Chapter Text
Black shapes were emerging out of thin air all around them, blocking their way left and right, eyes glinting out from beneath masks, a dozen lit wand tips pointing directly at them. Harry barely kept down his smile.
There it was. Of course.
“To me, Potter,” repeated the drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy, and Harry felt how much more he hated the man after learning how he treated his only son.
Lucius was holding out his hand, palm up, and seemed to think Harry might actually just give him the damn thing. His other hand held a wand, but strangely enough it didn’t seem to be his own. Harry remembered Lucius’ wand, after all. He kept it in his walking stick and the handle was attached to it, so it was very recognisable. The one he held now had no such handle.
Harry hoped once more that the Order members were right behind them, because he wasn’t sure how long they really would be able to hold these Death Eaters off. There were more of them than he’d expected.
“To me,” said Lucius yet again.
“Where’s Sirius?” asked Harry, still keeping up the pretence to buy them some more time, and stopping himself from looking at the others in case it might give it away. A few of the Death Eaters laughed, a harsh female voice from the midst of the shadowy figures to Harry left spoke triumphantly.
“The Dark Lord always knows.”
“Always,” echoed Lucius softly. “Now, give me the prophecy, Potter.”
“I want to know where Sirius is,” he said. Prophecy? The glass orb was a prophecy? A prophecy given to Dumbledore about Harry and Voldemort?
“I want to know where Sirius is,” mimicked the woman to his left, and he suddenly recognised her despite the hood. “The little baby woke up frightened and thought what it dreamed was true,” she continued in a horrible mock baby voice.
Harry felt Ron stir beside him.
“Don’t do anything,” he muttered. “Not yet.”
Bellatrix LeStrange let out a raucous scream of laughter.
“You hear him? You hear him? Giving instructions to the other children as though he thinks of fighting us.”
“Oh, you don’t know Potter as I do, Bellatrix,” said Lucius softly. “He has a great weakness for heroics. The Dark Lord understands this about him. Now give me the prophecy, Potter.”
“You’re just upset I freed your house elf, Lucius,” said Harry cheekily. Then, playing for time, he added: “Now tell me about Sirius.”
“It’s time you learn the difference between real life and dreams, Potter,” said Lucius, ignoring Harry’ first comment, though he could see Lucius’ eyes narrowing through the slits in his hood. “Now give me the prophecy, or we start using wands.”
Harry raised his wand without saying anything, feeling the others doing the same, but the Death Eaters didn’t move.
“Give me the prophecy and no one need get hurt,” said Lucius coolly, and it was Harry’s turn to laugh.
“Yeah, right,” he said. “Because we all know how much you and your unhappy band of misfits abhor violence. I give you this— prophecy, is it? — and you’ll just let us skip off home, will you?”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when Bellatrix shrieked ‘Accio prophecy’, but Harry was ready and cast a shield in front of him, and though the glass sphere had nearly slipped to the tips of his fingers, he managed to cling on to it.
“Oh, he knows how to play, little bitty baby Potter,” she smiled, her mad eyes staring through the slits in her hood. “Very well then!”
“I told you no!” Lucius roared at her. “If you smash it…!”
Harry’s mind was racing. The Death Eaters wanted the dusty glass orb — the prophecy — and were terrified of it smashing. Harry had no interest in it, only wanted to stall until the Order members arrived and they could catch the Death Eaters and get out alive. He assumed the prophecy was about him, since his name was on it, but if it was given to Dumbledore he would know it, surely. Was this ‘the weapon’? How?
Bellatrix LeStrange stepped forward and pulled off her hood. Azkaban had hollowed out her face, made it gaunt and skull like, but it was alive with a feverish fanatical glow.
“You need more persuasion?” she said, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “Very well. Take the smallest one,” she ordered the other Death Eaters. “Let him watch as we torture the little girl. I’ll do it.”
Harry felt the others close in around Ginny, though he suspected Bellatrix had no idea how fierce an opponent Ginny could be. Still, he stepped sideways so that he was right in front of her, the prophecy held up to his chest.
