Speaking in Tongues – Chapter 5 & 6 – Celticas

Reading Time:
13 Minutes

Harry desperately wanted to be back in the old alchemmy classroom with Draco’s everything surrounding him. Instead he was standing in the portrait hole into Gryffendore and could already feel a migraine blooming from the noise of a hundred rowdy teenagers crammed into a small space, the thick smoke from the cracking fires, and the clashing house colours. The bond could only do so much to stabilise him, especially when it was stretched across the castle and hadn’t even had an hour to settle.  Gathering his Gryffendore Courage, and taking solace in the shadowed Professor [Fleurie] beside him, he stepped inside.

Ginny was the first one to see him. The fourth year sprung up from where her friends were clustered and barrelled across the room shouting his name. Her sudden movement and yelling caught everyone’s attention. His quick step back was the only reason she didn’t throw herself straight into him.

She stumbled to a halt infront of him. “Are you okay?”

“Im okay.” Ron and Hermione joined them as he answered. “Just tired.” It wasn’t even a lie. After whatever had happened with Draco when their bond had settled he had nothing left.

“Of course.” Hermione smiled at him understandingly. “We’ll see you in the morning.” His unmoving best friend walking beside him stopped the two Weasleys or anyone else from trying to stop him.

Ron tried to follow him, but Fred and George swooped him and swept him away. Chattering away about their latest invention. Harry tudged up the stairs.

= + =

Hermione was reading in the common room the next morning. She had a book open in front of her, but Harry knew she wasn’t really taking in what she was reading. She hadn’t turned the page since Harry stopped on the last step.

“Are you going to stop skulking in the shadows?” Hermione asked. Finally turning the page she looked up at him. Exactly where he was hiding. She shouldn’t have been able to see him. “Not here.” She tucked her book into her bag, grabbed his wrist and led them out of Gryffendore Tower.

They ended up in a disused classroom 

Hermione pushed Harry into one of the chairs crowded into a corner. It was obvious that the room might not have been used as a classroom in decades, but students still used it frequently. A bookcase of used textbooks and other reference materials covered one wall, and chairs were clustered around magically extended tables and under the bright windows. “How severe is your sensory overload?” Hermione asked, using the new muggle term for a sensory spike. 

Harry couldn’t help but smile at his best friend. “I’m okay. I promise ‘Mione.” For half a second after Draco had left him in the hospital wing on the first night he had considered not telling Hermione everything that was going on. Then he realised that was stupid. She was smart enough to figure it out for herself. And that was before he knew about her being able to sense him lurking in the shadows. “My guide is here at Hogwarts. We bonded last night.”

“Yes, Malfoy. I know.” She didn’t even do him the favour of pretending to be surprised. “That doesn’t mean you have found your level yet.” She raised an eyebrow at him to dare him to continue to equivocate.

“I’m okay. Last night was a bit much.” He admitted. “I know it will take some time to get back into things, but I’ll be okay. How do you know all this?”

“I have your homework from class yesterday.” She changed the topic. A stack of parchment appeared in her hands. “Lavendar got your Divination homework.”

Harry wasn’t sure if her scrunched nose was because of Divination or Lavendar. The two girls had never gotten along. “Thank you.” He would thank Lavendar himself. “Come on, I didn’t have dinner last night.” He didn’t really feel hunger in the way he should, but he knew when he was meant to eat. And he would rather be in and out of the Great Hall before the majority of the students had woken up.

The walk through the castle was filled with Hermione telling him how the other Champions had done against their Dragons and talking about the research she had done into previous Triwazard Tasks. Only two dozen students were in the Great Hall when they arrived. A Ravenclaw looked up at their entrance. Quiet attention rippled out from him. Everyone turning to look at Harry and Hermione.

Draco was at the Slytherin table with Pansy Parkinson lent against him half asleep. The two of them turned to look with their usual sneers firmly in place. Harry smirked back at them before leading Hermione to the empty Gryffendore table.

“Transfiguration first.” Hermione reminded him as she doctored their teas and he slathered butter on toast for each of them. She swapped a mug for the growing stack of toast and pulled the marmalade closer. “I think Professor McGonagall might give us a surprise test today. Lee and Oliver both told me they had one yesterday.”

Taking the hint, Harry pulled out her notes from the day before and began flicking through them. Breakfast passed in quiet conversation. Harry asking for clarification on a point she had scribbled in the margins and Hermione chidding him to eat more.

“HARRY! HERMIONE!” Ron finally caught up to them outside the Transfiguration classroom only a few minutes before class started. “Where were you two this morning? I waited for ages in the common room for you.” He lied.

It was a good one. Before he came online, Harry might have believed it. Now he could smell a current of guilt nerves under the thick scent of the other boy’s onion and garlic loaded breakfast. In self defence, Harry turned his sense of smell down as far as he could.

