Harry Potter and the Final Curse

Chapter 11 - Double Trouble

Back in the old and dusty house, little had changed in the past few weeks. The Master still sat at the table, staring into the fire, deep in thought. The two men that had appeared before entered the room and disturbed their Master, which normally would enrage him but this time they had some good news.

"What is it this time?" asked the master irritably.

"Master, we have the tome you asked for," said the taller man in the friendliest voice he could muster.

The master was shocked beyond belief. He didn't quite believe those two idiots had finally managed it, to find the thing they had been seeking for years. Getting up from his chair, he thrust his open hands in front of his two servants.

"Show me," he ordered.

The shorter of the two men produced a package from inside his robes and gracefully offered it to his Master. The Master took it and excitedly unraveled the black cloth that covered what was inside. As soon as he got a peek at what it was, his heart jumped for joy.

"At last! The Tome of Death is finally mine!" said the Master with glee, as he caressed it.

It was a very ominous looking book, and, from what he knew from his research, it was bound in human skin and written in human blood. Most normal men would be repulsed by the sight of this horrible book, but to the Master it was a treasure to behold.

"Where did you find it?" asked the Master, as he continued to examine the Tome.

"In a muggle museum, Master," said the taller man. "Security was not very tight."

"They obviously did not know of its purpose. Did you have to silence anyone?" asked the Master curiously.

"One or two, Master," said the taller man. "The muggles didn't know what hit them."

The master smirked with pleasure. "Very good," he said. He almost felt like his two servants deserved some sort of reward for their excellent work, but he decided against it. He turned his attention back to the tome in his hands.

"You have both done well," said the Master, still keeping his eyes on the tome. "You may go, for now, unless you have any other information for me?"

"Yes, Master, we do," said the shorter man. "But it is not good news."

"Well? Spit it out anyway," ordered the master.

"Yes, Master. Our spy at Hogwarts reports that the assailant has still been unable to kill Potter."

"Damn," said the Master. "No matter, Potter will slip up eventually. It is only a matter of time. Anyway now that I have the tome, it should make my plans much easier...."

* * *

Meanwhile, Back at Hogwarts, Harry was finding out who the culprit of the Pink Mischief caper was.

"Lily?" asked Harry, completely shocked. "Are you sure it was her?"

"Positive, Harry," said McGonagall. "Traces of the Pink Mischief were found among her possessions."

"But the traces of it could have been planted on her," theorized Harry, "to divert the blame from the real culprit."

"No," said Hermione unequivocally. "I'm afraid to say Lily most definitely is responsible for the theft of the Pink Mischief and its eventual transference to the Gryffindor brooms. But she is not totally to blame. She had a partner in crime."

"Tina," sighed Harry.

"Exactly," said Hermione.

"But why did she do it?" urged Harry.

"That we do not know at the moment," said McGonagall. "Anyway, regardless of the reason, it now comes down to the punishment for the crime. This would normally be a relatively simple matter but we thought it best if you were involved in the process too."

"Both Lily and Tina have until tomorrow morning at eight o'clock to get their story straight, as they are due at my office at that time," said Hermione. "I want you to be there too."

"Of course," said Harry.

* * *

The following day, at just before eight o'clock in the morning, Harry waited with Hermione in her office for the arrival of Lily and Tina. Sat down at her desk, Hermione nervously tidied her various bits and pieces, although it was really quite pointless since her desk was already impeccably neat and orderly. The rest of her office was also very immaculate, with not a thing out of place.

Harry couldn't help thinking about his own office, and how messy that was. Even thought he had been here less than two weeks it had rapidly degenerated into a bit of a black hole. He kept meaning to tidy it up but never seemed to actually getting round to doing it.

The night before had not been easy for Harry as he continued to debate if Lily was truly guilty, but the evidence against her and Tina was quite damning. Aside from the fact that the Pink Mischief was found among their possessions, several students had given eye-witness accounts of them actually stealing it and some suspicious behaviour afterwards. Then it led on to why she actually did it in the first place, but Harry, no matter how hard he thought, could not think of a good reason. Hermione, since Lily was her goddaughter, was not taking it easily either, but still considerably better than Harry was.

