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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26077 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Forty-Six—Images of the Soul
"How much have you actually studied songbirds, Mr. Potter?"
"You usually call me Harry," Harry pointed out without looking up from the notes spread around him, notes that he'd taken from the extensive books in this section of the Black library. "You must be really concerned right now."
Professor McGonagall sighed and took the seat beside him. Harry knew without looking that she would be weary and frowning at him, so he still didn't lift his eyes from his notes. It wasn't his business how this trap was affecting her.
But then she reached out and took hold of his right hand, and Harry had to stop writing. He looked at her, and paused. She had more than weariness in her face. There was fear.
"Neville described the outlines of your plan to me."
"I knew he must have, or you wouldn't know enough to reference songbirds."
"You are proceeding along the lines of--untested theory would be the least of it." Professor McGonagall shook her head. "I will accept that you have an intuitive understanding of the Wild that most other wizards do not, or you would never have been able to make such progress in Transfiguration. But what you are doing is extending that theory by analogy and guess. You must be certain to trap You-Know-Who."
"Why?" Harry asked calmly. "I don't think Dumbledore is certain. He either didn't know about Neville being a Horcrux and was going to send him into battle anyway, or he did know and he's working on some plan he never revealed to anyone else. Everyone would have to deal with doubt and uncertainty. I'm only doing the same thing. And my plan has a better chance of working than anything Dumbledore could have done."
"How do you know that?”
"Because I have Neville's cooperation."
Professor McGonagall blinked. "Well, yes, that's something I didn't think of," she said, and leaned back in her chair a little while Harry fought the urge to say that a lot of people didn't think of Neville. "But I don't...would you be willing to explain your plan to me in a little more detail?"
"Yes." Harry shoved the notes over so that Professor McGonagall could see them. "I understood the gap in Nagini's Wild finally, the way I told Neville. That was what led to us figuring out she was a Horcrux. Lord Dudders scatters little pieces of his life force all over the place, when he makes the Dark Marks. That's not the same as a soul, but we can still use Death Eaters we've captured."
"We're not going to torture them?"
Harry looked at her and waited until she flinched a little and looked away. "No more than I did Bellatrix." He also wanted to add that what he'd done to Snape wasn't torture, it was hurting, and it had worked, because it got him to back off. But Professor McGonagall was nodding, and Harry saw no real reason to raise that issue with her right now.
"Very well." Professor McGonagall tried to sit up a little. "How do you think these left-behind pieces of the Wild make him vulnerable?"
"They bring parts of him out into the world and leave them scattered like pieces of meat for a predator to pick up. Maybe it wouldn't matter if his soul wasn't unstable from the Horcruxes. But now we have Nagini, who was both a Horcrux and something he invested a lot of his Wild in. No snake is that smart naturally. He infused her with life-force."
"He Transfigured her?”
"He infused her with life-force," Harry repeated. "He desired her to be smarter--and maybe be more capable of hosting his spirit when he was wandering around as a ghost, too. That's something Neville said he saw in his visions. And that made her a creature of his desires the way that Yar and Cross and all the rest are creatures of mine."
Professor McGonagall made a soft, thoughtful noise. "All right. What do you intend to use Nagini to do?"
"She's the crux," said Harry, and saw the confusion in her eyes. "Not Horcrux. But she's the only thing we have that had both a piece of his soul and a piece of his Wild. I can reach out and influence other pieces of his soul and his Wild through them. Neville has to be there because I need him to identify what a Horcrux feels like. She has an absence, but that's not enough. And I need the other Death Eaters for the same reason, to learn what his Wild really feels like when I'm not fighting it or damaging it to gain control of a Dark Mark."
Professor McGonagall put out a light hand to touch the book that Harry had been reading. "Why are you researching material on songbirds?"
"Because I think that's what it's going to be like," Harry said, and met her eyes, and sighed a little. "You know that songbirds use their songs to warn each other to stay away from trees, and mates, and to fight?"
Professor McGonagall nodded.
"I can hear the Wild. The way it hums around someone, the way it hums around the Dark Mark. It's easiest to think of it as a song. And I need to learn what a Horcrux sounds like, from listening to Neville, and to Nagini if I can--if the absence sings strongly enough. Then I can lay out a pattern of notes the way a songbird does. There's me, in the middle, with Neville and the Death Eaters beside me, and there's Lord Dudders somewhere far away, with the last piece of his soul singing in him. I don't think he has much left. And I can reach out from there and find out what other things he has in the world singing like him. I need to know what both Horcruxes and his Wild sound like so I can ignore the sounds of other Dark Marks. And then--"
"Then you can find the Horcruxes," Professor McGonagall whispered, sounding disbelieving. "How many do you think there are?"
