[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Homunculus to the Life, Harry/Ron/Hermione, R, 1/2
Title: Homunculus to the Life
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Ron/Hermione, mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: Not epilogue-compliant, angst, present tense, established Ron/Hermione, threesome, drama
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 5000
Summary: In a conversation with Dumbledore’s portrait after the battle at Hogwarts, Harry finds out that he is and always has been a homunculus-a substitute body made to carry the Horcrux so that little Harry Potter, who lies asleep as a baby under powerful charms, wouldn’t have to. Harry struggles to process the news, the fallout, and the discovery that he might disintegrate at any moment.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice, and will have two parts. (I wanted it to be a oneshot, but it had other ideas). Enjoy.
Homunculus to the Life
Dumbledore tells him the truth just after Harry finishes repairing his holly wand with the Elder one.
“I’m afraid it’s true, my boy,” Dumbledore says, his head bowed with something that might be shame as Harry slumps against the desk and stares at him. Ron and Hermione are silent with utter shock on either side of Harry. “You are-not the original Harry Potter. When I came to Godric’s Hollow, I recognized the imprint of some powerful and evil magic behind little Harry’s curse scar. I didn’t know at the time it was a Horcrux. That took me years more of study to discover. But I did know it was something Dark, and something discrete, not yet worked into Harry’s soul. So I used the Elder Wand to move it out of him and into a temporary body.”
“Me,” Harry whispers. Hermione’s hand crushes his left one, and Ron’s hand his shoulder.
“Yes.” Dumbledore’s voice is thick, although he still has his head bowed so Harry can’t see his face. Shame or remorse? What does it matter? “You were to be a temporary solution while I worked on a way to defeat Voldemort for good. Baby Harry Potter is asleep in the Time Room in the Department of Mysteries. At the end of each day, they cycle the time back twenty-four hours. He hasn’t aged since the day his parents died, and he hasn’t woken.”
Harry swallows, but can think of nothing to say. Hermione can, not surprisingly. “But why did you move the Horcrux into a body at all, sir? Why not move it into an object and destroy it later? Why did you-” Her breath hitches on the edge of a sob, and Harry imagines that she must be regretting all the years she wasted as a friend to someone who doesn’t even exist. “Do this?”
“The public needed a savior,” Dumbledore says tiredly. “Someone to focus on. I planned, once the hysteria died down a little, to have the homunculus die a natural death.”
“You would have killed him?” Ron’s voice is loud in the office, and the past Headmasters’ portraits crane their necks to look at them. Dumbledore asked Harry to put up a Silencing Charm before he told them the truth, so the paintings don’t have any idea what’s being said. It’s the only saving grace Harry can see in the situation.
“No. The bodies of homunculi that are meant to mimic human beings decay over time. Rather like the body of the homunculus that Voldemort was trapped in before his resurrection.”
Harry shudders and tries to draw away from his friends. The feeling of being tainted is washing over him like a waterfall of grease. But Hermione leans harder against him, and says, “Harry didn’t.”
“No.” Dumbledore sounds a little bewildered. He still doesn’t look at them. “It may have to do with the fact that the Elder Wand is…powerful and likes to show off.” He raises his head then and locks his eyes with Harry’s for a second. “Or perhaps, even then, it knew who its master would be.”
“Can Harry’s body still disintegrate at any time?” Ron’s voice cracks. “You’re saying he could just die?”
“I don’t know.” Dumbledore stares at Harry, and Harry can’t even make sense of all the emotions changing in his eyes. “With the Horcrux gone, an essential part of what was holding him together might be gone, too. Or he might continue to live because he now holds the Elder Wand.”
Harry blinks and looks down at the Elder Wand. Then he throws it away from him, as hard as he can.
It hits the wall with a cracking sound, but of course, it doesn’t actually crack. It rolls back towards Harry, clinking softly, and flies up onto the Headmaster’s desk to lie there, nestled next to his holly wand.
Harry puts his hands over his face.
“And what was your plan going to be for the baby?” Hermione is demanding. Harry listens with ears that seem wrapped with cotton wool. “Just leave him in the Time Chamber forever?”
“No.” Dumbledore sighs. “The Unspeakables will have been alerted by an alarm when Harry…died. They will have removed him from the Time Chamber by now.”
“So he can grow up?” Ron’s voice is low and challenging.
“Yes. I was thinking that your mother might be the perfect choice to raise him, Ron. He’ll need a loving family.”
Harry turns and walks out of the office. He can’t listen to any more of this. It should have been hard to tear free of the holds Ron and Hermione had on him, but it isn’t. He can hear their voices rising behind him, questioning Dumbledore.
What does it matter? Harry isn’t who he always thought he was. He’s not even human.
Once, when they were both five-when Harry thought they were both five-Dudley called Harry a monster, and said he wasn’t born but just put together in a witch’s cauldron. Harry hit him for it, and got hit back a lot harder.
But what do you know? Dudley was right.
Harry makes his way to Gryffindor Tower and collapses into bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. At some point he realizes that something small and slender has arrived next to him, and glances down to see the Elder Wand.
Harry picks it up and flings it across the room.
It’s back by his side by the time his mind mercifully darkens.
*
“I gave Dumbledore a piece of my mind.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Harry mumbles around a mouthful of the sandwich that Kreacher brought up.
Hermione, who’s lying across from him on the bed that used to be Neville’s, gives him a worried smile. “Dumbledore says that he put some Galleons into a vault for you at Gringotts, under the name Harry Dumbledore. He never expected you to live long enough for you to need Harry Potter’s vault, but then he let it proceed when it turned out you did.”
Harry breathes out slowly. “You mean he never expected me to last long enough.”
“That, too.”
Hermione has her stubborn look on, and Harry knows that he won’t get far if he tries to insist on his status as a non-living object. Hell, he can’t get used to it himself. He’s still walking around and breathing and eating and sleeping. Trying to contemplate that he might crumble to dust, or mud, or whatever Dumbledore made his homunculus body of, one day-
Harry shakes his head rapidly to clear the thought away, and sees Hermione’s hand extended to him. He clasps it, tightly.
“Ron went and found his mum and brought her to Dumbledore’s portrait,” Hermione whispers. “She said that of course she would adopt the baby-you. I think she needs it given Fred’s death.”
