Chapter 53: Horrors Within
Harry laughed, trying hard to make it sound carefree and light. With all the work he had been putting in to sounding amused and interested in what Alfie was saying, he ought to be able to make his voice do whatever he wished it to, but the laugh sounded tense. "Merlin, Alfie, what do you think you're doing sneaking around like that?"
"Well, with Sirius you can never be sure how he'll react," the boy said with a suave smile as he leaned his forearm against the bound Gryffindor. The grey eyes were frozen by the hex, but Harry was sure his friend was cursing and dying to throw a punch at the Slytherin. "So, have you found my book?"
"Not yet," he replied. It wasn't a total lie. He hadn't found the book, Sirius had. Alfie could drown him in Veritaserum and his reply to that question would be the same.
"Pity, I was so looking forward to finishing what we started." He slid from Sirius's shoulder across the corridor to wrap an arm around Harry. "What is all this nonsense of drawing your wand on me? Harry, if I didn't know any better, I'd think Sirius turned you against me." The boy's hand slipped under his shirt as it had the other day, playing across his skin and wilfully avoiding any damaged tissue.
Horrified at what Sirius must be thinking, Harry looked away from his friend and forced another laugh. "Hardly. It's my natural reaction when someone sneaks up behind me."
"Let me make it up to you," Alfie offered and leaned in to kiss him.
For a fortnight, Harry had managed to avoid gagging on the boy's tongue by imagining him to be Sirius. Now, having experienced the other's mouth, he thought he would be able to endure it all the better. He was wrong. The real thing only cast the fantasy into dismal shadow and showed Harry just how much he disliked having this boy on any part of his body.
'Don't do anything stupid, you need him,' he reminded himself harshly.
He managed to pry himself away after what he felt was a reasonable amount of time, feigning the enjoyment but not the embarrassment when he said, "Sirius can still see."
"Then let him watch," smirked Alfie, pushing Harry back against a wall and taking his mouth again. His hands gripped the front of his shirt and yanked hard, sending buttons flying and exposing his skin to the chilly air. Even with the full range of his torso free for his exploration, those hands kept to the visible skin of his chest and stomach; it seemed Alfie did not want to run the risk of there being more damage where he could not see it. It was insulting, but Harry managed to hold his tongue.
"Where were we yesterday? Do you remember?" the Slytherin questioned.
"Not too far from here," Harry muttered. "Just round that corner."
Alfie laughed. "No, I meant where were we? I think we were somewhere around here," he dipped his hand down the front of Harry's trousers. "Yes, this is where we were, although you were far more excited about it last time. I'll have to do something about that."
Harry bit his lip and thought of horrid things. Voldemort. Dementors. Ron in a bikini holding hands with a naked McGonagall. He fought hard to keep Alfie's attentions from affecting him, but he could only hold out for so long. It felt like ages, though was probably only a few minutes, before his mind lost focus and his mouth released a groan of want.
"Now, Harry," Alfie purred. "About my book?"
"Didn't find it," he managed. "Just a bit more." He didn't know if he was asking for more time to find the desired book or begging the boy to keep up his ministrations. Regardless, the words brought a smile to Alfie's mouth.
"I think you did find it."
"No, didn't find it." Harry gasped and groaned as the boy pulled away.
"Really? Then what was that show of falling over if not to distract me? Really, you Gryffindors are so easy to read." He turned and strolled the short distance to Sirius, taking the bag from his shoulder and quickly extracting the ancient book. "Just where I thought it would be."
"If you knew where it was, then why make me go through that?" Harry demanded, red-faced and mortified to see Sirius's wide eyes pointing right at him.
"For Sirius, obviously. He's always hated when I played with his things."
Anger burned in him, for his own humiliation and for Sirius. He didn't care if this boy might still be of value; he just wanted to hurt him, to make him suffer. "You are an absolute rat," Harry ground out. "If I had your spell, I would be using it right now."
"Not without a wand, you wouldn't," Alfie smiled and held up the holly and phoenix feather wand he had stolen while Harry was so distracted by his attentions. "And, let's be honest, you just don't have it in you." He turned away, flipping almost idly through the pages of his book until he reached the back cover. He turned back to the beginning and flipped through again, a bit more eagerly, and a third time, practically tearing through the book. He turned to Harry, eyes more alive than the boy had ever seen them, nostrils wide in anger and mouth contorted by a snarl. "Where is my spell?"
