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The Serpent's Gaze, Book Five: The Lernaean Hydra	By : DictionaryWrites Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male Views: 3108 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter and the characters therein belong to JK Rowling; I'm playing in the sandbox, as it were, whilst claiming no ownership and making no money.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
"You okay, kid?" Sirius asks as he comes into the kitchen, and Harry presses his lips together, resting his chin on the backs of his hands. He looks down at the Daily Prophet, eyes scanning the headline, and then Sirius meets Harry's gaze, looking serious. Harry takes in a small inhalation: he'd been up much of the night before, thinking for a long time on one thing or another, and he had, for the first time in months, began replying to the letters that had been waiting for him to respond to. He'd written a missive to Amelia Bones, then another to Augusta Longbottom, and at three in the morning he'd been left sitting in the middle of his bed, glancing through his photo albums. "What is it?"
"I wrote Dumbledore last night. There's an Order meeting at 7 this evening." Sirius furrows his brow, staring down at him. Harry feels his own exhaustion weighing him down, as he'd only got an hour or two's sleep, in the end. He'd managed that much only by making use of his Occlumency training, compartmentalizing his thoughts temporarily, just in order to get that fragment of a good night's rest. He'll have to sleep some more before they go out to Grimmauld Place.
"He told you that?"
"No," Harry says. "I told him." A ghost of something unexpected passes over Sirius' face, something like fear, and Harry furrows his brow a little further. Sirius soon warms slightly, though, and he places his hand gently on Harry's shoulder. Sirius' touch is a warm and comforting weight, and he seems to recognize the confusion on Harry's face.
"You looked just like your dad, for a second there," Sirius murmurs. He hesitates a moment, and then says, "The day we joined the Order." Harry inhales, slowly, and Sirius adds, "Sorry."
"It's okay." Sirius draws his hand away, stepping toward the counter and taking the kettle from the stove, pouring some hot water into a cup. The smell of coffee comes richly into the air between them, and when Sirius presses a mug into Harry's hands, he doesn't refuse it. Taking a small sip, he looks back to the paper. Stan Shunpike looks out at him from the page, grinning and holding a violently struggling Bludger in his hands; the article itself talks about how Shunpike's wand had not been recovered, and about how he had been slashed across the belly before he was stabbed. The Shunpike in the photograph is younger and spottier, wearing his Ravenclaw under robe and with a scarf tied around his waist.
He'd been a shit beater, someone had told Harry once, and had only lasted one or two games - maybe Bill Weasley told him, but he can't quite remember. Took more Bludgers to the head than with his bat.
"Did you know him?" Sirius asks. "This Shunpike lad?"
"No, not really," Harry says. "He was the conductor on the Knight Bus."
"They never last long," Sirius says, shaking his head as he heads into the living room. "Most of them end up getting hit by cars."
♌ ♊ ♑ ~ ☾ ϟ ☽ ~ THE LERNAEAN HYDRA ~ ☾ ϟ ☽ ~ ♑ ♊ ♌
It's a little past six o'clock, and Remus, Sirius and Harry are walking through the streets on their way to Grimmauld Place: they'd wanted to get there early, but there are people from far further afield that need to Floo in, so it hardly makes sense for them to do so. The idea hadn't upset Harry much, but apparently Sirius had heard a lot of (probably untrue) horror stories about people trying to Floo into a place at the same time and getting Splinched together. Harry hadn't minded. It's a warm evening, if a little too humid for his liking, but why should he have a say in how humid it is?
He killed a man last night.
"Harry!" He turns his head, mild surprise showing on his face, and Adrian grins at him. Harry's smile feels cold and forced, and he concentrates to soften the expression.Penney's is just a street away - perhaps he lead them to this route unconsciously.