Harry only nods. He never intended to try and force himself on the Weasleys after the war, anyway. First he thought he would be dead, and now he thinks that he really doesn’t want to be around the “real” Harry Potter, even though he knows it’s cowardly, and it’s not like it’s a toddler’s fault.
“Apparently, Dumbledore left instructions with the Unspeakables to tell everyone about baby Harry.” Hermione blurts. “So that’s what they did. It’s the story on the front page of the Prophet.”
Harry closes his eyes. He can just imagine the pity and the whispers and the sidelong glances. He wants to escape from all that.
That solidifies a resolution that’s been building in the back of his mind since he heard the news from Dumbledore, probably, but this has pushed him to realize what it is.
“I have to leave,” he whispers.
Hermione doesn’t say anything, and Harry looks at her, because he assumed she would try to talk him out of it. She’s nodding, biting her lip and looking at him with wide, teary eyes. They never fall, but that her tears are there at all is significant.
“I think you do,” she says. “There are too many people who are going to think themselves entitled to know all about this. People who will decide that you’re not the real Harry Potter, that you’re an imposter of some kind, or a trick of Voldemort’s, or who knows what. People who will want to be friends with the baby or turn you against him. Maybe even people who’ll want to do magical experiments on you to see how you’ve survived so long.”
Harry shudders in disgust. He sighs and picks up the Elder Wand, since that seems like it has to come with him. “Can you-can you talk to Molly and the others? Tell them why I’m leaving?”
“Of course, Harry.”
Harry sighs again when he thinks about Gringotts and the fact that they broke into to take a Horcrux out. He’s not at all sure he’ll be able to get the Galleons that Dumbledore left for him. But he’ll have to try. Otherwise, he won’t have any money. “And do you think someone, maybe Bill, could go and withdraw the Galleons Dumbledore left for me and close the vault? Is there a vault key?”
“Yes. Dumbledore’s portrait told me where it’s hidden.”
“Good.” Harry exhales and glances around the room, wondering distractedly what else he needs to bring with him. His clothes; they’re his, and Baby Harry couldn’t wear them, anyway. The Invisibility Cloak ought to stay here because it’s a Potter heirloom-
There’s a blurring in the air near him, and Harry staggers backwards on the bed as the Cloak drapes itself bodily over him. Harry stares at it and tries to pry it off him. It winds itself firmly around his arms and clings.
“I think it wants to come with you,” Hermione murmurs, the quiver of a laugh in her voice.
“I don’t know why, though,” Harry complains as he manages to stop the Cloak’s sleeves from completely making his arms invisible. “It ought to want to stay with the next Potter.”
Hermione considers him with her eyebrows raised. “Or it wants to stay with the Master of Death.”
Harry blinks at her. “I thought you didn’t believe in fairy tales.”
“I will when all the evidence points that way.”
Hermione has her jaw squared the way it gets when it does no good to argue with her. Harry sighs. “All right, I reckon it comes with. And if I-disintegrate, or whatever-I hope I’ll have some warning, and I can send it back to you, and you can pass it on to Baby Harry.”
Hermione frowns at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I might fall apart now that the Horcrux is out of me,” Harry says, as evenly as he can. “You heard Dumbledore.”
“Not that part. The part where you assume you would have to send it back to me.”
“Well, either you or Ron. You’re the only ones I trust to pass it on-”
“We’re going to be with you. If you die, not disintegrate, die, then of course we’ll take the Cloak back to the baby.”
Harry sits there and feels as though a huge gap has opened up in front of him, but he’s not sure whether that’s a good thing or not. “You have to search for your parents. And I thought Ron would want to stay with his family.”
“I can search for my parents while we’re going around the world to get you away from the situation here. And Ron-he’d like to, sure, but if you think he’d leave you in a situation like this-”
“Then you’re mental, mate,” Ron says cheerfully, coming up the stairs and holstering his wand as he does so. “You wouldn’t believe how many people are down there asking intrusive questions and acting like they have a right to the answers. Bloody Malfoy even tried to come into the Tower. Something about a life-debt.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “That kind of thing can be handled in a letter.”
“Oh, he said that he didn’t know if he owed you a life-debt or not if you were a homunculus.” Ron flops on his bed and tucks his hands behind his head. His hair shines in the early May sunshine coming through the windows. “I think it was just an excuse.”
“I bet you had fun telling him no,” Hermione says, smiling.
“Yeah.”
Harry looks back and forth between his friends, at the fond expressions on both their faces, and knows that he should refuse their offer to come with him, for their own good. They’re just beginning to explore their romance. What kind of romance will they have if they go with him? Hasn’t he dragged them into enough danger?
But he also knows, just for himself, that he can’t give them up. He’s not strong enough to do it right now.
“It doesn’t matter to you that I’m a homunculus?” he asks. “Not the real Harry Potter?”
Ron’s smile vanishes, and he leans forwards, so intent that it feels like Harry is being examined by some great cat. “What matters to me is that you’re the one I made friends with on the train. My best mate.”
“The one who helped save me from the troll,” Hermione says.
“The one I played a bloody huge chess game for.”
“The one I investigated a basilisk with.”
“The one I played Quidditch with.”
“The one I traveled back in time with.”
“The one I-” Ron turns red. “The one I was a prat about when he was entered into the Tournament against his will.”
Hermione sniffs at Ron. “The one I helped study spells against dragons for.”
“The one we both went to the Department of Mysteries with.”
“The one we went on the Horcrux hunt with.” Hermione gets up from Neville’s bed and comes over to hug him. “Don’t tell us to give you up now.”
Harry buries his face in Hermione’s shoulder, and reaches back to pull Ron into the hug, and holds on to them both.
*
“Ron and Hermione said that you’re going away with them.”
Ginny’s face is guarded and wary. Harry supposes he can’t blame her. What he learned from Dumbledore is shocking news, and it has to make anyone who knows him feel knocked off-balance, scrambling to understand what he really is.
(Except Ron and Hermione, his brain whispers, but Ginny isn’t them, and Harry always knew that, and doesn’t resent it).
“Yeah.” Harry rubs the back of his neck. They’re alone in the garden of the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley burst into tears and hugged Harry when she saw him, and offered to introduce him to his-the original Harry Potter, sleeping upstairs, but Harry just didn’t feel up to it. Then she herded everyone else away so that he and Ginny could have a moment together.
