Chapter 11 of 30
A talk about souls
Leo closed the book with a sigh and rubbed his eyes resting his elbows on the table. He had researched everything he could about souls and how they worked ever since Future Chris died. He wanted to know his baby boy would be safe and that he wouldn’t be affected by his other self dying. All his research had not given him much on that account since time-travel was tricky and Chris’s case was unique. But it had made him come across a lot of information that he wouldn’t have come across otherwise. Such as Horcruxes, one of the darkest kinds of magic there was. A kind of magic that explained why, when hit by the rebounding killing curse, Voldemort hadn’t completely died. He had already thought of that when Chris told him about the diary and figured the diary must have been a Horcrux. But Voldemort had to have had more than one or else the piece of his soul that wasn’t corporeal would have moved on when Chris destroyed the diary. Which if Chris’s dreams were right, he hadn’t.
The question was; how many Horcruxes were out there or was Chris all that was keeping Voldemort anchored to the world? He didn’t believe so, he thought Voldemort might have wanted to use Chris’s death to create a Horcrux and unintentionally made Chris into one. Because unfortunately, there was no denying it. It explained the dreams, why Chris was a parselmouth and the presence of another soul that Paige felt.
Chris was a Horcrux.
And Leo had no idea how to stop him from being one without destroying the vessel, Chris’s body. But he would find a way, but right now he had to think of how he’d tell Piper and the others this.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Paige asked and Leo gave a start. He hadn’t heard her coming into the library.
“Yes,” he said heavily.
“That good?” she grimaced. “I popped home to let Henry and the kids know I might take a while to come back home. Are you ready to go back?”
No he wasn’t. He’d never be, but he had to.
“So, how was dinner?” Hermione asked curiously from over Chris homework at a secluded table in the Gryffindor Common Room.
“Okay,” he shrugged extending his hand to get back his essay. “You don’t need to do that.”
Hermione swatted his hand away, “Of course I do,” she dismissed him and Chris smiled lightly, happy with his frail effort to not give her the trouble that would make the fact that he did want her to go over his homework lighter on his conscience. “So, details.”
“Dunno. They were all nice,” Chris cringed. “I kind of had to explain about first and second year because of something I let slip.”
“What?”
“The Basilisk.”
“Ouch! How did they react?”
“I expect the same way your parents reacted,” Chris said annoyed and Hermione snorted.
“I don’t tell my parents what goes on here! They’d never let me come back!”
“Oh,” Chris said surprised. “You don’t?” Hermione shook her head. “Oh well, there was a lot of pacing and cursing and Piper wanted to barge into Dumbledore’s office and explode him limb by limb.”
Hermione looked pensively, “Yes, I expect my parents would react in the same way and then withdraw me from school. Why did you say anything?”
“I thought they knew! That Remus and Sirius had told them. They seemed to know about third year.”
“I don’t think Sirius and Remus know about it anymore than they did,” Hermione shrugged.
“Of course they do,” Chris snorted not knowing the earful he was about to get from the mirror. “Anyway, other than that- er-excitement. It was nice, my aunts seemed nice, and Phoebe is going to help me with my empathy and-“ he fidgeted with one of the parchments on the table and mumbled something.
“Come again?”
“They’re going to buy me clothes.”
“About time.”
“Hermione!”
“What, those rags you wear do not constitute clothes Chris! Good for them!” she nodded satisfied. Chris heard his name being called in a muffled way and took his bag fumbling for the two-way-mirror. He took it and a very stern looking Remus said firmly:
“Go find a private place for us to talk.”
What followed next was a very stern lecture from Remus and Sirius about being reckless and endangering his life, and next time letting the adults deal with the situation.
“He was en Empath Phoebe,” Piper said sadly. They were both seated on the couch and once Piper had calmed down from her rant about Dumbledore they had started talking about Chris.
