Harry Potter and the Simulacrum Seal

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Heart of Hogwarts

Hogwarts.

Harry thought he understood. Hogwarts was the most magical place Harry had ever been. If anything could imbue his mother's crystal with enough magical energy to tear the soul from a Horcrux, Hogwarts could.

But how could he access that power?

First thing's first, he decided. He needed to open the bag and find the crystal - but how would he have the time to do that with the Horcrux bearing down on him, killing him every time he drew his attention away from it?

'I need a distraction,' Harry told Dumbledore.

'Wait one moment.'

Dumbledore left his portrait, and Harry continued his deadly dance with the Horcrux. Spells were exchanged, but none did significant damage to either. It was frustrating to know that this battle was only meant to wear him down, and he knew it would work if things kept going as they were.

When Dumbledore reappeared, he said, 'A suitable distraction has been arranged.'

Harry wondered what that meant, but only a few seconds later, the answer came through the floor.

Never in his life had he been gladder to see Peeves.

'Oooh, a pretty-pretty,' cooed Peeves at the Horcrux. Lily's face regarded Peeves with curiosity.

Then he swooped down, picked up the wastepaper basket by the desk, and dropped it right onto her head, covering her eyes. She struggled to pull it off while Peeves tore books from the shelves and chucked them at her.

Harry grinned but didn't waste any of the precious time he had gained. 'Thanks sir - and you too, Peeves!' he called as he ran down the staircase. As he ran, Harry tore open the bag and awkwardly stuck his hand inside, feeling around for the crystal.

Aha! he thought as his hand touched something smooth with sharp corners that fit in the palm of his hand. As soon as he withdrew it, he let the bag drop.

The unevenly-shaped crystal was mostly filled with a mist that reminded Harry of a black, rain-filled cloud - but there was a silvery-white spot in the centre.

Now that he'd found the crystal, he needed a lot of magic.

'Harry!'

His head snapped to Dumbledore, who was moving spryly through the pictures in the hall, causing disgruntled gasps and shouts from the occupants he was shoving aside on his way.

With a twinkle in his painted eyes, Dumbledore said, 'Think! Which room will give you anything you need?'

Harry grinned broadly as he realized what he meant. 'The Room of Requirement!'

Dumbledore tipped his pointy hat, and Harry was off again.

As he turned the corner, an explosion blew Harry him off his feet. He tried to scramble to his feet and cringed at the painful burn running down his back, but the urgency of his situation gave him incentive enough to ignore the pain. He spared one glance for the large, smouldering hole in the wall he'd just turned by.

The Horcrux had apparently dealt with Peeves and was coming after him. Harry ran faster than he'd ever run in his life through the halls of Hogwarts, up the trick stairs, past paintings cheering him on.

His sneakers squealed as he came to an abrupt stop. He stood outside the room.

I need magic, and lots of it! he thought desperately. He was sure his eyes would burn a hole in the wall if he stared at it any harder.

The polished door with its brass handle appeared just as Harry turned and caught sight of the Horcrux stopped at the end of the hall chanting a spell.

He threw the door closed behind him just as the bolt zipped past him. Harry knew he didn't have to run anymore; the Horcrux didn't need to enter the room, so it wouldn't be able to.

All thoughts of the Horcrux - of anything - left Harry's astonished mind as he looked about the room his thoughts had created.

It was full of light that seemed to be coming from all directions. In the middle was a vast, glowing ball of black and gold with strands of many-coloured light jumping about like fishes. As he stared at it, voices filed through his mind, one after the other.

'Mr Kingsley, put that down at once!' demanded a stern teacher.

'Slytherin!' the Sorting Hat shouted, and many voices cheered together.

'Gotcher nose!' cried a boy in a thick Scottish accent.

'Twenty points to Hufflepuff!'

'Look out, Snape's coming!'

'Wingardium Leviosa!'

On and on it went. Visions flashed through Harry's mind of late students running to class, a Quaffle sweeping cleanly through a goal hoop, and rows of upper-years settled in for a long study session in the library. The order of the sounds and images wasn't sensible, but somehow they made sense taken together. Harry felt as though he were seeing, hearing, and breathing the essence of everything that made Hogwarts so special in this very room.

