I'm With You

The chilling laugh of Lord Voldemort seemed to be suspended in slow motion as Harry Potter gripped Cedric Diggory’s lifeless corpse and the Portkey pulled them through the nothingness.

The realization took an infinitely long amount of time when Harry reappeared in the grand Hogwarts stadium. But when it hit, the gasps and screams of thousands brought Harry to his feet again. Lupin was the first to reach him.

“Harry, what happened?” He asked frantically.

“Voldemort,” Harry choked out. “He’s back. The trophy... It was a Portkey. He- he killed Cedric!”

“Harry, you’re bleeding!” Lupin took notice to the soaking cut that tattooed Harry from his palm to his elbow.

As more people began to crowd around him, around Cedric, Harry’s thoughts felt more and more muddled by the questions that were erupting from all directions. One voice, however, managed to find him among the rest.

“Harry, it’s Malina!” Hermione Granger called. Just the sound of his love’s name powered him through the masses to where she lay, with Hermione a worried wreck standing over her.

“Just before you came back she- she... I don’t know! She collapsed! And, oh Harry, her arm! Nothing even touched her!”

Harry threw himself to his knees besides Malina’s motionless body. Her arm, just like Harry’s was cut identically and bleeding terribly. “Impossible...” He whispered.

“And Harry,” Hermione said in barely a breath- more scared than Harry had ever heard her, “look at her forehead...”

Harry pulled her dirt-covered trembling thumb over Malina’s cheek towards her forehead. He gently pushed some black, sweat-covered hair away from her forehead. The panic that shot through his body was a million times more powerful than when he saw Voldemort emerged from the cauldron in the graveyard.

On Malina’s smooth, delicate forehead was something Harry had only ever seen in the mirror- A scar, in the shaped of a lightning bolt, pointing down towards her shut eyelid.

“Harry,” said the confident voice of Dumbledore. Harry jumped, he hadn’t even realized Dumbledore was right beside him.

“What is-”

Dumbledore shook his head. “No time for questions now. You and Miss Granger get Miss Cobbe to the infirmary. I’ll send an owl to summon you to my office later.”

“But-”

“Excuse me, Harry, but I have some things that must be attended to immediately.” And with that, he whisked off in the direction of the crowd surrounding Cedric.

“But, I need-”

“Come on, Harry,” Hermione said, tugging at his arm. “Malina needs help.”

Once again, the sound of her name was enough to focus Harry to the task at hand. Together, he and Hermione carried Malina towards the sleeping castle and got her to Madame Pomfrey.

They sat in silence around her bed for quite some time. The hour had soared past midnight and then one and then two. Still, Hermione and Harry sat beside Malina. Madame Pomfrey continued to insist that there was nothing physically wrong with her besides her cut arm, which she patched up rather quickly. Only Harry could possibly imagine the pain going on inside of her- if any at all. That connection to Lord Voldemort had brought him near his death on a number of occasions. The very idea that Malina could now be in the same kind of peril... No. Harry wouldn’t think about it. It was impossible.

Hermione took a deep breath and whispered, “I’m going to go find Ron and tell him what happened. I’ll see you later then.” she placed a reassuring hand on Harry’s shoulder as she stood. “She’ll be Ok, Harry.”

Not long after Hermione’s footsteps faded into the distance, Hedwig’s majestic whiteness flew in from the open window. She landed on Harry’s outstretched arm and gave a twittering, quiet hoot in Malina’s direction. Hedwig loved her, and Malina always joked that Hedwig probably spent more time at her window instead of Harry’s. This was Dumbledore’s signal.

The walk to the Headmaster’s Office was dark and nerve-racking. Hedwig led the way as the night curled around them. Harry, torn between getting answers and staying at Malina’s bedside, limped along tiredly.

“He’s expecting you,” grumbled the old gargoyle who subsequently revealed the set of spiraling stairs leading to Dumbledore’s office. Harry watched as Hedwig flew above them with ease.

The room was dark with the unknown. Dumbledore was sitting behind his desk, pouring over an ancient, thick book from behind his half-moon glasses. Given the intensity of the night, the elderly wizard didn’t look tired at all. Just extremely contemplative.

“Ah, Mr. Potter,” he said in his normal, magical tone. “She is resting, I hope?”

“What’s wrong with her, Professor?” Harry tried to keep his voice level and calm, but it cracked with nervousness and desperation. “She has... she has...”

“Your scar?” Dumbledore finished for Harry. “And the same cut on her arm?” Harry self-consciously touched the wound on his wrist, which he had absent-mindedly let Madame Pomfrey treat. “How did you hurt your arm, Mr. Potter?”

“Th-there was a cauldron,” Harry started, folding into a chair and regaining his courage and train of thought. “The death eaters... They put Voldemort into it. And then they cut my arm and put my blood into the cauldron too. Then... well, it turned this strange mixture of red and green before boiling over and...” Harry shuttered. “Voldemort emerged. In his own body.”

“Your blood, they put it in the cauldron they used to create a body for Voldemort?”

Even now, hearing Professor Dumbledore say the Dark Lord’s name made Harry’s stomach churn. “Yes.” He answered. “Yes, that’s what happened.”

Dumbledore shut the cover of the dusty book and pushed it to the side. Deliberately, he took his long, slender fingers and folded them on his desk.

“Fascinating...” He said so quietly, Harry less heard it, but felt the breath of the whisper brush by his ear. He, once again, he to work his hardest to contain his worry for his love, half-lifeless and alone in a bed across the castle.

“Sir?”

“This truly is fascinating.” Dumbledore repeated the word. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I’m afraid the best I can do is give an educated guess.”

“Guess about what, Professor?”

“Ahh, Dark Magic, my boy. The very same that kept you alive, but has haunted you ever since.”