As he waited, Harry noticed a large leather bound book mounted on a podium to his left, by the window. It looked very old, yet it appeared to be well cared for. Without notice, the book opened on its own, and a quill, that lay in a pot of ink to its side, rose up and began to write in the book by itself. Harry stood there entranced by it.

"Oh," said Hermione, noticing the book too. "Another one."

"Another what?" said Harry, mystified.

"Another baby," said Hermione. "This detects and records whenever a witch or wizard is born in Britain."

The pen formed the name 'Gary John Harper' on the page, along with the date and his current location of 'Norwich City Hospital, Norwich, Norfolk'.

"Oh, so this is the famous magic book that tells you when to send letters of admission to people," assumed Harry.

"Well actually it's not the book that's the important thing," said Hermione. "It's the quill that detects the birth. The book does however notify me every time someone in the book reaches the age of eleven, and then I compose a letter. Just part of the many duties I have to do."

Despite Professor Snape being the real Deputy Head of the school, Hermione did many of the tasks associated with it, including the Sorting, and official school correspondences. When asked why, Hermione simply replied - 'Because they're a lot of fun'. Harry could see how some of it could be considered fun for her, but to him it was largely just extra work. Snape seemed to understand this too when he happily passed the duties over to her.

There was a knock on the door, and Harry's attention was diverted from the book and quill.

"Enter," Hermione stated loudly, as she settled back down in the chair behind her desk.

The door opened and in stepped Lily, followed by Tina, both looking extremely nervous. As Lily got sight of her father, she smiled at him, probably in order to get some sympathy. However the situation was too serious, and Harry remained straight faced.

"You know why you're here don't you?" asked Hermione, getting the ball rolling.

"Yes, Miss," said Lily and Tina quietly in unison.

"Well?" said Hermione after a short period of silence. "I'm waiting for an explanation."

Lily and Tina looked nervously at each other, hoping that the other had the right answer, but neither of them said anything, so Hermione had to do a little leading questioning.

"Whose idea was it to steal the plant from Professor Greenvale's private store?" she asked non-threateningly.

Both Lily and Tina continued to look at each other before one of them finally spoke up.

"It was all my idea, Miss," admitted Lily. "Tina had nothing to with it."

Tina, looking shocked, objected to Lily's statement. "No, Miss," she said. "It was really both our idea. We accidentally saw a letter addressed to the Professor explaining about the Pink Mischief and thought it would be fun to get hold of some of it."

"Indeed," said Hermione. "But who actually stole the plant?"

"It was me," said Lily bravely.

"But she couldn't have done it without me," said Tina, not wanting her friend to get all the blame. "I caused Tommy Garner to cut himself using the shears, and kept lookout while Lily actually broke in."

"Thank you for admitting that," said Hermione. "But I still can't fathom why you actually put it on your own team's brooms."

"That wasn't exactly our fault," said Tina. "We were going to put them on the Slytherin's brooms, but somehow my cousin found out about our plans and must have switched them with the Gryffindor ones. We only realised this the moment the broom started acting funny."

"And who is your cousin?" asked Hermione curiously.

"Terry Mulligan," said Tina.

Harry smirked. "So I guess Mr. Mulligan was not totally faultless after all," he said.

"Well Mr. Mulligan will be dealt with later," said Hermione, "but the question now remains - what do we do with the two of you?"

Harry and Hermione looked at each other for a moment, silently discussing the punishment using just their facial expressions. Harry knew Hermione long enough to know pretty much what she was thinking, the reverse being also true. They'd both been in serious trouble before, doing things even more dangerous than Lily and Tina had been up to, although Harry could not remember a time when they actually caused serious harm to another student (apart from themselves).

"I think," decided Hermione, "a suitable punishment would be the loss of fifty house points, and a week's worth of detentions, each."

