ACT5CH21 - HEIR OF ECHOES

“Name’s Bathilda, dearie. Bathilda Bagshot.” Harry blinked, stuck with facing too many competing responses. He wanted to express his surpris

“Name’s Bathilda, dearie. Bathilda Bagshot.”

Harry blinked, stuck with facing too many competing responses. He wanted to express his surprise at meeting the author that wrote the History Of Magic textbooks. He wanted to mention how Hermione practically stayed glued to her History Of Magic textbook over the years, and how she had the text memorized verbatim. He wanted to say how Ron claimed she was a crackpot that was pissed off by goblins. He wanted to say how Binns kept droning on and on about rebellions.

Somehow, in his surprise, all of that got merged into a single, eloquent sentence.

“You’re the crackpot that loves droning about goblin rebellions.”

A cold draft passed between them, with the other two staring at Harry like he had grown an extra head. Bagshot… probably because she hadn’t expected to be so bluntly insulted like that, and Daphne, who was still registering that Harry had so bluntly insulted a renowned historian like that.

“Uh, sorry, that came out all —”

Bathilda’s shocked expression cracked, and she threw her head back and laughed for five entire seconds. Finally, she met his eyes and grinned. “That was a good one. Most people just attempt to be all polite in front of me.”

She laughed some more. “But no, young man. I don’t love droning about goblin rebellions. You really have your Ministry and Herbert Binns to blame for that one.”

Harry blinked again. “What has the Ministry got to do with that?”

Bathilda gave him a toothless smile. “Com’n, lad. Don’t pretend to be oblivious. You yourself unearthed that little mad scheme between Ekrizdis and Minister Rowle, didn’t you?”

Harry opened his mouth and closed it. 

Bathilda had a point. He had seen the kind of stunts Fudge’s Ministry had pulled over the years, and it didn’t even compare to what it did over the course of the year. So why was he assuming that Minister Rowle’s deal with Ekrizdis was the only one of its kind?

Just how many of such twisted and insane deals had occurred over the past decades and centuries? And how many of them had been swept under the rug titled Official Secrets Act?

“Professor Binns isn’t just teaching at Hogwarts because Dumbledore didn’t care to tell him he’s dead, is he?”

Daphne gave him a searching look.

Bathilda smiled. “You have fun with that. Say lad, you wouldn’t be here for little Al, would you?”

He and Daphne exchanged a snicker at someone calling ‘Albus Dumbledore’ as ‘Little Al’. 

“Ye, I mean, yes, we are.”

“Good,” said the crone, pointing at a house at the end of the lane to the right. “That one, with smoke coming out of that red chimney. That’s the Dumbledore house.”

“You knew Dumbledore when he was a student?” asked Daphne.

Something glinted in the crone’s eyes. “Trust me, girl. The things I know about the Dumbledore family, you could write a bloody book.”

She cackled out loud. “Do meet his old hag before you leave, lad. And you too, lass. I won’t bother you anymore.”

And then she turned towards the house at the end of the alley, and left.

Harry exchanged a look with Daphne. “Like I said, you learn something new everyday.”

They turned and walked into the house. 

He snapped his finger, and a ball of golden flame appeared, the Summer-equivalent of the Lumos charm, and waggled his eyebrows at her.

Daphne rolled his eyes, and attempted to repeat the feat, but to no avail. 

Harry grinned, and changed the glowing ball to red, then white, then blue, and circled through all the colors of the rainball, before settling for a moon-white shade.

“Show off,” Daphne scoffed. “I’ll get there, just you watch.”

“Obviously,” said Harry. “Just showing you how long that journey is.”

Daphne rolled her eyes.

It was a kitchen. It was quite in order, except for some pans, cauldrons and plates lying on the ground, shattered and rusty. Harry spotted a baby chair near the table. His baby chair. His throat went dry. This place… it had been home.

His home.

Daphne maintained a small distance behind, giving him some space. No words were exchanged, but he appreciated the sentiment. 