“Explains a lot. How he was able to manipulate us. He knew what we were feeling. And why he was so interested in us taking the empathy blocking potion. I thought it was to protect his emotions but I only got a whiff of his emotions once. I bet just like me he learned to block himself out to other Empaths if needed. But he probably didn’t want to feel some of our emotions anymore and blocking out is energy consuming. I rarely do it,” Phoebe winked.
“Like me hating him.”
“I was going for the more horny kind of emotions,” Phoebe tried to lighten the mood.
“I didn’t want him to know,” Piper mumbled through tears.
“You didn’t know who he was.”
“He felt that whole time how angry I was with him. How I blamed him for something that wasn’t his fault. His own mother! And when I knew he never felt how much I loved him because of that stupid potion!”
“He knew. He didn’t blame you Piper,” Phoebe pulled her into a hug. “He never did.”
“Didn’t he? Did he really know?” Piper asked worried. “One of the last things I ever said to him was that Wyatt being without Leo while I was in labor was more dangerous than him being eaten by a dinosaur. What if he thought I thought Wyatt was more important than him? What if he thinks that now, because we raised Wyatt? It wasn’t that I thought that, I was just so scared that we hadn’t saved Wyatt, that the future was still dark and I didn’t really want Chris to go there…I wanted him to stay, where I knew he was safe. But he was so determined to leave before he was born that I couldn’t tell him not to.”
“The last thing you told him was that you loved him,” Phoebe said firmly. “And he knew that and besides, no one was more determined than Chris to save Wyatt. Believe me, he must have argued with Leo himself that staying with Wyatt was more important than going with him. He did, when he sent Leo after Wyatt when he was…,” she faltered, “when Gideon had gotten Wyatt.”
Piper gave her a small grimace and nodded. She could only hope he had known. She missed that neurotic boy, she wanted him back, but at the same time she never wanted the Chris of now to ever remember his previous life. To ever have that pained look of someone who lost everything. She sighed, why couldn’t anything in their life be uncomplicated just for once? She and Phoebe stayed silent for a long time and when Leo and Paige finally came back she knew by the look in his eyes that things were about to get even more complicated.
Piper stared at Leo not wanting to believe what he just said.
“You’re wrong,” she said flatly.
“I want nothing more than to be wrong Piper. But-“
“No buts, you are wrong!” she said firmly getting up and pacing. “My son isn’t one of those Hor-whatever. He doesn’t have a piece of a murderer’s soul in him and he will not die again! Do I make myself clear?” she finished yelling at the other three who were looking at her with a mixture of pity and pain.
Leo got up and stopped her pacing by pulling her into an embrace, “You’re right. He won’t and we will find a way to save him.”
“What if we do kill him?” Paige asked and Piper turned around sharply but before she could yell Paige hastened to explain. “Listen up. I heard about that time you were sick and died and Leo brought your soul back before you could cross over. What if we did the same, except we only brought Chris’s soul back and Voldemort’s moved on.”
Phoebe looked at Paige nodding, “Yeah, yeah, what?”
Piper turned to Leo expectantly, “I was a Whitelighter-“
“Paige or Wyatt-“
“Are half-witch. They are not dead. I was, that’s why I could move around the spirit realm and guide you back.”
“What if we used a spirit? Mom, or Grams, even the Potters?” Phoebe asked.
“Or dad? He’s a Whitelighter,” Paige added.
“I’m not sure that will work,” Leo said. “I think that a big part of me being able to guide Piper back was because I could also heal and because of our bond. I don’t know if Sam would be able to guide him back. But-but maybe we can do something along those lines use a spirit that has a bond with him and the Whitelighters in our family together. We’ll have to do some research before we even try. This is very dangerous and I will not risk Chris’s life unless we are a hundred percent sure this will work. Right now that piece of soul is completely contained. It’s not affecting Chris other than giving him some abilities. It’s not possessing him. And I know Voldemort can’t die while it’s there but I won’t sacrifice Chris for that.”
“No, you’re right,” Piper nodded. “It’s too dangerous. We can’t just go at this blindly. We also need to look into other ways of getting that soul out of Chris.”
