A Scent of Memory

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It was Thursday and Harry was making himself a lunch of lopsided bologna sandwiches when someone ran the bell. He sprinted past the shrieking portraits to answer the door. Tonks stood on the front step looking entirely unrepentant. Her hair was pink with blue splotches today.

"Wotcher, Harry," she said over the noise.

"Tonks, I thought you were in Bulgaria," he hollered as he ushered her inside.

"I got dragged back for the conference with all the musty old men. Dreadful, boring stuff. How's it living in this wreck?" she shouted back.

Harry waved unhappily at the paintings and headed downstairs.

The stone of the kitchen muted the unholy howls from the hall and they were able to talk at a more normal level. "The conference isn't over yet, is it?" he asked when they were settled at the table.

"Oh no. We've got days and days left still." Tonks snagged a bologna sandwich. "But I suddenly felt like seeing the old place, and then Dumbledore got your message in the middle of one of the worst meetings yesterday, and I had a good excuse to get away."

"Already?"

"If you'd seen how boring those meetings are, you'd want to get away after only a few days too."

"No. I mean yes... That's not what I meant. I didn't realize paintings moved that fast. I wasn't expecting anyone for a while."

She shrugged. "Great Grandwhatsit Phineas must have thought it was important. Fudge was hopping mad that Dumbledore made him stop the meeting. How's Hedwig? Dumbledore said she'd been hurt?" As always, Tonks spoke with a volume and rapidity more typical of a Quidditch commentator than a young Auror.

Harry blinked. "Hedwig's in her cage. I don't want to let her fly around until the burn is healed. I think someone hurt her on purpose!"

"Who would want to do that?!" The blue spots in Tonks' hair were positively electric with interest.

"That's just it. I don't know. That's why I contacted Dumbledore. It might be nothing, but..."

"But no harm in being careful, eh? Eternal Vigilance!" Her impression of Mad Eye Moody nearly made Harry laugh. "All right, I'll see if there've been any reports of owl attacks. I should be getting back to the meetings." She stood. "Thanks for my day off."

"Tonks?"

"Mph?" said Tonks around a mouthful of bologna.

"What happened to Professor Snape?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, they never told us anything: He was just gone."

She nodded. "As far as I know he just disappeared one day."

"Oh."

"Why do you ask?"

"I just keep thinking about him... well, all of them. From the war... you know."

"Yeah, I know the feeling. Boy do I ever know the feeling." She gave his shoulder a quick squeeze. "I can ask around if you'd like."

"Would you? Oh, and Tonks?"

"Hm?"

"Something funny's going on with this house. I thought I heard something downstairs last night, and the paintings started screaming, but when I looked, no one was there."

"You can't Apparate through the wards. It was probably just the house. The drafty old place is enough to give anyone a fright." She ruffled his hair. "Try not to worry so much, ok?"

Harry stood at the front door and watched her Apparate away, still waving her bologna sandwich. She was right, he thought, the house really was creepy enough, and he didn't blame her for thinking he was hearing things. Maybe he was hearing things. Maybe he'd go mad from the house. Would the dark influences of the place creep into his mind as he slept? Should he escape the house while he still could? But that was entirely too paranoid a thought, and he went inside and shut the door emphatically.

Back in the sitting room, Harry trailed his fingers over the moth-eaten family tree. The raven had perched itself on the back of the sofa. It watched him curiously. At least, he supposed it was curious. It held its head at an inquiring angle and looked at him, but really, what did he know about birds. He resolved to ask the woman at Magical Menagerie about ravens the next time he saw her. He turned back to the family tree.

In the light of day, the tapestry had reverted to its usual dusty placidity. Stained wood paneling showed through the burned places and the threads crackled away at the edges of the holes when he touched them. He wondered who had woven it and how it was maintained. If Hermione had been there, she would have dived into the nearest library to come up with an answer for him, but Harry had never had much of a stomach for research and he'd seen nothing likely in the Black family library. He wondered if there had been a Potter family library. Probably not. Or if there had been, it had most likely been destroyed along with his parents in Godric's Hollow. He laughed at the irony of the name. What was the use of bravery when all it got you was killed? He wondered what Godric Gryffindor had really been like and if he had lost everything but his name. And had his name been enough in the end?

