Harry Potter and the Return of the Insanity

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The night was chill and dark, with a great round harvest moon shining down on field and city and village, lighting all with a dim, silvery glow. Nearly every living thing beneath it was asleep, but in one small cottage near the village of Ottery St. Catchpole, a sixteen-year-old boy named Harry Potter was not to remain so for long.

Harry jerked awake with a start, his face bathed in sweat and heart pounding like mad. He’d been dreaming, he knew that, but it wasn’t his dream that had woken him. He sat up and rubbed his face, reaching absently for his glasses and knocking over his glass of water in the process.

“Bother,” he muttered, perching the glasses on his nose and throwing a wad of tissue over the mess. He cast about for his slippers, found only a half-eaten box of candy, and shivered as he pulled his bathrobe on. Moonlight was pouring in through his open window; brilliant, silver-golden moonlight that lit the ground-mist to an eerie splendor and made Harry wince and squint. The night had been warm when he went to sleep, but it sure wasn’t now; Harry could fairly see his breath as he stumbled across the mess to shut the window, stepping on the soggy tissues and yawning.

Tissues were about the only normal thing in his room, which was crammed with enough oddities to give all the Dursleys a coronary. A bookcase on the far wall was stuffed with schoolbooks, both new and old, and littered with bits of correspondence from his friend Hermione. She was coming down to see he and Ron near the end of the holidays, but wasn’t due for another day or so. A box in the corner was loaded with enough fireworks to blast the whole village sky-high, were it not protected with a number of tricky spells invented by the Marauders in years gone by, and piled all around it were the various order-forms that Ron’s brothers Fred and George had sent his way for approval. Harry privately felt they were more interested in Sirius’s opinion than his; they held his godfather and the other Messrs. in something like worship.

He’d been living with Sirius for two years now, ever since, through a very bizarre and complicated tangle of events, he, Lupin, and his friends had managed to prove Sirius innocent. The little man who was responsible for Sirius’s wrongful conviction in the first place had lost his arms and the greater portion of his sanity in the process, but no one really cared about him, and Harry’s life outside of Hogwarts had taken a very drastic turn for the better since then.

He and Sirius had bought this little cottage the summer before, and had been living after the fashion of two single males ever since--like slobs. As the Weasleys lived only the next field over, Mrs. Weasley had been spending the majority of her time trying to worm her way into the house with a broom, but Harry and Sirius would have none of it--they were proud of their mess. After all, they argued, Harry had been trapped with his neat freaks of relatives for most of his life, and Sirius--well, no one liked to talk about where Sirius had been.

Harry winced at the thought of Azkaban; it always started him on a whole chain of painful memories, and now he paused in the middle of his room, lost in them once more. Sirius had escaped to save him, but he would have had nowhere to escape from if it weren’t for Pettigrew. And if it weren’t for Pettigrew, his parents would still be alive...........

Almost by instinct, his eyes were drawn to the bookcase, one shelf of which was filled with wizard photographs. Smiling and waving at him were countless pictures of his parents--one of their wedding day, one shortly after he was born, one of they and all their class at their graduation ceremony so long ago.

Here was a very battered photo of Sirius and Lupin, about to dump a bucket of something unpleasant on his father’s head; his mother had her hands over her mouth in the background, though whether she was about to warn him or trying not to laugh was unclear. Harry had never seen this one move; it stayed nearly as stationary as an ordinary Muggle picture, as though out of reverence to the memory. Behind this was yet another photo, one of the many given him by the camera-happy Colin Creevey, and looking at it now made Harry’s throat constrict as he felt the old, familiar prickling behind his eyes.

It was a picture of the farewell feast in his fourth year, when a combination of Peeves and some very interesting beans had contrived to start the biggest food fight in Hogwarts history. Zooming in and out of it were various students with armloads of food, but two figures stayed fairly consistently where they were. One of them was easily recognizable as himself, a skinny fourteen-year-old with untidy hair and the same round glasses he wore now, but it was the other one that always brought a sort of ache to his heart.

