ACT2CH21 - Hope (Patreon)

Daphne felt it in her guts and her soul as the shafts of burning white flame struck Harry.

She had known that her fiance was powerful. You didn’t get to cast a corporeal patronus capable of defending against a hundred dementors by collecting chocolate frog cards. The blood curse might have made her frail, but Daphne was not lacking in mental or emotional strength. Her father had exclusively trained her in the Patronus charm during the summer before third  year, and she had made it a point to regularly try casting it every single day before bed. Even after two years, she had yet to get a corporeal form. And Harry bloody Potter had done it in a single go with occasional sessions of half-arsed training from the Defense professor, who, Daphne noted, couldn’t even cast a corporeal patronus on his own.

But even that feat paled before what she was witnessing right now, with her own eyes.

Harry stood there, his hand raised and holding his wand like a sword. A shifter’s stance, Daphne recognized, a surreal power exploding out of him. Frost gathered around his wand, as a shale coloured energy surged out of it, hungrily consuming the shafts of white flame that the serpent golem was belching at him.

The sound from the explosion alone, as the two sources of power met, was enough to drive a strong mind mad. She wasn’t sure what it  even sounded like, for it was too loud a noise for  that. But what she could tell was that she too had started screaming in reflexive protest against that sound, and that her voice had gotten lost in the din. Harry reared his wand upward, the ground beneath him fracturing like a spider web, as he forced his pale, frosty power against the flames, and pushed them back. Fire and wind and frost frothed around, as a cyclone of pure power surrounded the two opponents.

Caught unaware between them, Daphne could only force the protego shield around her to hold still. The sheer power in the air pushed her back, but she held it up with all her might, not at all willing to lose her only shelter against this vicious magical storm. She could feel the power behind the hate behind the serpent’s attack. It was pure and undiluted, beyond any mortal emotion. It was as old as the world itself, as hard and sharp and cold as steel, and as hot as the flames of hell. A hate so vital and vitriolic, that it surpassed the mortal mind.

Daphne didn’t know why, but the serpent golem was actually trying to kill Harry.

Not because it was an audition, or a deathmatch of some kind.

No. This was personal.

And against that withering light and fury, Harry stood, a being of distilled power and emptiness, a shadow, an outline that was just as dark and terrible, standing against the unmoving tide.

In that one moment, she saw with her own eyes why Harry Potter was the Peverell vessel.

He stopped the flames. He stood before that undeniable power and was not moved. For a  long moment, Harry just stood there.

Daphne watched with bated breath, afraid of speaking or even breathing, lest something might happen. She watched him meet the emerald-eyed gazes of the serpentine golem, a battle of will and determination, now that the battle of magic had ended.

After what seemed like an eternity, the glare in all seven-eyes faded, acknowledging its defeat before the might, determination and sheer will of another emerald-eyed individual. Scared, Daphne watched as it just stood there, hood raised, doing absolutely nothing.

Then she realised it was waiting for him to act.

And Harry, as facing a wild hippogriff, slowly took a step back and bowed his head gracefully. The runespoor’s eyes flashed, and for a moment, Daphne feared it would attack him. Instead it mirrored his gesture, bowing all seven heads in reply. She saw Harry hiss something in Parseltongue, and as if like a spell that was forced into action, a wind blew and the leashed violence in the air suddenly vanished.

Like it wasn’t there in the first place.

“It’s done,” he finally said, looking at her. Despite that damned grin on his face, the signs of exhaustion were evident. He needed rest, and he needed it quickly.

Daphne exhaled, and vanished her shield and rushed towards him. She didn’t care about propriety or forwardness or whatever bullshit reason her mind crafted to hold herself back. She didn’t care that he had fallen down to one knee. She just grabbed him and pulled him into her, his face burying into her chest. A small grin tore through her lips as she felt his hands snake their way upwards from her hips to her back and pull her tighter.

“I was so afraid, Harry. I — I thought I’d lose you. You were right. You were absolutely right. I was so stupid to just waltz in here. We should have just left when we had the chance. Merlin, that fire, if you’d have missed just a bit then —”

“...phne?” he murmured.

“Mmm?”

“... ‘ffocating me!”

“Oh!” She pulled back, her cheeks red with mild embarrassment, “sorry. I was just —”

“Oh don’t be,” he said, flashing her another grin. “It was quite enjoyable. I knew you were a hands-on girl.”

Her face went red out of anger. Yes, anger. Fiery, murderous anger. “Pull another stunt like that and I’ll show you I’m a wands-on kind of girl.”

Harry barked out a laugh, and tried to stand up. She helped him, only for him to stagger, but she held him still.

“Sorry,” he apologised, “that took a lot out of me.”

“That… that was your Family Magic, wasn’t it?”

The grin flickered out from his face. “Not sure about magic, but it belonged to the Peverells. And now, me, I guess. If Family magic is the epitome of what a magical family can have, then this power qualifies as that for me. Not the first time I’ve seen it in action, but I’ve never pushed it to this level before. That power the runespoor was using… It was terrifying.”

