The Heart of Gryffindor
by SJR0301
Part II - Chapter One
The Muggle Ministry, Harry Potter reflected, was nearly as odd as the Ministry of Magic. He was not entirely sure what he had really expected to happen on his first day of work, but it was not to be re-directed from the very modern office building in the heart of London where his letter of hire had instructed him to report to a Chinese laundry in a neighborhood not far from his house on Grimmauld Place. He had exchanged doubtful glances with Hermione, who, being raised as a Muggle as he had been, also understood how odd it all was.
Ron and Ginny, however, having had almost no contact with the Muggle world, saw nothing strange about being sent for their initial instruction to a place like that. After all, the Visitors Entrance to the Ministry of Magic was through an out of use telephone box and the entrance to the wizard hospital, St. Mungo’s, was through a closed department store with the dubious name of Purge and Dowse Ltd.
They had received letters by owl post from Inspector Bones, the wizard who had fled Lord Voldemort’s murderous attack on his family and hidden himself as a Muggle for many years, instructing them to show up at the Muggle Ministry directly instead of at the Ministry of Magic first. The first part of the morning had been expectable and comprehensible. They had arrived at the modern office building in which a number of Muggle ministries were housed, including the administrative offices of the domestic anti-terror unit for which they had been supposedly employed; although forcibly drafted was more the reality as the Ministry of Magic had accepted their applications and then assigned them to work in a secret department for the Muggles in order to placate the Muggle Prime minister and keep him from making the wizard world public and subject to Muggle restrictions. Just one more unpleasantness to blame on Voldemort, dead though he was. But that was something Harry preferred not to think of or dwell on.
A terrifyingly efficient secretary had handed them paperwork to fill out. There were National Health forms, tax forms, a waiver stating that the signer understood the position of desk officer or surveillance officer to involve potential risk and assumed the risk willingly in service of the security of the United Kingdom. Lastly, they had to sign a secrecy form pledging never to reveal the details of their job to anybody or be prosecuted for the same. Harry signed everything as quickly as he could and he only stopped to stare when he saw that his starting salary would be twenty thousand pounds a year. A fortune to someone who had never had a salary before. Not that Harry needed it. His vault in London had more wizard gold than he could spend in a lifetime.
The laundry had the dry, astringent, chemical smell that dry cleaners always do and Harry sneezed as he asked the proprietress, a tiny, wizened Chinese lady where Inspector Bones might be. At first, he thought they had gone to the entirely wrong place as the lady stared at him from unblinking almond eyes and did not immediately answer. Then he realized with a start that she was staring at his scar, and he began to feel even more uncomfortable. The lady bowed suddenly and said in a papery-whispery voice, “Up the stairs, through the back, on the fifth floor.”
Harry said, “Thank you,” and led the others through the back. Plastic jacketed suits seemed to wave at him as he pushed through the racks of hanging clothing, past a huge laundry press and he could have sworn that a speckled, ancient, floor-length mirror said, “You look a bit peaky, boy,” as he trotted past it on the way up the stairs. Truth was, he was feeling a bit peaky by the time they arrived at the landing on the fifth floor and found themselves in front of a violet door with a sign that said simply, Department Seven.
The door handle yielded to a small office furnished with beige metal filing cabinets, and staffed by a middle aged woman with sausage-like gray curls who sat behind her olive green metal desk as though she were ensconced in the turret of a tank.
“This Department is for Filing and Storage only,” the woman said. “We don’t see applicants or salesmen here,” she added firmly. She eyed them beadily and said, “Well? Shut the door behind you, will you? The catch doesn’t always take.”
Harry looked back down at his instructions and wondered if they had gotten their directions wrong. Hermione, however, interrupted and said in her most efficient, business-like tones, “We’re here to see Inspector Bones, please. The lady downstairs sent us up.”
“There are no Inspectors here,” the woman sniffed.
“Yes, there are, Cecily,” Inspector Bones said. The blond-haired Inspector had opened the door at the back of the office and he waved them through smilingly.
Cecily sniffed again and replied, “What’s the use of security procedures if they aren’t followed? They should have had the password.”
Harry followed Bones through the door, his brief annoyance already subsumed into curiosity; but he distinctly heard Ron mutter, “Old Muggle bat. She could give the Fat Lady a run for her galleons,” as they went through.
