Chapter 15: Resurgam 1/2

DISCLAIMER: Is the one character who takes the threats and dangers of the magical world seriously treated as a joke by everyone else in the potterverse? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

CHAPTER 15

"It is not given to many to revisit their youth." Dumbledore's actually smiling at me, the arse. Like he'll be doing me a favour.

I laugh out loud at that. "If it weren't for the dire need, I wouldn't be. I'm going to be subjecting myself to several years of teenage dramatics and going through puberty a second time, as if once wasn't bloody awful enough. You may have to turn a blind eye to me sneaking out every so often with a bottle of aging potion just for respite's sake."

-oOo-

It takes another scolding from Madame Flamel to get Dumbledore out of the house, still in the boiler suit. She'd got Harry to sleep despite all the excitement and she was not for letting Dumbledore go up and disturb him. It may be centuries since she was last a mother, but it's like riding a bike. Dumbledore apparates from the driveway, giving the muggleworthiness spells what I hope is their last workout of the day. There are plenty of people out and about even this close to sunset, so a skinny old wizard in a too-small boilersuit, disapparating in plain sight, is a bit of a challenge to the magic. It doesn't surprise me to learn that he burnt a few of the rune-parchments out altogether. Annoying: those things aren't cheap.

"That was less trouble than I was expecting," Nicolas observes as I close the front door and breathe a huge sigh of relief. From the kitchen I can hear the kettle coming to a boil, so we join Perenelle there for tea.

"Home field advantage," I remark.

"Oh?" They both bid me go on in near-perfect unison. What six centuries of marriage will do for you, that.

"Harry's mother invoked an absolute monster of a really old protective spell on this house before she died, and it's almost certainly got the standard 'confusion and misfortune to the enemy' bit in it. At a guess, Dumbledore didn't realise he wasn't exempt from that, even though he monkeyed with it when he dropped Harry off here. His decision-making will have been compromised as soon as he settled an intention to attack here, as well as his luck turning sour."

The Flamels share a look. Quite a long one, giving me quite the excluded feeling as they have a silent conversation.

It's Madame Flamel who speaks first. "Defensor Patriae, were I to venture a guess," she says, "how much analysis have you done?"

"I'll get the file," I tell her, stepping into the dining room to pick it up, I'd left it out because I had actually meant to ask about this, "I ran a prism survey and got some images."

The Flamels look over my photographs of the dining room wall with the rainbow projected on it. "Yes," Perenelle says at length, "Defensor Patriae. The signature is quite distinctive."

"Defender of the Homeland?" I translate, "All I could figure out is that it's a really big piece of magic that got worked on for something like eight or nine hundred years. Some sort of blood magic, possible human sacrifice involved, very strong defense and protection elements."

She nods along with the thumbnail summary of my analysis, "Well, Sam Hartlib's the nearest thing to an expert nowadays. He was one of the last to have a hand in it. He ensorcelled Charles Stuart's execution scaffold to add his blood and life to the magic. Sam was on the Parliamentary side of the civil war, you see, and when they sentenced the king to death he took a view of 'waste not, want not' about the whole thing even though he didn't approve of the proceeding."

I'm a bit taken aback. "Do I understand correctly? The magical defence of the realm is powered by the sacrifice of royal blood?"

She gives me the kind of bright and brittle smile that puts a polite face on a distasteful topic. "I understand so, yes. I seem to recall there were some peers of the realm and knights put to death as well, but royalty is the most powerful charge. Charles Stuart's death allowed Sam to seal it for all time, if memory serves. Alfred the Great is reputed to have commissioned the first working on the site of what is now the Tower, and may have given his life to protect his realm. The histories are, sorry to say, obscure as all records of Alfred were heavily edited when Secrecy came in, what with him being England's first sorceror-king. Most of what became the College were in Egypt or Byzantium at the time, so we don't know either. Using the deaths of traitors came later, as I understand it."

I'm more than mildly surprised at how much sense it makes. "Resulting in every attempt at invasion since being a complete shambles of poor planning and incompetent execution?" The Armada, Napoleon, Operation Sealion: none of them got even close to the shores of Blighty, and all were marked by spectacular cockups. "Do we know what else can be done with that magic? Should I be asking Dr. Hartlib?"

"Probably," Pernelle says, "but what I'm wondering is how Lily Potter managed to call on it. It's supposed to be something only the oath-sworn and officers of the king should be able to do."

I take a moment. It's not so much a magical question as a legal question, and I'm the only one of us present that has ever passed exams in that. "Would the magic adapt to the current political reality?" I ask.

Perenelle takes a moment to think. "It's rather likely, yes. It's a magic of the realm, so what the realm currently is should govern and guide it."

