Harry Potter and the Valley of Souls

Chapter 4- Sixteen in St. Mungo's

The sterile mixture of cleaning solutions and sour potions hit his nostrils about the same time that Harry's subconscious became aware of a steady beeping noise just above his head.

"Damn it, Dudley," he murmured, not yet opening his eyes. "Turn off your bloody alarm."

But the noise continued and the smell was beginning to burn his nose. He opened his eyes groggily, reaching above his head. He expected to make contact with his cousin's sausage-like hands, which he predicted to be holding an alarm clock over him. Instead, to his great surprise, he reached out and grasped far smaller fingers, which closed around his hand and squeezed. The movement startled Harry into full consciousness and he looked up to meet a pair of brown eyes, rimmed in red, which watered as they met his own green orbs.

"Hello, Harry," Hermione whispered. Her voice was strained as she tried to sound upbeat. She gave him a forced smile and squeezed his hand again.

Harry managed a weak smile in return as he took in the room. He was lying in an unfamiliar bed in a place he vaguely remembered being in before. The room was sparsely furnished. A few chairs were lined against the windows. A table, a stand that resembled a Muggle-IV that held the beeping article, and a massive wooden cabinet, which held a collection of bottles and other instruments that Harry now deduced were implements of medical care, were the other limited items that took up space in the room. The occupants of the chairs -- Mrs. Weasley, George, Tonks, Ginny, Lupin and Kingsley Shacklebot -- all stared at him mutely. Mrs. Weasley dabbed her eyes on a handkerchief and sobbed quietly. Ginny looked pale and Harry wondered if she was going to faint.

As Harry took mental attendance, he noticed a conspicuous absence among the room's occupants. His best friend Ron Weasley was nowhere to be found.

"Ron?" Harry looked around anxiously. He caught Mrs. Weasley and Lupin exchanging a look and he felt the panic rise in his throat. "Hermione..."

"Shhh, dear." Mrs. Weasley rushed forward, patting his shoulder. "No, it's nothing like that."

Harry looked back to Hermione who was now covering her face and rocking back and forth. He struggled to decipher the sounds coming from behind her hands. Much to his relief, he quickly realized they were muffled sounds of laughter, rather than sobs. Mrs. Weasley gave her a half-hearted look of reproach, before shifting her gaze in turn to George and Ginny, who were also trying to stifle snickers.

"He's fine, Harry, really," she soothed, smiling in spite of herself. "You see, you were due to come to us last week, but when you didn't turn up at the Burrow, we were concerned."

Hermione coughed and took over the story in a voice that betrayed both concern and frustration. "Ron was especially worried. Harry, he hadn't heard a peep from you all summer!"

Lupin coughed meaningfully and shook his head at Hermione.

"Professor Lupin finally came to tell us that you were in St. Mungo's," she continued. "He brought you here when he picked you up from your aunt and uncle's house. Ron was beside himself, believing that your family had harmed you and he went to Surrey to confront your aunt and uncle."

Harry cringed as he tried to imagine any confrontation between Ron and Uncle Vernon that would not end badly.

"Your aunt and uncle weren't home, but Dudley was," she said. She laughed then, breaking the mood slightly. "Ron's getting a follow-up from a mediwitch down the hall. Fred's with him. They'll be back soon."

"St. Mungo's," he whispered hoarsely as tears began to slip down his cheeks. From Hermione's comment, he'd been there for more than a few days, but the last thing he could remember was stepping out onto path in front of his aunt and uncle's house. That had to have been more than a week ago. Everyone stared as he struggled to gain his composure and he wished they would all stop looking at him.

Mrs. Weasley took her handkerchief and started lightly dabbing his eyes, stroking his hair with her other hand. "You'll be fine, love. You just need a bit of a rest."

She turned to the assembled group and cleared her throat. One by one, they exited, stopping by the bed to whisper an encouraging word or touch his hand lightly as they passed. Harry acknowledged each with a nod, but wouldn't look at any of them. Instead, he turned against the wall and closed his eyes, surrendering to his exhaustion.