"Hi, Adrian." When Adrian reaches out his hand, Harry acts instinctively: it's not a handshake, really, because Harry clasps Adrian's hand with both of his own, and holds it a little too closely to his chest. Despite the oppressive warmth of the evening, weighed down by the moisture in the air, the warmth of Adrian's hand between his own is kind of comforting. Adrian leans in slightly, and then he looks at Sirius and Remus over Harry's shoulder. His uncertainty is palpable, and Harry says, "These are my Uncles. Sirius is the guy that can't dress himself, and the normal-looking one is Remus."
Sirius is laughing, his head thrown back, but when Harry lets Adrian go, Remus shakes his hand. He looks a little haggard, as the full moon is fast approaching, but his clothes are in a state of good repair, and Harry can imagine Adrian guessing him as an accountant or a bank clerk - overworked, but respectable. Sirius, of course, could be anything from rich eccentric to rock star, and Harry will have to think up a convincing explanation for him.
"Nice to meet you. Adrian, is it?" Remus asks, pleasantly, as Sirius shakes Adrian's hand very vigorously.
"Yeah, Adrian King," he says. He smiles a little, and flicks his head back, throwing his hair out of his eyes; his hands are in his pockets, but his shoulders are back, and he looks confidently between both of Harry's "uncles". "Me and Harry know each other from the arcade."
"The arcade, yes," Sirius says. "Great place to meet girls." Harry sees the confusion on Adrian's face, but Remus just chuckles and smirks at the other man.
"Do you know what an arcade is, Sirius?" Remus asks mildly, arching an eyebrow, his lip twitching.
"Uh, yeah. I'm great at bowling," Sirius says, and when all three of them laugh at him, his confidence turns quickly to indignation. "What? There's a ball, there's pins--"
"We have an appointment we have to go to, Adrian," Harry says quietly. People walk past them, but the streets aren't really busy, for London - more people are sat down in beer gardens rather than walking through the centre of the city. "It's a family thing. You want to meet up tomorrow, though?"
"Yeah, sure," Adrian says. He hesitates a second, green-brown eyes studying Harry's face, and then says, "Have you- You guys haven't got a phone?" The question takes Harry by surprise, stupidly, why had he never thought of that? Why wouldn't a regular person have a phone in their house?
"Uh--"
"Sirius and I have a strict separation between business and home," Remus says, breaking into the conversation. "We don't have a phone-line, let alone dial-up or a phone. Keeps people from calling us at all hours." It's so smooth that Harry wonders if Remus has practised these lines in front of a mirror or something, but why would he? What Muggles does Remus talk to? "Sorry about that, Adrian."
"Don't worry about it," Adrian says, smiling: there's no suspicion obvious on his face at all. "How does four sound?"
"Yeah, sure. Meet you then," Harry says, and he leads Sirius and Remus back in the direction of Grimmauld Place. For maybe fifteen or twenty minutes as they walk, there's silence between the two of them, but as soon as they step over the threshold of Number 12 and close the door behind them, Sirius explodes. As Remus neatly removes his coat, Sirius bounces from his heels to his toes, running around in circles like an excited hound, and Harry tries to force his expression into neutrality rather than letting the smile break across his face.
"Who was that? He was a Muggle? Have you shagged him? What was that thing with the hands? When did you meet him? What is--" Sirius begins talking so fast that his proper Pureblood enunciation becomes lost in the blurred words, and Harry tunes it out, moving into the dining room. Settled at the dining room table, chatting amiably with Narcissa and Dromeda, is Bill Weasley: both women are watching him with a disturbingly concentrated gaze, and Harry elects not to dwell too much on why that might be. Leaning against a cabinet is Cecilia Hayworth, talking rapidly with Tonks, Ted and Charlie Weasley; she gesticulates wildly, and Ted is interjecting every once in a while. Arthur and Percy Weasley are arguing over a checker board; Mad-Eye Moody stands alone, staring broodily out of a window; Lindon Sartorius is talking very quietly with a man Harry has to take a second before he recognizes.
