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(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 397: Spiritual Resonance
🕑 Added 2024-12-24 14:00:37 +0000 UTCChapter 397: Spiritual Resonance
5 May 1995, Hogwarts
The blonde watched, slightly dazed, as he opened a portal and leapt inside, before growling, “I didn’t mean right now!” The last Potter grinned before closing the portal. He could swear he could hear her voice saying, “I swear I’m going to hurt you, Potter.”
Harry walked through the familiar corridors of Hogwarts. The last time he had been there, even if it was brief, had painted the castle as a dour place that acted more as a prison than anything. Everything was darker, the student body had been very quiet, and the tone was sombre. It was pretty understandable. While they all stayed safely in this castle, family members were being wiped out, and killed by constant Lycan attacks, and a few were even kissed by dementors back when Voldemort still held their allegiance. Hogwarts was filled with scared teenagers who were not allowed to leave. No wonder they weren’t happy. However, they were fortunately very safe.
The truth was that McGonagall did a good job managing this crisis. Her wards were obviously effective – when it came to stopping lesser mages, of course – and had become a very well-defended position for the future of magical Britain. Harry wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of old families only survived because their scions attended Hogwarts.
Of course, it wouldn’t hold up against a persistent attack from an Archmage, but Dumbledore obviously needed to school to host the last task of the European tournament, Voldemort had bigger things to worry about than attacking a school, and Lily was too logical to earn the enmity of magical Britain by directly attacking children.
It would have been a good way to guarantee that Lycans would never be part of magical Britain. Attacking Death Eater sympathizers was one thing, getting lost in the moment was another, but children… That was out of line and Lily obviously knew that.
All in all, Hogwarts handled it well, but Harry was surprised by the shift of atmosphere since he last came there. He was walking under a lot of privacy charms, of course, but it wasn’t hard to notice how lively things had gotten.
Sure, it wasn’t exactly as cheerful as it was before, but there were a few animated conversations here and there. A few children were laughing, and running around, and a few students were studying and practising spells. A small spark had obviously ignited, and in Harry’s opinion, it had to do with the fact that the students realized that they could meet with the outside world soon.
It didn’t seem like a place that was perpetually in mourning. There was an undertone of sadness, but people adapted. However, as nice as this was, Harry had something to do, or more accurately, someone to find.
Over the years, Harry learned to filter out Hogwarts’ pretty significant ambient magic when he used his Arcane Hearing. It was a pretty necessary skill to have since it stopped him from getting a headache at the mere use of his most treasured skill.
Using this to find Longbottom was pretty easy. What the boy held in his scar was something that was so unnatural that it made it akin to following a constant scream in the middle of a silent castle. Of course, the school was large enough to overwhelm the sound, but as long as he got in the boy’s general surroundings, he would be fine.
Sure, the whole thing took him an hour at most, but to be fair, the boy was not in a usual spot. For some reason, he was in the Astronomy tower, sitting there in silence, alone. He was watching the sunset as if it gave him answers to his greatest problems.
Harry removed the privacy charms and spoke up, “That’s quite the view, isn’t it?”
Neville turned around with his wand in hand, before slumping, his eyes wide, “Potter? What are you doing here?”
“Nothing much just came here for a visit.”
“And you came to see me of all people?” the former Longbottom scion spoke up with incredulity in his tone.
“Don’t put yourself down so much, Neville.”
“I’m not putting myself down, but I know I’m not the first person you’d visit in the castle. How did you get in here? McGonagall closed all of the secret passages. Believe me, I checked.”
Harry snorted in amusement, “Seriously? You think I come here through the semi-public secret passages?”
As the boy who lived blushed in embarrassment, Harry looked down from the window and smiled faintly as he saw a few students playing Quidditch, “Well, this place certainly changed from the last time I came here.”
“News that the Lycans stopped attacking spread out. People aren’t as afraid to lose family members, not for a while. Voldemort hasn’t been seen in a while, and apparently, the dementor attacks stopped too. I guess, we started to hope a bit, and when McGonagall announced that she was going to open the wards back up for the tournament… I guess we got a bit excited. Did you have anything to do with that?”
“What do you mean?” Harry asked.
“The Lycans not attacking, Voldemort laying low. I’m not stupid, Harry. You just came out of nowhere, hid your return, and then the attacks stopped just a day later.”
Harry scratched the back of his head embarrassingly, “When you put it like that, I guess you do have a point. Voldemort laying low was directly my doing, but the Lycans' behaviour was only partially mine. I got into an argument with their leader, and she reacted by stopping all the attacks. It wasn’t exactly my intention. Let’s just say we had a lot of unfinished business.”
“And Greece? I heard about what happened there. Greengrass competed, so you had to be nearby.”
