MINISTRY OF MAGIC, DEPARTMENT OF MYSTERIES, DEATH CHAMBER
We open on an immense room. It is cold, dark, and mostly empty. Stone benches and high steps surround a sunken pit, twenty feet in depth, at the center of which is a stone dais. Upon the dais are two distinctly noteworthy elements. The first is a freestanding archway, primitive in appearance, like a deteriorating fossil from another age. Clinging to it, a ragged black veil that rustles slightly, as if touched by a gentle wind. Beside this, lying flat on a dull stone slab, the body of HARRY POTTER.
The room is so still, so undisturbed. It is both perfectly tranquil and exquisitely unsettling.
HARRY sits up in the darkness, breathing deeply — his exhaustion palpable, his fear overwhelming. HARRY looks around, bewildered. What is this world — and what is he within it? Pause. He puts on a pair of familiar-looking glasses and looks around the room, trying to work out where he is. HARRY sees the veil. He stares at it with disbelieving desperation. He has been here before.
THEODORE NOTT enters from off. His long, silvery beard and echoing footsteps stand out in the bleak environment. HARRY looks up, then turns left, surprised to see NOTT has emerged behind him. HARRY gets to his feet and faces the Unspeakable, who approaches nonchalantly.
HARRY (soft): Theodore Nott.
NOTT: Mister Potter.
NOTT smiles at HARRY. He steps decisively away from the veil.
You were sleeping.
HARRY (astonished): I was? I thought... perhaps...
NOTT: Dead? No. Not today.
HARRY looks at NOTT, trying to regain awareness. He realizes something.
HARRY: He's still here, Nott.
NOTT: Who's still here?
HARRY (gravely): Voldemort. I saw Voldemort. He's alive.
NOTT thinks, and then nods, accepting this.
How am I alive? Do I have... ?
HARRY touches his forehead.
NOTT: Another scar? No, you do not. The result of casting a curse is hard to determine, wouldn't you agree? (beat, he glances at the veil momentarily) Magic can be rather lawless — chaotic. I've heard it said that curses are the purest form of magic... at its most stubborn. For reasons beyond our understanding, your body absorbed the Killing Curse as easily as it would a ray of sunshine — though the sun does not generally knock one unconscious.
HARRY: But how did I survive?
NOTT: That question is why you find yourself here — now — in the Death Chamber of the Department of Mysteries. The Unspeakables have been studying you, Potter. And we have come upon a remarkable theory. We believe that your ability to survive the Killing Curse exempted you from its effects.
HARRY: Are you saying... what I think you're saying?
NOTT: Indeed. You are immune to its magic, for all time. It could have been your exchange with Voldemort as a child. Perhaps the curse you received during the Battle of Hogwarts... when the Horcrux was destroyed.
HARRY: You know about that?
NOTT (dryly): I know everything there is to know. (beat) Almost everything.
YOU ARE READING
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (The M. Clifford MOD)
Fanfiction"It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and the father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where...