"I don't know. Only that the diary and Nagini's Horcruxes have been destroyed. I need to know where they are to figure out how many there are." Harry tapped the book again. "That's why I'm learning what people have learned about the way birds sing. They map it, you know? Sometimes there's one pattern of songs in one place, and a different pattern in another. And sometimes birds are singing close together and other times they have huge territories. I need to figure out different patterns. Otherwise, I'll only know things like direction and maybe distance for the Horcruxes. I won't know where they are, just north. Or in a big cavern that has echoes. I think I can find them better if I have a different series of maps in my mind. Then I can fit them into a pattern that has my birds at them--"
"You actually intend to create songbirds?" Professor McGonagall interrupted, sounding stunned.
"Of course. Then I'll send them out to sing, and move further and further away, and have clusters of songs in my mind. And wherever the cluster of them nearest the Horcrux is singing, that's how I'll know where it is. Robins in Cornwall, and swallows in Wales, and--"
“I do not think that you can do this.”
“I intend to do it anyway.”
Professor McGonagall closed her eyes and swallowed, while Harry waited patiently for the thought he was sure was coming. Then she looked at him again, and said, “I don’t think you should do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it sounds wildly complex and likely to fail. You should come up with something simpler to defeat You-Know-Who.”
“Everyone’s simpler plans have failed, too. And no one has had all these captured Death Eaters to experiment with before, and no one knows the Wild like I do. I’m not the only one who could possibly do this, but I’m the only one who could do it with this plan. Dumbledore isn’t about to. Lord Dudders won’t just sit back and wait for someone to defeat him, either.” Harry paused. Professor McGonagall’s eyes were dull, the way Yar’s were when she hadn’t hunted in a while. “What is it?”
Professor McGonagall looked off to the side. Harry waited. Then she turned to him and said, “Will you allow me to cast a spell on you, Mr. Potter?”
“That depends on what it is.”
“There is a spell that can sometimes allow one person to see what another’s Animagus form is,” Professor McGonagall said, her voice soft. “It’s not often used because both the caster and the recipient have to be skilled in Transfiguration, and even then, it can fail because it requires a mastery of the Wild. I do not have that like you do, but I can sense the Wild.”
Harry tilted his head. “Why would you want to cast it on me?”
“Because I am one of those who believes the Animagus form reveals something deep and personal about the wizard.” Professor McGonagall paused as if bracing herself for ridicule, and then went on. “Something about the soul, if you will. I did not know your father’s Animagus form until after that horrible night when he and your mother were tortured, but a stag is often seen as proud and protective, which would suit James. And Sirius as a dog made sense. He was loyal beyond most Hufflepuffs.”
“The main question is why you feel you need to see my soul.”
*
He’s quick. So quick. Too quick?
But Minerva reminded herself about all the things Harry didn’t know, or understand, like the way he still focused on healing his parents and didn’t acknowledge many of the practical difficulties in the way, and nodded, her gaze fixed on Harry.
“I am uncertain of you, sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know whether I should stop you from some of the things you plan on doing. Whether you have—you have the intelligence to do this, Harry, of course you do. But I don’t know if you have the…stamina of soul.”
Her voice sank despite herself. These were old theories of the sort that voicing to colleagues, like Albus, would have got her scorned for. It was unexpectedly hard for her to say them to Harry, for all she knew that for him the Wild was more than a theory, and was the whole cornerstone of his gift in Transfiguration.
Harry examined her without scorn. Of course, for him, that kind of academic prejudice simply didn’t exist.
But neither did many of the reasons behind Minerva’s concern, the reasons that she wanted to see his Animagus form.
“Okay.”
“What?” Minerva blinked and came back from her contemplation, staring at Harry.
“If it will make you feel better,” said Harry, and slung himself to the side on the chair so that he could face her fully. “And make you stop worrying that I can’t do this. Your doubt could hurt me later, when I’m actually trying to accomplish it.”
He would make this about his plan, Minerva thought, but her heart still beat warmly, because Harry had said something connected to her feelings first.
She aimed her wand at him and let the concentration necessary for the spell flow through her bones and veins. She could do this. She wanted to see Harry’s Animagus form, and she wouldn’t feel differently about him no matter what it turned out to be. She only wanted to learn from it.
“Comprendo animam animalhominis.”
The spell left her with a heavy, sticky feeling of golden light tumbling in the air, nothing like the swift zip of most incantations. Minerva sat back and swallowed. The magic looked the way it was supposed to, and Harry didn’t resist as it settled over him, draping his shoulders and head like a hood for a moment before it sank into the skin.
