Morgen früh, wenn Gott will - Part I
Author: wantsunicorns
Title: Morgen früh, wenn Gott will
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Albus Severus Potter, James Potter, Lily Potter, Rose Weasley, Hugo Weasley, Victorie Weasley, Teddy Lupin, Scorpius Malfoy, background!Harry Potter, background!Draco Malfoy; Albus Severus/Scorpius, background!Harry/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~15.900
Warning(s): Major character death
Prompt: I used my own prompt :)
Summary: Albus wakes up in dark chamber, he doesn’t remember how he got there and what happened. It is for him and the rest of the people in that room to find out what happened and how to escape their inevitable seeming fate.
Author's Note: First of all thank you kindly to the people who took the time to look over this for me. You’ve been fantastic! I’m speaking of my betas of course, crazyparakiss, kinky_kneazle and wendypops thank you for encouraging me and sharing your thoughts with me. Without you this wouldn’t have been half as much fun! I might have tweaked it a little afterwards, which means that any remaining mistakes are my own. :)
I wrote this to my own prompt and of course like always, this fic developed more and more plot as I wrote it and I had remove a lot of it. It was a lot of fun to write and I’m pretty sure I’ll revisit this specific universe many more times. I know the POV isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, I’ve wanted to experiment a little and I think it worked out in the end. The title “Morgen früh, wenn Gott will” is taken from a German lullaby and traditionally followed by the line “wirst du wieder geweckt”. Those two lines translate to: “Tomorrow morning, God willing, you shall awake/be woken again.” If you want to learn more about this lullaby, feel free to check it out here.
Morgen früh, wenn Gott will
You wake up feeling disoriented. Someone’s shaking you by your shoulders and calling your name. You idly wonder about the clear sense of desperation you perceive in their voice. What could possibly have upset them so? It’s a bit cold, a bit dark, but you don’t feel uncomfortable. Your entire body feels relaxed, as if you are just about to fall asleep. Your eyes drift shut again and the shaking becomes more frantic. Part of you decides that the person who’s shouting at you must either hate or love you fiercely, because no other person would be that persistent in trying to disturb your rest.
You are finally able to make out words, instead of gibberish, and you are glad, because for a moment you were scared the other person might not be speaking English at all.
The hands on your shoulders slacken and a body slumps against you. Your body is starting to feel sore where it is awakened by the weight of another. Something feels off, but you can’t pinpoint it, as your thoughts are still sluggish. You feel a bit like whoever is running your brain at the moment is wading through a dark and smelly swamp. Bubbles of gas slowly rising to the surface popping here and there, with no landmarks as far as the eye can see. You should be worried. This isn’t normal; neither how little all of this bothers you, nor how you can’t feel your legs or how it took you this long to realise that the wetness on your chest comes from another person’s tears. Is it a man or woman, you wonder. Definitely a woman, you decide. You can make out her sobs, her desperate pleading, as she clings to your front.
“Al, please wake up; not you too. I can’t bear being the only one!”
The meaning of the words uttered in fear doesn’t register with you properly. After far too long you realise the that woman clinging to you - which in itself is odd as you are really not that into them - is in fact your sister, Lily. Something is very wrong here, and while you still don’t seem to care about yourself, her distress is definitely getting through to you. There’s something you should remember. Something just within your grasp, but every time you try to reach for it the memory slips from your hold like a cold fish.
Maybe you are in hospital. Did you have an accident? No, that idea doesn’t sit right with you; you decide it can’t be that. What then? Were you sick? Were you injured somehow? This doesn’t ring a bell either, and you are startled from your reverie when the shaking starts again. You try to blink your eyes rapidly, trying to get them to focus to no avail; all you can make out is a flickering brightness above you. For a second real terror strikes you as you realise that you could be going blind. You want to cry out in fear, but there’s something blocking your airway. You can feel panic rising to the surface and try to grab for whatever it is that is in your mouth, but you can’t feel your arms. Inside your head you are screaming. You are the only one who can hear it. You realise you are blind and paralysed, unable to help yourself or your baby sister.
But if you think about it, how is that possible? You clearly remember feeling your sister’s body against yours; shouldn’t you be unable to feel anything at all, if you are paralysed? Still you cannot move and there’s nothing you can do for your sister’s distress.
Something is blocking the flickering brightness above you and for a second you fear that your sight is going completely. Then the shape that is blocking out the light becomes the tear-streaked face of your sister. Her long red hair tickles your cheek and you feel relief flooding you. You are not blind, and as you see your hand coming up beside your face to reach for her you realise that you are not paralysed either.
Her voice still sounds muffled and a bit like she’s speaking from somewhere far away on a bad connection using one of those Muggle devices your godmother is so fond of. She’s clinging to you again but this time in relief. You still can’t seem to move much and you muse about how relief and desperation are both equally painful when unleashed on someone else in a bone-crushing hug.
You try to speak again, but there’s still something in your throat, you feel for it with your free hand, but your fingers encounter nothing but air. You were expecting some kind of tube, perhaps it’s a spell. Your entire body is sore and it takes every effort to touch Lily and signal her to look at you. You point at your mouth and look at her questioningly. You can see first confusion and then understanding pass across her features. She scrambles off you. You have no idea where she’s going or what she’s going to do. You just stare at the stone ceiling high above you with what you now can make out as flickering lights. A strange humming sound, like that of an angry hornet is coming from the bulbs behind their cover of frosted glass. You are happy to look at them; anything to help convince you that you haven’t gone blind. They look Muggle, but you are pretty sure they are not connected to electricity in any way, as you cannot see cables. Grandpa Arthur always had had a thing for Muggle technology and according to him there always were wires, even so-called wireless things needed wires at some point, he’d said. It’s so odd what one focuses on when one is trying desperately not to think about something else.
You can hear someone approaching with hurried steps. Maybe Lily went to fetch a doctor. Looking around you, slowly twisting your head this way and that as far as it can go, you decide you are not lying in a hospital bed, possibly a field bed of some kind. Since when have army field beds been made of stone? The memories inside you stir again as you think of war and you strain your mind, trying to hold on to them, but then Lily is back and the memories dissolve in the already slack grip of your subconscious, like a puff of smoke.
You don’t know what spell she uses, but the feeling of an object shoved down your throat disappears unexpectedly and you utter a hoarse croak as you try to thank her.
“What happened?” You manage to say loud enough for her to understand after the fifth attempt.
She slowly helps you to sit up and you realise that you are not lying in a bed at all, but in a coffin. No, not a coffin; a sarcophagus. The heavy lid twisted partway to the side just enough, to allow you to sit up. You are not prepared for how much this scares you and the only reason you even attempt to suppress how terrified you are is to protect your baby sister.
Lily begins to rub your hands and arms, trying to get life back into them, and while it hurts more than just a little you are still grateful because after your earlier scare you are glad to feel anything at all.
While Lily slowly helps you out of the sarcophagus that held you for who knows how long, she talks about how she woke up in the dark, feeling as if she was choking. The air had been filled with an intense wailing sound and it had taken a long time before she’d been able to move.
“They’re all here, Al!” Lily says to you, her voice still unbelieving and confused.
“Who’s here?”
“Everyone; Rose, Hugo, James, Teddy and Victoire. Even Scorpius bloody Malfoy is here. I tried to find Mum and Dad, but they aren’t here, and I haven’t been able to find a way out of this room yet so I don’t know whether they’re nearby.”
“What do you mean? Where are they?” you ask, looking around you and spotting more sarcophagi like yours. All the lids are pushed to the side, just like yours, and suddenly you realise that each and every one of them contains a body, paralysed and blind, just like you were till Lily came for you.
The fear is back. You know you should be afraid, because something happened, something truly terrible and frightening, but you still can’t remember. And then of course there’s Scorpius; you didn’t think you’d ever see him again. You and him being former best friends and all that. What a day that had been, when you told your father that you had been sorted into Slytherin - he’d actually been happy about that, or so it seemed at the time - and that you had made a new friend; your best friend. When your father found out his name he’d looked as if he’d just eaten a particularly sour lemon, and it wasn’t until much later that you figured out why he disliked Scorpius so.
You never disliked Scorpius, hell, you don’t even really dislike him now. With you and Scorpius it’s complicated. Better not to dwell on that.
“Alright then!” you say, sounding more sure of yourself than you feel. From the look she gives you, you can tell that Lily knows you are faking for her sake. “Let’s have a look at them, shall we?”
You make as if to get up, but you are so weak that it’s Lily who’s holding you up with a steadying hand. If not for her you would have fallen right back into your deathbed.
It takes a long time till you’ve crossed the two metres between your sarcophagus and the next one. Your heart beats faster as you see the still pale face of Scorpius Malfoy. He has always been pale, but his entire face is now the colour of death. You try to deny it, but deep inside you feel your heart breaking at the sight in front of you. All you want to do is throw yourself on his lifeless body and take it all back; all the words that were said in anger, just for him to come back to you. It’s been months since you’ve seen each other and only now do you realise how much you missed him; now that you can never have him back. Lily is speaking to you, or more accurately at you, and you realise that she must have been talking for a while now.
“Sorry, say that again?” you say, glad to have something, anything, to focus on besides how lost you feel without him.
“I said they’re all breathing and I checked their pulses, but I can’t seem to wake them up. You’re the first one to respond in any way. I was so scared…” At that her voice breaks and you wrap your arms around her, making reassuring shushing noises.
“We need to get them out of those coffins,” you hear yourself say.
“You aren’t strong enough, Al,” your sister points out. You know that she’s right, but you can’t stand to see him like this. You know you should be more worried about your friends and your brother, but all you can think about, now that you have seen his face again, is your lover.
“Please, Lily, help me get them out of these things.” You sound desperate and you know it. If you don’t get a hold of yourself Lily will start to get suspicious. You’ve never told anyone about you and Scorpius. Why secrecy was so important at the time escapes you now.
“Alright, I’ll get them out of there, but you stay put. Got that? I don’t want you fainting!” Her voice is stern and you smile, because it’s the kind of thing Molly Weasley would have said. You flash her a quick grin and nod; she grins back.
“As your ladyship commands!” you reply and get biffed on the head for it. You both start to laugh and it’s freeing. You slowly lower yourself to the floor beside Scorpius’ sarcophagus and lean forward to allow Lily to cushion your back with some of the padding she has torn from yours. Taking a calming breath and brandishing her wand in a confident manner, Lily gets to work. You already know she’ll leave Scorpius till last. None of your siblings or friends like him, they never understood what you saw in him, but you sort of liked it that way. Despite having two siblings, you were never that good at sharing anyway.
You sneak your hand into Scorpius’ coffin and caress his cold cheek while Lily is busy hoisting limp bodies out of their resting places, rubbing their limbs and sitting them down; leaning them against the walls of the large chamber. Out of the corner of your eye you can see James, Hugo and Rose leaning beside each other, James and Hugo unmoving and Rose blinking her eyes repeatedly. Teddy and Victoire follow and you wonder how Lily could possibly carry them, but when she turns around just for a second, wand in hand, you realise she’s levitated everyone but you. You feel special and the thought warms your heart, making you smile. No matter how much you’ve teased her over the years, Lily is still special to you, and always will be.