They went through another room full of old filing cabinets, some of them so overfull that the drawers would not quite close and some had nearly illegible hand-written signs on them that said, “Dispose of in the year 2056.” At the back of the room was a three foot wide break in the cabinets. Bones removed his wand and tapped on the apparently featureless wall seven times. Another violet door appeared out of nowhere and swung open and Bones gestured for them to enter. Harry drew breath to say something, but Bones put his finger to his lips.
Bones waited until the door closed behind them all and then handed Ron, Hermione and Ginny a lavender parchment each and said, "Sign at the dotted line, please."
Harry opened his mouth to ask, what about me, but Bones said quickly, "Wait!"
"These are binding magical contracts," Hermione said into the silence as Bones collected the signed parchments from the other three.
"Naturally," Bones answered. "The Ministry of Magic's very own employment contract and Official Magical Oath of Secrets," he added dryly. "In order to work for this Department, you have to sign the Muggle papers and ours as well."
"But I don't have to?" Harry asked slowly. "Or am I not working for the Minstry of Magic at all? And if I'm not, why am I here?"
Bones glanced briefly at the others; so briefly, in fact, that Harry could almost have imagined that glance.
Bones answered deliberately, hoping that Harry would not ask too many further questions. "You aren't signing a contract right now," he said, "because the Minister wants it kept very quiet, absolutely secret in fact, where you are and what you're doing."
The green eyes, made even more brilliant by the shadows of illness beneath them, held his in an uncomfortably sharp gaze. "Why?" was the simple rejoinder. And when Bones hesitated minutely before responding, Harry added coolly, "I mean, Voldemort is gone, isn't he?"
***
Bones could feel himself flinch at the spoken name of the Dark Lord, though he knew, having seen it himself, that the murderer was truly, really dead. He answered the Boy, who should have been just as dead himself and quite miraculously, astoundingly, was not, "Yes, of course Riddle's dead. But there are followers of his we never identified: some we know worked inside the Ministry and may still work there. And we, the Minister that is, doesn't want any of them getting an inkling of where you are in case they come after you. For revenge, you see."
Bones hoped that would be enough. It was true enough, too, he thought, just not the entire truth. As far as the wizarding public knew, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, had died on the day he had killed, defeated Lord Voldemort, the day he had deliberately allowed Lord Voldemort to attack him with the Killing Curse and deliberately failed to defend him-self.
Bones considered the young man before him as objectively as he could. The Minister, he thought, was probably right in his desire to protect Potter. Though nearly a month had passed since Riddle's last, massive attack, Potter still appeared terribly fragile. His face was quite pale and thinner than ever. His wrists, which stuck out rather endearingly below the cuffs of his dress shirt on account of his having grown again, were bony and the tendons on his elegant, long-fingered hands stood out. And though the day was only half through, gray shadows of exhaustion seemed to pool in the hollows of his cheeks and about the corners of his mouth. The Curse, Bones thought, might have rebounded back on Riddle and destroyed him, but it seemed to have stolen half the life and nearly all the strength out of the Boy, the young man who had lived.
Fortunately, Ron cut in and said, "I think it's a good idea, myself," and clever Hermione added in, "Really. Just think if people knew where you were. They'd want your autograph and idiots like Rita Skeeter would want to interview you all day long. You're better off with a bit of peace for a while, Harry."
"So what does that mean?" Potter responded. "I can't go to the Leaky Cauldron and have a butterbeer in case some dark wizard tries to kill me?"
Bones answered quite cheerfully and normally he thought, under the circumstances. "You won't have time for the Leaky Cauldron for a while anyway. Tomorrow you're all to report to the Thames Street office and you'll join your fellow recruits for your initial training courses. They'll have a bus to take you all to the training compound and you'll stay there for three months before you get a stab at your first street work."
"What about our auror training?" Ginny asked keenly. "I was looking forward to that after Tonks' descriptions."
"From what I've seen," Bones said, "you’ve already had nearly as much training as most aurors ever do." And seen more real fighting than many already as well, he thought.
The young girl blushed under his gaze and he had a momentary qualm about letting the four young ones loose in the intelligence training program. The program, especially the one they were set for, was meant for university graduates, specialists even. But young as they were, Bones mused, the four teens had seen worse and fought more dangerous opponents already than most agents ever did in their lives. Nevertheless...