That other was a woman, a short, scrawny little woman of perhaps thirty-five, wearing black robes that were a shade too large for her and carrying a gnarled, highly polished wooden cane. Her long hair was black like his, but far more wispy and flyaway than even Professor Sprout’s had ever been, and streaked with premature silver, and her strangely slanted eyes were an even brighter green than his. This was Professor Lorna Doors, his father’s elder sister and Hogwarts’ Herbology teacher of two years, who had filled the lives of nearly everyone at the school with a wonderful, unpredictable anarchy, and been the closest thing to a mother Harry had ever known.

It would have been her summer to have him this year, according to the bizarre custody arrangements she and Sirius had worked out. He would be in Ireland right now, chasing leprechauns and fairies and helping Doors do whatever it was she did during the holidays, and anticipating all the interesting pranks she and Sirius would pull when the term started again--for Sirius was a teacher, too, though he’d only started the year before. They’d had loads of fun, the three of them, for the better part of the term; they and Lupin and the Weasleys, generally wreaking havoc wherever they could, without a care in the world.

Harry should have known it was all too good to last.

Sirius wasn’t the only new teacher that year; several positions had been taken over by newcomers, but one in particular stood out then as now. Her name was Joanna Starling, and she was the incredibly beautiful Ancient Runes instructor who had captured the attention of most of the males at Hogwarts. Harry himself had taken something of a liking to her, though not nearly so much as Ron, who turned into a gibbering klutz at the mere mention of her name. As for Professor Snape--well, he would have been the butt of jokes for years to come, had not the true identity of Joanna Starling been too horrible for most to speak of.

It had been considered a given, that Snape would work up the nerve to propose to her sooner or later, and as Fate (and the Weasleys) would have it, most of the school was present when he was supposedly going to. Starling, however, had chosen that wonderfully propitious moment to reveal her true identity as a transvestital Lord Voldemort, and things had gone downhill from there. Half of Hogwarts had fled into the Forbidden Forest, and the other half raced about the grounds until Doors got her act together and blew the whole school to smithereens, before siccing a veritable army of Cornish pixies on Voldielocks and hauling Harry off into the Forbidden Forest himself. It had looked like the whole affair was in the bag, and they might just be able to defeat Lord Voldemort after all.

And then they let the Phantoms loose.

Harry, Sirius, and Lupin had trusted Doors, despite their fear of her plan, and indeed it would have worked, had not Lord Voldemort managed to wreck all and rebound Doors’s spell at the last moment, causing all hell to break loose. The Phantoms and a large portion of the Forbidden Forest were destroyed, but miraculously nearly everyone survived uninjured. Nearly, but not all of them. Lorna Doors had died.

Standing in the glimmering darkness of his room, Harry could still recall in perfect detail regaining consciousness after the.....accident. He had found his aunt, trapped amid a tangled wrack of rubble, and there held her hand until she was gone. And though she had promised to watch over him, though her ‘funeral’ was as perfectly disastrous as she could wish for, though Harry would swear he had felt her presence every now and then, there were times when he still missed her as horribly as though her death were only yesterday.

This wasn’t the first time he had woken to fight back tears in the middle of the night; Sirius had found him thus quite often at the start of summer, and had done his best to find words of comfort. His mourning had grown less of late, and was confined only to the night, but he was by no means the only one suffering from it--several times, Harry had heard Sirius do exactly what he was doing now, though he never said anything.

He shook his head, telling himself for the thousandth time that grieving did no one any good, and started for the window once more when two noises stopped him.

One he knew well; it was the fluttering of his owl, Hedwig, returning with yet another letter from Hermione. The other one, however, was a complete mystery; it sounded as though someone were trying to scratch their way through the back door. Kicking the soggy tissues off his foot, Harry tiptoed over to the window and peered cautiously out, wondering what sort of strange creature Fred and George had loosed on him now.

“What the......?”

Clawing at the door below him was not an animal, but a person, a man dressed in black and carrying a large bundle in his arms. Harry could hear Sirius moving downstairs, apparently wondering what was up, too. He studied hard the top of the intruder’s head, shining in the moonlight, and his eyes widened.

“No way,” he muttered, squinting through his glasses. “Professor Lupin?”

The man didn’t look up, but Harry heard the squeak of the door being opened, and low words exchanged between Sirius and the man who looked suspiciously like Lupin. Sirius’s hand gestured to the bundle, and Lupin shifted its weight in his arms so Sirius could draw back a fold of the cloth. The two stood with their heads together a moment, but Harry couldn’t see what they were looking at, and a moment later both entered the house and shut the door.

Harry stood a moment, utterly bewildered. Whoever their prowler was, Sirius had obviously been expecting him, but why hadn’t he said anything to Harry about it? There was little he didn’t tell his godson, and it wasn’t as though they hadn’t had all sorts of bizarre nocturnal visitors already this summer. And what on earth was Lupin doing here, if indeed that was Lupin, on the night of a full moon? Even the Wolfsbane Potion didn’t stop him transforming........

A loud clunk sounded downstairs, and a sudden, “Shhh!” from Sirius. He murmured something to the other man, but Harry couldn’t hear what, so he tiptoed as quietly as he could across his room and out into the hallway, mindful of the creaky board down the center.

“--doesn’t know what we’re doing, and now certainly isn’t the time for him to find out,” whispered Sirius, shifting one of the kitchen chairs.

“I don’t see why you haven’t told him, Sirius,” responded a voice that was most definitely Lupin’s. By the sound of it, he was rummaging in a bag for something.

Sirius sighed. “I would have, but if it......if we try this and it doesn’t work, it would only make things worse for him. Better we succeeded and told him later, than fail with him watching.” He was quiet a moment, apparently lost in thought.

Harry stood silent as well, wondering just what on earth they were talking about. Sirius had never kept any major secrets from him, and whatever this was, it sounded big. He had half a mind to go barging into the kitchen and see for himself, when Lupin said something that could only be taken as odd.

“I wonder, will she want to come back?”

Sirius sighed once more, but this time Harry could sense a smile along with it. “Want to? Remus, what with all that’s been going on in Ireland, what with all that will be going on soon, it’s a wonder she hasn’t found a way back on her own before now.”

Lupin laughed softly. “Well then....shall we?”

“I believe we shall.”

There came once more a shuffling noise, and Harry shivered with cold dread as he realized just what it was they were trying to do. Sirius had to be a little crazier than he’d thought.....No magic could bring back the dead, even he knew that, and Doors was not only very dead, he was quite certain she’d been cremated after her funeral. What on earth had Lupin found, that he would even dare try such a thing? And HOW had he managed to find Doors’s body (he was assuming that was what the bundle was) if she’d been cremated? The whole thing was bewildering, but Harry had a feeling it wouldn’t be for long. On the other side of the door, Sirius and Lupin had begun to whisper.

Harry leaned forward, his ears straining as he tried to catch something of their chant, but the door was solid oak. He held his breath, waiting for a flash of light, some grand herald that a soul was being returned to the earth, but in that he was sorely disappointed--the closest thing to a herald came quite suddenly in the form of one great, violent sneeze, followed by a thud and a string of cursing that would have made Lucius Malfoy blush scarlet.

It might not have been much of sign, but it was sufficient to startle Harry into leaning a bit harder on the kitchen door than he should have, with the result that he, a coat rack, and a misplaced chair went tumbling with a crash onto the flagstone floor.

For a moment he lay, dazed and winded, before he became aware of both Lupin and Sirius chuckling quietly.

“I could have told you you couldn’t keep a secret from that boy,” said Lupin. “He’s far too much like James.”

Sirius stood and pulled Harry to his feet, dusting off the shoulders of his bathrobe and flicking a dustbunnie from his ear. “Yes, well, Harry, as I’m sure you’ve heard all that just transpired in here, and, well--” he swept his arm in a gesture to the shadows behind him “--say hello to your aunt.”