Your hand traces Scorpius’ jaw and comes to rest on his throat. You can feel the reassuring flutter of his pulse against your fingers and before you know it, you’ve drifted off to sleep.
The room seems brighter when you wake up; the lights aren’t flickering anymore. You can hear hushed conversations in the background as well as the sound of someone sobbing uncontrollably. Your hand now rests on Scorpius’ chest and you feel anger surge through you as you realise that everyone but Scorpius has already been freed. Maybe it wasn’t for the best that everyone disliked him, after all.
The beating of his heart feels stronger and you feel unexpected confidence rise in you. Scorpius will be okay, you decide, and gently run your hand up and down his torso without noticing that you are doing it. Maybe you are just kidding yourself, but he feels warmer to your touch already.
The conversation at the other side of the room stops and you quickly snatch your hand away as if burned. It wouldn’t do for them to find out now, would it? As you still can’t make up your mind, Teddy walks over to you, helping you up and making you sit on the sarcophagus’ edge. Teddy carefully lifts Scorpius’ limp body, his head lolling from side to side as his body is moved. Adhering to standard wizarding first aid guidelines Teddy prepares to cast an enervate on Scorpius and your heart speeds up noticeably with anticipation as he brandishes his wand. Despite the strength of the spell Scorpius doesn’t even so much as shiver and your anticipation quickly turns into fear.
Just as you are about to scold Teddy for putting Scorpius down less than gently, Scorpius’ eyes fly open and he starts coughing and gagging. You rush to him, paying no heed to the questioning stares directed at you by your sister and cousin, and gently place your hands on his shoulders.
“Scorpius?” Your voice is barely above a whisper and you assume he hasn’t heard you. The coughing and gagging has stopped and his eyes are still open. You say his name again, a bit louder this time, but still get no reaction. His skin is slowly warming beneath your hands, but he’s not moving and his eyes are unseeing. He’s more like a broken doll than a human being.
“All the lights are on, but nobody’s home,” Teddy says beside you, his voice carefully neutral. He places his hand comfortingly on your shoulder as he continues. “James and Hugo are also catatonic; they breathe, their hearts beat and their eyes are open, but they don’t react to outside stimuli. We have no idea what’s wrong with them. Victoire displayed the same symptoms at first, but she’s perfectly fine now.”
You feel like you should know what’s wrong with them, what’s wrong with all of you, but you still can’t seem to remember. You must have dreamt when you were resting beside Scorpius, because you do remember something: the distraught face of your mother. You remember your dad reaching for someone - not your mum - and missing. Her face alone should jog your memory, and suddenly you remember running as if you were running for your life. Rose was there, and Lily and James, but none of the others that are in this room. In the memory your father is screaming at you to run faster and not to look back, as he fires hex after hex at whatever is following you. For the first time in your life you do as he says without question; you grab Lily’s hand and you run as if the devil himself is after you.
“Al, are you okay?” Teddy’s voice draws you back into the present. You nod, unsure whether it’s the truth.
Lily beckons you over to them and reluctantly you leave Scorpius behind after telling him that you’ll be right back and for him not to be afraid. What if he can hear and feel everything, you wonder. What if he is trapped in his own body unable to respond and going insane, just like you were before you recognised Lily?
You walk past seven sarcophagi identical to yours. The room is crescent shaped and while there are two doorways leading from it that suggest the entire complex is circular in shape, at least one of them has been blocked by rubble. You get closer to Rose and Lily who have piled books and what looks like notes onto a makeshift reading table. Most of the paper looks charred around the edges. A huge apparatus that reminds you of the kind of device Muggles use to measure your blood pressure rises out of the scattered remains of what can only be a half-molten cauldron.
You carefully approach the doorway that’s still about halfway blocked by boulders. Leaning inside you can barely make out the charred and scattered witnesses of a potions explosion. You assume that the dark substance caking the walls, rubble and what’s left of the shelves and worktop is dried potion of some kind. The ever present smell of burnt wood hints that there’s also a fair amount of ash and soot in the mix. The thick layer of grime and dust on the floor has been disturbed recently and you assume that the others have searched through the remains to find out what happened.
Before you can approach the other room, already much more attractive because of its decided lack of grime and boulders and the charred blackness that doesn’t even remotely resemble a door, Rose and Lily tell you what they found in that antechamber. It contains a pensieve, letters and a phial for each of your number with your names on them.
They’ve gone through the letters, which bear instructions on what to do with the phials. The notes they managed to recover from the destroyed potions lab seem to be more serious and difficult in nature and it takes all of Rose’s remarkable skills to make heads or tails of them.
Her voice is shaking but grows ever stronger as she starts to tell you what they’ve discovered.
“It seems that after Voldemort’s defeat and subsequent death there was an outbreak. A disease that all marked Death Eaters came down with several years after the end of the war. First it was just fatigue, but then it got worse and they all wasted away, whether they were in Azkaban or not; and people who got close to them started to show the same symptoms. It was as if the life was slowly drained out of them. My mother and several other wizarding potions masters and scientists tried to find a cure and discern whether it was caused by some slow-acting curse, but they never found out. The next step was to develop potions and spells that would stilt or at least slow down the progression of the infection, but they appear to have had trouble creating a serum the infection wouldn’t adapt to and as far as I can make out they never managed to get past creating a working prototype.
“When the first Death Eaters died, they didn’t stay dead. They returned and became violent. The first few were caught, but so many of them were on the run that they started a pandemic. Their blood and saliva was contagious, even getting scratched or bitten by them would turn their victims within days. Whoever got infected would start to waste away and be prone to irrational behaviour and violence. The infected would then succumb to a high fever and delusions, and after that fall into a coma. None of those infected ever awoke human. With no pulse or breath and driven by the need to make more of their kind, they’d attack those people who cared for them.”
She pauses again and you know the worst part is coming.
“Our parents fought day and night, but the infected didn’t need rest or sleep and our numbers dwindled. It doesn’t say so in the notes, but I believe they tried to protect us by putting us in here. I think they locked us in here and put us in some kind of cryo stasis, possibly with the help of the Sleeping Beauty Draught, and made their last stand after sealing this room, to keep us safe.”
Silence falls. None of you is sure of what to say, of how much truth there is in this. But then it was Rose who said it and she’s usually right.
“Why are there so few of us here?” you ask, realising just how very few of you there are. Where are the Notts and Longbottoms, the Parkinsons and Zabinis, you wonder.
Rose’s voice falters again and then continues void of emotion. “In old wizarding families it is customary to hold a wake for the deceased, with only their family and closest friends present. The people present at those events must have been the first to fall victim to the disease…” Her voice breaks and she begins to cry. Lily enfolds her in a consoling hug and you feel badly for Rose. You know she had been involved with the Parkinson boy, Scorpius told you so.
Nobody says a word and after a while you all decide to get some sleep. You are lying on the padding which you’ve torn from the sarcophagi as no one seems willing to climb back into them to sleep. None of you said it out loud but it’s as clear as day that you are all afraid the sarcophagi will close and imprison you while you are sleeping. After you make sure that everyone is comfortable, you wait until everyone else has fallen asleep, before you drag your makeshift mattress and cover over to Scorpius and curl up beside his still form.
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
At night you are assaulted by memories. You didn’t obey your father that day. The fact that he is Harry Potter has never had any pull with you or your siblings. The only thing you know about the war is what you know from your History of Magic class at Hogwarts and from what you can tell through having laughed about and compared with your father, Professor Binns is still as tedious and boring as he was when your dad attended Hogwarts.
You remember being ordered to wait in a dark chamber, not the one you are in now, but somewhere else, probably close by. Of course you snuck back out, the minute the others weren’t paying attention, to see what was going on. You saw your father with Draco Malfoy’s arm slung around his shoulder and he was half dragging, half carrying him towards you. They never made it that far. You could hear far-off noises but what you saw in front of you was even scarier. Mr. Malfoy was incredibly pale and he looked unwell to you, more dead than alive. As you remember this, a small thought rears itself at the back of your mind and you know that it can’t be good, as you take in the dark shadow on the inside of his left forearm.
“Draco, please! You have to be strong, I know you can fight this, I know you!” You’d never heard such desperation in your father’s voice and even now that you remember, it still scares you.
“Harry, you promised! You promised you wouldn’t let me become one of those things, you know I’d rather die…” He coughed and when he lowered his hand there were traces of blood on it, “…rather die than to be a danger to you or to my child.”
“I-I can’t!”
“You h-have to… there’s not much time.”
“Draco… I… I’m so very sorry about everything…”
“I know. Me too. I wish…” You can hear his voice drifting off as he grows weaker, he’s gazing into your father’s eyes and suddenly you know. There’s something more, some undercurrent that you never noticed before. Such desperation and sorrow can only be born out of love. Becoming aware of this, you begin to wonder where Scorpius is. The scuffling sounds are coming closer and you can also make out mindless moaning and wheezing. Your father and Mr. Malfoy quickly turn their heads towards the sound in unison, listening intently and then back to each other. Your father tries to hold Mr. Malfoy close, but he’s resisting, albeit weakly.
“No, Harry, go. Do what you promised and then go!” There’s a severity driven by desperation in Mr. Malfoy’s voice that you’ve never heard before and apparently neither has your father, because he looks shocked.
“I’m sorry Draco, I can’t!” And with that your father leans forward and presses a kiss first to Mr. Malfoy’s temple, and then his lips.
Mr. Malfoy is crying now. His knuckles are white as he clings to the lapels of your dad’s torn and tattered Auror robes. “No, Harry! Why’d you do that?!” Your father presses his forehead against Mr. Malfoy’s, cupping his face in both of his hands and caressing his cheeks gently.
“Because, I can’t be without you, I won’t! Not after what happened to Gin. I’ll make sure the children are safe and then I’ll come back here. I can’t do it otherwise. I can’t keep my promise if I have to stay behind by myself.” Silent tears still slowly roll down Mr. Malfoy’s cheeks; he just nods and then kisses your dad desperately.
“Come on, then,” your dad says after getting up and hoisting Mr. Malfoy up with him. You can hear him cast a weight-reducing charm on Mr. Malfoy and then move toward your hiding place.
The last thing you remember before the memory fades and you wake up, is the shocked looked on your father’s face as he sees you.
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
On your second day in the chamber you find that while you mind the lack of daylight you are already making yourself at home. Your sleeping arrangement doesn’t draw even so much as a single comment from the others and you are grateful for their silent acceptance.
It’s as if you’ve all moved on from that confused desperation you experienced upon waking up and are now already moving towards making the best of a situation utterly devoid of hope. None of you have experienced hunger or thirst and while that’s odd, it’s still one of the things keeping panic at bay.
