The War of Shades

Chapter 42 Deeper

As much as Harry disliked using the Floo network, it had the advantage of bringing him right into the immediate environs of Hogwarts castle. It also just seemed more hospitable to travel with Cameron, having spent the holiday with him, even if 'travel' in the magical world only meant a 15 second swirl through the Floo system. Thus it was that Harry emerged from the rectory fireplace on the Saturday before classes resumed after Christmas Break. Cameron stretched and said he would need a nap before making preparations for the next day's service at the chapel, so Harry thanked Cameron for the very different Christmas Break and made his way with his things to Gryffindor dorm.

Harry was not initially surprised that the castle was so quiet. After all, he had spent several Christmas breaks in a nearly deserted Hogwarts Castle and had rather enjoyed the solitude of it. But as he made his way up to the Gryffindor dorms, he realized it was too quiet. Almost half of the students were planning on staying over the break. All who stayed were going to do additional training. Some truly preferred to maintain training, and some simply couldn't go to their families. With many of the wizarding families having taken up residence in whatever available rooms there were in Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, there just wasn't room available for students to return as well. And yet there were no students about as Harry traipsed up the stairs.

He made it all the way to the Gryffindor boys seventh year dorm without meeting a single person. It seemed like he should have at least run into fifth- or seventh-years preparing for OWLs or NEWTs respectively, but he did not. He told himself that they probably were all in safe rooms so they could study with their glasses off, but he was not completely convinced. He called to Sirius' portrait and to his relief, Sirius was not far off.

"Hello, Harry, good break?" said Sirius enthusiastically.

"Yeah, actually, it turned out that way. I learned a lot and felt good doing what I was doing. Say, what's up around here, it's awfully quiet."

"Um, well, you know, people are occupied," said Sirius, obviously avoiding a straight answer.

"Occupied? All of them? How - or is it something I'm not to know about?"

"Oh, well, I guess I'll be the bearer of the news. After all, what'll you do - kill me? Too late for that!" Sirius barked a raucous laugh, and then quieted on seeing Harry's appalled expression. "Sorry, Harry, there's just something about being the portrait of a dead guy that makes for macabre humour. Listen, everyone's in the Hospital Wing and Melony's Goblin Clinic."

"I thought the Goblin Clinic wasn't supposed to be installed for another couple of months?"

"Yeah, well, they needed the space, so they rushed it. It was just a matter of expanding the space and bringing in pallets and the medicines for goblin healthcraft."

"Now are you going to tell me why everyone is in one or the other - what happened? Everyone hex each other?"

"No!" said Sirius overenthusiastically. "There were several dozen that weren't hexed!"

"Several dozen!? So - what - is that ... fifty out of over five hundreds!!?"

"That's about right - the healer trainees, Luna Lovegood, Neville, Moony - oh but he's not a student - and a few others, I forget. They're helping with the others' recovery."

"Well, at least they're doing something right. How'd it happen?"

"They were doing training outdoors on New Year's Day and a couple of the ground teams got into a fight. Their exchanges of spells knocked a few people from the squadrons off their brooms. The squadrons that were hit got angry and attacked back, but they weren't sure which units had hit them, so they hit several that weren't involved. Some of the people in those units counter-attacked the squadrons; others blamed it on the first ground teams and attacked them instead. It escalated pretty rapidly from there. This is just what I got by listening in. The good news is that it took over three hours, because they've all gotten so much better at defense."

"That's cold comfort when they have to defend against their supposed comrades. So what nest?"

"Eventually, there weren't many people left to fight, because so many were down. The few who were uninjured finally calmed down enough to start unhexing and removing people to the castle. The teachers and elves were summoned to help as well."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Okay, that was three days ago - unless they were using worse spells than we've trained with, they should all be okay now."

"They were, most of them, but the teachers wanted to figure out what went wrong, so they tried to set the situation up again yesterday. The students got to arguing about who did what and when: it escalated again and they all got re-hexed, this time with half the teachers caught up in it as well."

Harry sighed. "Is everyone accounted for?"

"Yes, Harry."

"Any deaths?"

"No."

"I guess that's the silver lining. Well, I guess I'd better get down there and see what I can do."

Harry went first to the new Goblin Clinic and greeted everyone there. Everyone seemed cheery enough, as if nothing was unusual about several hundred students being hexed into hospital twice in one week. Harry was surprised to see Hagrid lying on a mattress on the floor.

"Hi, Hagrid."

"Hullo, Harry. Good to see you back."

"What are you doing on the floor there?"

"Well, Madam Pomfrey thought my hexes would be better treated with the goblin skills, so I was brought here. It seems, though, I'm a bit too heavy for the pallets the goblin healers use so that their patients are on a good level for them, so a mattress was brought in for me. It's real good for my back, you know."