“You’ll have to smash this if you want to attack any of us,” he said lightly. “I don’t think your boss will be too pleased if you come back without it, will he, Bellatrix?”
She didn’t move. She merely stared at him, the tip of her tongue moistening her thin mouth.
“So,” said Harry, willing the Order to get a bloody move on, “what kind of prophecy are we talking about anyway?”
Neville’s arm was pressed against his, and he could feel him shaking. He felt for his friend, he did, meeting the witch who tortured his parents into insanity face to face. Although Harry had been certain that both Bellatrix LeStrange and Lucius Malfoy were two of the main Death Eaters in charge here, he hadn’t actually remembered to warn Neville about it. He’d just spoken about Death Eaters in general probably waiting for them.
“What kind of prophecy?” repeated Bellatrix, the grin fading from her face. “You jest, Harry Potter.”
“Nope,” he said plainly, eyeing the other Death Eaters with a carefully blank face. “Can’t say I am, really. How come Voldemort wants it?”
Several of the Death Eaters let out low hisses.
“You dare speak his name?” whispered Bellatrix.
“Why shouldn’t I? I’ve got no problem with saying Vol—,”
“Shut your mouth!,” Bellatrix shrieked. “You dare speak his name with you unworthy lips? You dare besmirch it with your half-blood tongue? You dare!?”
“Surely you know he’s a half-blood as well,” Harry said in that same casual voice. “You must know, Lucius, you were there when he came back. You know perfectly well there is no Riddle family among the Sacred 28. And not even for having a ‘too common’ family name like the Potters. No, Moldy Voldy’s old man was simply a muggle. Or has he been telling you lot that he’s a pureblood?”
“Stupe—,”
“NO!”
A jet of red light had shot from Bellatrix’s wand, but Lucius had deflected it, causing her spell to hit the shelf a foot to the left of Harry, and several of the glass orbs there shattered. Two ghostly figures, pearly white and fluid as liquid, rose from the fragments of broken glass on the floor, and began to speak. Their voices vied with each other, so that only fragments of what they were saying was saying could be heard over Lucius and Bellatrix’s shouts.
“At the solstice will come a new—,” said the figure of an old bearded man.
“Do not attack! We need the prophecy!”
“He dared, he dares!” shrieked Bellatrix incoherently. “He stands there, filthy half-blood—,”
“Wait until we’ve got the prophecy,” roared Lucius.
“And none will come after—,” said the figure of a young woman.
The two figures that had burst from the shattered spheres melted into thin air, the only evidence of their existence the fragments of glass upon the cold stone floor. They had, however, given Harry an idea. The problem would be conveying it to the others.
“You haven’t told me what’s so special about this prophecy I’m supposed to be handing over,” he said. He needed to keep them talking.
He moved his foot slowly sideways, feeling around for someone else’s.
“Do not play games with us, Potter,” said Lucius.
“I’m not playing games,” said Harry, half his mind on the conversation, the other half on his wandering foot. And then he found someone’s toes and pressed down upon them. A sharp intake of breath behind him told him they were Hermione’s.
“What?” she whispered.
“Dumbledore never told you the reason you bear that scar was hidden in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries?” Lucius sneered.
“Adults never tell children anything, do they?” Harry replied, in fake annoyance that wasn’t actually that fake. “What about my scar?
“What?” whispered Hermione more urgently behind him.
“Can this be?” said Lucius, sounding maliciously delighted.
Some of the Death Eaters were laughing again and under the cover of their laughter, Harry hissed to Hermione, moving his lips as little as possible, “smash shelves”.
“Dumbledore never told you?” Lucius continued. “Well, this explains why you didn’t come earlier, Potter. The Dark Lord wondered why—,”
“When I say ‘now’.”
“— you didn’t come running when he showed you the place where it was hidden in your dreams. He thought natural curiosity would make you want to hear the exact wording.”
“Did he?” Harry chuckled lightly. Behind him, he felt rather than heard Hermione telling the others about the plan, while he made sure to keep talking, to distract the Death Eaters. “He thought Dumbledore had told me the prophecy existed and yet didn’t tell me the exact wording? Surely if Dumbledore had seen fit to give me such information he would have given me all of it, if only to sate my ‘natural curiosity’, as you call it. So why did he need me to get it at all?”
