Harry Potter and the Book of Magical Maladies

Harry Potter and the Book of Magical Maladies

CHAPTER 1 - The Astronomy Tower

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For early summer, the wind was surprisingly cold and biting. Harry shivered as he pulled his robes tighter around himself. He couldn't remember pulling them from his trunk that morning, but there were many things about the day that he couldn't remember.

He might have been more concerned if he hadn't immediately recognized his surroundings. He was atop the Hogwarts astronomy tower, though he'd never seen it as crowded as it was now. He'd found himself, only moments earlier it seemed, on the tower surrounded by a crowd of strangers. He didn't think he recognized any of them, and for the first time, he didn't think they recognized him either.

He didn't remember why he was there, or how he'd gotten there, but no one else seemed concerned about these things. Weaving between the jumbled clumps of people chatting and drinking tea, he looked for the door leading down into the tower.

It took only a minute to squeeze between the dense grouping of people around the door. Harry grabbed the door and pulled, but it was held fast. He pulled harder, but it held, and refused to even acknowledge his efforts with a groan of stressed wood or the rattling of hinges.

"Any luck there, my boy?" called a voice from behind him. Harry turned, surprised that someone had finally noticed him. It quickly melted into disappointment as he saw who had called to him.

"I was just about to try that very thing," announced a rather cheerful Gilderoy Lockhart. "Perhaps we should look for a window."

"We're on a tower. There aren't any windows," he replied dryly.

"Oh! So we are." Lockhart scanned the tower, then turned back to Harry. "It did seem a bit breezy around here. I was actually getting just a bit cold standing about like this. Why don't you be helpful and check that door behind you."

"He's been checking that door every five minutes," announced a second voice. Harry turned to see Remus Lupin walking up beside him. "Hello Gilderoy. I hear there is a ladder down over there." Lupin pointed off toward the far side of the tower. Lockhart smiled and thanked him, then headed off toward the direction Lupin had pointed.

"How did I get here?" Harry asked Lupin once Lockhart was gone.

Lupin stared back at him with a bewildered frown. "This is where you are, Harry. You're here because you haven't left." Lupin turned away and walked back toward the edge, as if he'd more than answered Harry's question.

Harry tried to follow him, but either the crowd was growing or they were swarming around him without actually paying any attention to him. As he walked after Lupin, Harry began to recognize a number of people in the crowd. He saw Luna Lovegood father, Ludo Bargeman, and Madam Hooch. There seemed to be no order or reason for all of them to be there at once.

Harry caught up to Lupin at the low wall which ran along the outer edge of the tower. Lupin was calmly looking out across the landscape.

"How did we get here?" Harry asked. "Why are we all here?"

"We're here because you are, Harry. We're all together," Lupin responded as if it were the plainest thing in the world.

"Who put us here?" Harry finally asked. Lupin smiled back at him like he'd just asked his own name.

"You did,"

Harry felt a bizarre dizziness, like the world had shivered around him. What's happening, he wondered. Something wasn't right. No, something was deeply wrong. Harry stepped away from the wall, and started scanning the faces of the people around him, looking for anyone else to talk to. Suddenly he found a face he recognized, and a chill ran down his spine.

Staring at him from across the tower was Cedric Diggory.

Harry froze in place, staring at Cedric, who was alive and staring back at him. It can't be, he reassured himself. Cedric died. He forced himself to blink, but when his eyes opened, Cedric was still there, looking at Harry but talking to an older wizard. The conversation seemed to pause and Cedric nodded toward Harry. The older wizard turned to look toward him.

His throat tightened and his jaw clenched as Barty Crouch, Sr. turned to smile and nod at him. Harry turned away to glare at Lupin, who was still standing by the wall.

"Where is he?" he demanded.

"Where is who, Harry?" Lupin replied while fighting back a smile.

"Where is SIRIUS?" Harry shouted. A short laugh finally escaped Lupin's mouth and his eyes slid to look over Harry's shoulder. Harry whirled about to find himself face to face with Sirius Black, his godfather.

"Hello, Harry!" Sirius greeted him warmly. He reached out to grab Harry firmly on the shoulder. "I knew you'd find me. I could never hide from your father, either." Sirius gave him a warm smile, but it faltered when Harry didn't respond. "What's wrong, Harry?"

"You're dead."

"Really?" Sirius replied with a surprised smile. He laughed as he opened and closed his hand a few times. "It must agree with me. I rather expected I'd be a bit more... stiff, you know?"

"I saw you die," Harry persisted. "And Cedric. And I saw Crouch's body."