"Now listen," he added, "you're not to use any magic in your training and you're not to let any of your fellow recruits or officers know that you're wizards. Only Sergeant Kray and I know, and the Prime Minister, of course." He held their gazes, wanting them to see the seriousness of the edict. "You've signed our secrecy oath. It's not any different from your normal obligations under the Statute of Secrecy. As far as anyone in the program knows, you're ordinary Muggles training to be desk officers or field surveillance agents."
Bones could see that none of them liked that very much, but the one he was worried about was Potter. Sure enough, the tired face grew still and wary, but the protest, when it came, was far less vehement than he might have supposed.
“I see,” Harry said quietly, “they have managed to expel me, then, without even any hearing. It’s a sort of an exile, isn’t it? I’m farmed off to the Muggles but I don’t even do any magic and there won’t even be a record of my service as an auror for this Department.”
“They’re not expelling you,” Hermione said in protest. “You’ve still got your wand and you can do magic when you’re at home. It’s just that none of us can use magic when the Muggles can see us. We’re all in the same boat.”
Bones thought quickly. He was sure Potter was on the verge of walking out right then, and who knew what would happen if he decided to simply show up in the Leaky Cauldron or Diagon Alley? He cut in and said firmly, “For right now, you can each choose a desk and start reviewing the Department procedures. You should each have a set of starter supplies and if you want anything else, there are requisition forms to fill out.” He paused and hurried on again, “I’ve had Cecily line up some sandwiches and tea for lunch, so I’ll just go check and see if they’ve arrived.”
Bones concealed a sigh of relief when Harry glanced about the room and examined one of the battered old wooden desks for size. He was eyeing a violet quill with distaste when Bones slipped out of the room.
***
Harry examined the room more closely and tried to tell if he felt angry or not. The large open office seemed to be another strange compromise between Muggle world and Magic. The walls were painted a dull, institutional beige, which suggested that the location was actually a Muggle one. The old wooden desks looked as though they were excess left from World War I. There were, however, the violet quills and fresh jars of ink exactly like the ones he’d seen on Mr. Weasley’s desk at the Minstry of Magic, and a canister held several fresh rolls of parchment.
Harry picked up a violet quill and wondered what there was to requisition. What exactly did one need to be a Muggle intelligence agent? Thinking the answer might be right there, he looked at the requisition forms in the right hand drawer. These looked to be pure Muggle as they were clearly mass-printed three copy carbon forms which included such items as staples and stapler, calculator, ball point pens, papers of various sorts, business cards, and monthly subscriptions to various newspapers. There was also a separate special requisition form for weapons with a category of various firearms he’d never heard of.
He sank into the chair and looked at Ron and Hermione and Ginny, all of whom were watching him with great anxiety. He understood gratefully and sadly that if he were to get up and leave, they all would, though it would ruin any chance they would ever have of having a career in the magic world.
“What d’you reckon?” Ron asked.
“I dunno,” Harry said. “What d’you suppose these training courses will be like?”
He saw their faces brighten with relief and thought, after all, what difference did it make if he lived and worked as a Muggle for a while, if he were with his friends?
Hermione, naturally, said, “Well, I’ve looked it up and I think we’ll receive training in several different fields. We get data investigation training, which is sort of like research, and we have field surveillance training, which includes things like following suspects, and physical training, defensive and offensive. And then there are various introductory science courses about evidence collection and things like that.”
“Did you understand any of that?” Ron asked.
Harry felt a small grin sneaking up on him. “I think it’s like the Muggle versions of Stealth and Tracking and Defense.”
“That’s not so bad,” Ginny said. A mischievous gleam lit her brown eyes. “Just think, we already know how to track and fight.”
“Yes,” Hermione said, and then she added sternly, “but we’re not allowed to use magic. We have to learn the Muggle way, too.”
Harry had a brief flash of running about in a trench coat and chasing after a terrorist like in one of those James Bond movies. The amusement faded though as he looked about the boring bureaucratic room and considered the even more stuffy and bureaucratic headquarters at which their morning had started. Somehow, one didn’t imagine intelligence agents, Muggle or Magic, having to fill out requisition forms and follow hierarchical procedures. It occurred to him that perhaps the Ministry aurors had to do the same. After all, they’d never asked Tonks about those kinds of things, only about the exciting stuff like catching dark wizards.
Bones came back with a tray full of sandwiches and crisps and mugs of hot tea. Harry would have liked to ask some more questions, but the Inspector grabbed a sandwich and said, “I’ve got a few things to take care of.” He tapped on a tall portrait at the front of the room and stepped through the newly revealed doorway to another office beyond. Bones poked his blond head back out for a moment and added, “Go on and eat your lunch, then. You look like you’re perishing for a good meal. I’ll be back soon.” Then the door swung shut behind him.