Harry would gladly trade his notoriety for a normal life, or even for a single one of the many people he had not saved. Names might have power, but only the wrong sort. He wondered why Sirius had never changed his. Even disowned and disgusted, he had remained a Black. Harry pictured it as the tapestry family tree that reached out glowing tentacles in the dark to curl around the black spots that were blank in daylight. Was Tonks irrevocably tied to the dreary old house as well? Had she really wanted to see him, or was it some animal sense that sent her home like a salmon to the dark and corrupted fountainhead? He imagined her swimming next to Narcissa, naturally pink hair mingling with hair that was pink with blood.

When he looked in the mirror that evening, his eyes were more shadowed than ever and he realized that it had been months since he had slept properly.

"It's not healthy, Dearie," the mirror chided him. It sounded rather like Hermione, but the effect was creepy rather than comforting. How did Wizards stand it? The mirrors were bad enough, but the paintings...? He'd wished at first for a portrait of Sirius, but now he was glad there was none. What if it whispered at him in the dark? What if it blamed him? Did a painting even understand what it meant to be dead? Could he stand to see it never growing older, never able to interfere? But then again, it could have given advice. At least he'd have had someone to talk to in this horrible tomb of a house. He imagined himself growing old and mad like the house elf Kreacher, listening to Sirius' portrait screaming instead of Mrs. Black's and it gave him a crawling feeling like being pressed flat to his broomstick with a gust of November wind had whistling into his Quidditch uniform and down his spine. The empty portrait of Phineas Nigellus seemed to whisper at him from the bedroom. If only he'd thought of the paintings. It would have been so simple, but he'd never considered them. He'd just never thought...

But then wasn't that exactly his problem? He never thought before doing things. Professor Snape had told him so often enough and he supposed it was true. All those times suspecting Snape, all those narrow escapes, and it had been all right. It had worked out. All the time, he'd thought he was brave and maybe even resourceful, but all he'd really been was lucky. And who was Snape to criticize? All his Slytherin wiles had amounted to the same thing. He'd plotted and planned and then, just like Harry, his luck had run out. Harry wondered how it had happened. No one had told him anything, not even rumors, but he wasn't sure if it was because their suspicions were too horrible or because they honestly didn't know. He hoped Tonks would tell him, but would anyone tell her? And maybe they were right. Maybe he did need to be protected from the awful truth, whatever it was.

As Harry brushed his teeth, one question echoed through his mind: How am I ever going to sleep?

A furious hunt through his school trunks revealed a great deal of dust along with his books. They had studied sleeping spells in fourth year, and his text had several that warded off nightmares and promised untroubled sleep. He chose one of the easy charms and climbed into the canopied bed. The spell had a delayed onset mechanism (there was a footnote that said something about natural sleep patterns, but Harry had skipped it in forth year and he skipped it now). He read the book as he drifted off, regarding it with a good deal more fondness than he had ever exhibited when he had studied it for class. But his half dreaming mind couldn't help but remind him that potions were much better for inducing sleep than spells.

He woke before dawn, and though the spell had worked and he remembered not a single dream, he was restless. The weight of the house pressed down on him and strange images seemed to flit along the bed curtains as though they were the screen and his unconscious the Muggle cinema.

He wondered what happened to dreams that you didn't remember. Did they take on some life of their own, leaving you in search of a more appreciative dreamer? And how would they find that person? Did they choose the closest person? But what would space mean to a dream? Perhaps they would choose the person closest to you emotionally or mentally. Harry's dreams, he thought, would have a long way to travel.

Perhaps, with no other outlet, they were lurking in his head even now, boiling and festering. How many times could he use the spell before his brain was rotten with them and they spilled out onto the bed curtains in reality? And suddenly, he needed to get out. Out of the bed with its funereal draperies, out of the room with its empty paintings, out of the whole morbid conglomeration of architectural depravity that was #12 Grimmauld Place.