He had a disturbed sleep, tossing and turning as images of Dudley and Ron embroiled in combat danced around in his head. He knew Ron wouldn't use his wand, he was smarter than that, but Harry knew his friend could fight as he had seen Ron do it a handful of times at school. Harry, however, also knew his cousin, who was a bigger and more experienced fighter than the tall redhead. Though he hadn't seen the two since their scrap, Dudley's record around the neighbourhood suggested Ron would come out worse for it. Even in a semi conscious state, Harry tried to imagine Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's reactions when they came home to the aftermath of that affair.

Aunt Petunia filled his head again, erasing previous images of fists flying in the pristine parlour. Harry dreamt most about her during that unsettled rest. He replayed their last conversation over and over in his head, trying to glean a clue as to what she may have done to warrant exile from the wizarding world.

"What did you do? Why were you...?"

"It's complicated, boy. Very, very complicated."

"Aunt Petunia, did my dad do something to you?"

"No, not at all."

Over and over, the words played in his head, never changing, never altering. Finally, they faded too, leaving him alone in darkened silence.

The day outside had turned into night by the time Harry opened his eyes again. The room was empty now and the beeping that had woken him earlier had stopped as well. Harry considered getting up and having a walk around the tiny room. He had no idea how long he had been lying in the bed and wondered if his legs would even support his weight.

As he edged toward the end of the bed, the door opened and Remus Lupin strode inside. He took a seat in one of the chairs and waited for Harry to turn to him.

"I was wondering when you would wake, Harry. How are you feeling?"

"Hello, Professor," Harry tried to sound friendly, but his voice was bland and reminded him too much of one of the robot dolls Dudley had received for a birthday many years before. He shook his body and tried again.

"Professor." Not much progress. Lupin noticed his discomfort and came closer to the bed.

"Would you mind calling me Remus, Harry?" Lupin asked. "I'd like it very much if we could be friends."

Harry nodded and opened his mouth to utter agreement. Someone knocked on the door and Lupin rose to answer it. He whispered words to the people hidden by the frame and raised his hand in a wave, shutting the door again.

"I thought we'd have a chat before your friends came in to help you celebrate your birthday," he said. "Belated of course, but you still deserve a party."

"Birthday," Harry said thoughtfully. He'd never had a birthday party before and now he felt as if he was doing something wrong. He knew he had no control over turning another year older, but the whole idea of turning sixteen when the pain of losing someone was so fresh felt wicked. In the span of a few short weeks, weeks he barely remembered, he had become a whole year older while the hands on Sirius' life-clock had frozen. Harry, if forces were kind, would become seventeen, then eighteen and perhaps twenty-five, thirty, fifty and maybe even one hundred, but Sirius would never reach another milestone, forever trapped in a single age. Harry felt his windpipe constrict and he choked on the air around him.

Lupin dashed up to give Harry a glass of water, which he drank gratefully. He allowed the air to come back slowly, but not before making the attempt to ask a question that had been plaguing him since he learned he was in St. Mungo's.

"Professor," Harry stammered, forgetting to call him Remus. "Professor Lupin, am I...am I?"

Lupin cut him off with a friendly, but determined wave. "Let's get one thing straight. You are not going to die."

Harry looked down again and cursed.

"I wish I would," he said woefully. "I'd be a damned sight happier dead."

Lupin made an indistinct noise from the back of his throat as he stiffened his body and bore a frightened expression into Harry's own terrified eyes, causing the boy to reach up and cover his mouth with his hands. Harry had spent a summer craving death, wishing for it to sneak up on him as he spent sleepless nights on the washroom floor, but he had never expressed the wish audibly to anyone. Harry knew he had said the wrong thing.

Of course, he thought, Lupin's lost so many too. He would be scared of losing more people he cared for.

"I'm sorry," he said, scared to elaborate.

Lupin's eyes clouded into a guarded expression that Harry was afraid to try and decipher, but his jaw relaxed and his hands unclenched. He leaned forward and patted Harry gently on the shoulders, pulling him into a solid hug.