"Mr Keats," he says, and the man turns. His glassy eyes are soft behind his glasses, but as his gaze turns upon Harry it hardens slightly, as if he's suddenly coming away from a dream in his head. Beside Sartorius, who is skinny but tall, Dorian Keats looks very small: he's the record keeper that had brought news of the prophecy to Harry when it had been given to Lavender Brown last year. "When did you join our ranks?"
"This very week, Mr Potter," Harry had almost forgotten: Keats eternally speaks as if he's in a very posh library, and any word spoken too loudly is likely to get him expelled. His voice is rather high for a man's, but it's not gratingly so, especially not when it's heard in barely a whisper. "Lindon gave my name to Dumbledore. How are you faring?"
"Well, Voldemort hasn't killed me yet." At the name, the room goes abruptly silent, and Harry sees Dumbledore in the doorway from the kitchen. At his shoulder is McGonagall, and at his hip, Flitwick. "We've got twenty minutes to go. No business yet." Harry is almost surprised by the sternness in his voice, and even more surprised by the fact that everybody in the room seems to obey him, returning to their conversations, if a little more quietly than before. Across the room, Dumbledore meets Harry's gaze, and they exchange small nods.
In this moment, Harry feels impossibly old.
"It's good to see you, Mr Keats. We'll talk later." Something passes over Keats' face, an uncertainty or a fear, maybe, but then he nods his head, and Harry walks away from him, approaching Dumbledore. In the round mirror on the wall that he passes, he sees Sirius and Remus only just entering the dining room, and immediately they begin talking with Lindon and Keats. Sirius looks pale, and Harry wonders for a moment if he and Remus were arguing in the stairwell.
"Headmaster," Harry says, nodding his head politely. "I hope you don't think I've overstepped tonight."
"No, Harry, not at all," Dumbledore says, shaking his head slightly to the side; his beard, which had been tucked into his belt, comes loose, and he takes hold of the thick, grey ends and tucks them back into their proper place, where he is unlikely to-- What? Trip? "Your letter, of course, came as something of a surprise, but I merely wish you would tell me what precisely you are worried about, that I might better allay your fears. There are so many things for people to be scared of, in these times..."
Determinedly, Harry says, "I'm not scared, sir. I just have a few important questions to raise, that's all, and I think I have some answers."
"You wish you didn't, eh, Potter?" Flitwick looks up into Harry's eyes, his gaze direct and his expression solemn. It strikes Harry that the question is coming from a place of empathy and understanding, and he nods his head. He's always liked Professor Flitwick, but it's strange to be here: of course, he still feels the need to use the proper titles for his professors, to be respectful, but he also feels like he's being looked at as almost an equal. The sensation is surreal.
"Yes, sir. I'll admit to that." More and more people are suddenly filtering into the room now: Snape has been dragged into the conversation between the other men his age by a delighted Lindon Sartorius, and Moody is already arguing with Sturgis Podmore and some other Aurors Harry doesn't recall the names of. People are beginning to sit down around the table, and Percy's checkers board has been Vanished away. Narcissa Malfoy gets hold of a cushion for Flitwick to sit on, and he enchants it to bring him up to a comfortable level with the table: McGonagall doesn't sit, choosing to stand behind Flitwick's chair, and Moody also stays standing at the side of the room with Kingsley Shacklebolt on his left and Percy Weasley on his right. Around the room, Harry sees faces that are both very familiar and only semi-so - he sees Dedalus Diggle, Hestia Jones, Hagrid (who is standing in the corner of the room, as he won't fit at the table)... But there are new people too: not just Keats, but people Harry semi-recognizes from other places, or younger members, like Oliver Wood. "Mrs Figg!" Harry says, and he moves to pull out a chair for her: she sits down very slowly, giving him a very warm and kind smile, and Harry politely ignores the smell of Kneazles clinging to her clothes. "How are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm alright now, Harry," she says, nodding her head and placing her handbag neatly in her lap. "I live in Darning-On-Tweed now; one of those little communities with more wizards than Muggles, you know? It's where that nice young man, Oliver Wood is from. Do you know him?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Harry nods, and Dumbledore clears his throat, causing a hushed silence to spread through the room. Rather than taking a seat at the head of the table, like usual, however, he sits on the right hand, across from Sirius and Remus: the head seat is left empty, and he nods Harry toward it. Surprised and stiff, Harry moves over, moving to stand between the high-backed chair and the long dining table. For a long few moments, there is complete silence, and Harry stares around the room, at everybody's faces - there are forty people in the room, and every single one of them is looking right at Harry, some of them surprised to see him, it seems.