“Some things never change,” Harry said gloomily. “At Hogwarts, Professor Dumbledore never told us anything. Now it looks like the Inspector is just the same.”
“Aren’t you being just a bit hard on Dumbledore?” Hermione asked. “He told us what we were supposed to know and a lot that we probably shouldn’t have considering we were just students.”
Harry shrugged. He felt quite suddenly fatigued and could not summon the energy to argue. He drank some tea, and pushed aside the packet of crisps in favor of a ham sandwich. He could feel the others watching him covertly, assessing his condition and his mood. Once, the anxious looks would have annoyed him; just now, he couldn’t resent them. But he leaned back in his chair and applied himself to his lunch so that his friends would have no excuse to cosset him more than they had been.
***
Bones closed the door behind him and turned to take one more look at his four charges through the two-way portrait. He turned to the two men, who had also been watching, and said, “Just how long do you think you can keep up the charade that Potter is dead?”
Arthur Weasley, the Interim Minister of Magic, flinched only slightly, and Professor Dumbledore not at all. Dumbledore steepled his fingers together and said calmly, “As long as is possible. At least until Harry is sufficiently recovered in health to defend himself.”
“Will he ever be?” Bones asked.
There was brief pause, and Weasley asked, “What makes you think he won’t?”
Edgar looked back at Harry through the two-way door. It was not unlike looking through a Muggle’s two-way mirror. The door created a hazy veil through which he could observe the outer office. The three others were steadily eating their way through the sandwiches and crisps and chatting as they did. Even through the hazy view of the door though, he could see that Potter had come to the end of his strength for the day. A half-eaten sandwich was discarded on the desk and he was leaning back in his chair in what might be taken for nonchalance or relaxation, but which Edgar knew was sheer exhaustion.
He looked back at the others and said, “It’s been weeks since the battle with Riddle and he’s no stronger than the last time I saw him. He has no physical injuries, but he can barely get through half a day without breaking down from fatigue.”
“All the more reason, then,” Dumbledore responded, “to keep him sheltered and away from the wizard world for awhile.”
Edgar shook his head and asked, “Do you have any idea what the training for an officer is? I don’t see how he’ll get through the first day, much less the next three months.”
“Ginny has a good supply of Revitalizing Potion to give him,” Weasley answered. “It should help him recover his strength, we think.” He frowned, and Edgar could see the deepening of the worry lines in the normally jovial man’s face. “Look, Bones,” he added vehemently, “we’ve thought this through a hundred times. The bargain with the Prime Minister will have to be kept for now. And you have an inkling of what things are like. We’re still trying to track down missing people and figure out who some of our leaks were. There are more than half a dozen Death Eaters still on the loose and lots of dark wizards who might not have been You Know Who’s taking advantage of the chaos. You know what Harry is like. He’d think he had to go after the Death Eaters, and if he didn’t, they’d be on him to kill him between one wave of the wand and the next. And then there’s the other matter, as well.”
“The child?” Bones said quietly.
“The Heir of Slytherin,” Dumbledore said coldly. The old man’s blue eyes were unusually bleak. “Voldemort’s fall back in case all of his other schemes failed. He made sure that Slytherin would not be defeated permanently and that some piece of him would live.”
“Are you sure it’s his?” Bones asked.
“From what we know from young Malfoy,” Dumbledore answered, “I am afraid so.” He paused and the blue eyes seemed darkened with a greater grief than one might expect considering that the Dark Lord was dead and The Boy Who Lived was not. “I fear, that this child, should he live long enough, may well prove a greater danger to the wizard world than his unlamented father. And even now, he provides a focus for some of those Death Eaters left. If they knew Harry there alive, they would seek to try to re-birth their Lord in his full power, by murdering Harry and hoping Voldemort’s powers and soul could be brought back with Harry’s death.”
Appalled, Bones asked, “Is that possible?”
“Of course not,” Dumbledore replied. "Voldemort is dead, truly dead. But that would not stop them from trying and killing Harry.”
The three men looked through the hazy two-way door again. Dumbledore said softly, “They are the future, if we’re to have one at all. Guard them well, Edgar.”