“Why?” asked Lucius incredulously. “Because the only people who are permitted to retrieve a prophecy from the Department of Mysteries, Potter, are those about whom it was made. As the Dark Lord discovered when he attempted to use others to steal it for him.”
Like Broderick Bode, Harry presumed.
“And why would he want to steal a prophecy about me?”
“About both of you, Potter. About both of you. Haven’t you ever wondered why the Dark Lord tried to kill you as a baby?”
Harry stared into the slotted eyeholes through which Lucius’ blue-grey eyes were gleaming. They weren’t the silver eyes of Draco or Sirius, and strangely enough they seemed much colder than the molten steel he loved to stare into in the Room of Requirement. He looked away, down at the prophecy instead. Was it the reason his parents had died then? The reason he carried his lightning bolt scar? The reason he had been carted off to his aunt and uncle to be treated like less than dirt? It was hardly larger than a snitch and still gritty with dust, and he hated the thing.
He looked back up at Lucius and Bellatrix.
“So, Voldemort couldn’t be arsed to come get it himself, and now he’s using you to do his dirty work for him? Like he did Sturgis and Bode?”
“Very good, Potter. Very good,” said Lucius slowly. “But the Dark Lord knows you are not unintelligent—,”
“NOW!”
Six different voices behind Harry bellowed “Reducto!”, six curses flew in six different directions, and the shelves opposite them exploded as they hit. The towering structure swayed as a hundred glass spheres burst apart, pearly white figures rose into the air and floated there, their voices echoing from who knew what long dead past amid a torrent of crashing glass and splintered wood now raining down upon them.
“RUN!” Harry yelled, and then the fight was on.
They ran through different rooms, being forced to split up for a moment before they reunited once more, hitting several Death Eaters with various hexes as they went; one had fallen into the bell jar with only his head — which seemed to shrink and become a baby’s head, then ageing and de-ageing once more, ending up with the bizarre sight of a bulky Death Eater walking around with a bawling baby’s head on its shoulders.
Neville had his wand broken, as well as his nose, and Ginny a sprained ankle. Hermione was hit with an unknown wordless spell from Dolohov that had knocked her out completely, but was thankfully alive. Ron hadn’t actually been knocked out, but whatever had hit him had turned him all… funny. And not in a good way.
Luna supported a stubborn Ginny, Neville carried Hermione on his back, and Lee had his fair share trying to get Ron to keep up, as Harry lead the group, wand in his right hand and prophecy in his left, from room to room, drawing out time and doing as much damage as they could to the Death Eaters. In the end, Harry and Neville, who was wielding Hermione’s wand, left the three incapacitated DA members in a smaller office space, in the care of Luna and Lee, while they drew the Death Eaters away.
It had worked, though perhaps too well. As he ran through another door, Harry had the uncomfortable feeling of the floor disappearing from underneath him, and he fell down stone steps until his back hit the floor so hard it momentarily knocked the wind out of him. Death Eaters were laughing around him, and to his horror he saw one of them holding Neville, and a wand pressed to his throat. Harry got up on shaky legs and looked around.
They were in the room with the ancient stone archway.
He stepped onto the dais in an attempt to keep all the Death Eaters in sight, the prophecy, miraculously unscathed, clutched in his left hand.
“Potter, your race is run,” drawled Lucius, pulling off his hood. “Now hand me the prophecy like a good boy.”
“Let the others go and I’ll give it to you.”
A few of the Death Eaters laughed.
“You’re not in a position to bargain, Potter,” said Lucius, his pale face flushed with pleasure. “You see, there are ten of us and only one of you. Or hasn’t Dumbledore ever taught you how to count?”
“Who says he’s alone?”
Above them, two doors had opened up, and through them had come Remus, Moody, Tonks, Kingsley, and, to Harry’s horror, Sirius, who had been the one to speak. Lucius turned and raised his wand, but Tonks had already sent a Stunner that hit him square in the chest before he could do anything, and Harry dived off the dais out of the way. Sirius came running for him.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Harry hissed at him, however glad he truly was to see his godfather, he was equally terrified by it. “Dobby was supposed to keep you safe.”
