The Man Who Knew Almost Nothing

Chapter Twenty-six

Rhymes with deceive

Something was touching him, Harry realized, as he opened his eyes the next morning. It was early, and the gray light of morning lit his bedroom. And something pointed was touching his back. He started to move, but a hand pushed him down.

“Petrificus Totalus!” he heard a voice cast.

The voice was familiar and yet unfamiliar. It required a moment for Harry to realize that it was Gilderoy who had just put a full body bind on him. The point touching his back was that of a wand. If he could have, he would have shivered.

Gilderoy stepped into his range of vision and hunched down to look at him with a smug and satisfied smile on his face. His eyes were chillingly bereft of expression or emotion. They were cold and pitilessly hard.

Harry couldn’t understand what was going on.

“It seems that all I really needed to was a good, clean conk on the head, Harry, to become my stunning self again. And I am myself again. I wish I could say that I appreciated these last few months,” he said, his facing twitching slightly, “but one can hardly call living like this enjoyable. Or at least I can’t.”

Gilderoy rocked on his heels and practically beamed, though his smile was sinister, unwholesome, almost malevolent.

“I must admit that I consider myself very fortunate to have lived with an aspiring young writer. Your memoirs are just what I need to get my career going again. I can be a celebrity again and maybe finally have everything I deserve. Or, rather, everything that I want: fame and fortune. I can have it all again!” said Gilderoy with a deep breath and a sigh.

Gilderoy leveled his wand, but seemed to think better of it.

“Memory charms are such unreliable things! Breakable, you know? I know what would be much better. I can see the headlines: Harry Potter found dead, lover publishes beautifully written co-authored autobiography. I need credibility. That would be very credible. And your name would live on with mine. Of course, what do you need with more fame?” he asked, his tone turning nasty.

“Nevertheless,” he sniffed, tucking his wand away.

“Now, how to make this look like death by natural causes? We must make it look as though poor, young Harry Potter died in his sleep after winning his first professional Quidditch game. And, unfortunately, his lover was sleeping in the other room and could not save him. Ugh! The thought of you, dark hared and hopelessly skinny, dying in bed with unsurpassingly beautiful me! Well, convenient that I wasn’t in here,” he said contemptuously.

Harry could feel his heart beating wildly in his chest. Paralyzed he might be, but he was well aware of everything that Gilderoy was saying. It terrified him more deeply than Voldemort ever had. Even during his duel with the Dark Lord he had not felt so afraid, and certainly not so powerless or so helpless. He could not even plead with Gilderoy. He could not even cast a spell.

“Here we go!” said Gilderoy, chuckling darkly as he lifted the extra pillow from the bed. “This should do the trick.”

Before Harry had even realized what he meant, darkness closed in around him. Gilderoy pressed the pillow over his face, smothering him. He could not breathe! He could not even struggle for breath! There was only the darkness and helpless terror.

“No! No! He loved you! That boy loved with the fullest measure of devotion!” he heard Gilderoy wailing. “You can’t do it! You can’t!” he sobbed.

The pillow was jerked away just as Harry’s consciousness began to flutter away. Gilderoy was still standing over him, gasping as though he too had nearly been smothered. For a brief instant Gilderoy reached down and touched his cheek. Their eyes met. And then Gilderoy Lockhart tossed the pillow away and fled.

Harry could see spots before his eyes as Gilderoy’s heavy tread retreated into the parlor. His sobs were loud and uncontrolled. There were other sounds too, but he didn’t know them. He didn’t care. Foremost in Harry’s mind were two facts. He could breathe again, and he was still in a full body bind.

“Apparate!” he heard Gilderoy scream. There was a loud popping sound and no more. Only silence.

Harry could only lay there and replay the event in his mind over and over again, hearing Gilderoy’s uncharacteristically harsh and malicious words in an endless loop of despair.

“I wish I could say that I appreciated these last few months ...” as though their good times, their nights together, their love had meant nothing. A cheap gift tossed aside soon after the holidays had ended.

“I can have it all again!” as though this had been nothing, or worse than nothing, unsatisfactory and ordinary. Harry had believed what the two of them had was all that anyone could ever need. Love. Intimacy. A companion for the long road.