"No, Harry, I'm sorry," the older man whispered over and over. Harry writhed in pain and heartache as his tears spilled out against Lupin's solid shoulder. "I'm so, so sorry."

They sat together, each working out their own grief and guilt until Harry quieted and Lupin stopped patting him. With a sigh of resignation, Lupin handed Harry a paper tissue.

"Shall I tell you?"

Aunt Petunia, Harry thought. He nodded, silenced by anticipation.

"Let's see. You know about the Distraho Fidelitas."

Harry stared blankly.

"I forget, sometimes, that you were not raised in the magical world," Lupin sighed. "You look too much like James to think you weren't raised a wizard's kid. We would forget that too often, especially in the last few years. Sirius--"

Harry blanched as Sirius' name reached his ears. He gagged, but as there seemed to be no food in his stomach, he did not vomit. Lupin handed him the water again and waited for Harry to compose himself.

"Harry," he said. "We need to get your reaction to Sirius in check." The boy swayed again and Lupin caught him. "Mung told us you were barely eating at the Dursleys, but you've vomited or fainted every time I've said his name. Even when you were lying here, if anyone mentioned him, even in a whisper, you'd start to twitch and we thought you were having a seizure."

Harry felt his cheeks flush in embarrassment and cursed himself for his weakness. "Prof- Remus, I'm just not used to hearing it yet. I can handle it. I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to be sorry about, Harry. We just want to help you." He kept a firm grasp on Harry's shoulders while he contemplated his next words. "It's not going to be easy for you and to some measure I am grateful to your aunt and uncle for giving you a reprieve, as it were. However, The Daily Prophet has announced his death. You should know that his name may be on very many lips next week when you go back to school."

Back to school next week? Lupin mentioned that his birthday was belated, but how could he have lost that much time. If he hadn't completely lost track of days, Harry left the Dursleys sometime in mid-July, before his birthday. Now, it was late August. He had been unconscious for over a month.

There was another knock on the door. Lupin smiled. "Your friends are very persistent. I'm afraid they won't give us much more time for explanations and I don't know if I will be able to explain it all if I had all the time in the world. But you deserve some answers if you still want them. Shall I continue?"

"Please, sir."

"Distraho Fidelitas is the broken fidelity spell. It is very complicated and seldom used, but effective in permanently expelling the recipient from the wizarding community. The person is often left with the knowledge that they were a witch or wizard, but has few memories of how to function within the wizarding world. Do you follow me?"

"Yes," Harry nodded. It was all very confusing, but he was able to keep up. "I think so."

Lupin continued. "Most of the recipients of the spell are forced to live a life of exile. They are forbidden to contact their families unless in extreme circumstances and save for once a year, the exiled may never see their loved ones. On Halloween, however, the wizards can step into the muggle world and walk about freely, with little to no concern about concealing their appearances. Funny looking costumes, your father would say. But, the former witches and wizards may never again enter the wizarding world. To even attempt it would mean instant imprisonment in Azkaban or death."

Harry absorbed the information without gleaning any answers. Questions swarmed around him but he did not know which ones to ask first.

"Your aunt was only a teenager when the charm was forced upon her. She left our community and your grandmother, unable or unwilling to let her live in the Muggle world alone, took her and her younger daughter to Surrey, one of the least magical places in Britain. She reinvented the whole family as Muggles, changing their last name and family history and living purely without magic for several years."

Remus took a breath and looked at Harry, who was slowly processing the information. "Lily had been young, very young, when the family made the change and it was expected that her magical heritage could be stamped out of her if not encouraged by her mother and sister. Lily, in due time, proved them all wrong and received a Hogwarts letter. Despite the reservations of both your aunt and your grandmother, Lily reentered a world she had no prior memory of."

"And people believed she was a Muggle?" Harry asked.

Lupin nodded. "It wasn't hard, really. No one had ever heard of Lily Evans. The names were different and since the women had been living like Muggles for years, there was no reason to suspect anything other than the story your grandmother told. They didn't even look like their former selves, so your grandmother could take Lily to Diagon Alley and to the train without risking detection."