That didn’t mean it had actually worked. Minerva wouldn’t know that until she saw it working.
But an instant later, the air between her and Harry turned transparent, and then ice-colored, forming a white field as if for the display of an image, and she knew it had.
Minerva swallowed, a little surprised as the curling, growing vine-like outlines of the picture formed an image that wasn’t very large. She had thought, at least with part of her own experience, that Harry would have to be a large predator, perhaps a cat, ruthless in his goals and fighting for his own survival.
But the image that formed was considerably smaller than that—and oddly hunched. It didn’t make sense until Minerva managed to look past her own preconceptions and see that the image that formed had bloody prey locked under one claw.
Smaller than expected. Winged. Taloned. Head twisted so that the image was staring straight at Minerva, gaping its beak threateningly.
Harry in his Animagus form would have grey feathers, and a darker back and head, and staring, mad orange eyes. It was only those eyes that let Minerva, who didn’t know that much about hawks, identify him for sure.
A goshawk. He would be a goshawk.
They were known for being madly aggressive defenders of their nests, and that could include attacking humans and bears. They would pursue their prey anywhere, Minerva had heard—down burrows, into thick brush, into circumstances that would almost certainly result in their deaths. Once they were committed, no force on earth could turn them aside.
Yes, it’s appropriate, Minerva decided, and blinked as the image dissolved. Harry watched her from beyond where it had been, his hand resting on the book they’d been discussing like a goshawk’s talon resting on prey.
Looking at him, Minerva had to swallow against her fear and her enormous, enormous pride.
“Do you think I have the stamina of soul now?” Harry asked, barely moving his lips.
It would have been embarrassing, probably to both of them, to speak all her thoughts aloud, but Minerva realized one thing she could say. Harry would have studied more kinds of birds than eagles when he was laboring to create Yar. Minerva inclined her head and murmured, “You are a goshawk.”
Harry smiled a little, slowly, his shoulders relaxing. “Yes.”
“Yes,” Minerva echoed, and changed tacks. Since they were going to do this insane thing, she needed to know more about it. “Let me help you.”
*
Neville sat with his eyes closed and breathed slowly. He was trying to clear his mind the way he had so often when Dumbledore wanted him to practice Occlumency, but he thought he was failing.
This time, though, it was Harry and not Snape or Dumbledore trying to teach him this, and it did make a lot of difference.
“I’m not sensing anything,” Neville whispered, and flinched a little when Harry moved, with a sharp scraping noise, up the stone stairs to his side. This staircase in the back of the house was one of the few places they wouldn’t be disturbed by his friends or Terry or Black or Professor McGonagall coming in to get a book, or check up on them. Or portraits, either, for that matter. Neville had never known a portrait as foul-mouthed as some of the Black ones.
“Try again.”
“You keep saying that,” Neville complained, opening his eyes and staring at Harry. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to work!”
“But it can.” Harry stared calmly at him, and Neville shivered a little. He knew now that he hadn’t really attracted Harry’s full attention when they were at Hogwarts. Having it focused on him like this was bloody unnerving. “It could. If you try a little harder, for a little longer. And if you let me bring Nagini here.”
Neville fidgeted. He really hadn’t wanted to meditate with Nagini around, even though Harry had said she would make it easier to sense the Horcrux. The way she kept pleading with him to let her out of the cage and tell her why he had “changed”—she still thought he was Voldemort—was too unnerving.
But he had tried for hours now to sense this “song” Harry had talked about without success. And he wanted to overcome his fear, to show that he could be strong and he could repay the chance Harry had taken on him.
“All right. Bring her here.”
Harry raised his eyebrows, but didn’t ask if he was sure. It probably would have given Neville too much of a chance to back out. He raised his wand and Summoned the cage with Nagini inside it instead.
Nagini was hissing threats as the cage came through the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, but as usual, her tune changed when she saw Neville. She reared up and tried to make herself as enticing as possible, her hisses soft and resonant.
“Return to your faithful servant, Master! If I did not protect myself well enough, I apologize. Take me out and make me invulnerable again!”
It was the first proof Neville had had that Nagini understood what had been done to her, a little. He held back the temptation to sick up and took a step nearer the cage. Nagini immediately stilled and waited.
“I will make you invulnerable again if you work with me now,” Neville hissed, and was grateful, not for the first time, that he knew Voldemort had spoken in English to his mum before she died. If the last words she’d heard had been Parseltongue, then Neville thought he would never have been able to speak it. “I must be quiet, and you must be more so.”
“I will be quiet, Master.”