“That was it trying to kill you, not the audition bullshit you spewed earlier.”

“No,” Harry asserted. “It wasn’t trying to kill me.”

“I was there, Harry,” Daphne retorted. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

“No,” he repeated. “Not the golem. Ananta-shesha is… how do I put it? It’s like a warden, a function, a sentient enchantment crafted by Salazar Slytherin. It’s like the Sorting Hat. You might think it’s a real thing, but it’s actually an enchantment that follows instructions to the letter.”

“Oh?” she challenged, raising a brow. “And what instructions are those?”

“It was bewitched to present a challenge. It would keep pushing me, just to see if I could fight back. Don’t know if ole’ Salazar bewitched it to face Death, but either way, it accepted me as worthy.”

“So you are now…” she breathed, “the heir of Slytherin?”

He shook his head in amusement and looked around.

“More like custodian of all this stuff that he left around.”

She raised a brow.

Raising his finger, he pointed at the shelves that shot up towards the blinding light above. And then he began reciting them by types.

“Raw Energy manipulation, Mystic Derivation, Animagus Transformation, Necromancy, Reanimation, Conjuration, Somatic Casting, Phenomenon Inducement…” he went on and on, his finger automatically shifting from shelf to shelf as he kept naming the topics explored in those books. “Arithmancy, Hemomancy, Oneiromancy, Transmutation, Illusion, Keiromancy…”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough!” Daphne stated, raising both hands in surrender. “This place is a fucking library of magic. I knew that already.” she narrowed her eyes. “And how by Merlin’s soggy underpants did you know all that?”

He shrugged. “I just do.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He stared at her for a second. Then he said, “it might be better if you don’t know.”

Daphne lifted her chin and regarded him for a moment. “Excuse me?”

“This is… well, it’s bad business,” he said. “Might be safer for you if I don’t tell you much about it.”

“Well” she said. “That’s quite patronising of you, Harry. Thank you.”

He held up a hand. “It isn’t like that.”

“Yes,” she said. “It is. You know this place is bloody dangerous, and you were almost killed in the process, and you have this strange knowledge of things you have no business knowing  and you won’t tell me about it.”

“It’s for your own protection.”

“Isn’t that what Albus Dumbledore tells you every year?”

Something furious flashed across his face.

“Look,” she replied. “You’ve already given me some information by bringing me into this Chamber. I have an obligation in this matter. I need to know what this is, and safeguard the information responsibly. That means not using it blindly and making sure you don’t get reckless about it. Can you understand that?”

“Actually,” he sighed, “I can.”

She pursed her lips. “Then tell me.”

Harry stared at her, a little frustrated. Probably because she had a point. “Fine. But I’ll tell you this. It’s  weird. Like, weirder than the other things I’ve been through.”

“Shoot.”

He mumbled something under his breath. “When I defeated it, Ananta-Shesha accepted me as worthy of something. I’m not sure I fully understand what that something is, but it made me… aware.”

“Of what?”

“Of itself. Of all of this. The Chamber of Secrets. I guess the closest description I can give is connecting to a wardstone. Only instead of giving me control of just the wards, it gives me knowledge of well… its inventory. Bugger, now I wonder if this is how Kreacher feels all the time.”

“Harry, you’re not making any sense.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “Uh, okay, let me try a different approach. See, Sirius told me that the Black Family Magic made the Black townhouse sentient. It can speak to us, react and decide how to approach situations based on the Black Family Charter. Sirius calls it a Lar. In the same way, Ananta-shesha is the closest to a Lar, only it is sharing its awareness — of this entire place, with me.”

“Because you defeated it?”

“Sorta… That’s the part I’m not exactly clear about.” Harry scowled. “See, for this golem, the world outside doesn’t matter. All it cares about is this place, and what it contains. It knows the answer to every question about this place, every line in every paragraph in every book in these shelves, and it can tell me all of it. The only problem is asking it the right questions, which, believe me, is a lot harder than it looks like.”

“Yeah,” said Daphne dryly. “I’m getting used to the feeling.”

“The point is, Ananta-Shesha had told me the Truth earlier. It is a memory. Or rather, it contains the memory of the worst kind of magic in existence. This place… the magic here is terrible and powerful, and maybe in the right time, it can be very useful. But in the wrong hands, it  can lead to widespread destruction. The trouble is, Salazar Slytherin never quite made the difference between good and evil clear to it. Probably because they are so subjective. Instead, it just follows a system of protocols, and when a claimant comes for this place, it decides if the claimant is worthy to gain access to everything it contains. What the claimant does with the magic and the knowledge afterwards is up to the claimant.”

“And you know all of this because…”

“I share its awareness.”

Daphne rubbed the furrow between her eyes. She was starting to get a headache from this. “Does that mean you know exactly what book is located where?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Testing me, are you?”

