A Scent of Memory

Writ Large

The next day, he started on the library. The dust was worse here because the Order had seldom had occasion to peruse any of the remaining books, and the room was out of the way, tucked into a space that should not really have been there behind a battered wooden door in the drawing room. The door also tended to stick, and the house had been claustrophobic enough without any of them being locked in a tiny cupboard full of books. Well... perhaps not a cupboard, but a strangely shaped room all the same. It had space for a table and four ancient leather upholstered chairs, but the towering bookcases made it seem smaller than it was. He thought the chairs had once had something painted on the leather, but it was faded now past legibility. Unlike the rest of the house, there were no vermin here. He supposed that the room must have charms to keep rot and rats from gnawing at the books.

Harry had meant to dust, but got distracted by the books. I'm turning into Hermione, he thought. He had to remove the entire contents of the library in order to properly dust the shelves, and he kept accidentally glancing at the covers. There were genealogies upon genealogies, and vast tomes chronicling the illustrious history of wizardkind (the pure variety of wizardkind). He passed those by in favor of the illustrated books of monsters and human oddities. The books must be ancient, he thought; some of the creatures had been extinct for centuries. He stopped looking at the mythology books when a nice chapter on Isis and the abode of dead souls turned into a fully illustrated guide to mummification. Harry hadn’t wanted to know quite that much about removing brains.

Higher up, there were books on transfiguration and permanent transformations, magical artifacts – Harry wondered if they would explain the vast numbers of mysterious objects that still populated the house – and dueling: Dueling etiquette, dueling posture, dueling spells, dueling clothing. The Black family seemed especially fond of encyclopedias of dueling-appropriate curses, complete with animated and screaming illustrations of course. There were also regular etiquette manuals that Harry flipped through curiously, but the illustrations kept admonishing him not to slouch and he quickly put them back.

He had to levitate books down from the highest shelves. Some of them he found, to his surprise, were novels, and he was touched by this small sign of levity in the otherwise somber reading tastes of the Black family... Until, that is, he tried to read one. Allisandra raised her whip and smiled nastily. The Muggle knelt at her feet. "Oh, please, Mistress," it whined and kissed her boot. Ick. He sent the rest of the novels tumbling into the drawing room without examining them.

After that came the truly dark books, books on the unforgivable curses, books of love potions, the nastier half of the curse encyclopedias. (The number of books on curses seemed to be nearly infinite.) Books that were themselves cursed snapped at him and were duly stunned. There was a great, fat transfiguration book that puzzled him until he realized that it was about the transfiguration of evidence, particularly dead bodies, into harmless objects that could be carried from the crime scene or even concealed there. He wondered if that was what they had done with Snape. Was some innocent Muggle even now drinking from a cup that was strangely icy to the touch, or admiring herself in a mirror that showed every blemish with uncanny accuracy and, while it's owner slept, visions of shadowy men that crept and raged and wept and died in an endless catalogue of human suffering. Maybe he had become a book, with his life's history open upon a page. That would be the cruelest exposure of all. He could even now be waiting in this very library for someone to pull him from the shelf and pull his secrets unwillingly from him. Harry wondered if a living person could be transfigured to a book and back again and if the experience would leave a mark like faint ink stains all along their skin. Or would the transformation destroy all capability for human thought irrevocably? The book didn't say: it was interested only in the concealing of corpses, not in living men.

Something brushed against his arm and Harry started.

"Wha... Hedwig?"

He had fallen asleep in one of the faded leather chairs with a book in his lap, and Hedwig had landed in a heap upon the table before him. He blinked stupidly at her. She was trying to hold out his letter, but she was having trouble righting herself. She's hurt, he realized. There was no blood, but something had left a nasty burn on her side and she wouldn't let him touch the spot. The feathers on her right wing were all mangled and singed too. It was a wonder she had even been able to fly. It was a wonder... but what was he thinking? He swore and gathered her into his arms, ignoring her attempts to nip at him.