"Uh-huh. Well, that was part of what I was getting at, but what I was more concerned with is how you even came to be jinxed out of commission."

"Oh, well, Harry, when thing started to get out of hand, I kind of stepped in to put a stop to it, and ... well, the last I remember on that is a whole bunch of differen' spells converging on me at once. You know, I've been hit with spells plenty o' times before, but that was the first time I ever been stopped by 'em."

"I can believe it. You know what this means, don't you?"

"No, Harry, other than that someone else had to care for the grounds and creatures for a few days."

"The attack on you was coordinated. Whatever is causing all this fighting doesn't just make everyone angry and ready to fight each other like a pub brawl: it makes them coordinate attacks to destroy us from within. That's no potion doing that: there has to be a hex and a clever one at that."

"I see where you're getting that, Harry. I wish I could help, but like I say, I only saw the very beginning."

Harry chatted with Hagrid and others in the Clinic for a while more, and then went through the Hospital Wing. There he found the same 'nothing's amiss' attitude. It seemed that even though they had so totally lost control, they had barely a memory of it unless pushed for details. When they remembered what happened, they didn't attribute it to any spell, but got angry with whoever they said started it all.

As Harry passed Professor Snape, who was assisting with administration of Potions, Snape hissed quietly, "I don't know how yet, but I know this is somehow because of you, Potter."

Harry hung his head, and replied loudly enough for just Snape to hear, "I'm afraid you're right. Isn't it always, Professor?"

Harry found Hermione working on non-magical injuries, mostly caused by things falling on people or people falling on things.

"You can see it now, can't you, Hermione?"

"Oh, there you are, Harry. Happy Christmas. Thanks for the books - I always wanted to read the Foundation series. See what?" she said merrily.

"Look around you! You have half the students and faculty who stayed here in bed from fighting, and that's after unjinxing most of the rest - don't you see something's up?"

"Oh, so there were a few training injuries - it's to be expected, you know."

"A few!? Less than 10 percent escaped. And that was only because they were running out of people to fight with!"

"Hi, Harry!" interrupted Colin Creevey, cheerfully awaiting unhexing from a torticus spell that had him twisted in a highly unnatural way. "They didn't run out of people to fight with, they just got tired. See, there's no curse after all!"

"Oh, Harry, can you help with Colin?" said Hermione. "We don't know who got him with that. We certainly haven't worked on it. None of us is familiar with the reversal."

Harry pulled his wand and after searching Voldemort's knowledge for the corrective, unhexed Colin, who unwound himself and stretched. He thanked Harry before trotting off happily to Madame Pince for release.

"Do you see, Hermione!? Colin thought everything was normal, having 90% of the students here in hospital."

"Oh, but it's not that odd. We had some excellent training. You should have a few more trips, Harry."

"I'd probably find a crater here if I did that!" Harry yelled sharply, then gestured an apology to the patients he had disturbed.

"You're so silly, Harry. We'd never harm the school. So what if it's been a bit busy here? Honestly Harry, we train hard - what were you expecting? Personally, I'm glad for the extra training time. A few more sessions like this and I might be ready to take the Level 1 Healer license test by the end of the year. Wouldn't that be awesome?"

Harry was infuriated and Hermione's lackadaisical attitude. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake, but he reminded himself that she was apparently being affected by the hex as well. It wouldn't do to punish the sick for being sick. He would just have to find the cure. Nonetheless, Harry growled in anger and stomped off without a further word.

Harry went immediately to the library. Harry wished Dumbledore had been able to help, but the Headmaster had said he had no idea what magic would cause such widespread aggressive behavior. He warned Harry not to attempt to use a counter-spell without knowing just what he was dealing with. Dumbledore reminded Harry about what had happened when Professor Umbridge tried to remove Fred and George's fireworks display two years earlier - the fireworks multiplied on every attempt to squelch them. Harry agreed that they did not want to risk multiplying the discord about the school by acting blindly. Still it added to Harry's frustration that Dumbledore could not even so much as point Harry in the right direction. More frustrating, and ultimately more frightening, was that if this was some sort of a spell, it was beyond the conscious knowledge of both Dumbledore and Voldemort.

When Harry got to the library he was half tempted to kick the crutches out from under a student in the aisle who had been injured the day before whose potion had not quite completed his recovery. He caught himself and thought of the clients at the Aberdeen Rescue Mission: he reminded himself that the students were all sick in a different way and didn't even realize the nature of their sickness. He'd have to do everything he could to help them, even if they didn't really appreciate his efforts just yet. Nonetheless, he was very glad to be the only student authorized to be in the Restricted Section.

Before he could get to the Restricted Section, however, he was interrupted by a jubilant voice.