The next day, before a meeting they had with the other Heads of Schools Piper and Leo flooed to Remus and Sirius. They felt the two men not only deserved to know but they could help with the research for something in the Wizarding world. Remus’s and Sirius’s reaction was very similar to theirs. At first plain disbelief, then despair and then anger.
“He knows!” Sirius raged. “He has to! He would have come to the same conclusion when he came across that diary! He’s raising Chris as a pig for slaughter!”
“Because of the prophecy?” Leo asked.
“What prophecy?” Remus turned his head sharply to look at Leo.
“You didn’t know? That’s why the Elders asked us to protect Chris. Because there is a prophecy surrounding him and the destruction of Voldemort. I don’t know the words. I don’t even think the Elders know. They just know of the existence of one. I figured that that was why Lily and James went into hiding.”
“If they knew they never told us,” Sirius shook his head. “Dumbledore found out from an informant that Voldemort was targeting them and they went into hiding. But I always figured it was because of them. James and Lily were very active members of the Order before Chris was born. Responsible for bringing down many Death Eaters.”
“James wouldn’t have believed in a prophecy. But he would think there was a chance Voldemort did, and he wouldn’t tell us so Voldemort wouldn’t want to try and get it out from us,” Remus said looking at his hands.
“Maybe Dumbledore never told them why Voldemort was targeting them,” Piper mused.
“No he had to have had to. The only reason James backed off of the fight was because Chris was a target. We thought Chris was a target because Voldemort wanted the whole family, but if Dumbledore wanted to make sure that James would not put a foot out of line he have to have told him that he and Lily weren’t the target,” Sirius said. “or else James would have sent Lily and Chris into hiding and continue his best to try and kill the bastard who was trying to hurt his family. Hiding was just not James,” he smiled sadly. “It’s not that he wouldn’t put his family first, he would. If it was just hiding to not get involved in the war, to not be a target. He would. They already had withdrawn from the fighting since adopting Chris. They had been helping with research and funds. But with his family being the target he would have wanted to stop it, so they could live.”
Leo nodded pensively understanding James’s desire to do something. He himself had that urge when Chris was born, after Gideon almost killed Wyatt and killed future Chris, “Dumbledore must think that they’ll both end up killing each other somehow and that is why he has Chris so isolated. So ready to sacrifice himself because Chris doesn’t think he is worth the same as everyone else,” Leo said and was worried Dumbledore was right. He’d seen it before. Chris risking his own existence, giving his life because he thought Wyatt was more important. No, Leo wouldn’t have it. Dumbledore might be the war general that needs to put the whole world’s needs before the individual but he wasn’t. And to him, his family came first. He looked up resolutely and together with Piper, Sirius and Remus they planned out how they would find out how to get rid of the Horcrux and how to find out if Voldemort had more and where they were.
They decided that for now the children shouldn’t know. There was no need to burden them. They were the adults. Leo wondered if Wyatt had sensed Voldemort’s soul or if the only reason Paige noticed the extra presence was because she knew how Chris’s soul felt like, whereas Wyatt was three- years-old when Chris became a Horcrux and couldn’t possibly remember. Since Wyatt never mentioned anything he figured he was right.
“I told you, Ron has a lot of issues about being overlooked because of his brothers, and now he’s jealous,” Hermione rolled her eyes. “You just don’t understand because you don’t have- er- you weren’t raised with siblings,” Hermione corrected with a look at Wyatt who was nodding in an understanding way. They had come outside and stayed by the lake to flee from the gossiping looks and murmurs. And the mean remarks from the less nicer members of Hogwarts, namely Malfoy.
Rita Skeeter’s article had come out the previous morning and to say she embellished Chris’s silence and inflated Piper and Leo’s remarks was an understatement.
“With tears in their eyes Piper Halliwell and Harry Potter told me how they have helped each other heal from the terrible losses in their lives.”
Was just an example of what she had written. She had gone further to digging out the fact that Chris usually hung out with Hermione and made them out to be a couple. The taunting and quoting hadn’t stopped since and even Wyatt had been a victim.
