In the Melancholy Moonlight, Part 5: Dark Matter

Chapter 272: Dissonance

LUCY:

I didn't open my eyes again until it was dark outside. I needed a minute, to process, to remember where I was, to remember why I was there, to remember what had happened -

Harry. I needed to check on Harry.

Hermione was still asleep, so I jumped from my bunk quietly and made my way outside, grabbing a blanket on my way, to find Harry. He was sitting on a log near the exact place we'd landed the night before, a lifetime ago. He was still, my wand clutched in his right hand.

"Hi," I said softly as I approached.

"Hey," he replied, his tone somehow both devoid of and overwhelmed with emotion. He glanced up at me, and I could see the storm in his eyes even in the darkness of the night that had fallen.

I rubbed the back of my neck shyly. "Is it okay if I - "

"Of course." Harry shifted to the right so I could sit beside him. "Did you sleep well?"

"I kept having nightmares that I was being chased by a snake. I wonder why."

"Yeah, that's strange," he replied, playing along with my poor attempt at humor.

I wrapped the blanket around the two of us and pulled it tight.

I studied Harry's face in the darkness. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. Sorry for leaving so abruptly this morning, it was just... a lot. I didn't want to blow up and make it all worse."

"I understand."

Silence, neither comfortable not uncomfortable, stretched between us for a couple of seconds.

"Can we... talk?" I asked, feeling unusually shy about the situation.

"I'm sorry," Harry said. "We should never have gone to Godric's Hollow, it's all my fault - "

"What?" I interrupted. "No, Harry, we all wanted to go. Nothing that happened is your fault. You had no way of knowing the snake was there - "

"She was the snake. The snake was inside her the whole time."

I blinked. "Sorry, what?"

"You-Know-Who somehow put the snake inside Bathilda's body, I'm guessing she's been dead for a long time. He knew I'd go back, and he left the snake to wait for me. Inside Bathilda Bagshot, apparently."

"How?" I asked.

Harry shrugged. "I mean, Remus said we'd encounter magic we've never conceptualized before."

"Yeah, but I thought he meant, like, books that would try to kill us, not snakes inside innocent elderly women's corpses!" I shuddered. "Anyway, what happened upstairs?"

"She didn't want to talk in front of you two, because it was Parseltongue, all Parseltongue, and I didn't realize, but of course I could understand her," Harry continued.

I sighed and shook my head. "I should never have done the polyjuice. I had a normal Muggle child's sense of hearing. I would have heard you if I'd been myself, and I could have gotten up there so much faster."

"It's okay. Now we know. Anyway, once we were up in the room, the snake sent a message to You-Know-Who, I heard it happen inside my head, I felt him get excited, he said to keep me there, and then..." Harry hesitated. "How much detail do you want?"

"All of it," I said. "Even if it's revolting."

"The snake crawled out of her neck."

I clapped a hand over my mouth. "No! So it was functioning as her spine? Or something?"