“What do you need with more fame?” he had asked as though fame were a thing that Harry collected and that he, that Gilderoy, treasured, but was not allowed to have enough of. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps Gilderoy had needed more recognition, more time in the sun, but Harry would never have denied him that.

“Ugh! The thought of you,” might have been the worst of it. Emotional connections are difficult to judge, but the physical connection they had had seemed so right, so natural, so perfect. And he could discard it like that? Harry would have wept if only it were possible.

“You can’t do it! You can’t!” he had screamed in a voice that sounded more like the one he woke up to in the morning. The kindly, gentle-hearted man that he had fell in love with so quickly, so easily.

He had spared him. The part of Gilderoy that he had loved and loved him in return had saved him. And perhaps that part would return to release him from the body bind. Harry watched the room brighten with sunlight as he waited.

Then the shadows of afternoon came and the sky darkened.

He was still completely immobile and utterly wretched.

“Why didn’t he just kill me?” he thought. “Because he loved you. Because that was real,” he answered himself.

Voices. His mind was dimly aware of voices. Familiar, soothing voices somewhere far off in the distance. Or were they close? Harry could not say for certain. The world was blurry, confusing, and only just beginning to grow light again. Wasn’t darkness permanent? Wasn’t it forever? Something was forever. He thought it was the darkness that had surrounded him, but it was fading.

“I’m telling you, Moony. Harry would not miss a Quidditch match unless the situation were extremely dire,” an anxious voice pressed. He knew that voice.

“Would he have left a note?” asked another voice, less anxious, but more tired.

“Bother a note! Where are they?” asked the first voice.

“Sirius,” Harry thought, identifying the speaker by name. “Godfather?” his confused mind asked. Recognition was slow to him come to him.

“Check in there,” said the other voice.

“Professor Lupin,” No, that was an old name. He had another. “Remus.”

He heard the loud sound of footfalls. Everything was becoming louder, clearer, but no less confusing. He only wanted to retreat back into darkness.

“Harry?” questioned Sirius.

“What?” called Remus from a great distance.

Sirius and Remus had apparated in from the rainy Quidditch pitch in France as soon as they realized that Harry and Gilderoy weren’t there. The absence of the latter was easily explained by his injury, but they knew that Harry would not let his teammates down unless it was a matter of life or death. Remus had gone to check the guest room while Sirius had walked into the master bedroom.

“Harry?” he had called, spotting the slender form of his godson sprawled on the bed, unmoving. He had grabbed the door frame for an instant. His head was swimming as the thought occurred to him, “My God! He’s not moving! Is he breathing? He looks dead.”

Then he leapt toward the bed, scrabbling frantically to Harry’s side. A strangled sobbing sound escaping from his throat. He caressed Harry’s bare back and felt his neck desperately for a pulse, for any sign of life. Anything to tell him that the boy still lived.

“Padfoot! Tell me he’s not!” said Remus in a frightened voice as he watched Sirius touching Harry’s throat.

“He’s been paralyzed. A body bind,” said Sirius after a few panicked moments. It was not a difficult conclusion to make. He had seen it often enough, though it was certainly unexpected.

“I’ll get it off,” said Remus, pulling out his wand.

He removed the spell with a word, and Harry fell limp in his godfather’s arms.

“Speak to me, Harry. Tell me what happened,” said Sirius, rubbing Harry’s arms to try to bring him around. He seemed only semi-conscious.

As Harry lay in Sirius’s arms, he was physically comfortable for the first time in more than twenty-four hours. Even Sirius’s gentle chafing, which was joined by Remus patting his face and calling his name, was welcomed. But he could not immediately speak. He could not begin to fathom what to say to them as they tearfully sat there with him. His own eyes felt far too dry for tears, but he would have gladly wept. Someone was missing. Someone whom he loved had abandoned him. And he could not find the words to fit the deed.

What had happened was painfully clear. Image by image, he could see it all again in the blink of a eye. The worst of it was that he had been waiting all those long hours for Gilderoy to return for him. After all the harsh words, so uncharacteristic of the man he had come to know and love, or thought that he had known, Harry had still hoped that Gilderoy was going to come back, remove the spell, and ask for forgiveness, which Harry was very willing to give. If only he had returned ...