As Ginny stares at her hands, Harry becomes more and more convinced that it’s not really together, as such.
Ginny swallows and looks up again. “It was really you who came and rescued me in the Chamber of Secrets?” Her voice wavers back and forth.
“Of course!” Harry says, and even as he says it, he knows his voice is both too loud and too angry. He looks away from Ginny and stares at the far side of the gardens. “But not really me who survived the Killing Curse. Not really me who’s the Boy-Who-Lived.”
“Oh.”
Ginny stands there looking elsewhere, and Harry can’t blame her. He shouldn’t blame her, let’s put it that way. After all, he might fall to pieces any day, and he didn’t really defeat Voldemort’s Killing Curse, and he only exists at all because of the Elder Wand. Ginny has to be feeling confused, when she knew him as the Boy-Who-Lived, and it turns out that he’s-
Not really that. Both that and something else.
Harry has to admit, though, since Ron and Hermione recited that list of everything they survived together, that he’s a little more annoyed at the thought that he’s not really Harry Potter. Maybe he doesn’t have the right to that name. But he did survive everything most people thought he survived except the one thing. He’s the one who burned Quirrell in his first year-Hermione told him that came from protections that Dumbledore implanted in the homunculus body-and killed the basilisk and got called the Heir of Slytherin and rescued Sirius and competed in the Tournament and got used in a resurrection ritual and got tortured by Umbridge and had to walk to his death and all the rest of it.
But he’s also coming to agree with Hermione’s perception that it’s useless to argue about that kind of thing. If Ginny has to take a step back to reevaluate things, or doesn’t think him of as really Harry anymore, then that’s her problem to struggle with.
Harry is leaving. Harry has Ron and Hermione. More and more, he’s coming to think that he doesn’t need anyone else.
Ginny squares her shoulders. “I won’t be going with you.”
Harry holds back the temptation to ask why she thought she’d be welcome. It would only make things harder between them than they need to be. “I know. So, this is goodbye.” He holds out his hand.
Ginny clasps it, looking both shy and squeamish. “Um. Good luck, Harry.” She runs away before Harry can ask her what for.
Harry closes his eyes and stands there, wind ruffling his hair. They feel real, both the wind and the hair.
So that’s the end of one thing that could have been.
*
In the end, Harry does go upstairs to the twins’ old room and look in on Baby Harry.
Not so much a baby, Harry thinks, startled at the size of the toddler curled up on the bed with his thumb in his mouth. Then he shakes his head. Of course, he-Harry-was fifteen months old when he survived the Killing Curse. Just because Harry doesn’t remember being that size himself doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.
The kid’s cute. Harry finds himself thinking of Baby Harry that way, as the kid, as though they’re essentially two separate people.
And they are. If one can call Harry a “person.”
Harry has to smile, knowing exactly the kind of furious scolding he’ll get from Hermione if he ever says that.
He steps into the bedroom and runs his hand gently through the baby’s black hair. Baby Harry coos and turns his head in the direction of Harry’s touch. There’s no lightning bolt scar on his forehead. Harry supposes that transferred to him when Dumbledore transferred the Horcrux, or maybe it “naturally” appeared on the homunculus’s forehead as a consequence of carrying the Horcrux.
God, this is so weird. The homunculus is himself, but it feels hard to think of that way. And Baby Harry is a separate person from him, but it feels difficult to think of that, too.
Baby Harry abruptly opens his eyes. Harry jumps. Those eyes are the same brilliant green as his own, or they’re a different color and brighter. He can’t tell. It’s not like he walks around with a mirror, the way Malfoy probably does.
What is it going to be like for Baby Harry to grow up in a world where Malfoy isn’t his enemy, and Mrs. Weasley is his mum? Harry has to admit he envies Baby Harry that last part. The first one, he isn’t sure about.
Baby Harry reaches out a hand. “You,” he says sleepily.
Harry ruffles his hair again, not sure how talkative children this age are. “Yeah,” he says, embarrassed. “Me.”
Not you.
Before Harry can spiral down into thinking depressed thoughts about that, Baby Harry lifts his arms. “Up,” he says insistently.
Harry blinks and carefully picks him up. Baby Harry is a heavy warm weight in his arms. He peers at Harry’s face, pulls for a second at his glasses, glances around the room, and clings.
Harry pats his back a few times, and then puts him back on the bed. Baby Harry begins to wail. Harry winces. He knows shite about babies.
Luckily, Mrs. Weasley is right there and bustles into the room, reaching for Baby Harry while patting Harry absently on the shoulder as she passes. Harry backs up a step and watches Baby Harry crying and Mrs. Weasley murmuring something about how he needs his nappy changed.
And something else inside him twitches and shifts.
Maybe everything else about the situation is bad, but at least Harry can spare Baby Harry the torture of growing up with the Dursleys and fighting in a war.
Maybe it’s not so bad to have been a magical construct after all, if it means that he stood in the way to protect an innocent.
He’s pretty sure that his saving-people thing is his, not something Dumbledore implanted in him as a homunculus. Of course, how does he know that for sure? Dumbledore’s portrait didn’t mention it, but maybe he would have wanted to create someone-something-that would jump in the way when real humans were endangered.
On the other hand, homunculi aren’t supposed to have feelings, either. Just to mimic the functions of life.
Harry is pretty sure he’s really alive, but he doesn’t know how you tell when your own experience is all you have.
He slips downstairs while Mrs. Weasley is changing Baby Harry’s nappy, and sees Ron and Hermione both waiting for him near the front door. Hermione smiles at him, while Ron nods and asks, “Got it all, mate?”
Harry can feel his shrunken trunk in his pocket when he shifts his weight. The Cloak is stuffed in another pocket, the holly wand is in its holster, and the Elder Wand is in a second holster a shopkeep in Diagon Alley sold him with a lot of staring. (She insisted on seeing Harry’s Galleons first, as if she thought his money might be a construct like he is).
And his two best friends are waiting for him.
Harry smiles. “Yeah.”
*
They go to France first, where, unexpectedly, they have an invitation to stay with the Delacours. Harry accepted it gratefully. He doesn’t know if they want to gape at him or if it’s just because of Ron’s family connection with Fleur, but either way, it’s a place to stay while they plan where to go next.
