No Mouth But Some Serpent's

Chapter 10 - Fugitivus Animus

Thank you for the reviews, especially on the last chapter! Many were detailed and thoughtful. Review responses will be up in my LJ later this afternoon.
I can safely say now that this book will be longer than Saving Connor, since the chapters don't want to contract in length, and now there are more of them.

Chapter Ten: Fugitivus Animus

Harry turned as he heard footsteps coming up the hall. He knew who it would be. It was about time for the Halloween Feast to let out, and this loo was on the route to Gryffindor Tower.

Percy Weasley rounded the corner first. He stuttered to a stop at seeing Harry there, and stared at him. Harry stared back, and ducked his head. He could have ducked into the loo and hidden, he supposed, but that would have been worse. Everyone would suspect him anyway, given that they thought he was Dark, and he had associated with Luna in the last few days. At least standing in the open would look less suspicious than trying to run.

Harry wondered if he should be disgusted with himself, that his mind was working like a Slytherin's even under the shock, trying to calculate damage to himself and what would happen next. At least he could be partially rational, he supposed. That was a gift. If it were Connor lying on the floor, he didn't think he could have been rational in the slightest.

That means that you are intelligent, not disgusting, said Sylarana. Although I think you might have tried to distance yourself from standing exactly at the scene.

As he looked up and met Percy's widening eyes, Harry was inclined to agree.

The Gryffindor prefect shook his head, then turned and shouted to the younger students spilling along the corridor behind him. "Stay back! We've got an injured student here, and signs of Dark magic!" He drew his wand.
Harry was grateful for Percy's words, especially since he had assumed Luna was injured and not dead, but he knew they wouldn't work. It was a group of Gryffindors that Percy was leading, not a group of Hufflepuffs.

One head, then two, popped around the corner, and then someone gasped, and Harry heard the burgeoning whisper of the message being passed back.
He knew what would happen next. He watched in detachment as Percy knelt beside Luna and cast a simple Life-Sensing Charm on her. He closed his eyes and sighed in the next moment. "She's Petrified," he said. "Not dead. Finite Incantatem!"

Luna lay there, unaffected by the spell. Harry nodded. The fading traces of Dark magic in the air argued that this was nothing as ordinary as a Body-Bind, nothing that could be undone with a simple sweep of a wand. Still, he should have tried himself. He should have thought of that.

Do you always blame yourself this much, or is this a special occasion? Sylarana demanded.

You've only lived with me for four months, Harry told her, as he waited for the inevitable confrontation. You haven't seen me in all my moods.

I've seen enough. Harry -

He didn't get to find out what she would have said, since Connor and Ron, followed by the Weasley twins, came around the corner just then. Connor halted and stared at the water and the bloody writing.

Then his eyes came back to Harry's face, and Harry let out a slow breath. If he had thought Connor was wounded earlier today, when Harry had chosen to show his Slytherin colors, then he had had no conception of pain. There was betrayal and worse than betrayal in Connor's gaze now, a kind of soul-deep horror that Harry knew he would have expressed, in a lesser form, towards anyone who had done something this heinous. But this was his brother who had done this.

You didn't do it! Sylarana was making his sleeve bulge and ripple with her dancing. Harry hoped that she wouldn't come into the open right now. The last thing that anyone needed to be reminded of was that he was not only a Parselmouth, but had a dangerous snake. Doesn't that matter to you? Don't you remember it?