Harry Potter and the Deeper Sight

A Harry Potter Fan Fiction
© 2006–2013 by gsteemso

Prologue


In the hall outside Hogwarts’ main library, the few students who happened to be passing by were startled by what sounded like a major fight, erupting violently behind the ancient doors. Just as they were trying to decide whether to go fetch help or go in to help, the noise coalesced into a single outraged cry from Madam Pince:

“PEEVES!!”

The onlisteners immediately responded to years of bitter experience and made themselves scarce, lest either the castle’s dreaded poltergeist or the equally intimidating librarian transfer their attentions to a new target. Moments later, the doors slammed open into the now-empty corridor and the cackling Peeves shot off into the distance, with nasty-looking spells from the infuriated librarian’s wand leaving scorch marks on the walls at his heels. With one last venomous glare in the direction the spook had fled, Madam Pince (adorned with an impressive coating of the rare glues and pastes she used for magical bookbinding) closed the doors as firmly as she could without slamming them. “ ‘Loosen me up,’ indeed… I’ll loosen HIM up…” she growled as she returned to her office.

Peeves, on the other hand, was in a wonderful humour. So far today he’d dropped wet or sticky stuff on seven different people — both, in the librarian’s case — and it wasn’t even near lunch time yet! Not that he could eat, of course, but Peeves’ world revolved around bringing chaos and petty vandalism to the rest of the castle’s populace, so he was well aware of the daily habits of both the living and the dead.

On a whim, he wandered over to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom to see what the new professor would do when confronted with The Magnificence That Was Peeves. So far he’d gotten a slightly different entertaining reaction from each and every new occupant of the cursed teaching position; to be sure, the ones that were good at their jobs occasionally made things awkward for him, but since most of them in recent years had needed to rather embellish their CVs to get the post, he wouldn’t have worried much about it even if he were inclined to.

Peeves got even happier as he approached the sounds of chaos and screaming students. It sounded like they were already having fun in there! He always liked joining in when people were already in the right frame of mind (namely, “panicked”). Ahead of him, the Defence classroom door rattled in its frame as something small rebounded solidly off the other side, and the poltergeist heard a strangely familiar high-pitched chittering noise, coupled with the rattling of dozens of stiff little wings in use. Puzzled, he pondered how to get a look at the action without spoiling things by letting whatever was loose in there escape. The point was rendered moot as the door burst open, releasing a flood of distraught second-years and a few…

“…Cornie pixieses? That’s it?” Peeves was honestly surprised, and rather let down. The screaming students had fled so quickly, they hadn’t even noticed him! Looking through the now wide-open door, the poltergeist was just in time to see the Rotter Potter and his little friends back into one another, trying ineffectually to fend off their tiny blue assailants with their arms. On the far side of the little group from where Peeves was, a tall shape with multicoloured ink and at least one violently disgruntled pixie tangled in its hair unfolded from under the teacher’s desk.

“Capital, capital, just nip them back into their cage on your way out, won’t you? Good lads!” the sparkle-toothed Gilderoy Lockhart said easily to the incredulous children, making good his escape from the classroom before they could answer. Peeves was greatly entertained to see the pixie trapped in the man’s ink-soaked hair still thrashing furiously as he left, and making liberal use of its claws into the bargain, to judge by the faint tearing noises from his scalp. Now this was entertainment, and he didn’t even need to help it along!

Unfortunately for Lockhart, Peeves had found a new interest in life.


“Hear that, Hermione? Lockhart thinks you’re a good lad!”

Ron was forced to dodge the pixies even more desperately, as Hermione answered him by Banishing several of them into their cage by way of ricochets off his head. Harry wisely kept his thoughts to himself, hurriedly Petrifying as many as he could to keep them out of her immediate reach.


Gilderoy Lockhart, darling of the media and owner of what he’d often heard was a truly dazzling smile, slumped wearily into his office chair, barely sparing a happy glance for the hundreds of wizarding publicity shots of himself papering every vertical surface. “Gilderoy, old boy, you’ve gotten ahead of yourself!” he decided. “I’ll have to start a bit slower, get them caught up a little before we leap headlong into hands-on examples. Can’t expect mere children to keep up with me straight off!”