“I woke up early.” Harry shrugged. They all knew Hermione was an early riser. “So we went to breakfast early and then to the library. ‘Mione was helping me catch up with the work I missed yesterday.”

The suggestion of more time in the library or working on schoolwork saved them from any further questions. “Cool.” Ron said unconvincingly. “Want to go flying after class?”

It didn’t surprise Harry that Ron was pretending he hadn’t, at best, been ignoring Harry for the last six weeks. He wanted to return the behaviour, but knew it would be a bigger hassle than the satisfaction of it would be worth.

“Can’t.” That didn’t mean he had to make it easy.

“Come on mate. I’m sure whatever you have planned can be put off! The weather is great today!” Ron wheedled.

“I have an appointment.” Harry lied easily. “I can’t just put it off.”

Ron huffed in obvious disbelief. “Oh, Hey!’ His eyes lit up. “If you have something to do, I can use your broom! Deam or Seamus will come flying with me. Hey, Dean?” He called across to the other boy.

“No.” Harry interrupted before Ron could invite someone else to use Harry’s things. “I’m not comfortable lending you my broom.”

Ron’s face fell into an angry scowl and he opened his mouth to argue except the classroom door opened before he could. Harry ducked into the room and slid into a seat at the very front. Much closer to the teacher than Ron would want to sit.

Hermione took the seat next to him without saying a word.

There was a surprise test, just as Hermione had predicted. Walking out at the end of it, Harry thought he did okay. He had started to notice that the lack of the higher maths that arithmancy introduced was starting to affect his understanding of the mass conversation theories in Transfiguration.

Why hadn’t anyone told them about the links between the core classes and the various extra classes? Hermione would absolutely lend him her third year textbooks and notes if he asked.

Ron went back to ignoring him between Transfiguration and Charms. The reflected glory of Harry’s display in the First Task was not enough to overcome his unwillingness to lend him his Firebolt. If the broom didn’t mean as much to him as it did, he would be tempted to let the idiot try. He was liable to break his neck when he inevitably lost control of it.

Once again Hermione and Harry sat at the front of the class with Neville taking the third chair on their table, while Ron slumped into a table with Dean and Seamus.

“Today we will be practicing colloportus.” Flitwick began his lecture. “Wands out!” The excitable half-goblin jumped off his precarious stack of old textbooks and began wandering between the desks to gently correct their movements or pronunciation.

Harry did his best to focus in on his own work rather than allow himself to be distracted by the other students. “Colloportus.” The lock they were practicing on locked with a loud click and glowed red for a moment as the metal of the two parts fused together.

What was that?!

A quick glance around proved that Hermione was the only one who noticed.

“Accio.” Harry summoned one of the spare locks and flicked the fused one into his bag. Hoping the whole time that Flitwick was fully distracted by Sue Li’s never ending questions.

“Harry?” She whispered.

“I don’t know!” He hissed back.

She watched him with worried eyes for a minute before Flitwick came over to see how they were doing.

= + =

The rest of the day dragged on. Every time Harry looked at Hermione she was looking back at him. Her eyes worried and considering. The only reason she hadn’t asked was that Ron was hanging around. The other boy wasn’t talking to Harry. He was just there muttering to himself.

At lunch he wedged himself between Harry and Neville and then spent the meal talking around Harry to Lavendar who was sitting on Harry’s other side. Across from them, Hermione was five seconds away from murder. She wouldn’t even feel bad about it when it happened. To protect their House points, because McGonagall would absolutely dock all of the points if Hermione mained a Weasley over lunch, Harry dragged her back to the abandoned classroom she had taken him to that morning.

As they left the Great Hall, he caught Draco’s eye. Without anything else, his Guide whispered to Parkinson. He knew they would be following in a minute.

“What have you gotten into now?” Draco drawled as he sauntered through the door. His nose wrinkled at the worn furniture and crude drawings on the blackboard.

“I would ne-” Harry tried but was interrupted by Hermione’s snort of disbelief. “I didn’t – DO ANYTHING-” he glared at her when she tried to talk over him “- this time.”

They all laughed at him.

“I looked at the scroll you gave me.” Draco’s smirk died. “It’s bad.”

“What scroll?” Hermione asked at the same time.

Harry handed over the original. Draco noticed that he had trusted Hermione with the original when he hadn’t trusted him. All Harry could do was shrug at him. Harry trusted Hermione with everything.

She missed their by-play, already three inches deep into the arithmancy. Parkinson didn’t miss anything though. She watched them like they were her newest obsession.

“Is this directional?” Hermione pointed at a line of numbers and letters.

Draco glanced at it quickly. “Yes. And it is magnitudinal. The longer it flows, the stronger it is.”

“Let me keep looking at this.”