In the cacophony, Harry thought he heard:

'Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,

Teach us something please,'

He let it soak into his being, and he wished for several moments that he could stay there forever. Hogwarts, in moments pleasant and grim, dull and exciting, was his home, and he was so tired of fighting. If Voldemort could just leave him here...

But then he remembered his duty, and he got on with the task at hand.

Now that he was paying attention, the crystal seemed to strain against Harry's palm, hungry for the teeming life of the castle. Hoping that he was doing the right thing, Harry threw it into the light and waited.

Something happened immediately. The sphere that was Hogwarts' heart shrunk like a dying star collapsing on itself. It ended too fast for Harry's liking; the last thing he heard, in a droning chorus, was:

'Just do your best, we'll do the rest,

And learn until our brains all rot.'

When the crystal lay alone and the voices fell away, the room seemed grey, lonely, and much smaller than before. The crystal kept its dazzling light to itself, a single point of brightness in the room.

Harry picked it up - it was hot in his hands - and, with a loud creak, the door fell limply open. He saw the Horcrux's silhouette standing in the doorway.

That's odd - how did she get in?

'I found you,' the Horcrux declared in a sing-song voice. She raised her wand, but her gloating had taken her enough time to give Harry the advantage.

He quickly threw the crystal, which was rapidly becoming too hot to hold, into the air. 'Saggitare!' he cried, hitting the crystal and directing it toward the Horcrux.

'Gugh!' she choked out as she was struck by the crystal. It lodged itself in her abdomen, and the smell of searing flesh filled Harry's nostrils. The Horcrux was immobilized; its glassy eyes stared past him lifelessly.

The burning started slowly, but within an instant, the Horcrux was engulfed in bright blue flames. It didn't seem to feel pain; it was a broken doll, and its head lolled to the side as the fire curled against her hair.

Within moments, Lily's bones scattered onto the floor. When Harry picked the crystal up again, it was cold, but the bright white spot inside was larger than before.

***

Voldemort's small foot kicked the satchel lying near the entrance to the Headmaster's office before he ascended. The office was a mess of books, papers, and chocolates thrown everywhere; the only things that remained in their proper places were the portraits of the Headmasters.

The Dark Lord ran Ginny's fingers nimbly over the edge of the desk. There was a look in his shining eyes that combined nostalgia with expectation; he was perhaps imagining what it would be like to be master of Hogwarts after his too-long absence.

'The desk is quite exceptional, isn't it?'

He snapped toward Dumbledore's portrait, looking as though he'd been unpleasantly interrupted.

Dumbledore looked past Voldemort and gave his old desk a fond sigh. 'Somehow there was always enough room for my stacks of correspondence. I swear that the desk grew to accommodate it, but it was always the same size every time I measured it.'

Voldemort appeared annoyed to the point of extreme disgust. 'How wonderful for you.'

'You will never have Hogwarts, Tom,' Dumbledore declared with a prescient sureness that stoked the Dark Lord's anger.

'Oh really?' he asked with an angry sneer. He walked behind the desk and sat down cosily in the Headmaster's chair, threading his fingers together. His malicious stare met Dumbledore's look of satisfaction. 'What do you call this, then?'

'Your single moment of perceived victory before your great fall,' the portrait responded, threading its fingers together in kind.

As if to confirm Dumbledore's words, the desk started to jiggle. The jiggle grew to a rumble that itself became a momentous earthquake; the piles of books, some perhaps lamenting that they hadn't been given the chance to fall momentously off their shelves, quivered violently on the floor.

'What are you doing?!' Voldemort shrieked in alarm, holding onto the desk.

'I'm doing nothing at all!' Dumbledore called loudly over the noise, laughing as though he were enjoying a rollercoaster ride. 'The magic that holds Hogwarts together stone by stone has been drained - without it, the castle is structurally unsound!'

Voldemort opened his mouth and shouted something back, but he couldn't even hear himself as the ceiling toppled down.