The fatigue you felt when waking up is still there. You feel a bit like no matter how much you sleep and rest it only gets worse and that worries you. Something is off about this entire situation and the room you are all trapped in. Rose probably knows what’s going on, but before you can ask her, she calls your name and you walk over to her improvised lab table. You know that she’s been trying to get some contraption to work that your aunt left behind, but she doesn’t appear to have made much headway. Victoire has been trying to assist her with even less success, which you are easily able to discern from Rose’s exasperated expression as Victoire grabs for something on the table again.
“What’s going on?” you ask, unsure of whether you want to get into the middle of what might very well turn into a fight sooner rather than later.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how my mother tested everyone’s magical aura for infection. I’ve used samples both from myself and Victoire and while my sample seems to work fine for me and hers for her, whenever I test her, I get ambiguous results.”
“What do you need me to do?” you ask, smiling despite the fact that you already know she’s going to ask you to let her test your aura.
“Just walk over here and see if this thing works for you,” she says, pointing at the thing on the table.
You do as she asks and put your arm into something that looks suspiciously like a thickly padded shackle. The material feels strange against your bare skin and you wonder what’s going to happen next. You can feel something feeling for and then connecting with, that steady current of energy/power running through every fibre of your being. You’ve never been aware of just how much magic is a part of who you are and the feeling of this part of yourself being analysed that closely is decidedly odd.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so. It feels really strange. What is it doing?”
“As far as I can tell from my mother’s instructions - and they are hard to understand at times mind you - it’s absorbing a tiny part of your magic and filtering it. If it detects any trace of the curse, it’ll take a larger sample and analyse it further to make sure and if there’s no trace at all, you are done after the first test. I’m just trying to figure out how it works to be honest. Mum must have been in a hurry when she threw the notes together for us; there are many bits and pieces of research and information missing and I’m going more by trial and error at this point than anything else,” she says matter-of-factly, making you smile. Rose was never one to appreciate shoddy workmanship. It feels good to discover that some things haven’t changed, despite the bizarre situation you find yourself in.
You lean over and look at the several sheets of paper scattered all over the small table in front of you, surrounding the device that’s still examining your magic like a very messy black and white carpet.
“How long is this going to take?” you ask, but before you can concentrate on the answer something among the notes catches your eye. You reach for it with your free hand and skim the page which appears to have been torn from a notebook. All you can make out is something about the room you’ve woken up in, something about sustaining it and constant energy being needed to keep the artificial space from collapsing. If anything it sounds incredibly ominous to you and if you didn’t know better you’d swear the walls had come closer since you woke up.
“Never mind. Rose, what’s this?” You hand the page over to her.
She seems surprised when what it says on the page starts to sink in. But before she can explain it to you, Victoire grabs the page and studies it with not a little anticipation.
“Does that mean the room is getting smaller because it was artificially created?” Victoire asks after looking up from the page.
“I honestly don’t know, Victoire,” Rose replies. “Al, were there any more pages?”
You shake your head, indicating where you found it on the table and start shuffling paper around. Rose moves over and helps you, shortly after followed by Victoire and the three of you quickly compile a small amount of torn notebook pages. You are glad for the help, because you are still hindered by the device that’s now holding your wrist in a vice-like grip. Rose has already started sorting the pages to make sure they are in the right order, when the testing device finally makes a noise like the microwave your uncle Ron is so fond of before releasing your arm. A small friendly blue globe hovers over the device, you have no idea what it means and open your mouth to ask Rose. She flashes you a quick grin before wordlessly handing you the torn manual that’s so covered in your aunts notes and apparently been used to many times that you can barely make out the words. Apparently blue means that you have nothing to worry about. Curious of what colours other results would show, you read on, red of course means someone is infected and your aunt has made a note of the fact that the device would trap whoever got that result by not releasing their arm upon the test’s conclusion. The thought of being faced with that kind of news and being tied to the bolted down lab table in front of you makes your skin crawl, as if one of those things wasn’t bad enough in itself. You realise that war changes people, even the people one loves and considers to be above cruelty like this. It ceases to matter what someone is subjected to when everything has become a question of survival. You hope you’ll never have to make the kind of choices your parents had to.
The next page you turn over is strangely free of notes and any kind of handwriting. The manual states that if the test results in a yellow globe that further samples and testing are required and to turn to the next page and follow those instructions closely. You are troubled as you turn to the next page and find it missing as are the following ten pages before the manual describes maintenance and storage of the device. You look up, trying to catch Rose’s gaze.
“Rose, have you by any chance found the missing pages from the manual?”
“No, sorry. I’ve been trying to make sense of everything we found and the manual really wasn’t my top priority.”
“What results did you get?”
To your surprise it’s Victoire that answers, not Rose.
“We both got the same result as you, Al.” There’s a faint note of accusation in her voice as she speaks and glances quickly at Rose. “At least when we tested ourselves,” she adds and the mere note becomes more pronounced.
“I didn’t do anything wrong, Victoire. It’s not my fault the globe turned yellow when I first tested you,” Rose replies, sounding annoyed.
You aren’t quite sure how to react to this and instead of getting involved you ask Victoire to join you in trying to recover more of the destroyed potions' lab. She agrees and you help her climb over the rubble that’s still blocking half of the doorway and that you are too afraid to remove because you can’t be sure the explosion didn’t harm the structural integrity of the room.
Every piece of paper you find that’s even remotely readable gets passed over to where Rose is trying to make sense of it all and even though you hardly manage to spare more than a passing glance you notice how the number seven appears to be one of its major subjects. Time passes swiftly and before you know it, both Victoire and yourself are covered in soot from head to toe and too tired to carry on.
When Rose sees you both climb back into the main room she starts laughing and can hardly stop herself. Her laughter is contagious and soon the three of you are laughing so hard your bellies hurt and you have trouble standing up straight. When she’s finally able to get enough breath into her lungs she attempts to speak.
“Merlin, Al! You look ridiculous! What did you do?” And she’s off again, laughing like a maniac and pointing at your face.
Frowning you conjure a mirror and look at your own reflection. It was dark in the lab and while you assumed you looked sort of like Victoire, you don’t really. You must have unconsciously passed your soot-covered hands over your brow many more times than she did, because you look - as Rose pointed out correctly - utterly ridiculous. There’s dark smears of soot all over your face and hair, which must have come in contact with some of the grime on the walls because it’s sticking up in a less than flattering way as well. In other words, you look a complete fright.
Spotting the look of anguish and shock on your face at your own appearance sends Rose into another fit of giggles and you decide to have your revenge by grabbing her and holding her close, rubbing plenty of soot on her.
“Oh, dearest cousin, how I’ve missed you!” you say and plant several kisses all over her cheeks, making sure to get as much soot and grime on her as possible. She shrieks first with outrage and then with laughter as you hold your conjured mirror up to her face and she takes in her reflection.
You are both laughing so hard that even trying to hold on to each other isn’t helping and you sink to the floor shaking and giggling.
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake!” someone says, sounding less entertained and more annoyed than you think the situation calls for and not soon after you feel the unpleasant sensation of a scourgify cast on you and Rose.
“Instead of behaving like children you should work on getting us out of here, Rose! Especially since you won’t let anyone else handle the equipment. And do something about these weird lights will you?” Victoire says sounding annoyed and pointing at the ceiling lights that have just begun flickering a moment ago.
You gently but firmly place your hand on Rose’s forearm to stop her from replying.
“There’s no reason to speak to us like that, Victoire. You know very well that Rose is the most likely to find a solution. She’s got enough pressure on her as it is.” From her manner you can tell that Victoire is about to reply and slightly raising your voice you continue. “I’m not done! Behaving in such an antagonistic manner is not helping at all. I understand that this is hard for everyone, but we have to stick together and make do with what we have. It won’t do to lose your temper, we’re all in this together and we will find a way out of here. I think it’s best if we all just take a step back, maybe get some rest and then try again tomorrow.”
Victoire turns away without a word. The hunched shoulders and how she curls up to sleep, facing the wall tell you more than she could ever have expressed with words. After a while you hear quiet sobs and while you know that you and Rose are the last people she wants to talk to right now, you don’t want her to be alone and you beckon Lily over, explaining the situation and asking her to look after Victoire.
“Thanks, Al.” Rose says. “I think I’m actually going to take a leaf out of your book and get some rest myself.” She gets up, grabs some of the notes and gets comfortable on her own makeshift bedding.
You get up as well, casting one last look over at where Lily is stroking Victoire’s arm and back soothingly before heading back to Scorpius’ side. He still hasn’t moved or woken up. You rub his arms and legs to help his circulation and when you lay down beside him, caressing his arms and face, you can’t hear Victoire’s sobs anymore. The only thing you can make out is the ever present beat of Scorpius’ heart that stays with you, even as you fall asleep.
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
By now the shaking sensation on your shoulders is familiar as you slowly wake on what must be your third day in the chamber. You grumble because you are so very comfortable snuggled up against a warm body. Reluctantly you open your eyes. Gazing blearily around you catch sight of a blond head resting beside yours and you smile.
“Al, wake up! I need to talk to you!” It’s your cousin’s quiet voice this time that’s dragging you back to reality and you remember what it was like waking up the first time.
If possible the light in the room has grown even brighter. That doesn’t sit right with you. What’s causing it, you wonder, but get distracted when Rose pokes you in the chest with a pointed finger.
“Hey, this is important!”
“What’s going on? Why are we whispering?”
“It’s about Hugo, James and Scorpius. I went through my mother’s notes again and I think they might have had a bad reaction to the stasis charm. She anticipated something like this and wrote down some ideas on how to deal with it. I have to read up on it more, but while I do that, you should really watch the memory that was left behind for you.”
You would have rolled your eyes at her, for trying to be the sensible one, if the situation hadn’t been as serious.
“What’s wrong with them exactly?”
“I don’t know yet. It seems like the reviving process was supposed to trigger memories and revive the brain, but there appears to have been some malfunction with their pods, as well as ours. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but none of us can quite remember how we ended up here. All we know about it is what I read in Mum’s notes.”
You just keep looking at her, waiting for her to continue, suspecting and fearing at the same time that there is worse yet to come.
“There’s something else I am worried about, though. I haven’t told the others.” She pauses and her voice is barely audible now, you have to lean in closer to catch the rest of what she’s saying.
“I think there might have been contaminated air in the vents that fed oxygen into the pods. We still don’t know how those first family members got infected; whether it was by proximity alone, whether it was an airborne agent that was spread by those already infected, or whether it was some toxin targeting specific DNA groups…” Her voice breaks. You reach out and touch her arm, trying to reassure her and yourself. You can hear the worry in her voice and you know that she’s just barely forcing those words through a throat that feels much too tight, both from terror and sadness, exactly like your own.
