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Chapter Fifty-Six—To Take the Gift
"None of the Durmstrang students know anything about Karkaroff or the Portkey, from what I've been able to determine." Daphne spins her hair around her finger as she watches Harry. They're on the couch furthest away from the fire in the Slytherin common room, and he hasn't relaxed his vigilant attitude or his fixed stare since they began speaking. It's more than a little disturbing. "I think I should stop spying."
"Yes, I agree. But then, it wasn't my idea in the first place."
Daphne widens her eyes. "But I took the order from one of your lieutenants. Or is Theo not your lieutenant? In that case, I think you need to speak to him about overstepping his bounds."
Harry gives her an exasperated look and clutches the thing in his pocket that is probably the firestone Chaos left for him. Daphne only saw it once, but it's obviously important to Harry. "Well, anyway, stop spying. There's no reason to talk about it anymore. Karkaroff goes on trial tomorrow."
"Will you be called to testify?"
Harry grimaces and nods. "But probably not until later in the summer. There's a whole lot of political shit to get through first, left over from the time when he was a Death Eater. Apparently a lot of people aren't thrilled that he escaped with essentially a slap on the wrist."
"Do you think You-Know-Who will approach him?" Daphne has learned better about calling Voldemort the Dark Lord, even though she still can't bring herself to say the name since his resurrection. The last time she called him by title, Harry froze over in a way that didn't seem to be conscious and gave her one-word answers for an hour.
"I don't see why he would. Karkaroff sold out some of his best people. I'm more worried about him trying to break those people free from Azkaban."
Daphne swallows. She wants to say Azkaban is secure enough that that will never happen, but everyone knows Sirius Black broke out of it. And Minister Fudge has his head firmly in the sand about Voldemort's return. They can't count on honest reporting of the breakout even if one happens, and they probably won't increase the number of guards at Azkaban.
"What are you going to do to prepare for that?" she asks quietly.
"Train."
It's the same answer that Harry's given to most questions in the last few days, from "What's your next plan?" to "What are you going to do this summer?" Harry is touching the stone in his pocket, if that's what it is, and staring with grim determination at the fire. Daphne slowly leans across the couch to lay a hand on his arm.
Harry starts and looks at her. Daphne asks, just wanting to bring him out of his frozen mood, "Could Astoria and I come and stay with you this summer?"
"Are your parents abusive, too?"
Daphne sighs. "Not really." It's hard to define the relationship she has with her parents. "Just—I don't think they see us as children. More like pawns."
Harry nods at once. "If you want. Just keep in mind that if they aren't abusive, Professor Snape won't be able to legally keep you there all the time. You might have to stay with them to sleep and stay with us during the day, that kind of thing."
Daphne smiles. "Thank you, Harry." He's so kind. Sometimes she thinks that means the same thing as weak, but then she sees the good consequences of it for her personally, and she no longer thinks that.
"You're welcome."
Harry goes back to staring into the fire again, but perhaps there's less frozen about him than before. Daphne pulls out her Charms book and starts revising some of the spells that Granger suggested last week can be used offensively.
It's good to know where she's going.
A large hawk comes flying towards Harry the next morning. He doesn't know what kind it is, but it has blue-grey feathers and big yellow feet and it screeches at him as it lands on the table.
"Don't touch it, Harry."
Harry wasn't going to touch it, but he leans back with a sigh and a roll of his eyes as Theo casts several charms in the hawk's direction. Finally Theo shakes his head. "It's radiating powerful magic, but it doesn't seem to be guarded with the kind of spells that would mean it's dangerous to you."
"I don't think you should touch it anyway." Blaise seems to have got a little more protective of Harry ever since Harry faced down his mother for him. Harry is touched, but doesn't really understand. Facing down Mrs. Zabini should have shown Blaise that he could take care of himself, right?
"I won't directly," Harry promises, but the hawk is staring at him and won't go away, so he carefully cuts the twine wrapped around its leg with a small Severing Charm and then studies the package. It's so small that it can't be some of the stranger things that his mind immediately jumps to, like someone sent him poisoned sweets or a knife. In fact, it's about the size of a ring.
Harry sighs. He hopes that people aren't going to start sending him betrothal offers the way Sirius teased him they might. Of course, Sirius was mostly saying that to bring him out of the melancholy he'd sunk into after Chaos's death.
Harry just really isn't interested in marrying anybody. It sounds like a lot of work.
He studies the package one more time and opens his mouth to say what he's going to do, but then Severus swoops down from the professors' table and gathers the package up in a moleskin bag. He's walking away before Harry can even think of what to say about it.
Harry shrugs at his friends and picks up his fork again. Everybody fusses at him when he doesn't eat enough, and honestly, he wants to. He wants to be strong for everything coming up as much as he can.