***

Harry died twice before he wound up above the wreckage of the school instead of suffocating underneath it. He took a large, grateful gasp of air when he finally found himself topside. As he pressed himself up from the rubble, cutting his hands on the sharp, broken stones, he noted that at least the burn on his back hadn't been resurrected with him.

That was all he had time to think before Ginny's face, contorted in rage, blocked his view of the sky - and smashed his skull in with a sledgehammer.

When he returned to life again, Harry was still reeling.

'YOU WORTHLESS LITTLE BASTARD!' Voldemort shouted. (Harry, in his fuzzy state of mind, grinned sideways at the thought that he didn't sound nearly so intimidating with Ginny's voice.) 'I'LL KILL YOU - AGAIN!'

Voldemort stomped forward. One hand was balled into a fist at his side while the other carried a shiny magical sledgehammer that morphed into an ice pick. He didn't seem interested in spells at the moment; apparently he found physical conflict a better bandage for his shattered pride.

'Voldemort,' Harry greeted unenthusiastically. It was helpful to say his name - it reminded Harry that this wasn't Ginny.

Voldemort growled in frustration as Harry Apparated across the rubble, but the short separation seemed to give him enough time to get his fury under control. The ice pick morphed back into a wand.

'Potter,' he said, spitting as if Harry's name was a curse, 'what did you do to cause this?!'

Although it was painful to see Ginny's eyes stare at him accusingly, he tried to focus on the fact that he'd just won his first victory in too many months, and he finally had a (sketchy) plan. He patted the crystal in his pocket.

'I have no reason to tell you anything,' Harry answered with a calm voice that didn't come easily. 'You're the one who boasts about his victories.'

Harry decided to Apparate far away and leave his nemesis to stew. It wasn't time to face him yet. As he raised his wand to do just that, a voice from behind him called his name loudly.

He swivelled and saw Ron running toward him, followed by several others, including Hagrid. Harry was paralyzed by trepidation, not knowing if they were there to help him or tell him off.

Voldemort smirked, and Harry knew without using Legilimency that he was intending to exact his revenge by killing Harry's friends.

Keeping his wand pointed at Voldemort, he yelled, 'SOD OFF! I'M FINE!'

But still his unwanted reinforcements approached, their footsteps easy to hear as they crunched through the snow.

Voldemort's unpleasant smile broadened at this insubordination. 'Can't keep your forces in line?' he taunted. 'I suppose I'll have to do it for you.'

Ron stopped when he was next to Harry, who couldn't help but shoot him a brief, angry look before returning to watching Voldemort like a steely-eyed hawk.

'What?' Ron asked in puzzlement at his reaction, as though Harry ought to have expected him to be there - as if they'd last seen each other that morning instead of over a month ago.

Harry fired a spell at Voldemort (nothing in particular, just something to get his attention) and, as it was blocked, told Ron, 'Get lost.'

He couldn't see Ron's face, but he could feel his anger in his voice when he said, 'Sorry, but no. Not being around for weeks means you've given up the privilege of telling me what to do.'

Guilt stabbed him like a rusty knife. He turned to Ron. 'Look, I'm sorry, but you really have to go -'

Harry's peripheral vision caught a burst of light, and he pushed Ron aside full-force. Now standing where Ron had been, Harry didn't even bother dodging the Killing Curse; being immortal was making him lazy about that, he thought.

'No!' shrieked Ron, and Harry remembered (even more guiltily) that Ron didn't know about his immortality yet. If only he'd told Kreacher -

His soul snapped back like an elastic band, and Harry returned to life. Ron, who'd already started to sob over his body, looked up.

'H-Harry?!'

He aimed his wand and hit Voldemort with a silent curse. Surprisingly, it didn't bounce off his usually strong protections (perhaps Voldemort was getting lazy too) and Ginny's legs wobbled underneath him. He flushed pink as he tried to direct his wand at them, clearly embarrassed to have been caught off-guard by a mere Jelly-Legs Jinx.

As that went on, Harry grabbed Ron by the shoulder. 'I'll explain -'

A scream of rage startled Harry into silence: coming up the hill with McLaggen, Hagrid, and Tonks was Draco Malfoy, and his face was the most frightening of all.