He walked into the next room, passing before the front door. It was a small and dusty little thing, with a bookshelf, a broken toy broom, and loads of torn parchment, half-sunk into the cobwebs on the floor. There were a few books too, but they were somewhat intact. He touched the surface of the bookshelf and felt a slight tingle — remnant of an impervius charm that had still remained over the years. Then he turned around and —

Froze.

On the floor was a sharp white marking, probably cast using Everlasting ink. Of course, nothing was truly everlasting. The magic needed to be properly replenished, so he imagined it was enchanted to draw power from the wardstone powering the cottage.

No, the real shock was what it was used for.

This was… the marking of a human outline. His — his —

“Dad,” Harry croaked. 

James Potter had fallen here. Harry fought the urge to run away from this awful place, and the terrible pain he felt rising within.

Daphne reached for his hand. “Harry?”

“I’m okay,” he said, taking deep breaths. This was here his father had faced Voldemort. This was where he had offered a last stand, knowing what inevitably lay ahead, but he had gone all out in a sacrificial attack, giving whatever time was possible for Lily Potter to save their baby. Every inch of Harry wanted to just turn away and shut his eyes, but the marking — his father’s outline would not leave his eyes. 

All this time, Harry had felt a very limited connection to his father. Yes, he looked like his father. Yes, James was a seeker. Yes, he was friends with Sirius, Lupin and Pettigrew. Yes, he was quite the ladies man. Yes, he and Snape hated each other with a passion. Yes, Snape thought James was a right bastard, and yes, the man died to ensure his wife and child would survive.

He knew all that. But knowing was one thing. Seeing it? Being at the very site, with the stench of the killing curse floating around, seeing his outline — that was different. Visceral. Raw.

Harry couldn’t help it. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them —

The world went grayscale.

Color drained away like water from a bleeding wound. The old cottage — shattered beams, moss-slick stone, and crooked floorboards — stilled. Everything paused, like the house itself was holding its breath.

Then, the threads came into focus.

Magic, Dumbledore always said, left traces.

Most spells faded with time — low-powered charms and minor incantations dissolving into the aether like breath on glass. But the magic born from powerful emotion… that lingered. It clung to the world like soot, like fingerprints on cave walls, waiting to be found by those who knew how to look. To someone attuned, it was like pressing a hand against the place where another had once pressed theirs. The stone was cold now, but you could still feel the echo. Still hear the whisper it left behind — 

I was here.

It wasn’t language. It wasn’t memory. It was a presence stamped into the weave of the world. A ghost of purpose. Magic as a message. The past reaching forward through the weight of years.

We were here.

Dumbledore had shown him the spell - Appare Vestigium, a complex tracking spell that identified magical residue present at the site of impact, and employed Abstract magic to conjure a temporal reconstruction of the events that left the residue behind. The only problem was that once employed, it used up the entire magical residue, deleting all evidence at the crime scene once used.

Fortunately, Harry didn’t need that anymore. His eyes were enough. And what he saw…

—was a cry. A scar.

Telling the story of what happened to James Potter.

“Harry…” Daphne whispered.

“He was down here, you know,” said Harry suddenly. “My dad. Maybe the wards let him know. He came down the stairs, and cast a Colloportus on the door, hoping it would work. Voldemort blew the door out by the hinges.”

He touched the broken ends of the door hinges. Cold. His fingers came away stained with rust and something finer. Ash. The same kind that had once clung to Sirius’s robes.

“No, a colloportus and a petrifaction spell. I think he was hoping to catch Voldemort off guard when he cast his Confringo next.”

Harry looked at the stuffed toy badger on the floor, broken into multiple pieces.

“He transfigured and animated that toy. Voldemort cut it down using a fire whip. The bastard was just playing with him. He could have ended the fight any moment, but he wanted to let Dad tire out first.”

He clenched his hands, and looked around.

“Harry —”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked around. “Dad threw a Confringo next. And an Oppugno. Maybe it was the books, coupled with Flagrante.”

Daphne looked at the half-burnt pages of some books scattered all across the room. They were scorched, but the scorching was too neat, too clean to be paper.

“And then he used the parchments. Duro, I think,” said Harry tonelessly. “But he failed and fell. Voldemort had him under the cruciatus.”

His fingers were now drawing blood. Yet, he didn’t stop.