“Do you just go picking up any orphan to replace your brother or just the truly pathetic ones?” Malfoy had jeered just this morning. To top that his detention with Snape the previous night had been horrible and Ron had glared at him and given him the silent treatment the whole time. As if the article had just inflated his rage even more. The only difference was that lately Ron seemed to be glaring at Wyatt too and Chris could feel jealousy and resent coming out of him. Was Ron jealous because Chris had a famous friend? Did he think Chris was seeking more fame by hanging out with Wyatt? Well Wyatt was his brother, and Ron would know that if he wasn’t so intent on being a stupid prat.
“You neither,” Chris pointed out to Hermione.
“But she’s right. I can relate to Ron,” Wyatt said.
“You were practically raised as an only child too,” Hermione snorted.
“Not in my family, no. You’re right. Because of all that happened I was basically the only child until I was about six years old. Almost six, but then,” Wyatt took a deep shuddering breath and had a pained look in his face, “She happened.”
“She?” Hermione asked.
“Yes, she’s evil!”
“Who?” Chris asked curiously.
“Prue.”
“Who’s that?” Hermione asked.
“Our cousin, Aunt Phoebe’s daughter,” Wyatt made a choking sound and then whined, “And she was a girl! My reigning days went out the window.” he made an exaggerated motion with his hand.
“Oh, stop whining,” Hermione huffed but Wyatt looked at her with wide eyes.
“You don’t understand! The Halliwells had been a long line of women. Men were just used to procreate and then discarded. Chris, our cousin Junior and I are considered anomalies. But Prue no, oh no! Finally a girl! It was like she was the first heir of the Halliwell line, and even mom cooed over her. She’s evil,” Wyatt nodded firmly.
Hermione and Chris couldn’t help it and burst out laughing at Wyatt’s pout. When they did manage to get control of their laughter Chris looked at his watch and nodded towards Wyatt to get up.
“Let’s go,” he nudged the other two and grabbed his broom and a school broom that had been resting by his side.
“Are you two sure about this?” Hermione asked.
“Of course,” Wyatt said. “It’s ten o’ clock. Mom and dad had a meeting with Dumbledore, Karkaroff and Maxime. They’ll be too busy to look out the window.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Hermione rolled her eyes as they walked towards the Quidditch pitch. “It’s dangerous.”
“He’ll fly with me first Hermione,” Chris said getting on his Firebolt. “Get on behind me Wyatt.”
Wyatt eagerly complied, “Hold tight,” Chris said and Wyatt held on to him as if they were on a motorcycle and Chris took off. Wyatt couldn’t help himself, he let out a delighted yelp as the wind started roaring through his hair and Chris went further up. He looked down and was amazed at seeing the castle and grounds from up high. He grinned widely! Oh, he so was going to try this on his own!
“So, how was your morning?” Piper asked when she met Wyatt in the halls after lunch.
“Nothing much, just playing some Quidditch with Chris and the twins,” Wyatt said evasively. The twins had seen Wyatt and Chris flying from the tower and taken their brooms down to the pitch. After Chris had instructed Wyatt on how to fly on a school broom, which had nothing on Chris’s broom, but Wyatt was a little more comfortable with it for his first time flying, and then flying around with him for a while, the twins brought a Quaffle and challenged them to a quick Quidditch game. Wyatt loved it, even though he lost the ball more than once. It was tricky to keep control of the broom and fly at the same time. But he wasn’t in Magic School’s basketball team for nothing and Chris and the twins’ regular positions didn’t involve handling the Quaffle either so they were more or less evenly matched.
Piper smiled at him, “That’s nice. It’s good to share their culture with them. Is Quidditch fun?”
“Great!” Wyatt smiled. “A little bit like basket.”
Piper nodded satisfied and Wyatt just hoped his mother didn’t kill him too much when she found out he had been on a broom. Oh, and Chris said he heard Sirius had a flying motorcycle! Wyatt wondered if Sirius would let him ride it. He gave his mother his most innocent smile.