"Don't look at me," Harry said. "Maybe it was never in that book. You said yourself you've only ever heard of it. Who said it was even in there to start with?"
The book dropped to the floor with a dull 'thud', and Alfie stepped over it as if it were a bit of parchment left in the hall, just another piece of worthless garbage. His hand gripped Harry's throat and wand came to rest between his eyes. "I know it was in there. You will give it to me."
"I can't give you what I don't have."
"You've given me plenty already," the boy smirked and stole a kiss.
"Gerroff!" Harry cried and shoved at the boy, but Alfie was unrelenting and strong; he held his grip.
"You said someone tried to curse you once. Perhaps I ought to finish the job. Would that convince you?" Alfie said with a smile as he pushed the tip of his wand into the skin of his forehead. "Or are Gryffindors too courageous to give in when their own lives are threatened? Perhaps I should be working on him?" His arm whipped around, the wand in his hand coming to rest on Sirius. "How much pain would he have to be in for you to give me what's mine?"
Harry said nothing, certain the boy wouldn't do it.
He had underestimated him, for after a beat Alfie was shouting, "CRUCIO!"
Frozen as he was by the full body bind, Sirius showed no outward signs of being in pain, but Harry knew that beneath the magic holding him still as stone, the boy was writhing and screaming.
"Stop it!" Harry cried.
"You know what to do, Harry."
The wand came up again. Alfie paused, looking at Harry and waiting for him to surrender the spell. But he had nothing to give. If the spell had been in the book to begin with, he was not the one who had removed it. Even if he had, he didn't think he could willingly hand it over to the boy, not even to stop him causing Sirius pain. Alfie was one of the worst people he had ever met, manipulative and ruthless. Harry couldn't imagine the damage he would do with a spell as horrifying as the Riven Heart. What demented alterations would he produce if he got his hands on it? Who would he use it on? How much power would he gain with it?
Power came from perception; that's what Alfie had said. If enough people perceive something to be true it would become so. The thoughts ran through his mind. It took barely a heartbeat for him to realise how important the boy's obsession with perception really was. Alfie cared only about appearances. He wanted the pretty things because they appeared better, and therefore made him better. He wanted the most horrifying spells because everyone said they were better, though not a single one of the people saying it had ever seen the spell or the book containing it.
Unlike Alfie, Harry had actually seen the books, read the spells; he might not look it, but he was the more powerful of the two of them. He had the knowledge. He had the skill to channel his magic through a wand he wasn't even touching, inadvertent as that skill might be.
As the pain of the boy's hand tightening around his throat grew worse, he remembered one of the spells Alfie so longed to get his hands on. A spell to show others for what they really are; 'painful and perfect', the description had read. If it worked, it would be precisely what Alfie deserved. With Alfie's hand constricting his throat and forcing the dragon's tooth into his neck, he felt the same prickle of magic that he had experienced just before performing a memory charm on Snape. He pulled on the same feelings and thoughts that had brought on that wandless spell, and focused them on screaming the new restricted spell in his mind.
"CRUCI—ahAHHH!" Alfie doubled over and screamed. His hands clutched at his head, and he screamed again. His screams turned into one, long wail before his voice cracked and became little more than a whimper as he crumpled to the floor, his body shaking from the pain the spell had caused.
Harry stumbled and fell against the wall, suddenly too tired to hold himself up.
"Fucking hell. That was heroic, Harry." Sirius grinned and knelt down in front of him. "You always go throwing wandless spells at enemies?"
"No," Harry mumbled. "Just for you. Twice now."
"Damn heroic," the boy repeated. "But now it's my turn." He hopped up and turned to the heap of Hogwarts robes sprawled on the stone floor. With a sharp kick, they knew the boy was still alive. With another kick, they knew he was conscious. "Up, Quintain!"
The boy rolled over.
"Sweet Circe, what is that thing?" Sirius shouted as he leapt away.
"Harry," the thing croaked. "What was that, Harry?"
Sirius kept retreating as the thing crawled closer. "Quintain?"
"What did you do to me, Harry?"
"Yeah, what did you do to him?"
Harry's mouth fell open as he stared at the thing. It couldn't possibly be Alfie. The Slytherin was tall, handsome, his eyes bright and hair thick and wavy against his head. This thing was grotesque, hunched and rickety, arms pulled in and hands contorted with arthritic knuckles. Its eyes were cloudy beneath heavy, lumpy eyelids, and what hair it had was sparse and thin. The only thing Harry recognised was its teeth. Those two rows of shining little pearls were unmistakable. The thing was Alfie.
