HP Widdershins, Part 4

I've played fast and loose with the timeline, with interpretation, with everything, and this fic has come out wrong like a wrong thing that is wrong. I'll just say I'm sorry up front, shall I? I'm sorry. You're right. I'm so wrong. Alas, I can not promise I won't do it again. :/

HP Widdershins.
An illustrated, alternate universe, OOC fanfic by Didodikali.
Part One, in which Harry Potter grows a brain.
Part Two, in which Dudley Dursley grows a personality.
Part Three, in which Hermione Granger seizes the reins.
And now, Part Four, in which Harry Potter speaks softly.

Oct 3
The evil was really good. It crunched and broke in to smaller and smaller pieces, reformed again, and broke apart. It disintegrated and remained entirely what it was. It rolled out and then in, and then it poured, down and down-

I woke up alone and unnerved in the dark of the hospital wing. I jumped up, dressed and ran outside, straight into a big strapping lass who was kitted out for bear. "Oof," she said.

"Hiya, Millicent. You guarding me?" Why the hell am I alone with her? I patted myself down and found my wand in one robe pocket and my glasses in another.

"Nope. And you're a tad arrogant to think you rate your own special bodyguard, eh?"

"Yeah? Oh. Well." Where the heck is everybody? I looked around and saw bonfires and people running. Tonight? How long was I out? "Are we doing the Patronus mining party now?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "I see your face is back on."

"Pretty much. Bit pickled, but it's all right. How's it look?"

"Somewhat less disgusting than the last time I saw it."

There were people walking the grounds in every direction I looked. Most of them had a drink in their hands. I relaxed a little and let go of my wand. "Great, great. That's high praise coming from you. So who'd I get last trip?"

"I'm not certain. Some Death Eater. Ask Weasley. Bill, I mean; there's Weasleys everywhere tonight. ...I've been wanting to ask, how on earth do you find our targets?"

Stupid girl, what a question to ask. I smiled at her. "Me? I'm not finding them. I just go where I'm sent."

Millicent still looked innocently curious. "Someone knows where to go though. How?"

"Uh." I looked down. I can't tell her it was Hermione's doing; that'd make Hermione even more of a tasty target. I must not tell lies. If I tell Millicent only those who need to know get to know, then, if she's loyal, she'll be insulted. And if she's another effing spy, she'll know I'm onto her. I must not tell lies. Well, sod that for a lark. I said, "McGonagall tried to explain to me how it was done, but I didn't understand a word. Too advanced for me. Maybe you'd get it if you talked to her?"

"McGonagall? Oh. ...She's pretty busy these days. Maybe later."

See, Millicent's not evil. Or maybe she's really smart. Could be either. Aren't those Slytherins into that discretion being the better part of valour thing? "What are you drinking tonight?" I asked her.

She blushed. Huh. Maybe she's noticed that everytime we go to the Three Broomsticks that our pint to toilet cycles are exactly synchronised. "Nothing," she said. "My team drew one of the short straws and we're on guard duty."

"Oh-ho. You were guarding me."

"I'm guarding this section of the grounds. You just happened to be within my assignment," she said primly. She put her hand in the center of my back and pushed and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. "Go on," she said. "Drink mine for me."

"Right." I went down the steps and then looked back up at her. She winked at me. "Yeah, I'm gone," I said and ran.

~

Bill and Fred and George were in the quad in front of the castle with a crowd of people before them. Ginny and Ernie stood in the queue together snogging, a sight that filled me with incredible indifference. I skipped past them to the head of the queue. "Who'd I bag last trip?" I said to Bill.

"Don't know, I'm still labeling and collaring the last batch." Bill, as our best curse-breaker, had been volunteered for clamping lettered iron circlets on the little wet legs of all our frogged Death Eaters, which was much more involving and dangerous than it sounded, and tonight he looked delighted to have a break from it. He happily filled cups with the potion for the Patronus mining and Fred and George handed them out with verbal instructions.

I grabbed a pint from the table. It looked like ordinary butterbeer. Tasted like it, too. Mostly. And there didn't seem to be any other liquor on offer. Oh well. "Where do I go?" I said.

