnished object was a terrible miracle, a memento of another world or a reminder, by its novelty, of how different the two worlds were. She couldn’t see the forest, but only the trees.
“I’ll bet that I could even find my old bedroom. I stayed here for a month last summer. He was gone for most of the time but…” Her voice was more brittle this time. “The library’s a wreck too, I’ll reckon.”
“It was,” someone said. Not Filius, but someone with like voice of crushed glass and sour wine. “Albus’ cronies restored much of it, however.”
Harry spun around. Between her and Filius stood… nothing. But in the mirror she could see something, a mad hermit’s memory of a man, or a nightmare’s nightmare. Something frailer and meaner and more off-putting than both of them together.
Harry’s hand stopped just short of touching the mirror. “You’re a horcrux. But why did you bind yourself to a mirror?”
The grey-black shape shook its head. “Not the mirror.” The voice was coming from all around her now. “The house.”
“The hollow house.”
“At your service.”
“Why?”
“Why limit myself to six horcruxes? That’s what I asked myself when I was younger. Seven was better than six, wasn’t it? And if it was, then fifty was surely better than even seven. I realized that I wasn’t being cautious enough. If I was going as far as six then that implied that some part of me thought someone could destroy five. I chose prudence over pride that day.”
“And if five, why not fifty-five?”
“Correct.” The shape twisted in a way that Harry supposed might have been a smile. “Professor Flitwick explained to me something of your situation. I’m willing to offer my services in an advisory role, as always.” Perhaps it was just her imagination, but Harry thought she felt a chill or something else run down her just then.
“Why?”
“They’re getting rid of the competition for me. Not that they put any stock in motives even as selfish as that. I know that they don’t trust anything that I say until they’ve verified it three ways over. But there’s something different about you…”
The shape laughed.
“I can feel it. I felt you the moment that you apparated onto the grounds. I think that I could have felt it from even further away. I felt something different many days ago, even. No doubt that’s why these other horcruxes went to Diagon Alley, even if they weren’t sure what was going on.” The shadow paused, as if considering something. “After all, I wasn’t sure until Bones and Flitwick told me, and I had an inkling of your double’s plans. But there’s always a rhyme and reason to our actions. Broken as we are, though, sometimes we just can’t figure it out.”
“Are you talking about the connection to the scar on this body?”
“Yes.”
“Why would any of that change? It’s still the same body and the same scar. Shouldn’t it be the same magic?”
The shape made a motion suggestive of a shrug. “I split my soul. Many times. Like an open wound, it has become especially sensitive.” It turned to Filius. “Do you know?”
“No.”
“Then let me venture that we have learned more than one thing today. Whatever this project was that this world’s Harry was working on, it doesn’t work on the mind. He may have thought it did, but he was wrong. It pulls on the soul, and you can’t just copy a part of a soul. Cut it? Remove it? Yes. With more power perhaps he could have made himself your horcrux, a vessel for a part of your soul, but instead he simply rotated your positions.”
For a moment Harry had a horrible thought about the indestructibility of a horcrux located in another universe entirely. What made it worse was that if she had thought it then surely the horcrux here had as well, or soon would.
Filius looked thoughtful. “If that’s true, then we could run some experiments to find out for sure.”
“I’m always glad to be of service. You know that. You won’t find a way to destroy this house, I’m sure of that. I had all of the time in the world to make the best of my circumstances.”
“Voldemort,” Harry said.
“Yes, girl?”
“Come with me. I’d like to talk with you about something. Filius, can you stay behind for a minute?”
“But—”
“I’ll be careful.” She turned back to the mirror. “If this house is your horcrux then we’re inside your horcrux, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Great.”
ignoring Filius’ protests, Harry walked away. And when she came back there was only one thing that she had to say.
“You know that horcux that’s made out of the cloak? We’re going to beat it.”
Most of the mourners had left already, but Harry was still standing off to the side of Snape’s brownstone tomb. Filius stood beside her, silent save for a few words that he had spoken half an hour ago.
“We still don’t know what the horcruxes were doing at Diagon?” Harry asked.
The grass was wet beneath her feet.