"Hmm. So under current conditions 'officers' means officers appointed under authority of the crown in parliament. Which would mean constables, justices of the peace, officers of the armed forces, possibly other ranks in same, most of the civil service above some grade we'd have to experiment to find, officers of the court, and probably a whole lot of other categories I can't think of off the cuff. She wasn't likely to be any of those, unless she got a special constable's warrant we don't know about. Leaves 'oath-sworn'. How formal do you have to be, do you think?" There's something I've seen in Petunia's memories that represents an amusing possibility.

Nicolas takes this one, "We're talking about oaths in the sight of magic. Sincerity would be the most important thing."

"So a promise to serve the queen made by a seven-year-old little girl, in all childlike innocence, would do the job?"

"Yes, quite well I should think, at least until adult cynicism erodes it, but who administers oaths to children that young?"

"The Brownie Guides. If it's the same as the Cub Scout Promise I made, it starts with a promise to do one's duty to God and the Queen." Amusing. Dumbledore would never have figured this out in a million years.

Nicolas chuckles. "I will be circulating photographs of Sam Hartlib's face when he hears about this."

Perenelle is more measured. "What the world lost when that girl was murdered," she says, wistfully, "to discover one of the old magics and use its own terms to trick it into making her sister's house a protected place? Brilliant."

She's not wrong. Contemplating what she did, the pure brazen audacity of it, I think I'm actually falling in love.

"It would require the post be manned by loyalists, if not actual patriots, though," Nicolas says when he gets himself back under control. "The magic wouldn't protect rootless cosmopolitans like Perenelle and I, for instance. Or most magicals, they think the Queen is just another muggle and the muggle parts of the realm don't count. Which is why she couldn't use it wherever she was hiding from this Riddle character, her husband was a pureblood wizard, no?"

"It'd work for me, though," I say, "Just about, at any rate, I'm a bit of a My Country Right Or Left sort of patriot, which is more in the spirit than the letter, I suspect. I imagine the real driver in this house is Vernon. Bless him, he's a small-minded jingoistic xenophobe, and fiercely proud of it, and those will have been the values the magic was first worked with. I'm going to guess that Lily didn't actually know how powerful the magic she was calling on was, or she'd have moved her husband out for the duration, possibly moved in with her sister since there was a reconciliation in its early stages at the time, and let Riddle fry himself on a magic he had no idea of, and unlikely to know about."

Both Flamels are nodding along.

I really want to tell Dumbledore about this. The look on his face, when he learns what he meddled with in his ignorance? It's going to be one for the ages.

I can't help but feel I'm not making some important connection when it comes to thinking about this magic, though. It nags at me, but inspiration doesn't come.

-oOo-

The week after the Summer Solstice - and the ritual and subsequent Bollocking Of Dumbledore - I make a breakthrough with Skriker. I get him to go for walkies around Little Whinging. I'm probably going to scare seven shades of shit out of anyone who can see me, but like all dogs he's a good listener and I've done a lot of good thinking while walking the dogs I've owned.

"Shame it took so long to get you around to doing this, lad," I tell him, "since there's a chance I won't be able to come any more."

He gives me a doggy huff.

"Well, of course you managed to be a good boy for centuries without my help, but company can't hurt, can it?"

He perks up and points for a moment. There's a loud squeal of brakes and a bang from somewhere up the road, in the direction Skriker is indicating. There's a signed accident blackspot on the A-road that Little Whinging is on, and from the sounds it just claimed another victim. He relaxes after a moment. Whatever happened, everyone's going to survive it.

"See?" I say, "if that had been fatal I could have gone along. Done any talking you needed doing. Obviously that couldn't be a regular thing, but you've been such a good listener and I want to do something about feeling so obliged."

Skriker leans in to the scritches I give him.

"Yes, I know, being a Good Boy is its own reward. We still give good boys treats, and since you can't eat treats, well …"

He lopes off to have a good sniff at a lamppost. Checking his social media, kind of thing.

"Well, I'm going to have to be off soon. I'm going to wear my new body for the first time at the break of day and Dr. Hartlib and the Flamels are coming to see. It wouldn't do not to be there to greet them."

I steer us back to the churchyard and leave Skriker with much reassurance that he is a good boy, yes he is.

Dr. Hartlib and the Flamels apparate with a gentle pop into the back garden at Number Four a little after twenty to five in the morning. Vernon's still in bed and I've remembered to keep my occlumency down, so they can see me. After a round of good mornings we go into the garage and I turn the light on for the first time in a week. I note that the temperature controller is showing 37.6 degrees and about half the fan heaters are running. "Don't need those any more," I say, and hit the kill switch. The room won't lose more than half a degree in the ten minutes between now and sunrise. We take the time to check everything over. While the garage has been sealed up tighter than a duck's arse for the last week, that doesn't rule out screwy magical effects.