He didn’t notice the office door pulling open a crack, or the eager poltergeist staring through the gap at ceiling level.

“But what do I do with the other example I brought in for them? I need to dispose of the dratted creatures somehow,” Lockhart mused, staring intently at an ordinary-looking but heavily reinforced crate in the corner. Occasionally it jolted a bit, as though the contents were moving very fast and rebounding randomly off the sides, though you couldn’t tell by listening because of the silencing charm. “Can’t just get rid of them, I had them shipped in all the way from Germany, and I’ve got too much fan mail to answer to spend all my time feeding the things! …Feeding things… Didn’t the Headmaster say something about a gamekeeper? That’s right, it was that incredibly large and hairy man. He’ll certainly never get into Witch Weekly looking like that… Yes, maybe I should offer the poor fellow some fashion advice, and in return he can look after the wretched Gefplümpterschen for me.” Feeling reinvigorated, Lockhart sprang up and strode away out the door to suit action to words… as soon as he stopped by his rooms and freshened up a bit, of course.

Peeves made sure to stealthily drop a big handful of dust in the inky mess on Lockhart’s head as the man passed below, but forewent making more noticeable fun of him in favour of checking out his mystery crate. Peeves had never heard of a Gefplümptersch, but it sounded like it would be very entertaining to watch a few of them in action. The crate looked easy enough to open; now, where best to release the creatures within? Peeves floated upside down in a “The Thinker” pose and mulled the problem over. It wouldn’t do to rush things and end up with substandard entertainment, after all.

“I know it! Silly willy book lady needs more partying, Peeves thinks.” All those books were far too orderly, which had to be a sign of some sort of obsessive disorder and plainly wouldn’t do at all. Well, there was a simple answer to that… Peeves reached “up” towards the floor and snatched the crate, then zoomed off through the door and headed back towards Pince’s domain. He made sure to bounce the crate off plenty of walls, suits of armour and the odd luckless student on the way; it would be embarrassing to try and release the Gefplümpterschen, only to find out they’d gone to sleep or something while being carried across the castle.

On arrival at the Dread Portal beyond which Madam Pince ruled with an iron fist, known to everyone who wasn’t a student as the doorway to the school library, Peeves encountered a setback — apparently, the crotchety librarian had set up an actual ward against him! Peeves was impressed — due to the erratic physical nature of poltergeists, no one in Hogwarts had managed that trick in nearly 250 years.

It wouldn’t achieve much, though. Peeves floated into a dark corner, setting the crate of Gefplümpterschen behind a convenient suit of armour (which gave Peeves a puzzled look from its empty helmet and shuffled uneasily, with a quiet noise like a cutlery drawer being shaken), and settled down to wait.

A few minutes later, just as Peeves was finishing up a nice “Kick me!” note for the back of the nervous suit of armour, his patience was rewarded. Approaching from the other side of the warded doorway was a trio of second-year students, the house colours on their robes glinting silver and green. As they drew up to the doors, they paused to hold a brief, muttered conversation. It sounded like the short, poncy blond one, who for some inexplicable reason put Peeves in mind of a ferret, was issuing orders to the two big stupid ones. Peeves didn’t care, as long as it meant they wouldn’t look behind them on their way through the door. Crouching down and hugging the crate to his chest — not an easy task, considering its size, which was about two feet to a side — he skulked over behind the stupid one on the left, and cheerfully followed the trio through the doors, closely enough on their heels to fool the anti-poltergeist ward.

Once inside, Peeves carried the crate smoothly away down the first dark, grimoire-lined aisle the group passed, and zipped up to ceiling height once he was certain he was in the clear. He cast about until he spotted the librarian, shelving books in the aisle next to the Restricted Section, and sneaked carefully over to the next aisle away from the Restricted Section’s partition wall. He shook the crate violently for about 30 seconds, the better to rile up the contents, then undid all the latches and hurled the whole mess over the row of shelving that stood between himself and Pince.