"In his messages to you tonight, Professor Dumbledore probably told you the meeting wasn't being convened by him. For those of you that don't know, or haven't met me before, my name is Harry Potter." A few of the strange faces show their surprise, and Harry shifts his head slightly, making sure his fringe is covering the scar on his forehead. Pushing his glasses up his nose, he is aware of how fast his blood seems to be moving through his veins, how much his heart is beating in his chest, and he does his best to ignore it. "Voldemort killed my parents, but now that he's back, he's concentrated on me again. You've probably read the prophecies I published in the Prophet this year: he has his reasons, I guess, just like I have mine for living. It's not about those prophecies that I want to talk tonight, though..." People flinch at the name, but he won't shy away from it... They'll stop in the end.
"Stan Shunpike was murdered last night on the Hungerford Bridge. His wand hasn't been recovered - the Aurors think it fell into the Thames, yeah? - but they saw the tattoo on his left arm. That's why wizards were called in: it's not exactly normal for a tattoo to move like that in the Muggle word." Kingsley Shacklebolt and Eleanor Guinan are both nodding at his comment about the wand: every person in the room seems rapt, and it's strange for so many people to pay attention to him. Snape is looking right at Harry's face, and when Harry meets his black gaze, he thinks about how he'd used his Occlumency to sleep, and he considers it now, too. The memories of the knife, of the cigarette burn, of Shunpike falling onto the ground, are all neatly filed away, out of reach.
Snape's expression, as ever, remains impassive.
"The Aurors reported it was likely a Muggle mugging gone wrong - they tried to rob him, and when they found he didn't have a wallet with recognizable money on him, they stabbed him and left him for dead." Again, Shacklebolt and Guinan nod. "I think you're wrong." Shacklebolt's expression betrays only a slight curiosity, but Harry sees Guinan bristle, so he goes on: "I think Lockhart's lot killed him. I think they know something that I've just figured out myself."
"You think Lockhart killed Stan Shunpike?" Keats asked, arching his mousy eyebrows. Harry sees that Sirius is watching him very closely, but he looks at Keats himself. Keats says, "I've been attending Lockhart's meeting: he's not mentioned any such thing." Harry thinks back to the meeting he'd witnessed, in by Invisibility Cloak... Had Keats there? Or was he recruited as a double agent later on? It doesn't matter. All that matters is that Harry points blame to a wizard without it being himself.
"How comfortable is Lockhart's half-assembled army with the idea of murder thus far, Mr Keats? You think Lockhart could really tell the group if he killed a man himself, with the group's support?" Keats hesitates, his glassy eyes flickering from left to right as he digests the thought, and then he leans back in his chair, giving a small inclination of his head. You should feel guilty for that. Why don't you? Harry steels his jaw. "Voldemort is a very careful man, wouldn't you guys say? Throughout the First War, he was focused on strategy, patience... He took a lot of time to do everything, particularly to pick out his servants. A lot of those he branded with the Dark Mark are the cream of the crop - some of the highest ranking wizards in society, in positions in the Ministry or with a lot of money and rank. Stan Shunpike was a stupid half-blood that came out of Hogwarts with a NEWT in History of Magic and a handful of shitty OWL scores, and he didn't know the difference between his backside and the spout of a teapot. I don't say this to denigrate him or to speak ill of the dead: I'm saying something that people who knew him in this room could only confirm - Oliver? Charlie? Tonks?"