"Are we waiting for anything in particular?" Hartlib asks.

"No," I say, "the process is all but run. I could go straight in, but the optimum moment to take my first breath is sunrise after seven nights of growth. While I'm sure there's plenty of slack in the procedure I devised with all your help, I want to take no chances with the first one I've ever done."

"First one anyone has ever done," Nicolas Flamel avers, "while this was always a theoretical possibility, it was a solution in search of a problem up until now."

"If I'm right about the technologies of the next couple of decades," I say, "it might well be proof-of-concept for growing transplant organs in vitro. It'll require a lot of technical workarounds for the bits we did with magic, of course, but I shouldn't be too terribly surprised if this can be done in mundane labs by the middle of the 21st century. The first actual cloned mammal is only ten years or so away, after all."

Before we can get into the interesting speculations, Perenelle has her watch out and forestalls us. "One minute," she says, "how do you want to do this?"

"Well, if you undo the seals - they're simple bow knots, just pull an end - and lift the lid smartly as I go in, I should be fine from there. I could probably do it myself from the inside, but I'd very much like to go with certainly being able to take a first breath that isn't whatever outgassing the inside of the vessel has filled up with."

There's definitely a body in there, of a suitable size to be a child somewhat larger than Harry. It's blurred by condensation all over the inside, so no details are visible. It's a healthy-looking pink, though, which is a good sign. We're about to get a whole lot of data about the interaction of epigenetics and ritual magic, and it looks like Harry's genes are able to express as a rather larger kid than the average-height-but-skinny you get if you carry them in a normal womb for nine months and then keep the result in a cupboard under the stairs and feed it scraps for three and a half years.

Perenelle counts me down. "Three, two, one, go!"

Dead on the moment, I enter my new home. I blink sleep crusted eyes open and immediately screw them shut again. It's bright in here.

I feel dizzy, light headed, slightly floaty. Oh yeah. Breathe, you fuckin' idiot. I hear the lid lift off with a hiss. Low pressure, must've used up some of the oxygen from the air in here. Possibly oxygenate the mix next time? Install a gas lock?

I gulp in as big a breath as I can manage, hold, release slowly. I'm laying in lukewarm slurried sausage, and trying to do breathing exercises. Also bare-arse naked in company, I helpfully remind myself. I feel like I've run an hour of wind sprints. Not enough oxygen in the haemoglobin. A dozen breaths and the feeling fades. Which is cool, apparently I've been born fit. Through squinted eyes I look at my thumbnails, squeezing them to get a rough guess at my blood saturation. They come up pink with gratifying quickness.

I sit up, shaky as a newborn lamb.

"Well, come on, lad, say something," Hartlib barks out.

"Something," I choke out through a dry throat, to a round of chuckles. "Could murder a cup of tea."

"Come on, up you get," Perenelle says, in that brisk tone that I'm pretty sure they have courses in at NHS teaching hospitals, "and let's give you a once-over."

"Right," I say, "muscle tone's a bit rubbish. Give me a minute. There's towels and a dressing-gown on top of the freezer there, could someone be an absolute star…?" I'm slurring my words just a bit, having to talk slowly and deliberately. No muscle memory anywhere. I'm going to be weaving and swaying like I'm six pints deep for a few days.

It takes me a couple of minutes to get on my feet, and Perenelle comes through like a champ helping me get the goop wiped off. I'm going to need a shower still - preferably before what's still on me goes rancid - but I'm fit to be seen quite quickly.

While it's going on I'm vaguely aware of Hartlib - "Call me Sam, lad, I was present at your birth after all," - and Nicolas murmuring into pocket dictaphones and performing analytical spells. I think they both get samples of what remains in the sarcophagus, and I direct them to samples of the raw stuff in the freezer. They probably won't do much by way of analysis, I've been lucky to get as much of their time as I have, but even a superficial critique of my work from these two is worth its weight in gold.

Perenelle gets a quick but efficient medical done, I get poked and prodded in all the usual places and my vitals recorded along with the results of her own analytical and diagnostic spells.

"Well," she says at length after borrowing her husband's dictaphone to rattle off a couple of minutes of medical jargon, "you're an outstandingly healthy six year old. Surprising amount of muscle development, muscle tone is a bit below par, certainly, but far better than you really should have on literally your first day up and about, and unless I misremember my growth charts, you're big enough that you could pass for eight."