It hit with a loud crash, mingled with a startled shriek from the librarian and a loud splintering noise. Drifting quickly upwards, Peeves peered down over the top of the shelving unit, looking forward to finding out what a Gefplümptersch looked like. He was surprised to see that the crate had smashed partway through the partition that separated the Restricted Section from the rest of the library, spilling small blurry shapes into the aisles on both sides of the barrier. “Huh. Ol’ Peevsy is not knowing own strength.”

Pince, who by this point had recovered enough to stand up and get out her wand, looked up sharply at these words. “PEEVES?! How in Merlin’s name did you get in here again? GET BACK HERE!” She chased him away through the stacks, grimly firing spells as she ran. She was using a creative selection of nasty hexes and curses that would have impressed Professor Flitwick, who was known to have once been a champion duellist.

Behind them, temporarily forgotten, the small blurry figures of the Gefplümpterschen spread unchecked into odd corners, their uncomplicated little minds seeking safety after all the jostling and jarring they’d recently endured. After a few minutes, they had spread to the whole library, both inside and out of the Restricted Section, and were calming down enough to realize that there was a veritable cornucopia of edible goodness all around them. Faint sounds of munching began to rise from the darkest corners of the huge room…


Five minutes earlier:

Draco Malfoy looked casually back and forth past the hulking (for preteens, anyway) shapes of Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. He couldn’t see or hear anyone. The Biography section was generally good for that, barring the odd Ravenclaw with eclectic taste in bedtime reading or the occasional pair of upper-year students seeking a private place to snog. (The latter rarely came to the library, in well-founded fear of Pince’s wrath, but Malfoy had observed that ‘common sense’ and ‘snogging’ were seldom found together. He was grateful he wasn’t old enough to have to worry about all that nonsense yet.)

“Right. Let’s go,” he ordered. The three immediately began casting spells as quietly as they could and still have them work, stopping occasionally to look around themselves nervously. They were just finishing up when they heard a loud crash and Madam Pince shouting at someone on the other side of the library, followed shortly by the sounds of spellfire and a vigorous pursuit of some sort, which disappeared through the entrance within ninety seconds. Malfoy didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and quickly adjusted his plans to capitalize on this new opportunity. “Take all these spells down again, and then make yourselves scarce. I’m going to go check out the Restricted Section,” he ordered.

Leaving his two unimpressive henchmen to dismantle the distraction he had originally planned, Malfoy hurried around the perimeter of the library to the site of the initial commotion. He wasn’t worried about being noticed, as everyone else in the room had clustered around the library entrance to watch Pince’s war with whoever had been stupid enough to get on her bad side, and were talking loudly in excitement. Reaching the site of the disturbance, Malfoy was just in time to see the end of the day’s little drama.

The Gefplümpterschen fed on decaying organic matter in nature, and were now finding well-aged books to be absolutely delicious, particularly the mediæval ones made of parchment. Unfortunately for those who were now eating a substantial percentage of the Restricted Section, the spells that protected the books against theft and unauthorized access had not been designed to be ingested. With a rather alarming sizzling noise, the books began to violently explode, hurling fragments of shelf, half-eaten books, and shredded lumps of luckless Gefplümptersch in all directions.

Malfoy ducked a lethal shard of shelf, eyes wide with shock, and was just turning to flee the continuing explosions when a thin, mostly intact volume with ornate Gothic lettering on its age-blackened cover smacked him in the side of the head. “Ow!” Grabbing it, on the premise that any book from the Restricted Section would have to have something interesting in it, he quickly took to his heels, hiding the book in his bag as he went.


The ruckus caused by the Gefplümpterschen had taken the entire faculty a full day and a half to resolve, due in no small part to the fact that only Lockhart knew where the crate had come from, and he was keeping quiet about it. By the time November came around, the whole perplexing incident had faded into student legend, and in any case had been eclipsed by Filch’s cat, Mrs. Norris, mysteriously getting petrified during the Hallowe’en feast on Saturday.