“It’s my job to keep you safe, Harry. And Dobby understood that,” replied Sirius, back turned to Harry and wand raised.
The Death Eaters seemed to have been so thrown by the appearance of the members of the Order that they didn’t know what to do with themselves, half of them having fallen by the rain of spells within the first few minutes. Neville had picked up Hermione’s wand again and began casting with it, and Harry nearly yelled when he was hit with the Cruciatus Curse by a cackling Bellatrix. Instead he ran towards them, ignoring Sirius’ shout, and cast a Stunner at Bellatrix, who ducked away just in time, but was then quickly caught up in battle with Tonks.
A large arm suddenly held around Harry’s throat, holding so tightly he could barely breathe.
“Give it to me,” a Death Eater, with a vaguely Eastern European accent, said gravelly into Harry’s ear. “Give me the prophecy.”
Looking around he saw Sirius in combat with another Death Eater, Kingsley taking on two at once, and Tonks still duelling Bellatrix. Harry couldn’t get enough air to vocalise a spell, but a shout from his side had him turn his head what little he could just in time to see Neville lunging at them, and rather than hitting the Death Eater with a spell, he jammed Hermione’s wand into the eyehole of the mask, which made him let go of Harry with a scream.
“Stupefy!”
Harry had turned and immediately Stunned his attacker, and as the mask slid off he could see that it was McNair, the one who had been hired to kill Buckbeak.
“Thanks, Nev,” he said breathlessly to Neville. “You alright?”
They didn’t have much time to breathe. Dolohov, having finished with Moody, immediately drew Harry and Neville into a duel, leering at Harry in a way that made him sick to his stomach. He’d managed to unbalance Neville so that he fell to the floor again, and Harry barely had time to throw up a Protego as Dolohov’s wand did the same cutting motion it had done towards Hermione earlier. While his shield stopped most of the damage, Harry was still pushed to the side by the force of the rest flying past his ear, and tripped over Neville’s body.
“Accio prophecy—,” Dolohov barely had the time to say before Sirius lugged him clean in the face and he was knocked out. Harry only barely held onto the prophecy this time, and Sirius ducked over him as a pair of Stunning Spells flew towards them.
“Harry—,” Sirius began, but was cut off by a jet of green light only barely missing his head. Harry saw Tonks topple to the ground and a jeering Bellatrix running once more into the thick of the action. “Harry, take Neville and the prophecy and go.”
“There’s no way I’m leaving you here, Sirius!”
“Grab Neville and run,” was all Sirius said before he dashed to meet Bellatrix in a duel.
Harry could only watch as they fought, their wands a blur, and then it was like everything moved in slow motion.
A jet of red light from Bellatrix’s wand shot towards Sirius just as his shield flickered and gave out, and hit him square in the chest, and he fell sideways towards the veiled stone archway, and Harry suddenly realised exactly what that would mean. He screamed, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure. Then, at the last moment, just before Sirius would have surely died, Dobby appeared with a pop and within a split second had left again, taking Sirius with him.
Harry’s ears were ringing. He stared at the spot where Sirius’ body had been only moments before, part of him scarcely believing that Sirius hadn’t died, and then he saw the look on Bellatrix’s face going from malicious glee to disappointment, and Harry snapped.
The rage monster that he had kept down so successfully roared within him, and when Bellatrix hopped down from the stone dais and disappeared through one of the doorways as someone else (another Order member, Harry assumed) appeared on the opposite side of the room, Harry followed her without so much as a single look back at the prophecy he had just let crash to the ground or the words it was spewing, lost in the roar of the fighting.
It did not matter. Dobby would keep Sirius safe. Dobby had promised, and Dobby kept his promises.
Harry didn’t pay attention to anything else as he followed Bellatrix, who was jeering and laughing and shooting spells at him that he easily deflected. He followed her through the corridors from the Department of Mysteries and up into the atrium by a lift.