"You don't have a number already? Ah... Ron and Hermione have the maps and are setting out the patterns. Ask them if they have any holes that need filling. Wait, didn't you just come from the hospital wing? Haven't you been taking-"

"Oh, it's been hours since I had anything. I'll be fine."

Bill looked at me doubtfully, "You're not supposed to mix this with any other potions, it can be a tad reactive unless blended by a professional. There can be side effects. Perhaps you should-"

Fleur walked up then, levitating a keg behind her. She cuddled up to Bill's side and he lost his train of thought and I escaped before Bill could fuss more at me. The butterbeer potion had a strange bitter aftertaste. I sipped it again anyway and strolled away across the grounds.

I caught the sound of Hermione's voice and followed it down to the source. She sat before a table covered in maps and rosters and timetables and phones and she had an Arithmancy homework on her lap and yet another phone to her ear and she seemed to be talking to someone who was not bored out of their skull by her.

"But how would that instance work?" she said, "Would it be continuously differentiable or infinitely differentiable?"

My ears had stopped ringing since my previous engagement and were now extra sharp; I could hear the response through her phone from two meters away. "Uh... I don't know off the top of my head. But I know where to look it up. Ask me again tomorrow," said whoever she was talking to. Victor? I'd always thought Victor a bit thick for Arithmancy. No Bulgarian accent, either. Probably Percy.

She seemed stunned. "You'll look it up for me? That's the most beautiful thing anyone's ever said to me," she said.

The bloke on the phone laughed at that one for ages, but Hermione didn't look like she was kidding. Maybe she was drunk-dialing. No, wait, she's on Millicent's team, no butterbeer for her. "Read me that bit about azimuths again," her caller said finally and Hermione paged backwards through her Arithmancy book.

If it was her book. Maybe she's stolen that one, too, the way she stole my Legilimency book.

I listened in as Hermione read aloud and as the bloke on the phone made suggestions. She curled around on her camp stool, giggling. "No, I will not set my phone to vibrate," she said. And at that lewdly technical comment, the penny dropped.

What is this? Do they all think they're going to die, so they've completely dropped their standards? What's next? Luna and Dobby? Firenze and Trelawney? McGonagall and the Giant Squid?

"You're talking to Dudley," I told her, no longer wondering.

She looked up and noticed me standing there for the first time, but she didn't blink. "I'm sorry, did you want me to nag you? I'm busy. Please come back later. Beeeep," she said and then she laughed again. "No, it's Harry," she said into the phone.

"Give me that," I said and I plucked it out of her hand. "What are you two doing?"

"The square root of fuck-all," said Dudley. "Now give the phone back to Hermione so we can continue."

Hermione hissed and reached for her phone, but I threw up the dome shield Lupin had taught me.

"Hold on a second, Dudley. I've always wanted to ask you: do you think it's normal to lock children in cupboards and give them used toothpicks for Christmas?"

"What? ...Are you expecting me to apologize? I didn't do that shit. I was a kid, why do you think I should say sorry for what they-"

"-I don't give a flying fuck if you're sorry. I'm trying to find out if you think Dumbledore purposely manipulated your parents' treatment of me in attempt to grow his own pet Dark Lord, or if you think it was just an unfortunate coincidence that your parents happened to be evil, narcissistic sociopaths. Well? Which do you think? I mean, you were there."

I pressed my ear to the phone in anticipation, waiting to hear the answer. ...And the coward hung up on me.

Hermione beat her fists upon the air and screeched at me. I ignored her. I poked the redial button on Hermione's phone and waited; it rang and rang and rang and rang and rang. And, eventually, Dudley answered. "Hermione?" he said, his voice unsteady.

Oh, ewwwwww.

I tossed the phone through my shield to Hermione and she caught it. "Dudley?" she said into it, and she backed away from me with her wand in her hand.

And then I felt the curving shell of my invisible shield shatter and fly apart. I turned around and Remus Lupin smacked me on the back of my head with his wand. "If you want to be a proper evil overlord when you grow up, you need to attempt to keep your minions," he said and he sipped from a bottle of something foul-smelling, something that was not butterbeer. Snape was with him, looking amused- probably because Lupin had so thoroughly broken my shield. I need to study harder. And that looks tastier than this stupid butterbeer.