He stared, shocked by what the spell had done.
'The Painful Truth', the spell was called. Harry had found it in a book like any other behind the gate of the Restricted Section. He had glanced over it, thinking it would be a fine spell to use on Malfoy should they ever find their way home. At the time, he laughed, imagining it would turn the Slytherin into a ferret or some other low, sneaky creature, but seeing Alfie, he knew why that spell had been locked away.
"What is the meaning of this noise?" the crisp voice of their head of house called as she marched stiffly down the corridor. "People heard you clear across the castle!"
"Professor McGonagall, I—we—," Harry stopped, not at all sure how to explain himself. He settled for pointing. "Alfie."
The woman gave a startled cry, her hand flying to her heart as she turned to look. "Good heavens, boys, what is it?"
"It's Alfie," Harry said. "Alfie Quintain."
"Impossible."
"Fix this, Harry," Alfie begged.
"I don't know how," he said truthfully.
"We must see the Headmaster at once," McGonagall decided, then as an afterthought she asked, "Can you walk, Mr Quintain?" The boy, if he could be called such a thing anymore, took a few shuffling steps and nodded.
Dumbledore was waiting by the door to his office when they finally arrived. Harry didn't find that particularly strange given Alfie's slow, ungainly gate; it had taken close to an hour to reach the gargoyle that guarded the stairs to his office. Even the slowest portrait could have ambled along to inform the old man they were coming and still had time left over to discuss Scotland's chances for the World Cup next year.
The man's eye held no twinkle as he ushered them in wordlessly, making a circle around Alfie once, twice, three times before he sighed. "This is much worse than I was told."
"Can you fix it?" Harry asked, still horrified by what he'd done, even if the Slytherin did kind of deserve it.
He shook his head. "Most of the books housed in the Restricted Section have been put there for a very good reason, Harry. The spells contained in them have no counter charm. The damages caused are irreversible. What would possess you to even think to use such a spell, and, my dear boy, what have you done to your shirt?"
Harry hurried to pull the two halves of his torn shirt together, folding his arms protectively around himself. "Alfie. He kind of molested me."
"You enjoyed it," the thing spat in a harsh whisper. "Don't even lie."
"Mr Quintain, we do not behave in such a way at Hogwarts," Professor McGonagall cried. "Fifty points from Slytherin."
"Now is not the time for points, Minerva," Dumbledore chided. "However, she is quite correct. Is that why you attacked him, Harry?"
"No, he was using the Cruciatus on Sirius, trying to make me give him a spell from the Restricted Section."
"An Unforgivable?" McGonagall breathed, all but fainting into a chair.
Dumbledore was silent for a long moment, his bushy white brows drawn together into a single line across his forehead. Harry imagined the worst in his silence. The headmaster would order the spell cast on him as punishment, expel him into the world as a deformed monstrosity to suffer the derision of the world before finally being thrown before Voldemort and made to tell him everything that would happen in the next twenty years. No less than he deserved.
"Mr Quintain will be taken to the hospital wing, where Madam Pomfrey will do all she can until his parents come to collect him. I am sorry for your misfortune, Mr Quintain, but you cannot be permitted to remain at Hogwarts after using an illegal, Unforgivable curse on another student," the man said, voice sombre.
"What about him?" Alfie demanded, his melodic voice reduced to guttural grunts. "He turned me into this! He gets to stay?"
The headmaster nodded. "The Painful Truth. I used the spell once on my brother when we were young, before the book had been moved to the Restricted Section. I hated him, thought him everything I wasn't, a monster or worse. Do you know what the spell did to him?" He paused, giving them time to speculate though no one voiced their ideas. "It straightened his crooked nose."
"That can't be right," Harry protested. "Look what it did to him!"
"What The Painful Truth shows is unique to each person," Dumbledore said, walking around to place a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. "You could cast it on one hundred people and it would have little to no effect on most of them, but cast it on someone who is hiding a malicious mind, someone who would assault another student and use Unforgivables to get what he wants, and you see the results. The spell can only reflect the horrors within, not dictate them. Still, you should have known better, Harry."
"Is there really nothing you can do for him?"
"There is a chance, but I must see your wand." He held out his hand.
"I don't have it," Harry admitted, pointing to Alfie. "He stole it when he was… you know…"
"Mr Quintain, is this true?" The deformed boy offered what might have been a petulant shrug but did not verbalise a response as he threw Harry's wand at the floor. Dumbledore looked to Harry again, his pale blue eyes round behind his spectacles. "Harry, how did you cast such a powerful spell without a wand?"