All three of them look at each other, sharing glances across the room, and then they each look back to Harry.
"He was crap at school," Tonks admits quietly. "He only got that NEWT because he cheated on the exam."
"He was alright on a broom," Oliver says. "But he wasn't great or anything. He was even on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team for half a season, until he took that Bludger to the back of his skull and Madam Pomfrey banned him."
"Charlie," Harry asks, his hands resting on the edge of the table in front of him. "Would you say Stan Shunpike would have anything to offer Voldemort and the Death Eaters?" Charlie drums his burned and scarred fingers on the edge of the table, seeming to consider the question, and then he slowly shakes his head.
"He was the conductor of the Knight Bus, I suppose, but everyone knows no one lasts in that job. You bang your head too many times, or you get caught up in Muggle traffic. He didn't know much about anything, like you said, and I don't think he had any hidden skills... What are you saying? That he wasn't really a Death Eater?" Every head whips in Harry's direction, and he inhales. He could tell them all, he supposes: tell them all that Harry burned him with a cigarette and stabbed him twice with the knife tucked inside his belt... But he's not quite that mad yet.
"No, I think he really was a Death Eater. I think Voldemort is forgetting his patience a little bit, actually: I think he's panicking." There are murmurs throughout the room, and people seem confused, so Harry says, "Voldemort killed two of his own this summer, Igor Karkaroff and Lucius Malfoy." Intentionally, Harry keeps his gaze away from Narcissa. "Why would he do that?"
"Because they betrayed him!" Moody snaps, shambling forwards. "You're just a boy, Potter, what do you-"
"Alastor," Harry says, sharply. Moody actually recoils slightly, his real eye widening slightly, his false one revolving at speed in its socket. "Leave your insults for after the meeting, please. But please, tell the room: how has Voldemort dealt with betrayals in the past? In the First War?"
"He killed them! Just like this, he killed them, left the Dark Mark above their heads."
"Just like this? Really? Lucius and Karkaroff - they died in a way you'd seen before?" Moody's mouth closes. He stares at Harry for a second, and Harry glances around the table, his gaze settling on Snape. "Professor, can you describe for us the state of Karkaroff and Lucius' bodies, please? I'm not doing this for no reason, I swear. This is important." Snape's impassive expression fades for a second, revealing a curled lip and an expression of mild disgust, but then understanding seems to pass through his dark eyes, and he stands to address the room.
"Lucius and Igor were found on their backs, each with blood clinging to their clothes, but they weren't waiting in piles of their own blood. Each had a vicious wound in the centre of their chest, as if attacked by some sort of wolf or bear: teeth had torn through the flesh and bone with an apparent savage ease, and both were almost entirely exsanguinated."
"No blood at all?" Harry asks. He tries to keep the image away from the forefront of his mind: he's imagined it before, of course, but he'd never known for certain how Lucius had looked when he was dead, and now... This isn't the time to think about it. This isn't the time. "In either of them?"
"Only what little remained on their clothes, and that was still wet when we arrived." Harry thinks of Snape having bloodied cuffs after coming away from the bodies - had he reached to check Lucius' pulse, maybe, despite the injuries? Out of pure instinct, and emotion? "Please, Potter, we are all rapt. Do elucidate on your theory for the rest of the class."