Nagini imitated a statue, and Neville found that reassurance enough to come a little closer. Then he stretched out a shaking hand and wrapped his fingers tightly around the bars of the cage. Nagini hissed a little, but it had no words, and let Neville touch her head, guiding it down until only a small length of space separated them.
Then Neville closed his eyes and returned to the meditation.
This time, he could sense it immediately—the song in him, and the silence in her. There had been something there once; there wasn’t now. Nagini’s soul, a small thing, coiled alone in the great darkness.
Neville wasn’t alone. The song of the Horcrux came from behind another sound that he could only sense with such hard concentration that it left him panting. That was the sound of his own soul, and it was so familiar to him that he truly couldn’t “hear” it the way he could a foreign one.
And the Horcrux’s sound was distinctive.
Neville hated it immediately. It was a thin, vibrating whine, like a mosquito blundering against the walls, but it went on and on, and sometimes it dipped down into a darker sound that rasped against Neville’s teeth. He shuddered a little. He had thought he might have some trouble reproducing the song for Harry, but he already knew he would never forget it.
“Neville?”
Harry’s voice was faint and far away. Neville immediately opened his eyes. He’d spent enough time alone in the darkness with Nagini’s soul and the thing inside him. He immediately began to imitate the sound, and Harry wrote down something in a complicated musical notation he’d been developing over the last few days.
By the time Neville had finished, Harry had only a note or more left to scribble. He nodded and leaned back on the stair, stretching unselfconsciously. There was a strong curl to the grin that made Neville glad when it disappeared.
“Do you think all the Horcruxes sound the same?” Neville asked, to have something to talk about. “I mean, what if the one in me sounds different from whatever other ones Voldemort has?”
“I think they sound the same.” Harry sat back and glanced at his parchment thoughtfully. “Just as the parts of the Wild that he put into the Dark Marks and into Nagini sound the same.” He tapped his wand against the parchment, doing something to it that had no visible effect to Neville’s eyes.
“I didn’t know those parts of the Wild had a song.”
“I don’t think most people can hear it.” Harry sounded a little baffled at that. Neville had noticed that Harry didn’t really understand people having different desires or interests than he did. “But I can.”
Neville nodded, and watched as Harry rolled up the parchment and flicked his wand to send Nagini’s cage into the cellars again. Nagini hissed in agitation, but Neville forced himself not to listen to what she said. It would only make him sorry for her, and that wouldn’t really help right now.
“You think I’m doing something wrong, don’t you?”
Harry was looking at him at with those eyes like a hawk’s eyes. Neville started and shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You don’t really approve of the way that I’m going about destroying Lord Dudders.”
Neville frowned. That surprised him. “I think it’s probably going to work. I just wish you would let Mr. Black and Professor McGonagall help more.”
“I’m going to let Professor McGonagall. She asked if she could cast a spell on me this afternoon that would reassure her I had the strength for it. And now she wants to help. Regulus…” Harry shrugged. “I don’t know yet. But I thought that you might think it was wrong to set out to destroy someone’s soul.”
Neville swallowed. “I don’t really like it. But I don’t see how else we can kill him.”
“Neville, will you tell me something?”
That might be even more of a question he didn’t want to answer. But Neville only nodded and waited.
“Why are you still so afraid all the time, even when you got training to defeat Lord Dudders from the time you were a child?”
So that was it. Neville supposed he should really be surprised that Harry hadn’t asked sooner. He told the truth, though. With Harry, it was usually impossible for him not to feel that he should.
“They kept telling me I had to defeat him. And then Gran would tell me how he killed Mum and Dad. She told me that over and over. And then she would say that I probably wouldn’t defeat him, but I had to try. And Prof—Professor Snape made it clear that he never thought I could do Potions. And there was never a good tutor for Defense Against the Dark Arts, even though that seemed like it would be the most important. And Professor McGonagall got impatient with me when I couldn’t get Transfiguration right on the first go. And everyone told me how useless being good at Herbology was. They all kept telling me, over and over, that I couldn’t do it. So how could I help being afraid? I was going to die. And I was going to disappoint them.”
Harry was silent so long that Neville thought he was thinking about something else. And then Harry reached out and silently squeezed his shoulder. Neville gasped a little at the strength of that squeeze, and looked at Harry in wonder.
“They shouldn’t have done that. They shouldn’t have expected you to be a prodigy and then be disappointed in you when you weren’t.”
Harry stood up and disappeared, silently, down the stairs.
Neville took a seat on them again. He didn’t really think he was ready to go back and talk to Ron and Hermione again.
He wanted to be silent, with the revelation that someone had understood.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning