Chapter Twelve of 'Forgive Those Who Trespass'- Instauro Nos
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Chapter Twelve-Instauro Nos
Harry had barely stepped away from the Pensieve when he staggered. He put one hand on the base of the pillar supporting the Pensieve, though he longed to flinch away because it was Draco’s rib, and one hand on Draco’s shoulder. Draco paused, staring at him and mouthing a question.
“I-don’t know what-“ Harry muttered. His head was swimming, and his feet seemed a long way from it. He shook himself, remembering that he was making a spectacle in front of a man who had just recovered perhaps the most disturbing part of his past, and took a firm step.
It planted him on the floor. He didn’t even remember falling, which argued he had blacked out on the way down. He picked himself up, staring at his scraped palms; the stone of the Pensieve rooms was as smooth as that of the rest of the maze, but he’d come down hard, and with his hands splayed in front of him to catch his full weight.
“What-“ he asked.
The communication sphere was suddenly in front of his eyes. Harry blinked, while his vision narrowed and tunneled and rolled over twice and expanded, while Draco carefully selected the facet that meant Tired.
“Then rest,” Harry mumbled drunkenly, and leaned his forehead on his palm. “I’ll be up in just a moment to cast spells on the far doorway and-“ He frowned. He knew there was something else he had to do before Draco slept, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He went floundering after it in his mind for a long moment before he realized Draco was tapping out another message on the communication sphere.
Not me. You are tired.
Harry finally understood what must be happening, and flushed for not figuring it out earlier. The effects of the Cognosco had worn off. He was so weary that the thought of standing was intolerable, let alone putting one foot in front of another.
And so, unexpectedly, came the first test of his new trust in Draco.
Harry raised his head, though it lolled drunkenly on his neck, and stared at Draco. Draco looked back, eyes glittering; Harry could make that out when he concentrated as hard as he would on a Potions recipe. The shortened fingers reached out, traced down Harry’s forehead over his scar, and landed on his eyelids, which they forced shut.
He might as well have spoken aloud.
If you really trust me, prove it.
“All right,” Harry whispered. “Yes. I’ll sleep.”
He dragged the blankets out of the satchel with numb fingers, and messily spread them on the floor. He would have fallen asleep right then and there, but Draco forced him aside so that he could hook his wrists under the blankets and arrange them to his own satisfaction. Harry protested, but since it was in a sleepy mumble, Draco seemed content to loftily ignore him.
And then, instead of a pillow, Harry’s head somehow wound up in Draco’s lap.
The thought occurred to him of what Ron would say, and then of the thoughtful nod Hermione would give, and how both of them would stare when they first saw him like this. He entertained, briefly, the idea that he should roll off Draco’s lap and lie on the floor simply to prove a point, but he had forgotten what the point was.
Then a palm stroked his hair, and the next moment he was asleep.
*
Harry woke so slowly that he felt fretfulness pulse somewhere deep inside his head. Had something gone wrong? Had someone cast a sleep spell on him? Had an Acromantula come along during the night and tied both him and Draco up? Why was it so hard to move?
But at least he understood better when more of his consciousness returned. He was warm and deliciously comfortable, lying with his head still on Draco’s lap, one blanket over him and more beneath him, his breath still heavy and drugged in his ears. Draco’s slow, carefully moving palm, wandering through Harry’s hair to the nape of his neck and then back over his skull, proved he was still awake, and keeping watch.
He had slept next to Draco, of his own free will-well, mostly of his own free will; Harry still doubted he would have chosen that if the Awareness Charm hadn’t worn off-and nothing bad had happened.
He would have liked to lie there and maintain the warmth, but a sudden thought of his friends caused him to stiffen. What would they say, if they could see him there like this? Hermione might comment approvingly. She might say that it was good to see Harry getting over his problems with his sexual orientation, enough to lie close to and accept comfort from another man.
Harry pushed himself away from Draco, who stared at him with raised eyebrows. Harry coughed, said, “Good morning,” and reached for the satchel. He was hungry, and food was the best way to deflect any questions Draco might have.
He seemed to have none. Instead of trying to start a conversation, he willingly accepted the cold meat and cheese Harry offered and ate. But he stared at Harry the entire time, and his gray eyes seemed to communicate significance without meaning. Harry turned away from them at last and rose carefully to his feet, testing to make sure the scrapes on his palms hadn’t interfered with his ability to draw his wand. They had scabbed over already, which he was grateful for, but which worried him with the indication of how long he’d slept.
“Ready, Draco?” he asked, the name slipping easily from his lips this time. “I think we should start.”
Draco pulled himself gracefully to his feet. His eyes remained on Harry, joined this time by a quiet smile. Harry turned away, blushing. He could think of all too many reasons Draco would smile. He trusted the other wizard not to betray him to the Unspeakables now, but Draco would still make snide and mocking remarks as often as possible. God help Harry if he ever learned about Harry’s little preference for men.
“Is there another section of maze beyond this room?” he asked Draco.
Luckily, Draco closed his eyes to think about that, which cut off that intense stare. Harry shifted from foot to foot. The wooden one still clunked with an unfortunate noise, but at least he was getting used to balancing on it.
At last, Draco shook his head. Harry nodded briskly, slung the satchel over his shoulder, called the communication sphere and the sphere of light to float after him, and made his way to the room’s far door.
It opened on absolute blackness, as the other doors from the Pensieve rooms had, but this time Harry caught his breath when the sphere darted past him and he started casting his spells. This was a single, enormous room. It wasn’t a cavern, either. The walls and floor were finished stone, jointed flagstones. There were faint lines of squares that might have been windows filled in by more stones. Harry frowned, wondering why the maze would bother with such things when the windows had never existed, and then shrugged. Why put Draco’s memories in Pensieves on pillars made of his rib bones? The symbolic aspects of the maze seemed as important as the physical and real ones.
The room had no furniture, and Harry’s spells revealed, once again, no traps and no magical creatures. He had just started to relax when Draco grabbed his arm. He could squeeze hard for someone without a proper hand, Harry thought, wincing a little.
“What?” he whispered.
Draco pointed to the walls. Harry lifted his wand, and the sphere of light flew higher. He frowned when he made out long lines of portraits, stretching away beyond sight. They seemed about the same size, all only a bit shorter than a human body, all set in neat mahogany frames. And they all seemed to be of the same woman, unless they changed beyond the point that his light could reach.
Harry leaned as near as he could without stepping into the room, studying the woman in the portrait. She was a dark-eyed, dark-haired, beautiful witch, her eyes cast down on the floor. She sat in a chair covered with forest-green cloth, turned sideways to the viewer. She wore formal blue dress robes, as if she expected to go dancing any minute, and her hands were neatly folded in her lap. The only unusual thing about the portraits, Harry thought, was the series of runes inscribed under each one-and, of course, he couldn’t read them, never having been smart like Hermione and taken Ancient Runes in Hogwarts.
“Well, what do they say?” he whispered to Draco.
Draco shook his head, which might mean he couldn’t read them or it wasn’t important. The next moment, he flapped his left hand demandingly for the communication sphere, and Harry floated it over to him before he considered how odd it was that he should be able to read that single gesture so neatly.
Draco tapped the facets that meant, I know her.
Harry blinked and glanced back into the room. “You’ve seen the original?”
Unspeakable. Torturer.
Harry hissed under his breath, and studied the portraits again, the unknown runes seeming ten times more ominous to him than they had before. “Were you there when the picture was painted?”
Draco shook his head, and looked again into the room, troubled.
Harry let him have his stare, but when he made no move to reach for the communication sphere or to press forwards, he asked, “Is there a way around this room?”
Another headshake.