"If you'll sit down, sir, I shall." Snape's lip twitches, and he seats himself as gracefully as a prince. Bastard. "A few years ago, I found out I was a Parselmouth, and I ended up accidentally unlocking a library in the Slytherin Common Room that had been forgotten for hundreds of years. Not a foot had stepped inside since the 18th century, from what Lindon Sartorius and Cecilia Hayworth could find..." A pause, and then Harry says, "I knew otherwise, but I chose not to correct them at the time. When exploring the room at night, I found this stuck in the back of an old desk - an old doodle left behind by an old student. Another Parselmouth, it turns out. He actually came to Hogwarts in 1938." He hears McGonagall gasp, her blue eyes wide, her hand over her mouth. Harry pulls the folded piece of paper out of his pocket, pushing it across the table to Dumbledore, who carefully examines it. "At the time, I was just a kid, and I thought it was a cool drawing. A snake coming out of a skull."
"This is Tom Riddle's handwriting, certainly," Dumbledore says quietly, tracing the half-scribbled out words: his well-manicured thumb nail comes to rest on the word that Harry had puzzled over: anima. "You had no idea what you held in your hands."
"None at all, sir." Harry looks around the room, at the pale, uncertain faces. "You see, the way Lucius and Karkaroff died is connected to this piece of paper. There are a few words here that I didn't understand, but they're centred around one that I did know. Anima. Latin for mind, or soul, but not the kind of thing we'd use for animating something in Charms or Transfiguration. This word would be used for something deeper, more powerful. I don't know how, but it's my theory that when Voldemort brands one of his Death Eaters with the Dark Mark, he's creating a link between them."
There's sudden talk all around the room: Moody is grumbling something, the historians are leaning in and speaking conspiratorially, and Narcissa Malfoy looks like she's about to cry: Sirius slams his hand down hard on the table, and silence reigns again.
"I think Voldemort can stay immortal via his servants. As long as some of them are still alive, he can cling on. And if he needs to draw power to himself, if he needs to gain energy quickly... He can cannibalize their life force, their magic, and use it to fuel his own. The lack of blood in Karkaroff and Lucius... Maybe it was symbolic, or maybe it was part of the ritual, but I'm sure Voldemort has already done this with some kind of snake." You should see the guy lately, he wants to say, but he doesn't want to upset anybody in the room any more than he already has: he thinks of Voldemort's shining skin in the vision he'd had last year, his sharpened teeth, the new shape of his jaw... "Professor Dumbledore, you probably know more about this than me."
Harry sits down, and Dumbledore stands, his expression very serious.
"Harry is right," he says, very slowly. Gravity weighs down his every word, and even though Dumbledore is speaking, Harry can feel other people's gazes on him. Molly and Arthur Weasley are holding hands where they sit together, their expressions serious (where are the twins, Ron and Ginny? Did she leave them at home alone, or are they outside?), but Molly keeps looking at Harry as if she's about to murder him by motherhood. "In the past decade, I've devoted some time to piecing together the life of Tom Riddle - that is to say, the life of Voldemort before he took on that name. One of his focuses was on a particular kind of magic that enabled one to embed a piece of one's soul, one's magic, in a physical object... This would imbue the caster with a sort of immortality: he could not truly die, because a tether was keeping him to this world. I found an early experiment of his, a diary he had at school, where he seemed to dip into this magic--
"It was strange to me, I confess, to see that he never attempted to make another. Looking at these scribblings, however, of a younger man, it is quite clear to me that Harry is right. We would have to test the links, but Voldemort may well be tied to his Death Eaters."
"Then we should kill them all, Headmaster?" Snape asks; his tone is slightly sardonic, but his expression is serious. Had Snape killed anyone in the war, Harry wonders? "If it is Death Eaters that allow the Dark Lord his immortality, then those links must be severed."
"There is undoubtedly a way to do this without bloodshed," Dumbledore says.
"Without bloodshed?" Moody demands, his angry gaze now turned on Dumbledore rather than on Harry. "Really? This is war, Albus! You can't really--"
"My husband had that mark!" Narcissa says, voice uncharacteristically sharp with anger. "You think these men incapable of change?"
"I think a Death Eater dead is better than one alive, no matter how much they claim to change."
"How dare you! In my own house-"
"I think you'll find it's my house, Cissy."