"Come now, Harry. You're more clever than that," Sirius said in a quieter voice. "Do you believe everything you see?"

"Where is the veil?"

"What are you talking about? What veil do--"

"WHERE IS IT?" Harry yelled to Sirius' face. "The veil? From the Department of Mysteries? It's here, I know it is. It's always here."

Harry's head swung from side to side as he searched the top of the tower for the same gently billowing veil which had been haunting his dreams. They all ended the same way. He'd end up in the same circular room of open doors, each leading to some horrible experience from his memories. Each time he'd pick the same door, and he'd get to briefly see Sirius fighting bravely before falling though the veil. They might start out differently, but the ending was always the same.

As Harry searched, his mind struck upon something different, something new. It was simply a feeling or impression of something foreign and yet more real than anything else there. This dream was different than the others. There was something important that he was missing. He searched the faces around him again.

His eyes locked on a pair of wizards a moment later. They were standing next to the door he'd just tried to open. A tall dark haired wizard and a slightly shorter witch with longer red hair. As soon as Harry saw them he knew who they were, and he started walking toward them. They were just as he'd seen them in the Mirror of Erised, and just like the Mirror, they turned to look back at him. Their expressions were not the ones of love and pride he'd seen in the Mirror, but of desperate worry.

Something was different. Something was wrong. Harry recognized the feeling he'd felt before. It was danger.

Harry whirled to face Sirius again and found him laughing with Lupin as they leaned against the low wall. Harry recognized the first tremor as if he'd expected it from the moment he first realized he was here. It was inevitable, and yet he had done nothing to stop it.

Instinctively, Harry dove for Sirius, but the wall had already fractured and was falling away with most of the rock under Sirius' feet. Harry watched as his hand gripped a stone ledge for a brief second before slipping and falling out of view.

Harry ran for the hole, but Lupin stopped him and held him back. Sirius was gone. He died just like he always did. As Harry tried to look down the side of the tower, he felt a second, stronger shake, followed by more crumbling and a few sharp screams.

When he turned to look in the direction of the screaming, there was nothing more than a cloud of dust. Before he knew what he was doing, he had wrenched himself free of Lupin's grasp and was frantically pushing people away from the low wall along the edge of the tower. Lupin had started doing the same thing nearby, but without any of Harry's urgency.

The people around him mostly seemed annoyed with Harry, some of them even shoving back. Harry tried to ignore them, but the more he tried to push them from the edge, the more they fought back.

"Are you mental?" one wizard shouted at him. "I was trying to enjoy the view!"

"You were going to die," Harry growled back, only to have the wizard draw his wand.

"Get away from me," he said angrily. "I won't have you threaten me and my family!"

With a scowl, Harry turned and walked over to Lupin, who was smiling and talking to a pair of old witches as they walked away from the edge. Harry grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away from them. Lupin looked quite annoyed.

"Yes, Harry, what is it?"

"What is happening? What's doing this?" he asked quickly.

"Oh, you mean the shaking?" Lupin asked lightly. "It's nothing. Probably just the wind or falling trees or some troll who thinks the tower stole its favorite rock."

"It could be a Basilisk," one of the elderly witches suggested in a shaky voice. "The Daily Prophet said that Potter boy has one he uses to scare people into being his friends."

Harry felt the anger rising in his chest, but he was distracted by another tremor and another set of screams from nearby. He ran to the spot and watched as the last witch tumbled down the side of the tower.

"It's getting worse, wouldn't you say?"

Harry looked up to see Cedric staring over the edge with him. This wasn't real. It was a dream, or some hallucination brought on by some old food or some bizarre illness. Cedric was dead. He wasn't standing in front of him. This wasn't happening.

"Ah, well, I guess you don't need me to tell you that," Cedric said. "It is nice to have some help, though." He smiled at Harry.

Just as Harry smiled back, there was a loud grinding noise as the stones under Harry and Cedric's feet lurched. A large crack snaked its way from the center of the tower to the edge, just inches behind Cedric. Before Harry could do anything else, a thunderous tremor hit the tower and he felt himself drop a few inches. Without thinking, he shoved Cedric backward across the break in the stone. As he himself stumbled backward, his heels caught on another small crack that had formed, and he fell back onto the stone.

Harry scrambled to his feet and prepared to jump across the break, but to his horror, the section of the tower he'd pushed Cedric onto was already falling away, taking twenty or more people with him.

He felt like sick. He watched in horror as the chunk of the tower tumbled down the side of the tower, tossing wizards and witches in all directions.

"What did you have to do that for?" a wizard called out from behind him.

"I didn't mean to... I-- I was trying to save him..."

"Looked to me like you were trying to push him off the tower," the wizard replied with an accusing glare.

"I-- I wasn't... I didn't mean to... I thought I--" The words stumbled out of Harry's mouth as he stood on the small ledge overlooking the chasm left by the falling stone.

"I saw 'im! Pushed that other one off the edge!" a witch called out above the rest of the noise.

There was another shake, and another smaller section of the tower fell away. Harry instinctively ran towards the people as they struggled to climb up the broken rocks to safety. He held out his hand to one wizard, but when he saw Harry, his eyes opened wide and he screamed and let go of the large beam he'd been holding onto.

Harry stood and turned to face the remaining people on the tower. The rock floor was now broken and tumbled in many places, with large gaps where pieces had fallen to the courtyard below.

It wasn't real, he told himself. It can't be real. Cedric died long ago. It hadn't been his fault. That had been real. This was something else. The fear in the eyes of everyone around him was real enough, though. They were crowding away from him now, but the shaking didn't stop. Every minute or so, the tower would shudder again, and another piece would drop away. Everyone was trying to get away from him now, fleeing onto crumbling ruins which were barely holding their weight.

As more and more tower split away, less and less wizards were left on the tower and their fear became more and more desperate, until they cursed him when he made any move to get closer to them. So he leapt from rock to rock as the tower crumbled away beneath him.

Less than half the others were left now, and after the last spectacular tremor, Harry was left standing on a pinnacle of stone rubble with only a single ledge a few feet away from him. Above the ledge was a small group of wizards who had their wands pointed at him already.

"It's not me!" Harry shouted at them. "I'm trying to help you!"

"Like you helped Diggory? Or that bloke who claimed to be your godfather?" one of them shouted back. "No! You stay where you are. We're safe enough without you."

Harry looked around for any other way off the column he was on. There was nothing else. He pulled out his wand. Maybe he could try to cast some ropes. Suddenly a voice cut through the noise.

Jump.

Harry paused and searched for the source of the voice. It had been a woman's voice. Harry searched the remaining occupants of the tower. Was it some spell? It had been soft, soothing and familiar.

Jump.

Harry stared down to the courtyard below and the litter of boulders and bodies strewn across it. He would never live through the fall.

It's for the best

"No," Harry said under his breath, "There's always another way."

There is no other way the voice insisted. It is what you were meant to do.

The voice sounded familiar to Harry. Some far corner of his mind identified it as his mother. Was it really her? Was she haunting him? "I have to try and help them," he pleaded in a louder voice. "I have to try." Surely his mother would understand that.

No you don't, Harry. You're only making it worse.

"I can't just give up!" he shouted at the sky. "I can help them. I have to help them! I can't just give up!"

Don't think of it as giving up. It is simply accepting your part in fate. Accept it, and everything will work out as it was intended. Now jump, Harry. There isn't much time.

The voice was getting stronger, more insistent, and less soothing. "No," Harry replied, fighting back his tears. "No! I won't accept it. I can save them. I'll find a way."

Harry, you must. Jump, Harry. It's the way it's supposed to be.

Harry ignored the voice. He could feel something wrong in his stomach. A familiar lightness. The feeling of Voldemort's happiness. It was a trick. This was another one of his tricks. Harry ignored the wizards by the ledge and jumped. The column of rock tumbled away as he leapt from it.

No, Harry. You must accept--

Harry shouted to drown out the voice as he leapt up to the remaining stone floor. As soon as his feet hit the large flat stones, the tower was rocked by a series of loud tremors, knocking everyone off their feet.

"I won't give up! I have to try!"

Tears streamed down his face as he ran for the crowd of wizards working to wrench the door at the center of the tower open. They cried out as he approached, then again as the remaining rock making up the floor seemed to simply rip itself apart. In an instant, the last of the floor broke apart and cascaded down to the courtyard, leaving him bruised and clutching a heavy wooden beam poking out into the empty space where the tower wall had once been.

Harry watched in horror as the last few wizards desperately clung to the sides of the tower. In his head he could hear a soft hissing laughter.

You can't save them all, Potter.

Harry sat up in bed, suddenly awake. He was cold and clammy, and his muscles ached as if he'd been doing chores for days. He tried to catch his breath as his heart pounded in his chest. That hadn't been like the other dreams. They'd always been the same. That dream was different in too many ways to describe.. Slowly, fearing what he might find, he reached up to feel the scar on his forehead.