Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Unlikely
April 20th, 1997
Filius and Headmistress Bones had fought with Harry a little bit when she demanded to have Filch on the team, but for God’s sake he was Argus Filch. Argus Filch of Filch’s Five Laws. His intuitive grasp of blue science was greater than even Ekayanake’s, for all that was holy under the sun. Maybe he didn’t know all of the details but if he was the same person then he had to have the same instincts, and the others were beginning to admit that she just may have been right.
“How are the networks coming Dr. Filch?” she asked him. He looked at her with that all-too-familiar expression of his, the one that revealed he couldn’t decide whether to be pissed with her or appreciative of how highly she regarded him.
She would take whatever he dished out, though. He’d been ornery in her world too.
“For the last time, you daft girl, I’m not…” Filch scowled. “Trying to match this to them diagrams you drew up but I don’t think it’s close enough.”
“Sshh,” she replied. “Most of the folks here just think I’m your Harry,” she whispered. “Now, don’t worry overmuch about it. I’ll check the work after, just keep your feelings open and if you think something’s weird, pay attention to that.”
“It’s all bizarre…” he muttered.
Harry smiled at him before she went over to the next room. The… horcrux that was in or was the house was keeping to itself, as they’d agreed on, and nobody working here was any wiser about the significance of this ramshackle estate.
“Harry!” Filius called, hurtling down the stairs so fast that it was nearly a controlled fall. “How’s on the main floor?”
“Fine, fine,” she told him. Harry waved her stun baton lazily in the direction of the hall. “The lights are getting all hooked up with each other and the wiring is getting layered with all the right enchantments. At least I think so. I guess we’ll find out.”
Filius nodded. “You said earlier that this would help us with more than the cloak. What did you mean?”
“If this doesn’t blow up in a lot of bad ways, then we know that I haven’t totally forgotten everything I learned in class. So we could use the basics of blue science to up the power on any rituals that we need to perform to do the switch again. And it looks like we’re going to need a lot of power to do it right.”
“I remember that. The process was mostly random but we’re trying to find a very specific world this time.”
Filius made a quiet hmm noise to himself. “How sure are you that the cloak is going to come here after all?”
“Pretty sure,” she answered. “The horcrux that’s here is lacing impressions in the cloak. He’s been doing it since after you first brought me here.” She paused, thoughtful. “Well, he’s not really giving impressions so much as he’s making them. He’s just letting the cloak know, as if the cloak’s put the pieces together on its own, that there’s a horcrux here. A housebound, presumably defenseless horcrux.”
“How is he doing that?”
It started as a chuckle but grew and grew till it became a manic, roaring laughter. “I’m a common link. Or this body is.”
“What do you mean?”
“The scar, Filius. This damned scar. You know that it’s got Voldemort’s magic all through it. Well, that connection can make a couple of jumps. If I’m connected to Voldemort, and he to me, then it stood to reason that he was connected to himself through me. And reason’s been well proven. I’m well and truly a web between the horcruxes.”
Filius stared at her. “You shouldn’t have done that. We could have found some other…” He shook his head. “I should have asked you from the beginning. I’m too used to your counterpart.“
Harry smiled. “Don’t worry, I would have lied. It’s not your fault. Besides, if me being here is any indication, you probably shouldn’t have let him work on his own so much either.”
April 21st, 1997
It sickened her.
Harry opened herself up to the hollow house. She could feel it insinuate itself, seeping into her like water and mold in an old wall. She could not look back, as it looked to her. She couldn’t bear to. The shape of its mind as it was pressed against hers was so foreign, so familiar, so touched with the feeling of a nightmare that is disturbing precisely because everything that should be right is so wrong, and yet close enough to be almost, almost recognizable.
She imagined that this felt something like dying did.
But there was nothing to be done about it. This was the plan. This was the course of destruction, the path down to Hell to slay the beast and its triple heads.
All onward for the glory of Britannia, Pax Britannica.
“For I will be a Knight of Merlin’s Order,” she whispered to herself. “In my right hand the grail of life, succor for the mourning. And in my left hand the sword of destruction, dawn to the dark.”
She had demanded that the defense of the house be left to her alone. She was the only one who held the advantage. Anyone else was a liability.
But alone?
The dust, as it swirled or shifted with every unseen step.
The hesitant sound of a floorboard creaking.
Breathing, soft and measured, nearly impossible to hear.
A hundred scattered clues to its every movement, taken in and processed by a being that knew this thing as it knew itself. For they had been one, after all.
And this the hollow house gave to Harry, speaking to and perhaps acting through her. And still it was only barely enough.
The cloak realized that it had been a trap. Knew it but could only press on. The only way was through. The doors were barred, the walls and windows enchanted to be tougher than Damascus steel beside soapstone.
Curses were volleyed back and forth, colors and blasts from and into empty space. The cloak must have spun and woven through each room like an acrobat so quickly did it seem to move from one position to another. But it had been boxed in.