Filius shook his head. “Only guesses, and it’s possible that we couldn’t understand their motives if we tried. They’ve been among the craftier horcruxes, especially the homunculus with the eye, but the soul-splitting has taken a toll on all of them. Some of them have tried devouring the others in an attempt to repair the damage but that seems to have had other consequences for them. That’s how the original activation was finally destroyed, forcibly split and devoured by a gang of others, including the homunculus that you meant.”
Snape’s tomb. And Dumbledore’s, now that they’d retrieved what was left of his inferius.
“How many are out there?”
Harry still felt bad about that, now that she was able to think about what she had done. Even if she hadn’t really done anything to Dumbledore himself.
“A hundred or more,” Filius answered. “Maybe half that in Britain, and the rest scattered across the world. Those are mostly the older horcruxes, the ones that knew they had little chance of defeating versions of themselves that knew more magic and knew what they would have done in their younger years.”
But thinking about that had led to thinking about other things.
“I had trained for this,” she said. “You know that. I’m going to be a Knight. A Knight of Merlin’s Order. But I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t think about everything that I needed to think about. It wasn’t that I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t smart enough.” She paused. “The Headmaster could have done it with half of what I had.”
“You’re sixteen,” Filius told her.
“That’s old enough to cast a curse. I’d already be a Knight in older times.”
“Be that as it may, these are the times that you’re in.”
Harry didn’t say anything to that.
“You mentioned the hollow house to me recently, do you remember?”
Harry nodded.
“I spoke with Professor Bones— excuse me, Headmistress, Headmistress Bones, and in light of the situation we think that you need to see it.”
“What is it?”
Filius didn’t respond immediately. “It’ll be best if you saw it for yourself.”
Harry didn’t respond, and Filius left a little later, a pat on her shoulder to say goodbye. Ginny came over a few minutes after that. She sat down next to Harry and patted the ground beside her. When that didn’t work, she pulled on one of Harry’s sleeves until Harry finally sat down.
“Even if you’re not… my Harry,” Ginny said after awhile, “you’re still Harry. Somehow. And you told me when you didn’t have to, because you didn’t want to lie to me. That sounds like a friend. You’re a good friend,” she said, leaving no room for protest.
Harry understood, and leaned against her.
“Professor Snape wouldn’t have liked it,” Harry said.
“I still appreciate it.”
“Should I tell his family, you think?” She looked at Ginny. “How would I do that, anyway? Do they live in Surrey in this world? Professor Snape looked upset when I asked about them.”
Ginny looked at her oddly. “They wouldn’t care… They used to hurt Harry. They’d do anything that didn’t leave a mark. It only stopped when Snape found out. He told Dumbledore that either Harry would be staying at Hogwarts or Snape would be staying at the Dursleys, and I guess Dumbledore thought the latter might result in some dead Dursleys. I think there were some protections on the house, but then Snape went and talked to them and then… they were gone? Or they didn’t work anymore or something. Harry only told me a little bit. But Dumbledore gave in after that and never talked about the protections anymore,” Ginny finished.
“Oh…” Harry choked back a sudden sob. She tried to make it sound like a cough, but by the look that Ginny gave her the other girl hadn’t fallen for it. “I was hoping to see them before I left,” she said in a flattened tone.
“Why?”
“I miss them. They died a long time ago. When I was nine.” As if it were happening to someone else, Harry only distantly noticed as her cheeks became wet. “And they weren’t like that at all. They were nice. Dudley was my best friend. And then— and then they died, and there was nobody else left, nobody who was alive. I became a ward of the state.”
“Who did you go to after that?”
Harry didn’t answer.
“Thanks for being friendly, Ginny.”
“No problem.” Ginny paused. “Hey, um… I’m sorry for trying to kiss you that one time, by the way. I hope that wasn’t too awkward. I just thought you were, well, you know, my Harry was being silly.”
Harry shrugged. “There were worse ways to have had my first.”
April 17th, 1997
Oh, Harry was already familiar with the hollow house, as it turned out. Very familiar.
“Riddle Manor,” she said, suddenly out of breath. It was so old looking. So dilapidated.
It was a ruin, she thought.
Filius paused. There was a need to recover from the stress of apparating past the decaying wards here, but more than that… “You know this place?”