“Stupefy!”
She dodged his Stunner with a laugh.
“Expelliarmus!”
She threw up a shield, turning around and skipping off with another laugh, and Harry felt his hatred surge.
“Crucio!”
The spell knocked her off her feet with a scream, but she didn’t writhe and shriek with pain like Neville had. Though when she was back on her feet she was no longer laughing. Harry dodged behind the fountain to avoid her counterspell, which hit the the wizard in the middle of the statue, taking its head clean off.
“Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?” she yelled. “You need to mean it, Potter. You need to really want to cause pain, to enjoy it.”
Oh, he did want to cause her pain. Just the thought of Sirius dying was enough to drive him to heights of hatred he hadn’t felt before. And she had been fucking disappointed when he didn’t fall through the veil. If anything, Bellatrix calling him boy only made him want to hurt her more, enough to ignore the way his scar prickled ominously.
“I’ll show you how it’s done, shall I?” she asked as he edged to the opposite end of the fountain, though he had to duck back down again when her Crucio hit the centaur’s arm, making it crash to the floor. “Potter, you cannot win against me.”
She was trying to egg him on, deflecting his own Stunner back at him so that he barely ducked in time.
“I’m going to give you one last chance, Potter,” she said. “Give me the prophecy. Roll it out to me now and I may spare your life.”
It was Harry’s turn to laugh, and he did.
“Well, you’re gonna have to kill me then, because it’s gone,” he said loudly, still laughing, though pain was searing across his forehead before he’d even said it, the prickling having steadily grown the closer Voldemort came. His scar was burning with a surge of fury unconnected with his own. “And he knows it too,” Harry added in the same loud voice, still laughing. “Your dear old mate Voldemort knows it’s gone. He’s not gonna be happy with you, is he, Bellatrix?”
“What? What to you mean?”
For the first time Bellatrix sounded afraid.
“The prophecy smashed when you nearly killed my godfather. What do you think Voldemort will say to that?”
His scar seared and burned, the pain making his eyes water, but he blinked it away and grit his teeth.
“Liar!” shrieked Bellatrix, but he could hear the terror behind the anger now. “You’ve got it, Potter, and you will give it to me! Accio prophecy! Accio prophecy!”
Harry laughed again, mirroring Bellatrix’s own manic laugh just because he knew she’d hate that. The pain was building in his head now, so Voldemort had to be very close by, just not visible.
“It’s smashed,” he said, waving his empty left hand in the air for a moment and withdrawing it quickly to avoid a jet of green light. “It smashed and nobody heard what it said. Tell your boss that!”
“Nooo,” she screamed. “It isn’t true!”
“Or should I tell him? He’s here, you know.”
“Indeed I am, Potter,” said a high cold voice.
Harry looked up at the snakelike face, white and gaunt, with a cheeky smile.
“Hello, Tom. I would say it was nice to see you, but that would have been a lie.” Harry was quite sure that had Voldemort had nostrils they would have been flaring.
“So,” he said in a low angry voice, “you smashed my prophecy?”
“Our prophecy, Tom. Not yours. You really must learn to share your toys.”
“No, Bella,” said Voldemort, ignoring Harry’s words. “He is not lying. Months of preparation, months of effort, and my Death Eaters have let Harry Potter thwart me again!”
“Master, I’m sorry. I knew not, I was fighting the animagus Black,” sobbed Bellatrix, flinging herself down at Voldemort’s feet as he paced nearer. Harry looked on in disgust.
“Be quiet, Bella,” said Voldemort dangerously. “I shall deal with you in a moment. Do you think I have entered the Ministry of Magic to hear your snivelling apologies?”
“But, Master, he is here. He is below.”
Harry had no idea who she was referring to, and Voldemort didn’t seem to care, as he ignored her words completely.
“I have nothing more to say to you, Potter. You have irked me too often for too long. Avada Kedavra!”
Harry hadn’t even opened his mouth to speak, hadn’t lifted his wand to react, but still his wand moved of its own accord, casting without Harry doing anything. A jet of red light hit the jet of green and followed it back to the wand in Voldemort’s hand, cracking it down the middle. Harry looked confusedly at his wand, and he could feel Voldemort’s rage as he threw the broken wand away and sent the same spell again with a different wand.
