Harry Potter and the Final Prophecy

     --- Chapter Nine ---

     Nexus

Harry resolutely avoided thinking about the book as the end of term approached and Beauxbatons became filled with ostentatious and elaborate Christmas decorations, giant ice sculptures and artificial grottos filled with irritatingly chirruping wood-nymphs. However its presence continually nagged at him until finally his curiosity overcame his resistance and he went back early to the dormitory after dinner one evening and opened it. He was struck immediately by the line ``Nexus and Connection Maledictions" in the table of contents. Somewhere he had heard his mysterious link with Voldemort described as a Nexus curse ... these had been Lupin's words, he remembered, whilst he'd been eavesdropping on an order meeting last year ... He began to read the strange spiky rune-like font of the chapter. It described different kinds of cursed connections, known cases, and how these connections were created. ``In the strongest form of Nexus, the Mortal Connection, the souls of the victims are not only connected, they are imiscibly intertwined and interpenetrate each other, so that when one feels a strong emotion, so does the other, involuntarily, and moreover they may share a single perception at such moments. But the defining characteristic of the Mortal Connection gives it its name: when one of the connected individuals dies, so must the others. In the case of Warlocks Efor Agram and Mendas Shad of Tewksbury in 1349 ..." Harry stopped reading, his heart felt as if it was gripped by fingers of ice. So this was why everyone had been predicting his death with such confidence. Even if he succeeded in killing Voldemort, he would also destroy himself ... but how could that be, he wondered ... if Voldemort still possessed the protections against death which had saved him from his own deflected killing curse sixteen years ago? Maybe in any encounter it would be he, Harry, that would die, and Voldemort's soul would simply be driven from its body once more to live a parasitic existence possessing other creatures and wizards?

He closed the book with a shudder. Perhaps he should go straight to Dumbledore and challenge him with what he knew and suspected. But the more he thought about this the more it seemed pointless. Dumbledore would not lie to him, but would simply refuse to tell him anything he felt might endanger the order or their eventual hope of defeating Voldemort. He could discuss it with Hermione, but she would probably take the same view ... only Sirius might try to help him, but somehow Harry sensed that Sirius's knowledge of magic was not at the level necessary to unravel such a hideous situation.

As he dwelled bleakly on the book's information he heard Hermione and Ron having an argument in the common room outside, their voices rapidly rising. As he opened the door, Ron shouted furiously at Hermione `... you're not the only source of wisdom on the planet, you know!' and stormed past Harry into the dormitory, slamming the door behind him. Harry didn't know what to say, he could see Hermione was crying, the first time he'd seen her genuinely cry in many years.

`Oh, Harry, I just don't know what to do!' she sobbed.

Harry was very alarmed at being asked for his advice on this subject. `Er, maybe just give him time,' he suggested cautiously. `I mean, it's the first time he's had, well, you know, a sort of girlfriend, and ..'

`Sort of?' queried Hermione, raising an eyebrow.

`Well, I mean, it's not normal is it?' said Harry defensively, feeling he'd been backed into a corner by his own choice of words.

`Normal?!' demanded Hermione, her voice rising. `What's not ``normal"?'

`Well, it's like, you said yourself, Lavender trails after Seamus like a lost sheep, but they weren't friends in the way you and Ron were, and I didn't know Cho at all ...'

`So you think being friends means you can't have a relationship as well?'

`I don't know, I'm no expert, Hermione! But I just mean it's confusing, isn't it, and I expect he's pretty confused about it as well ... I know I would be.'

Ron came out of the dormitory, saw them deep in conversation and scowled and slunk out of the common room without a word.

For the rest of the week Ron pursued a policy of complete non-communication with Harry and Hermione, avoiding them at meal times and simply striding past them with a deeply offended look at their imagined betrayal of him.

Harry went to Sirius and asked his advice on what to do, but Sirius simply laughed and told him that they'd have to sort their own relationship out. `The number of times that Lily and James had massive rows and then got together again a couple of days later as if nothing had happened, it became a joke, really, and nothing I or Remus could say made any difference--' he smiled sadly `--they were both very strong-willed people, you know, that's why they stood up to Voldemort when very few were willing to risk opposing him ...'

     *

Harry and Hermione were walking round the intricate ornamental gardens of fountains and ponds at the edge of the school grounds on Saturday, discussing Sirius' verdict on the situation, when Harry suddenly felt his scar burn with pain and the sculpted hedgerow he was looking at disappeared into a blur of darkness as the world reeled around him. He collapsed onto the grass, hearing Hermione crying `Harry, Harry!' as if from a vast distance away. He could see a pit of flames, into which bodies were being hurled, one after another, people were being murdered and then thrown into the firey grave ...

He felt her hands on his face and gradually the horrific vision and the pain in his scar ebbed away. He realised he was curled up in a ball on the ground. He shook as he tried to stand, leaning on Hermione, who looked terrified. `It was Voldemort?' she asked.