He really needed to stop underestimating Neville’s intelligence, and just responded, “Yeah. Daphne wanted to be done with her responsibilities to the tournament since we didn’t know if she’d compete here. Let’s just say that it was the wrong task to choose.”
“No shit, one of the magical wonders of the world was destroyed. I heard a lot of people died, but I don’t know how much. The Hufflepuffs held a funeral for Diggory though. You were there when he died?”
“No. There was this maze hidden inside the mountain and we got separated. We didn’t see him after that. There wasn’t even a body. To be fair, a lot of bodies were gone too. So, how have things been around here.”
“We’re a bit more invested in the task than we expected. McGonagall is giving us extra credit to help her organize the tournament. The upper years are doing the heavy lifting, making the arena, the stands, and everything, but we’re all contributing. People are really looking forward to the wards being lifted. But that’s now why you’re here, are you, Harry?”
Harry raised an eyebrow at that, “What makes you think that?”
“The last time you were here, you were obviously tired and scruffy. You didn’t want to speak with me, just know where Greengrass was. But now, you’re specifically here for me. You want something from me, don’t you?”
The last Potter hummed, “You’re not wrong. I didn’t expect you to clock it so quickly.”
“I’ve been spending more time with Hermione. But you didn’t answer the question, why did you come to see me?” he stated, and to be fair to the boy, it made sense.
Being around intelligent people would make most people spend more time thinking before speaking. The sad truth was that most people were not stupid. Sure, they had different interests, and different talents, but very few people were genuinely unintelligent. Most people confuse ignorance with stupidity, but there is a distinct difference between the two. The sad truth was that people often just didn’t put in the effort or never learned to think logically. However, spending time around people who do will force anyone to think differently. Everyone was shaped by their surroundings, young people especially.
Neville’s main contact in Hogwarts was mostly Ron Weasley, frankly, a boy with a lot of potential but who refused to use it. Unknowingly, he kept emulating the boy, which ironically, caused him to make very bad decisions in the long run. Of course, there’s the Horcrux in his scar, the fame getting to the boy’s head, and so much more…
Perhaps the new Hermione was what he needed to finally start growing. The boy had been pretty calm since her return the previous summer, not that Harry interacted with him too much. Or maybe it was his parents’ killer finally being back.
Harry still gave him a soft smile, “I suppose you’re correct. I came here with a bit of an offer. We had a conversation around this time about your scar, do you remember?”
The boy immediately stiffened, “It’s not something one would forget easily. A part of Voldemort’s soul is in my scar. He would never die as long as I live. What did you think I felt every time I heard about some poor man or woman being kissed by dementors because I wouldn’t sacrifice myself to kill this monster? Everyone in in this place is locked down because I’m here and I can’t help but wonder how many of them my refusal to die turned them into orphans.”
Harry could sympathize with that. The responsibility that the boy held on his shoulder and gave him a soft look, “I know you think you had a responsibility in this, but you didn’t. Voldemort has others. He would have come back regardless of your actions.”
He was lying, of course, not that anyone really knew that Harry had taken care of the man’s Horcruxes. However, he didn’t know if killing Longbottom would have changed anything. Technically speaking, anything that a wraith inhabited acted as an anchor to the material plane. If Voldemort possessed someone or had created a basic body to inhabit, then killing Longbottom wouldn’t have changed much on that side.
The boy gave him a desperate look, “Do you think so?”
“I do,” Harry asked, “But like you said, I came here with an offer. It took me a long time, but I think I can remove the soul piece from you, and free you from this burden. You’ll be allowed to live a full life, a free life, without all of this hanging over your head.”
“Wait what? Just like that?”
The last Potter rolled his eyes, “It takes a lot, and I mean a lot, of calculations, and I’m probably the only person who can do this, but it’s better than you dying.”
“Is it any dangerous?”
“Of course, it’s dangerous, but I did a similar thing not too long ago.”
“I don’t know,” Neville hesitated, “This sounds really risky. Can you give me time to think?”
Harry shook his head, “Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of time. It’s now or never.”
Neville looked pensive for a moment before he nodded, “What the hell. This has to beat living with a death sentence over my head anyway. Out of curiosity, what would you have done if I refused.”
Harry let out a vicious grin, “The procedure works a lot better when you’re willing.”
Before he could say anything, Harry channelled the power of the resurrection stone and used it to pulse Neville’s soul. Soul magic wasn’t an exact science. Harry had been using it more as a hammer, just controlling a soul, sealing it somewhere, pushing his authority over it, but what he was doing to Longbottom was akin to surgery.