When they reach the Apparition coordinates, a shining meadow of blue and silver grass opens in front of them, dotted with nodding white flowers. Harry blinks, first because there’s a massive manor house in the distance that seems to be made entirely of marble, and second because there’s a young silver-haired woman in blue dress robes curtseying in front of them.
She straightens up, and Harry realizes her face is familiar.
“Gabrielle?” he asks uncertainly.
Gabrielle smiles at him and runs over to take his hands. “You do remember me!” she says. “I told Maman you would-” She leaps into French, and Harry laughs a little and gently takes his hands away, so that she won’t think he’s rejecting her friendship.
“I’m glad to see you. But you don’t need to curtsey.” Harry can practically feel Ron and Hermione exchanging glances behind his back. He hopes they don’t think that he’s become a stuck-up berk who needs people curtseying to him all the time.
An image flashes into his mind of Hermione trying to curtsey, and he holds back laughter with an effort. She would never manage it.
“But you are a-” Gabrielle pauses, and Harry tenses, wondering what she’s going to say, if there’s a French word for the kind of magical construct he is and if he’ll even recognize it. But then Gabrielle nods. “You are a miracle,” she says, pronouncing the English word with relish.
“I’m a what?”
“Of course he is,” Ron says, and comes up to nudge Harry with an elbow, moving him a little away from Gabrielle. Harry’s too stunned to figure out why. “With all the times he survived? It’s a bloody miracle he’s walking around.”
Gabrielle wrinkles her nose a little at Ron, probably not understanding his rapid English. “Maman!” she turns and calls back at the house, and a tall woman with shining silver hair, purple robes, and overwhelming presence Apparates into the meadow beside her.
Harry bows a little himself, overwhelmed. This must be Apolline Delacour, Fleur and Gabrielle’s mother, and the wife of the French Minister for Magic.
“Harry.” Apolline’s voice is more heavily accented than Fleur’s, but Harry finds he can understand her if he listens. “My thanks for coming. It is a long time since we have had one like you among us.”
Harry shakes her hand, but he exchanges a puzzled look with Ron. Ron also looks a little dazed, which probably means that Apolline’s presence is radiating allure strong enough to hit him. Hermione is the one who comes up and clears her throat this time.
“Thank you for having us, Madame Delacour,” she says, and then launches straight into French that leaves Harry blinking. Gabrielle jumps into the conversation, too. Ron and Harry blink at each other.
“Did you know she could do that?” Harry asks in an undertone.
“No. But she’s always been brilliant, you know that. And she spent some holidays in France.”
That part, Harry forgot. He watches the way Ron beams at Hermione, and feels both jealousy and confusion. He really should have insisted they stay behind so they could get on with falling in love.
But the way Ron looks at Hermione…
It’s not so different from the way Ron looks at him, sometimes.
Harry doesn’t know what to think of that.
*
It turns out that staying with the Delacours is oddly restful. They chatter about him and to him, sometimes in French and sometimes in English, but their eyes are filled with an admiration that Harry at least knows has to do with the way he rescued Gabrielle and the fact that he’s a living homunculus-which is special to them for a reason that apparently has to do with their ancestors-and nothing to do with the scar on his forehead or his status as the Boy-Who-Lived.
Their house is huge and filled with rooms that have soft carpets and sunlight and what seems to be dozens of large, silvery-furred dogs who want to follow Harry around and put their chins in his lap. Harry pets them, and remembers Padfoot, and for the first time in a long time, the memories don’t hurt.
Hermione vanishes into the Delacour library, or into long conversations in the gardens with Apolline. Ron lounges around with Harry, and sometimes plays with the dogs, and sometimes plays Quidditch. Gabrielle plays the piano in the same room and sometimes casts bright, blushing looks at Harry that he pretends not to see.
Ron does, though.
“I think Gabrielle fancies you,” he remarks, one evening when Gabrielle has stayed late wandering in dreamy melodies on the piano and had to be called up to bed by her mother.
Harry shrugs a little. “It’s not like I fancy her.” He doesn’t know what to make of the tone in Ron’s voice. Jealous? Is that because he fancies Gabrielle himself, or because he’s jealous of Ginny’s claim?
“You could, you know. I mean, not her, she’s pretty young, but you could find someone to love.”
All the relaxation flees Harry’s body in instants, and he stares at the ceiling for a second the way he did at the canopy of his bed in the Gryffindor Tower. A second later, he shakes his head and keeps his voice as calm and light as he can. “Who would want to be with someone whose body might crumble any second, Ron?”
“How does that make you any different from anyone else?”
“Huh?” Harry rolls his head to stare at him. They’ve both been lounging in recliners near the glass windows that let out into the garden. Ron is staring straight ahead, and the dusk is deep enough that it’s hard to make out the expression on his face.
Then Ron looks at him, and Harry can. It’s as blindingly bright as Ron’s face looked when he sacrificed himself to defeat that chess set.
“We’re all going to die,” Ron says, with quiet, savage intensity. “All of us. It could be any moment. At any time. I could fall off a broom tomorrow. It could turn out that Hermione has some kind of disease that none of us knew about, and it could kill her in a month.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Harry whispers, reaching out to clasp Ron’s shoulder.
Ron grabs Harry’s hand before it can get to his shoulder and holds on, but he keeps going. “I’m only saying. Life is fragile, Harry. You could die at any time. So could we. Why does it matter? Do you think it should keep you from falling in love? Finding happiness? Having a family?”
“It-it wouldn’t be fair to saddle someone with me when-”
“Saddle.” Ron laughs, and his voice is husky and bitter. “Mate, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Gabrielle isn’t the only one looking at you like that.”
“Ginny. I know.” Harry sighs. “But she changed her mind before we left. She pretty much implied that she didn’t know who I was and she didn’t feel able to go on dating me.”
“Anyone would be lucky to be with you.”
Harry squeezes Ron’s hand. “I’m the one who’s lucky to be with you and Hermione.”
“Yeah.” Ron leans a little nearer, studying him. “And don’t you forget it. If you think that’s we going to let you go act stupid by yourself, or fall to pieces alone, or whatever, then you can give up that notion right now.” He lets go of Harry’s hand, but not his gaze, as he stands up. Then he nods and stalks away into the house, presumably to go to the bedroom Apolline’s given him upstairs.