'Avada Kedavra!' he screamed.

The spell hit Voldemort, and Harry was disturbed by the sight of Ginny falling lifeless to the ground, even though he knew it wouldn't be long before she was reanimated.

'We all need to leave, now,' he told them. Ron, mouth hanging open, was still staring at Harry as if he were a giant spider.

Harry gripped his shoulder and Apparated away with him, hoping that the others would follow. Tonks had a solid head on her shoulders; he expected that she'd get them to retreat. Ron was right about one thing: Harry didn't have the right to give anyone orders anymore.

***

In front of Grimmauld Place, Ron blurted out, 'You're dead.' He was viscerally afraid, and he stepped away, eyeing Harry up and down with suspicion.

Harry wasn't sure where to start, and it took too long for him to figure it out; Hagrid and McLaggen appeared next to them, and Hagrid clapped Harry on the back.

'Yeh didn't think I'd not come back, did yeh?' Hagrid chuckled deeply. 'Where've yeh bin?'

'Abroad,' was all Harry had time to say before Tonks and Malfoy popped in.

'Help me with him!' cried Tonks. Harry got a look at Malfoy, who was leaning heavily against her; blood was gurgling from his mouth, his eyes rolling aimlessly in his head.

'Mobilicorpus!' said Harry, and Draco flopped onto an invisible gurney. Tonks had some of his blood running down her robes.

'What was he hit with?' Harry demanded to know as they got Draco into Grimmauld Place as quickly as possible.

'Nothing,' she answered with deadly seriousness, shaking her head in dismay. Harry's eyes were caught by the old, grey colour of her thinned-out hair, but he didn't think this was the time to mention it.

Draco tried to speak through the blood. 'Take it easy,' Harry told him. Draco regained enough motor control to glare at Harry earnestly, so Harry paused once they'd entered the doorway, holding off the people coming to greet him with a firmly raised hand.

He leaned in, smelling Draco's blood, and Draco slowly whispered, 'I...forgot...the vow...'

'The vow? What vow?' he asked.

Draco's fingers curled around Harry's sleeve. 'Vow...to him...the mark...'

'What's he saying?' Tonks demanded to know.

Harry could recognize someone taking command when he saw it, and he was perfectly willing to cede this situation to her. 'Something about a vow to someone and a mark, I think.'

'I don't understand.'

Draco managed to choke out one last word: '...potion.'

Harry frowned with worry as Draco's head lolled back. Malfoy wasn't his pal, but he'd try to kill Voldemort, and that was enough to at least put him in Harry's good books.

Tonks was snapping her fingers near her ears and squinting as though the answer was on the tip of her tongue. 'Got it!' she declared. She immediately pushed past Hagrid, who was blocking the door, and turned the knob.

'Keep him stable. I'll be back soon,' she ordered.

Once Tonks was gone and it was clear that they couldn't do anything for Draco at the moment, attention turned to Harry once more.

'Where were you?'

'What happened?'

Quieter, some asked, 'What are you going to do?'

Harry felt cornered by all the questions. 'Stop badgering him!' said Mrs Weasley, who was rushing down the stairs to greet him with a big smile on her face. Harry felt a little sick inside, and Ron was watching him closely, as if worried that he'd infect his mum with some undead disease.

As Mrs Weasley grabbed him and hugged him tightly, tears streaming down her cheeks (and Harry's guilt meter rising off the scale), Mrs Black seemed to wake up from whatever stupor had allowed such a gathering in the hallways and shrieked obscenities at them all. A few of the crowd closed the curtains, and then they all stuffed themselves into the drawing room. There were at least three times the number of people that Harry had ever seen in the house at once before.

'I'll make tea,' announced Mrs Weasley. 'Make yourself comfortable, Harry dear.'

Harry wondered morosely if she knew that he was responsible for the death - and worse - of her youngest child.

'Well, um...' Harry didn't know how to start. Then he realized that something - or rather someone - very important was missing. 'Wait, where's Hermione?'

'Upstairs,' Ron answered. His eyes widened, and he seemed to realize that she'd chop him up into potion ingredients if he let her miss Harry's homecoming. 'I'll get her. She's resting.'