Harry moved his lips, but no sound emerged.

“Louder, Harry,” said Sirius, leaning closer to hear him.

“Gilderoy ... gone,” Harry managed after a few long moments. “Never coming back.”

Then he closed his eyes and felt the tide of darkness sweep him away.

Sirius’s eyes drifted from his godson to the night stand by the bed. Harry’s wand was there, but Gilderoy’s was absent. At first he couldn’t believe it. Then he felt his blood suddenly boil with rage. Gilderoy had surely done this! Sirius clutched Harry close.

“I’ll kill him,” Sirius swore. “I will kill that worthless, faithless son of a ...”

“Sirius! You can’t jump to conclusions, not now, not when Harry needs us,” said Remus, gripping his shoulders.

“We should have ... I should have been here when this happened, when Harry really needed me. We have to contact someone. Harry needs help.”

“Dumbledore? Poppy?” suggested Remus, leaving the bed.

“He isn’t their responsibility anymore. We can’t just ask them to come here. Do you know a good mediwitch or wizard?” asked Sirius, shaking his head.

“A few at St. Mungo’s,” Remus nodded, dashing into the setting room to use the fireplace.

Sirius lifted Harry into his arms and carried him from the bedroom. He was unconscious. Sirius cursed his misfortune. If Harry could only tell him where that bastard had got off to, he would go after him seeking vengeance.

Remus was already talking to a head in the fireplace when Sirius sat down on the couch with his charge.

“A body bind, you say? There shouldn’t be any lingering after effects. Unless, of course, it was used for an extended period of time. Twenty-four hours or more perhaps,” said the bearded head in the hearth, a mediwizard from St. Mungo’s Hospital.

Sirius gasped at what the mediwizard told them. Harry had been left under the influence of a magical binding spell for as long as a day? It was unconscionable! It was unthinkable! It was torture!

“We don’t know how long ...” Remus told him.

“Let me grab my things, and I’ll be right over,” said the mediwizard.

“Thank you, Darien,” nodded Remus, stepping away from the fireplace and joining Sirius on the couch. “Padfoot? How is he?” he questioned.

“I don’t know how he is,” Sirius snapped. “Sorry,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“Sirius?” questioned Harry feebly, returning to the waking world again.

“Yes, Harry? I’m here,” said Sirius. “And so is Remus. Don’t worry. We’re going to take care of you.”

“Gilderoy ...”

“Yes?”

“Did he come back for me?”

“He isn’t here. Tell me, Harry, did he put that spell on you?” asked Sirius, brushing Harry’s dark hair from his forehead.

“Yes,” said Harry softly.

“But why?” asked Remus, leaning closer to hear him.

“The memoirs ... fame ... celebrity.”

Remus looked at the untouched pile of papers next to the typewriter on the coffee table and frowned, “But they’re still here, Harry. He didn’t take them.”

“For a while he was scheming Professor Lockhart again, but then he ... remembered our love ... And then he ran away. I was certain that he had still taken them, especially since he hasn’t come back for me,” said Harry, turning his head to look at the neatly typed sheets of paper.

His eyes drifted to the mantel. Harry squinted and saw that the box with the Ministry seal, the box containing the keys to Gilderoy’s vault and childhood home, was gone. Gilderoy had taken it when he left.

“Harry?” questioned Sirius.

“He won’t be coming back.”

“I’m sorry, Harry. I wish that ...” Remus began to say, squeezing Harry’s shoulder.

A roar from the fireplace, signaling the arrival of someone by floo, interrupted whatever he might have said. It was the mediwizard from St. Mungo’s.

Darien, who had been a schoolmate of Remus and Sirius, examined Harry, who seemed to be recovering quickly, at least physically. His friends could see the despair and pain that lingered in his eyes as he reclined on the couch, covered with a warm blanket. Remus made cocoa while Sirius and Darien talked quietly outside and out of earshot, so as not to worry or bother Harry.

Remus tried to smile as he brought a mug of hot chocolate to Harry, sitting down next to him on the couch.