“…I…I’m afraid that if it was an airborne agent, that they might have been infected while they slept.” She clings to you now and you cling back just as hard. The thought of your brother, your cousin and your lover contaminated by that plague, almost kills you. Contaminated by what you now remember clearly took so many people you loved from you.
“We cannot be sure what the effects of long-term exposure to the pathogen might be. They could very well look something like this. It’s probably only a matter of time before they turn on us and there’s no way out of here…” You hear the panic in her voice and realise how fragile the façade of control she’s trying to keep up for all of your sakes is. If even one of you panics, it’ll all be over, you know that much. You push her away gently and hold her at arm’s length by her shoulders.
“Rose, listen to me. If anyone can figure this out, it’s you! Alright? I know you can do it!” You see her eyes clear and you are surprised by how much any human being is able to bear.
Deep inside you hope that her worries will not be fulfilled. Then another thought fights for your awareness. James and Hugo were cold; they feel and look like they are still in their stasis pods, but Scorpius is warm, he coughed and blinked, what if... No, you can’t even make yourself consider the possibility. There must be some mistake. Something makes you ask Rose anyway.
“Have you checked on Scorpius?” You hope that Rose misses the note of fear in your voice.
“Not yet. I didn’t want to disturb your rest and after what Lily told me, that seemed more important. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
This time it’s her that gives you that whom-do-you-think-you-are-kidding look; it reminds you so very much of your godmother that you decide to come clean.
“He’s different to the others; he’s warmer for one, and he looked almost awake when Teddy pulled him from his… pod, you called it?”
She walks over to Scorpius without a word to feel his skin and pulse and you want to stop her in case he really is a danger to more than your heart.
“Very interesting,” she says and takes a step back, her brows furrowed in thought. “I think I saw something about this in mum’s notes, I’ll just be…” You watch her walking over to where she’d been reading earlier without another word and still don’t know whether you should be worried or relieved. With words like interesting and people like Rose, you can never tell whether “interesting” is a good thing.
You don’t know how much time has passed, but it can’t have been a lot, when Rose walks back to you and asks you to help carry Scorpius over to the device she used on you earlier. Apparently she’s made some headway in using the manual to find out how to operate it properly and she takes several samples for, as she calls it, “in depth analysis”. You carefully carry Scorpius back to his makeshift bed. You fear that your magic might give out on you and hesitate to levitate him for fear of dropping him.
Even carrying him the small distance from the table back to his bedding by yourself has taken it out of you and you welcome the softness of your pod’s padding as you sink down on it beside him thinking you will just close your eyes for a second to catch your breath, but almost immediately falling into a deep sleep, plagued by nightmares.
When you wake the next time in cold sweat, the fatigue is worse than ever. It takes two tries until you even manage to sit up straight, leaning against the cold stone wall of the chamber, blinking your eyes repeatedly and silently praying for the room to stop spinning already. You draw your wand to cast a quick tempus, but like every other time the result is frustrating, because it’s just a series of numbers from one to twelve quickly merging into each other as if time was passing too swiftly for the spell to pick up.
Scorpius’ still form feels like a furnace where it touches you and you are worried enough to seek out Rose where she sits leaning against the wall, papers surrounding her and covering her lap. She’s staring into the distance, her eyes unfocused, deeply lost in thought. The only sound you hear coming from her is the sound of paper scratching against paper when she shifts slightly to adjust her weight or tries to find a more comfortable position.
It took you longer than anticipated to cross the short distance and sink down on the mattress beside her, trying not to sit on anything that’s looking important. Rose finally looks up at you, but before you can speak she’s already talking to you.
“Just give me a minute, Al. I think I've almost got it figured out.”
As you sit beside her, waiting for her to reach her conclusions, you idly observe the others. Teddy has taken Lily’s place beside Victoire and the two of them are speaking softly to each other. Too softly for you to be able to make out what they are talking about, but you can imagine; it’s what you are all thinking about. Something’s wrong. You all look incredibly tired and the times you spend sleeping grow longer and longer compared to the time you spend awake.
Lily is rubbing James’ and Hugo’s arms and legs to ease circulation. Everyone seems to have found something to do to pass the time. As always, your gaze returns to Scorpius. You’ve made sure he doesn’t lie on his back or his sides too long; Hermione has once told you that that’s what you do in hospitals to make sure patients don’t get bruises from lying in one position too long. You hope Rose has time for you soon, because you feel it’s time again to turn him over.
Rose touches your shoulder to get your attention and you are forced to stop your musing and return to reality.
“You're really worried about him, aren’t you?” Her voice is full of compassion and you fear the worst.
“Yes. I-I don’t even know why we kept it a secret for so long.” You take a shuddering breath, trying to hold back tears but forge on ahead anyway. “It was me, you see? I didn’t want anyone to know. I was afraid of what people would say, Mum and Dad and everyone else. I thought we wouldn’t be able to withstand all the attention. Turns out I was wrong… All the sneaking around became too much for Scorpius. He said either we’d go public or he’d leave me. I never thought he’d go through with it. But he did. He was probably just as surprised as I was when he did. Oh God, Rose, I’m so scared that I won’t ever get to hear him speak to me again. The last time I spoke to him I said so many things I wish I hadn’t said and now I’ll never get to tell him that I’m sorry. What am I going to do?” You bury your head in your hands as sorrow finally overtakes you.
“Hush, darling. It’ll be alright. You’ll see,” Rose says soothingly while caressing your arms and back.
You throw yourself into her arms unable to hold back. She holds you close, her arms tight and reassuring around you as you can’t hold back the sobs that shake your entire body. It feels like it takes forever for them to subside and for your breathing to calm. Rose’s shoulder is wet where her clothes soaked up your tears and when you’ve calmed down enough to her constant, reassuring words, you feel slightly embarrassed for having lost control in that way.
You disentangle yourself slowly, but allow Rose to keep you at arm’s length. Your cheeks with the salt of tears and your eyes look red and puffy. Everyone will know that you’ve been crying. Rose appears to have read your thoughts, because she asks if you know a spell to fix yourself up. You shake your head. She casts a spell you’ve never heard before, but your cheeks feel clean and cool afterwards and your eyes have lost their puffiness.
“I never thought having hay fever would ever come in handy. Of course it had to be Albus Severus Potter who would make me realise that.”
“Thank you,” you reply, smiling despite yourself.
“You know, in another life we’d‘ve made the perfect couple, Al. Providing we weren’t both into men.” She winks at you then and hugs you once more impulsively.
“Now, I think the reason you came over has less to do with the research you recovered from the lab and more with the fact that I took some samples for testing?”
You nod carefully trying to hide your growing sense of anticipation. Rose sees through your attempt and flashes you a quick grin that eases your worries somewhat before continuing.
“The results aren’t entirely clear. I think it has something to do with the draught used in putting him to sleep. The properties appear to be slightly different to the one we all consumed. My mother created several different versions before she settled on one. While Scorpius’ symptoms are disturbing in conjunction with the draught that was officially used, they make sense if he took one of the experimental ones. He should be awake, actually. His body is fully functioning, it’s producing warmth on its own and he coughed and blinked when you got him out of his pod. Hugo and James didn’t do any such thing. I’m still not entirely sure what we can do to get him out of the state he’s in, but I’ve got some ideas. I’m glad you came over though, because there’s something else I wanted to ask you.”
“It’s about the room isn’t it?” you ask, obviously surprising her.
“Yes, how did you…?”
“The notes all around you, they are the ones concerning this place and some of them are the ones we pulled from the lab yesterday.”
“The thing is… no… let me ask you first to make sure your answer is completely unaffected. Did you notice anything odd about this chamber?” She asks looking at you expectantly.
“I’ve noticed the lights have been getting brighter the more of us are awake at any one time. Also, something feels off about it. We all sleep a lot more than we should and when I wake it’s as if I hadn’t slept at all. I thought that the fatigue might have been a side effect of being in the pods for so long but then you probably would have mentioned it already. So, what’s really going on then?”
Rose takes a deep breath and begins summing up what she’s found out.
“So, you see, the chamber was originally designed for seven pods, but we are eight people in eight pods in here. I think there are several reasons for why we are so tired all the time. The draught we took was supposed to keep us asleep for one hundred years, but considering the room had to keep more people in stasis than it was designed to, I doubt that as many years have passed. If I had to guess I would say we spent about eighty-six years in here. The other reason is that with one more pod the drain on the magic used to create this room was much stronger than anticipated and I’m already impressed that it has lasted us this long and that the room hasn’t collapsed or dissolved. Now this is where it gets interesting. The room is absorbing magic to keep itself stable.”
“But you said the magic was gone. How can it be absorbing magic?”
“Think about it, Al. Our spells don’t work properly in here; we tried apparating out of this room and nothing happened. The lights, as you said, have grown brighter the more of us are awake.”
“So you think…”
“Yes, I believe the room is siphoning off some of our magical energy to keep itself stable. That’s why we are so tired, because our magic is connected to our life force. Now, the reason it’s doing that is to keep the occupants of the pods alive, but in the process it’s slowly draining us. Once we have no magic left, it’ll collapse entirely.”
“What do you mean once we have no magic left? Are you saying that we’ll die if we don’t get out of here?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’ve gone through all the research we’ve managed to recover and I think I might’ve found a way to disrupt or at least slow down the flow of magic. But we have to learn as much as we can from the pensieve in the next room and what’s left to salvage in the lab to be sure.”
You stare at her, trying to absorb what she’s just told you. The room that’s supposed to keep you safe - that looks as solid as the reassuring walls of dungeons at Hogwarts - will collapse if it stops draining your life energy.
“This is insane, Rose!” you eventually say.
“It sounds a bit like that, doesn’t it?” she replies. “I tried disconnecting myself as an experiment, but it didn’t work. I believe we all have to be disconnected at once, but I’m working on that. Do you remember the spell they taught us for making someone’s magical aura visible?”
You nod in reply.
“Cast it on me right now and tell me what you see.”
You obey and cast the spell. Slowly Rose’s aura becomes visible and you smile as you notice its colour is perfect for her name.
“Can you see it yet?”
You shake your head, but then you begin to see it, just above her heart her aura is pulsating gently and it’s as if part of it is flowing outward and dissipating into the air. If her aura was blood, her heart would be steadily pumping it out into the atmosphere. You can’t believe she was right again. You should have known better than to doubt her and still you can hardly believe your eyes. You cancel the spell unable to meet her gaze. She reaches out to you and takes hold of your hand, giving it a quick reassuring squeeze before letting go again.
“I assume this means you’ve seen it. It’s a disturbing sight, isn’t it?” she asks. You nod mutely. You’ve done a lot of that lately and force yourself to reply properly this time.
“I saw it, but I still can’t quite believe what it means. Are you sure you can fix it?”
“Sure enough. Let me worry about the details, Al. I think you should really look at the memory that was left for you. You are the only one who’s able to, who hasn’t seen theirs yet.”
“Alright. Can I sit with you for a while longer, please?”
She smiles. “You can sit with me for as long as you’d like, Al.”