"You stay out of this!" Quickly, the room is awash with voices, each trying to speak over the other, and Harry stands from the table, leaving the paper with Dumbledore and leaving the room. The Weasley children aren't out in the corridor; they must have stayed at home, with Fred and George in charge. His hands in his pockets, Harry wanders through the corridors of 12 Grimmauld Place, finally stepping into the library, where the dampening charms block out the distant sounds of yells and shouts in the dining room downstairs. Sirius probably spent a lot of time in here as a child and a teenager, Harry guesses, if his parents yelled as much as he's heard. He walks over to the window, looking down into the street.
Muggle cars are parked along the pavements, but this is a one-way road into a small cul-de-sac, and in the middle of the room some Muggle children are kicking around a football. Through the enchanted window, Harry can't hear a thing, but he imagines that they're laughing and calling to each other as they run back and forth.
Behind him, he hears the door unlatch, then click shut. He doesn't bother to turn, and simply keeps his gaze on the window: the reflection is quite clear, as the evening light outside is warm, but not bright. Dumbledore's thumbs are loosely settled on the sides of his belt. "Couldn't stand all the noise and bother?"
"It did seem a bit too much," Dumbledore admits, and he begins to walk toward the window, but Harry waves him off and gestures to the soft seats of the library. Dumbledore sits down in an old, comfortable armchair, and Harry settles on a small stool. Beside them, the fire crackles into action, immediately sending a pleasant rush of heat into the room, even though it hadn't been especially cold. Dumbledore crosses his legs over each other, revealing that he's wearing socks emblazoned with pink flamingos, and he interlinks his fingers upon his knee. "How long have you known about this, Harry?"
"Not very long," Harry says quietly. "I was thinking from the beginning of the summer, and trying to work it out in my head. Then I was going through some old letters in my albums, and I found that piece of paper. When Stan died..." When I killed him, you mean. "I guess it just slid the last piece into place. I'm sorry I didn't tell you, sir, I guess I was just hoping someone would prove me wrong in the course of explaining, you know?"
"A hope dashed, I'm afraid, my boy." Dumbledore sighs softly, and Harry shakes his head slightly, looking away from him. All those overlapping voices had been impossible to listen to, but now, in the silence of the library, he almost wishes for them. "It's quite alright. They'll calm soon: we have news to take from Mr Keats."
"About Gilderoy Lockhart?" Harry inhales slightly, then looks back to Dumbledore. "Do you think I'm wrong? About him killing Shunpike? I thought it made sense, but if Keats doesn't think so--"
"We can hardly say," Dumbledore says quietly. Behind his glasses, his blue eyes are as piercing as ever, and when he meets Harry's gaze, Harry doesn't allow himself to look away. His Occlumency, he hopes, is sufficient - how easy is wandless, non-verbal Legilimency? Could Snape and Dumbledore possibly do it so easily? "You may be right, in other ways. It may be another Death Eater betraying his master, or even a Muggle. Such a life taken... It's a great shame." Does he know? Does he suspect, even?
Harry has no idea. How could Harry know?
"Do you really think there's a way around--" Harry hesitates, and then says, "What Snape said, sir, about killing them all...?"
"We must find one," Dumbledore says. "Taking a life, Harry, whether that life belongs to a friend or an enemy, a Death Eater or not... It takes its toll not only upon one's mind, one's conscience, but upon one's very life force - upon one's very magic. One of the steps Voldemort must have taken in order to approach this sort of magic was to kill someone. It creates a split in the soul, Harry, damage that can never be undone. There is no greater crime than murder."
"What about letting murders happen?" Harry asks. Dumbledore's gaze flicks to his face, and he says, "If I were to let Voldemort keep going... He'd kill so many more people. The Death Eaters--"
"They're still people, my boy, regardless of their crimes," Dumbledore says quietly. He says this with more sadness than anger, and Harry looks down at the richly patterned carpet of the room, thinking about Stan Shunpike's desperate, wet gasp, the cry he'd let out when Harry's cigarette had sizzled against his skin, the feel of the knife in his hand, hot blood against his fingers...