I've been looking myself over during all of this, and yes, I'm probably going to be the biggest, most jacked six-year old for miles around, if not in all England. Perfect eyesight into the bargain, which is a bit of a bother since I rather like giving people hard stares over the top of my spectacles. "Harry," I sigh, putting two and two together. "What do you care to bet he got enthusiastic about how he expected me to turn out when he was filling that bottle of words?"

That gets me a round of chuckles.

"Magically speaking he's a powerhouse much as all bright children are," Nicolas opines, "and you can't say you weren't warned. I sent you those monographs for a reason."

"I'm not complaining," I remark, "although I was hoping to come out at least looking unremarkable. It's not like possession, either. There was a whisp of what might be developing consciousness in here, but it evaporated when I took up residence. I feel … connected."

"Ownership is important," Sam tells me. "You bought all the raw materials and did all the making yourself, and young Harry, I should imagine, wouldn't have dreamed of treating any of his contributions as less than whole-hearted gifts. From what Perenelle tells me, he's a sweet child."

Perenelle nods and smiles along with that assessment. She rather took to little Harry last week, and I suspect he's in for at least birthday cards from her. I'm pleased to see it: I'd trade a dozen fairy godmothers for an alchemist nana. "He's a little treasure," she says.

"He is that," I say, "and it does suggest that if I do this for someone else a formal transfer of ownership will be an important part of the process. I was expecting to be basically possessing an unensouled body, but I rather think I'm fully at home here." It doesn't augur well for my ability to keep spooking about at night, unfortunately. I may have to go back to the churchyard in the flesh and see if I can still see Skriker.

"Speaking of being at home," Nicolas chimes in, "you mentioned tea as practically the first thing you said when you sat up. I rather think I could stand a cup myself, these early starts are no joke at my age."

After we've had refreshments and a nice long chat about how the procedure went and what lessons might be learned, they decline to remain to greet the Dursleys when they get up. While they're all from times when the occasional good leathering was considered a vital part of childrearing, they're actually a good deal more disapproving of the kind of emotional abuse the Dursleys were handing out than most modern folks would be.

When I pass comment on that, I learn that it's because Obscurials are a thing. Not by that name, though, nor likely to kill the child. "The point," Perenelle tells me, "is that magic proceeds from the soul, mind and heart, and wounds thereto pervert the magic in ways terrible to behold. Monsters are born in the imagination of suffering children. Had little Harry's torment gone on much longer, something terrible might well have woken in him."

"Monsters from the Id," I murmur, although I'm confident Harry would have managed, he did in the books and movies after all. I'm pretty sure the Dursleys would have slacked off somewhat as the years went on. What I saw of Petunia's behaviour was nastier than what appears in the books, but as Harry got older and learned to do things to her standards she would likely have gone easier on him. And, bluntly, Harry may well have been tough enough to cope anyway. Some people can take the kind of emotional damage that makes basket cases of the rest of us and come out no more than a bit quirky.

All three of the alchemists present get my reference though, active in the scientific (and therefore nerd) community as they are. Sam's the one to remark on it, "I'm pretty sure someone involved with that movie had seen what could happen, or had heard stories. There was an incident in New York in the 20s, which was never adequately covered up. Another, shortly after, in Paris, that Nicolas was present for, was kept better concealed largely because Grindelwald and the Thule lunatics were getting going then."

I'm pretty sure he's talking about the events of the Fantastic Beasts movies, but I'll have to do some research to figure out how well the films told the stories. From everything I've seen so far, I suspect the answer is 'not very'.

"Obviously," Nicolas continues, "there were reports back then about Grindelwald trying the deliberate creation of such monsters as weapons of war."

"Not that we didn't know the boy was a bad hat from the faculty at Durmstrang. We've blackballed a couple of his known associates from the College since then," Sam adds, and I'm not slow to make the connection with Dumbledore's history with the Invisible College, "but even the accidental creation of such a thing is disgusting. It's part of why I, for one, am willing to excuse what you did to these people." He gestures to take in the whole house.

I shrug, rather revelling in the fact that I can. "I worked with the capabilities I had. I'm pretty sure they know the score now, are slightly better people even, so I'll be able to use less ethically-questionable violence going forward. They'll be able to choose of their own free will between decent behaviour and being, say, electrocuted." I open my hand and make sparks crackle between my fingers and my thumb. Turns out transfiguring charges on air particles is quite easy, and for party tricks like this, doesn't even require a wand. Lightning from clear skies, or even something as simple as a taser shot, is a way off yet. The important thing, though, is that this is the first test of magic in my new body. Result: all in working order. Better than the physical side, although I can feel an improvement in even the half hour since I first sat up.