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
Continue on to Part II
Title: Morgen früh, wenn Gott will
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Albus Severus Potter, James Potter, Lily Potter, Rose Weasley, Hugo Weasley, Victorie Weasley, Teddy Lupin, Scorpius Malfoy, background!Harry Potter, background!Draco Malfoy; Albus Severus/Scorpius, background!Harry/Draco
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~15.900
Warning(s): Major character death
Prompt: I used my own prompt :)
Summary: Albus wakes up in dark chamber, he doesn’t remember how he got there and what happened. It is for him and the rest of the people in that room to find out what happened and how to escape their inevitable seeming fate.
Author's Note: First of all thank you kindly to the people who took the time to look over this for me. You’ve been fantastic! I’m speaking of my betas of course, crazyparakiss, kinky_kneazle and wendypops thank you for encouraging me and sharing your thoughts with me. Without you this wouldn’t have been half as much fun! I might have tweaked it a little afterwards, which means that any remaining mistakes are my own. :)
I wrote this to my own prompt and of course like always, this fic developed more and more plot as I wrote it and I had remove a lot of it. It was a lot of fun to write and I’m pretty sure I’ll revisit this specific universe many more times. I know the POV isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, I’ve wanted to experiment a little and I think it worked out in the end. The title “Morgen früh, wenn Gott will” is taken from a German lullaby and traditionally followed by the line “wirst du wieder geweckt”. Those two lines translate to: “Tomorrow morning, God willing, you shall awake/be woken again.” If you want to learn more about this lullaby, feel free to check it out here.
Morgen früh, wenn Gott will
You wake up feeling disoriented. Someone’s shaking you by your shoulders and calling your name. You idly wonder about the clear sense of desperation you perceive in their voice. What could possibly have upset them so? It’s a bit cold, a bit dark, but you don’t feel uncomfortable. Your entire body feels relaxed, as if you are just about to fall asleep. Your eyes drift shut again and the shaking becomes more frantic. Part of you decides that the person who’s shouting at you must either hate or love you fiercely, because no other person would be that persistent in trying to disturb your rest.
You are finally able to make out words, instead of gibberish, and you are glad, because for a moment you were scared the other person might not be speaking English at all.
The hands on your shoulders slacken and a body slumps against you. Your body is starting to feel sore where it is awakened by the weight of another. Something feels off, but you can’t pinpoint it, as your thoughts are still sluggish. You feel a bit like whoever is running your brain at the moment is wading through a dark and smelly swamp. Bubbles of gas slowly rising to the surface popping here and there, with no landmarks as far as the eye can see. You should be worried. This isn’t normal; neither how little all of this bothers you, nor how you can’t feel your legs or how it took you this long to realise that the wetness on your chest comes from another person’s tears. Is it a man or woman, you wonder. Definitely a woman, you decide. You can make out her sobs, her desperate pleading, as she clings to your front.
“Al, please wake up; not you too. I can’t bear being the only one!”
The meaning of the words uttered in fear doesn’t register with you properly. After far too long you realise the that woman clinging to you - which in itself is odd as you are really not that into them - is in fact your sister, Lily. Something is very wrong here, and while you still don’t seem to care about yourself, her distress is definitely getting through to you. There’s something you should remember. Something just within your grasp, but every time you try to reach for it the memory slips from your hold like a cold fish.
Maybe you are in hospital. Did you have an accident? No, that idea doesn’t sit right with you; you decide it can’t be that. What then? Were you sick? Were you injured somehow? This doesn’t ring a bell either, and you are startled from your reverie when the shaking starts again. You try to blink your eyes rapidly, trying to get them to focus to no avail; all you can make out is a flickering brightness above you. For a second real terror strikes you as you realise that you could be going blind. You want to cry out in fear, but there’s something blocking your airway. You can feel panic rising to the surface and try to grab for whatever it is that is in your mouth, but you can’t feel your arms. Inside your head you are screaming. You are the only one who can hear it. You realise you are blind and paralysed, unable to help yourself or your baby sister.
But if you think about it, how is that possible? You clearly remember feeling your sister’s body against yours; shouldn’t you be unable to feel anything at all, if you are paralysed? Still you cannot move and there’s nothing you can do for your sister’s distress.
Something is blocking the flickering brightness above you and for a second you fear that your sight is going completely. Then the shape that is blocking out the light becomes the tear-streaked face of your sister. Her long red hair tickles your cheek and you feel relief flooding you. You are not blind, and as you see your hand coming up beside your face to reach for her you realise that you are not paralysed either.
Her voice still sounds muffled and a bit like she’s speaking from somewhere far away on a bad connection using one of those Muggle devices your godmother is so fond of. She’s clinging to you again but this time in relief. You still can’t seem to move much and you muse about how relief and desperation are both equally painful when unleashed on someone else in a bone-crushing hug.
You try to speak again, but there’s still something in your throat, you feel for it with your free hand, but your fingers encounter nothing but air. You were expecting some kind of tube, perhaps it’s a spell. Your entire body is sore and it takes every effort to touch Lily and signal her to look at you. You point at your mouth and look at her questioningly. You can see first confusion and then understanding pass across her features. She scrambles off you. You have no idea where she’s going or what she’s going to do. You just stare at the stone ceiling high above you with what you now can make out as flickering lights. A strange humming sound, like that of an angry hornet is coming from the bulbs behind their cover of frosted glass. You are happy to look at them; anything to help convince you that you haven’t gone blind. They look Muggle, but you are pretty sure they are not connected to electricity in any way, as you cannot see cables. Grandpa Arthur always had had a thing for Muggle technology and according to him there always were wires, even so-called wireless things needed wires at some point, he’d said. It’s so odd what one focuses on when one is trying desperately not to think about something else.
You can hear someone approaching with hurried steps. Maybe Lily went to fetch a doctor. Looking around you, slowly twisting your head this way and that as far as it can go, you decide you are not lying in a hospital bed, possibly a field bed of some kind. Since when have army field beds been made of stone? The memories inside you stir again as you think of war and you strain your mind, trying to hold on to them, but then Lily is back and the memories dissolve in the already slack grip of your subconscious, like a puff of smoke.
You don’t know what spell she uses, but the feeling of an object shoved down your throat disappears unexpectedly and you utter a hoarse croak as you try to thank her.
“What happened?” You manage to say loud enough for her to understand after the fifth attempt.
She slowly helps you to sit up and you realise that you are not lying in a bed at all, but in a coffin. No, not a coffin; a sarcophagus. The heavy lid twisted partway to the side just enough, to allow you to sit up. You are not prepared for how much this scares you and the only reason you even attempt to suppress how terrified you are is to protect your baby sister.
Lily begins to rub your hands and arms, trying to get life back into them, and while it hurts more than just a little you are still grateful because after your earlier scare you are glad to feel anything at all.
While Lily slowly helps you out of the sarcophagus that held you for who knows how long, she talks about how she woke up in the dark, feeling as if she was choking. The air had been filled with an intense wailing sound and it had taken a long time before she’d been able to move.
“They’re all here, Al!” Lily says to you, her voice still unbelieving and confused.
“Who’s here?”
“Everyone; Rose, Hugo, James, Teddy and Victoire. Even Scorpius bloody Malfoy is here. I tried to find Mum and Dad, but they aren’t here, and I haven’t been able to find a way out of this room yet so I don’t know whether they’re nearby.”
“What do you mean? Where are they?” you ask, looking around you and spotting more sarcophagi like yours. All the lids are pushed to the side, just like yours, and suddenly you realise that each and every one of them contains a body, paralysed and blind, just like you were till Lily came for you.
The fear is back. You know you should be afraid, because something happened, something truly terrible and frightening, but you still can’t remember. And then of course there’s Scorpius; you didn’t think you’d ever see him again. You and him being former best friends and all that. What a day that had been, when you told your father that you had been sorted into Slytherin - he’d actually been happy about that, or so it seemed at the time - and that you had made a new friend; your best friend. When your father found out his name he’d looked as if he’d just eaten a particularly sour lemon, and it wasn’t until much later that you figured out why he disliked Scorpius so.
You never disliked Scorpius, hell, you don’t even really dislike him now. With you and Scorpius it’s complicated. Better not to dwell on that.
“Alright then!” you say, sounding more sure of yourself than you feel. From the look she gives you, you can tell that Lily knows you are faking for her sake. “Let’s have a look at them, shall we?”
You make as if to get up, but you are so weak that it’s Lily who’s holding you up with a steadying hand. If not for her you would have fallen right back into your deathbed.
It takes a long time till you’ve crossed the two metres between your sarcophagus and the next one. Your heart beats faster as you see the still pale face of Scorpius Malfoy. He has always been pale, but his entire face is now the colour of death. You try to deny it, but deep inside you feel your heart breaking at the sight in front of you. All you want to do is throw yourself on his lifeless body and take it all back; all the words that were said in anger, just for him to come back to you. It’s been months since you’ve seen each other and only now do you realise how much you missed him; now that you can never have him back. Lily is speaking to you, or more accurately at you, and you realise that she must have been talking for a while now.
“Sorry, say that again?” you say, glad to have something, anything, to focus on besides how lost you feel without him.
“I said they’re all breathing and I checked their pulses, but I can’t seem to wake them up. You’re the first one to respond in any way. I was so scared…” At that her voice breaks and you wrap your arms around her, making reassuring shushing noises.
“We need to get them out of those coffins,” you hear yourself say.
“You aren’t strong enough, Al,” your sister points out. You know that she’s right, but you can’t stand to see him like this. You know you should be more worried about your friends and your brother, but all you can think about, now that you have seen his face again, is your lover.
“Please, Lily, help me get them out of these things.” You sound desperate and you know it. If you don’t get a hold of yourself Lily will start to get suspicious. You’ve never told anyone about you and Scorpius. Why secrecy was so important at the time escapes you now.
“Alright, I’ll get them out of there, but you stay put. Got that? I don’t want you fainting!” Her voice is stern and you smile, because it’s the kind of thing Molly Weasley would have said. You flash her a quick grin and nod; she grins back.
“As your ladyship commands!” you reply and get biffed on the head for it. You both start to laugh and it’s freeing. You slowly lower yourself to the floor beside Scorpius’ sarcophagus and lean forward to allow Lily to cushion your back with some of the padding she has torn from yours. Taking a calming breath and brandishing her wand in a confident manner, Lily gets to work. You already know she’ll leave Scorpius till last. None of your siblings or friends like him, they never understood what you saw in him, but you sort of liked it that way. Despite having two siblings, you were never that good at sharing anyway.
You sneak your hand into Scorpius’ coffin and caress his cold cheek while Lily is busy hoisting limp bodies out of their resting places, rubbing their limbs and sitting them down; leaning them against the walls of the large chamber. Out of the corner of your eye you can see James, Hugo and Rose leaning beside each other, James and Hugo unmoving and Rose blinking her eyes repeatedly. Teddy and Victoire follow and you wonder how Lily could possibly carry them, but when she turns around just for a second, wand in hand, you realise she’s levitated everyone but you. You feel special and the thought warms your heart, making you smile. No matter how much you’ve teased her over the years, Lily is still special to you, and always will be.