Lily and Tina looked shocked for a moment, before finally coming to some sort of acceptance of their punishment.

"Is there anything else you'd like to add to the punishment, Professor?" asked Hermione to Harry.

Harry thought about this for a moment. He briefly considered about taking back the Invisibility cloak and Marauder's Map, which almost certainly had played a part in the crime, and which would probably facilitate further rule breaking, but he thought the existing punishment was harsh enough. He did however mentally cross the owl off Lily's forthcoming Christmas list, and she would have to do something pretty spectacular for him to reconsider it.

"No," said Harry. "I think that punishment should stand for now."

"Very well then," said Hermione. "You both shall be contacted soon enough once I have sorted out your detentions. You are free to go for now, but for the rest of the day you are to remain in your common room when not in lessons or at meal times."

"Yes, Miss," said Lily and Tina, before humbly leaving Hermione's office and closing the door behind them.

After they left, Harry contemplated the whole situation. Lily and Tina had become the pranksters of the current age, filling the shoes of Fred and George, as well as his father and Sirius Black, before them.

Hermione, who seemed to read his mind once again, commented, "How long do you reckon before they open their own joke shop?"

* * *

Shortly afterwards, Harry retreated to his own office to catch up on work and reflect on recent events. He stared at his fireplace for a moment before deciding to Floo Ginny and tell her what had happened. The shouting from the resulting conversation could be heard from the other side of the castle, and Harry did his very best to persuade Ginny not to send a Howler.

Harry had spoken with Ginny nearly every day since he had come to Hogwarts, where they would discuss goings on in their days and anything else that took their fancy. Harry had decided not to tell her about the attacks that had been made upon him; after all he didn't tell her every single detail in his dealings as an Auror, so there was no reason to worry her even more.

Teachers were allowed a certain number of nights and weekend days per year where they were allowed to leave the school and go home to their families. Harry had one such Saturday coming up, so he travelled back home to London, where he spent the whole day with Ginny. They had a great time together and Harry didn't want to leave. Such close times were rare now that he was working at Hogwarts and, despite being reminded by Hermione that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder', at times Harry would have given anything to spend a little more time together.

He took solace in the fact that he had at least one of his loved ones nearby, despite her misbehaviour. Harry always tried to spend a little time with Lily every day, which he thoroughly enjoyed, although the subsequent time after the meeting in Hermione's office wasn't quite so fun. Lily seemed to be very sorry for what she had done, but Harry found it difficult to forgive her.

Thinking that Tina was at least partially responsible for leading her astray, Harry indirectly told Lily to try and not spend so much time together. However, short of chaperoning Lily everywhere she went, it was going to be near impossible to enforce the separation of such a strong friendship.

* * *

As their student life went, the next few weeks were not easy for Lily or Tina. They'd both lost points for their house before, but the sudden loss of a hundred points had left them deeply unpopular among their fellow house members. The house Quidditch team, for obvious reasons, was even angrier with them.

Spending most of their time trying to stay out of the way of other people in their house was getting a little depressing for both Lily and Tina. They both decided to at least try and change their ways and started a quest to redeem themselves. Aside from completely behaving themselves and being intensely polite to everyone, they began to do little favours for anyone that needed help.

* * *

Two days after the meeting, the third attempt on Harry's life occurred.

The day in question was like any other day but with one difference. Normally Harry would go down to breakfast with Stewart Ackerley, but today Stewart was off sick, and he had to go by himself. It was only a walk of a couple of minutes down to the Great Hall, and he could probably shave a good thirty seconds off that time if he walked quicker than normal, so Harry decided to take the risk. He'd duelled with the best of them, and wasn't going to be defeated by just some student.

Almost as soon as he had left the common room via the broom cupboard, the alarming sight of a figure cloaked entirely in black, appeared in front of him down the corridor. Harry instinctively drew his wand and got ready to take action, although his mysterious foe was able to get their spell off first.