"I am not a minion!" I heard from somewhere off behind me and a small rock launched out of the darkness and bounced lightly off my shoulder. A rock? I'd forgotten to put my busted shield right back up like in training, but I wasn't going to go to the trouble for this.

"You throw like a girl," I yelled into the black.

"And I shoot like a sniper, you sod. This is restraint," she shouted back. Another rock sailed by and narrowly missed my nose. I edged around and put Snape and Lupin between Hermione and me.

Lupin swayed dangerously and Snape grabbed his arm. "Restraint? I shay we kill him," said Lupin.

Snape eyed him. "We're working on it. Give me back my bottle."

"No, no, not Voldemort. Though we should kill him, too," said Lupin, "But I meant Lord Potter. Teasing his friends like that. Poor Hermione!"

"Poor Hermione? We can kill him for that? Oh, yes. Absolutely. You start." Snape laughed.

I glared up at them. "I'm still paying you people to teach me; you're not allowed to-"

"-Ahahaha! No. That's not how it works. Especially not tonight. Just ignore us. We're drunk," said Snape to me. He looked at Lupin. "Now that the old goat has karked it, do you really think we could take out What's His Face without the effing Chosen One?"

Lupin took another swig. "You're sho hasty. You could poison Harry after we've done with Voldemort."

"I tried poison once with the current Dark Lord. It just made him bald and scaly."

"That was you? Are you losing your touch?"

"It should have worked. Dark Lords react strangely. Not my fault," said Snape and he wrestled the bottle out of Lupin's hands.

Lupin let it go and whispered in Snape's ear. "He's got a bit of a pointy head. I don't know that bald and scaly would be a good look for him." And they both stared at me.

"Yes, poison's too unpredictable," said Snape and he took a drink from the bottle. "Suppose Potter tripped and fell and accidentally landed on a magic sword?"

"No one would believe that," said Lupin, "We'd have to make it look like a training accident. I know where we could get a squirrel and a five pound lodestone. Piece of cake."

Snape grinned horribly. "Oooh, nice one."

"Hit me," said Lupin, and Snape handed him the bottle again. Snape wheeled Lupin slowly around and they sauntered off towards the bonfire, which was a relief because I had been too gobsmacked to actually run myself away from professors contemplating how to kill me.

I was alone again. Except that Hermione the sniper was still out there somewhere and she had rocks and possibly her sidearm and definitely her wand and potentially a whole team of completely sober people who enjoyed working with her and there was a small chance that I had seriously ticked her off. I scarpered away around the castle.

~

I found Ron in the back castle garden making X marks in the grass with a squeeze bottle of powdered chalk. "Ron, my only friend, you would never betray me, would you?" I asked him.

"What are you on about? Oh, wait. Is it the side effects? Bill said you might go all funny in the head. More than usual, I mean." He peered into my eyes. He put his hand on my shoulder, as if he might grab me by the neck and throttle me. I took a step away from him. Constant vigilance, as they say. "Ooo, and you look terrible, too," he said. "Go see McGonagall. She'll set you right."

"I don't want to miss the Patronus mining. I'm fine-"

Ron took another step towards me and I backed up again. Ron laughed. "We have plenty enough people, Harry. Afraid McGonagall will twinkle at you, offer you sweets, and then try to play you like a bloody chesspiece? Go on. Go up and see her." Ron jerked his thumb at the tower that had been Dumbledore's office.

Everyone knew McGonagall hated that office. "Why would she be up there?" I asked, but when I looked up the lights were on at the window.

"She has to be. She's setting the keystone spell for the Patronus mines. Her office is the center of the lines. Maybe you can help her with that," Ron said and he took another look at his map, which appeared to be in Hermione's handwriting, and he took a few steps to the left and he made another mark on the ground with his chalk.

Considering what Snape and Lupin were plotting, I thought Ron overestimated the value of bought loyalties. The professors had clearly been planning my immanent, painful death. McGonagall could be in on it, too. This could be her perfect opportunity to kill me. Or to let Dumbledore possess me. Who knew what else had I missed while I was unconscious.

