When Magic is Useless

When Magic is Useless: Chapter 4

Indus

For disclaimers see chapter 1.

Warning: Slash will be hinted at again this chapter. Not overt yet, but all slash fans should just wait. If you aren't a slash fan, this is the last chapter that won't have overt slash in it. But don't worry; this will never be more than an R rating.

Themes: Slash

Rating: R

Summary: Alexander Weasley was kidnapped by a Muggle and presumed dead. But who is Ash, this new stranger making friends with the Weasley clan?

Six and a half years after Alexander's kidnapping.

Hermione put away her wand, grumbling at the Smyth (first syllable pronounced like smile) she had just thrown against the wall. "I have better things to do with my time on a Sunday morning than arrest a few lowlifes like them."

Harry sighed as he determined that the Smyth was alive but unconscious, having heard that complaint from both his friends at least fifty minutes in the last hour. "You know, Marcia and I could be cuddled up just as happily in front of a fireplace, if the three of us weren't called in to do some Auror duty. She isn't on call this Sunday, and is sleeping ALONE in our bed right now. I am not much happier than you are, but we are doing something important."

"Important? The Smyths are hardly Death Eaters. They are annoying and horribly purist. But the worst the organization has ever done to a Muggle-born is spraying some rather unpleasant messages on his/her door in rooster's blood!" Although she was griping, Hermione winced inside at that reminder of Ginny killing roosters at the command of Voldemort because the Basilisk was vulnerable to their cries.

"That may be true, but as you know we have been called in to see if they have, as was written in by an anonymous owler, been researching and learning obscure Dark spells-"

Before he could finish his sentence, he heard a yell and the sound of crashing glass from downstairs. Looking at his friend in silence, he saw acknowledgement that it was her husband who had shouted. They sprang into action and ran to where they had left him.

He was in the living room, or rather at the entrance to a secret room. What they had thought was mirrors initially had proven to be a gateway to a library that made the restricted section at Hogwarts look like Hyde Park. The Darkness in that room could almost be smelt by the Aurors and Harry had to fight the burning pain in the scar on his forehead.

Hermione and Harry immediately began to shoot spells and duck curses with Ron against the four wizards in the Dark library. It did not take them long to defeat the four Smyths, as Smyths were evil but not very powerful, especially compared to the trio who had defeated Voldemort.

When their adversaries were on the ground, disarmed and unconscious, Ron kneeled beside them to examine their wands while his wife and best friend looked at the books. Casting the Priori Incantatem Spell with a modification Penelope had created allowed them to see a large number of spells the wizards or witches had used that wand for, rather than just the last one.

"Interesting," he murmured.

"What is it?" Harry asked distractedly as he tried to subdue a book that seemed intent on making sure James was the last Potter born for a while.

"These wizards and witches all seem to have used simple dark spells that I can easily recognize. The library suggests that our owler was correct, but these wands do not support that suggestion."

"I don't agree with you." Ignoring her husband's mutter of how there was nothing unusual in that, Hermione continued. "The curses on these books have not yet been dealt with. If I was studying from these books, there is no way that I would take the time to put these rather intricate curses on them each time I put them away. No, this library is new, and they have not yet had time to do more than read some of these books. I doubt more than one or two-"

Here she turned to look at Ron, and her new position allowed her to see the man in the living room behind him. He was whispering something, his wand pointed at her and his eyes gleaming with insanity. She couldn't speak, or think of anything other than her stupidity in not tying him up when she had left him upstairs.

Her sudden silence, however, was telling and both her companions reacted as they had been trained to. Harry whipped out his wand and spun around to curse the Smyth into oblivion. Ron, without turning, pushed himself off his knees and in between Hermione and the enemy he still had not seen. He held her eyes as Harry shouted "Expelliarmus!" about a second too late.

When the dark spell hit Ron, it was almost anti-climactic. He did not move for a second, and then very, very slowly, slid to his knees.

Ron! She screamed in her mind, but it only came out as a whisper. She caught him before his head touched the floor, while their best friend bound their foe, leaving his mouth free.

"What did you do? What was that spell?" Harry's voice was desperate, and through her own fear and grief Hermione recognized that she needed to be strong for all of them right then. The Boy Who Lived needed his best friend, his first family, the way most people needed their mothers no matter how old they were.

Ron's eyes flickered open. Breathing softly, he asked her what was wrong.

"How do you feel?" she asked anxiously, looking for any physical signs of a dark curse. And then she saw it, similar to the Dark Mark, to a Muggle symbol of danger, but a different curse that threatened the man she had loved since before she was old enough to understand what she felt.