Harry stares after him, wondering.
Part Two.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Ron/Hermione, mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: Not epilogue-compliant, angst, present tense, established Ron/Hermione, threesome, drama
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 5000
Summary: In a conversation with Dumbledore’s portrait after the battle at Hogwarts, Harry finds out that he is and always has been a homunculus-a substitute body made to carry the Horcrux so that little Harry Potter, who lies asleep as a baby under powerful charms, wouldn’t have to. Harry struggles to process the news, the fallout, and the discovery that he might disintegrate at any moment.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice, and will have two parts. (I wanted it to be a oneshot, but it had other ideas). Enjoy.
Homunculus to the Life
Dumbledore tells him the truth just after Harry finishes repairing his holly wand with the Elder one.
“I’m afraid it’s true, my boy,” Dumbledore says, his head bowed with something that might be shame as Harry slumps against the desk and stares at him. Ron and Hermione are silent with utter shock on either side of Harry. “You are-not the original Harry Potter. When I came to Godric’s Hollow, I recognized the imprint of some powerful and evil magic behind little Harry’s curse scar. I didn’t know at the time it was a Horcrux. That took me years more of study to discover. But I did know it was something Dark, and something discrete, not yet worked into Harry’s soul. So I used the Elder Wand to move it out of him and into a temporary body.”
“Me,” Harry whispers. Hermione’s hand crushes his left one, and Ron’s hand his shoulder.
“Yes.” Dumbledore’s voice is thick, although he still has his head bowed so Harry can’t see his face. Shame or remorse? What does it matter? “You were to be a temporary solution while I worked on a way to defeat Voldemort for good. Baby Harry Potter is asleep in the Time Room in the Department of Mysteries. At the end of each day, they cycle the time back twenty-four hours. He hasn’t aged since the day his parents died, and he hasn’t woken.”
Harry swallows, but can think of nothing to say. Hermione can, not surprisingly. “But why did you move the Horcrux into a body at all, sir? Why not move it into an object and destroy it later? Why did you-” Her breath hitches on the edge of a sob, and Harry imagines that she must be regretting all the years she wasted as a friend to someone who doesn’t even exist. “Do this?”
“The public needed a savior,” Dumbledore says tiredly. “Someone to focus on. I planned, once the hysteria died down a little, to have the homunculus die a natural death.”
“You would have killed him?” Ron’s voice is loud in the office, and the past Headmasters’ portraits crane their necks to look at them. Dumbledore asked Harry to put up a Silencing Charm before he told them the truth, so the paintings don’t have any idea what’s being said. It’s the only saving grace Harry can see in the situation.
“No. The bodies of homunculi that are meant to mimic human beings decay over time. Rather like the body of the homunculus that Voldemort was trapped in before his resurrection.”
Harry shudders and tries to draw away from his friends. The feeling of being tainted is washing over him like a waterfall of grease. But Hermione leans harder against him, and says, “Harry didn’t.”
“No.” Dumbledore sounds a little bewildered. He still doesn’t look at them. “It may have to do with the fact that the Elder Wand is…powerful and likes to show off.” He raises his head then and locks his eyes with Harry’s for a second. “Or perhaps, even then, it knew who its master would be.”
“Can Harry’s body still disintegrate at any time?” Ron’s voice cracks. “You’re saying he could just die?”
“I don’t know.” Dumbledore stares at Harry, and Harry can’t even make sense of all the emotions changing in his eyes. “With the Horcrux gone, an essential part of what was holding him together might be gone, too. Or he might continue to live because he now holds the Elder Wand.”
Harry blinks and looks down at the Elder Wand. Then he throws it away from him, as hard as he can.
It hits the wall with a cracking sound, but of course, it doesn’t actually crack. It rolls back towards Harry, clinking softly, and flies up onto the Headmaster’s desk to lie there, nestled next to his holly wand.
Harry puts his hands over his face.
“And what was your plan going to be for the baby?” Hermione is demanding. Harry listens with ears that seem wrapped with cotton wool. “Just leave him in the Time Chamber forever?”
“No.” Dumbledore sighs. “The Unspeakables will have been alerted by an alarm when Harry…died. They will have removed him from the Time Chamber by now.”
“So he can grow up?” Ron’s voice is low and challenging.
“Yes. I was thinking that your mother might be the perfect choice to raise him, Ron. He’ll need a loving family.”
Harry turns and walks out of the office. He can’t listen to any more of this. It should have been hard to tear free of the holds Ron and Hermione had on him, but it isn’t. He can hear their voices rising behind him, questioning Dumbledore.
What does it matter? Harry isn’t who he always thought he was. He’s not even human.
Once, when they were both five-when Harry thought they were both five-Dudley called Harry a monster, and said he wasn’t born but just put together in a witch’s cauldron. Harry hit him for it, and got hit back a lot harder.
But what do you know? Dudley was right.
Harry makes his way to Gryffindor Tower and collapses into bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. At some point he realizes that something small and slender has arrived next to him, and glances down to see the Elder Wand.
Harry picks it up and flings it across the room.
It’s back by his side by the time his mind mercifully darkens.
*
“I gave Dumbledore a piece of my mind.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Harry mumbles around a mouthful of the sandwich that Kreacher brought up.
Hermione, who’s lying across from him on the bed that used to be Neville’s, gives him a worried smile. “Dumbledore says that he put some Galleons into a vault for you at Gringotts, under the name Harry Dumbledore. He never expected you to live long enough for you to need Harry Potter’s vault, but then he let it proceed when it turned out you did.”
Harry breathes out slowly. “You mean he never expected me to last long enough.”
“That, too.”
Hermione has her stubborn look on, and Harry knows that he won’t get far if he tries to insist on his status as a non-living object. Hell, he can’t get used to it himself. He’s still walking around and breathing and eating and sleeping. Trying to contemplate that he might crumble to dust, or mud, or whatever Dumbledore made his homunculus body of, one day-
Harry shakes his head rapidly to clear the thought away, and sees Hermione’s hand extended to him. He clasps it, tightly.
“Ron went and found his mum and brought her to Dumbledore’s portrait,” Hermione whispers. “She said that of course she would adopt the baby-you. I think she needs it given Fred’s death.”