Quite predictably, yet harrowing since it was impossible to block, the figure cast the killing curse. "Avada Kedavra!"

As the sinister green ball of energy hurtled down the corridor towards him, Harry dodged it by crouch-diving to his left into a slight recess in the wall, where a large white ceramic urn lie. Using the urn as cover, Harry aimed his wand at the assailant.

"Offensio!" shouted Harry.

The knock-back jinx propelled down the corridor, straight at the cloaked figure. Although it didn't do a lot of damage, the jinx was very fast and was often enough to tip the balance in a battle.

The figure was hit dead-centre in the middle of their face, causing them to be propelled backwards a few metres, skidding down the empty corridor behind. Harry was amazed at how good his aim was, especially considering he was still a little bleary-eyed from his sleep.

Harry tried to close the distance between them as quickly as possible, and he sprinted down the corridor towards the assailant. He was getting close, about fifteen metres away, and he pointed his wand at them as they lay on the ground. However his foe managed to recover more quickly than had anticipated and Harry was now faced with a wand pointed straight at him.

Harry quickly cast his spell. "Expelliarmus!"

Unfortunately for Harry, his assailant had managed to get a spell off in time. "Crucio!"

The two spells crossed in midair as they headed towards the opposing magic-user, barely missing each other. Harry's spell managed to strike first, causing the assailant's wand to sail backwards down the corridor.

Unluckily, his opponent's spell was still on its way, and Harry attempted to dodge the spell by sidestepping it. However he wasn't quick enough to avoid it totally and it grazed his left shoulder. Immense pain racked through his body at that point, lasting only a brief moment (although it felt a lot longer), causing him to lose his concentration enough so that the assailant could escape, grabbing their wand on the way.

After he regained his control on the situation, Harry gave chase. He pursued them down the corridors of Hogwarts, as they manoeuvred their way around the school to an unknown destination. After a couple of minutes however, Harry lost them somewhere near the hospital wing.

It was only after he slowed down did Harry then fully realise the pain in his left shoulder. Since he was near to the hospital wing, Harry thought he might be able to get something to help deaden the pain, but for now he just cradled it with his right hand.

The hospital wing was thankfully empty of students as Harry didn't want to have to start making up a believable lie to cover up what happened. He caught sight of Madam Mendel at the other end of the wing, making one of the beds, and she acknowledged his arrival. As Harry slumped down on the nearest bed, Madam Mendel quickly came over to see what was the matter.

"Professor Potter, what can I...?" she began, but then soon realised that Harry was cradling his bare shoulder. "Oh, what happened? Was it that person that's been trying to ... well you know?"

Harry nodded. "Yep," he said.

"Let me have a look," she said.

Harry took his hand off his shoulder, then Madam Mendel pealed the slightly scorched robes away to get a look at the wound. Astonishingly there was no cut of any kind, but just looked a lot redder than normal.

"There's nothing really here," she said, looking perplexed. "Are you sure it hurts?"

Harry looked at her in disbelief. "Of course it hurts!" he said brusquely, the pain in his shoulder overriding his self-control a little. "I wouldn't be in here if it didn't hurt."

Madam Mendel looked apologetically at him. "Sorry," she said. "But what caused it then?"

"The Cruciatus curse," explained Harry. "I've been inflicted by this curse before, but it's never had a lingering pain like this."

Madam Mendel studied the wound closely for a moment using a small portable magnifying device that she normally kept hanging around her neck on a string. "Well, I'm afraid my experience at treating wounds caused by unforgivable curses is severely limited, but I think I may have something that might help."

She disappeared through a door to Harry's left, and emerged moments later carrying a small sealed tub.

"Here," she said, opening the lid of the tub to reveal a green coloured cream. "This might do the trick."

Madam Mendel stuck her hand into the pot and took out a large glob of the cream. It was only until she applied it to Harry's shoulder did he realise that the cream smelled like rancid meat, although he put up with it in the hope of it reducing his pain.