Eeylop's Owl Emporium was closed for the night, and no one answered no matter how loudly he banged on the door. He ran, still clutching Hedwig, to Magical Menagerie. It too was closed, but the proprietor opened the door at his frantic knock and ushered him inside. She took Hedwig from him and examined her closely.

"Young man," she said at last, "what have you been doing to this owl?"

"Nothing! She came home that way," said Harry defensively. Then, more anxiously, "She will be all right, won't she?"

"Hmm. Yes. I can fix her up this time, but she had best be more careful in the future, and it will take a while for her feathers to grow back properly. This is a bad burn she's got." Still holding Hedwig, the witch fetched a brown jar from one of the shelves behind the counter and began smearing its contents on her. "Hortense's Hibooze will speed up the healing process, but she shouldn't be doing any strenuous flying for at least two weeks, and certainly no parcel delivery."

"Do you know what hurt her?"

"Don't you?"

He shook his head.

"Unless I miss my guess, this is a magical burn. Someone was trying to curse her mid-flight."

"What?"

"I don't know what you've had her doing, but someone certainly seems to have objected."

Harry stood gaping at her.

"Now she could have simply blundered into an ambient defense system, but the burn is a bit narrow for that, so it's more likely from a wand. Now I'm sure it's all for a good cause, but I would think you cloak and dagger types would have more regard for your birds than to send them flying into enemy fire."

"Wha...? No, I mean, I'm not," Harry spluttered. "It was just an ordinary letter."

"Yes, of course it was, Dear, but I think you'd be best off getting yourself a less conspicuous bird. Owls may be quiet, but this one's much too easy to spot. It's always a problem with the snowies."

"Err..."

"Now what you really want is one of these," she continued, pulling the cover off of a cage of ravens. "Black so they're hard to spot and brainy as anything." She busied herself with Hedwig again. "Much better for daytime mail delivery than owls anyway, not that you aren't a lovely bird, My Dear." She stroked Hedwig. "Can't think why they never caught on, ravens I mean. Dead useful birds."

Harry could figure out why. He rather thought it had something to do with the way the raven in the corner was giving him the evil eye. The rest of the cage was mostly asleep, but one bird had woken sufficiently to glare at him, and Harry suddenly felt rather shorter and more awkward than he had a minute before.

"I don't think the ravens like me."

"Nonsense. Of course they do. See? My new little favorite has even woken up just to meet you. Now isn't he a handsome bird?" She scooped the glowering bundle of feathers out of the cage and deposited it before him on the counter.

Harry reached out, tentatively. The raven tried to peck him.

"Now, see, he's just the thing."

"I really don't think he likes me."

"Oh, he's just shy. He's warming up to you already, see? And I guarantee he'll avoid nasty magical mishaps like the one your owl's gotten herself into. See what good camouflage he has."

Harry wondered if the bird might not in fact peck out the eyes of the offending wizard rather than hide from him, but he supposed the witch was right.

"Well, I do need a second bird while Hedwig recovers."

"Excellent! That will be two galleons for this fine fellow here and six sickles for the ointment. Be sure to apply it every night, and she'll be fine in no time. Now you kids get home to bed. I have work to do." She shooed him out of the store, Hedwig riding on one shoulder and the raven flapping behind him.

"Thanks, Mrs... err..." But he realized that he hadn't the slightest idea what her name was and she had shut the door. Perhaps he should come thank her another time, but now he felt a bone-deep weariness stealing over him and he realized that it had been an age since he had slept properly and that the awkward nap in one of the library chairs had been more tiring than restoring. He coaxed the raven onto his hand, apparated home, and tumbled into bed. As always, his sleep was restless.

The dream began like so many of his others with the doorway in the room of death. It waited for him and he could not turn away. Closer and closer it drew, and he could hear the whispers starting. Harry... Harry... And he passed through the portal and the curtain plastered itself over his face and he tasted the icy chill and mold of the grave. He fell, screaming, down and down. Clawing aside the cloth, he found himself on the banks of a river, but so silent a river that no ripple moved upon its surface and no current moved in its depths. There was no boat, but he waded out into the water, his feet finding purchase on the sandy bottom, and he thought it strange that the river never reached past his knees, but was so broad that he could barely see the other side.