Harry put a hand on his shoulder, and drew him close, so that Draco could absorb the warmth and steadiness he needed after being confronted with the picture of a woman who had probably tortured him. Hadn’t one of the voices in the scene where he lost his fingers been a woman? Harry was quite prepared to believe that it had been, and to hate her.
At last they moved forwards together, Draco matching paces with Harry exactly, even when his natural feet could have carried him faster than Harry’s mismatched ones.
Harry glanced over his shoulder continually, and sent the light sphere wheeling in odd circles, so that it filled corners with sudden radiance and reeling shadows. Nothing was revealed, and nothing approached them. The room remained absolutely silent, and no portrait differed from the others. Harry, to Draco’s visible nervousness, did stop and spend some time studying the runes beneath one picture, thinking that they might be Latin or simply letters reversed for a mirror, and that a good moment’s concentration would make him able to figure them out. But nothing came to him-they still remained dots and lines and squiggles-and he gave up in disgust and led Draco on.
He wished there was some way of knowing when they were halfway through the room. There wasn’t, of course. No line was drawn on the floor; no door appeared in the distance; they passed the portraits and the lines that signaled filled-in windows at absurdly regular intervals. Harry cast a spell that sharpened his senses so that he might hear or smell anything out of the ordinary, but all that enabled him to make out was his own stink of sweat. He wrinkled his nose and cast a Cleaning Charm. Draco mimed a sigh of relief at him. Harry shoved at his shoulder, though not hard enough to get Draco away from his side. “Prat,” he muttered.
More pictures, and more stones, and more darkness, and more light where the sphere floated, and more silence, and Harry was losing his fear of the room, though he thought he should have felt more suspense instead. It was only natural to feel a bit giddy when you’d been keyed up for an attack and then nothing attacked you, wasn’t it? Harry thought he must have felt that way all the time.
He frowned and tapped his fingers on his thigh at his inability to remember. Him. The giddiest person he knew. The boy who had rushed around in Harry’s second year snapping pictures of him and never listening when Harry asked him to stop. The boy who died in the Battle of Hogwarts. What was his name again?
But no, wait, he hadn’t died in the Battle of Hogwarts, had he? He had lived and married that giggling girl Ron was always dating in sixth year. They had six children already. Six, to match the number of the years she’d spent in Hogwarts before she started dating Ron. Harry was delighted with himself for making the connection, and delighted with them for the match. They both suited each other, so giggly. What was her name?
He glanced at Draco-Malfoy-Draco, and wasn’t it funny how the name kept seesawing in his head? Draco-Malfoy-Draco was rubbing his forehead as if it hurt, frowning slightly. Harry laughed, and figured it was just jealousy when Draco jerked his head towards him in alarm, because Harry could laugh and he couldn’t. “Why are you doing that?” he asked. “I’m the one with the scar.”
Draco summoned the communication sphere with a flap of his hand, though it took Harry a moment to understand him. Harry shrugged indolently as he sent it skimming over. Not his fault if Draco-Malfoy-Draco’s lacking fingers meant that his gestures were hard to read. Or should that be Malfoy-Draco-Malfoy?
Whilst Harry pondered this intriguing question, Draco was stroking the communication sphere, looking hopelessly for the facet he wanted. Harry laughed again. “We didn’t put in words for everything,” he said, and then frowned a little. Maybe they had put in words for everything. It would have taken an awfully long time, but who could tell how much time had passed since they’d begun this journey into the maze anyway?
Had they begun the journey? No, Harry thought he had come alone. But then he’d found Malfoy-Draco-Malfoy.
He thought.
His attention was drawn back as Malfoy hissed and pushed the communication sphere away from him, to float in midair. Then he glanced to the side and froze in shock. The next moment, he was pinching Harry to make him look, too.
“Ouch,” Harry said indignantly. He didn’t see the big deal when he turned, either. There were just the portraits on the wall, like always, with the witch in the fancy dress robes turned so that she was looking at them, her mouth gaping wide. And a faint silvery mist was streaming into each painted mouth. So what? It was cold in here, and when it was cold you could see people’s breaths. “So what?” Harry asked aloud, and shrugged. “She’s just breathing.”