Wednesday morning, Harry Potter made his way through the castle towards the Great Hall. He was looking forward to breakfast with his friends, who’d gone ahead while he looked for his Charms homework — it had been under the bristly end of his broomstick — when he suddenly heard a muttered incantation behind him. He grabbed frantically for his wand and started to turn around, but was too late. Everything went blindingly polychromatic, and his last coherent thought before losing consciousness was puzzlement about where all the blackness had gone.


END PROLOGUE

Sat. 2013/02/09: Minor amendments

Harry Potter and the Deeper Sight

A Harry Potter Fan Fiction
© 2006–2013 by gsteemso

Chapter One


Harry groaned, and became aware again. One question rose to immediate prominence, before even “Where am I?” — why was it so bright in here? Wait a moment, he thought, puzzled. Aren’t my eyes closed? He opened one experimentally, and vaguely made out a ceiling — apparently he was lying on his back — but it was almost completely relegated to irrelevance by the same all-pervading, shifting flow of transparent colours he’d seen with his eyes closed.

“All right, that’s… weird,” he muttered in perplexity, blinking experimentally. While it was still almost painfully bright, he was starting to get somewhat inured to the glare, if only because there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. He had a feeling he’d be needing a headache potion if it kept up for long, though.

Belatedly, he began his normal waking routine, and started to cast about for his glasses. Ah, there they are— He froze. He’d just done that without needing to move his head. How did he know they were behind him? Slowly, almost fearfully, he rolled over to face the other way. Sure enough, there was a bedside table, with a familiar blur sitting on top. He reached out with an unsteady hand to gather them, and carefully inspected them. There was more of that odd glow to the frame, right where the left arm attached to the lens. Harry blinked in surprise, out of futile habit, as he realized he could somehow tell that the glow went all the way through the material.

On very close inspection, the peculiar luminescence looked like a fantastically complex weave of glowing threads… holding the frame together? Harry’s brow furrowed in thought. Isn’t that where Hermione fixed them last year? But that would mean… no, that was crazy. People didn’t just start to see magic!

Slipping the glasses on to his face, Harry saw that he was apparently lying in a bed in the hospital wing. After being stuck here for several days in July after that whole mess with the Philosopher’s Stone, he had no trouble recognizing the bland, whitewashed, stone walls even through the complex, flowing plurality of layered colours that filled the air and clung to every surface in the room. He sat up, and was startled when a loose weave of the same intangible threads around the bed convulsed at his motion, sending a tiny, focussed pulse off behind him somewhere.

The sheer amount of information flooding into his mind, even through otherwise solid objects and from directions he wasn’t looking, was all but overwhelming, but Harry was still able to pick out a sense of something approaching from the direction of Madam Pomfrey’s office, apparently in response to the mysterious pulse. It was by far the most complex impression he’d received yet, and he grimaced and squeezed shut his eyes as the office door suddenly opened to reveal the bustling mediwitch. Normally he would have welcomed the sight, as it might indicate his impending release from this drab confinement, but the older witch was — for lack of a better word — radiating so much…

“Well, you’ve given us a good scare, Mr. Potter— Gracious, child, whatever is the matter?” Madam Pomfrey was shocked to see her presence apparently affecting him like a continuous chain of small blasting curses, more strongly as she approached him. Whipping out her wand — and noting that he flinched away from it as though it were blistering hot and shrieking in agony — she began to cast a diagnostic charm, but halted in alarm when the boy gave his own agonized scream through clenched teeth and slumped back in the bed, unconscious again.

“Well. That was… odd.” Since, as a quick test charm verified, it didn’t seem to be harming him in his inert state, she continued casting diagnostic spells; but there were no new insights to be had from that avenue. The apparent hypersensitivity to her presence was a helpful clue, though. After turning the past few minutes over in her mind, she decided that there was no question — Harry Potter had somehow acquired an extreme sensitivity to magic, and from what few cases she’d read about in Amusing Ailments You Won’t See Twice (which was what passed for a medical journal in the Wizarding world), probably to all the more usual senses as well.

She hurried back to her office to Floo the Headmaster. She would need help with this one.