Despite the fact that he had known what his godfather and Lupin were up to, seeing his aunt Lorna again came as rather a shock, to say the least. She was half-crouched in the corner, still sneezing violently and slapping at a strange powder on her sleeves. Harry stared at her for a long moment, before she finally glanced up at him.

“Oh, comb od, Harry,” she said thickly, sneezing one last time and wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Quit gawking at me like I’m Nearly Headless Nick and give me a hug already.”

Harry, hardly aware that his feet were moving, shuffled across the kitchen and threw his arms around his aunt, who gagged and coughed but returned the embrace all the same.

“Easy there, easy,” she said, wincing and patting her ribs. “I’ve been dead a while, you know. It’s not easy readjusting.”

Harry quickly let her go, still staring at her as though he thought she might vanish if he blinked (which he did.) “But....how--?” He started to turn back to Sirius and Lupin, but the former clapped a hand on his shoulder and laughed.

“Harry, trust me, you’re going to find out a sight more than you wanted to about reanimating the dead before this year is out,” he said, gazing down at his godson. “You and all of us.”

Doors, still brushing at her sleeves, grinned suddenly. “So I’m right in assuming I’m not the only person you two plan on--er--returning to this plane of existence?” she asked. “And you’d be better off putting it that way, rather than having people think you’re pulling a Silversleeves.”

Both Sirius and Lupin gave an involuntary shudder.

“Silversleeves?” Harry croaked, still too shocked to actually register a word they were saying.

“Dyonisius Silversleeves,” said Lupin, rising from his chair and looking as though nothing at all were out of the ordinary. “He was the first wizard to ever seriously dabble in magical resurrection. Devoted years of research to the art of reanimating the dead, using old Egyptian books and the like.”

“And it worked?” said Harry, thinking vaguely that for once he might be able to prove Hermione wrong.

“Well, sort of,” said Sirius, brushing more of the strange powder that adorned Doors’s sleeves off the table. “He certainly reanimated them, in the sense that they walked and talked and breathed, but.......well, it wasn’t THEM he brought back.”

“Then.........what was it?” asked Harry, not really wanting to know.

“No one’s quite clear on that,” returned Sirius, wiping his hand on his bathrobe. “Seeing as whatever it was wasted little time in killing Silversleeves and all his laboratory workers, before going berserk and killing one another as well. Only one person escaped, a small apprentice named O’Lenihan, and it’s because of him that all such resurrection attempts were internationally banned--Lorna, what are you doing?”

Doors was rummaging her way through the kitchen drawers, her over-long sleeves rolled back and dust-covered robes dragging on the floor. “Looking for scissors,” she replied, fumbling in the main junk drawer near the sink.

“Well, good God, Lorna, you don’t honestly think we keep them in a drawer, do you?” said Sirius, sounding thoroughly scandalized. “Look on top of the icebox.”

Doors did so accordingly, while Harry sank weak-kneed into a chair, suddenly finding his legs too shaky to support him any longer. This was far, far too much for him to comprehend so swiftly; one moment he was mourning his losses in an attic bedroom, the next he was brought face-to-face with one of the very people he missed the most. He felt like collapsing and running at the same time; he had to do something, make something, tell someone.........The idea of racing up to the Burrow and throwing stones at Ron’s window appealed to him, but no sooner had he gotten to his feet than Lupin’s voice, sounding quite shocked, broke into his thoughts.

“Lorna, what on earth are you doing?”

Harry looked up and saw at once what Lupin meant; Doors had found the kitchen scissors and was in the process of chopping her wispy hair with them. She dropped both hands and scissors at Lupin’s outcry and snorted.

“I’m plantin’ corn. What’s it look like I’m doing?” she asked, nudging the fallen tendrils of flyaway hair with her foot. “This would be a lot easier if I had a mirror, you know.”