“I’m afraid I still don’t understand...”

Dumbledore rose. Dawn was beginning to break, Harry could tell, by the way the red phoenix Faux twittered.

“In all my years at Hogwarts, I’ve seen my share of, well... Let’s call it young love,” Dumbledore winked. “A multitude of the time these bouts of romance lead to broken hearts and the occasional ill-advised hex, but once in a blue moon I am blessed to watch true love blossom from within these sacred walls. The kind that stays with you from life to death.”

“Like who, Professor?”

Dumbledore smiled a half-smile. “Your parents certainly come to mind,” he answered. “But I must say, never have I, in my entire life, seen anything like the relationship you share with Miss Cobbe. And I’ve certainly seen a lot in my lifetime! Colors you never knew existed. Magic and spells being born and breathing all around the world. But the energy I see when your eyes connect with Miss Cobbe’s... That is truly magical.”

“She’s my everything, Sir.” Harry responded. “She’s part of me.” Dumbledore looked at Harry squarely, completely contemplative.

“Yes, Harry. I think she really is.” He whispered as she sat back into his chair. Then, he spoke with more volume. “When you were in that graveyard, they forcibly took your blood to create a body for Voldemort, am I correct?”

“Yes, Sir. Wormtail took out a knife and cut my arm. He dripped the blood into the cauldron and Voldemort emerged in his body... Crouch said, when he was still pretending to be Mad-Eye, that... that my blood coursed through Voldemort’s veins now.”

“The connection has grown stronger,” Dumbledore nodded. “You’re a part of him...”

Silence followed momentarily. Dawn began seeping in the modest window high above where Dumbledore made Harry anxious with his thoughtful expression.

“Harry, I want to suggest an idea to you But you must keep your head on. It is only an idea. We have entered a realm of magic that nobody has ever seen. Malina could be in grave peril.”

Harry gulped and nodded, there really was nothing more he felt capable of doing at this point.

“Love is an intensely powerful thing, as you know. Your mother’s love is the reason you sit before me today while Voldemort was reduced to a corpse-less spirit. That is because love isn’t just something we feel. It’s something we are. The love we have for another person composes us physically no less than our bones or our blood.”

Dumbledore paused and watched Harry intently, waiting for realization to fill the boy’s face.

“Your heart beats for Malina, Harry. Each drop of blood that flows under your skin contains her. The very blood that now, as Crouch put it, courses through Voldemort’s veins.”

“She’s a part of me and I’m a part of him.” Harry whispered to himself as everything finally connected. Professor Dumbledore had asked him to keep calm, but the panic seized him like the suffocating feeling of apparation. He sprung to his feet and clutched his wand, as if he were about to go find Voldemort himself and tear him part with his bare hands. Harry wanted to physically rip every piece of his beautiful, sweet Malina from Voldemort’s serpent-like and slimy body. “No!” Harry shouted. “No, no, no!”

“Harry, my boy, please sit down,” Dumbledore said. Instead, Harry began pacing and ranting.

“So what now? She’s connected to him just like I am? She can go into his head and feel the pain of everyone he destroys”

Dumbledore nodded slowly, “it would appear that way.”

“Does he know? Did he feel anything when it happened?”

This time, Dumbledore shook his head. “I’m afraid I do not know... As I said, all of this is just my best guess.”

“He knows.” A voice answered from behind Harry. It was Malina, looking beautifully calm in the doorway. “He certainly felt something. I don’t think he knows who I am or why I’m there, but he knows that you, Harry, and he are no longer alone.”

“Ahh, Miss Cobbe,” Dumbledore answered politely. “I hope you didn’t have to wake up alone.”

Malina smiled her proper smile, as she always did when talking to her professors, “oh no, Ron and Hermione were there. Granted, Hermione was sound asleep on Ron’s shoulders as he snored louder than a hippogriff with a head cold! But they were there.” She then turned her attention to Harry. “Madame Pomfrey said this is where I’d find you, Harry. I hope you’re feeling Ok. Didn’t mean to give you such a scare.”

“Oh, now don’t be sorry for anything Miss Cobbe. Please have a seat.” Dumbledore replied. “How is your head?”

“It’s certainly a sensation I’ve never felt before!”

The old professor chuckled, “ahh, well that is to be expected. Care for a licorice snap?”

Harry’s head whipped back and forth between them with disbelief. How on Earth were they being so calm about what was going on here?!

“Excuse me!” Harry desperately interrupted their polite banter. “Has the world gone completely mad?! Voldemort is back and Malina,” his words froze in his throat as he looked at his natural love. She looked back at him with an unreadable expression. “Malina is now just as much a target for the Dark Lord as I am! She is in grave danger and we’re talking about Ron’s snoring and licorice snaps?!”

Malina and Dumbledore exchanged a look. The elder wizard nodded, as if understanding words Malina had never spoken. She, however, stood slowly, and walked over in front of the sweating, panting, panicking Harry. Brushing her dark, disheveled hair to the side, she revealed that lightning bolt scar which defined everything Harry was afraid. Malina then moved Harry’s hair away as well, to display the identical mark.

“Harry,” she said his name in a way he had never heard it before. “I’m not afraid of the danger. That much has been evident since the moment we met. The first time I looked into these eyes, I just knew. I’d fight with you. Side by side. Until the end. This was decided long before tonight.”

“But the connection, Malina... it’s-”

“Awful? Terrifying? Painful?” Malina shook her head. “Nothing could be as agonizing as watching you go through this alone, Harry.”

Harry ran his finger over her scar. “I love you, Malina.”

“I love you too, inside and out. You are a part of me. And now, we are a part of something so much bigger then ourselves. I’m with you, my love. I’m with you.”