Five

Chapter 5

1 May, 2014

The Potters' House, Godric's Hollow

"Harry!"

"Dad!"

"Draco!"

"Father!"

Voices shouted, screamed and yelled in a cacophony of sound, from Lily Luna's childish treble to Charlie Weasley's hoarse bellow, but none was as horrified as Ginny's, more anguished than Scorpius' and Narcissa's, or rang with such a sick sense of déjà vu as Ron and Hermione's. At least the latter two had at one time been rather inured to the various scrapes and calamities fate seemed to throw at Harry on a regular basis, and trusted him to take care of himself. Still, to have it happen today, after years of relative peace and quiet, and amongst family and friends like this, was disconcerting in the extreme. The rest of the assembled guests reacted according to temperament, or to the degree of understanding they were capable of.

Ginny was standing closest to Harry and Malfoy and instinctively reached out to her husband. But as soon as she came into contact with the dome surrounding the two men, it flared with a brilliant light, making her cry out with shock and stagger back a few steps. Wands were being drawn all around; Hermione and Ron rushed forward, preparing to do whatever they could, but a harsh command from Bill froze them in their tracks.

"Stop! Don't interfere!"

Bill moved to within a couple of feet to the translucent bubble, wand at the ready. "Let me scan this first."

"We can't just stand here and do nothing," Ron protested, his face blanched nearly white underneath his freckles. "That's Harry in there!"

"Thanks for stating the obvious, Ron." Ignoring his brother, Bill began to cast.

"Your brother is the expert in a situation like this, Mr. Weasley," Narcissa Malfoy said, a barely-suppressed tremor in her cultured voice. "Out of all of us, he would be the most qualified to deal with whatever is holding Harry and my son." Despite being visibly upset, her wand was steady and held in readiness even as she clutched Scorpius to her side.

Ron looked mutinous, but Arthur stepped up and laid a restraining hand on his arm. "They're right, son," he murmured. "We don't know what this shield is, or what it might do if we disturb it."

Bill was moving around the bubble, a frown on his scarred face as every diagnostic spell he could think of was either deflected or showed no useful result. "I can't make heads or tails of this," he muttered. "It's old magic, very old, and doesn't seem hostile, but more than that I can't tell."

Hermione had started her own investigation from farther away after making sure that Molly, Andromeda and the other adults were looking after the children. The youngest had begun to cry, the oldest were pale with fright, and Scorpius seemed nearly petrified as he stared at his motionless father:

"It almost looks like Priori Incantatem," she said, "but I don't think it is."

"Definitely not." Bill shook his head. "For one, it's emanating from the chalice, not a wand – and for another, the signature has some characteristics that don't match up." Frustrated, he dispelled his diagnostics and returned his wand to its holster. "Where does that cup come from, anyway?"

"The Black family vault," Narcissa said after a moment's pause. "Harry, Andi and I retrieved it the other day."

"It's an heirloom," Andromeda added. "I'm no expert on antiques, but to me the workmanship looked as if it was fourteenth century; how long it's been in the family's possession, I couldn't say."

"The Blacks were always a Dark family," Hermione murmured, sending an apologetic glance at the sisters. "We found so many cursed objects at Grimmauld Place ... Could the cup be another one?"

"Absolutely not." Andromeda's reply was adamant, and echoed simultaneously by Narcissa.

"How can you be sure?" Ron spat, his ears already beginning to turn red with anger as he whirled around to stare at Mrs Malfoy. "I'll grant that you probably didn't mean to hurt Harry, but how could you have let him use that ... that thing if you didn't know it was safe?"

"Because we all believed that it was," Andromeda snapped. "Do you honestly think that Harry, of all people, would have brought a dangerous artefact into his house where people he loved ‒ his children! ‒ might get hurt?"

"No. No, he wouldn't have," Ginny said with conviction.

"Okay, but why has it trapped Harry and Malfoy, though?" Neville asked. "I mean, I've never heard or seen anything like this, and you must admit, it doesn't look good."

"I wish I knew," Mrs Malfoy sighed, casting a quick glance at her grandson who now stood anxiously poised at the edge of the group of children Molly had herded some distance away. Scorpius had been taught to stay well away from manifestations of unknown magic and was too well-mannered to disobey an adult, anyway, but his small, pointy face was even paler than usual, and tension radiated from every line of his body.

Momentarily reassured that the boy was safe, Narcissa wearily pressed a hand against her temple. "Our grandfather kept the chest with the chalice in his office as long as I can remember – and no matter what beliefs my family may or may not have espoused in the past, they wouldn't have willingly endangered the children of the House," she said shakily. "Not that we were ever allowed to touch the heirlooms except under supervision, but it definitely wasn't warded or locked away."

"For what it's worth, Sirius' mother hated the chalice and banned it to the vault as soon as Arcturus had died," Andromeda added. "As I told Harry when we picked it up. Also, all three of us agreed that whatever magic the cup is imbued with ‒ and it positively oozed with it, I'll say that much ‒ is definitely benevolent."

"Did any of you touch it before you took it from the vault?" Bill wanted to know. "Because the old high-security vaults may have protections on them that fizzle out once certain items are removed from Gringotts ..."

