Chapter Text
Thanks for reading and reviewing.
Here is another one. I haven’t watched Charmed in years. I’ll watch a few episodes to see if I can’t catch Leo’s character, but this is early Leo, right after he meets Piper. About time he disappears for that long period of time.
Hphphp
The fight raged on, spells flying in every direction. Everyone was fighting for their lives, and things were not going in favor of the Order or the kids. The Death Eaters were winning. Harry was fighting harder than he ever had before and was even thinking of using spells he had once sworn he never would. Stunning and disarming spells just were not enough anymore. He glanced at his godfather, who was dueling Bellatrix by the Veil of Death. Sirius was laughing, of all things. Then Bellatrix struck him with a bright orange spell, and Sirius fell backward.
“Sirius!” Harry called, running toward the man, knowing he would never make it there in time. “Sirius!” he cried again, his hand reaching out as if he could yank the man back from the Veil.
Hearing Harry yell, Remus grabbed his cloak and held him back. “No, Harry, it’s too dangerous,” he said, dragging the teen away.
“Let go!” Harry demanded, reaching back and slapping the werewolf’s hand off of him. He turned around and was stunned at what he saw.
The world seemed to lurch, and in the space of a heartbeat, Sirius was no longer falling into the Veil. Instead, he was thrown sideways, landing hard to its left as he gasped for breath.
“No!” Bellatrix screamed, lifting her wand in fury. “Die, cousin.” Spells flew from her wand, raining down on the prone man, but they weren’t hitting him. It was as if a force field surrounded him.
Harry wasn’t having any of it. He lifted his own wand and started flinging every spell he could think of at her.
She started laughing at him and flicked the spells away. “Does little Harry want to play?” she asked in that babying way of hers. “Come, baby Potter, play with me,” she simpered, before hurling more deadly spells at him.
“You leave my godson alone,” Sirius said, hauling himself off the floor and firing back with the sort of vicious Black family magic he had spent years pretending he didn’t know. He wasn’t laughing now. He was trying to hurt her.
She screamed as the skin vanished from her right arm and her wand dropped from her hand. “You bastard!” she screeched. She snatched up the wand with her left hand and continued the fight, using Black family spells she knew even better than Sirius did. She had been practicing a lot longer than he had.
The two of them danced for a few more minutes while the rest of the Order and the Death Eaters fought around them. Harry was engaged with Malfoy, who was not the great fighter he liked to pretend he was. He couldn’t be, since Harry was holding his own.
Hermione had been taken down by Dolohov, and Ron was standing over her, protecting her. He wasn’t doing all that well either after his run-in with the brains. Neville had a broken nose, and it was hindering his spellcasting. Ginny had a twisted ankle, but she was holding her own with Luna by her side. Luna moved like a pro, firing off spells as fast as a machine gun.
Then Dumbledore appeared and the tide turned. Or so they thought. The Death Eaters ran and the Order ran after them to the atrium. That was where Voldemort showed his face.
“Ah,” said Voldemort softly, “Dumbledore and his motley little band. Where is my prophecy?” His red eyes remained on Dumbledore, though the question was meant for anyone foolish enough to answer.
“I tried to get it, my Lord,” Bellatrix answered, the only one who dared face his wrath, “but those brats thwarted us.” She glared at Harry and his friends, who were standing off to the side, staring back at her.
“Did they?” Voldemort asked, turning his gaze to Harry with cold amusement. “Give me the orb, boy.” He held out his hand as though obedience were inevitable.
“Not on your life,” Harry said, lifting his chin in defiance. He wouldn’t do anything this man asked of him. He’d die first.
“How about the lives of everyone here? Would you give it to me then?” Voldemort asked, lifting his wand and pointing it at Luna, who was the only one who was not injured.
Luna just looked at him with that vague look of hers, and hummed. She put her hand on Harry’s arm as if to tell him not to listen to the man.
“You are outnumbered, Harry. Be a good boy and give me what I want,” Voldemort said silkily, hand still outstretched, as though he were asking a child to return a trinket he had no right to keep.
