Harry Potter Breaking Free

Over the next few moments, green lines of pulsing, ambient magic appeared to spread along Harry's veins, counteracting the poisonous black lines. It looked as if his body had become a battleground between twin armies of black and light green serpents. All throughout his body, his veins were changing from black to green and then back at irregular intervals. As this was happening, Harry's body twitched and popped and moaned and growled. He punched the floor beneath his body, as if the stones were the source of his agony.

They weren't…

It appeared that Harry was desperately willing his magic to heal his body, but he wasn't strong enough to completely destroy the venom. A stalemate of some kind had been reached, but at a cost.

Pain...

Harry was being tortured as his body fell to pieces and was regenerated over and over again. Nothing changed for well over a minute, during which time Harry gasped and groaned in an intense cocktail of misery.

The Delacour Ladies had no idea how the boy was still resisting, in the face of this kind of suffering, and with no real end in sight. They just floated there watching, as he strained and fought against what seemed like his inevitable death...

Then, with a small but beautiful trill, a baby phoenix suddenly landed on Harry's arm, where it began releasing copious amounts of its tears directly into the wound. Suddenly both Appoline and Fleur understood. They knew exactly how Harry had survived to meet them, and twin triumphant smiles bloomed across their faces. Harry had held out long enough for the Phoenix to reincarnate, and it had saved him with its healing tears.

At the last second, just as Spectral Tom was about to become corporeal, Harry brandished the Basilisk fang as a weapon. He didn't aim to fight Tom at all, but instead he impaled the journal right through the middle. As the poisonous fang melted the journal, Tom's handsome appearance transformed into the wraith that he really was. Then, in a flash of blinding light, he was rendered down to nothing.

Harry had destroyed the book and saved the damsel. As the memory faded to black, it was to the sight of the roughed up boy shaking Ginny awake...

Harry Appoline and Fleur stumbled across the library floor as if they'd been launched back into their bodies. As they regained their balance, Fleur and Appoline looked at each other and then down at Harry. He'd fallen to the floor but was already rising to his feet again. The boy's body was shaking a little bit, but otherwise he appeared to be handling the memory just fine.

Harry just shrugged and shook his head to clear his mind of the lingering pain and panic. Yeah. That was an extremely unpleasant experience. Without another word, he turned the black book into a pebble, put it in a bag and cinched it at his waist.

After dropping their hands on Harry's shoulders, Fleur and Appoline started radiating soothing comfort and healing, even as they mended his mind. Appoline was also sending Harry quite a bit of maternal affection, although she was barely aware of that fact.

As she worked, Fleur watched Harry closely, before turning away with a frustrated expression on her face. "Dumbledore did mention two times that you saved your school, but I ended up making light of it. What is wrong with this school of yours?"

At first, Harry just grinned at Fleur's question, but then the smile slipped off of his face and he shrugged helplessly instead. Gods only knew why Hogwarts was the way it was. Fleur's words also brought to mind the next memory that they were about to encounter and the fact that Harry should give the girls some advanced warning.

"Listen ladies... The next memory we're going to encounter will most likely scare you both, because of what it implies. Just... be prepared." Harry didn't say anything after that because there was no easy way to describe what he was talking about. He just looked around for the next black book.

After a few seconds spent just staring at Harry's back, Fleur and Appoline followed his lead.

The next book was labeled The Third Floor Corridor on the Left, Philosopher's Stone.

Despite the warning he'd already given, Harry turned towards the ladies with a look of concern on his face. Due in part to the panic reaction people tended to have when this next subject was brought up, Harry wasn't going to just spring it on his friends. It was bad enough that they'd had to see him destroy a remnant of the man. "Okay, it's time. Are you both still under the influence of the calming draught?"

Both ladies nodded.

"Alright then." Harry sighed and gestured at the black book on the floor. "This memory features a man possessed by the real Tom Riddle. I assume you've realized just whom it is I'm talking about?"

Both women visibly shuddered in response but stood their ground.

"Yes. He's alive and out there somewhere. He's currently far less than human but far more than a ghost. He's trying to find ways to get himself a new body. This next memory is the second time the two of us met each other, at the end of my first year at Hogwarts. Of course the first time I encountered him, I was only an infant..." As Harry finished his explanation, he picked up the book and began to look at it.

....

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