Dumbledore, Pomfrey, Snape, and McGonagall were gathered in Dumbledore’s office, arguing over the best course of treatment for the Boy-Who-Was-Unconscious, when Pomfrey’s monitoring ward over the hospital wing tripped — apparently he was awake once more. She was just bustling for the Floo, the others at her heels, when the wards went off a second time; two very short people had just entered from the corridor. Judging by the rather advanced unlocking spell that had been used, it was probably Miss Granger and the youngest Mr. Weasley sneaking in to see their friend, AGAIN.

“Oh, honestly!” she fussed, as she grabbed a pinch of Floo Powder and flipped it into the Headmaster’s fireplace. “Don’t know why we don’t just install a revolving door…” If this kept up she would have to start using the heavy-duty bars and wards that normally only came out when the school’s defences were locked down.

Dumbledore and McGonagall had a hard time keeping a straight face until the grumbling matron had disappeared into the green flames; Snape, of course, looked like he’d swallowed a lemon and forgotten to not chew it. One by one, they filed into the Floo after her, emerging to find — with some surprise — that Pomfrey had stopped at the door out to the treatment hall and was squinting intently through the gap at the children on the other side. “Poppy, what—?” began Dumbledore, but she held up a peremptory hand for silence, and whispered, “They’re talking to him and it’s not overwhelming him. Children have less magic!”

“Aaahh. Carry on.”


Harry returned his attention to his friends, relieved that the group of painfully intense adults (including an apparent near-supernova that was probably the Headmaster) were going to keep a minimally excruciating distance, at least for now.

“Glad to see you awake, mate,” Ron was muttering cheerfully. It still felt like his friend was shouting at him through a bullhorn while the pair of them radiated energy like large bonfires, but after their first joyous greetings had seen him frantically wrapping his pillow around his ears while cowering, wincing and emitting a pained squeak, they’d had the sense to be as quiet as possible.

“Everyone’s been so worried,” agreed Hermione. “Do you remember what happened to you? The class found you just lying in the corridor after Charms, and when Professor McGonagall talked to the Fat Lady, Parvati heard her say you must have been out there all morning!”

Harry frowned in concentration. “Someone cursed me from behind, but the incantation was so quiet I’ve no idea who it was,” he confessed, annoyed with himself. If only he’d been paying more attention… “Everything’s so ridiculously BRIGHT, even when my eyes are closed, and people are so much more intense still that I blacked out when Madam Pomfrey got close. It hurt just being near her!”

The tone and texture of the sensations blasting him from his friends immediately changed sharply, and they both took a large step backwards, looking chagrined.

Harry gave them a grateful smile. “You two aren’t as, um, fiery as the adults all seem to be, but that’s still a lot easier. Thanks.”

“So you’re hypersensitive to light and sound? And people, apparently. That’s weird. Maybe it’s body heat?” Hermione had a new puzzle to work out, and as a bonus, solving it would help one of her best friends. If she was REALLY lucky she might even get house points out of it! Her smile got a bit brighter. “Have you noticed anything else, no matter how small?”

“This is going to sound as weird as that whole thing with the evil voice that no one else can hear, but… I’d swear I’m seeing magic!”

Whatever his friends had been expecting, that wasn’t it. Ron was momentarily speechless — how do you even answer something like that? — and Hermione’s suddenly wider eyes were flicking intently back and forth, unseeing, as she worked through the implications in her mind.

“That would explain why we’re not as, er, glaringly bright as Madam Pomfrey,” she mused, “our magic is a lot weaker at our age. We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, though. How did you arrive at that conclusion?”

Harry explained what he’d seen in his glasses, and held them up to demonstrate. He could at least tell vaguely what was around him even without them, now, though it was rather wearing to sort through the continuous barrage of overwhelming sensations. “See, isn’t this where you fixed them last year?” he asked, pointing at a specific part of the frame.

“Yes, it was. All right, so you’re seeing magic. Anything else? Does everything smell too strong, for example?” She didn’t notice Ron, beside her, suddenly look worried and discreetly shuffle a bit further back.