In Harry's experience, nearly all of the wizarding medicines either tasted disgusting, or smelt really bad (quite often both). He only knew of one medicine that actually nice, a cure for wizard pox (an illness similar to chicken pox that only afflicted those of magical blood), which actually tasted like a very milky chocolate, despite its blue colour. For the sake of the treatment, wizard pox was the only illness that children actually looked forward to getting, and when Lily contracted it at age six, she was over the moon.

After a couple of minutes, when the cream had been thoroughly rubbed in, Harry's shoulder seemed to feel ten times better, although the pain had not gone away completely. Harry thanked Madam Mendel for her help and got back to the rest of his normal day, starting with a late trip to the Great Hall for breakfast.

Later in the day, Harry naturally informed McGonagall and the rest of the teacher about what had happened earlier. They too seemed deeply concerned that the assailant actually caused him direct damage, and it seemed to reinforce their knowledge of the danger. Harry, as normal, did not mention the event to any of the students, even remotely, as he still bore the aching pain in his shoulder. The pain itself lasted for the best part of the week, but the red mark still remained even after it had gone.

Thereafter, the attacks kept on coming, averaging one every two days, varying quite considerably in time, place, and technique. Because of their seeming randomness, it was impossible to predict when the next attack would come, so Harry had to be on constant alert. The quality of magic the assailant used was getting steadily better each time, and it became much harder to evade their attacks. Fortunately Harry was able to avoid any more wounds, although there were a number of close calls.

The only common pattern was that the attacks would only take place when Harry was by himself. It would look too suspicious if Harry was escorted everywhere, especially to the students, for as far as they were concerned there were no attacks at all, but he tried to be in the company of others whenever possible.

* * *

If the only thing Harry had to worry about was avoiding attempts on his life, then things would be easy for him, but unfortunately he still had to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts. After over a month's worth of teaching, Harry had begun to get sort of used to it, but it still remained just as arduous. Somehow he had thought it would be the same as teaching in the DA but he soon found out it was at least ten times harder. Hermione kept saying to him that teaching was a doddle, but she didn't seem to realise that Harry hadn't been teaching for ten years and wasn't a workaholic.

The teaching notes that Professor Tyler had left weren't very helpful, largely due to the fact that his handwriting was abysmal, and it may as well have been in a foreign language. Not even Professor Prose, the teacher of Ancient Runes, could decipher the notes. Harry had to therefore think up his own lessons, trying to follow the laid out curriculum as closely as possible.

On one day he had lessons solid throughout the day and, when he finished those, he barely had five minutes to grab something to eat before he had to go and mark some homework assignments. By the time he finished it was nearly midnight, and Harry didn't have the energy to do anything else apart from sleep. This wouldn't be as bad if he didn't have to be on constant watch for someone trying to kill him. Luckily the staff wing seemed to be a safe haven from attacks so far, but Harry wasn't going to take the chance and become complacent there.

Once he had just about settled into his teaching routine, things became worse when Professor Asgard increased her levels of flirting to the extreme. Almost everywhere he went, Harry would find her nearby, and usually it ended up with him politely refusing an offer to spend the evening together. He did remind her on several occasions that he was married with a child but she didn't seem to take much notice of it. Harry asked Hermione if she would have a quiet word with her about it, but she seemed to think it was all rather amusing.

One main thing that was keeping Harry sane was the Quidditch Seeker Club, for which he was determined to come up with a better name, although nothing came to mind at the moment. The club had more than fifty students attending now and it was becoming quite a hot topic of conversation in the Great Hall at lunchtime.

Lily's recent spell of saintly behaviour had gone down well among her fellow students, which also seemed to improve her academic life too. Her performance in the Seeker club was also much improved.

* * *

One morning in early December, Harry was in the staff room, on one of the few free periods he had, staring aimlessly through the window. Although it had been snowing for about a week now, it only started noticeably settling this morning, covering the whole castle and grounds with a soft white veil. It was unusual to have so much snow this early in winter, even for a place this far north, but Harry wasn't complaining.