“Drink up. It’s nice and hot, Harry,” Remus instructed.

“I don’t want anything.”

“Just give it a taste. It will warm you up.”

“You don’t have to mother me, Remus.”

“I know that, but who else do I have to mother?” he chuckled.

“You have Sirius.”

“Well, that’s a matter of opinion. I always look at it as Sirius has me.”

“You have each other. I thought I had ...”

“None of that!” said Remus gently, but firmly. “We will get you sorted out first, and then we will handle Lockhart.”

“Unnecessary. He has returned to his manor and his old life. You should just let him stay there.”

“You know where he’s gone?”

“He took the keys. And where else does he have to go in all the world, Remus?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter. I will owl him, I think, when I feel better.”

“Really? What for?”

“It hurts, what he’s done, but I know that the man I fell in love with is still alive in him, even if he is the fraud and the selfish schemer too. I want him to know that I’m not angry with him.”

“Harry ...”

“Would you expect any less of me?”

“And would you take him back?”

“If he returned to me ... I believe that I would.”

The mediwizard gave Harry a sleeping draught before he left. He remained on the couch as he waited for it to take effect. Sirius had decided to sleep in a chair by the fire, but Remus was duty-bound to return to Hogwarts before morning. There would be exams the next day. Sirius had yet to take on the mantel of such responsibility and would remain with Harry for as long as he deemed necessary.

“You could stay with us over the holidays, Harry. Remus and I would love to have you,” offered Sirius.

“Or we could stay here with you for a while,” said Remus.

“I’ll be all right in a day or so,” said Harry, yawning.

“Of course, but we don’t want you to be alone ...”

“I was quite accustomed to being alone. I can get used to it again. Don’t worry yourselves about me.”

“The more often you say that, the less true it turns out to be. How about if I stay here until you feel better?” questioned Sirius.

“Suit yourself then,” said Harry, his eyes closing on their own accord.

It was quiet for a few minutes, but Harry wasn’t asleep yet.

“What did Darien say?” questioned Remus in hushed tones.

“It took a lot out of him. He was already weakened. He never quite recovered from the duel ...”

“And?”

“I think his dreams of being a Quidditch star ended yesterday.”

“That was never Harry’s dream. James’s, yes, but not Harry. It just gives him something to do, you know.”

“Perhaps,” Sirius acquiesced.

“What else did he tell you?”

“We will both probably outlive our young friend.”

The silence between them was very heavy, palpable. It was difficult to imagine that Harry would not even have the life span of a muggle, much less that of a true wizard. Harry had known this for sometime, and it had been his secret, his deepest and darkest.

They were right about Quidditch too. He loved the game, but with less than all of his heart. When he got on the national team, he had planned to play for three years and no longer, long enough to get some enjoyment out of it and sort himself out. Long enough to decide how he wanted to use the time he had been left with after serving his life’s true purpose, which had always been to defeat Lord Voldemort.

“I can still finish out the season if I’m not tossed off the team for missing a pivotal game. Well, not exactly pivotal. It was only France. They haven’t won the Cup in years,” he thought sleepily.

“So ...” said Remus casually, though the word seemed to stick in his throat.

“Should I go after Gilderoy? Should I make him pay the price for this?” asked Sirius.

“You would, I think, be within your rights, though the Ministry might not see it that way, but Harry would never forgive you if you killed him.”

“The boy has a heart of gold ...”

“The man, Padfoot. Harry isn’t a child any longer.”

“When he’s asleep ...” said Sirius, his voice trembling. “He looks just like James did when we were in school. Only more careworn perhaps. Sadder somehow.”

“I was sad when I thought you betrayed me.”

“Point taken.”

“Both times.”

“I only betrayed you once ... when I told Snape ...”

“Yes, Padfoot, and I forgave you after a time.”

“You never truly trusted me again though.”

“I trust you now.”

“Time. There’s an old saying ...”

“Time heals all wounds? Yes, one of my favorites,” chuckled Remus.

“Mine too.”

“Will it work for them?”

“If Harry has enough of it, perhaps. And if Gilderoy isn’t too much of a fool.”

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