"Yeah," Harry whispers. "They are."
♌ ♊ ♑ ~ ☾ ϟ ☽ ~ THE LERNAEAN HYDRA ~ ☾ ϟ ☽ ~ ♑ ♊ ♌

Adrian's mouth draws away from Harry's, and Harry groans as he realizes there's a string of saliva collecting their mouths. Adrian lets out a sudden bark of laughter, and they break apart, both wiping their mouths, Adrian with his sleeve and Harry with a handkerchief. Harry leans against the alley wall, pushing the handkerchief back in the pocket of his jeans, and Adrian looks at him from where he leans himself, his back against the fire escape of the next building. "How did your meeting go yesterday?"
"Okay," Harry says, shrugging his shoulders. "We got some stuff done, I guess. It's just to do with Remus and Sirius' business, so it's not anything interesting." When they'd got home last night, Sirius and Remus had apparently been desperate to avoid the topic of Voldemort's soul magic, and instead had each asked him about a thousand questions apiece about who Adrian King might be. Harry had deftly avoided the majority. Now, he turns his head, looking up at the setting sun as the evening gets on. What's going to happen now, he has no idea.
Keats had fed back about Lockhart's plans, which were mostly about arranging times where people could be trained in self-defence and could plan out strategies if Death Eaters attacked Diagon Alley - ways to evacuate people safely, ways to take down Death Eaters, et cetera... People had spit on the idea a lot, but Harry had actually been kind of impressed, even if Lockhart has tried to kill him.
He's not the same man that went into Azkaban, Harry knows.
"Harry?" Adrian pats him on the arm, and Harry turns to him.
"Sorry. I was miles away - what was it you said?"
"I said I'm a Sagittarius," Adrian says, mildly. "I was asking what your sign was."
"You believe in that stuff?" Harry asks, thinking of the Sybil Trelawney impression Tracey Davis had done when she'd made the mistake of mentioning she was an Aries in class.
"No, it's a pretence for conversation between snogging," Adrian answers, and Harry feels himself laugh.
"I'm a Leo, I think." Adrian frowns slightly, his eyebrows lowering.
"A Leo? When's your birthday?"
"The 31st."
"Of July? That's barely two weeks away! Why didn't you say?" Harry shrugs his shoulders helplessly, and Adrian grins at him, leaning against the wall beside him, their shoulders aligned. "Aren't you going to have a party?"
"A party?" Harry repeats. The idea is bizarre - he's never had a birthday party before, and it's never really occurred to him that it might be an option. Remus and Molly had both baked him cakes last year, and he'd blown out candles and unwrapped presents, but a party? What would a party for him even consist of? "Oh, um, no. I-- To be honest, Adrian, I've never had one." He sees the horror pass over Adrian's face, and he's quick to say, "Sirius and Remus aren't against it or anything! It's just that, uh, my other aunt and uncle used to have custody of me. They didn't really, uh, like me much. I never celebrated my birthday until I went to school up North."
"I'm sorry," Adrian says immediately. He says it quickly, but not unfeelingly: Harry doesn't think he imagines the slight anger in his features - anger at these relatives of Harry's Adrian doesn't even know. "That's just so... Shitty."
"Tell me about it." There's a pause between them, and Harry thinks that Adrian is going to bridge the gap and kiss him, but he doesn't: instead, his hand entwines with Harry's, and he leans back against the wall beside him, turning towards the sunset. Adrian's hand is dry and warm in Harry's own, and he doesn't pull away, but settles into the silence between them.
That night, when Harry goes home, he writes to Florean Fortescue, and asks to make a booking. Outside his window, a shooting star falls, and instead of thinking about wishes, he only thinks about death.
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The Serpent's Gaze, Book Five: The Lernaean Hydra