Before it could even get close to Harry, the headless wizard from the fountain had come to life and sprung in between him and Voldemort, the spell bouncing off its chest as it protected Harry.
“What?” cried Voldemort, staring around. And then he breathed, “Dumbledore.”
Harry looked behind him and to his surprise saw Dumbledore indeed standing there in front of the golden gates of the lifts, and then they were duelling too. Bellatrix was pinned to the floor by the witch statue, which was also brought to life by Dumbledore.
“The Aurors are on their way, Tom,” said Dumbledore, sounding almost sad.
“By which time, I shall be gone and you shall be dead,” spat Voldemort, his Killing Curse missing Dumbledore.
They exchanged spells and words, Dumbledore looking so calm that Harry nearly cried out in warning despite himself. But then Voldemort disappeared into thin air, and for the first time Dumbledore looked scared. Harry couldn’t see Voldemort, but he knew he was there, he could feel him, and then suddenly he felt the overwhelming nausea he associated with someone attempting to break through his shields.
Voldemort was trying to possess him, and the agony of it in his scar was making Harry dizzy. He couldn’t think, all he could do was try to keep his mind safe, and though Voldemort couldn’t possess him enough to look through his eyes he managed to speak from Harry’s mouth.
“Kill me now, Dumbledore. If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy.”
Harry focused hard. He focused on his love for Draco, his friends, Sirius, Remus, willing himself to remember them and forget the pain trying to eat him whole so that he could push Voldemort out completely. To his amazement, Voldemort’s hold on him loosened and the pain stopped, and Harry, being able to think clearly once more, shut his mind tightly, forcing Voldemort all the way out. And then Voldemort was gone from him, leaving Harry shivering in the cold floor.
Voices were echoing through the atrium, and Harry saw Dumbledore running to him.
“Are you alright, Harry?” Dumbledore asked him.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Harry mumbled with a bit of a slur. “Where’s Voldemort? What happened with our wands?”
He was surprised to notice that the atrium was full of people, and when Dumbledore pulled Harry to his feet without answering his questions he thought it quite understandable. There were more people coming in too, and he was sure Dumbledore didn’t want everyone knowing their business.
“He was there,” shouted a man with a ponytail. “I saw him, Minister! I swear it was You-Know-Who! He grabbed a woman and Disapparated.”
“I know, Williamson,” said Fudge. “I know, I saw him too!”
“If you proceed downstairs into the Department of Mysteries, Cornelius,” said Dumbledore, apparently satisfied that Harry was alright, and walked forward so that the newcomers would realise he was there. “You will find several escaped Death Eaters contained in the Death Chamber, bound by an Anti-Disapparation Jinx and awaiting your decision as to what to do with them.”
~ ~
Dumbledore sent Harry back to Hogwarts with a portkey (which Fudge did not seem too keen on, unsurprisingly), and he found himself in a bit of a daze as he sat in Dumbledore’s office, waiting for him. Phineas Nigellus tried to engaged Harry in conversation, but Harry barely glanced at him and ignored the indignant squawks the portrait gave in turn.
When Dumbledore returned to the office after the promised half an hour, he told Harry that Dobby had taken Sirius directly to Hogwarts’ hospital wing (deeming this safest, still set on following Harry’s request) and he was currently being patched up by Poppy. As were most of the others, except those who needed the help of the Healers at St Mungo’s, which had turned out to only be Tonks.
Once Harry knew that Sirius and his friends were in the hospital wing, Dumbledore had to lock him in to keep him from leaving, and Harry found himself yelling at the headmaster about how close Sirius had been to dying, actually dying, as Dumbledore clearly must have misunderstood how dire the situation had been.
In the end, Harry gave up and sat down in front of Dumbledore’s desk to let him speak, if only to get it over with. To his astonishment, Dumbledore apologised to him.
“You were in the right and I was in the wrong, Harry. I should have taken the message you gave me this past Yule, via Phineas Nigellus, more seriously. Though I do wonder who you are learning such colourful language from.”