Harry could tell that she already had a good idea of what she was reading, but wanted to be sure. The distant sound of students hurrying to their next class was the only reason he didn’t push her to tell him right away.

“Tonight.” He demanded.

She agreed easily and led the way out of the quiet classroom.

CHAPTER 6

“Mr Potter.” Professor Sprout called for his attention halfway through the last class of the day. 

She waved him over when she caught his eye. Pomphrey was standing beside the herbology professor. The two women were polar opposites but still warm and comforting. The smell of fresh growing things and healthy soil clashed with the sterility of a hospital.

The disconnect was giving Harry a headache and he had to reduce his sense of smell out of self-defence.

“The specialists from the SG Foundation have arrived. They are waiting to meet with you in a room just off the Hospital Wing.” Madam Pomphrey explained. “Please gather your things and come with me.”

“Go on dear.” Professor Sprout waved him off. “Your friends can bring you your assignment. If you have any questions, my door is always open to you.”

“Thanks Professor.” Harry hurried back to his station.

Neville had already gathered up his books and bag. “I’ll finish repotting your Moly.”

“Thanks Neville. Can you get my essay back from Sprout?”

“Sure!”

It was painful how happy Neville was to be asked to do something. Guilt shrivelled something inside Harry. He wasn’t a good friend to the other boy. They had been sharing a room and classes for three and a half years and Harry realised he had never done much to build a friendship with the quiet boy.

He waved at Neville and Hermione as he hurried back across the large greenhouse. Madam Pomphrey waited for him to draw even with her before she said good bye to Professor Sprout. They walked in silence until they were one floor away from the Hospital Wing. Without his newly enhanced sensed Harry would have thought they were the only two people in the castle. Classes were still in session and everyone with a free period hidden away in the library or their common rooms.

“Things are going to change for you quickly Mr Potter.” Madam Pomphrey started. “There aren’t many magicals in the Sentinel/ Guide community. Amongst muggles about twenty-five percent of the population is either online or latent. And most latents will come online. Only ten perent of magicals are latent and maybe half of them come online.”

Harry had known incidents of Sentinels and Guides was lower in the magical world, but he hadn’t realised it was that much lower. “Why?” He asked without expecting an answer.

“We don’t really know.” She admitted.

He didn’t think she was lying to him, but she also wasn’t telling him the whole truth. They might not know but they probably very strongly suspected.

“Here we are.” Madam Pomphrey said before he could decide if he wanted to push the issue. Her knock was answered almost instantly by a tiny woman.

Did she have goblin ancestry like Professor Flitwick? He wondered.

“Hallo Poppy.” The woman’s dark eyes were bright with magic and a knowing that Harry was just starting to recognise. “Come in! Hallo, you must be Harry. Velkomst.” The room was a cozy living room. A fire crackled in the hearth with plump armchairs clustered around it. The colours were all deep blues and soft tans that was the most restful combination Harry had seen in the last two days.

“Can I make you some tea?” Satü offered. “Oh, this is my Sentinel Guivi.”

The man waved from his seat. He was only marginally bigger than Satü. But where she was dark eyed and dark haired, he was paler than Draco. “Han er så liten.” Guivi said without taking sad eyes off Harry.

A weight landed on Harry’s shoulder. Azhdaha curled his tail around Harry’s throat.

“Neither of us can talk of how small he is.” Satü laughed. “He is taller than you!” She smiled at Harry in comisseration. “Sit please.” The tea tray she had been working on floated itself onto the low coffee table between the seats. Steaming water streamed out of the kettle on the fire and into the waiting teapot.

It was only once he was seated that he realised Madam Pomphrey hadn’t come in with him. Azhdaha crawled down the front of his robes and curled up in his lap like a cat. Patting the dragon wasn’t as comforting a patting Crookshanks, but he did begin a hissing purr that settled Harry.

“Did Poppy tell you why she was calling us in?” Satü asked.

“No.”

“That’s okay. The Gavesang showed you were Kiment’aana. Only Shaman can awaken the ability to talk to the dead.” Satü explained.

“Fuck.” The swear just slipped out and he instantly flushed. Embarrassed for the foul language. “Sorry.”

They both laughed at him. “It is okay. I said something similar.”

“Meg også.” Guivi smiled cheekily.

“It might put you aside, but it also connects you to something so much bigger. A world that most people will never connect to.” Satü tried to reassure him. “You will never walk this world alone again. Even before you find your Guide.”

Harry had nothing to say. Since he was fifteen months old he had been other. For twelve hours he had thought he would find a place with people like him in the wizarding world. Except then he was other even here. The Boy Who Lived. The sideshow attraction who people always forgot was also a person.

And then maybe he would be just another Sentinel. There might not be many of them, but they were a tight knit community.

Except once again he was walking through life in the shadow of the dead.