Edgar turned back and said, “I’ll do my best.” He added sardonically, “and if I mess up, the Minister’s wife will make me wish I had a Death Eater after me because that would be tame by comparison.”
Weasley said coolly, “That’s right.”
They would have gone then, but Edgar wanted his curiosity satisfied first. “What are you doing about the Riddle child then? Do you have aurors after them?”
“We’re looking for him everywhere,” Weasley answered, “but that’s another matter that isn’t going through the Ministry.”
“I suppose not,” Bones said, “if Ministry security is that compromised.”
He waited for them to explain further, but all Weasley would say was, “Dumbledore’s handling it with a few most trusted men from the Order of the Phoenix.”
“Not Snape?” Bones asked.
“Severus Snape is perfectly trustworthy,” Dumbledore said sharply. “But as it happens, he has other things to do just now. Ordinarily,” he continued, “this is a matter that your Department might handle. But, obviously, anything that goes through your Department is likely to be discovered by Harry and his friends.”
“Come, Professor,” Bones protested, “we’re not about to let raw recruits have information about a major operation.”
The blue eyes had regained their normal twinkle. “Inspector Bones, a word of advice. If there is a secret anywhere, no matter how well hidden, no matter how forbidden, Harry will dig it up. He’s like a cat that way. Give him a hint of a puzzle and he’ll worry at it until he has an answer and never mind whether he’s supposed to know or not.”
“He’ll make a bloody good intelligence officer, then, won’t he?” Bones said. “From what I’ve seen,” he reflected, “they all will, and Merlin help the Muggles when they get started.”
The two men stood up to go, but Edgar forestalled them with one further question. “You will be returning here to add in further protections, won’t you?”
Dumbledore nodded. “Aside from the usual Muggle repelling charms, we’ll add some additional protections to keep and magic you use in here from leaking out into the rest of the building and disrupting the Muggles’ equipment. And I think our secrecy measures should be sufficient.”
Bones was relieved. Dumbledore had already offered to be the Secret-keeper for the Department. He had an inkling that Dumbledore had added another level to the charm somehow though, just to ensure that the identities of the Department’s members were completely secret as well. He glanced once more at his recruits as did Weasley and Dumbledore. “I’m afraid,” Bones added, “that the greatest danger of the secret being let out is from our young friends.”
Dumbledore cast a keen glance at him and Weasley bridled just a bit as two of them were his own children. “I don’t think you need fear for their ability to keep a secret themselves. They were rather successful at doing so even in Hogwarts, even at times from me.” his blue eyes twinkled, and then he added more soberly. “No. The more likely difficulty is that Harry will not like being restricted to Muggle society only for very long. As soon as he starts to recover, he’s going to want to be free to go to Diagon Alley or the Leaky Cauldron just like any other wizard. And you’ll have the job of convincing him he must not.”
“He’s already protested about that,” Bones answered. “And I think it’s a mistake not to let him know everyone still thinks he’s dead.”
But Dumbledore’s face was entirely unyielding. “We’ve got at least three months while he’s at your training program to settle the matter of the child. I want that done before he has the free time and recovers enough to start thinking about it; and, unfortunately, to try to do something about it.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so worried about him knowing what you’re up to,” Bones responded uneasily. “After all, he defeated Riddle. What more can anyone do to prove his loyalty and ability than that?”
“It’s not his loyalty or ability that concerns me,” Dumbledore answered. “It’s the gentleness of his nature. It is, both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness that he will pity even the darkest and most evil, even those whom he knows will do him harm. As this child most certainly will when it is grown.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Bones asked. “It’s just a baby. You can’t know what it will do.”
“It will have its choices, yes,” Dumbledore replied. “But it is Slytherin’s heir. It will use those choices for ill, for so it was laid down by his ancestor’s curse.”
“Well, I don’t see why you even keep a Slytherin house,” Bones grumbled. “It’s nothing but trouble, the lot of them thinking they have to live up to their evil founder.”
“They really would toss Dumbledore out for good if he tried to make that change,” Weasley said tiredly. “And besides, Slytherin wasn’t always bad, was he? He and Gryffindor were best of friends, once. It says so in the Sorting Hat’s song.”
Dumbledore, however, seemed to have lost his faith in that particular bit of Hogwarts legend, and he made no further comment, but bowed to Edgar in goodbye. He swept out of the office by its other entrance, though not before taking one last glance at the four friends in the outer office.