“You’ll have to kill me first,” Harry said. His voice was steady now. “And you’ll have to get through all of us.”
The Order and the children lifted their wands, and the Death Eaters did the same. They were at a standoff. It was a tense moment that could end either way. Hermione was the only one badly injured, and she was lying behind the Fountain of Magical Brethren, where hopefully she would remain safe. She was breathing, but barely. For the moment, Remus was performing first aid on her.
Just then, the Floo flared and the Minister of Magic tumbled out. The rest of the fireplaces opened up, and Aurors came pouring into the Ministry lobby, only to find the standoff already in progress. They were shocked to see not only Sirius Black, but Voldemort and his Death Eaters there, standing on opposite sides. They stopped short at the sight of two of the most infamous men in Britain facing each other at wandpoint.
“What the devil is going on here?” Fudge asked, at once edging behind Amelia Bones. “That’s You-Know-Who. What is he doing here? He’s dead.” He sounded as shaken as he looked.
“Yes, yes, it is. It appears he is not as dead as we were led to believe. At a glance, I would say there is a tense confrontation,” Amelia stated, taking in the scene quickly. “Aurors, arrest them,” she ordered, indicating the Death Eaters and Voldemort. She eyed Dumbledore and his group and added, “Detain them.” She wanted to know how all this had come about. She didn’t doubt for a moment that she would get the runaround, but she had to try.
Voldemort sighed and said, “It looks like our time has come to an end. We will meet again, Harry Potter.” Then in a cloud of black smoke, he and his Death Eaters retreated. Laughter filled the air as they vanished as if the Death Eaters felt they had won the confrontation.
“Blast and damnation,” Bones said, wondering how they got through the wards. She slammed her hand against her leg and started towards Dumbledore and Harry Potter.
“They must leave as well,” Dumbledore stated, creating a Portkey to take Harry, his friends, and Sirius to Grimmauld Place. “I will stay and answer any questions you have, but the children must go,” he told Amelia. He quickly turned a piece of rope from the fountain’s decorative border into the Portkey. “Quickly, now,” he told the group of children and Sirius.
“All of you stay where you are,” Bones told them, lifting her wand to stop them, but they didn’t listen to her.
With each other’s help, the five of them and Sirius crowded around the Portkey and were swept away to Sirius’s house. They landed in a heap, alive but not well. Hermione needed a healer right away.
“She’s bleeding out,” Harry said, pressing his hand to her wound, at a loss as to what to do.
“I’ll call Madam Pomfrey,” Sirius said, moving to get up.
There was a bright light in the doorway. It pressed inward as if it were fighting the wards, and then, with a sigh of magic, a man appeared. “I can help,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Who are you, and how did you get into this house?” Sirius demanded at once. His wand was up in an instant, aimed straight at the stranger’s chest.
“Does that matter? The girl will die. I can help,” the man said, his demeanor calm and relaxed. He didn’t seem to care that there was a deadly weapon pointed at him. Either he was a muggle or he was stupid.
Hermione lay there gasping for air and sweating profusely. “Harry, I don’t want to die.” Her eyes were wild with desperation.
“Sirius, if he can heal her…” Harry said, gripping Hermione’s hand like he could anchor her with it. “Keep your wand on him if you want but let him try.” He looked at the man, eyes hard. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you myself.”
The man held up his hands in supplication. “I’m here to help,” he said. He came in and put his hand over Hermione’s wound. The hand started glowing white and he closed his eyes as if in prayer. The wound started to heal.
Hermione gasped. Her body tensed at first, then relaxed completely, and she sighed. It was the most wonderful sensation she had ever felt. She smiled at the man with awe. “Thank you,” she said with genuine gratitude.
The man lifted his hand from where it hovered over her stomach. “There now, you’ll be right as rain,” he said, looking at her kindly. He hadn’t done it just to heal her. He needed to get into Harry’s good graces, and what better way to do that than by healing his friend? Of course, he could tell them what he had done to save Harry’s godfather, but that had meant breaking the rules, and he wasn’t about to tell anyone about that. It had been a last-minute decision. He hoped it had slipped by the Elders. If they didn’t catch it, he won’t get into trouble. Still, he had broken the rules, and he could end up in serious trouble.