Honestly, it was only his growing skill with the resurrection stone that made him think he was ready to do something like this. The way he used souls as the basis for his most powerful attack, as he did against Grindelwald and Dumbledore, came to him as an instinct more than anything. He hadn’t even known he could manipulate souls with the stone before that happened. It was only in his mindless rage against the monster that had almost killed Johnson that he unlocked the ability.
He experimented with the ability a bit since using it the first time, he never did something as delicate as what he was currently doing. Voldemort’s soul was more like a parasite than anything else. It was vicious, trying to hide within Neville’s soul, mimic its signature, really.
The only good thing was that it reacted pretty slowly when Harry pulsed Neville's soul, making it relatively easy to slowly contain it. It took a while, but slowly but surely, the soul shard slowly made its way into the resurrection stone, before being sealed into a black disgusting gem, a physical manifestation of Voldemort’s corrupted soul.
It was pretty unstable, all things considered, but it would suit his needs to track down Voldemort easily enough. After all, a soul cannot hide from itself. The connection transcends the physical world. One could technically even track it down into a different dimension if necessary, and Harry certainly had the capability to do that. Well, that made finding Voldemort a lot easier. Maybe it would even inconvenience Dumbledore if the man still assumed that Longbottom still had a Horcrux in his scar, even if he didn’t really hold out hope it would change much on that front.
With that done, Longbottom fell to the ground, kneeling, before slowly getting up, “What happened?”
“It’s done,” Harry retorted, “I removed the soul piece from your scar. You’re now free.”
“I feel weird. Am I supposed to feel this weird? It’s like everything got clearer somehow.”
Harry nodded, “You’ve lived with this thing for your whole life. Your perception of the world, your emotions, and even your magic might have been influenced by it. You’ve seen what happened when you tried to channel it before.”
“Is this it?” the boy asked as he slowly got up, staring at the inky black movement inside the gem. The boy’s scar was bleeding, but Harry could feel the boy’s magic slowly healing it. It would probably take years, but slowly, but surely, the scar will fade. If he survived what was coming, of course.
“Not really. Souls are not really physical things. They can’t express themselves in the material world without an anchor. This is a manifestation of what was inside you, like the tip of an iceberg in a photo, compared to the real thing.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
Harry gave him a piercing look, “Nothing bad, I assure you. This will be destroyed at the end’s day, that I can tell you, but the rest is private.”
He was about to say something, only for him to feel a pulse of magic spread its way to the castle. It originated somewhere in the south and it was reminiscent of the magical release of the broken prophecies, only far more natural.
Broken prophecies were rebellions against Fate itself, and it showed. The magical release was primal, immense, wild. But this was definitely man-made, like a curse being broken, but not a malicious one. And the pulse didn’t just come with a bunch of energy, it seemingly negated something. Every single melody around him had gotten slightly quieter as if grieving what just happened.
The magical release itself wouldn’t be enough to replace a broken prophecy fully, but topping up the magical release in Greece, well, it could theoretically be possible. Dumbledore had already made his move, and that meant that Harry’s advantage over what happened in Greece was gone. It was pretty disheartening, but the magical effect seemed to affect the entirety of the British Isles at the very least. This definitely warranted a proper investigation of what happened.
He needed to investigate the matter. Without looking at Longbottom he uttered, “I have to go.”
“What? Just like that? You came in, removed the thing in my scar, and are just leaving without any other explanation.”
“Goodbye, Longbottom. I have things to do. Oh, and don’t tell anyone about this.”
With that said, he conjured an illusion hiding himself as he opened a portal and left the castle, with a dumbstruck teenager yelling his name.
AN: I’ve been pretty busy with personal stuff today since it’s Christmas Eve, and I didn’t have time to re-read this chapter properly. I usually make some pretty significant edits before uploading, sometimes even rewriting the whole thing, so I really have no idea if this chapter came out well or not.
This chapter was supposed to be a bit longer, but it really got away from me. I decided to throw Neville a bone and remove the Horcrux from his scar. I was tempted to make it a Neville POV but went against it. There’s this storyline I’m thinking about including him and Hermione in, but I haven’t really decided yet, so I’m leaving this up to you to decide. A part of me wanted to just make a big deal with Neville’s removal (which would have had more character growth) but I decided against it. With Harry’s skill with the resurrection stone, removing the Horcrux without killing Neville should have been a possible avenue, and I don’t think straying away from Harry no of all time, especially for something like this, is a very good idea, given we’re pretty close to the final task.
As usual, I don’t mind rewriting this chapter depending on your feedback and, as usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.
Comments
Afterdark230
I think a Neville and Hermione off shot would be fun. You could tie it in with them helping Harry someway. And Harry helping to “fix” Hermione.
DoodleBopCheese
I would like to see a full Hermione recovery if possible.