***
Exhausted though he was, Harry lay awake looking out at the crescent moon and thinking his first official day of work had been both odder and more familiar than he could have expected. The Department Seven office had almost the feel of a classroom and the quills and portrait doors had made him feel as though he had never left Hogwarts. But the paperwork and the morning's first stop at the huge Thames Street office tower had made him feel as though he had landed in Uncle Vernon's company. The secretary had even reminded him of Aunt Petunia.
There was also the fact that he had been excluded from the Ministry’s records. The others had been given Ministry of Magic papers and he had not. They could try explaining it as being for his protection, but it still hurt.
And then there was the fact that they were staying at a Muggle hotel. Not the Leaky Cauldron. Not even at Sirius' house in Grimmauld Place --Harry's house now--which had more protections on it than practically any wizard place in England next to Hogwarts itself. No, Bones had insisted that even his own house was no good.
"Well, Kreacher is still there," Hermione had observed. "You freed him but didn't throw him out."
"Well, it would have killed him," Harry had answered. "It was the only home he ever knew."
"Who cares if it killed him," Ron had said. "Nasty, evil traitor..."
Hermione had thrown her most quelling look at Ron and said, "That's the point. He's perfectly free to go tell anyone where you are, Harry, and just might."
"Yeah," Harry said, "but why a Muggle hotel? We could have gone to Ron's house."
Ginny had jumped in and said, "But Mum's gone to visit Charlie in Romania," and Ron had said, just a bit too slowly, "Right. So there's no one there."
Harry had been too tired to protest then, and he had to admit that the Muggle hotel was comfortable. They'd ordered from the room service menu, and Ron had entertained them all with comments on the telly programs. Well, everyone except for Hermione, who had made it a point to show Ron how easy it was to turn on and off the lights with the switch.
The girls had retired to their own room when Bones had told them they would have their wake-up call at six thirty in the morning.
"It's the crack of dawn," Ron had complained, but Bones had said merely, "The bus leaves from the Thames Street office at eighth o'clock and you need to be there half an hour before for check-in."
"I dunno about this," Ron had said after the Inspector left. "But you have to admit, there's one bright spot, really."
"What's that?" Harry had asked.
"We don't have to see Percy for three months. We don't have to have him rub our noses in it that he's still in the Minister's office and we're not."
"Yeah, well," Harry had said yawning, "Percy is a complete git, so why anything he says bothers you is a mystery to me."
Ron had snorted and then fallen to sleep as easily as a baby. Harry could hear his soft snores and wished he could sleep so easily. Getting to sleep was difficult; but once he did, waking up was more so.
He stared at the faint glow of the moon and tried, as he had, for many nights in a row, to get up the nerve for the thing he knew he should do.
Perhaps it was knowing that tomorrow he would be with many more people, innocent Muggles, that gave him the courage. Perhaps it was simply that he had to know. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, hoping, not even really daring to hope that it would be all right.
He cleared his mind of every thought and emotion. He pictured in his mind the wall he had created there last year, the mental wall meant to keep Voldemort locked out, imprisoned to that tiny corner, since on account of the connection of the scar, the monster could never be completely eliminated.
Bit by bit, he uncovered the wall; piece by piece, stone by stone, until it was all down, all. He cast about searching for the presence of the other, seeking the faintest whiff of the snake's existence. He felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into the well of his own being, spiraling down into almost endless space.
Was he alone? He thought, I am. Or has he hidden himself so well inside of me that I can no longer tell what part of me is me and what part of me is him? I am alone, he insisted. I am.
Then the dark depths of well were soothing and comfortable. He could rest there, float, and imagine he heard his mother's voice saying, "We love you."
After a while, he slept.
Harry dreamed he was falling. He was falling into a bottomless abyss, falling through a gyre, spiraling down and he thought he was back in the well of time through which he had flown after Voldemort had struck him; but he wasn't afraid.
It was just like flying really. Glimpses of people and places flashed by: a glittering starlit night; an army of goblins clashing with men; lovers in a moonstruck garden oblivious to the laughter of fairies. Then he slowed and hovered, and fell in the open window that abutted on one circle of the well.
The baby cried in its cupboard. It was hungry and wet. When the nurse opened the cupboard door, the light hurt his eyes and he cried more, and when she lifted him up and said, "Naughty boy! Strong wizards don't cry," the arm wrapped around him was cold as metal, but nowhere near as cold as the emptiness in his heart, because no one loved him.