"Potter! Hey, Potter!"

It was Malfoy, who was clearly enjoying the inability of the DA to function.

"Yes, Malfoy," said Harry, in his best 'let's get this over with' tone.

"Oh, what's the matter, Potter? Disappointed you missed the fun? Have you decided yet to change the name of your band of lemmings to SDA - for Self-Destruction Army!? Or if you like 'DA' it could be the Disintegrating Army - like that? You should be proud - they learned so well from their mistakes on Wednesday that they were able to repeat them precisely yesterday. Now that's progress!"

Harry smiled patiently. "Very funny, Malfoy. Aren't you even concerned about your friends who were injured?"

Malfoy sneered. "Friends!? You should know better than that! You even have those who knew better last year following you this year. I can barely get a word out of anyone but the professors. This may be the longest conversation I've had with a student this whole year."

"Why don't you join us, Draco?" said Harry genuinely. "You're welcome to come, even if you just want to work on defensive spellwork."

"That'll be the day! Besides," said Draco, jerking a thumb toward the hospital wing, "your training in defensive spells seems to be rather spotty."

Harry thought about that. That wasn't quite it - the melee had taken quite a while, according to Sirius. They could defend, but the fight was just too much. Then something occurred to him.

"Draco, did you see any of the fighting?"

"Just yesterday's, Potter. Why, you want a spell-by-spell description? I'd love to tell all about it."

"No, thanks, I've heard enough, but tell me: did you see them just training or were they fighting each other?"

"Oh they were fighting alright," drawled Draco. "I only saw them yesterday, but they were knocking each other out something fierce. It was a hoot, or should I say a riot?"

"And you were wearing your sunglasses?" asked Harry.

"Yes, I was," snapped Draco, grabbing at his glasses to make sure Harry couldn't summon them away, "and don't you dare try to take these. You just go on and leave me alone."

"Aww, Draco, you're getting unhappy - shall I cheer you up some?" Harry said, slowly reaching toward his wands.

"Forget it, Potter!" Draco hurried off so that he could neither lose his glasses and be put on detention nor be Cheering-Charmed into the hospital again.

Harry sat at his usual table in the Restricted Section, surrounded by the piles of books he had selected for study. So, he thought, I know something more now: the curse is not affecting Malfoy even though he wears the sunglasses. It only affects those working to defend. He started to select books based on this new information when his scar began to burn. He felt Voldemort's glee at Harry's predicament.

"How does it feel, Potter?" echoed Voldemort's gloating voice in his head. "Aah, that's right - I know how you feel. You know you've chosen poorly. You've thrown in with the rabble, and now you are being swept away in the flood of them acting like a rabble. What a surprise. Did you think they would be able to be disciplined all along? Oh, they were impressive last year, all of them getting up early and running around the lake and doing their training and exercises. Yes, of course I know all about it. You've produced some good fighters, too. But you lack insight: skill makes one proud and proud people must be under the thumb of overbearing power to be made to cooperate. You have the magical power, as we both know, but you're emotionally too weak to dominate them as they would need. If you could only be strong enough to be cruel, I could use someone like you on the winning side. We are, after all, so very much alike, even beyond the unfortunate accident at Goodrich's Hollow. Stop fighting me and give up that insipid sentimentality of yours and you can have the recognition you crave - you can wield the scepter, while I stay behind the scenes. Together there is no force on earth which can stop us. Look in yourself - you know it's true. Together we can have anything we want, everything we want. No one could resist our control - they would be putty. Let your mind relax and I will guide us: we'll have the power and the glory and we'll have a kingdom which lasts forever and ever."

"NEVER!!!" screamed Harry. "NEVER!!!"

"Shhh!" said Madam Pince.

All the students in the general section of the library looked up at him. None seemed very shocked or annoyed. Several gave him a thumbs-up, and others were smiling happily.

"You can see," thought Harry, "the things I want that you also desire. But you aren't even capable of seeing what my heart most desires. You are blind to the best things. I'd rather die fighting on behalf of those I love than to live on forever without love. That is the difference which truly divides us - the things you say make us similar are superficial."

"You are a foolish boy," said the contemptuous voice in Harry's head. "What good is dying to help others? When you die, and you will, you will be gone. There will be nothing else. Trust me: I have been as close to death as anyone can be and still come back to walk this earth. Better to walk forever, even 'unloved' (the voice in his head intoned mockingly), than to rot in a coffin, your 'love' spilled to the winds, while those who 'loved' you forget you ever existed. In the end, no one cares, Potter, whether you live or die - you're just the tool they use to protect themselves. If you don't take care of yourself, no one else will. That's all that living is about. And if you can't grasp that, then you may as well die!"

"If that is all life is about," thought Harry to Voldemort, "then I may as well."