Orb. He found himself super-aware of her presence next to him, her damp sleeve pressed against his bare arm, the long curls of her hair tickling his throat. He turned and looked at her, at the line of her profile, marble-pale and serious in the dimly pulsing light of the Orb. Her cheeks were flushed to wild rose with excitement; she looked as she did when she had solved a particularly difficult Arithmancy problem.
'What is it?' he asked, his voice slightly husky, from the damp and perhaps from something else.
'I think we should try to open it,' she said. 'I mean, I?m the Heir of Ravenclaw, you have Gryffindor and Slytherin blood — we?re just missing Ginny, but maybe if we can get it to open a little ways, its better than nothing. And there wasn?t anything that said we all had to touch it at the same time.'
Harry nodded and laid his hand over hers on the slick surface of the Orb. 'Alohomora,' they both said, her soft voice almost drowned out by his.
There was a flash of light from deep within the Orb: a radiant flash of deep red, followed by a pulse of deep blue. Something inside him tensed almost painfully, he waited —
Nothing happened.
Hermione looked disappointed. 'It didn?t work,' she said, taking her hand off the Orb, but keeping her fingers interlaced with Harrys.
He turned and looked at her. Her damp hair curled in thick locks around her face, frizzing a little at the ends, and her wet robes clung to the outline of her body. The Orb threw scarlet patches of light over her dress, her skin; she looked as if she were splashed with blood, and he felt his mind cast itself back, as if he were remembering, although the memories that came to him were nothing he had ever experienced. He saw the same room he was in now, and a woman in a blue dress stained all over with blood, cradling a dark-haired man in her lap and weeping inconsolably.
It was Hermione he heard crying, and yet it wasn?t Hermione at all.
Her familiar face blurred out of all recognition as he leaned back against one of the gold pillars, suddenly feeling very faint. For the second time that day he felt the sensation of steel going into his chest, this time thrust through from behind before his murderer spun him around and lowered him slowly to the ground, and leaned over him, and smiled at his death even as he bent and kissed the blood from his mouth. Cousin. Best friend. Enemy. Murderer.
'Harry?' Hermiones voice came from a long way away. He went on leaning against the wall, lost in a dark haze of memory, until he felt her small hands at his waist, loosening the scabbard there, and it clattered to the floor with the sword still in it and the mist lifted from his eyes as if a wind had blown it away. He heard himself taking deep, gasping breaths, and raised his eyes.
Hermiones face swam slowly into focus. She looked very anxious.
'Harry?'
'I?m all right.' He pushed himself off the wall, feeling his shirt stuck to his back with sweat and water. 'I was just…'
'Its the Key,' said Hermione, the anxiety in her eyes turning into sympathy. 'It makes you…remember things.' At his anxious look, she hastened to reassure him. 'Not all the time. In dreams, and in certain situations.'
'What kind of situations?' Harry demanded, although he had a feeling he knew. He looked around the room, then back at Hermione. 'I think Godric died in here,' he said.
She nodded without speaking, and drew him towards her. She rested her hands lightly on his shoulders, lifting her face to his. 'I know,' she said. 'I felt it. Something awful happened in here; something heartbreaking.'
He didn?t say anything. There was a fierce pain inside him, made up of residual nightmare, the aftereffects of so many stresses and torments, the constant fear for his own life and for the life of those that he loved. He looked down at her, half-blindly, and saw her face, very white in the flaring and fading light of the Orb. 'Harry,' she said. Her eyes searched his. 'I love you, you know that,' she said quietly. 'I always will.'
He nodded, the tangled knot of emotions inside his chest tightening almost painfully as he looked at her, her eyes dark and earnest, fringed by lashes beaded with water. He remembered the first time he had ever kissed her, both of them drenched in rain, and a blazing stab of yearning and pain struck at his heart. Unthinking, he bent and kissed her, as he had not been able to for days, even weeks: hard and fiercely, as if hungry for something he had not even quite realized he was starving for.
She responded instantly, her hands locking across his back, lips opening under his. She stood on tiptoe, her back against the pillar, pushing her body against his, her head arched back, whispering into his mouth, repeating his name, Harry, Harry, Harry. Her eyes were closed, and he could see the leaping pulse in her throat, hammering as he touched her, his hands finding his way through the wet folds of her clothes as if he were pushing through damp leaves, peeling them away. He felt her body shake as he touched her and his mouth on hers trembling and he saw another room and another man, with untidy dark hair and dressed in scarlet, and a woman in blue, and the light of tawny candles glowing, and then behind them a door opened, and another man came in, and this one was dressed in black and silver…
Hermione gasped.
Harry spun away from her, his hand going to the scabbard at his waist, his damp fingers slipping over the hilt of his sword. But it was too late. Salazar Slytherin stood there in front of the glowing Orb, and in his left hand he held something silvery-gray and filmy, which Harry recognized with a lurching swell of shock that almost knocked him off his feet.
James Potters Invisibility Cloak.
* * * * *
The castle was in chaos; Sirius had never seen anything like it. He had insisted that Lupin remove the still extremely weakened Fleur to the relative safety of the werewolves? den, where she could be protected. Lupin had allowed Sirius to borrow his Paw Paw wood and unicorn tail wand and Sirius was edging cautiously along the walls, map in hand, trying to orient himself in order to get closer to the dots marked Virginia Weasley, Benjamin Gryffindor, and Draco Malfoy.
Thundering down the corridors were creatures of all description, locked in mortal combat with regiments of wizards. A ten-foot swamp troll heaved its axe at a witch dressed in Hufflepuff gold; a beaky veela screeched and launched herself at a heavily armed witch in Gryffindor red, who dispatched her handily with a Combustis spell. A wizard in Ravenclaw blue was being chased round and round the stairwell by Raven, the banshee, who was shrieking and brandishing the Giant pike. Everywhere Oggrings were being dispatched in all their shapes and