Harry nodded as she slowly ascended the steps. “Headmaster Riddle took me here sometimes.” She knocked on the door once, then realized how foolish it was to knock at an empty house and simply went inside. “I went here first when the Dursleys died. The Headmaster had a room set up for me but I wanted to sleep on the couch.” She smiled. “They found a place for me the next day, but the Headmaster had wanted to make sure I was safe in the meantime.”
Filius followed close behind her as she wandered the halls. His eyes seemed to cover every inch of the house, looking everywhere and nowhere all at once, but for Harry every tarnished object was a terrible miracle, a memento of another world or a reminder, by its novelty, of how different the two worlds were. She couldn’t see the forest, but only the trees.
“I’ll bet that I could even find my old bedroom. I stayed here for a month last summer. He was gone for most of the time but…” Her voice was more brittle this time. “The library’s a wreck too, I’ll reckon.”
“It was,” someone said. Not Filius, but someone with like voice of crushed glass and sour wine. “Albus’ cronies restored much of it, however.”
Harry spun around. Between her and Filius stood… nothing. But in the mirror she could see something, a mad hermit’s memory of a man, or a nightmare’s nightmare. Something frailer and meaner and more off-putting than both of them together.
Harry’s hand stopped just short of touching the mirror. “You’re a horcrux. But why did you bind yourself to a mirror?”
The grey-black shape shook its head. “Not the mirror.” The voice was coming from all around her now. “The house.”
“The hollow house.”
“At your service.”
“Why?”
“Why limit myself to six horcruxes? That’s what I asked myself when I was younger. Seven was better than six, wasn’t it? And if it was, then fifty was surely better than even seven. I realized that I wasn’t being cautious enough. If I was going as far as six then that implied that some part of me thought someone could destroy five. I chose prudence over pride that day.”
“And if five, why not fifty-five?”
“Correct.” The shape twisted in a way that Harry supposed might have been a smile. “Professor Flitwick explained to me something of your situation. I’m willing to offer my services in an advisory role, as always.” Perhaps it was just her imagination, but Harry thought she felt a chill or something else run down her just then.
“Why?”
“They’re getting rid of the competition for me. Not that they put any stock in motives even as selfish as that. I know that they don’t trust anything that I say until they’ve verified it three ways over. But there’s something different about you…”
The shape laughed.
“I can feel it. I felt you the moment that you apparated onto the grounds. I think that I could have felt it from even further away. I felt something different many days ago, even. No doubt that’s why these other horcruxes went to Diagon Alley, even if they weren’t sure what was going on.” The shadow paused, as if considering something. “After all, I wasn’t sure until Bones and Flitwick told me, and I had an inkling of your double’s plans. But there’s always a rhyme and reason to our actions. Broken as we are, though, sometimes we just can’t figure it out.”
“Are you talking about the connection to the scar on this body?”
“Yes.”
“Why would any of that change? It’s still the same body and the same scar. Shouldn’t it be the same magic?”
The shape made a motion suggestive of a shrug. “I split my soul. Many times. Like an open wound, it has become especially sensitive.” It turned to Filius. “Do you know?”
“No.”
“Then let me venture that we have learned more than one thing today. Whatever this project was that this world’s Harry was working on, it doesn’t work on the mind. He may have thought it did, but he was wrong. It pulls on the soul, and you can’t just copy a part of a soul. Cut it? Remove it? Yes. With more power perhaps he could have made himself your horcrux, a vessel for a part of your soul, but instead he simply rotated your positions.”
For a moment Harry had a horrible thought about the indestructibility of a horcrux located in another universe entirely. What made it worse was that if she had thought it then surely the horcrux here had as well, or soon would.
Filius looked thoughtful. “If that’s true, then we could run some experiments to find out for sure.”
“I’m always glad to be of service. You know that. You won’t find a way to destroy this house, I’m sure of that. I had all of the time in the world to make the best of my circumstances.”
“Voldemort,” Harry said.
“Yes, girl?”
“Come with me. I’d like to talk with you about something. Filius, can you stay behind for a minute?”
“But—”
“I’ll be careful.” She turned back to the mirror. “If this house is your horcrux then we’re inside your horcrux, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Great.”
ignoring Filius’ protests, Harry walked away. And when she came back there was only one thing that she had to say.
“You know that horcux that’s made out of the cloak? We’re going to beat it.”
Sign up to rate and review this story