Sirius stepped forward and snatched the scissors from her hands, looking quite grateful she hadn’t had time to get snip-happy. “And just why are you scalping yourself?” he demanded, setting the shears safely out of her reach.

Doors looked rather surprised. “Well, really, Sirius, you don’t honestly expect me to keep all this hair once I’ve got w--”

Sirius clapped a hand over her mouth, glancing nervously around and shaking his head. “Are you out of your mind?! They’ll hear you!”

Doors, who was looking distinctly disgruntled and rather as though she’d like to bite her friend’s hand, scowled.

“Mfffl flulff leth?” she said crossly, and Sirius hastily removed his hand. “Oh, come on, Mr. Paranoid, no one’s going to hear me; hardly anyone even knows about it yet.”

“All the more reason to keep it that way,” said Sirius, still looking as though the walls had ears. “And anyway, for God’s sake don’t go getting slice-happy just yet; it’s odd enough having you back as it is, and you without all your hair would be a bit too much. I mean, really, Lorna, have you ever given yourself a haircut before?”

Doors opened her mouth to snipe at him, but paused. “You know, I don’t think I ever have,” she said reflectively. “The last time anybody cut it was about fourteen years ago, when it got caught around the railings of the fence near Scotland Yard.”

“Then don’t you think you ought to leave it to someone who actually knows what they’re doing? And anyhow, you go giving yourself that major of a change, people are going to talk.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” said Doors, eying the small pile of hair on the floor. She shot Sirius something of an annoyed glare, and added in the tone of an afterthought, “Though I suppose they’d be a little too preoccupied with the fact that I was even ALIVE to notice something like my hair.”

Harry, who had been growing steadily more confused as this conversation went on, finally spoke up.

“Sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what you people are talking about,” he said, sitting back down as his knees gave way once more.

Doors looked at Sirius, who looked at Lupin, who was rummaging through the cupboard. “And WHY is he still human?” demanded Harry, his head spinning.

“Well, that one I can explain,” said Lupin, turning around with his arms full of sugar packets. “I’ve spent the last few months researching obscure branches of magic in Romania, and I came across a very little-known potion from which the Wolfsbane Potion was derived. It’s immensely complicated and many of the ingredients are very rare, but I made it all the same. Finding a body for Lorna could only be done on the full moon, so I rather had to.” He set the sugar down on the table, tapped it with his wand, and four cups of peppermint tea appeared.

“And how--how did you do that?” Harry asked, taking a cup and glancing at Doors, who was examining the house plant by the window. She waved her wand, muttered something, and a long, thin creeper trailed its way up the dusty windowsill.

“Yet another unknown spell,” sighed Lupin. “Silversleeves discovered it, but his instructions were so convoluted it took me the better part of two months to figure it out.” He took a long draw at his tea. “So long as you have some artifact of the deceased, you can draw upon the memory of them as they were at the moment of their death--cuts, scrapes, robes and all. Now, I just happened to have one of Lorna’s old projects floating around--” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the remainders of what looked like a super-sized Dungbomb gone slightly wrong “--and so I used it in the spell. Took me long enough to get it right, but as your dear aunt hasn’t sprouted antennae or poisonous fangs, I’ll assume I did indeed perform it correctly.” He shot an puckish look at Doors, who was sitting perched on the counter with her long braid pulled over her shoulder. In the light coming through the window Harry could see the strands of silver among the frizzy wisps had advanced considerably, and her young, mischievous face seemed a bit more weathered than before.

“Oh, don’t get all full of yourself just yet,” she said, her eyes twinkling green through the dimness. “I could still wind up growing horns like Whatsisname at the Ministry.”

The kitchen roared with laughter, but Harry yawned as well; it was nearly three in the morning, and he hadn’t exactly gotten to bed early in the first place. His three companions continued to talk long into the night, but Harry didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until Sirius shook him awake, some six hours later. And when he did, Harry knew Dumbledore was wrong--death wasn’t the greatest adventure after all.