But first he needed breakfast. Nothing looked especially appetizing, but he knew he had to force himself to eat regularly. Toast was, in the end, the least off-putting solution.

He crunched the stale bread, stiff and hard with the combination of age and cooking, and contemplated the fire. It was too little to warm the dank kitchen, but the flames were comforting to watch. They flickered and merged and – suddenly – he was looking someone's head instead of the flames.

"Tonks!" Harry nearly dropped his toast. "Did you find something out," he asked eagerly. "About Professor Snape?"

"Sorry. Not much. Dumbledore said it was better to let the dead rest in peace."

"Oh. Well... we don't know he's dead."

"No, but we know he hasn't come back. Dumbledore said he was sure he would have, had it been possible." She grimaced.

The sentiment was familiar. A cold shudder passed through him. It was familiar because he had thought the same thing of his godfather. If there had been any way... But he would not think of that. "Someone must know something. Was he on a mission? Where was he?" He had to know. Not for Snape or for Sirius, probably not even for himself. Just to know. Visions of blackberry vines and pumpkin pasties swam behind his eyes.

"Well, when Dumbledore wouldn't tell me anything, I asked some of the others and it turns out that he was in London buying supplies and he sent some sort of message."

"Message?"

"For Dumbledore. Apparently he'd discovered something important."

"He must have: he didn't show up for an exam." He still remembered the jubilation when the exam had been canceled. Only later had the shame started, a slow burn in his belly when he realized that the absence was more than temporary. And for what? He had been as close as London, maybe even close to the sanctuary of Grimmauld Place, only to be swallowed up by the teeming mass of the city. Had he ended up an unnamed corpse in a Muggle morgue? Had he...

"The last we heard from him was a note by postal owl from somewhere in Norway," said Tonks.

"Norway?" Harry's fevered imaginings were cut short. "What was he doing there?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure anybody does, but the owl was from Haugesund."

"Oh?"

"Haugesund." Tonks stared intently at him. "Don't you read the paper, Harry?

"Not lately." The Daily Prophet was filled with jubilant news of the Glorious Future. Harry didn't find his future very glorious at all. Worse still, they sometimes had articles on him: his life, his relationships, his plans.

"Well get out of there, find a copy and see for yourself."

Harry Apparated into Diagon Alley. Magical Menagerie was unaccountably closed, but he bought a few papers from the newsagent and made his way along the street to the Leakey Cauldron where he settled himself at a table in the back.

Wedged in a dark corner, he scanned headlines. Fudge was regaining popularity. The front pages bristled with little smiling Ministers holding babies and unveiling public works. There were a few features on war heroes, thankfully nothing on him this time. And then there it was in flaming purple type; the title, Muggle Murderer Strikes Again!, was visible even in the uncertain light of the pub. Harry dived into the article breathlessly.

The rash of Muggle slayings continues, and it's getting closer: The reign of terror that began in northern Norway has now moved as far south as Haugesund where the bodies of three Muggles were discovered yesterday. Authorities have declined to comment, but it is known that at least one Muggle is being held at St. Mungo's. The victims are said to have clawed their own eyes out in abject terror – the last was rendered in a red ink that oozed about on the page and gave Harry a headache to read – and the survivor is said to suffer from total loss of brain function. Is it possible there are Dementors on the loose? Could we be NEXT?

He skimmed the other papers. The monthlies had brief mentions of some sort of potentially magical disturbance originating in Scandinavia, but nothing on the latest attack. The other dailies had much the same article as the Daily Prophet, only with greater and lesser amounts of flaming purple type. The Quibbler, which he'd picked up in deference to Luna, strangely enough had the longest article. The writer actually claimed to have seen the surviving Muggle at St. Mungo's and described her manner as vacant and fishlike. It had reminded the reporter of his great aunt Prudence. A spot between Harry's shoulder blades twitched unhappily.

That night, he used the sleeping spell again. Through the open bed curtains, he could see Hedwig dozing in her cage and the raven glowering at him from its favorite spot on the armoire. Sleep was like the brush of giant wings and Harry slipped away into the silent torrents of wind.