Ron had always had problems understanding Hermione. He knew her in many ways better than she knew herself, but when it came to reading her he often relied on Harry for help. It wasn't so much that he couldn't recognize her emotions; rather, his temper and impatience did not allow him time to try. But then, in that library where evil could be felt and smelt in the air, he didn't need her to speak before looking down at his hand at a symbol he had never seen before, and realizing it was the mark of a horrific curse.

Dimly, Hermione heard a familiar voice yelling at her, but she couldn't react until Harry grabbed her shoulder and shook her. "What is it? Hermione, what is that mark?"

She stopped him from touching the crimson grinning skull and quietly told him that it was a curse.

The bespectacled still-young man didn't appreciate her diagnosis. "Yes, Hermione, after almost thirty years in the wizarding world, and a little less than forty years of fighting evil wizards, I think I could recognize that. But what does it look like a - well, incomplete bloody Dark Mark?"

"It's a different curse, and one that is centuries older than Tom Riddle. I don't know much about it, but I do know that few, if any, have survived it." Her voice was mechanical, but Ron wasn't hurt by her seeming unconcern. After they lost their son they had both been forced to see how each other dealt with the most difficult blows; their marriage had depended on understanding that they were too different to grieve the same way, but identical in their need to lean on each other while they mourned. "Ron, we need to take you to Hogwarts immediately."

"All right, and don't worry, it'll be fine." Her husband slowly stood up, feeling exhausted but unharmed.

"You do that. I'll join you both there with any books that I think have been read recently so that we can find the curse they used." Harry watched as his friends used the fireplace to get to the one fireplace in the castle that had been charmed to only accept them all the time. He only hoped Sirius and Remus were quite decent and ready to receive them. There had been several incidents for the first few years until Remus had finally set his foot down and told his protégés and grandchildren that they had to give some warning before they visited.

With a sigh, Harry put aside thoughts of his extended family, still not enough but so much more than he knew he deserved, and looked for books that would explain the mark on Ron's arm. He shrunk all the books that showed traces of being read, such as having curses removed, and the ones that looked old and evil.

All the while, he didn't think or imagine what was happening with his best friend and brother. Ron would be all right, he had to be. Because for the all the greatness that was Harry Potter, the truth was always that the Boy Who Lived would have died a long time ago were it not for the love and support shown to him by the youngest of Molly and Arthur's sons.

*

Ash frowned as he prodded the half-dead black rose before him. He had hoped adding some mandrake to the plant as food would have a similar affect to adding the mandrake to crushed petals, but it seemed that the bush didn't take to mandrake very well at all. He had to find a way for the mandrake to become palatable; black roses and mandrake, as he had found a few months before, made for a wonderful awakening potion for those who had lost consciousness. Unfortunately, mandrake wasn't easy to get so his potion wasn't very useful for emergencies unless he could find a way to raise an entire bush of mandrake-enriched black roses. And that wasn't working very well.

Hmm, maybe some Venemous Tentacula should be added to the mix. Not that it would help, of course, but after a rather painful incident last week he would have liked some way to exact revenge on the blasted plant!

Art burst in, shouting incomprehensibly at the top of his lungs. While he was somewhat used to his best friend's entrances, he had already warned Art not to explode into the greenhouses as sudden, loud noises weren't conducive to delicate work. So he turned away from his roses ready to do battle, but then he saw the tears Art was barely suppressing. "What is it? Is Lily all right?" He wasn't aware of moving, but somehow he was grasping his friend, no his brother, for if he was needed he could be a Weasley again, just for a while.

"No, it's Uncle Ron- " And just that fast, Ash was back in the body of a too-serious child who wanted nothing more than a day in the library, except maybe for his father to pick him up and twirl him around so fast his head would spin for hours. He couldn't quite hear Art over the roaring in his ears, but somehow he understood that something horrible had happened. "Is he dead?"

Art wasn't stupid; just what his father called under the influence of his twin uncles, and if he had not been so upset himself he might have wondered why someone would become so concerned and disturbed about a man he had only known a year. But steeped in worry and misery, all Art appreciated was that his best friend seemed to understand his feelings. "No, but he was attacked by a powerful old curse, called Crimson Death, and it's not been used for so many years no one knows how to cure it. Uncle Harry and Aunt Hermione are at Hogwarts, working with Professor Snape at researching a cure, but they need all the help they can get."

Ash understood what his friend was trying to say, and felt somewhat embarrassed that he hesitated before offering his own services. He knew he was exactly what they needed; he was a practitioner of unconventional healing who was trained in conventional healing. By now, Madame Pomfrey was too old to handle anything but the regular mishaps of the students, and they would need another healer to work with the researchers on a daily basis.