Harry furrowed his brow, but Lupin continued with the explanation. "Remember, your grandmother was leaving the wizarding world of her own volition, but she didn't want to expose her exiled daughter to a life of torment and harassment. Wizarding kids have a way of finding the houses of the exiled, you know, and have a nasty habit of sending dungbombs and other 'gifts' to people who are unable to defend themselves. Just before they left the wizarding world, your grandmother altered her appearance and Petunia's to shield them from those occurrences. No such precautions were taken for Lily. She was beautiful, even then, and it would have been a shame to ruin her."

Harry detected a note of wistfulness in Lupin's voice just then. But in a moment, the same calm, matter-of-fact tone retuned. "Of course, they lived quite harmoniously for the first few years, but once Lily received her invitation to Hogwarts, life changed. Having a witch in the family did prove difficult for Petunia, with the restrictions of the charm. By then, however, she was older and had married Vernon. She was able to avoid her sister when Lily came home, even when she brought us with her, and eventually the sisters became irrevocably estranged."

"But Remus," Harry said, increasingly confused. "Dumbledore...the howler last summer..."

"Certain allowances were made for Petunia when she took you in," Lupin said shortly. Harry waited for him to elaborate, but the words didn't come.

"How is it, sir, that you know all of this?"

"Many ways, Harry." Lupin smiled and wiped the hair from the boy's face. "Your aunt was a bit of a legend in the wizarding world, until you came along that is. She was the youngest person ever to be expelled and many of us were threatened into good behaviour by admonishments like 'don't end up like Buttercup.' Your mother and father shared a bit with us when you were small as well. Well, James did most of the talking. He actually had to tell Lily about her family history once we figured out who she was." His voice trailed for a moment and Harry snorted. Leave it to my father to figure out mum's secrets.

Lupin recovered quickly. "Buttercup filled in the rest on the day I came to get you."

"Buttercup?" Harry had believed to be a nickname when Lupin had first used it in his house.

"Her real name. Your grandmother had a thing for flowers." Seeing Harry's eyes light up with another question, he added, "she doesn't remember her surname."

"What did she--"

Harry never completed his question. The door swung open, startling Harry and Lupin, who jumped up and raised his wand. Harry's best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger stood in the doorway. Hermione looked a little peeved at Ron, who was alternating between shooting her glares from two blackened eyes and using the same eyes to offer apologetic expressions to Lupin and Harry.

"Sorry, Professor Lupin," Ron said. "Visiting hours are about finished for today and Mum says we have five minutes."

"Of course, Ron," Lupin put his wand away. "We were finished here anyway, right Harry?"

Lupin's tone very much suggested that the conversation was finished, but Harry wished it wasn't so. He nodded reluctantly. Ron and Hermione entered, followed by Ginny. All three were carrying parcels wrapped in string. Harry noticed that one of Ron's hands was bandaged and he wondered, wickedly, how Dudley looked. They bounded towards Harry's bed and stood there, young faces plastered with deliriously stupid grins that Harry deduced were to brighten the mood in the otherwise awkward environment.

Harry eyed Ron's injuries warily.

"Hullo, mate," he said, keeping his gaze on the bandaged hand and avoiding the blackened eyes completely. "Feeling alright?"

Ron shrugged. "Been better of course, you?"

"Been better."

Ron was silent, obviously not knowing what to say next. Harry hazarded a gaze upward and saw hurt and confusion staring back from Ron's normally friendly eyes. He was sorry for putting this expression into his friend's look and wished to Merlin he'd never done anything to hurt him. Hermione noticed the stares that passed between them and nudged Ron who gave the other boy another, friendlier grin.

"No permanent harm done, of course."

Harry smiled. He knew Ron had forgiven his silence over the summer and they would be friends again. With a nod from Hermione, the three opened their boxes and revealed three delectable cakes, all decorated in various colours of sugared cream frosting.

"Happy Birthday, Harry," Hermione said. "We thought you deserved a celebration."