Draco gave him a look of distress. Harry couldn’t remember seeing anything so funny since the jokes made by those blokes.
You know, he told himself, cudgeling his brain. Those blokes. The red-haired ones. I’ll remember their names in a moment, don’t know why my memory seems to be so full of holes…
Draco opened his mouth and closed it again, silent as a sheep in a thunderstorm. Harry laughed once more, and reeled down until he was sitting. It seemed a safer position than walking. He closed his eyes; the spirals of silver smoke, which seemed to be rushing from his temples towards the mouths of all the portraits, rendered him dizzy.
Someone fetched him a terrific thump on the back of his head. Harry opened his eyes and repeated, “Ouch.” A blurred figure stood above him, and for a moment he thought he must have lost his glasses, but then he realized it was just that he didn’t recognize the man.
“Hullo!” Harry said, pleased to have met company in this unpleasant dungeon. Or was it an unpleasant dungeon? Maybe he was wandering in a dream, or the dungeons under Hogwarts, which resembled home to him now. “Who are you?”
The man fell to his knees in front of Harry, oddly silent in response to a friendly greeting. Harry squinted. He was barely visible through the fog of silver that seemed to be steaming off them both. But he thought he could make out shortened fingers reaching and plucking the glasses off his face.
Harry let them go; they were covered with the silver steam, anyway, and less than useless. He watched in curiosity, though, as the fellow with the nubs for fingers began to trace clumsy letters in the fog on the glass, because he had nothing better to do.
Insta, the stranger wrote, occupying both lenses, and then breathed on them to obscure the letters and started over again.
It really was uncommonly cold in here.
Uro nos, the stranger finished, and then handed the glasses back to Harry, who squinted obediently at the letters.
“Oh, no, I don’t want to wear them, you can keep them,” he said, and settled his head back against the wall. He had a vague recollection that he used to have unpleasant dreams, but he believed he could sleep without interruption now. His head felt pleasantly empty.
The stranger thrust the glasses at him again, then forced them onto his face and picked up Harry’s arm, pressing his fingers shut around the stick he held.
“That’s my arm,” Harry pointed out-patiently, he thought.
The stranger flourished the stick through a movement, again and again, so insistently that Harry thought he might as well mimic the motion so he could get solitude and some sleep. But when he repeated it, did that content the stranger? No. Of course not. He could never get a break, Harry thought crossly. The stranger jumped to his feet and started tracing the letters in the air this time.
“They won’t stay,” Harry felt obliged to inform him.
The stranger pointed at him, waving his hand wildly in the air and beginning to mouth the words this time. Harry watched the movements of his lips critically, to be sure he had the words and because the bloke really wasn’t a good writer. Then he shrugged and lifted his wand.
This time, he used the movement and the words at the same time. “Instauro nos!” he shouted, enthusiastically, because he hadn’t had a good shout in a while.
The steam around him shivered, and then appeared to reverse itself. Harry gave a sleepy smile and lowered his wand. Hm. That was funny. The stick was a wand? What did he do, go about playing at magician and performing at children’s birthday parties?
What did he do? What an excellent question.
And then the memories slammed into his head, all at once, the steam streaming backwards, the collision with what he’d managed to retain making Harry gag. He leaped to his feet at once, panting harshly, and shot an arm around Draco, bringing him close to his side. Draco came without protest, his head falling on Harry’s shoulder as if he’d exhausted himself.
He probably has, if he lost some of his own memories and then had to go through so much effort saving my life, Harry thought grimly.
Blue-white light like the glow of a will-o’-the-wisp flickered over the surfaces of the portraits. Harry could see clearly now that the position of the witch had changed. All of her leaned forwards in their chairs, their fists clenched in front of them and their mouths open in hungry snarls. Harry shuddered. She had nearly eaten him-and maybe Draco.