Lightning crackled from the wires and the lights. Her wand and stun baton, touching at the walls and tracing symbols wherever she moved, trailed bolts of white and green that flickered and shivered. Where the cloak touched ground, it shuddered. Where it moved, the interaction of electricity and magic interacted, giving tell tale traces that the hollow house could read.
Shadows swarmed from dark corners and furniture was animated by Harry, by the cloak, by the hollow house itself, to attack their master’s foe. When her body grew tired, she pushed it forward with the power of the house, the will of the horcrux and electricity and magic all woven together to keep her on her feet.
Still, it would never been defeated as the situation was. Stalemate. One of them would fall from exhaustion first and between her youth and its possessed body it would be a gamble as to which of them would fall first.
Only one other option. One way for it to win after all. It was Harry herself that stood between the cloak and the house. Harry, and then the cloak could work at its leisure.
She saw a head and half a body appear to her left. Its face was covered with blood. Its nose and an ear were missing, and scars crisscrossed its body, which the bore the signs of prolonged starvation. The horcrux evidently hadn’t taken too much care with its host body.
In the space of time it took for her to react it had unleashed some unknown spell on its body and thrown itself, its true self, the cloak-self, in her direction. She froze, and the cloak fell over her eyes.
The world was in shadows.
The world was in fire.
A fire.
She could see the screams
Blood over her eyes
The darkness like a wolf
Into a likeness not like unto the moon
Fingers stapling pine nuts into everything they touched
Falling like fixtures within a railway through a thousand bearded clouds entering through while seven exited and thanked the ground…
…your blossoming feet be never thus engaged…
…your entrance ever segues to endless lands dis-integrating….
(the eloquence of motion the grand summation of a passing lyre)
Fingering sublimating a taste as memorable as marrow and honey
Your blood hands and hair it might not be you but it would be enough
Glowing like split rotting livers in the sun
Glowing
Glowing
In the sun
She was so cold. Suddenly, so cold (sold mold bold hold).
“I am… a knight…” she whispered. (light right fight)
“Harriett Petunia Potter.” (rotter slaughter)
“I am myself.” (shelf)
“Myself, and no other.”
She looked at where the cloak now lay. Empty. Powerless. Soulless.
For it hadn’t been the only soul in touch with her. No, and the cloak was a weak soul. It was barely one at all, so small it was. Small and impotent. The hollow house would scarcely notice the intrusion of that quivering splinter on its lorn and hungering mind.
As the hollow house withdrew from her, Harry could feel its pleasure.
“You are closer to us than you realize,” she heard it whisper.
The cloak burned like kindling.
Filius and Headmistress Bones had fought with Harry a little bit when she demanded to have Filch on the team, but for God’s sake he was Argus Filch. Argus Filch of Filch’s Five Laws. His intuitive grasp of blue science was greater than even Ekayanake’s, for all that was holy under the sun. Maybe he didn’t know all of the details but if he was the same person then he had to have the same instincts, and the others were beginning to admit that she just may have been right.
“How are the networks coming Dr. Filch?” she asked him. He looked at her with that all-too-familiar expression of his, the one that revealed he couldn’t decide whether to be pissed with her or appreciative of how highly she regarded him.
She would take whatever he dished out, though. He’d been ornery in her world too.
“For the last time, you daft girl, I’m not…” Filch scowled. “Trying to match this to them diagrams you drew up but I don’t think it’s close enough.”
“Sshh,” she replied. “Most of the folks here just think I’m your Harry,” she whispered. “Now, don’t worry overmuch about it. I’ll check the work after, just keep your feelings open and if you think something’s weird, pay attention to that.”
“It’s all bizarre…” he muttered.
Harry smiled at him before she went over to the next room. The… horcrux that was in or was the house was keeping to itself, as they’d agreed on, and nobody working here was any wiser about the significance of this ramshackle estate.
“Harry!” Filius called, hurtling down the stairs so fast that it was nearly a controlled fall. “How’s on the main floor?”
“Fine, fine,” she told him. Harry waved her stun baton lazily in the direction of the hall. “The lights are getting all hooked up with each other and the wiring is getting layered with all the right enchantments. At least I think so. I guess we’ll find out.”
Filius nodded. “You said earlier that this would help us with more than the cloak. What did you mean?”
“If this doesn’t blow up in a lot of bad ways, then we know that I haven’t totally forgotten everything I learned in class. So we could use the basics of blue science to up the power on any rituals that we need to perform to do the switch again. And it looks like we’re going to need a lot of power to do it right.”
“I remember that. The process was mostly random but we’re trying to find a very specific world this time.”
Filius made a quiet hmm noise to himself. “How sure are you that the cloak is going to come here after all?”
“Pretty sure,” she answered. “The horcrux that’s here is lacing impressions in the cloak. He’s been doing it since after you first brought me here.” She paused, thoughtful. “Well, he’s not really giving impressions so much as he’s making them. He’s just letting the cloak know, as if the cloak’s put the pieces together on its own, that there’s a horcrux here. A housebound, presumably defenseless horcrux.”