`Yeah,' Harry said, wondering how he could ever put what he'd seen into words. He had no doubt that he had witnessed yet more killings by Voldemort, the ghastly combination of anger and sadistic pleasure which he'd sensed was by now all too familiar to him. `He was murdering again, many people ... with the Death Eaters ... there were mass killings ... I saw the bodies burning up in a sea of flames ...' He shuddered as a fresh wave of darkness swept through him and he glimpsed the edge of the vision again.

`You've stopped taking the potion,' she said in an accusatory tone as she helped him back to the palace.

`It has nothing to do with that!' Harry responded, with as much force as he could muster. He leant exhausted against the wall of the school and was suddenly striken with nausea, and vomited uncontrollably into one of the elaborately arranged flower beds. The rose bushes immediately started flailing their strands of thorns blindly towards him in revenge, so he hurriedly retreated inside and spent the rest of the day recovering in bed. Ron stubbornly continued to act as if Harry didn't exist, and went down to breakfast on his own without saying a word to either Harry or Hermione.

Finally Harry lost patience with Ron's performance and collared him before he could get away from them after Transfiguration. `Look, I don't know what you think is going on between me and Hermione but there isn't anything, OK!' he said angrily. `She was just asking my advice about you, god knows why ...' Hermione hovered nervously in the background.

`OK, OK,' said Ron finally, `maybe I was overreacting a bit. I'm sorry, Harry, Hermione ...'. They went in to the dining hall together, the ceiling and walls now shimmering with animated images of winter landscapes, snow-topped mountains, ice-covered lakes, and so forth.

Harry grimaced at yet another strange French concoction of glutinous over-ripe cheese and undercooked meat which sploshed onto his plate as he sat down. `I mean, frankly, I have other things on my mind at the moment, like whether I'm still going to be alive at the end of the year.' He told them about the original prophecy and how it seemed to mean that he would either have to commit murder, or be murdered himself.

Ron had a stunned expression on his face when he'd finished the explanation. `Jesus, Harry, why didn't you tell us this before? We noticed you were acting a bit weird after the battle at the Ministry, but thought that was just because of what happened to Sirius ... but this ...'