"Thank you," he said, his voice raspy with emotion. Harry, grinned, determined to put his pain away for a while. He allowed his friends to pamper him at his very first remembered birthday party. They, joined by Remus, talked pleasantly of Quidditch and gossiped about their schoolmates. He laughed at the tales that Ginny and Ron told about their oldest brother Bill's attempts to woo Fleur Delacour, who was part veela and very, very pretty. He asked about Neville and Luna and was surprised to hear that they had both spent time visiting the Burrow over the summer.

"They send their regards, Harry," Hermione told him, handing him a package. "Luna sent along these clips from The Quibbler. You can read them later if you feel up to it."

Harry took the package wordlessly. He was sure the clips included stories of the bravery he and his friends exhibited against the Death Eaters and he wasn't yet ready to face something so heavy. In the back of his mind, Harry wondered how he was going to tell them about his aunt and what he had learned, but there would be time enough for that later as well.

All too soon, the door opened again and Ron and Ginny's father, Arthur Weasley stood in the entryway.

"Dad?" Ron asked. "What are you doing here?"

"Hullo, Mr. Weasley," Harry said pleasantly. He could see that Ginny and Ron were surprised to see their father and wondered why they would react in such a way. Had there been another family fight? He looked to Hermione who looked just as stunned to see Mr. Weasley as his own two children. Lupin saw his questioning gaze and patted his hand.

"Later," he mouthed.

Mr. Weasley entered the room, stopping to hug Ginny and Ron. He looked tired and worn, but Harry could tell as soon as he saw his children there were no ill feelings amongst the family. "Harry, I'm sorry I haven't been in to see you. The Ministry and other projects have been keeping me--" He glanced at Lupin, "busy. I wish I could say this was a purely social visit, but Cornelius Fudge asked me to give you this when I came to pick up Ron, Ginny and Hermione."

Arthur produced a scroll, sealed with an official looking crest bearing the name "Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic." He gave it to Harry with a solemn expression.

"Best to read it now, son," he said nervous and sad. "Fudge is awaiting your answer."

Harry's heart began to pound so loudly he imagined the people in the room could hear it as well. He turned the parchment over in his hand his eyes prickling with tears, his throat drying with every breath. This is it, he imagined. My expulsion papers. He had broken too many rules to not be expelled from Hogwarts and after breaking into the Department of Mysteries with his friends last spring; it would have to be done in a personal letter from the Minister. Dumbledore wouldn't be able to protect him this time.

Maybe Remus will take me.

He looked at Remus, who was sadly fiddling with a string hanging from his threadbare coat. He was worried, Harry could tell.

"Harry," Mr. Weasley said, his voice cracking. "It's best to open the letter."

Harry took a deep breath and broke the seal. To his amazement, the letter was not to inform him of his expulsion from Hogwarts, but the message inside was no more comforting. Reading it over silently first, he took a breath and read aloud.

Dear Mr. Potter:

Pursuant to your role as witness to the events that took place in the Department of Mysteries on 13 June, you are hereby ordered to appear as a witness in the trial of Lucius Malfoy. Trial to commence on 30 August. Please send a reply promptly with the deliverer of this message. Further instructions to follow upon your affirmative response.

Regards,

Cornelius Fudge

Minister of Magic

Hermione made a small noise as Harry turned the letter over in his hands. He wanted to cry, but realized he had no tears left. His breath was coming in quick spurts as he fought to control the anger within him. Lucius was being granted a trial? Men who had committed far lesser crimes had been sent to Azkaban without an opportunity to present their "innocence" and yet Lucius Malfoy was being given an opportunity to defend himself. And Harry Potter himself was expected to speak against him. Was he the only one, he wondered. Clearly, Ron, Hermione and Ginny had not received similar letters and they had been witnesses. Harry choked as he considered the unfair nature of what he was expected to do.

"Harry," Ron said uncertainly.

Harry lifted his head determinedly as his eyes locked with Mr. Weasley's.

"Tell Fudge I'll be there."