Harry waited awkwardly, and the others impatiently, for Hermione and Ron. As the stairs creaked, his trepidation only grew.

When he saw Hermione, an uncontrollable sob escaped his throat. 'Oh, Hermione...'

She stiffened and raised her chin. 'Harry,' she remarked coldly. Ron's hand tightened over hers, and the crowd parted to let her by. She was placed next to Harry on the couch, which made him uncomfortable given that she seemed so angry with him; when Ron tried to sit next to her, she grabbed his arm demandingly.

'No, you sit next to Harry,' she told him. Hermione had rarely brooked opposition before, but now everything she said came out as an almost magical command.

So Hermione scooted over so that Harry could scoot over, and Ron took a seat beside him (though, notably, he kept as far away from touching Harry as he could). It felt to him as though the three of them - him, the ringleader, and his two lieutenants on either side - were being lined up against a jury for a court-martial.

'So, I, uh...'

His thoughts were punctuated by a particularly loud moan from Draco and Mrs Black's howls. Bill and Charlie went as a team and got Mrs Black to shut up quickly; Tonks rushed up to Draco and held his head up, pushing a potion vial against his lips.

'Where'd you get that?' Bill asked her. 'All the shops are shut down.'

'Only the legitimate ones,' answered Tonks with a grimace; Harry could smell the potion even from where he sat, and it wasn't pleasant. 'I stole it. One of you can arrest me later.'

Malfoy drank the potion without being told, and he sighed in satisfaction as it took effect.

'What's wrong?' Harry asked him, earning several reproving looks from those waiting impatiently to ask him questions (and, from Hermione, a disapproving set of her jaw).

Draco scowled; the colour rose in his cheeks. 'Death Eaters, we...we all make an Unbreakable Vow to You-Know-Who.'

That got the room's attention. 'Why haven't you mentioned this before?!' asked Harry angrily.

Disdainfully, he answered, 'It didn't exactly come up in conversation, Potter! We're not supposed to talk about it!

'It's pretty basic, anyway,' he added, perhaps noticing with his wary eyes that a great deal of suspicion had been foisted upon him. 'There are only three rules: we can't harm him, we can't harm his "vessels", whatever that means -'

'Horcruxes, probably,' inserted Hermione. 'Go on.'

'And we can't tell anyone about the Vow,' finished Draco. 'That's it for most of us.'

Ron looked puzzled. 'Why wouldn't he want anyone to know about the Vow? And how come he doesn't make you lot obey his every command? I'd definitely put that on my Unbreakable Vow list if I were him.'

Draco opened his mouth to answer, but Hermione got there first. 'Of course he wouldn't want anyone to know - it would cut the recruitment rate if anyone realized they had to make an Unbreakable Vow to sign on. By the time they're at the point where they get the Mark, they can't possibly back out.'

Draco looked grimly reminiscent.

Then, her brow wrinkled, Hermione added, 'As for the other question, an Unbreakable Vow to never disobey his orders would result in an awful lot of casualties, wouldn't it? If a Death Eater failed his mission, he'd die. It seems that he probably had to forego that for practical purposes. I suppose a Death Eater could vow that he'd obey orders to the best of his ability to get around that, but defining what the best of one's ability is can be slippery. I mean, if a Death Eater made a dumb mistake, maybe that wouldn't count as "the best of his ability", and he would fall down dead just for making a misstep in a duel. And "try to obey" would be even worse...'

Apparently even without eyes Hermione noticed that she was boring people now, so she clamped her mouth shut.

'Like I said,' Malfoy concluded, as though Hermione's words had been his own, 'he can't force me to do anything for him.'

Harry connected the dots. 'But you broke your Vow!'

'That's why he needs this potion,' Tonks piped in, holding up the empty vial.

Moody rumbled, 'Death by an Unbreakable Vow can be held off - for years, even, by a competent wizard or witch - but not indefinitely. Not unless the person the Vow is made to dies.'

Even Ron looked at Draco with sympathy. 'But he can't die.'

'Yeah, well, I guess that means I'm going to die, Weasley, and you can have a party when I'm gone!' Draco madly declared, clearly perturbed by the knowledge that death was creeping up on him.

