499Disc: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
STILL ALIVE
3
Hogwarts, 2002
Beth sat in the Gryffindor common room and made a pathetic attempt at finishing her homework. The fifth firework of the hour went off with a bang. A few people screamed in shock or delight.
It was seven o'clock in the morning and the last thing she was concentrating on was Transfiguration. She couldn't stop thinking about the strange man from yesterday, and whether Professor Granger and the Headmaster were down there talking to him, right now. Professor Granger had asked her to stay after Transfiguration, and then asked her not to tell anyone about what had happened.
As if she would tell! The man was her secret, and she wanted to know what was happening. Was he a Death Eater? Had they arrested him?
She couldn't help feeling that something was off about the whole situation. Everyone in the school, even all the students, had to be imprinted with a special spell before they could enter the grounds. It was said that this included all the secret tunnels that led out of the school. How could the man get in unless he had the clearance, like Professor Granger had said? He certainly wasn't a student, and everyone had the spell taken off when they left Hogwarts.
Eventually she stuffed her things back in her bag and ran up the stairs to the dormitory. The other girls were sitting around, braiding each other's hair, of all things.
Emily Lareston looked up at her in surprise. "Did you just run up those stairs, Green?"
"Yes actually," Beth snapped.
"There's no need to be touchy," sniffed Emily, returning her attention to Ally Houser's plait. "You could do with the exercise, dear."
Beth's face reddened. "What are you doing, anyway?" she shot back. "You're thirteen, you realise. You're acting like ten-year-olds at a sleepover." The four girls replied with the horrible up-and-down stare, which after three years they'd all perfected.
Beth threw her bag down on her bed and stormed out. Her dorm-mates – no, her house-mates – no, her entire year level were such complete idiots. The girls were all ditzy and disgusting and all of their names ended in the same syllable. Three of the boys were complete terrors and would probably end up in jail before they even left school. Another one was so pathetic that Beth had no idea how he'd got into Gryffindor in the first place.
And the other one… was sitting at the bottom of the stairs.
"Hi, Beth."
Beth walked right past him. He stood up and grabbed her arm. "Leave me alone, Quin," she snapped.
"I just wanted to see if you were all right," he said, taken aback. She glared at him. He had red hair and freckles, and the stupidest name of the lot. He was okay, most of the time. He was all right to talk to during class, when they were paired up in Potions… but he wasn't her friend. He usually hung around with the Ravenclaw boys, who seemed to like him despite him being just as smart as them, which would normally irritate your average Ravenclaw with a terrible ferocity.
"Did Emily say something horrible?" he asked her.
Beth was aware of her expression changing from anger to surprise. She might have stopped right there if he hadn't pointed at her and said, "I could tell by your face."
She ripped her arm out of his grip. "You're the worst idiot of them all, Quinton Weasley," she hissed. She ran, leaving the portrait swinging on its hinges
"Hey," said a voice from behind Quin. "What's with you and Green?"
Quin looked behind him to see his dorm-mate Dom Hinch looking at him. "What? Nothing."
Dom shook his head. "She got bigger over the summer. I think it made her meaner. Best leave her alone, Weasley, or she'll curse your head off."
"Give it a rest, Hinch. She's all right," said Quin, watching the portrait hole finally swing closed.
"Oh yeah? See anything happening with you two?"
"Don't be a prat."
OOO
Beth stopped when she reached the bottom of the tower, panting. The second run of the day. Her legs had been aching when she'd woken up, from all the rushing around she'd done yesterday. That's it, she thought. No more running. Ever.
She walked to the hospital wing, ignoring the glances of the passing teachers who were obviously wondering what a student was doing out of their common room so early. She started to make up a story in her mind, in case someone asked her.
Yes, Professor, I'm just on my way to the hospital wing because that idiot Lareston cursed her nose off like Madam Pomfrey is always warning us not to and she's too embarrassed to come down herself…
This kept her so amused that she was surprised when she found herself at the door of the Hospital Wing.
When she put her ear to it she could hear talking. Nothing remarkable, just Madam Pomfrey telling someone to rest for the moment, and maybe they'd better stay the night. She waited until the sound stopped, and she estimated the point when Madam Pomfrey must have gone into her office. Then she went in.
Rupert Gill, the Gryffindor Seeker, was lying on one of the beds dressed in hospital pyjamas, his filthy Quidditch robes slung over a chair. He was cradling his right arm with his left hand. He was two years above Beth and very popular. Despite all this, Beth found she rather liked him.