He came to it eventually, a great silver gate with bars that twisted themselves into flowers and birds, and he passed through it into a vast forest of dark trees that drooped their branches and blotted out the faint gray light that shone from somewhere far above.

He walked until the river water had all dripped from him and his footprints had run dry and then the trees changed. Instead of sagging evergreens, there were shorter trees with long, slender leaves and scarlet flowers, fleshy blossoms like fire that opened their mouths to belch forth gold. Under the trees sat a man. A raven was pecking at his hand, and Harry thought he was dead, but he stirred and raised his head as if sensing Harry's approach, and Harry saw that it was his godfather who sat there and that his mouth was stained and smeared with red.

"Are you alright," he asked. The man smiled and a red froth flowed from his lips. The raven cawed.

Harry woke up with a jolt and groped for his glasses. Had he heard something? Was someone there?

The raven let out another croak.

He relaxed again. It was just the bird. It was examining him from the top of the ornate wardrobe in the corner. It almost looked friendly in the light of morning. He should send it at once with a message to Dumbledore. He should be informed of Hedwig's injury. Absurd though it seemed, the woman at Magical Menagerie might be correct. What if someone really had tried to curse his owl? What could it mean, and who could be responsible?

He was rummaging through his half-unpacked trunks looking for parchment when a voice interrupted him: "Harry Potter, is it?"

Harry jumped. It was the portrait of Phineas Nigellus. It was so often empty that he had forgotten its existence. "Oh. Hello."

"And may I ask what you are doing?"

"Writing a letter." Harry tossed notes and old assignments aside looking for a blank piece of parchment. "It's a bit urgent, so if you wouldn't mind...?"

"If you need a message sent, perhaps I can be of assistance?"

Harry looked up. "Dumbledore's supposed to be at a wizarding conference in Oxford right now. He won't be in his office."

"And I suppose you think I can't get a message to Oxford?" The portrait looked a bit offended.

"Well you can only move between your portraits, right?"

"Certainly, but there are several past headmasters of Hogwarts hanging in St. Edmund's. It is St. Edmund's, correct?"

Harry nodded numbly and watched as the portrait emptied. How could he have been so stupid? He could contact Dumbledore through the portrait. He hadn't needed to send Hedwig into danger at all, or the new glowering bird either. And so, of course, he thought of other things that he had done and not done and remembered that portraits hung elsewhere in Hogwarts than the Headmaster's office and that he could have talked to any of them back then without Umbridge finding out, and any of them could have gone to find Phineas Nigellus and he could have found Sirius before it was too late. Or he could have used the mirror. Or... or... or a thousand other things that he had thought of only in the past years in hindsight. A black cloud seemed to come over the house, a black cloud of memories that smelled of wet dog and regret.

North of the Norwegian sea port of Haugesund lies Haraldshaugen, the reputed burial place of Harald I. Nearby is a campsite, catering to the many tourists that frequent the area. The winters are long and dark in that part of the world, but the summers are a glorious riot of light. It was especially warm that year, so the tourists were all the more surprised at the sudden chill that overtook them on that July evening. Confused, they headed back to their cabins and tents to change into something warmer. The gray shapes glided into the campsite after them. They were silent. Silent and hungry. And they were cold in their long, stiff cloaks that smelled of desiccated corpses. Their leader thought – assuming he had still did anything resembling thinking – that they would be warmer without the muffling garments. It was ironic really, that clothing made them colder. Of course, Dementors do not truly think, so these impressions swam briefly on what passed for his mind and melted away into the cold and the pressing need that drove them onward to seek a warmth that could never drive out the chill on their lips and a food that would never fill the gnawing hunger in their guts.

In one of the cabins a girl began to scream. The Dementor smiled to itself and flowed towards the sound.