"No. No, we didn't," Andromeda stated firmly.

"We just took the chest the cup was stored in," Narcissa said. "And that felt perfectly ordinary – I should know, because it was I who found it."

Hermione made a frustrated sound. "So nobody touched the artefact itself before today?"

"I did."

Ginny's quiet statement had the same effect as a well-cast Silencio. Everybody shut up immediately and turned towards her.

"You did? When, and why?" several people asked at once, their voices once more overlapping and tinged with a mixture of incredulity, shock and curiosity. Not surprisingly, it was Molly Weasley who gained the upper hand and rushed towards her daughter to gather her in a protective embrace.

"Merlin, Ginny, how could you? Haven't you learned not to handle unknown artefacts, especially ones from –" she scolded, but broke off when she caught sight of Narcissa's involuntary grimace and blushed despite herself. "Yes, well, I'm sorry, Narcissa; maybe it wasn't your fault, and I don't believe you'd harm your son, not after you lied to V-Voldemort for him and saved Harry, but ... can you blame me for thinking ..." she rallied.

"Calm down, Mum," Ginny sighed, disengaging herself from Molly's arms. She slowly walked towards the abandoned chairs and sank into one that offered her an unhindered view of Harry and Draco. They still stood frozen in the same position they'd been in when the dome had sprung up – facing each other, left hands joined, the chalice held above them and the athame's blade half-plunged into the water swirling in the cup.

"Harry showed it to me when he brought it home, and it looked so grubby ... all I did was clean it last night. And Andi and Mrs Malfoy are right, it did have a palpable magical aura about it, but it felt absolutely non-threatening."

"If you say so," Bill grumbled, scowling that he couldn't have examined the cup himself before it'd been used in the ritual. He hated having to rely on someone else's perceptions of ancient artefacts. "What kind of spells did you use?" he wanted to know next. "Maybe they interfered with the cup's magic?"

"It could have been something in the cleaning solution," Molly, ever practical, put forth, interrupting her oldest son's ruminations. "When I was still a newlywed, I nearly managed to ruin a couple of silver candlesticks myself because they reacted badly to the Bundimun secretion in Mrs Scower's Magical Mess Remover."

"Or maybe whatever you used contained dragon's blood," Charlie spoke up unexpectedly. "I know it's sometimes used as a cleaning agent, but even a drop or two too many can cause significant damage. Ruddy Dumbledore should never have listed that among the twelve uses," he added in a disgruntled mumble.

Ginny produced a rather weak chuckle, surprising everyone. "Actually, I didn't use any magic on the chalice."

"How did you get it so shiny, then?" Andromeda asked. "Down in the vault, the metal seemed quite dull, even if we only saw it by the light of one torch."

"That's why I decided to give it a good rubdown." Ginny's eyes flicked briefly towards her sister-in-law. "I used an old Muggle remedy," she admitted. "Hermione mentioned it once; I was out of Mrs Scower's, so I thought why not give it a try – and it worked!"

"Muggle?!? Impossible, that's..." Bill started, only to be interrupted again, this time by his father.

"Ginny, Muggles often use comicles to clean," Arthur said with a frown. "Maybe those did something to the chalice?"

"Chemicals is just another word for ingredients or components, Arthur," Hermione corrected gently. "Or rather, their properties – the way they react with each other and to certain conditions. Chemistry, as the Muggle science dealing with that kind of thing is properly called, is a bit like a mixture of Alchemy and Potions." She shook her head when Mr Weasley's eyes lit up. "Please, Arthur, not now; I'll gladly explain at another time. Now, Ginny – what exactly did you use to polish the cup?" There lurked a twinkle in her eyes that indicated she already knew, and it was answered by a slight, if strained smile from Ginny.

"Toothpaste, of course."

If the situation hadn't been so serious, the reactions and expressions on the assembled witches' and wizards' faces would've been priceless and equally exasperating and amusing to Hermione. As it was, she quickly explained why toothpaste – something even wizards were familiar with – could be and frequently was used by Muggles to polish delicate metal items, like jewellery ... and that it was highly unlikely that such a mundane thing would have influenced a magical artefact in any way.

"Well, in that case, I'm at my wits' end," Bill sighed as he slumped his shoulders. "There's no curse I can detect, nothing and nobody has apparently done anything to the chalice that could've caused it to act like this... so I guess all we can do is wait."

Decidedly not happy, Ron pursed his lips. "For how long, though?"

"However long it takes." Bill grimaced ruefully. "For what it's worth, in my experience even the most powerful heirlooms can't sustain energies like that dome indefinitely. I know it's not what any of you want to hear," he added, letting his eyes sweep across the assembled family and friends, "but it's the only way. We'll give it some time, and see what happens."

"I'm afraid Mr Weasley is correct," Narcissa concurred after exchanging looks with Andromeda, Molly and Arthur as the oldest Purebloods present. Even if neither the Weasleys nor the Prewetts put as much stock in the old teachings as the Blacks and Malfoys, they still knew about most of them ‒ and when to step back and let events run their course.

"Meanwhile, may I suggest we complete the ritual as best we can without Draco and Harry? We don't want any stray energies that may still be lingering about to interfere with the magic of the chalice when it dissipates."

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