The boy shifted uncomfortably as McGonagall came to stand alongside the intent headmaster, their eyes boring into him. "I—I don't know."
"Probably that magic, glowing necklace of yours," Sirius chimed in from his seat in a comfortable chair.
"Let me see your necklace," the man demanded sharply.
Harry's hands flew to his throat, pulling at the necklaces he kept around his neck. He broke the chain that held the keys to his trunk, handing them over to the headmaster with such urgent fingers that he nearly dropped them. The leather thong was not being so cooperative. The more he pulled at it, the more it dug into his skin. "It won't come loose; Tonks charmed the knot."
"Ted?" Sirius questioned, sitting up a bit straighter in his chair.
"No, Nymphadora."
The boy frowned. "She's three."
"Not where I'm from," Harry reminded him, annoyance colouring his tone.
"Oh, yeah. So you know little Nymphie. What's she like?"
"She's like Tildy," he said, growling when he couldn't make the knot untie. "Is this really the time, Sirius?"
"No, I suppose not," the boy agreed and fell silent.
Dumbledore easily removed the charm and the knot from the leather, taking it gingerly in his hands and carrying it to the candelabra by his desk. He turned the items around in his hands, examining them in the glow of the candles. His eyes twinkled, though more from the challenge than from any merriment. "This is fascinating. Harry, where did you come by this necklace?"
"It was a birthday present. From Charlie Weasley."
"Charlie's three," Sirius muttered. "Spends all his time throwing clods of mud at me when I go visit Nymphie and 'Dromeda."
"Not where I'm from," Harry said again. "Where I'm from he works on a dragon preserve."
"Nice," the boy grinned. "I know what I'm buying him for Christmas."
"Mr Black, this is hardly the time," Professor McGonagall chided sharply. "You will accompany Mr Quintain to the hospital wing. If you were struck by a body bind and the Cruciatus curse, Madam Pomfrey will want to examine you as well."
The boy's protests landed on deaf ears as the woman took hold of his arm and pulled him from the room. "We will continue this discussion later, Harry!" Sirius called as the door closed tightly.
Harry wanted to smile at his foolishness, but he was too worried. His necklace, the one he had been wearing every day and night for months, had twice managed to turn his deepest need into a reality, saving Sirius but also damning Alfie to a lifetime of deformity. Thinking about it, Harry now knew why Hermione had not remembered Quintain's name from the list of Voldemort's known followers. Even the Dark Lord wouldn't want something so monstrous as a follower, no matter how many spells or hexes he knew.
Dumbledore made a sound low in his throat, bringing Harry back to the present.
"What is it, professor?" Harry asked. "Are the stones amplifiers or something?"
"Very good, Harry," Dumbledore said with an approving nod. "But no. You are looking to the wrong part of the necklace. The stones, while doubtless meaningful, hold no magic. A dragon's tooth is nothing, disposable and bearing no magical properties either. This cord, however…"
"It's leather," the boy said doubtfully, daring to prod the thick brown cord. It had been against his skin since June; he had no reason to fear it now, but couldn't help the feeling of dread when he looked at it.
"Yes, but from what animal?"
"A cow. There are cows in Romania." He didn't really know that for certain, but there had to be. There were cows everywhere.
"True, but on a preserve, I think it most likely such animals would be food for the dragons, swallowed whole after being cooked in fiery breath. What skin remained would be in no condition for tanning into leather." The man waited for him to process the words. Ever the teacher he wanted Harry to come to the right conclusion on his own.
Leather that had magical properties. Dragons were magical, but not every bit of them if their teeth held no magic. Was dragon hide magical? Their heartstrings were. Hermione's wand had a dragon heartstring core.
"No," Harry said. "Charlie used a dragon heartstring?"
"I would have to consult Mr Ollivander to be absolutely certain, but I would venture to say yes," he smiled. "Harry, do you know what this means?"
"Charlie's not as clever as everyone thinks he is."
"Possibly, but I will try to avoid judgement until I meet him myself," he said with a slight chuckle as a twinkle took hold in his eye. "What this means, Harry, is that we know why the Split-Apart was so much stronger than it ought to have been. The dragon heartstring of your necklace acted as a second wand, amplifying the spell. We know what happened."
He swallowed hard as he looked up into the man's wide and earnest smile. "We can go home?"