'I don't mean to be insensitive, but we have more pressing issues,' declared Bill loudly, ending the conversation and turning to Harry, whose stomach sunk. He couldn't put this off anymore.

'Okay,' he relented. He took a deep breath and told the painful story of what had occurred during the attempt to rescue Ginny as the crowd around him listed in raptly attentive horror. Harry tried not to look at Mrs Weasley as he spoke, knowing that she would be among the most devastated to hear about how her daughter had died.

When he was done, he was expecting a lot of questions from Hermione, but she seemed shell-shocked by all the information.

'I've learned a lot more today, too,' he added, hoping to get everything he had to say out in the open now.

'Wait a minute!' interrupted Ron with a desperate tone. 'You mean...you can't die either?!'

He held back a depressed sigh. 'Yeah, that's right.'

'Awesome,' McLaggen gushed, looking at Harry with breathless admiration for the first time.

'It's not awesome!' snapped Harry. 'Don't you get it?! He has part of my soul!'

'Oh Harry!' Hermione sobbed, throwing her arms around him unexpectedly. 'I'm so sorry!'

Her heartfelt sympathy affected him powerfully; it was as if her emotions seeped into him. Tears came to his eyes, and he hugged her back tightly. He lightly kissed her scarred cheek. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered in her ear.

He soon pulled back, embarrassed by everyone's attention, and stared into his lap.

'We're dead.'

The words came from Malfoy. 'No,' Harry told him with a quelling glare. 'I have a plan - well, sort of. I'll need everyone's help to make it work.'

'We'll do anything,' insisted Hermione, sounding as though she'd be willing to go to hell and back if he asked her. 'I mean...I'll be as helpful as possible...' she murmured, her head falling downward in shame of her physical disability.

'You'll be a big part of it,' he promised her. He wasn't sure how, but there was no way he'd let Hermione feel useless. She perked up at this, and he forced a smile - though it quickly faded as he remembered she couldn't see him anyway.

'Well, what's the plan?' grumbled Moody. 'The sooner we get started, the better. There's no telling how long...'

He trailed off at the fury he saw in Tonks's eyes. 'Remus won't betray us, if that's what you're thinking. He'd sooner die.'

Moody huffed. 'Might be better if he did. We could assign a new Secret Keeper.'

Tonks's jaw dropped in disbelieving outrage.

'I'll tell you my idea,' Harry interrupted to distract the two. 'We can't afford to be divided right now, so let's focus on the task at hand: destroying Voldemort.

'First off - and I know this'll sound crazy, but hear me out - I need to get into the Ministry.'

'That's impossible!' Bill interrupted immediately. 'There are Dementors all over, and we wouldn't even have time to set up the Dementor Net before -'

'I know all that!' Harry insisted - though he didn't. 'We can work out the details later. It can't be done any other way, because I need to go into the Department of Mysteries.'

'No,' Tonks declared, aghast.

'Yes,' he pronounced, gritting his teeth. 'I know there are obstacles, but if I can just -'

The room erupted in a cacophony of objections.

'We don't have the manpower -' started Moody.

'- never get to the lift -'

'- be at least a dozen guarding -'

'Shut it!' yelled Ron. 'Let Harry finish, at least!'

Thanks, Ron, he thought, beaming at his friend. Ron smiled weakly in return, but Harry could tell that him being immortal and partly soulless was straining their relationship.

'Right, so, like I was saying, once we get to the Department of Mysteries, I need to jump through the Veil, and -'

A hand shot up in the air. 'Yes?' asked Harry snappishly.

'What's the Veil?' asked a newer member timidly.

Hermione explains. 'It separates the living from the dead. Harry, you can't go in there, you'd...oh, right.'

'What?' asked Ron.

'Well, most people would die, but Harry wouldn't, seeing as he can't. I'm not sure how he'd find his way out, though,' Hermione muttered, considering the matter.

'Once I'm in there, I need to collect the pieces of Voldemort's soul, and -'

'The pieces of his what?!'

Harry sighed. This was going to take a while...and the real work was yet to come.