“Uh, no. Thank goodness. Even with magic to clean it, it still smells of hospital in here.” Seeing Ron look subtly relieved, Harry politely pretended not to notice the sudden calming of the feel he exuded. Actually, that was probably important… “Hermione, is there a word for, um, a kind of fog of impressions that wraps tightly around people? Everyone I’ve seen so far has got one, all different, and they seem to change depending on what the person is thinking and feeling. It’s like everyone has their own weather and I’m seeing it from space like the weather satellites on the telly.”

“Sounds like an aura,” suggested Ron, skipping over the unfamiliar Muggle reference with the ease of long practice. “I think there are spells you can use to see them, and see magic too actually, a lot like what you’re telling us but not as overwhelming. It’s called Mage Sight. We can write to ask Bill. Being a curse breaker, he ought to know.”

“That would really help, Ron!” Hermione beamed at him.

“Crap, the Professors are coming in!” hissed Harry abruptly, cocking his head towards the door to Pomfrey’s office. It didn’t escape Ron’s and Hermione’s notice that he had neither put his glasses back on, nor actually looked in that direction, when he said it.

“Oh, no, we’re not supposed to be in here! And, language, Harry,” Hermione hissed, frantically looking around as though something improbably helpful, like Harry’s invisibility cloak, would suddenly pop up if she looked hard enough.

“Sorry. Relax, they’ve been watching us since right after you got here. I think they liked that you could talk to me without it knocking me out.”

“Oh, no! What if they give us a detention, or worse, take house points?” Hermione started nervously chewing on her knuckles, her imagination running away with her. Beside her, Ron swallowed loudly and set his jaw. He supportively stepped a bit closer to her and stared fatalistically at the opening door.

The first one through it was the intimidatingly stern-faced mediwitch. They winced. This would not be good.

Madam Pomfrey glared down at them and said, sharply, “Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger, when I have locked that door, it is generally for a good reason. I am not in the habit of being second-guessed by second-year students, is that understood?”

They looked guilty for a moment, but then were distracted by Harry’s poorly concealed agonized writhing on the bed next to them. “Quietly, please, Harry’s hypersensitive to light and sound,” Hermione explained absently, in a low voice, as she stared helplessly at his pained grimace. She was obviously frustrated that she couldn’t help her friend.

Hermione immediately decided that she had a new research project — Harry would need some kind of damping charm or ward to cut down on how intensely he perceived everything, and to make matters very much more difficult, it would need to be magically undetectable in order to not set off his oversensitivity to magic. She suspected such a project was probably post-NEWT-level magic, but a small percentage of her recreational reading was already past OWL standard, and she was not afraid of hard work if it would help one of her first-ever friends.

Behind Pomfrey, Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled brightly and Snape’s rolled in disgust as they caught this decision; a vow like that one might as well have been shouted from the rooftops as far as a Legilimens in the same room was concerned, especially coming from a sharp-minded borderline obsessive like Hermione Granger.

The mediwitch herself had to admit that the girl’s spoken point was highly relevant. “Both of you, come back into my office with us. Anything else you can tell us will help,” she agreed, much more quietly than before.

Snape snorted and spun on his heel, leading the way. I was called away from my research for THIS?


Harry blinked and shook himself awake. That was interesting. They’d given him a single mouthful of Dreamless Sleep potion, so he wouldn’t be awake to suffer through the intense magic of the whole castle, and had Hagrid carry his slumbering form out to the gamekeeper’s small house at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Everything was a lot less painfully intense out here, though he could tell even through the walls that most of the forest proper glowed with flows of magic like a neon sign emporium, at least to his new senses.

“All righ’, Harry?” asked Hagrid affably. He was just as magically “loud” as McGonagall, so had to be sure to keep his distance from the convalescent Potter (awkward in such a small house, but Hagrid didn’t mind when it would help his young friend), but being in the same room as an adult wizard was a lot more tolerable for Harry when the rest of the ambient magic levels were so much lower. There was a lot of magic no matter where you went around Hogwarts and its grounds, but the castle itself was one of the most magical structures in the British Isles; getting outside helped immensely.

••• INCOMPLETE •••


END PART ONE

Sat. 2013/02/09: Minor edits

Sun. 2012/12/02: 500 words added

Mon. 2012/08/06: Chapter begun