Chapter Text
The next day arrived, though no one was feeling exactly enthusiastic to greet it.
They had not gone to bed until very late the previous night, after spending hours going over the details of their plan. Harry, who was sleeping on the floor in the living room with Hermione, had lain awake for a long time afterwards, his face aching too badly for him to fall asleep.
As he stared up at the ceiling, he was not thinking of the peroxide he had yet to put through his hair, or the Molecular Orbital Theory, which Snape had wanted him to memorise. Instead, his mind had wandered to the waxen face of Tom Riddle, the burgeoning Dark Lord who had once sought a teaching post from Dumbledore. Harry found himself wondering what sort of university Voldemort had gone on to create, whether he had ever taught at Wraithmoor, and what sort of lessons he might impart upon his students.
“I’m sorry,” said Harry, when Hermione woke him late that morning, catching sight of his own face reflected in the steaming cup of coffee she handed to him, “but part of me is glad you can’t see what I look like right now.”
“You’ll always be a little boy in my mind’s eye,” said Hermione, yawning. “I can see you as clearly as if it were yesterday. Eleven years old, with an exceptionally bad haircut.”
“How rude,” said Harry, smiling. “I liked that haircut.”
“Did you really?”
Harry dressed in one of Phoenix’s dark tailored suits, with a slim tie and matching waistcoat. Fastening the cufflinks, he couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the last time he had gotten himself ready for his first day at a new school. The boy he had been then seemed impossibly distant now.
Nobody would be getting ready to board the Hogwarts Express that morning, for Hogwarts no longer existed, and nor, for that matter, did King’s Cross Station.
“You’ve changed your hair,” said Phoenix, when Harry emerged from the bathroom some hours later.
“I did,” said Harry, without much enthusiasm.
Jolts of anxiety and nagging doubts twisted together to form a knot in his stomach. He could not shake loose the fear that it was all going to go very wrong, that Voldemort would see straight through him. He kept telling himself that Snape was confident he could get them inside Wraithmoor, that they were prepared for this.
Yet, he still felt uneasy.
He realised that he was more comfortable fighting Voldemort across an open battlefield than with these covert and underhanded tactics, which felt, for lack of a better word, so distinctly Slytherin. Thinking again of his eleven-year-old self, Harry wondered whether he might feel differently about all this had he allowed the Sorting Hat to place him where it wished.
“You look good,” said Phoenix. His glassy eyes travelled slowly from the shiny shoes on Harry’s feet to the dirty-blond hair he had styled to fall across his face.
Harry’s lips curved ever so slightly. “Frighteningly so, I imagine,” he said, with an air of self-deprecation, as he pictured the burn that his hair did not quite conceal, extending all the way down his forehead and over half his face.
A shadow passed through Phoenix’s glassy eyes before his attention returned to the pile of cheese and pickle sandwiches he had been preparing.
They shared a late and subdued lunch, gathered their belongings, and bade Phoenix farewell. Harry tucked a bushy-tailed cat inside his cloak, drew up his hood, and with Phoenix’s trunk in hand, stepped out onto Spinner’s End and into the rain.
Snape locked the door behind them, and then they turned together into the suffocating darkness of apparition.
Harry’s feet met with a cobblestone path, and tepid water flooded into his shoes. They had found themselves at the end of a dingy alleyway that lacked sufficient drainage to cope with the volume of rain.
Levitating their trunks behind them, they waded through the water towards the end of the alleyway, which opened onto a deserted London street. Harry walked beside Snape, peering through glass-panelled doors into empty shop fronts and water-logged cafes, where overturned furniture threw warbling shadows across pools of trapped water.
Side by side, they continued down the street before turning left into a hidden entrance leading to Knockturn Alley. In stark juxtaposition to the deserted London street they had just left behind, the shops lining the alley appeared to be thriving.
Harry could not help but notice that several people were staring at them. He had to remind himself that he was in disguise, that they could not possibly know who he really was. And then it occurred to Harry that they were not looking at him at all, but at Snape, whom Voldemort had long favoured with a place in his inner circle.
At the end of Knockturn Alley stood a line of stage coaches pulled by winged thestrals.
With a gesture of his hand, Harry levitated his trunk onto the luggage rack at the back of the carriage and climbed inside after Snape.
The carriage door snapped closed.
Harry had just settled the bushy-tailed cat onto his lap when the thestral spread its wings. A moment later, the carriage launched skyward with such speed that Harry was thrown back against his seat.
Higher and higher they rose into the sky, until the alley was a speck beneath them.
They were still in the sky when twilight fell, and through the fogged carriage window, Harry saw the sky deepen to a dark and dusky purple, sprinkled with tiny twinkling stars. Soon, only the occasional light below gave any indication of how far above the ground they were, or how far they had travelled.
