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Chapter 16: Fifteen

The night air raised goosebumps on what bare skin it found on Assistant's face and neck, beneath the hood, as he stood gazing up at the leafy canopy - or what he could see of it lit dimly from below by candles along the path: there was no moon to see by. He had only the vivid orange glow of flames to guide his way through the rites when the time came.

And, as he thought of that, it did: the resonating peal of a large bell pierced the unnatural quiet of the forest and lingered, curling among the tall, straight trunks of old trees like the mist gathered about his bare feet. Assistant stepped down onto the sand of the path and began his wandering way in contemplative silence, aware only distantly of the ones who walked ahead of him, for his mind was far and away.

This is a horcrux, Assistant: a cursed artifact containing the slightest fragment of my living soul. So Sir had said, and then, Here - hold it, and he had laid the thing in Harry's cupped hands as though he trusted him not to do anything to it. Him! Harry-

No. It had been him, Assistant, hadn't it, and Sir had only been amused by his faint protest, heartbeat thunderous in his chest - Should I be holding this, Sir?

Ahead, the path was intersected by a wide, shallow pool; each figure cast aside their robes to wade through its clear water, which at its center would submerge the whole of them, and at the far shore don a simpler drape of black for the rest of the night. By unspoken arrangement, Assistant was the last in line.

The Dark Lord had smiled, slinging his arm about Assistant's shoulders. Do not worry, my dear Assistant, he'd assured him, it is not so fragile as it seems. Focus instead on how it feels in your hands. Harry had bitten his lip, nervous, thumbed over the emeralds inlaid in an S upon the locket's surface. It was cold in his hands, refusing to warm from his skin, and he had noticed now his attention was brought to it that the sensation was not unlike being submerged to the wrists in-

Water, Harry had realized, astonished. It feels like water. Albeit not the same as Assistant felt now, white silk left behind as he slipped into the glossy black surface of the pool. Where this water was warm around him, a streetside puddle after a day in sunlight, the locket had been a bone-deep chill same as the ocean Harry and Dumbledore had swum through to the Cave last year. And when the Dark Lord replaced the horcrux in its box, to Harry's relief, that was not like water, did not cling to his skin in droplets as he reached the farther shore: it was dry.

It was dry, and the splash of non-water when Crouch was killed was dry, and Harry had realized - that was a soul?

Thirteen steps, fourteen, and the path through the woods ended at a clearing wreathed in flame, and Assistant was dry, the damp left upon his skin steamed away. He made his rounds about the clearing, three widdershins, three deasil; by the last, he was parched, sticky where his sweat had left only salt behind, and wishing he could go back to the pool again - no matter the parallels of its black surface and that of the lake in the cave, of his thirst now and Dumbledore's then.

There would be wine ahead, he knew; a cup to drink from that bore no curse, an audience warm and alive and peaceful. This place was really nothing like the cave had been. So Assistant composed himself, and passed beneath the stone arch to the final stage, smiling beneath the hood at the celebrants he saw ahead.

He had seen this scenery in daylight earlier, on Sir's viewer special: a portion of Malfoy Manor's gardens set aside for just this spell. The wall of shadow bordering the final space was hedge, the carpet of moss beneath his feet a vibrant contrast between deep green and nearly-white, with flat stones along the sides of the rectangular space for those who watched to sit. It was all dark now, as everything was, when Narcissa beckoned Assistant forward to kneel before the bowl of wine, that he might receive the same blessing as those before him.