If he can do anything to prevent it, Voldemort isn't going to take anyone else from him.
"What the hell is that?"
"Something sent to Harry at breakfast," Severus says shortly as he dumps the thing out of the moleskin bag onto the table in his quarters. He summoned Black and Lupin to come to him from the newly-made-up rooms where they've been staying in the school to be close to Harry. "It was delivered by a peregrine falcon."
Part of Severus still flinches when Lupin's growl reverberates around the room like that, but at least he can keep those parts internal. "Dumbledore," Lupin says, spitting the word like a curse as he stalks over to stare down at the wrapped package. "It's strange that he sent it so openly, though."
"Either he was counting on Harry touching it before he knew what it was, or he still thinks that he can appeal to Harry somehow." Black has his arms folded as if he knows that he'll destroy the thing otherwise.
"Either could be true," Severus murmurs, although he doesn't think Harry is incautious enough at this point to touch anything that simply appears in front of him. There's a third possibility: that Albus knows he has nothing left to lose and is willing to risk everything on one desperate gamble.
"Are you going to open it?"
"Not without trying to find out what it's in it first, Black."
"I meant after the designated detection charms and the like, Snape."
"Stop sniping at each other," Lupin says, his voice heavy and quiet. He's sniffing, and there's a feral look on his face. "Whatever is in there, it smells of Albus's magic. More strongly than I've ever smelled it before."
Severus nods slowly. That shouldn't be a surprise, but the confirmation still chills his hands as he begins to cast the detection charms.
Nothing comes back with a positive result. That could be expected if this is something that Albus sent to try and manipulate Harry rather than magically control him. He wouldn't want to undermine what he has to know is a fragile trust by putting curses on the package.
Black takes over then, and uses spells that are probably from family knowledge and make ice and darkness spread around the package at various points. As the last of them melts, however, Black just looks at both Severus and Lupin and shakes his head in frustration.
"Dumbledore obviously handled whatever is in here," he says, with a long sigh. "But what it is, what he planned to do with it…that's more than I can tell."
Severus nods. "Then if you would step behind me and raise a shield, Black? I am going to cut it open."
Lupin and Black move as he tells them to, which is something he once would have found astonishing. Now, he's paying more attention to the way the shield forms in front of them, nearly as solid as stone, before he cuts open the strings and then the sleek paper the package is wrapped in.
The anticlimax of it all nearly makes him laugh. When the wrapping falls away, what lies on the table in front of him is…a stone.
Not, Severus has to admit, a stone like anything he has ever seen before. It's dense and black and utterly still, in a way that makes Severus think he could blast it with a Wind Charm and it wouldn't move. Its blackness seems to draw in light from across the room. And when Severus stings the air above it with another detection charm, it gives a single, ominous vibration.
"What is it?" Black asks again.
"I don't know," Severus has to confess. There are plenty of magical artifacts that he wouldn't recognize, if on a mad whim Albus decided to send them to Harry, but on the other hand, he would have expected them to smell of themselves, not Albus's magic. When he glances at Lupin, he suppresses a flinch at the growl building up in the man's throat.
Lupin's eyes flare gold once, and then he glances at Severus and seems to understand his reaction. He takes a step back and clears his throat. "My apologies, Severus. But it continues to smell like Albus's magic. At best, it's a stone he enchanted. At worst…"
"What?"
"It's an artifact he corrupted, so that it only smells of him."
Severus narrows his eyes. That's not something he considered. It is possible to hollow out a sufficiently powerful artifact so that the shape of it survives destruction and fill it with your magic instead. It simply requires both an artifact and a wizard so strong that it doesn't happen often.
"What effect is it meant to cause?" Black demands.
"We don't know, Sirius." Lupin sounds weary. "But I don't think there's any chance of us passing it along to Harry."
"Of course not," Severus says harshly, to cut off any brilliant ideas Black has. "We need to study it more, and determine what Albus was trying to achieve with its sending. A pity that he couldn't be bothered to send a letter along with it."
Lupin frowns. "That part does puzzle me, I admit. I would have thought Albus would seek to manipulate Harry with words, and—" Then he spins towards the door, a moment before Severus himself hears the running footsteps and then the hand pounding urgently on the stone and rattling the knob.
"Professor Snape! Professor Snape!"
Severus moves at once, his mind filled with visions of Harry suffering, dying, poisoned, under the Imperius. But when he opens the door, he finds Granger there instead, a letter hovering safely in front of her. There's a little golden glow around it that indicates a powerful Stasis Charm. Severus raises an eyebrow in spite of himself. He didn't know Harry's study group had got into such serious spells, let alone that Granger could practice them.