Harry had already witnessed a large number of students having a snowball fight at break time, and was expecting even more students to have a go at lunchtime. He was even thinking about having some fun in the snow himself, as back home in London it rarely snowed heavily enough.

It was fortunate that Harry shared this free period with Hermione, and they usually had the entire staff room to themselves. Despite already have a large workload of her own, Hermione always gave Harry a hand in preparing for his next lessons, which he greatly appreciated.

Harry was busy going through a stack of his notes, all the while deciding how to teach his lesson on the Patronus Charm for his sixth year class later that day.

"Tea?" offered Hermione, pointing her wand at the nearby table.

"Sure," said Harry, continuing to sort through his notes.

Seconds later, two cups of tea had materialised on the table. Reaching for one of the cups, Harry tasted it and found it to be the way he liked it, just at the right temperature to drink properly. Most food and drink produced magically didn't taste the same as preparing it the normal way, but Hermione's tea was unusually excellent, something she had perfected over many years. Whenever Harry made tea, it always tasted lousy.

Harry came across a piece of paper that he knew shouldn't have been in his notes, a pink one that smelt faintly of lavender. He didn't have to read it to know what its origin and content were.

"What's that?" asked Hermione.

"Another note from Professor Asgard," said Harry, glumly.

Harry only managed to read the words 'Dear Harry', and catch a glimpse of the words

'Love' and 'Romantic' before Hermione snatched it from his grasp and began to read it, pausing every now and then to giggle.

"Hey it's not funny, it's just plain annoying," griped Harry. "I thought you were going to have a word with her about it?"

"I did, but she seemed to think you were playing hard to get," said Hermione.

"Hard to get? Hard to get?" exasperated Harry. "In this case I'm impossible to get."

"It's just an infatuation Harry," explained Hermione. "Emily's been doing this ever since she started working here and has tried it with just about every male teacher here, including Professor Snape."

"I bet he loved that," said Harry. The thought of Professor's Snape and Asgard kissing came into his head, which lightened his mood a little. He also made a mental count of how many male teachers there were at the school, which turned out to be a fair few.

"She gives up eventually and then moves onto her next target," said Hermione.

"Well I just hope she gives up on me soon," moaned Harry. "I've got enough on my plate without having to worry about her."

Harry snatched the note back from Hermione and scrunched it up into a little ball without bothering to read it properly. He was about to have a shot at landing the paper ball in the bin at the far end of the staff room when the door was suddenly flung open and Professor Cortes entered.

"Quick! Both of you come quickly!" he shouted, gasping for breath. It looked like he had been running, as his hands straightened up his dark hair and blue hat.

"What's the matter?" asked Hermione.

"No time to explain. Follow me!" he said.

Harry and Hermione looked at each other curiously for a brief moment, before dropping what they were doing and following Professor Cortes. They ran briskly down several corridors before they eventually ended up on the first floor, where they found a small congregation of teachers, including Professor McGonagall, by a door.

Harry then realised exactly where he was - this was the entrance to the main Muggle Studies classroom. Thinking that Professor Asgard couldn't be far away, Harry looked around fearfully, although thankfully she was nowhere in sight, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"What's happened?" Harry asked, bemused.

"You better see for yourself Harry," said Professor McGonagall uneasily, pointing towards the door to the classroom. "In there."

As Harry approached the door, he dreaded to think he might find. Would Professor Asgard have plastered the walls of the classroom with 'I love Harry Potter' posters? The real answer was just as worse.

Standing high in the air was a skull, with a snake protruding from its mouth like a tongue, and the whole thing seem to consist of green stars. It was unmistakably the Dark Mark, which had not been seen since the fall of Voldemort.

"What the...?" said Hermione in shock, as she joined Harry's side.

Harry then realised that there was something else in this room that was out of the ordinary. Below the Dark Mark lay the bodies of Professor Asgard and a young boy whom Harry recognised as Donald Smith, a third year Slytherin.