“And then — Dad made the chair there explode. I think that was a last ditch attempt to escape. But Voldemort was too fast. He — he killed him with the killing curse. And then — then —”

He looked down at the outline of his father’s fallen form, and then at Daphne, at her teary eyes. His own eyes were stinging now, but he had to know. He didn’t hear Daphne anymore. Only the thunder in his chest as he climbed toward the last breath his mother had left in the world.

The door creaked as he pushed it open.

Harry stepped into the nursery.

Grayscale light washed everything in shades of memory. The cot in the corner was splintered along one leg. A faded mobile of stars and snitches hung from the ceiling, twisted on a thread that no longer turned. Toys lay scattered — some transfigured, others broken by time or violence. A stuffed lion had its seams ripped open. A wooden phoenix stared with one blind eye.

The wall to his right had been blasted off to smithereens, leaving an open space. Likely this was what had taken the brunt of the explosion. His gaze followed the line of fracture, all the way to his feet on the threshold.

The threshold.

 — Stand Aside, you silly girl! Stand aside, NOW! — 

Acting out of instinct, Harry stepped back right then. Swallowing, he exhaled, and then stepped into the nursery again, making sure not to stay at the threshold again. 

“Harry?” Daphne asked again, concerned.

“I’m fine,” Harry said automatically.

“No, you aren’t,” she scoffed. Then, softly, she said. “Harry, let’s get out. We are late for the meeting.”

“We will,” said Harry absently, never once looking away from the nursery. “This is… I have questions I need answered. I’m not leaving until I get them.”

“Harry,” Daphne insisted. “There’s nothing here. The DMLE and the DOM had had years to study this. If they found nothing to explain, then I doubt —”

“They wouldn’t know where to look,” said Harry, waving her suggestion away.

“But —”

He ignored Daphne. She wouldn’t understand. It was true that Albus Dumbledore and the Department of Mysteries had conducted investigations for months after the incident in 1981. Hell, the Department had an entire cabinet filled with all sorts of theories and tests they had conducted at the site after Harry was left to the muggles.

And Harry could understand it. After all, Lily Potter had done the impossible, leaving them with all sorts of theories regarding how Harry had survived the killing curse. And if you had theories, you had to test them.

The real problem was the stench of the catastrophic explosion was so great that trying to figure out what happened here was nigh impossible to find. One might as well attempt to find a particular pebble by fine-combing through an avalanche site.

He knew this because he had read the files courtesy of Tonks. He knew this because Dumbledore had confirmed it.

But neither Albus Dumbledore nor the Department of Mysteries could see magic the way Harry could. And now, after developing his Death-vision, after staring deep into the Anima and peering far into it, Harry, no, the Gatekeeper had the means to see what they couldn’t.

It was as if this event was frozen in time, just so that one day Harry, the rightful heir to this tragedy, could come and unveil the truth for himself.

He had finally come full circle.

His eyes shifted to putrid yellow —

BRIGHT.

LIGHT.

DARKNESS.

DEATHFORCECONTAGIONCIRCLEENCHANTMENTSACRIFICESEVENPOINTSFACTORSCONJUNCTIONAMBIENTMAGIC —

“Hngh!”

“HARRY!” Daphne faltered as Harry suddenly went rigid before his entire body started to shake wildly and stumbled back as if he had just been assaulted.

“Wait. Hold on,” He didn’t care that he had just bitten his tongue. Or that his body had morphed into scales. Or that his fingers — now claws, were grinding against scaled skin and on the verge of breaking. The sudden deluge of information and overwhelming exposure to what lay before him had punched him in the eyes.

Damn it.

His brain was overloading to the point that he might have suffered an aneurysm right then. The pain was so bad that a little more and he’d have blacked out.

Bloody hell! He was not prepared to gaze at what he had. Not by a long shot!

“Bloody hell, Harry! What happened?” Daphne exclaimed.

“Sorry, I was just — I didn’t expect,” Harry mumbled.

It was true. 

He had expected to see tiny strands of leftover magic, perhaps fine-comb through the magic of the explosion to understand what might have transpired before the explosion. Instead what he had found was the exact opposite.