"What happened?" she asked.
Rupert nudged his arm in her direction. "Went slam bang into a goal post to avoid a Bludger." He winced. "Maybe I would have preferred the Bludger."
"Bad luck," said Beth, looking around. Apart from Rupert, all the other beds were empty. The one where Professor Granger had put the wild man was equally empty, and bedecked with fresh sheets and pillows. She recognised the door to Madam Pomfrey's office, and the one to the store cupboard. But at the far end there was now a door that she'd never noticed before. She made her way towards it. "I expect Madam Pomfrey can fix it."
"Yeah, she fixed the bone, she just wants… hey, I don't think we're allowed in there."
Beth put one hand on the doorknob. "It's okay," she said to Rupert. "I'm allowed." She went in, closing the door softly behind her.
A man was there, facing away from her, pulling a hospital shirt over his head to match the trousers he already wore. The disgusting Malfoy robes from last night were lying in a heap on the floor.
Shirt on, the man turned to look at her. "Should you be here?" he asked.
oO0Oo
"What do you mean you can't do it?"
He tried to bang his head against the wall but he was too tired. "I can't, all right? I studied with Snape for nearly a year and it came to nothing, then I did lessons with Dumbledore for a while… I'm better than I was when I started, but against Voldemort? I'm like a bloody pack of cards."
From the other side of the wall, Draco hissed in pain. He wasn't in quite as bad shape as Harry had been after three months, but from what Harry saw of him whenever they hauled the other man past his cell, his body was starting to give up under the strain of continuing. Dark red-brown streaks in his bedraggled blonde hair stood out like phoenix feathers, his clothes little more than tatters.
Harry hadn't asked Draco what he had done to be there. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. But, though it pained him to admit it, life seemed more bearable now that there was someone to talk to. When they were actually talking, anyway. What they were doing now was like a one-sided argument.
"Trust you, Potter. You've had two of the most accomplished Occlumency teachers in the world tutoring you, and you're still hopeless at it?"
"Give it a rest."
"Well, it's good to know you're hopeless at something, anyway."
"Well, if you're so clever, you teach me."
"Fine."
Harry paused. "Really? You know Occlumency?"
"Well, I'm better at Legilimency, to tell you the truth."
"Hah. You would be."
"Harry, I'm serious. It'll be hard, what with neither of us being in… ideal physical shape, but do you want to be able to protect yourself or not?"
He thought about this. There'd be very little opportunity to defend himself ever again, he considered. Not now Voldemort has got all he can get from me. "Why are you offering to help me exactly?"
Draco sighed. "Whose side do you think I'm on?"
"Hah. I've thought about that. You're on your own side, aren't you?"
"Correct. I protect my own interests. And right now, the one thing I've got going for me is that the only person in this place who stands a chance of getting out is in the cell next door, and might perhaps see his way to helping me out once he manages it."
"What makes you think I have a chance of getting out?"
"Because you're you, Potter. You get out of everything. So, let's begin."
oO0Oo
Hogwarts, 2002
Beth stared. The man was transformed. He was clean, not to mention clean-shaven, and those visible wounds which were not healed, had been dressed. His hair, while still looking as though it would take several washes and cuts to get it to look normal, was tied back with a piece of string.
He was as skinny as a skeleton, except with the hair and the pyjamas he was more like a scarecrow. Without the beard, the white scars around his eye were even more obvious, but so were the intense dark-grey eyes that stared at her as she stood, transfixed. She found she couldn't look at them for too long.
She swallowed. "You… look different."
He squinted. "Do I know you?" he asked. His voice was still as hoarse and painful-sounding as it had been when he had spoken to her yesterday.
"Beth Green," she reminded him. "I was in the Entrance Hall, yesterday."
Recognition sparked in the eyes. "Yes," he said, leaning against a bedpost. Beth noticed for the first time that the room in which they stood was a small, private hospital bedroom. "I remember. Sort of. You ran away, didn't you?"
Beth folded her arms, indignant. "To get help!"
"Oh. Sorry." Beth waited, aware that she was still, well, staring. "What?" he asked, eventually.
"Um… are you evil?"
He smiled. "I don't think so. Are you?"
"No!"
"Then if you think I'm evil, why are you talking to me?"
