What Shakes The Elephant

What Shakes The Elephant

Chapter 7 – Double Dare

Harry groggily rubbed lingering sleep from his eyes and checked the time next to the bed. He had a brief heart attack when he read ten thirty a.m. on the clock but quickly realized that it was Saturday and that he did not have to be in to work. Taking a few moments to calm his heart rate and slow his breathing, wishing that he hadn’t been so foolish.

There was a dull throb in his head as he sat up and put on his glasses. The room was empty and the house was relatively quiet. He got up and got into the shower to wash off the sleep and residues of the alcohol. Harry let the hot water run over him and exhaled deeply.

He felt jittery. He had slept for long enough but didn’t feel rested. It seemed to him that the entire night he had spent asleep, he had been running a marathon after someone. Towards someone.

Harry shook his head and rubbed his eyes. The images of the previous night suddenly flooded his mind and he felt a searing sensation in his chest when he pictured the smiling Malfoy discussing his work.

It had been so awkward and yet so natural. Harry couldn’t fathom the reasons behind this confusion, let alone begin to process the surreal experience. He was just pleased that it seemed to be working out more easily. He hoped that he would be able to learn to understand Draco Malfoy more fully so that, at the very least, he could actively support his son.

Harry got out of the shower, dried off, dressed and headed towards the kitchen. Ginny was bustling behind the counter, preparing a meal for Lily who was sitting in a chair much too large for her, playing with some old wizard chess pieces. Kicking her feet wildly in the air as she assaulted the castle with her queen, Lily looked up with bright eyes to welcome her father.

“Daddy!” she squealed happily. “Sleepy-head! Come play with me!”

Harry smiled and kissed his daughter on the forehead before walking over to his wife. Ginny turned around, her face rather flushed from the heat of the meal she was preparing, and gave him a soft kiss.

“Morning there, starshine,” she whispered to him. She gave him a smile and turned back to her cooking.

“Morning, Gin,” he replied happily. Harry stretched awkwardly and groaned from the pull on his muscles. “I haven’t slept until ten thirty in ages.”

“You haven’t been out until four in the morning in ages,” Ginny remarked, an almost imperceptible note of displeasure in her voice.

“Four??” Harry exclaimed. “No, there’s no way. It couldn’t have been that late. When I left Three Broomsticks it was only two!”

Ginny turned back around, her eyes questioning. She held a wooden spoon with some unidentifiable sauce splattered across it in one hand.

“Harry, I was awake when you came home,” she told him. “And it was four. You must have misread your watch.”

Harry frowned. He hated pointless arguments.

“No, Gin,” he told her. “I didn’t check it wrong. It was two –” he said, looking back at the watch. His words stopped dead on the air, however, as his eyes rested on the face of the watch and he realized that it had stopped. Something sunk in his heart. This had been the watch that Mrs. Weasley had given him for his seventeenth birthday. It had belonged to her brother and had made Harry feel more like the family than he ever had before.

“What is it?” Ginny asked, noticing his crestfallen look.

“My watch stopped,” he said simply but the words were heavy to him, falling through the air like cannonballs and leaving craters around him.

“What?” Ginny said, walking over to him to check the watch herself as though she didn’t believe him. “That’s not possible. These watches don’t just stop.”

“Well it did,” Harry repeated, running his fingertips over the face and willing it back to life. “I’ll bring it into Diagon Alley tomorrow. Maybe they can fix it.”

“Best go today instead,” she told him, moving back to her simmering pots. “I don’t know why it would do that. Those things run on magic.”

Harry set his watch down on the table in front of him and took a seat next to his daughter. He ruffled her hair for a moment.

“What kind of magic?” he asked absently, making faces to entertain Lily.

“Well, I’m not sure actually,” she admitted. “What does it matter?”

“I was just curious,” Harry answered her. “I’ll just ask when I got get it fixed.”

His wife made a noise of acceptance and set out three plates for them of spaghetti. She sat down, huffing from the effort that the meal had taken and watched Lily play in her noodles with her fingers for a moment before smirking and starting on her own food.

“So how was your little meeting last night?” she asked him with mild contempt. The smugness in her voice told him that she firmly believed that he was going to recant on his plans and defences, and go on about how Malfoy was a horrible person.

“Quite good, actually,” he answered. “It was much more enjoyable than I expected. Same old Malfoy, really, but he’s grown a lot I think.”

“Nineteen years can do that to you,” Ginny remarked, twirling the spaghetti around her fork. “Are you satisfied now?”

Harry shifted in his seat and shoved some of the food into his mouth while trying to wipe his daughter’s face clean of the splattering sauce.

“Well, not exactly,” he said quietly. “We’re meeting again next Friday.”

Ginny dropped her fork with a hollow clang. Harry looked up calmly, hoping to avoid another row.

“What? Again??” she demanded in disbelief. “What for?”

“Friendships don’t happen overnight, Gin,” Harry went on to explain as he helped Lily finish her plate.

“Who said anything about being friends with him?” Ginny was not pleased. She stood up from the table and began removing the plates though he clearly was not finished.

“Well, I think I remember mentioning –” Harry began but he was cut short.

“No, you said you were going to reconcile with him in order to maintain civility,” she corrected harshly. “Get to know him in order to understand him. For Albus’ sake.” She emphasized every word that she could in the last two sentences, clearly mocking his logic. Harry gave her a hard look.

“Ginny,” he told her quietly. “I am doing this for our son.” But was that true? Was it only for Albus? “I am doing it for all of us. There is no reason for us to keep up old feuds anymore. In fact, feuds like that are what brought about the war in the first place, don’t you remember?”