Harry felt the knot in his stomach tighten as they began their descent.
He tried to catch a glimpse of their destination below, but could see little through the rain. His hand drifted to the bushy-tailed cat, absently scratching behind its ears before lifting it from his lap and setting it on his shoulder.
“We are about to arrive,” Snape said in a low voice. “Do not leave my side. Do not get distracted. You will not like what you see, but you must not show it. You must play your part convincingly. However much it goes against your inherent nature, you cannot afford to draw attention to yourself.”
“I know,” Harry said stiffly.
“The very last thing that you need,” Snape went on, sounding unconvinced of Harry’s understanding and speaking a little louder, as though volume might get the point across, “is to give the Dark Lord any reason to take a closer look at you.”
“I know that.”
“You know what?”
With deep irony, Harry amended, “I know what is at stake, Master Snape.”
Snape’s black eyes narrowed. “I hope that you do.”
The carriage dropped suddenly, struck the ground with a jolt, and rolled to a bumpy stop.
Snape opened the door, and they stepped out of the carriage and onto the path, where a rush of humid air swept over them.
Harry squinted through the rain and saw that other carriages were arriving. They had pulled up alongside a vast wall of white stone. Beyond it, Harry could just discern many turrets and towers reaching up into the star-strewn sky.
“Come along, Apprentice,” said Snape, sounding irritated.
A line had formed at the single point of entry through the wall, but Snape did not join the end of it. Leaving their luggage with the carriage, Harry followed close behind as Snape bypassed the line altogether, his black cloak billowing behind him.
Harry arranged his features into a bored expression, though inside his heart was beating so loudly that he did not even hear the sharp yet short exchange between Snape and the guards. Cringing back and looking thoroughly chastised, the guards waved them through. And then Harry was striding through the gate, right past Voldemort’s wards, and right into the heart of the Dark Lord’s regime.
It was not until he was on the other side of the wall that Harry realised it was not made of white stone at all, but of human bones.
They walked through the village, past the pub and the post office, and then across the town square, where a stone post stood on a raised platform at its centre, fitted with shackles for wrists and ankles.
The path came out at last into the shadow of the castle.
They continued up a flight of stone steps and through a pair of huge glass doors.
Finally out of the rain, Harry took a moment to collect himself. With a gesture of his hand, he dried his clothes, his hair, and the bushy-tailed cat still perched on his shoulder.
The entrance hall was as big as the one at Hogwarts, but far darker and gloomier.
Because Snape had drawn them a map, Harry knew that to the left lay the wing which housed the University, and to the right the wing occupied by the Death Eaters. At the centre was the dining hall, positioned between the two to bring academia and politics together beneath the same glass roof.
Somewhere behind the dining hall was the tower where Voldemort resided.
“Good luck, ‘Mio,” Harry whispered.
The bushy-tailed cat leapt lightly from his shoulder and slunk from the entrance hall, navigating its way by whiskers and scent.
Harry had thought that he would feel elated if they managed to get this far, but all he felt as he watched Hermione’s bushy tail disappear around the corner was concern about what would happen next.
They had known that Voldemort would make an appearance at the start-of-term banquet, and they had known that this would present a perfect opportunity to take a look at the wards around his rooms. If the Horcruxes were kept anywhere within the castle, those rooms seemed a likely place.
However, Snape’s apprentice would be expected at the feast, and they had to maintain appearances. It would be up to Hermione to find out what she could.
“Apprentice,” Snape said in a low, warning tone.
Harry hastened to catch up.
Snape led the way down a stone corridor and through another doorway into the dining hall. They exchanged a brief look, and then Snape continued towards the table at the back of the hall, where Voldemort’s inner circle stood upon a raised dais.
Harry’s eyes danced from left to right. Many long tables were arranged in rows beneath a glass roof streaked with rain. The tables were set, and steaming dishes had been arranged across them, ready to be served. Yet, nobody was eating. Hundreds of people were already assembled in the hall, each standing silently behind a chair with their head bowed. Dotted here and there between the students and Death Eaters were various dark creatures.
Somewhere at the edge of his vision, Harry caught sight of a head of white-blond hair.
Deciding on a whim that it was better the enemy he knew than the one he did not, Harry walked over and took the vacant place beside Draco Malfoy.
Bowing his head, Harry stole a curious glance at his childhood nemesis.
At twenty-eight years old, Draco Malfoy was the very image of his father, from the silver clasp that fastened the high collar of his jacket to the white-blond hair slicked back against his pale face. Infinitesimally, Draco’s pointed features turned in Harry’s direction.
“I saw you come in with Master Snape,” Draco whispered. He had spoken so quietly that his lips had barely moved. “Are you his apprentice?”
Harry arched an eyebrow at Draco.