But he had also heard of the Crimson Death curse. He had read something about it in his mother's library. Not much, unfortunately, but enough so that he knew he would have recognized it in a second, as his mother must have done. Knowledge could be a curse sometimes; he could only imagine how devastating it would've been for Hermione to see the mark on her husband and face the possibility of losing him. And in such a way-

Although the cure of Crimson Death had not been mentioned, since there were only rumors of a cure existing at all, the book had said that it drained the life-spirit of the victim over a period of a few years. At first, it was rapid, causing the victim to change his/her life drastically. But then the victim remained weak, easily fatigued, fading away so gradually it was almost a surprise when he/she finally succumbed less than four years after the curse. But the first and last few weeks were excruciatingly painful.

Centuries of researching Crimson Death had left only rumors of a cure, and by the time Hogwarts was built only a handful of people, among them just a couple of writers, had even heard of the curse. Even if they were successful, it would require months, if not years of intense studying to find it, and Ash would have to spend all that time with the family he could not afford to expose himself to, many of whom were remarkably perceptive people.

But there wasn't really a choice, was there? A son couldn't let his father die, anymore than a healer could turn his back on a suffering human being.

Closing his eyes, straightening his shoulders, he bore an unconscious resemblance to a little boy who had once faced great physical harm and perhaps even death on a life-size chessboard. Then, grabbing his best friend and cousin's chin, he humbly offered his assistance. "I don't know much about Crimson Death, but I'll be glad to do what I can."

Art smiled, already relieved at the thought of his friend on his father's side. He had always been impressed with Ash's capability; as a Weasley, he couldn't even imagine what it was like to be facing life completely on one's own, without any familial support. "Blimey, Ash, you have no idea how much I appreciate it! My Uncle needs all the help he can get, and Professor McGonagall said she would be more than glad to accommodate anyone they needed to bring in. I'll owl Aunt Hermione immediately."

*

"Hermes, do you need a few more minutes?" Hermione smoothed the feathers of the bird that reminded her of Errol, another bird that had been delivering letters for the Weasleys long after it had eaten its last meal.

"Is that Hermes? What did Percy say?" Harry ambled into the living room of Ron and Hermione's suite, yawning slightly and looking a little more disheveled than usual.

"Actually, Hermes delivered a letter from Art, who has arranged for his friend Ash- you remember Ash, don't you Harry? - To come and help with lifting the curse. I've heard great things about him, so I spoke to Professor McGonagall and she said she would arrange it."

Harry couldn't help laughing at this manifestation of typical Hermione efficiency. It was only nine in the morning, but she had already done so much. Of course, this was a matter of some urgency. "How's Ron?"

"I'm fine." Ron walked out of the bedroom slowly, but something in his demeanor warned the others that he would not stand for any offers of help. Still, both his wife and best friend were forced to bite back gasps of shock and pain at the sight of him. Despite the passage of only a few days, he looked a great deal weaker. He seemed to have lost more than fifteen pounds already, and there was a look on his face that spoke of the exhaustion felt by those who have slim physical connections to life. It was borne on to his best friends that Ron's life on Earth was now greatly limited, unless they could find a way to lift the curse.

Hermione filled him in on the newest developments, and he looked a little embarrassed at the efforts taken in his name. But when he spoke, his words were positive. "Good, I'd like to meet Ash again. He plays a decent game of chess. Not quite as good as Ron, of course, and he seems as if he is more used to playing Muggle chess, but still, he's a better opponent than either of you ever were."

"I don't think that's saying much," Hermione replied wryly.

*

Ash stepped off the coach slowly, and put his small bag, containing all his meager possessions, down on the cobbled ground. Raising his head, he took in as much of the castle as he could, and couldn't decide if he was trying to stop the memories from flowing, or break the barriers that he had formed almost seven years ago. But he was back at Hogwarts, the place that had once been home, and it was difficult not to recall what he had experienced. The fear of a new place, but the constant presence of friends...

For a minute, he could see the two red-haired boys with the black-haired girl running to Hagrid's cottage so quickly you would have thought that they were another trio, and the wizarding community depended on their mission. But instead they were just children, who ran when adults would have walked, jumped when adults would have stood still, and part of a generation that was supposed to know no terror or violence. But then, wasn't every generation supposed to know no terror or violence? Remus had once told Ash that the day of the final battle between Harry and Voldemort had begun with Sirius crying in their bed because he hated the fact that James' son was fighting the war James had died to protect him from. And Harry himself had once told Lily that he had thanked Merlin the day she was born because Voldemort was dead.

But Voldemort hadn't brought violence to the family, to the newest group of children.

The trio Ash was seeing morphed from his dreams and memories into real people, namely Ro, Shawn and James, two redheads and a Potter again. And they were running to meet him, full of hope that he would solve this new great tragedy, not knowing that he was the last great tragedy. No, they hadn't needed Voldemort this time.