Your hand traces Scorpius’ jaw and comes to rest on his throat. You can feel the reassuring flutter of his pulse against your fingers and before you know it, you’ve drifted off to sleep.
The room seems brighter when you wake up; the lights aren’t flickering anymore. You can hear hushed conversations in the background as well as the sound of someone sobbing uncontrollably. Your hand now rests on Scorpius’ chest and you feel anger surge through you as you realise that everyone but Scorpius has already been freed. Maybe it wasn’t for the best that everyone disliked him, after all.
The beating of his heart feels stronger and you feel unexpected confidence rise in you. Scorpius will be okay, you decide, and gently run your hand up and down his torso without noticing that you are doing it. Maybe you are just kidding yourself, but he feels warmer to your touch already.
The conversation at the other side of the room stops and you quickly snatch your hand away as if burned. It wouldn’t do for them to find out now, would it? As you still can’t make up your mind, Teddy walks over to you, helping you up and making you sit on the sarcophagus’ edge. Teddy carefully lifts Scorpius’ limp body, his head lolling from side to side as his body is moved. Adhering to standard wizarding first aid guidelines Teddy prepares to cast an enervate on Scorpius and your heart speeds up noticeably with anticipation as he brandishes his wand. Despite the strength of the spell Scorpius doesn’t even so much as shiver and your anticipation quickly turns into fear.
Just as you are about to scold Teddy for putting Scorpius down less than gently, Scorpius’ eyes fly open and he starts coughing and gagging. You rush to him, paying no heed to the questioning stares directed at you by your sister and cousin, and gently place your hands on his shoulders.
“Scorpius?” Your voice is barely above a whisper and you assume he hasn’t heard you. The coughing and gagging has stopped and his eyes are still open. You say his name again, a bit louder this time, but still get no reaction. His skin is slowly warming beneath your hands, but he’s not moving and his eyes are unseeing. He’s more like a broken doll than a human being.
“All the lights are on, but nobody’s home,” Teddy says beside you, his voice carefully neutral. He places his hand comfortingly on your shoulder as he continues. “James and Hugo are also catatonic; they breathe, their hearts beat and their eyes are open, but they don’t react to outside stimuli. We have no idea what’s wrong with them. Victoire displayed the same symptoms at first, but she’s perfectly fine now.”
You feel like you should know what’s wrong with them, what’s wrong with all of you, but you still can’t seem to remember. You must have dreamt when you were resting beside Scorpius, because you do remember something: the distraught face of your mother. You remember your dad reaching for someone - not your mum - and missing. Her face alone should jog your memory, and suddenly you remember running as if you were running for your life. Rose was there, and Lily and James, but none of the others that are in this room. In the memory your father is screaming at you to run faster and not to look back, as he fires hex after hex at whatever is following you. For the first time in your life you do as he says without question; you grab Lily’s hand and you run as if the devil himself is after you.
“Al, are you okay?” Teddy’s voice draws you back into the present. You nod, unsure whether it’s the truth.
Lily beckons you over to them and reluctantly you leave Scorpius behind after telling him that you’ll be right back and for him not to be afraid. What if he can hear and feel everything, you wonder. What if he is trapped in his own body unable to respond and going insane, just like you were before you recognised Lily?
You walk past seven sarcophagi identical to yours. The room is crescent shaped and while there are two doorways leading from it that suggest the entire complex is circular in shape, at least one of them has been blocked by rubble. You get closer to Rose and Lily who have piled books and what looks like notes onto a makeshift reading table. Most of the paper looks charred around the edges. A huge apparatus that reminds you of the kind of device Muggles use to measure your blood pressure rises out of the scattered remains of what can only be a half-molten cauldron.
You carefully approach the doorway that’s still about halfway blocked by boulders. Leaning inside you can barely make out the charred and scattered witnesses of a potions explosion. You assume that the dark substance caking the walls, rubble and what’s left of the shelves and worktop is dried potion of some kind. The ever present smell of burnt wood hints that there’s also a fair amount of ash and soot in the mix. The thick layer of grime and dust on the floor has been disturbed recently and you assume that the others have searched through the remains to find out what happened.
Before you can approach the other room, already much more attractive because of its decided lack of grime and boulders and the charred blackness that doesn’t even remotely resemble a door, Rose and Lily tell you what they found in that antechamber. It contains a pensieve, letters and a phial for each of your number with your names on them.
They’ve gone through the letters, which bear instructions on what to do with the phials. The notes they managed to recover from the destroyed potions lab seem to be more serious and difficult in nature and it takes all of Rose’s remarkable skills to make heads or tails of them.
Her voice is shaking but grows ever stronger as she starts to tell you what they’ve discovered.
“It seems that after Voldemort’s defeat and subsequent death there was an outbreak. A disease that all marked Death Eaters came down with several years after the end of the war. First it was just fatigue, but then it got worse and they all wasted away, whether they were in Azkaban or not; and people who got close to them started to show the same symptoms. It was as if the life was slowly drained out of them. My mother and several other wizarding potions masters and scientists tried to find a cure and discern whether it was caused by some slow-acting curse, but they never found out. The next step was to develop potions and spells that would stilt or at least slow down the progression of the infection, but they appear to have had trouble creating a serum the infection wouldn’t adapt to and as far as I can make out they never managed to get past creating a working prototype.
“When the first Death Eaters died, they didn’t stay dead. They returned and became violent. The first few were caught, but so many of them were on the run that they started a pandemic. Their blood and saliva was contagious, even getting scratched or bitten by them would turn their victims within days. Whoever got infected would start to waste away and be prone to irrational behaviour and violence. The infected would then succumb to a high fever and delusions, and after that fall into a coma. None of those infected ever awoke human. With no pulse or breath and driven by the need to make more of their kind, they’d attack those people who cared for them.”
She pauses again and you know the worst part is coming.
“Our parents fought day and night, but the infected didn’t need rest or sleep and our numbers dwindled. It doesn’t say so in the notes, but I believe they tried to protect us by putting us in here. I think they locked us in here and put us in some kind of cryo stasis, possibly with the help of the Sleeping Beauty Draught, and made their last stand after sealing this room, to keep us safe.”
Silence falls. None of you is sure of what to say, of how much truth there is in this. But then it was Rose who said it and she’s usually right.
“Why are there so few of us here?” you ask, realising just how very few of you there are. Where are the Notts and Longbottoms, the Parkinsons and Zabinis, you wonder.
Rose’s voice falters again and then continues void of emotion. “In old wizarding families it is customary to hold a wake for the deceased, with only their family and closest friends present. The people present at those events must have been the first to fall victim to the disease…” Her voice breaks and she begins to cry. Lily enfolds her in a consoling hug and you feel badly for Rose. You know she had been involved with the Parkinson boy, Scorpius told you so.
Nobody says a word and after a while you all decide to get some sleep. You are lying on the padding which you’ve torn from the sarcophagi as no one seems willing to climb back into them to sleep. None of you said it out loud but it’s as clear as day that you are all afraid the sarcophagi will close and imprison you while you are sleeping. After you make sure that everyone is comfortable, you wait until everyone else has fallen asleep, before you drag your makeshift mattress and cover over to Scorpius and curl up beside his still form.
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
At night you are assaulted by memories. You didn’t obey your father that day. The fact that he is Harry Potter has never had any pull with you or your siblings. The only thing you know about the war is what you know from your History of Magic class at Hogwarts and from what you can tell through having laughed about and compared with your father, Professor Binns is still as tedious and boring as he was when your dad attended Hogwarts.
You remember being ordered to wait in a dark chamber, not the one you are in now, but somewhere else, probably close by. Of course you snuck back out, the minute the others weren’t paying attention, to see what was going on. You saw your father with Draco Malfoy’s arm slung around his shoulder and he was half dragging, half carrying him towards you. They never made it that far. You could hear far-off noises but what you saw in front of you was even scarier. Mr. Malfoy was incredibly pale and he looked unwell to you, more dead than alive. As you remember this, a small thought rears itself at the back of your mind and you know that it can’t be good, as you take in the dark shadow on the inside of his left forearm.
“Draco, please! You have to be strong, I know you can fight this, I know you!” You’d never heard such desperation in your father’s voice and even now that you remember, it still scares you.
“Harry, you promised! You promised you wouldn’t let me become one of those things, you know I’d rather die…” He coughed and when he lowered his hand there were traces of blood on it, “…rather die than to be a danger to you or to my child.”
“I-I can’t!”
“You h-have to… there’s not much time.”
“Draco… I… I’m so very sorry about everything…”
“I know. Me too. I wish…” You can hear his voice drifting off as he grows weaker, he’s gazing into your father’s eyes and suddenly you know. There’s something more, some undercurrent that you never noticed before. Such desperation and sorrow can only be born out of love. Becoming aware of this, you begin to wonder where Scorpius is. The scuffling sounds are coming closer and you can also make out mindless moaning and wheezing. Your father and Mr. Malfoy quickly turn their heads towards the sound in unison, listening intently and then back to each other. Your father tries to hold Mr. Malfoy close, but he’s resisting, albeit weakly.
“No, Harry, go. Do what you promised and then go!” There’s a severity driven by desperation in Mr. Malfoy’s voice that you’ve never heard before and apparently neither has your father, because he looks shocked.
“I’m sorry Draco, I can’t!” And with that your father leans forward and presses a kiss first to Mr. Malfoy’s temple, and then his lips.
Mr. Malfoy is crying now. His knuckles are white as he clings to the lapels of your dad’s torn and tattered Auror robes. “No, Harry! Why’d you do that?!” Your father presses his forehead against Mr. Malfoy’s, cupping his face in both of his hands and caressing his cheeks gently.
“Because, I can’t be without you, I won’t! Not after what happened to Gin. I’ll make sure the children are safe and then I’ll come back here. I can’t do it otherwise. I can’t keep my promise if I have to stay behind by myself.” Silent tears still slowly roll down Mr. Malfoy’s cheeks; he just nods and then kisses your dad desperately.
“Come on, then,” your dad says after getting up and hoisting Mr. Malfoy up with him. You can hear him cast a weight-reducing charm on Mr. Malfoy and then move toward your hiding place.
The last thing you remember before the memory fades and you wake up, is the shocked looked on your father’s face as he sees you.
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
On your second day in the chamber you find that while you mind the lack of daylight you are already making yourself at home. Your sleeping arrangement doesn’t draw even so much as a single comment from the others and you are grateful for their silent acceptance.
It’s as if you’ve all moved on from that confused desperation you experienced upon waking up and are now already moving towards making the best of a situation utterly devoid of hope. None of you have experienced hunger or thirst and while that’s odd, it’s still one of the things keeping panic at bay.