Beth was about to say 'I don't know', but then she thought better of it. "To see if you're evil or not," she said finally. "Are you still hurting?"
The man sat down in a chair with a groan. "There's the answer to that," he growled.
"Well… you look much better than you did yesterday," she said, with what she hoped was an encouraging smile.
"Thanks, I think," he said. "Er… who else saw me? Yesterday, I mean."
"Professor Dumbledore, Professor Granger and Madam Pomfrey."
"Whoa, wait – Granger? Hermione Granger?"
"Yes. You thought I was her, remember?"
He squinted at her again. She decided she really didn't like being, well looked at so thoroughly. It was unnerving. "You do look like her," he said eventually. "I'm sorry. I must have been really delirious."
Beth said "Yes…" before she could stop herself. "But you seem okay now," she added quickly.
He nodded. "I was on a Restorative Potion," he told her. "Feels great for the first few hours, but when it wears off it brings you down twice as low as you were before. Also extremely additive, like Dreamless Sleep, but it's out of my system now, so…" he stopped suddenly. "Don't go spreading that around, please. I'll get in trouble for educating second years about wizarding drugs."
"I'm in third year," she corrected him.
"Really."
"You're pretty lucky you showed up on a Hogsmeade day," said Beth, attempting to fill the silence. "There'd have been loads of people around otherwise. The place is always really empty on Hogsmeade weekends."
"Lucky for me you were there, then," said the man, with a smile.
Suddenly Beth heard voices from behind the door. One look at the man told her that he heard them too – and she hadn't even got a chance to tell him about Professor Snape… "Now I'm for it!" she squeaked.
The man, to her great surprise, jerked a thumb towards the wardrobe.
OOO
Hermione sat in the big armchair in her room, cradling a cup of cold tea in her hands.
Not again.
Harry was dead. He had died almost exactly four years ago, the day after Ron's birthday. It was the worst day of her life, and Ron's, and even Dumbledore had shed tears at the funeral. There had been a funeral, although there was no body to bury.
There were witnesses, of course. She was one of them. Harry's body was burnt to ashes and with him went all the hopes and dreams of the wizarding world.
And yet, not all. Perhaps it was to do with the fact that there had been no body to bury, that they'd carried an empty coffin to the grave and shed tears over that which they could no longer see… but somehow, some of them still hoped that maybe somehow, in the way that Harry so often achieved the impossible, he had survived.
Maybe he's still alive.
Ron hadn't taken it in, not really, despite being there when it happened. Ginny hadn't. Luna kept insisting that it was all a trick, which made it all the more painful for those that did believe it, and poor Luna was now even more lonely at twenty-one than she had been at fourteen.
And Hermione? She'd seen it… and she'd still believed there was a chance… that maybe someday, he would come back. Somehow.
And he had. He'd turned up outside Hogwarts' gates the July after next, almost two years and four months after his death, the month after Ginny and Luna had left school. Hermione and Ron were there as soon as they got word. He looked bedraggled and ill, and he walked with a limp. But the eyes and scar were the same, and Hermione had cried on his shoulder and Ron had hugged him for what seemed like an hour. He'd seemed a little different, but of course he would be, after all he had been through.
Snape wasn't there. He was out of town somewhere, on one of his many trips. By the time someone had warned him that something was wrong at Hogwarts, it was too late.
When he at Hogwarts, a week after Harry's spectacular arrival, Professor Flitwick was already dead. Snape caught up to the impostor in one of Hogwarts' upper classrooms, and stunned him. After they removed the many layers of charms and concealments that had fooled even Dumbledore, 'Harry' was revealed to be Marcus Flint.
"His mind was open," Hermione remembered Dumbledore telling Snape, quietly, as she and Ron stood staring at what they had believed to be their friend. "It was Harry."
"Maybe it nearly was," said Snape. "Voldemort must have taken all of Potter's thoughts and memories and transferred them to Flint. What you saw in him was the last remains of Harry Potter."
Flint died that night. They decided there must have been a suicide element to his mission, which, unless it had been the murder of Professor Flitwick, had failed.
And that was the end of the Death Eater charade for Professor Severus Snape. Unfortunately, he hadn't been the only one around when he'd foiled whatever plan Voldemort had for Hogwarts, and word had spread among the students whose parents had Dark sympathies. He hadn't left the castle for months, under Dumbledore's orders, and even now he rarely went outside Hogsmeade.