“Feuds, fine,” Ginny replied more calmly. “But that doesn’t go to say that you should become best mates with your once loathed enemy.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Harry said evenly. “But I’ve no intention of becoming best mates with him. And I never loathed him. I disliked him greatly… and perhaps I’ve claimed to hate him, but never loathed.”

“I think your memory is going in your old age, Harry Potter,” she told him quietly. “But if you want to consort with the likes of Draco Malfoy, then be my guest. But if you bring back any of his elitist ideas then I’ll have to skin you.”

Harry laughed and shook his head. Ginny washed the plates and he kissed her again before picking up his watch from the table to bring it in to Diagon Alley, but he stopped before the fireplace.

There was something off about his wife. Her skin was paler than usual and her lips were a little blue. Harry froze and cocked a brow, wondering why he hadn’t noticed before.

“Gin, are you alright?” he asked before leaving. She turned to him and forced a smile.

“I’m fine, Harry,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“You look pale,” he whispered, moving closer to her. She waved it off.

“I just didn’t sleep much last night,” she explained. “If you want me to look better, don’t stay out so late.”

Harry smiled guiltily and nodded to her. He stepped into the Floo and soon appeared in Flourish and Blott’s. He stared at the sign in the window and smiled briefly. It advertised the impending release of Hermione’s books.

He was pleased that he could contribute to something so meaningful. He walked out of the shop and into the wizard jewellers just down the street.

“Hello?” he asked, looking around the shop. It was small and dark, though the light from the window reflected off of the silver and gold ornaments, reminding Harry of a cavern full of hidden treasures.

And then it briefly reminded him of a completely different cave, full of horrors. He was forced to physically shake himself of the memory when the little old man walked in.

“Yes?” he asked in a wheezy voice. He wore thick, round glasses that reminded Harry of bottle bottoms. They magnified his eyes to the point of bug-like appearance and he was thin and wispy. “How can I help you today?”

“I need to get my watch fixed,” Harry told him, holding out the old watch. “It has stopped.”

The man took it from him and held it up to his eyes, examining it closely and then he cocked a wiry eyebrow and made a thoughtful noise.

“Very strange,” he said quietly to himself. “Where did you get this watch?”

“My mother-in-law gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday,” he explained. “It belonged to her brother before me.”

The man listened intently before examining the back of it where there was a small dent. He held it up to his ear and when no perceptible sound came, he tapped the end of his wand to it. There was a little green spark that emit from the tip and the fizzled out.

“Very strange indeed,” he muttered.

“Can you fix it?” Harry asked, feeling mildly alarmed. The man looked up.

“Do you know how these watches work?” he asked simply. Harry shook his head.

“I know they run on magic, but –” He suddenly felt very much as though he was back in school.

“Do you know what type of magic?” he asked anxiously.

“Well, no, I don’t,” Harry replied, trying not to get annoyed. The man looked from side to side and searched around as though he was afraid someone would overhear. Then he motioned for Harry to follow him to the back of the shop. Harry did so, feeling remarkably like he did when he was on the hunt for the Horcruxes.

“Mr. Potter,” the man said, though Harry didn’t need to ask how he recognized him. “Watches like these are not made anymore. Traditions change like the weather in the wizarding world and it has been very well near a century since the last watch of this nature was produced.”

“What does that mean?” Harry asked, remembering now why he was happy to have left school. It had been enjoyable and free but he did not appreciate being uninformed.

“You know that it is customary to give a watch like this as a gift for coming of age,” he said more than asked. “But the watched we produce now run differently. The new watches run off of a perpetual motion spell that takes its energy from human heat. When you wear the watch, you give it power to run. It runs all through the night when you put it down because you have charged it all day long.”

“So how did the old ones run?” Harry asked, not wanting to seem rude but feeling wholly uninterested in the history of watch magic. The man’s eyes glinted.

“There are those who would greatly disagree with wearing a watch like this one anymore,” he told him. “These watches were created for pureblooded families a century or more ago. They were made with only pureblood family members in mind and never awarded to wizards of mixed descent or muggle birth.”

“Well that’s unfair,” he stated bluntly before he could stop himself. The wizard nodded.

“Indeed it is now,” he agreed. “But it was not very long ago that muggleborns and half-bloods were still outnumbered by purebloods.”

Harry studied the man and wondered where he was going with this.

“So what does this have to do with anything?” he asked shortly.

“A watch like this one was designed to run off of pureblood magic,” he explained. “Its power ties in directly to the sustaining magic of a pureblooded line, which is why it shouldn’t have stopped as long as that pureblooded line survives.”

Harry suddenly became more interested. He thought on the words for a long time and tried hard to understand what that meant. And then it hit him like a sac of bricks.

“So the watch dies when the pureblood line dies??” he asked in alarm. The man nodded sadly but Harry shook his head. That didn’t make sense. “But the Weasleys are still alive.”

“Your mother-in-law,” he began slowly. “Was not a Weasley when she was born, was she?”

Harry froze in fear. Molly Weasley was a Prewett before she was a Weasley. And both of her brothers had died before her.

“She was a Prewett,” he whispered breathily. “But her children are living…”

“Her children are born Weasleys,” he added further, hoping that Harry would catch on quickly enough. “The watch sustains only for those born into the name.”

Harry’s breath hitched and his heart stopped. If the watch had stopped then…

“Mrs. Weasley,” he gasped, bolting from the shop.

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A/N: Going to spread out the posts a little bit. I’ll be posting the next chapter later on tonight. Hope you liked it!

You don’t get a full sense of what Harry is feeling in regards to the first meeting, only because he really hasn’t figured it out either. Hopefully in the next few chapters you’ll see more of both of them. And… err… I think that’s all I have to say.

Thanks for the reviews and support and lovely words! It means a lot! *love*