Harry only nods. He never intended to try and force himself on the Weasleys after the war, anyway. First he thought he would be dead, and now he thinks that he really doesn’t want to be around the “real” Harry Potter, even though he knows it’s cowardly, and it’s not like it’s a toddler’s fault.
“Apparently, Dumbledore left instructions with the Unspeakables to tell everyone about baby Harry.” Hermione blurts. “So that’s what they did. It’s the story on the front page of the Prophet.”
Harry closes his eyes. He can just imagine the pity and the whispers and the sidelong glances. He wants to escape from all that.
That solidifies a resolution that’s been building in the back of his mind since he heard the news from Dumbledore, probably, but this has pushed him to realize what it is.
“I have to leave,” he whispers.
Hermione doesn’t say anything, and Harry looks at her, because he assumed she would try to talk him out of it. She’s nodding, biting her lip and looking at him with wide, teary eyes. They never fall, but that her tears are there at all is significant.
“I think you do,” she says. “There are too many people who are going to think themselves entitled to know all about this. People who will decide that you’re not the real Harry Potter, that you’re an imposter of some kind, or a trick of Voldemort’s, or who knows what. People who will want to be friends with the baby or turn you against him. Maybe even people who’ll want to do magical experiments on you to see how you’ve survived so long.”
Harry shudders in disgust. He sighs and picks up the Elder Wand, since that seems like it has to come with him. “Can you-can you talk to Molly and the others? Tell them why I’m leaving?”
“Of course, Harry.”
Harry sighs again when he thinks about Gringotts and the fact that they broke into to take a Horcrux out. He’s not at all sure he’ll be able to get the Galleons that Dumbledore left for him. But he’ll have to try. Otherwise, he won’t have any money. “And do you think someone, maybe Bill, could go and withdraw the Galleons Dumbledore left for me and close the vault? Is there a vault key?”
“Yes. Dumbledore’s portrait told me where it’s hidden.”
“Good.” Harry exhales and glances around the room, wondering distractedly what else he needs to bring with him. His clothes; they’re his, and Baby Harry couldn’t wear them, anyway. The Invisibility Cloak ought to stay here because it’s a Potter heirloom-
There’s a blurring in the air near him, and Harry staggers backwards on the bed as the Cloak drapes itself bodily over him. Harry stares at it and tries to pry it off him. It winds itself firmly around his arms and clings.
“I think it wants to come with you,” Hermione murmurs, the quiver of a laugh in her voice.
“I don’t know why, though,” Harry complains as he manages to stop the Cloak’s sleeves from completely making his arms invisible. “It ought to want to stay with the next Potter.”
Hermione considers him with her eyebrows raised. “Or it wants to stay with the Master of Death.”
Harry blinks at her. “I thought you didn’t believe in fairy tales.”
“I will when all the evidence points that way.”
Hermione has her jaw squared the way it gets when it does no good to argue with her. Harry sighs. “All right, I reckon it comes with. And if I-disintegrate, or whatever-I hope I’ll have some warning, and I can send it back to you, and you can pass it on to Baby Harry.”
Hermione frowns at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I might fall apart now that the Horcrux is out of me,” Harry says, as evenly as he can. “You heard Dumbledore.”
“Not that part. The part where you assume you would have to send it back to me.”
“Well, either you or Ron. You’re the only ones I trust to pass it on-”
“We’re going to be with you. If you die, not disintegrate, die, then of course we’ll take the Cloak back to the baby.”
Harry sits there and feels as though a huge gap has opened up in front of him, but he’s not sure whether that’s a good thing or not. “You have to search for your parents. And I thought Ron would want to stay with his family.”
“I can search for my parents while we’re going around the world to get you away from the situation here. And Ron-he’d like to, sure, but if you think he’d leave you in a situation like this-”
“Then you’re mental, mate,” Ron says cheerfully, coming up the stairs and holstering his wand as he does so. “You wouldn’t believe how many people are down there asking intrusive questions and acting like they have a right to the answers. Bloody Malfoy even tried to come into the Tower. Something about a life-debt.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “That kind of thing can be handled in a letter.”
“Oh, he said that he didn’t know if he owed you a life-debt or not if you were a homunculus.” Ron flops on his bed and tucks his hands behind his head. His hair shines in the early May sunshine coming through the windows. “I think it was just an excuse.”
“I bet you had fun telling him no,” Hermione says, smiling.
“Yeah.”
Harry looks back and forth between his friends, at the fond expressions on both their faces, and knows that he should refuse their offer to come with him, for their own good. They’re just beginning to explore their romance. What kind of romance will they have if they go with him? Hasn’t he dragged them into enough danger?
But he also knows, just for himself, that he can’t give them up. He’s not strong enough to do it right now.
“It doesn’t matter to you that I’m a homunculus?” he asks. “Not the real Harry Potter?”
Ron’s smile vanishes, and he leans forwards, so intent that it feels like Harry is being examined by some great cat. “What matters to me is that you’re the one I made friends with on the train. My best mate.”
“The one who helped save me from the troll,” Hermione says.
“The one I played a bloody huge chess game for.”
“The one I investigated a basilisk with.”
“The one I played Quidditch with.”
“The one I traveled back in time with.”
“The one I-” Ron turns red. “The one I was a prat about when he was entered into the Tournament against his will.”
Hermione sniffs at Ron. “The one I helped study spells against dragons for.”
“The one we both went to the Department of Mysteries with.”
“The one we went on the Horcrux hunt with.” Hermione gets up from Neville’s bed and comes over to hug him. “Don’t tell us to give you up now.”
Harry buries his face in Hermione’s shoulder, and reaches back to pull Ron into the hug, and holds on to them both.
*
“Ron and Hermione said that you’re going away with them.”
Ginny’s face is guarded and wary. Harry supposes he can’t blame her. What he learned from Dumbledore is shocking news, and it has to make anyone who knows him feel knocked off-balance, scrambling to understand what he really is.
(Except Ron and Hermione, his brain whispers, but Ginny isn’t them, and Harry always knew that, and doesn’t resent it).
“Yeah.” Harry rubs the back of his neck. They’re alone in the garden of the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley burst into tears and hugged Harry when she saw him, and offered to introduce him to his-the original Harry Potter, sleeping upstairs, but Harry just didn’t feel up to it. Then she herded everyone else away so that he and Ginny could have a moment together.