`But these prophecies ... they don't necessarily mean what you think they mean,' Hermione said, trying to find something to reassure Harry, `it's all in the interpretation ...'.

```and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives", that sounds pretty clear, Hermione,' Harry reminded her. He didn't want to tell them about what he'd learnt from Sirius's book, as he knew this would make them even more worried.

Very few of the other Gryffindors remained at Beauxbatons over the Christmas holiday, only those whose families, like Hermione's and Ron's, were still living in Voldemort's Britain. Most of the Beauxbatons students had also gone home. A large Christmas feast was nevertheless prepared, and the lavishness of this made Harry feel somewhat sick. How could they celebrate when only 100 miles away people were being systematically tortured, thrown out of the wizarding world, or murdered, simply for having the `wrong kind' of blood? Madame Maxime made an impassioned speech in French and English about how important it was for the schools to be united in the face of Voldemort's threats, but Harry had noticed soon after he'd arrived that many Beauxbatons students disapproved strongly of himself and the other half-bloods, and even more of the Muggle-borns such as Dean and Hermione.

From what Hermione told them about the contents of the French wizarding newspaper, ``Gazette de Sorcellerie", and its admiring comments on Voldemort's reforms, there seemed to be even more support for `purification' of the wizarding world in this country than at home. Madam Maxime was one of the few speaking out about the dangers of dealing with Voldemort's regime.

Ron and Hermione went out for a walk together in the snowy grounds after the Christmas meal, and Harry returned alone to the dormitory, as had become his usual practice before their break-up. He couldn't get to sleep, so started to read and re-read the chapter of `Forbidden Sorcery' about the Nexus curse. Suddenly he stopped at a footnote describing one of the more bizarre manifestations of the curse. An idea, a sudden understanding, had occurred to him, but as soon as he realised the implications of what he'd read, he pushed it down out of his conscious mind, so that Voldemort could not reach it.

He was still holding the book in a daze of shock when Ron returned, looking very cheerful. He gave Harry a thumbs-up before disappearing behind the curtains of his bed. Harry decided that he would have to dispose of the book before Ron or anyone else noticed it.

     *

As the new term began, and all the students returned, Harry was distracted from his preoccupation with his own fate by the sudden reappearance of Hagrid, who turned up at breakfast, sitting on the Hogwarts staff table, deep in conversation with Dumbledore and McGonagall, but casting furtive glances towards Madam Maxime at the head table. They went up to him after breakfast and started questioning him about what he'd been doing, but he told them `Can' talk now, you'll be seein' me after lunch, I'm takin' over from Professor Gnyevski, I'll tell yeh everythin' then!'

After a perfectly harmless Care of Magical Creatures lesson on Re'ems, which even Hermione couldn't object to (although Harry suspected it was only harmless because Hagrid hadn't yet had time to organise anything more ``interestin'" for them) they finally managed to ask him about what was happening back home.

Hagrid shook his head sadly, `We've done all we can over there, I reckon, mos' people are too scared ter stand up ter You-Know-Who, they're jus' keepin' their heads down ...'

Harry gazed around at the excessively manicured landscaped lawns of the school, which always reminded him of an giant version of the absurdly neat garden at Privet Drive. `But surely some people are still resisting him?' he asked.

`Nah, the pure bloods think that nothin's goin' ter happen ter them, an' the rest are jus' too frightened ter even say anythin' 'gainst You-Know-Who. He's got spies an' agents everywhere, an' anyone that speaks out, just disappears an' no-one ever sees 'em again.'

`But what were _you_ doing, Hagrid?' Hermione asked.

`Er, well, this an' that, yer know,' Hagrid said evasively. He suddenly caught sight of Madam Maxime inspecting her giant Abraxan horses on the other side of the grounds and blushed a deep red behind his beard. `Ah, must dash,' he muttered, hastily trying to comb his hair into a semblance of neatness with his hands as he hurried away to meet her.

Totally dissatisfied with Hagrid's information, they went to talk to Sirius after dinner. Sirius was obviously becoming increasingly frustrated at his forced inactivity and prolonged recuperation. He was pacing impatiently up and down in his room when they entered.

`Hi, Sirius,' Harry greeted his godfather, `we've just seen Hagrid and he refused to tell us anything about how things are going back home, so we thought we'd come and pester you instead. You must be getting some news, surely?'

Sirius sat down on the edge of his bed, legs apart in the familiar deliberately casual pose Harry now knew so well. `What makes you think I get told anything more than you?' he said with a grim smile, `I'm just stuck here, doing nothing useful, until I've ``completely recovered", whatever that might mean.'

`Do they still think you might be .... ?' Hermione began and then abruptly stopped herself, blushing in embarrassment.

`Might be what, Hermione?' asked Sirius, looking at her sharply.

`Well, I mean, the thing that attacked you, that possessed you,' she said reluctantly, `I mean, if it was still inside you ...'

They all looked at her in horror.

`What makes you say that?' Sirius whispered, his face white.

`I felt it,' she said nervously, `when we first saw you, before Christmas. Something demonic, evil, half-dead, struggling to live by possessing the living and destroying them. And I can still feel it, but it's much fainter now ... I'm sorry Sirius, I might be wrong ...'

Sirius slumped back onto the bed, his head in his hands as Harry watched him with a chill of fear. `No, I don't think you're wrong,' Sirius said finally, `I've had dreams ever since the fall of the castle ... weird dreams ... like memories from another life, not mine ... yet somehow ...' he shook his head to clear it. `This thing, this person as it once was, I think they experimented, like Voldemort, with the Dark Arts in order to ward off death. But they succumbed to the madness that often comes to those who practise the Dark Arts -- you only have to look at my own family for many examples of that!' He tried to laugh but made only a choking sound. `Instead of dying they lost their own body, lost contact with the corporeal world, and became some kind of spirit of darkness, living on only in the bodies of others. But I am in control, I am fighting them, they only exist in my dreams, now.' He stood up, shakily. Harry went to help him, and they moved into Sirius's small kitchen and sat down around the table while Ron distributed butterbeers from the pantry.

`So you see,' Sirius continued eventually, partially regaining his old energy, `I don't have any good news from home, except, well it's rather ironic really, did you hear that Umbridge was killed by Voldemort's purification squads?'

`Umbridge?' said Harry, totally surprised, `why, she was pure-blood, wasn't she?'

`Oh no, you see she'd been keeping secret a rather important fact, her mother was pure-blood alright, but a pure-blood hag!'

`But she was so against part-humans!' exclaimed Hermione, astounded.

`She was just trying to cover up her own status,' Sirius said, `the more she fulminated against ``dangerous half-breeds" the less likely it was that anyone would accuse her of being one.'

`We should've guessed,' said Ron, draining his butterbeer bottle and partly surpressing a belch, `the way she treated people .. it was like the more suffering she caused the happier she was.'

`What about Fudge and Percy,' Harry asked, `are they still doing what Voldemort wants them to?'

`Yeah,' Sirius said contemptuously, `they'd quite happily run things for Voldemort even if it involved massacring millions of Muggles. I can just imagine Fudge trying to justify himself ``It's a beastly business but it has to be done", he has no morality at all.'

`Are you going to go back there and help organise resistance?' Harry asked. `Hagrid seemed to think there was no point, that everyone had given up.'

`Well, I hope so. That's for Dumbledore to decide. But as I think you know, Harry,' Sirius said, looking at him seriously, `the real battle lies elsewhere. While you are still alive Voldemort will never rest. You must keep on your guard against anything unusual, anything that could be an attempt to capture you and remove you from the protections that are in place here.'

`So you think Voldemort's next move will be to attack Beauxbatons?' Hermione asked him.

Sirius raised his eyebrows at her, `I'm not sure how you deduced that from what I said, Hermione, but yes, of course, that does seem likely.'

`But we can't keep running away from Voldemort,' Harry protested, `eventually there'll be nowhere left to run, and the whole wizarding world will be under his control.'

`You're right,' Sirius agreed, `there will be a confrontation, I'm sure of it, sooner rather than later, and you must learn to defend yourself, Harry, as I explained before, you must be ready to face the worst that may happen.'

`I will be,' Harry said resignedly, aware of Ron and Hermione watching him intently, `I promise, when the time comes, I will be ready.'