There was magic here. So much magic that Harry, who, all modesty aside, was one of the most powerful wizards in Britain as far as ‘raw power’ went, felt like a firefly compared to the bonfire that was the nursery. There was simply too much power, so much that it was impossible to comprehend how it was being held inside this tiny room with absolutely no ward to hold the energy within. 

It simply wasn’t possible to cram that much power in that tiny place, without affecting Reality around it. In fact, the closest thing that Harry had seen similar to this was —

The Philosopher’s Stone.

The realization floored him. 

But how? Why? What could have happened here? At least Nicholas Flamel was a Master of Materia-Phase transfiguration, which enabled him to do that. Just what could Lily Potter have done in that tiny space, in that situation to cause something like this?

“Didn’t expect what?”

“This place,” he murmured. “The reports claimed that this place was devoid of magical residue. That none of the equipment could detect anything.”

“Yes. Everyone knows that!” Daphne snapped. 

“It was even in the bloody papers. Dad kept cuttings. The power of the explosion was so great that it erased all magical residue. The only reason they knew you survived the killing curse was because there was killing curse residue all over you, centered around your scar.”

She was on the verge of losing her patience. He couldn’t blame her.

“That’s the thing. It isn’t the lack of residue that’s the problem. It’s the size.”

Daphne blinked. “You mean —”

“The reason the Unspeakables couldn’t sense anything is the same reason an ant can’t perceive the person holding the magnifying glass between them and the sun.”

....

....

The study was quiet.

It was not a silence born of silent consideration, of the stillness of minds weighing futures, of histories that had already cost too much. Soft light from the high windows of the Dumbledore home filtered across a polished mahogany table, illuminating three teacups, three untouched saucers, and the slow, meditative movements of the three people sitting inside.

Albus Dumbledore sat with his hands lightly steepled, blue eyes unfocused behind half-moon spectacles. His gaze flicked toward the window as the breeze stirred the long curtains.

Across from him, Amelia Bones stood stiff-backed, arms crossed over the deep red of her robes. The set of her jaw betrayed restraint more than calm.

“He may not come,” she said flatly. “We requested him to leave the Gate and join the world. Help Britain out of its problems. And then, we tried to bind him. He didn’t have a reason to trust me then, and he definitely doesn’t have one now. I don’t think he’ll even entertain my presence.”

“Harry gave me his word,” Dumbledore said simply.

Amelia exhaled, frustration briefly slipping through her controlled facade. “I am not questioning his word, Albus. I am questioning whether we deserve a second audience.”

“I’m afraid both of you are putting the boy on a far greater pedestal,” said Babajide. “The boy might have good intentions, but he is also quick to anger. I am not certain this plan of yours has merit.”

“When Harry arrives, talk with him personally,” said Albus.

“If he comes,” Babajide repeated stubbornly. “You’re being overly sentimental when it comes to Harry Potter.”

He took out a small flask and took a sip of the concoction within. “If the boy intends to take part in global defense,” he said calmly, “then punctuality would not be an unreasonable starting point.”

Dumbledore looked over the rim of his glasses. “That might be true. But I didn’t summon him for a council meet, Babajide. This is not a summons. We are here not to judge him, but to see if we can put aside our differences and work together.”

Akingbade frowned. “A seventeen-year-old boy does not—”

But the rest of his sentence was swallowed by a sound that did not belong to this house.

A deep hum. A rip in silence.

The scent of ozone spread across the room, before a shimmer cracked the space beside Dumbledore’s desk. And through it, appeared Harry Potter and Daphne Greengrass.

“Ah, the famous Harry Potter,” began Babajide. “It’s good to know that you think so highly of —”

But Harry had other plans. He had grabbed Albus’s sleeves and pulled. “Professor Dumbledore. I need you to come with me. I think I finally know what happened on Halloween, 1981.”

And before Albus could even say anything, he was whisked away from the room, leaving Daphne with the other two staring at her flabbergasted.

“Uhm,” said Daphne. “Look, this is way beyond my paygrade. But it’d be really nice if you could just come with me to the Potter cottage. Right now.”

“....”

“...yeah, it’s one of those days.”