As Ginny stares at her hands, Harry becomes more and more convinced that it’s not really together, as such.
Ginny swallows and looks up again. “It was really you who came and rescued me in the Chamber of Secrets?” Her voice wavers back and forth.
“Of course!” Harry says, and even as he says it, he knows his voice is both too loud and too angry. He looks away from Ginny and stares at the far side of the gardens. “But not really me who survived the Killing Curse. Not really me who’s the Boy-Who-Lived.”
“Oh.”
Ginny stands there looking elsewhere, and Harry can’t blame her. He shouldn’t blame her, let’s put it that way. After all, he might fall to pieces any day, and he didn’t really defeat Voldemort’s Killing Curse, and he only exists at all because of the Elder Wand. Ginny has to be feeling confused, when she knew him as the Boy-Who-Lived, and it turns out that he’s-
Not really that. Both that and something else.
Harry has to admit, though, since Ron and Hermione recited that list of everything they survived together, that he’s a little more annoyed at the thought that he’s not really Harry Potter. Maybe he doesn’t have the right to that name. But he did survive everything most people thought he survived except the one thing. He’s the one who burned Quirrell in his first year-Hermione told him that came from protections that Dumbledore implanted in the homunculus body-and killed the basilisk and got called the Heir of Slytherin and rescued Sirius and competed in the Tournament and got used in a resurrection ritual and got tortured by Umbridge and had to walk to his death and all the rest of it.
But he’s also coming to agree with Hermione’s perception that it’s useless to argue about that kind of thing. If Ginny has to take a step back to reevaluate things, or doesn’t think him of as really Harry anymore, then that’s her problem to struggle with.
Harry is leaving. Harry has Ron and Hermione. More and more, he’s coming to think that he doesn’t need anyone else.
Ginny squares her shoulders. “I won’t be going with you.”
Harry holds back the temptation to ask why she thought she’d be welcome. It would only make things harder between them than they need to be. “I know. So, this is goodbye.” He holds out his hand.
Ginny clasps it, looking both shy and squeamish. “Um. Good luck, Harry.” She runs away before Harry can ask her what for.
Harry closes his eyes and stands there, wind ruffling his hair. They feel real, both the wind and the hair.
So that’s the end of one thing that could have been.
*
In the end, Harry does go upstairs to the twins’ old room and look in on Baby Harry.
Not so much a baby, Harry thinks, startled at the size of the toddler curled up on the bed with his thumb in his mouth. Then he shakes his head. Of course, he-Harry-was fifteen months old when he survived the Killing Curse. Just because Harry doesn’t remember being that size himself doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.
The kid’s cute. Harry finds himself thinking of Baby Harry that way, as the kid, as though they’re essentially two separate people.
And they are. If one can call Harry a “person.”
Harry has to smile, knowing exactly the kind of furious scolding he’ll get from Hermione if he ever says that.
He steps into the bedroom and runs his hand gently through the baby’s black hair. Baby Harry coos and turns his head in the direction of Harry’s touch. There’s no lightning bolt scar on his forehead. Harry supposes that transferred to him when Dumbledore transferred the Horcrux, or maybe it “naturally” appeared on the homunculus’s forehead as a consequence of carrying the Horcrux.
God, this is so weird. The homunculus is himself, but it feels hard to think of that way. And Baby Harry is a separate person from him, but it feels difficult to think of that, too.
Baby Harry abruptly opens his eyes. Harry jumps. Those eyes are the same brilliant green as his own, or they’re a different color and brighter. He can’t tell. It’s not like he walks around with a mirror, the way Malfoy probably does.
What is it going to be like for Baby Harry to grow up in a world where Malfoy isn’t his enemy, and Mrs. Weasley is his mum? Harry has to admit he envies Baby Harry that last part. The first one, he isn’t sure about.
Baby Harry reaches out a hand. “You,” he says sleepily.
Harry ruffles his hair again, not sure how talkative children this age are. “Yeah,” he says, embarrassed. “Me.”
Not you.
Before Harry can spiral down into thinking depressed thoughts about that, Baby Harry lifts his arms. “Up,” he says insistently.
Harry blinks and carefully picks him up. Baby Harry is a heavy warm weight in his arms. He peers at Harry’s face, pulls for a second at his glasses, glances around the room, and clings.
Harry pats his back a few times, and then puts him back on the bed. Baby Harry begins to wail. Harry winces. He knows shite about babies.
Luckily, Mrs. Weasley is right there and bustles into the room, reaching for Baby Harry while patting Harry absently on the shoulder as she passes. Harry backs up a step and watches Baby Harry crying and Mrs. Weasley murmuring something about how he needs his nappy changed.
And something else inside him twitches and shifts.
Maybe everything else about the situation is bad, but at least Harry can spare Baby Harry the torture of growing up with the Dursleys and fighting in a war.
Maybe it’s not so bad to have been a magical construct after all, if it means that he stood in the way to protect an innocent.
He’s pretty sure that his saving-people thing is his, not something Dumbledore implanted in him as a homunculus. Of course, how does he know that for sure? Dumbledore’s portrait didn’t mention it, but maybe he would have wanted to create someone-something-that would jump in the way when real humans were endangered.
On the other hand, homunculi aren’t supposed to have feelings, either. Just to mimic the functions of life.
Harry is pretty sure he’s really alive, but he doesn’t know how you tell when your own experience is all you have.
He slips downstairs while Mrs. Weasley is changing Baby Harry’s nappy, and sees Ron and Hermione both waiting for him near the front door. Hermione smiles at him, while Ron nods and asks, “Got it all, mate?”
Harry can feel his shrunken trunk in his pocket when he shifts his weight. The Cloak is stuffed in another pocket, the holly wand is in its holster, and the Elder Wand is in a second holster a shopkeep in Diagon Alley sold him with a lot of staring. (She insisted on seeing Harry’s Galleons first, as if she thought his money might be a construct like he is).
And his two best friends are waiting for him.
Harry smiles. “Yeah.”
*
They go to France first, where, unexpectedly, they have an invitation to stay with the Delacours. Harry accepted it gratefully. He doesn’t know if they want to gape at him or if it’s just because of Ron’s family connection with Fleur, but either way, it’s a place to stay while they plan where to go next.