That gets me a round of chuckles, and a bit of a discussion of the magic involved going. It's about seven when they all step outside - as etiquette requires - to disapparate.

-oOo-

It's half past seven by the time I get out of the shower and dressed - everything I bought in advance is small on me, so there's shopping to come - and still early for getting the boys up. I was about to see if Petunia and Vernon were ready to get up so we could have a discussion about how we were going forward, but as soon as I step out on the landing I can hear how they've chosen to celebrate Vernon's liberty; I knew Petunia was quite pleased with how Vernon's health-and-fitness programme was turning out and the looks she was giving his body were making me a bit uncomfortable toward the end, there. Yeah, not interrupting that.

Which leaves me with the thing I'm decidedly nervous about. Harry was as excited as hell to see me in my new body - he helped make it after all - and it took considerable persuasion to get him to go to bed at all last night. Dudley picked up on it and we had to tell him there was a new person coming and some big news in the morning. Which means a bit of a Talk with that young man, and probably having to look in to getting the Dursleys registered as Knowledgeable Muggles. Petunia probably is already, but nobody at the ministry knows that Vernon and Dudley are living with an underage wizard.

I'm woolgathering. It's nearly eight by the time I go in to Harry's room. He's not awake yet, I doubt he got to sleep at any sensible hour last night, and he's half off his bed in classic little-kid sprawl mode. Easiest way to get him awake is to try and tuck him in and sure enough, a couple of minutes after I get him straightened up he stirs. After few moments of rubbing-of-eyes and blinking, I hand him his glasses and sit on the edge of his bed.

He puts his glasses on and blinks the sleep out of his eyes. "Mal?" he says, and there's that flash of unconscious legilimency; Harry has internalised that the person he sees isn't necessarily the person he's talking to, and his magic has figured out how to just know. A quick peek tells me he doesn't know he's doing it. I'm pleased with the change from baseline Harry, in a world that includes polyjuice and possession it's a damn' handy knack to have.

"Yep. Since sunrise this morning, Harry. Madame Perenelle said to say hi."

"MAL!" He yells and leaps in for a hug and immediately starts crying. And giggling. And hiccuping and trying to say absolutely everything at once. Comes time to master the Patronus Charm, this moment will feature. For both of us.

I lean in to the hug and resign myself to being thoroughly limpeted by the little man for a while. It's a good thing he wished me as big and strong as he did, because if I was his size? I'd be flattened at this point.

I'm letting him just get it all out of his system when I hear Dudley come in. "'Ere, geroffim!" he yells, "you're 'urtin' Harry! Gerroff!"

Sir Dudley's spurs start jingling in earnest, and he grabs my shirt and cocks a fist to wallop me.

Harry, fortunately, is quick to talk him down. "No! Don't hit him! Calm down, Dudley, it's Mal, I told you he was gonna be here all real today!"

I look at Harry with a cocked eyebrow, and he immediately goes a bit sheepish. "I told Dudley you used to be a ghost, an' you were telling his dad how to do magic to make you real."

Dudley's frowning. He lets go of my shirt and steps back. "Thought that was a joke. Magic's not real, 'cept on the telly."

I give him a grin. "Well, that's what everyone thinks," I tell him. "Have a sit down, and we'll let you in on the secret."

Dudley goes all wide-eyed.

Once I've got all three of us sat cross-legged on the bed, Harry leads off with "Mal can do magic, only it's dead secret."

"Mal's just a kid, though?" Dudley's confused. Which is better than his other emotion, angry.

"I'm sort of a kid and sort of not," I tell him. "I used to be a ghost, but I helped your Dad and Harry to do special magic to make me real again. And magic is real, look!" I hold up a hand and do the Light of Re.

"Cor!"

"Brilliant!"

It's the first time I've demonstrated that spell to either of them.

"Can I learn to do that?" There's a hunger on Dudley's face, and if it were possible for him to learn magic I suspect his reluctance to do schoolwork would be spit on a hot stove in the face of that desire.

"Not that one," I tell him, "Sorry. I can only do that because I used to be a ghost. Harry might, because his mum and dad were magic. Your mum's only a bit magic so you can't do spells. Which is a bit rubbish, I know, but you've still got magic in the family with Harry and me here."

"You're family? Like a cousin or something?"

"Sort of. It's complicated, don't worry about it. I'm a grown-up who can turn into a kid with magic, and I'm here to help Harry with his magic, but I reckon we can be friends. We can play footy and stuff, right?"

"Right!" Dudley understands footy, and is looking forward to rugger. Attempts to get him alongside cricket have proven fruitless, alas. Which is a shame, he's got quite a lot of focus for sports, he'd probably be pretty good.