“Right,” Sirius said sharply. “Start talking. Who the hell are you?” He never took his eyes off the man. He knew him from somewhere and yet not quite anywhere; his magic kept straining toward the stranger as if it owed him something. Sirius hated that.
The man nodded as though he understood why they were ill at ease. “I am Leo. I am here to guard Harry Potter,” Leo said, standing and moving to the side, away from everyone, in a nonthreatening manner. “I’m his Whitelighter.”
“I’ve had enough of people saying they’re here to protect me,” Harry said, the bitterness coming out before he could stop it. “Usually, it just means they want to tell me what to do. What in Merlin’s name is a Whitelighter?”
“Whitelighters are guardian angels,” Leo said, sounding as though he had given this explanation many times before, “meant to protect and guide good witches, and future Whitelighters, toward their destined paths.”
“Harry isn’t a witch,” Luna pointed out.
“That was very observant,” Leo said, smiling at her.
“Are you saying that I am destined to be a Whitelighter?” Harry asked with a despondent sigh. “What if I don’t want another destiny?” He had enough to do with the prophecy hidden in his pocket. He didn’t even know what it said, and yet he could feel the weight of it.
“Yes,” Leo answered without hesitation or remorse.
“Bugger,” Harry said, looking around the room at his friends, who were all looking at him with varying degrees of emotions.
“You can’t just walk in here and tell Harry he’s got yet another destiny hanging over his head,” Sirius snarled, moving straight into Leo’s space. “He’s carrying enough already.”
“I am here to help him, not control him,” Leo said. His eyes lingered on Harry’s scar. “And the first thing I mean to do is get rid of the evil bound up in it.”
“What? What evil?” Harry exclaimed, jumping up and moving away from the Whitelighter. “How can you tell there is evil in my forehead?” he demanded, unwilling to take the man’s word for it.
“There is a knot of evil behind your scar,” Leo said. “I can heal it.” He wanted it to be gone as quickly as possible; the thing lodged there was dark, ancient, and wrong.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Hermione asked, rising to Harry’s side. He had healed her, yes, but that didn’t mean he could be trusted. He might have done it for that very reason.
“I guess you will have to take my word for it,” Leo said, saddened that they were fighting him on this. “Is there nothing I can do to get you to trust me? That scar is going to do more harm than good in the long run. If you let me heal it, you’ll think more clearly and make more rational decisions.” He was certain what he was saying was true.
“They’ll need to know you a little better first,” Luna said, drifting between Harry and Leo as though the thought had only just floated past. “Harry doesn’t trust quickly, but that’s sensible. People are usually quite loud about what they are, if you give them time. And if you press too hard, they float away. Piper always says so.” Seemingly finished, she wandered off to inspect the shelves in the study.
Leo looked at her as if she had just said something profound. “Alright, I’ll back off for now, but don’t put it off too long. I will be here.” Then, in a burst of bright white light, he disappeared.
“Shite,” Sirius said, looking around the room like he could spot the man.
“Where did he go?” Harry asked, also looking around the room.
“He’s giving you time to think,” Luna said, still studying whatever had caught her interest on the shelf. “He’ll be about. They usually are.”
“Great, another ‘protector’,” Harry grumbled, not needing someone else in his life that just sat and watched while his life was on the line.
“Don’t be like that, Harry. This one will actually help you,” Luna said, coming up to him and putting a hand on his arm.
“Oi, do you think he can help me with this headache?” Ron asked, putting a hand to his head.
“Or my ankle?” Ginny put in. They had been silent throughout the whole exchange, but now their injuries were flaring up, and they wanted healing too.
“Ad by dobe,” Neville added thickly through his broken nose, still staring down at his broken wand as though that mattered far more.
“Right, I’ll call Madam Pomfrey,” Sirius said, getting up and going to the Floo. He had the secret written down for the healer so he could get her into the house. He’d get the kids healed and send the woman on her way. Then he would find this Whitelighter, and they would have a talk.