When they reach the Apparition coordinates, a shining meadow of blue and silver grass opens in front of them, dotted with nodding white flowers. Harry blinks, first because there’s a massive manor house in the distance that seems to be made entirely of marble, and second because there’s a young silver-haired woman in blue dress robes curtseying in front of them.
She straightens up, and Harry realizes her face is familiar.
“Gabrielle?” he asks uncertainly.
Gabrielle smiles at him and runs over to take his hands. “You do remember me!” she says. “I told Maman you would-” She leaps into French, and Harry laughs a little and gently takes his hands away, so that she won’t think he’s rejecting her friendship.
“I’m glad to see you. But you don’t need to curtsey.” Harry can practically feel Ron and Hermione exchanging glances behind his back. He hopes they don’t think that he’s become a stuck-up berk who needs people curtseying to him all the time.
An image flashes into his mind of Hermione trying to curtsey, and he holds back laughter with an effort. She would never manage it.
“But you are a-” Gabrielle pauses, and Harry tenses, wondering what she’s going to say, if there’s a French word for the kind of magical construct he is and if he’ll even recognize it. But then Gabrielle nods. “You are a miracle,” she says, pronouncing the English word with relish.
“I’m a what?”
“Of course he is,” Ron says, and comes up to nudge Harry with an elbow, moving him a little away from Gabrielle. Harry’s too stunned to figure out why. “With all the times he survived? It’s a bloody miracle he’s walking around.”
Gabrielle wrinkles her nose a little at Ron, probably not understanding his rapid English. “Maman!” she turns and calls back at the house, and a tall woman with shining silver hair, purple robes, and overwhelming presence Apparates into the meadow beside her.
Harry bows a little himself, overwhelmed. This must be Apolline Delacour, Fleur and Gabrielle’s mother, and the wife of the French Minister for Magic.
“Harry.” Apolline’s voice is more heavily accented than Fleur’s, but Harry finds he can understand her if he listens. “My thanks for coming. It is a long time since we have had one like you among us.”
Harry shakes her hand, but he exchanges a puzzled look with Ron. Ron also looks a little dazed, which probably means that Apolline’s presence is radiating allure strong enough to hit him. Hermione is the one who comes up and clears her throat this time.
“Thank you for having us, Madame Delacour,” she says, and then launches straight into French that leaves Harry blinking. Gabrielle jumps into the conversation, too. Ron and Harry blink at each other.
“Did you know she could do that?” Harry asks in an undertone.
“No. But she’s always been brilliant, you know that. And she spent some holidays in France.”
That part, Harry forgot. He watches the way Ron beams at Hermione, and feels both jealousy and confusion. He really should have insisted they stay behind so they could get on with falling in love.
But the way Ron looks at Hermione…
It’s not so different from the way Ron looks at him, sometimes.
Harry doesn’t know what to think of that.
*
It turns out that staying with the Delacours is oddly restful. They chatter about him and to him, sometimes in French and sometimes in English, but their eyes are filled with an admiration that Harry at least knows has to do with the way he rescued Gabrielle and the fact that he’s a living homunculus-which is special to them for a reason that apparently has to do with their ancestors-and nothing to do with the scar on his forehead or his status as the Boy-Who-Lived.
Their house is huge and filled with rooms that have soft carpets and sunlight and what seems to be dozens of large, silvery-furred dogs who want to follow Harry around and put their chins in his lap. Harry pets them, and remembers Padfoot, and for the first time in a long time, the memories don’t hurt.
Hermione vanishes into the Delacour library, or into long conversations in the gardens with Apolline. Ron lounges around with Harry, and sometimes plays with the dogs, and sometimes plays Quidditch. Gabrielle plays the piano in the same room and sometimes casts bright, blushing looks at Harry that he pretends not to see.
Ron does, though.
“I think Gabrielle fancies you,” he remarks, one evening when Gabrielle has stayed late wandering in dreamy melodies on the piano and had to be called up to bed by her mother.
Harry shrugs a little. “It’s not like I fancy her.” He doesn’t know what to make of the tone in Ron’s voice. Jealous? Is that because he fancies Gabrielle himself, or because he’s jealous of Ginny’s claim?
“You could, you know. I mean, not her, she’s pretty young, but you could find someone to love.”
All the relaxation flees Harry’s body in instants, and he stares at the ceiling for a second the way he did at the canopy of his bed in the Gryffindor Tower. A second later, he shakes his head and keeps his voice as calm and light as he can. “Who would want to be with someone whose body might crumble any second, Ron?”
“How does that make you any different from anyone else?”
“Huh?” Harry rolls his head to stare at him. They’ve both been lounging in recliners near the glass windows that let out into the garden. Ron is staring straight ahead, and the dusk is deep enough that it’s hard to make out the expression on his face.
Then Ron looks at him, and Harry can. It’s as blindingly bright as Ron’s face looked when he sacrificed himself to defeat that chess set.
“We’re all going to die,” Ron says, with quiet, savage intensity. “All of us. It could be any moment. At any time. I could fall off a broom tomorrow. It could turn out that Hermione has some kind of disease that none of us knew about, and it could kill her in a month.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Harry whispers, reaching out to clasp Ron’s shoulder.
Ron grabs Harry’s hand before it can get to his shoulder and holds on, but he keeps going. “I’m only saying. Life is fragile, Harry. You could die at any time. So could we. Why does it matter? Do you think it should keep you from falling in love? Finding happiness? Having a family?”
“It-it wouldn’t be fair to saddle someone with me when-”
“Saddle.” Ron laughs, and his voice is husky and bitter. “Mate, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Gabrielle isn’t the only one looking at you like that.”
“Ginny. I know.” Harry sighs. “But she changed her mind before we left. She pretty much implied that she didn’t know who I was and she didn’t feel able to go on dating me.”
“Anyone would be lucky to be with you.”
Harry squeezes Ron’s hand. “I’m the one who’s lucky to be with you and Hermione.”
“Yeah.” Ron leans a little nearer, studying him. “And don’t you forget it. If you think that’s we going to let you go act stupid by yourself, or fall to pieces alone, or whatever, then you can give up that notion right now.” He lets go of Harry’s hand, but not his gaze, as he stands up. Then he nods and stalks away into the house, presumably to go to the bedroom Apolline’s given him upstairs.
Harry stares after him, wondering.
Part Two.