But most of all, the incident had shattered any last hopes that anyone had for Harry's return. People went on with their lives, and the Order of the Pheonix started frantically searching for ways they could defeat Voldemort without the child spoken of in the Prophecy. Hermione, much to her surprise, had been offered Professor Flitwick's position at Hogwarts, despite still having three more months to complete her teaching course. She took the exams early and passed, with only ninety-seven percent.
Another year and more had passed, with little incident. Ron was two years into training for the Magical Law Enforcement, which, he had discovered to his delight, did not require a Potions prerequisite, or even particularly high NEWTs in anything except Defence Against the Dark Arts.
No one had done well on their NEWTs that year, except some of the Slytherins. Even Hermione had found herself daydreaming during the Arithmancy final. Reliving Harry's death…
And now here it was again. The situation was too horribly familiar. A stranger arrives at Hogwarts. Who would he claim to be?
She shook her head, and glanced up at the clock. She jumped up suddenly when she realised she was late, spilling cold tea all down her robe. She cleaned it up with her wand and ran out of her room and down the corridor.
After all, she thought as she ran. The poor man hasn't even said anything yet.
She met Dumbledore and Snape outside the hospital wing. Snape, who she was told had protested loudly to her appointment as Charms Professor, sneered as she panted, leaning against the wall for support.
"Are you quite all right, Miss Granger?" he drawled.
"Fine, thank you Severus," she replied, sweetly. Stop treating me like a first year, you overgrown old bat…
"Well, here we are," said Dumbledore.
"Thank you for waiting this time, by the way," Snape sneered as Dumbledore opened the door.
"Hermione's idea, actually," Dumbledore admitted, with a wink in her direction. Snape said nothing.
One of the Gryffindor Quidditch team was watching them interestedly from one of the beds.
"Good morning, Mr. Gill!" said Dumbledore cheerfully. "Bludger, was it?"
"Goal post, sir!" announced Rupert, with a left-handed salute. Hermione looked at the boy who had replaced Harry as Seeker in his second year. Of course, he would have done that anyway because Harry would have left school… but with all the thoughts and memories that had gone rampaging through her mind that morning, it made her sad to see him.
"Very good, very good," said Dumbledore, as Madam Pomfrey bustled in from her office. "Ah, Poppy, how is our other patient?"
"Thank goodness you're here!" exclaimed the nurse, hurrying over.
"What happened?" Hermione asked, fearing the worst, as they all went to meet her out of Rupert's hearing range.
"Well… I woke him up, Headmaster, I mean, you can hardly expect me to sit back and watch a patient who may or may not have degenerative neural damage, so I hadto test him. And then, well, he insisted on getting washed, which believe me, wasn't such a bad idea…"
"You let him move around?" Snape growled.
Pomfrey put her hands defiantly on her hips. "Next time you're in here with an injury list the length of my arm, Severus Snape, I'll make you stay filthy and see how you like it."
"Injured how?" Hermione asked. "I saw the fingers and his head, but apart from that he just looked wet."
The older witch crossed her arms and recited. "The patient has various scars from the torso to the knees, back and front, some resembling whip-marks, others which look to have been made by a knife, or other sharp implement. There is a burn mark down the left side, and a double row of small puncture wounds down the inside of the right arm. They resemble Muggle injection wounds, but are too wide to have been made by a needle.
"I healed an infected cut over the right eyebrow which carried traces of rusted iron. There is evidence of a fractured tibia which healed badly, and various other old breakages are evident. There is a large area of scar tissue around the right eye, however, the eye itself seems undamaged. Finally, the fifth and fourth fingers of the left hand are missing, the fifth having been removed quite some time ago and the fourth quite recently, and inexpertly."
Hermione winced.
"There are also traces of a Restorative in his system," Madam Pomfrey continued. "It could explain his collapse yesterday, although I'd be more certain if I blamed his injuries for that…"
"It would explain why he's suddenly up and about, if the after-effects have passed," said Snape. "What kind of Restorative?"
"I don't know. But apart from that, he looks… well, better," Pomfrey admitted. "He's severely starved, but I thought it best not to feed him until you spoke to him, Professor," she addressed Dumbledore. "If he's trustworthy, I suggest you make him get a haircut."
"Thank you Poppy," said Dumbledore, grimly. "Shall we?"
Hermione nodded, Snape just looked sour. Dumbledore knocked on the door.
OOO