And then I noticed the white ferret that lay draped around Ron's neck. It wore a little iron collar. I spluttered, "That's not- You never-"

"Oh," said Ron, noticing my trembling, pointing finger. "Well, yes. He wouldn't toad; must have had some sort of talisman on him at the time, but this worked all right. He's almost as good as a rat, so-" The ferret licked Ron's ear and then blew a raspberry at me. Ron petted it and raised his eyebrow at me. "No point in getting upset about it, Harry. McGonagall transfigured him and he's not going anywhere till this is over."

"Him. Ah," I said.

"Great woman, McGonagall," said Ron and he smiled. "Very good at getting things done. She called Bill earlier and told him she'd prepared the antidote for the Patronus mining potion. Not that this would concern you, because you're FINE-"

"-Shut it already, Ron. I'm going."

~

McGonagall sat behind her desk with her forehead pressed to the blotter and her hands over her ears. Fawkes bounced on his perch next to her desk and said, "I expected more loyalty from you."

"How do you stand it?" I asked her and she looked up from her desk. There was chalk all over the room and a big smudge of it smeared across McGonagall's cheek. I would have told her, but she wouldn't have cared.

"I take everything with a grain of salt. It counteracts many subtle mind controls, as you know. Not to mention counteracting tonight's screwy butterbeer. Here, have a crisp," she said and she pushed a bowl over the desk to me. I took a handful. Even just touching them, I could feel the salt sink into my flesh and the insane paranoia ebb.

Fawkes bobbed his head. "Awk. Disappointed. Oddment. Expected loyalty. Awk."

"Have you discovered out how much of him is in there?" I asked with my mouth full of crisps, nicely painful on my new tongue.

McGonagall glanced at Fawkes and sighed. "Not very much. I think he was was quite out of his head when he Imperiused Professsor Snape into making Fawkes into his own Horcrux. It shouldn't have worked at all, and all we've got here are the very dottiest bits."

"-If only you had trusted me, all would have been revealed in good time. Awk," said Fawkes.

McGonagall scowled. "Put a sock in it. Don't think I won't burn you in effigy myself," she said and Fawkes edged away from her on his perch.

"So was Dumbledore using mind control on other people?" Please let it be mind control and not that we're all just morons.

"Go, Gryffindor!" said Fawkes.

She looked embarrassed. "I go back and forth on that. I thought all sorts of things he did weren't remotely good ideas and yet somehow I got pulled in."

I sighed. "He told me that he loved me so much that he was forced to avoid me like a lurgy for a year, and I believed him. For a while. Sounds really stupid now. And then he dragged me off alone so I could watch him poison himself, even though he had at least twenty people who would have happily run back-up for him. Or even point. I mean, what the heck was that?"

McGonnagall rubbed her hands over her face. "Sugar-induced dementia?" she guessed.

"Awk. Trust me. Awk. Choices. Go, Gryffindor!" said Fawkes. McGonagall picked up a glass paperweight and tossed it at the big orange bird, which ducked adroitly. The glass paperweight shattered below Fawkes's stand, over a spikey carpet of bits and bobs and the wrecked remains of many delicate silver instruments.

"Suck," said Fawkes, "Lemondrops."

I stared down at the broken silver bits on the floor. Among them were chess pieces shaped like gnomes and goblins and house elves and centaurs... "I've just had a thought," I said. "That big fancy statue collection in the atrium at the Ministry. That'd make a great Horcrux. Let's blow it up."

"Yes, all right. I'll put it on the list." She pinched her nose. "I have to stay here for at least another hour," said McGonagall. "And I've just about emptied this desk of throwable objects. I don't suppose you've got some sort of charming student problem I can assist you with?"

I wonder if I'll ever give all those people who think I'm going to be the next Dark Lord a really good reason to kill me. "There's not near enough quidditch in my life," I said.

"Excellent," said McGonagall. She pulled a bottle out of her desk and two small glasses. She poured an inch and a half of amber liquid into each and handed one to me. "Tell me all about it," she said.

~

Next: Part 5.

Tags: fanart, hp fanart, hp fanfic, illustrated stories

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55 comments

dolorous_ett

September 3 2006, 12:42:42 UTC 5 years ago

Too jetlagged to comment in any detail, but I really enjoyed this.

I particularly liked your image of Millicent (who is grossly overrated in my view), Horcrux!Fawkes and poor stressed McGonagall.

Vintage stuff. Great.

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HP Widdershins, Part 4

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