His eyes twinkled for a moment, and even Harry managed a tiny smile.
“I do believe my intentions were good when I decided the best course of action this past year was for me to avoid you, once I became aware of the connection between you and Lord Voldemort. I wished to keep you safe, and thought it would be best not to tempt Voldemort, should he realise that our relationship was anything beyond that of student and headmaster and seek to use you. However, my actions only made you to feel alienated, and untrustworthy. It is easy, you see, for an old man to forget that you are not in fact a child anymore, Harry. You are growing up so quickly, and I am at every turn astonished by your bravery and intelligence. I see now that rather than hide from you the information we had, I should have given you the tools necessary for you handle being exposed to them. And for that I can only apologise profusely, Harry, and strive to do better.”
Harry could understand the impulse, he supposed. Especially because Harry had indeed been susceptible to Voldemort’s influence before this school year. Had it not been for Draco deciding to teach him Occlumency from the beginning of the first term, Harry wasn’t sure anything Snape did to him would have helped him learn it. But Draco was also right — Dumbledore should have been the one to teach him the moment he guessed there was a connection at all.
Then Dumbledore finally told him about the prophecy. The prophecy about Harry and Voldemort, that Trelawney of all people had given to him. The prophecy that said that Harry would either have to kill Voldemort or Voldemort would have to kill him.
“What about what my wand did?” Harry asked. “And why did Voldemort have two wands?”
“It seems, dear boy, that Voldemort had realised the connection between your wands in the graveyard last year. The twin cores make it so that you cannot kill, only wound, one another, and so he went to the Ministry using a different wand.”
“Then why did my wand still react to it?”
“That, Harry, is a mystery as of now,” Dumbledore replied. “In fact, had I not seen it happen with my own eyes I might not have believed it. I can tell you that the wand he was using, the one that your own broke, belonged to Lucius Malfoy. It was, I believe, punishment for losing Tom Riddle’s diary.”
Harry’s head was so buzzing with this new information that when he was finally allowed to leave Dumbledore’s office to visit the hospital wing (with strict instructions to let Poppy give him a checkup) he couldn’t make himself run. Instead he walked in a daze, not even noticing where he was headed.
When he stopped and looked around he was shocked to find himself not in front of the hospital wing, but in the 7th floor corridor by the Room of Requirement, and to his greater shock, there was a door already there.
Entering the room he saw that he was in his and Draco’s version of it, and that Draco was fast asleep on the sofa. Harry walked over slowly, a smile tugging on his lips as he felt that pull, the vibration that told him Draco was close. He let his fingers brush through Draco’s soft white blond hair, watching as he frowned, squirming a bit, and his eyes slowly opened and fell directly on Harry.
“Harry,” Draco breathed and sat up quickly. “What happened? You look like you’ve been through hell!”
Draco pulled him down onto the sofa and looked him over with a worried frown.
“Something like that, yeah. Most of the others are in the hospital wing though, so I got off pretty unscathed.”
“What happened? Where did you go?”
“The Department of Mysteries. I had a trap to walk into.”
“You what? Harry, please just explain.”
“Tom’s Death Eaters had set a trap. Most of them were caught though, because we already knew it was a trap. And I’m sorry, Lucius was one of them. And they didn’t get what they were after, so Tom’s pretty pissed. Also, I kinda broke Lucius’ wand…”
Harry had never seen Draco look the way he did. It was like a storm of feelings were warring in his mind and he simply couldn’t land on just one.
“You—” he began, then stopped and swallowed hard. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You walked willingly into a trap set by Death Eaters in possibly the most dangerous fucking Department within the Ministry? Harry, you are fifteen,” he said, as though Harry didn’t know this.
“I am aware. And yeah, I did. The Order took forever though.”
Draco seemed to be shocked into angry silence for a moment, and then it was as if he spotted something on Harry’s face and he deflated visibly.
“Hey, come here,” he said softly, pulling Harry into his arms.
Harry felt like he had been under water all this time and he could suddenly breathe. To his horror he felt tears prickling behind his eyes and he could do nothing to stop them.