He was surprised that Draco was speaking at all. He had always been a bit of a coward, and they were supposed to remain silent until Voldemort had given permission for the feast to begin. The Dark Lord did enjoy making an entrance. But then Harry saw Draco shape a rune with his fingers, and he realised that Draco was casting a wandless charm, and he knew that no one else could hear them.
“I am,” Harry whispered back, copying the shape of Draco’s fingers.
The woman standing beside Draco leaned forward a little to peer at him. She wore winged eyeliner and dark lipstick, and though Harry knew he recognised her, he could not, in that moment, recall her name.
“This is Pansy Parkinson,” said Draco, having noticed where Harry was looking, “and my name is Draco Malfoy.”
Into the six inches that separated them, Draco extended his hand.
For the second time that day, Harry was transported back to that first journey on the Hogwarts Express. Back then, refusing Draco’s offer of friendship had seemed a matter of principle. In retrospect, Harry understood that Draco had only been a product of his environment. Now, Harry couldn’t help but wonder how things might have gone if he had only taken the time to make Draco see reason, if Harry had only been a little more understanding, a little more forgiving, if he had only handled the other boy with the maturity he himself lacked back then.
This time, Harry took Draco’s hand into his own, and he shook it.
“I’m Phoenix Klum,” said Harry, in his best impression of Phoenix’s accent. He released Draco’s hand, and thinking about the abbreviations he had been trialling, he added, “But you can call me Nix.”
Draco smirked. “I’d go by something else as well, if that’s what my parents had called me.”
Harry wondered whether it was possible to regret shaking Draco’s hand only three seconds after having done so. He supposed Draco was referring to the Order, but Phoenix might not have known that, so Harry settled for giving Draco a withering look.
“Imagine being named after an ancient magical creature,” Harry said dryly. “How absurd.”
The smirk vanished from Draco’s face. “I suppose that you wouldn’t understand the significance, not being from here. Anyway, I’m named after the constellation, not the creature.”
Harry was about to point out the flaws in this when Draco cut him off.
“Master Snape is my godfather,” Draco went on. “I’m an Alchemy major, so we’ll share some classes. Pansy does Art History. You look rather young to be starting an apprenticeship, though I suppose students at Wraithmoor tend to be somewhat older than one might expect, given the disruptions to our education.”
Harry gave a slight shrug. “Considering most wixen live to be two or three hundred years old, I hardly think it will have set you back much in the scheme of things.”
“I agree,” said Draco, with a slight sneer. “What’s the rush, anyway? Like, I never understood why anyone would finish Hogwarts and immediately step into some menial job. I mean, can you think of anything more demeaning than customer service?”
Harry was regretting his decision to stand beside Draco more and more with each passing second.
“University is a privilege,” Harry explained. “Not everyone has the finances or support to delay work in favour of study. Most people don’t have that option at all.”
“Oh, perhaps,” said Draco, and even though his lips hardly moved, Harry could hear the note of boredom enter his voice. “Play Quidditch at all?”
“No,” Harry said regretfully, because Phoenix did not play. “Is there a university team?”
Draco shook his head. “I’d like to start one. Say, what happened to your face?”
Harry stared at Draco, more offended than he cared to admit. “Potions accident,” he said shortly.
“Sorry,” said Draco, not sounding particularly sorry at all. “No need to take offence. I only asked because I might be able to help with the scaring.”
Harry stood quite still, surprised by the turn the conversation had taken. Before he could think how best to respond to this, a chill moved through the hall. There was no wind inside the castle, but all the same, every one of them had collectively shivered.
Harry broke the rune he had been holding with his fingers and lowered his gaze to his empty plate.
He hardly dared to breathe.
A dark and malevolent energy had settled over the dining hall. It was a power unlike any other, as immense as it was frightening, the very embodiment of evil.
It was a presence Harry knew only too well.
Very slowly, leisurely, Harry heard the soft tread of bare feet moving over flagstones, and the whisper of a robe as it swept across the floor behind them. The footsteps continued down the centre aisle, then up to the table where Voldemort’s inner circle stood.
With his head still bowed, Harry risked a glance toward the dais.
Voldemort stood at its centre, looking out across the hall with his arms spread wide, giving the impression that nothing could have pleased him more than their submission. And though the hood of Voldemort’s cloak cast his monstrous face into shadow, Harry somehow knew that the man was smiling, as for one fraction of a second, their eyes seemed to connect across the hall.
Harry had been trying to keep his fear at bay ever since he had looked up and seen the wall made from human bone. Now, the knot in his stomach drew tight and broke, and that fear flooded through him, filling the hollow of his chest and rising up into his throat.
“Welcome,” said Voldemort, and though his voice was quiet, it carried clearly through the hall. “Welcome to a new year at Wraithmoor.”