Supported & Torn (HP) {Book 3 of the Wild & Free Series}

18. Christmas at Grimmauld Place

Was this why Dumbledore would no longer meet my and Harry's eyes? Did he expect to see Voldemort staring out of them, afraid, perhaps, that their vivid green might turn suddenly to scarlet, with catlike slits for pupils? I remembered how the snakelike face of Voldemort had once forced itself out of the back of Professor Quirrell's head, and I ran my hand over the back of my own, wondering what it would feel like if Voldemort burst out of my skull...

I felt dirty, contaminated, as though I was carrying some deadly germ, unworthy to sit on the underground train back from the hospital with innocent, clean people whose minds and bodies were free of the taint of Voldemort... I had not merely seen the snake, I had been the snake, I knew it now...

And then a truly terrible thought occurred to me, a memory bobbing to the surface of my mind, one that made my insides writhe and squirm like serpents...
"What's he after apart from followers?"
"Stuff he can only get by stealth... like a weapon. Something he didn't have last time."

We're the weapon, I thought, and it was as though poison were pumping through my veins, chilling me, bringing me out in a sweat as I swayed with the train through the dark tunnel. Harry and I are the ones Voldemort's trying to use, that's why they've got guards around us everywhere we go, it's not for our protection, it's for other people's, only it's not working, they can't have someone on us all the time at Hogwarts... We did attack Mr. Weasley last night, it was Harry and me, Voldemort made us do it and he could be inside us, listening to our thoughts right now...

"Are you all right, Harry and Liana, dears?" whispered Mrs. Weasley, leaning across Ginny to speak to us as the train rattled along through its dark tunnel. "You don't look very well. Are you feeling sick?"

They were all watching us. We shook our heads violently and stared up at an advertisement for home insurance.

"Harry, Liana, dears, are you sure you're all right?" said Mrs. Weasley in a worried voice, as we walked around the unkempt patch of grass in the middle of Grimmauld Place. "You look ever so pale... Are you sure you slept this morning? You go upstairs to bed right now, and you can have a couple of hours' sleep before dinner, all right?"

We nodded; here was a ready-made excuse not to talk to any of the others, which was precisely what we both wanted, so when she opened the front door I proceeded straight past the troll's leg umbrella stand and up the stairs and hurried into my and Ginny's bedroom.

Here I began to pace up and down, my brain teeming and seething with questions and ever more dreadful ideas...
How had we become a snake? Perhaps we were Animagi... No, we couldn't be, we would know... perhaps Voldemort was an Animagus... Yes, I thought, that would fit, he would turn into a snake of course... and when he's possessing us, then we all transform... That still doesn't explain how come we got to London and back to our beds in the space of about five minutes, though... But then Voldemort's about the most powerful wizard in the world, apart from Dumbledore, it's probably no problem at all to him to transport people like that...
And then, with a terrible stab of panic I thought, but this is insane — if Voldemort's possessing us, we're giving him a clear view into the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix right now! He'll know who's in the Order and where Sirius is... and Harry and I have heard loads of stuff we shouldn't have, everything Sirius told us the first night we were here...

I stopped pacing and dashed out of my room. I knew what Harry and I had to do. We had to leave!

"Harry!" I said, storming into his room. He looked up and he seemed to have been pacing, too.

"We have to go," Harry told me, voicing my exact same thoughts. "It's too dangerous for us to stay here; we'll bring everyone in danger." I nodded in agreement.