“How is he doing that?”
It started as a chuckle but grew and grew till it became a manic, roaring laughter. “I’m a common link. Or this body is.”
“What do you mean?”
“The scar, Filius. This damned scar. You know that it’s got Voldemort’s magic all through it. Well, that connection can make a couple of jumps. If I’m connected to Voldemort, and he to me, then it stood to reason that he was connected to himself through me. And reason’s been well proven. I’m well and truly a web between the horcruxes.”
Filius stared at her. “You shouldn’t have done that. We could have found some other…” He shook his head. “I should have asked you from the beginning. I’m too used to your counterpart.“
Harry smiled. “Don’t worry, I would have lied. It’s not your fault. Besides, if me being here is any indication, you probably shouldn’t have let him work on his own so much either.”
April 21st, 1997
It sickened her.
Harry opened herself up to the hollow house. She could feel it insinuate itself, seeping into her like water and mold in an old wall. She could not look back, as it looked to her. She couldn’t bear to. The shape of its mind as it was pressed against hers was so foreign, so familiar, so touched with the feeling of a nightmare that is disturbing precisely because everything that should be right is so wrong, and yet close enough to be almost, almost recognizable.
She imagined that this felt something like dying did.
But there was nothing to be done about it. This was the plan. This was the course of destruction, the path down to Hell to slay the beast and its triple heads.
All onward for the glory of Britannia, Pax Britannica.
“For I will be a Knight of Merlin’s Order,” she whispered to herself. “In my right hand the grail of life, succor for the mourning. And in my left hand the sword of destruction, dawn to the dark.”
She had demanded that the defense of the house be left to her alone. She was the only one who held the advantage. Anyone else was a liability.
But alone?
The dust, as it swirled or shifted with every unseen step.
The hesitant sound of a floorboard creaking.
Breathing, soft and measured, nearly impossible to hear.
A hundred scattered clues to its every movement, taken in and processed by a being that knew this thing as it knew itself. For they had been one, after all.
And this the hollow house gave to Harry, speaking to and perhaps acting through her. And still it was only barely enough.
The cloak realized that it had been a trap. Knew it but could only press on. The only way was through. The doors were barred, the walls and windows enchanted to be tougher than Damascus steel beside soapstone.
Curses were volleyed back and forth, colors and blasts from and into empty space. The cloak must have spun and woven through each room like an acrobat so quickly did it seem to move from one position to another. But it had been boxed in.
Lightning crackled from the wires and the lights. Her wand and stun baton, touching at the walls and tracing symbols wherever she moved, trailed bolts of white and green that flickered and shivered. Where the cloak touched ground, it shuddered. Where it moved, the interaction of electricity and magic interacted, giving tell tale traces that the hollow house could read.
Shadows swarmed from dark corners and furniture was animated by Harry, by the cloak, by the hollow house itself, to attack their master’s foe. When her body grew tired, she pushed it forward with the power of the house, the will of the horcrux and electricity and magic all woven together to keep her on her feet.
Still, it would never been defeated as the situation was. Stalemate. One of them would fall from exhaustion first and between her youth and its possessed body it would be a gamble as to which of them would fall first.
Only one other option. One way for it to win after all. It was Harry herself that stood between the cloak and the house. Harry, and then the cloak could work at its leisure.
She saw a head and half a body appear to her left. Its face was covered with blood. Its nose and an ear were missing, and scars crisscrossed its body, which the bore the signs of prolonged starvation. The horcrux evidently hadn’t taken too much care with its host body.
In the space of time it took for her to react it had unleashed some unknown spell on its body and thrown itself, its true self, the cloak-self, in her direction. She froze, and the cloak fell over her eyes.
The world was in shadows.
The world was in fire.
A fire.
She could see the screams
Blood over her eyes
The darkness like a wolf
Into a likeness not like unto the moon
Fingers stapling pine nuts into everything they touched
Falling like fixtures within a railway through a thousand bearded clouds entering through while seven exited and thanked the ground…
…your blossoming feet be never thus engaged…
…your entrance ever segues to endless lands dis-integrating….
(the eloquence of motion the grand summation of a passing lyre)
Fingering sublimating a taste as memorable as marrow and honey
Your blood hands and hair it might not be you but it would be enough
Glowing like split rotting livers in the sun
Glowing
Glowing
In the sun
She was so cold. Suddenly, so cold (sold mold bold hold).
“I am… a knight…” she whispered. (light right fight)
“Harriett Petunia Potter.” (rotter slaughter)
“I am myself.” (shelf)
“Myself, and no other.”
She looked at where the cloak now lay. Empty. Powerless. Soulless.
For it hadn’t been the only soul in touch with her. No, and the cloak was a weak soul. It was barely one at all, so small it was. Small and impotent. The hollow house would scarcely notice the intrusion of that quivering splinter on its lorn and hungering mind.
As the hollow house withdrew from her, Harry could feel its pleasure.
“You are closer to us than you realize,” she heard it whisper.
The cloak burned like kindling.
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