"This letter came with a second falcon about ten minutes ago," Granger says breathlessly. "We cast all the detection charms we could at it, but then it started to smoke and act as if it was going to blow up like a Howler, so we brought it to you."
Severus nods curtly. In truth, he is far more upset with himself than with the students who did what they felt best to neutralize and investigate the letter. He should have realized that Albus would send nothing so enigmatic without a message to explain it. "Thank you, Miss Granger. Did Mr. Potter seek to read it?"
Granger snorts. "No. He said that he didn't care about what that manipulative old tosser says."
Severus raises his eyebrows. "Was that language his or yours, Miss Granger?"
Granger flushes bright red. "His, sir," she mutters, and Severus can tell from the passive effect of his Legilimency skill that she's not lying.
"Do inform Mr. Potter that he has a detention with me at seven tonight," he says, and where some of the Slytherins gathered behind Granger shift as if they want to object, Granger, willing to follow the rules at least this far, bites her lip and nods.
"Yes, sir."
Severus floats the letter into his quarters and starts to shut the door, but not before Nott manages to ask, "What was in the package, sir?"
"A thing," Severus says, and shuts the door firmly.
Black is practically choking on laughter when Severus turns away from the door, but Severus ignores him. It's not as though he thinks Black is mature. He unrolls the parchment scroll in front of him with a motion of his wand, and stares at it for a silent moment.
"Severus?" Lupin has taken a step forwards.
Severus shakes his head, a little overwhelmed. Then he manages to get his mouth started again, and murmurs, "It is something that none of us could have anticipated. Did you know that wizards had the ability to condense their magic into a stone and gift it to another wizard?"
"No," Lupin says, and then his nostrils narrow and his eyes flare with a new explosion of gold. Severus is proud of himself for not flinching. "Of course, that doesn't mean they do. This is probably just another lie."
"It's not."
Black's voice is so hoarse that Severus doesn't recognize it at first. He glances over at him, and finds Black looking grey-green. Severus shakes his head and conjures a basin. "Do me the courtesy of not throwing up on my furniture if you are going to be nauseated."
Black gives him a glare, but it's a half-hearted one at best. "It just—I have seen something like this before. I read about it in a book that my parents had."
A sarcastic comment about Black's childhood rises to Severus's lips, but he manages to hold it back. At least it is true that Black might be the only person he knows with a legitimate reason for claiming that his childhood was worse than Severus's or Harry's. "What did the book say?"
"That you basically can't give someone else your magic because if you do it, you'll die," Black whispers, his eyes locked on the stone. "But if you were desperate enough, you could make a gift of your magic to someone else, and if they accepted it, they would have your power and your—knowledge. I think the book meant memories, not that you'd suddenly be able to cast every spell the other person cast, but. Well." He falls silent and blinks rapidly.
"Why would Albus do something like this?" Lupin demands. "He certainly never gave up before or acted like he knew he was defeated."
"He was injured by the dragonfire," Severus murmurs, his mind leaping in a way that he's accustomed to it doing only when he's in the middle of an experimental potion. One conclusion seems naturally to pave the way for the rest. "Of course. He would know that he is unlikely to recover his full strength, or to have any influence over Harry again. But if he could give Harry his memories—"
"His perspective," Black says, staring at the stone and shaking his head. "This is what that is. More insidious than any letter."
"Is it basically a way for Albus to possess him?" Lupin demands.
"Not that," Black says, after waiting a moment to let Severus answer. But Severus has gone as far as he is willing to go. "But if Harry understands Albus from the inside out, then he might advance his goals."
"And it could be the best way Albus has of advancing his goals," Lupin finishes.
"Not only that." Black glances back and forth between Lupin and Severus. "You realize we can never let Harry know about this or what he might be able to gain from absorbing the stone, right?"
"Why?" Lupin looks baffled.
"He would do it in order to have the magic to fight Voldemort," Severus murmurs, irritated with himself for not seeing it before Black. "He is so focused on that right now that he believes any advantage and any weapon is necessary."
"But…he can make a strong showing with the magic and the allies he has now."
"A strong showing is not enough for him." Severus summons a wooden box from a shelf that at one time contained an experimental potion he would not have trusted in the open air. He snaps the lid open and begins to set defensive spells to contain the damn stone.
"But if we keep it from him, we'll be lying to him." Lupin sounds disturbed.
"That does not matter," Severus begins.
Black interrupts him. "He's in mourning right now, Remus. He's a little unpredictable. Maybe we can tell him when he's past this in a few months, and he can learn what it really is and understand the risks of absorbing it."
Severus lets them get into the moral debate, while he takes the practical precautions. In a few more waves of his wand, the box is sealed, and he uses the chance to conceal it without letting either Black or Lupin see where he puts it.
As far as Severus is concerned, Harry is never getting his hands on that stone.