He wasn’t sure which vision made him angrier-himself as a mindless shell and his friends, whom he had to rescue, suffering forever, or Draco sent back into a version of the same slavery he’d just escaped, losing all his newfound memories.
He scarcely thought about what he was doing. His wand flicked out, and he sent a Conflagration Curse at the nearest portrait.
The blue-white light caught on fire in a moment, and oil poured down from the surface of the painting as if it were melting. Harry stared in fascination, even as the figure of the witch behind the oil blurred to a dark, skeleton-like shape. Draco was tugging and pulling on his arm, trying to get him to run away, but Harry refused to move. He wasn’t about to leave his enemies behind him, and though he doubted he could kill these paintings, any more than he could kill the shadow-wolf or the Malfoys, he had to make sure he neutralized them.
The oil melted away completely. What was left looked like a doorway into another room, the one where the pictured witch sat. And then she stepped out of the portrait and started striding towards him.
Harry didn’t need Draco’s panicked squeeze to tell him that this was not good.
No time for qualms, no time for spells of lesser power. Harry twisted, to put Draco fully behind him, and aimed his wand directly at the striding figure. “Avada Kedavra!”
The green light passed through her as it would have through a ghost, not slowing down. The witch grinned at him, if you could call opening her mouth fully and drawing in her breath a grin. The dress robes she wore stretched and creaked around her as if supported by whalebone.
Draco pinched him again.
Harry looked at him, perforce, and realized that Draco was leaping up and down excitedly and pointing at the portrait the witch had come from. Harry put up a Shield Charm in the hopes that might hold their enemy off a moment, and then stared at the burning painting, choosing to trust that Draco had something important to tell him, even if it was in actuality a foolish child’s fancy.
The oil had poured into the runes. Harry blinked. They weren’t runes at all, he saw, but parts of letters. They had been impossible to decipher because they were so broken and scattered, but the oil filled in the gaps like a shimmering paste. There was now clearly a name beneath that portrait, and, Harry thought, beneath the others as well.
He glanced at Draco. Draco gave him one more nod, and mouthed the name, conveying that this was the witch he had known.
“Josephine!” Harry said aloud.
The witch stopped and screamed, a piercing, terrible sound, though still not as loud as the roar Harry had heard when he and Draco were both in the room with the Malfoy-chickens and the books. Everything in the room glowed: Draco’s hair, the silvery streams of memory that once again were beginning to flow from Harry’s temples to Josephine’s mouth, the blue-white light on the burning portrait, the sphere of light, the crystal communication sphere, and the lines between the stones on the floors and wall. Harry flung an arm up to partially shield his eyes from the light, but didn’t stop watching as Josephine’s body thinned into a spear of radiance and flew backwards into her portrait. The fire recoiled, the melted oil trickling upwards and once again resuming the appearance of a barrier over the picture’s occupant. Harry thought he heard a final hungry snarl as the name became unreadable once more.
That just left the problem of how they were going to cross the remainder of this enormous room without the other portraits sucking out their memories. Even if he didn’t burn another painting, Harry knew well enough that the oil barrier didn’t prevent Josephine from feeding.
Then he snorted to himself. Once again, as with the shadow-wolf, the solution was simpler than he was making it out to be.
He chanted a certain charm Hermione had taught him when he wanted to avoid looking at letters he hadn’t answered yet, and then used a multiplication charm on that, so it would spread out to engulf however many objects of the same kind crowded the room. In moments, each portrait was flipping to face the wall. The silver streams stretching out from Harry halted, wavered uncertainly with no mouths to go to, and then flowed back into his head when he repeated the Instauro nos incantation.
And then, finally, they were free to cross the rest of the room without being eaten alive.
Harry sighed and looked down into Draco’s face. “You just saved my life twice, you know,” he told him. “You have the right to be a little smug.”
Draco leaned against Harry’s chest to listen to his heart instead.
Chapter 13.