The fatigue you felt when waking up is still there. You feel a bit like no matter how much you sleep and rest it only gets worse and that worries you. Something is off about this entire situation and the room you are all trapped in. Rose probably knows what’s going on, but before you can ask her, she calls your name and you walk over to her improvised lab table. You know that she’s been trying to get some contraption to work that your aunt left behind, but she doesn’t appear to have made much headway. Victoire has been trying to assist her with even less success, which you are easily able to discern from Rose’s exasperated expression as Victoire grabs for something on the table again.
“What’s going on?” you ask, unsure of whether you want to get into the middle of what might very well turn into a fight sooner rather than later.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how my mother tested everyone’s magical aura for infection. I’ve used samples both from myself and Victoire and while my sample seems to work fine for me and hers for her, whenever I test her, I get ambiguous results.”
“What do you need me to do?” you ask, smiling despite the fact that you already know she’s going to ask you to let her test your aura.
“Just walk over here and see if this thing works for you,” she says, pointing at the thing on the table.
You do as she asks and put your arm into something that looks suspiciously like a thickly padded shackle. The material feels strange against your bare skin and you wonder what’s going to happen next. You can feel something feeling for and then connecting with, that steady current of energy/power running through every fibre of your being. You’ve never been aware of just how much magic is a part of who you are and the feeling of this part of yourself being analysed that closely is decidedly odd.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so. It feels really strange. What is it doing?”
“As far as I can tell from my mother’s instructions - and they are hard to understand at times mind you - it’s absorbing a tiny part of your magic and filtering it. If it detects any trace of the curse, it’ll take a larger sample and analyse it further to make sure and if there’s no trace at all, you are done after the first test. I’m just trying to figure out how it works to be honest. Mum must have been in a hurry when she threw the notes together for us; there are many bits and pieces of research and information missing and I’m going more by trial and error at this point than anything else,” she says matter-of-factly, making you smile. Rose was never one to appreciate shoddy workmanship. It feels good to discover that some things haven’t changed, despite the bizarre situation you find yourself in.
You lean over and look at the several sheets of paper scattered all over the small table in front of you, surrounding the device that’s still examining your magic like a very messy black and white carpet.
“How long is this going to take?” you ask, but before you can concentrate on the answer something among the notes catches your eye. You reach for it with your free hand and skim the page which appears to have been torn from a notebook. All you can make out is something about the room you’ve woken up in, something about sustaining it and constant energy being needed to keep the artificial space from collapsing. If anything it sounds incredibly ominous to you and if you didn’t know better you’d swear the walls had come closer since you woke up.
“Never mind. Rose, what’s this?” You hand the page over to her.
She seems surprised when what it says on the page starts to sink in. But before she can explain it to you, Victoire grabs the page and studies it with not a little anticipation.
“Does that mean the room is getting smaller because it was artificially created?” Victoire asks after looking up from the page.
“I honestly don’t know, Victoire,” Rose replies. “Al, were there any more pages?”
You shake your head, indicating where you found it on the table and start shuffling paper around. Rose moves over and helps you, shortly after followed by Victoire and the three of you quickly compile a small amount of torn notebook pages. You are glad for the help, because you are still hindered by the device that’s now holding your wrist in a vice-like grip. Rose has already started sorting the pages to make sure they are in the right order, when the testing device finally makes a noise like the microwave your uncle Ron is so fond of before releasing your arm. A small friendly blue globe hovers over the device, you have no idea what it means and open your mouth to ask Rose. She flashes you a quick grin before wordlessly handing you the torn manual that’s so covered in your aunts notes and apparently been used to many times that you can barely make out the words. Apparently blue means that you have nothing to worry about. Curious of what colours other results would show, you read on, red of course means someone is infected and your aunt has made a note of the fact that the device would trap whoever got that result by not releasing their arm upon the test’s conclusion. The thought of being faced with that kind of news and being tied to the bolted down lab table in front of you makes your skin crawl, as if one of those things wasn’t bad enough in itself. You realise that war changes people, even the people one loves and considers to be above cruelty like this. It ceases to matter what someone is subjected to when everything has become a question of survival. You hope you’ll never have to make the kind of choices your parents had to.
The next page you turn over is strangely free of notes and any kind of handwriting. The manual states that if the test results in a yellow globe that further samples and testing are required and to turn to the next page and follow those instructions closely. You are troubled as you turn to the next page and find it missing as are the following ten pages before the manual describes maintenance and storage of the device. You look up, trying to catch Rose’s gaze.
“Rose, have you by any chance found the missing pages from the manual?”
“No, sorry. I’ve been trying to make sense of everything we found and the manual really wasn’t my top priority.”
“What results did you get?”
To your surprise it’s Victoire that answers, not Rose.
“We both got the same result as you, Al.” There’s a faint note of accusation in her voice as she speaks and glances quickly at Rose. “At least when we tested ourselves,” she adds and the mere note becomes more pronounced.
“I didn’t do anything wrong, Victoire. It’s not my fault the globe turned yellow when I first tested you,” Rose replies, sounding annoyed.
You aren’t quite sure how to react to this and instead of getting involved you ask Victoire to join you in trying to recover more of the destroyed potions' lab. She agrees and you help her climb over the rubble that’s still blocking half of the doorway and that you are too afraid to remove because you can’t be sure the explosion didn’t harm the structural integrity of the room.
Every piece of paper you find that’s even remotely readable gets passed over to where Rose is trying to make sense of it all and even though you hardly manage to spare more than a passing glance you notice how the number seven appears to be one of its major subjects. Time passes swiftly and before you know it, both Victoire and yourself are covered in soot from head to toe and too tired to carry on.
When Rose sees you both climb back into the main room she starts laughing and can hardly stop herself. Her laughter is contagious and soon the three of you are laughing so hard your bellies hurt and you have trouble standing up straight. When she’s finally able to get enough breath into her lungs she attempts to speak.
“Merlin, Al! You look ridiculous! What did you do?” And she’s off again, laughing like a maniac and pointing at your face.
Frowning you conjure a mirror and look at your own reflection. It was dark in the lab and while you assumed you looked sort of like Victoire, you don’t really. You must have unconsciously passed your soot-covered hands over your brow many more times than she did, because you look - as Rose pointed out correctly - utterly ridiculous. There’s dark smears of soot all over your face and hair, which must have come in contact with some of the grime on the walls because it’s sticking up in a less than flattering way as well. In other words, you look a complete fright.
Spotting the look of anguish and shock on your face at your own appearance sends Rose into another fit of giggles and you decide to have your revenge by grabbing her and holding her close, rubbing plenty of soot on her.
“Oh, dearest cousin, how I’ve missed you!” you say and plant several kisses all over her cheeks, making sure to get as much soot and grime on her as possible. She shrieks first with outrage and then with laughter as you hold your conjured mirror up to her face and she takes in her reflection.
You are both laughing so hard that even trying to hold on to each other isn’t helping and you sink to the floor shaking and giggling.
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake!” someone says, sounding less entertained and more annoyed than you think the situation calls for and not soon after you feel the unpleasant sensation of a scourgify cast on you and Rose.
“Instead of behaving like children you should work on getting us out of here, Rose! Especially since you won’t let anyone else handle the equipment. And do something about these weird lights will you?” Victoire says sounding annoyed and pointing at the ceiling lights that have just begun flickering a moment ago.
You gently but firmly place your hand on Rose’s forearm to stop her from replying.
“There’s no reason to speak to us like that, Victoire. You know very well that Rose is the most likely to find a solution. She’s got enough pressure on her as it is.” From her manner you can tell that Victoire is about to reply and slightly raising your voice you continue. “I’m not done! Behaving in such an antagonistic manner is not helping at all. I understand that this is hard for everyone, but we have to stick together and make do with what we have. It won’t do to lose your temper, we’re all in this together and we will find a way out of here. I think it’s best if we all just take a step back, maybe get some rest and then try again tomorrow.”
Victoire turns away without a word. The hunched shoulders and how she curls up to sleep, facing the wall tell you more than she could ever have expressed with words. After a while you hear quiet sobs and while you know that you and Rose are the last people she wants to talk to right now, you don’t want her to be alone and you beckon Lily over, explaining the situation and asking her to look after Victoire.
“Thanks, Al.” Rose says. “I think I’m actually going to take a leaf out of your book and get some rest myself.” She gets up, grabs some of the notes and gets comfortable on her own makeshift bedding.
You get up as well, casting one last look over at where Lily is stroking Victoire’s arm and back soothingly before heading back to Scorpius’ side. He still hasn’t moved or woken up. You rub his arms and legs to help his circulation and when you lay down beside him, caressing his arms and face, you can’t hear Victoire’s sobs anymore. The only thing you can make out is the ever present beat of Scorpius’ heart that stays with you, even as you fall asleep.
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
By now the shaking sensation on your shoulders is familiar as you slowly wake on what must be your third day in the chamber. You grumble because you are so very comfortable snuggled up against a warm body. Reluctantly you open your eyes. Gazing blearily around you catch sight of a blond head resting beside yours and you smile.
“Al, wake up! I need to talk to you!” It’s your cousin’s quiet voice this time that’s dragging you back to reality and you remember what it was like waking up the first time.
If possible the light in the room has grown even brighter. That doesn’t sit right with you. What’s causing it, you wonder, but get distracted when Rose pokes you in the chest with a pointed finger.
“Hey, this is important!”
“What’s going on? Why are we whispering?”
“It’s about Hugo, James and Scorpius. I went through my mother’s notes again and I think they might have had a bad reaction to the stasis charm. She anticipated something like this and wrote down some ideas on how to deal with it. I have to read up on it more, but while I do that, you should really watch the memory that was left behind for you.”
You would have rolled your eyes at her, for trying to be the sensible one, if the situation hadn’t been as serious.
“What’s wrong with them exactly?”
“I don’t know yet. It seems like the reviving process was supposed to trigger memories and revive the brain, but there appears to have been some malfunction with their pods, as well as ours. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but none of us can quite remember how we ended up here. All we know about it is what I read in Mum’s notes.”
You just keep looking at her, waiting for her to continue, suspecting and fearing at the same time that there is worse yet to come.
“There’s something else I am worried about, though. I haven’t told the others.” She pauses and her voice is barely audible now, you have to lean in closer to catch the rest of what she’s saying.
“I think there might have been contaminated air in the vents that fed oxygen into the pods. We still don’t know how those first family members got infected; whether it was by proximity alone, whether it was an airborne agent that was spread by those already infected, or whether it was some toxin targeting specific DNA groups…” Her voice breaks. You reach out and touch her arm, trying to reassure her and yourself. You can hear the worry in her voice and you know that she’s just barely forcing those words through a throat that feels much too tight, both from terror and sadness, exactly like your own.
“…I…I’m afraid that if it was an airborne agent, that they might have been infected while they slept.” She clings to you now and you cling back just as hard. The thought of your brother, your cousin and your lover contaminated by that plague, almost kills you. Contaminated by what you now remember clearly took so many people you loved from you.