“Sirius almost died,” he said in a choked voice. “I couldn’t stop it.”
“Oh, kitten,” said Draco, dropping a kiss on his forehead and brushing his hair.
Harry didn’t know for how long they sat there, Draco rocking him gently as he let the tears fall until he had no more of them left. Only then did he realise that he had bits of stone in his hair, Draco’s hand dislodging them, and his entire body was covered in fine stone dust from the Death Room. He had no idea at what point he had lost his hair tie.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” said Harry, his voice rough. “He’ll probably be jailed.”
“Don’t be sorry about it,” said Draco. “I’m not and it’s not your fault.”
“It could make things difficult for your family though. Bellatrix got away too.”
Draco took a deep breath.
“We’ll be fine. We’ll figure it out.” He didn’t sound completely convinced though.
“I can’t let anything happen to you,” said Harry, surprised to find that he did actually have some tears left. “Please, promise me you’ll stay safe.”
Draco merely held him closer, and Harry knew it was better that he didn’t promise. He wouldn’t have been able to forgive him if he promised and then broke it, and none of them were safe. So Harry let Draco hold him tightly, both wishing to stay right there forever.
~ ~
Sirius stayed in the hospital wing until the next day, and Harry was happy that he was so close, that he could see him and hear his laugh all that time.
“You could’ve died, Sirius!” Harry had shouted at him when he first saw him. “You very nearly did!”
“Harry, did you honestly think I wouldn’t find a way to come after you? Do you think I could have ever forgiven myself if I had stayed in that house, knowing that you were throwing yourself head first into duels with Death Eaters three times your age?”
“But if Dobby hadn’t—,”
“I know, Prongslet,” Sirius told him, putting a hand on his shoulder and making him sit down on the edge of the hospital bed. “And I knew Dobby was there. It was the only way he would let me leave, he kept saying he’d promised you that he’d keep me safe, so he stayed hidden. Honestly, he probably deflected more than one spell that could have easily killed either one of us.”
Harry had become somewhat anxious about Sirius being out of his sight, and he dreaded the time he would have to spend with the Dursleys, hoping to the founders it wouldn’t have to be long. Though it seemed he needn’t have worried at all. The moment Minnie was back from St Mungo’s she was a woman on a mission, and she had actually berated Dumbledore in front of most of the Order for saying Harry would have to stay with the Dursleys at all, making Dumbledore appear more shamefaced than Harry had ever thought would be possible for the old warlock.
So to Harry’s great relief he was allowed to go directly from Hogwarts to Grimmauld Place. Draco was relieved too, that Harry wouldn’t stay with his muggle relatives, but Harry could tell he was dreading his own homecoming. The closer they got to the end of the school year the tenser Draco became, and their last night alone together was spent furiously clinging to each other as if it was the last time.
“Write to me this summer?”
Harry was lying on top of Draco on the sofa, with his face hidden against Draco’s neck and a hand in Draco’s hair.
“Of course, kitten.”
The answer was slightly wobbly. Harry knew Draco was crying, that he was afraid of what was expecting him at the Manor, but he also knew that Draco didn’t want him to point it out. Instead Harry simply held him, kissed his tears away tears away, and brushed his fingers through his hair. Comforted him, because that was really all he could do. They both knew it.
It was harder than ever to leave the Room of Requirement that night, but Harry needed to pack. He had procrastinated, his hands frozen with fear for his boyfriend every time he tried packing, and his mind overcome with guilt for feeling happy that he would be spending it with his guardians instead of his aunt and uncle. In the end he had to force himself to pack though, there was no way around it.
Instead of travelling by the Hogwarts Express, they went directly to Grimmauld Place by the floo in Dumbledore’s office, Remus following with Harry’s belongings and Sirius catching him as he fell out of the floo on the other side, laughing heartily when Harry nearly made him topple over and even making Harry laugh despite the fear in his heart.
At least he had things to occupy him at Grimmauld Place, and as he clung onto a laughing Sirius he decided that he would make the most of this summer.
No matter what.