She narrowed her eyes, and crossed her arms. “Go on, impress a girl. Get me something on Blood Curses.”

Maybe it was just hopeless optimism on her part. Her belief that there was something somewhere that could get her answers on the blood curse she was suffering from. Sirius Black and his cousin Andromeda Tonks were perusing the Black Library over the last month, but they had yet to find anything. She really didn’t expect Harry to know, let alone a positive reply. She had embraced herself to hear a confused denial on his face when —

“Sixth shelf, second row, number eight. Seventh shelf, first row, number nineteen. Fifteenth shelf, fourth row, number two. There is one more located on the eighteenth shelf but never mind, it’s just a tattered copy, oh, what the hell — ”

Daphne stared at him, flabbergasted, as three books zoomed out from the shelves at him. With the unerring skill of a seeker, Harry grabbed them out of mid-air and stacked them back to back, handing them to her.

“There you go!” he said cheerily.

Daphne just stared at the books, unblinking. He hadn’t been lying. Hastily, she grabbed the first book, and perused through its pages.

“This… this, I don’t recognize this language,” she mumbled, her frustration growing all over again.

“Huh!” muttered Harry as he glanced over. “Oh, it’s Sanskrit. This tome has…” he paused, and his expression changed, his  features growing remote. His shoulders eased into relaxation, his eyes distant and unfocussed. He stared into the far distance for several moments, his breath slowing, and his eyes started moving as if he was reading a book.

“Okay. Here it is,” he said, his voice slow and dreamy. “Citation on page three, line seven. This tome is a cursory introduction to malediction and its foundations, and how it combined Astronomy, Divination, and Hemomancy to create a curse that travelled down the descendants of an individual.”

With that, he left his trance and his eyes focussed back on her. “That won’t help much, I think. Surely Joshua —”

“Harry!” Daphne stopped him midway. “This is exactly where we need to start. My dad searched for years, but all books on the subject have been redacted by the ICW. We are not even sure how Sagittarius Black pulled off a blood curse, but my father believed the Black Family Magic had something to do with that. But this… Harry, this…”

She grabbed the book tightly against her chest. “This can change everything. This —”

She paused, realising that he was actually frowning. His pupils were shifting constantly, as if he were reading from something, before they focussed back on her. “I cannot get the books out of this place. It’s against… protocol.”

“How about the duplication charm?”

He shook his head again. “These books are too dangerous. They are charmed against the duplication spell.”

Her face fell.

“But,” he said. “I can read them out aloud, and last I checked, dicta-quills are a thing. Even if I can dictate around ten pages per day, we should get the entire book down in a month or something. That should be enough for mmmhhh —”

Daphne cut him off as she grabbed his face and pulled him into a kiss. It was soft to begin with, with her testing the waters. Once Harry got past the initial surprise, he automatically began to return it. It  was quiet, sensuous but not impassioned, patience without hesitance. His lips were a gentle and somewhat chilly contact on hers, and there was a sense of exploration to his mouth, as she felt her way around the kiss. She knew he was tired, or even magically exhausted, but it  still felt good. It felt really good. Her insides flamed with desire.

And then without warning, a desperate yearning for more of that simple contact roared through her in a flash fire of pure need. Within seconds, their tongues were battling for dominance as she forgot herself and leaned into him, enjoying the moment for what it was worth. Before she knew it, she had dropped the books on the floor and pushed herself against him, her hands finding purchase in his hair. Harry tasted like mint and something wild, and she smiled as she felt his own hands slowly crawl under her top, and up the smooth bare skin of her back. She shivered at his touch, her teeth tugging delicately  at his lower lip. She  drew the kiss to a slow, quiet close, and bowed her head, so that her forehead was resting against his. Both of them remained like that for a minute or so, breathing a little fast.

She met his eyes and found a wonderstruck expression on his face. Snorting at his dazed look, she blushed and looked down, crouching to pick the book up.

“Uh, that kinda came out of nowhere,” Harry croaked.

She giggled. Damn it. Since when did she start giggling like a little girl? What was it that he did to her? She tried to regain her anger but it would just not come. Instead, she felt butterflies in her stomach.

Damn him for infecting her with his stupid Gryffindorish nonsense!

“This started as a date, remember?” She said with a straight face. “It’s customary to end a date with a polite kiss. Pureblood custom, that’s all.”

“Err… right.”

“And besides,” Daphne went on, ignoring the reddish tinge on her cheeks. “We are to be wed. It's only natural that we start demonstrating affection towards each other in public and private. It will make the transition easy and — Oh to hell with it!” She huffed and pushed herself forward into him into another steamy kiss.

She didn’t know what Ananta-shesha witnessed in its lifetime as a warden. But if it thought Harry worthy, it’d have to make do with seeing them like this. And by Morgana, it’d see them like this a lot.

Her hands snaked around his neck. She smiled as she felt his hands trace their way back under her shirt.

Daphne smirked. She might not have Fleur Delacour’s allure, but that didn’t mean that Harry could resist her.