“We cannot be sure what the effects of long-term exposure to the pathogen might be. They could very well look something like this. It’s probably only a matter of time before they turn on us and there’s no way out of here…” You hear the panic in her voice and realise how fragile the façade of control she’s trying to keep up for all of your sakes is. If even one of you panics, it’ll all be over, you know that much. You push her away gently and hold her at arm’s length by her shoulders.
“Rose, listen to me. If anyone can figure this out, it’s you! Alright? I know you can do it!” You see her eyes clear and you are surprised by how much any human being is able to bear.
Deep inside you hope that her worries will not be fulfilled. Then another thought fights for your awareness. James and Hugo were cold; they feel and look like they are still in their stasis pods, but Scorpius is warm, he coughed and blinked, what if... No, you can’t even make yourself consider the possibility. There must be some mistake. Something makes you ask Rose anyway.
“Have you checked on Scorpius?” You hope that Rose misses the note of fear in your voice.
“Not yet. I didn’t want to disturb your rest and after what Lily told me, that seemed more important. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
This time it’s her that gives you that whom-do-you-think-you-are-kidding look; it reminds you so very much of your godmother that you decide to come clean.
“He’s different to the others; he’s warmer for one, and he looked almost awake when Teddy pulled him from his… pod, you called it?”
She walks over to Scorpius without a word to feel his skin and pulse and you want to stop her in case he really is a danger to more than your heart.
“Very interesting,” she says and takes a step back, her brows furrowed in thought. “I think I saw something about this in mum’s notes, I’ll just be…” You watch her walking over to where she’d been reading earlier without another word and still don’t know whether you should be worried or relieved. With words like interesting and people like Rose, you can never tell whether “interesting” is a good thing.
You don’t know how much time has passed, but it can’t have been a lot, when Rose walks back to you and asks you to help carry Scorpius over to the device she used on you earlier. Apparently she’s made some headway in using the manual to find out how to operate it properly and she takes several samples for, as she calls it, “in depth analysis”. You carefully carry Scorpius back to his makeshift bed. You fear that your magic might give out on you and hesitate to levitate him for fear of dropping him.
Even carrying him the small distance from the table back to his bedding by yourself has taken it out of you and you welcome the softness of your pod’s padding as you sink down on it beside him thinking you will just close your eyes for a second to catch your breath, but almost immediately falling into a deep sleep, plagued by nightmares.
When you wake the next time in cold sweat, the fatigue is worse than ever. It takes two tries until you even manage to sit up straight, leaning against the cold stone wall of the chamber, blinking your eyes repeatedly and silently praying for the room to stop spinning already. You draw your wand to cast a quick tempus, but like every other time the result is frustrating, because it’s just a series of numbers from one to twelve quickly merging into each other as if time was passing too swiftly for the spell to pick up.
Scorpius’ still form feels like a furnace where it touches you and you are worried enough to seek out Rose where she sits leaning against the wall, papers surrounding her and covering her lap. She’s staring into the distance, her eyes unfocused, deeply lost in thought. The only sound you hear coming from her is the sound of paper scratching against paper when she shifts slightly to adjust her weight or tries to find a more comfortable position.
It took you longer than anticipated to cross the short distance and sink down on the mattress beside her, trying not to sit on anything that’s looking important. Rose finally looks up at you, but before you can speak she’s already talking to you.
“Just give me a minute, Al. I think I've almost got it figured out.”
As you sit beside her, waiting for her to reach her conclusions, you idly observe the others. Teddy has taken Lily’s place beside Victoire and the two of them are speaking softly to each other. Too softly for you to be able to make out what they are talking about, but you can imagine; it’s what you are all thinking about. Something’s wrong. You all look incredibly tired and the times you spend sleeping grow longer and longer compared to the time you spend awake.
Lily is rubbing James’ and Hugo’s arms and legs to ease circulation. Everyone seems to have found something to do to pass the time. As always, your gaze returns to Scorpius. You’ve made sure he doesn’t lie on his back or his sides too long; Hermione has once told you that that’s what you do in hospitals to make sure patients don’t get bruises from lying in one position too long. You hope Rose has time for you soon, because you feel it’s time again to turn him over.
Rose touches your shoulder to get your attention and you are forced to stop your musing and return to reality.
“You're really worried about him, aren’t you?” Her voice is full of compassion and you fear the worst.
“Yes. I-I don’t even know why we kept it a secret for so long.” You take a shuddering breath, trying to hold back tears but forge on ahead anyway. “It was me, you see? I didn’t want anyone to know. I was afraid of what people would say, Mum and Dad and everyone else. I thought we wouldn’t be able to withstand all the attention. Turns out I was wrong… All the sneaking around became too much for Scorpius. He said either we’d go public or he’d leave me. I never thought he’d go through with it. But he did. He was probably just as surprised as I was when he did. Oh God, Rose, I’m so scared that I won’t ever get to hear him speak to me again. The last time I spoke to him I said so many things I wish I hadn’t said and now I’ll never get to tell him that I’m sorry. What am I going to do?” You bury your head in your hands as sorrow finally overtakes you.
“Hush, darling. It’ll be alright. You’ll see,” Rose says soothingly while caressing your arms and back.
You throw yourself into her arms unable to hold back. She holds you close, her arms tight and reassuring around you as you can’t hold back the sobs that shake your entire body. It feels like it takes forever for them to subside and for your breathing to calm. Rose’s shoulder is wet where her clothes soaked up your tears and when you’ve calmed down enough to her constant, reassuring words, you feel slightly embarrassed for having lost control in that way.
You disentangle yourself slowly, but allow Rose to keep you at arm’s length. Your cheeks with the salt of tears and your eyes look red and puffy. Everyone will know that you’ve been crying. Rose appears to have read your thoughts, because she asks if you know a spell to fix yourself up. You shake your head. She casts a spell you’ve never heard before, but your cheeks feel clean and cool afterwards and your eyes have lost their puffiness.
“I never thought having hay fever would ever come in handy. Of course it had to be Albus Severus Potter who would make me realise that.”
“Thank you,” you reply, smiling despite yourself.
“You know, in another life we’d‘ve made the perfect couple, Al. Providing we weren’t both into men.” She winks at you then and hugs you once more impulsively.
“Now, I think the reason you came over has less to do with the research you recovered from the lab and more with the fact that I took some samples for testing?”
You nod carefully trying to hide your growing sense of anticipation. Rose sees through your attempt and flashes you a quick grin that eases your worries somewhat before continuing.
“The results aren’t entirely clear. I think it has something to do with the draught used in putting him to sleep. The properties appear to be slightly different to the one we all consumed. My mother created several different versions before she settled on one. While Scorpius’ symptoms are disturbing in conjunction with the draught that was officially used, they make sense if he took one of the experimental ones. He should be awake, actually. His body is fully functioning, it’s producing warmth on its own and he coughed and blinked when you got him out of his pod. Hugo and James didn’t do any such thing. I’m still not entirely sure what we can do to get him out of the state he’s in, but I’ve got some ideas. I’m glad you came over though, because there’s something else I wanted to ask you.”
“It’s about the room isn’t it?” you ask, obviously surprising her.
“Yes, how did you…?”
“The notes all around you, they are the ones concerning this place and some of them are the ones we pulled from the lab yesterday.”
“The thing is… no… let me ask you first to make sure your answer is completely unaffected. Did you notice anything odd about this chamber?” She asks looking at you expectantly.
“I’ve noticed the lights have been getting brighter the more of us are awake at any one time. Also, something feels off about it. We all sleep a lot more than we should and when I wake it’s as if I hadn’t slept at all. I thought that the fatigue might have been a side effect of being in the pods for so long but then you probably would have mentioned it already. So, what’s really going on then?”
Rose takes a deep breath and begins summing up what she’s found out.
“So, you see, the chamber was originally designed for seven pods, but we are eight people in eight pods in here. I think there are several reasons for why we are so tired all the time. The draught we took was supposed to keep us asleep for one hundred years, but considering the room had to keep more people in stasis than it was designed to, I doubt that as many years have passed. If I had to guess I would say we spent about eighty-six years in here. The other reason is that with one more pod the drain on the magic used to create this room was much stronger than anticipated and I’m already impressed that it has lasted us this long and that the room hasn’t collapsed or dissolved. Now this is where it gets interesting. The room is absorbing magic to keep itself stable.”
“But you said the magic was gone. How can it be absorbing magic?”
“Think about it, Al. Our spells don’t work properly in here; we tried apparating out of this room and nothing happened. The lights, as you said, have grown brighter the more of us are awake.”
“So you think…”
“Yes, I believe the room is siphoning off some of our magical energy to keep itself stable. That’s why we are so tired, because our magic is connected to our life force. Now, the reason it’s doing that is to keep the occupants of the pods alive, but in the process it’s slowly draining us. Once we have no magic left, it’ll collapse entirely.”
“What do you mean once we have no magic left? Are you saying that we’ll die if we don’t get out of here?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’ve gone through all the research we’ve managed to recover and I think I might’ve found a way to disrupt or at least slow down the flow of magic. But we have to learn as much as we can from the pensieve in the next room and what’s left to salvage in the lab to be sure.”
You stare at her, trying to absorb what she’s just told you. The room that’s supposed to keep you safe - that looks as solid as the reassuring walls of dungeons at Hogwarts - will collapse if it stops draining your life energy.
“This is insane, Rose!” you eventually say.
“It sounds a bit like that, doesn’t it?” she replies. “I tried disconnecting myself as an experiment, but it didn’t work. I believe we all have to be disconnected at once, but I’m working on that. Do you remember the spell they taught us for making someone’s magical aura visible?”
You nod in reply.
“Cast it on me right now and tell me what you see.”
You obey and cast the spell. Slowly Rose’s aura becomes visible and you smile as you notice its colour is perfect for her name.
“Can you see it yet?”
You shake your head, but then you begin to see it, just above her heart her aura is pulsating gently and it’s as if part of it is flowing outward and dissipating into the air. If her aura was blood, her heart would be steadily pumping it out into the atmosphere. You can’t believe she was right again. You should have known better than to doubt her and still you can hardly believe your eyes. You cancel the spell unable to meet her gaze. She reaches out to you and takes hold of your hand, giving it a quick reassuring squeeze before letting go again.
“I assume this means you’ve seen it. It’s a disturbing sight, isn’t it?” she asks. You nod mutely. You’ve done a lot of that lately and force yourself to reply properly this time.
“I saw it, but I still can’t quite believe what it means. Are you sure you can fix it?”
“Sure enough. Let me worry about the details, Al. I think you should really look at the memory that was left for you. You are the only one who’s able to, who hasn’t seen theirs yet.”
“Alright. Can I sit with you for a while longer, please?”
She smiles. “You can sit with me for as long as you’d like, Al.”
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
Continue on to Part II