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Cambiare Podentes: Invocare
by Jordan Grant
Monday, May 4, 1998 7:00 p.m.
Six more weeks,
Harry thought, glancing around at the Gryffindor common room.
Six more weeks until summer.
Is that why everyone is acting so strange? Funny, I've never seen the prospect of summer vacation have quite
this effect, before. Maybe it just seems different because this year is my last at Hogwarts?
That wasn't it, though, and Harry knew it. In the first place, why would summer make everyone depressed? Of
course, it always depressed Harry, but he was different. The others had nice homes and families to go to when
school let out. Families they had missed during the term.
Besides, the sombre mood wasn't some generalized discontent; it had a focus. Worse, that focus seemed to be
him
. He'd caught the mood first at dinner. Seventh years looking at him, and then away, quick little glances full of
worry, though masked the minute he seemed to notice them. It wasn't just the Gryffindors, either. The Raven-
claws had been doing it, too.
And now, it was going on in the common room. Those same distressed peeks when they thought he wasn't look-
ing, and not just that, but whispered conversations in every corner. Conversations about him, or so it seemed to
Harry.
No, it was more than a mere
seemed.
He'd had enough experience of people gossiping about him to have a fairly
good sense for it.
Harry grabbed a sleeve as Ron passed by, and yanked him down to sit next to him on the sofa he'd been occupy-
ing alone. That was another thing. For all this apparent
concern
people were showing him, not a single person
had bothered to actually come talk to him about whatever was on everybody's mind. Harry was sick of it.
"What is going on?" he murmured against Ron's ear. "Why do people keep looking at me like they think I'm about
to die?"
Ron made a noise of distress, halfway between a strangled groan and an attempt to force a laugh.
"What?" Harry demanded. "Talk."
One word came croaking out his friend's mouth. "Trelawney."
Abruptly releasing Ron's arm, Harry leaned back against the back of the couch. "Is that all? So she predicted my
death again. Big deal. She's only been doing it weekly since third year." Then his eyes narrowed. "Anybody who's
taken Divination has heard it all before. Dozens of times. Why spread it around now?"
Ron gulped back a rush of air, his red hair flying wildly as he shook his head. "I heard it didn't happen in class.
Um... Neville went up to her classroom alone, and she acted really weird, not like her usual weirdness either,
and..."
Harry laughed. "It's Trelawney! She's mental no matter how you slice it. Get a
grip,
Ron! I'm not going to die!"
"But that's just it," Ron blurted out. "She didn't predict you'd be squashed by the whomping willow or poisoned by
Slytherins or any of her usual lines. It was more this spooky, really creepy stuff all about You-Know-Who killing
you on your nineteenth birthday. Except she called him the 'Dark Lord,' just like Snape always does."
"What else?" Harry pressed, because by then, Ron was doing a good job of looking anywhere but at Harry, and
that could only mean one thing. There was something more to the story.
His friend cleared his throat. "Something about some old rite called
Cambiare
being the only solution, and how
apart from that, he'll kill you for sure and reign over the rest of us for ten thousand years. The rest of us being
purebloods, by the way. Muggleborns and half-bloods are going to get the axe, one and all."
Harry blew out a long breath. "Okay, well for the sake of argument, assume she knows what she's talking about,
unlikely as that is. I'll just do this
Cambiare
."
"Yeah, well that's part of the problem," Ron admitted. "Word of this actually started going around this morning,
and a bunch of us skived off classes to hunt up the spell in the library. We couldn't find a single reference, not
even after we got the Ravenclaws to help."
"Restricted Section," Harry advised.
"Hermione's there, now. I... er, I lent her your invisibility cloak. And... well, you know. She's snuck in there an
awful lot, so we figured she'd stand a better chance than you or me of finding anything, if it's in there."
"And the reason nobody thought to tell
me
any of this?"
Ron looked away again. "Well, we just thought it might be better to know what we were talking about, first. You
know, find out what this
Cambiare
even is."
Harry crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back. "That makes sense."
"You aren't mad?"
"No." He felt his lips curving into a smile. "It's really sort of nice, everybody looking out for me. And besides, we're
still talking Trelawney."
"Yeah," Ron agreed, but he didn't sound so sure. "It's just that Neville said that she was really, really dodgy about
the whole thing. Didn't speak in that whiney little voice she uses all the time, but some deep, dark drone that she
kept repeating. And afterwards, when he asked her to explain what she'd been going on about, she didn't have a
clue what he was talking about. Like... like she'd been possessed, or something, and didn't remember her own
words."
Uh-oh,
Harry thought.
That sounds bad. Really bad. Reminds me of third year, when I heard the crazy old bat
actually give a real prophecy, not to mention what I saw in Dumbledore's pensieve, fifth year...
"Let's see what Hermione comes up with from the Restricted Section," he decided, keeping his voice level so as
not to alarm Ron any further. Ron, or anyone else, he realised. By then, most everyone in the common room was
quite obviously trying not to be noticed as they listened in. "And I think I'd better talk to Neville for myself. Is he in
our dormitory?"
Harry ignored the stares as he headed there, Ron in tow.
~
Monday, May 4, 1998 7:16 p.m.
Neville sighed, and shoved a piece of parchment across his bed, his hand shaking. He glared briefly at Ron. "I
worked on it all day, once I was given a chance to think about what I'd heard. I suspect I don't quite have it per-
fect, but it's nearly so."
"Wow," Harry had to say when he glanced down at the neatly inked words. "She said all this?"
"Over and over."
Harry nodded, and read the prophecy out loud:
When the marked one marks his nineteenth year,
the Dark Lord's triumph shall appear.
When one who should have died now dies,
The Dark Lord's glory shall arise.
Ten thousand years he'll rule the land,
his minions given open hand,
all others given unto death
for tainted blood the only test.
And yet remains a ray of hope,
Salvation in a lightning bolt.
As he still lives, all is not lost,
vanquish dark by powers crossed,
ancient rites of ancient days,
and spells that none alive can say.
Cambiare is the key,
else unto death yield sky and sea.
Invoke the rite not just in name,
for only truth will evil tame.
His life oft saved though hate did glow,
by one the Dark Lord used to know,
and now to him all will must go,
lest twice-filled powers never flow.
"Well, that certainly clears it all up," Harry quipped when he finished reading. Shifting on the bed, he cast Ron a
glance, then passed him the paper. "So Trelawney didn't explain this, not at all?"
"Harry, she doesn't even remember saying it, even though she repeated the whole thing three times in a row.
Then she sort of shook her head, all jittery, like she was coming out of a trance, and she looked at me and said,
Did you come for that tea I promised, dear?
But nobody had even mentioned tea! I went back for a book I'd left
behind!"
"So what made you think this was worth mentioning to anyone?" Harry questioned. "Last time I checked, you
were only taking Divination to avoid Seventh-Year Potions. Not that I blame you; I sometimes wonder if I should
have ditched those torture sessions in the dungeons, too. But seriously, Neville. You think Trelawney's an old
fraud, don't you?"
"Of course I do!" Neville hotly disputed. "That's just it, Harry. I can't explain, you had to be there, but it wasn't
Trelawney saying those words. Something else was talking through her mouth, and you can call me a nutter all
you want, but that's the truth!"
"Nobody's calling you a nutter, Neville," Harry sighed. "I just had to know, that's all, if you were starting to fall for
all her claptrap, or if this prophecy concerned you
in spite of
it. 'Cause, see..." he cleared his throat. "I heard her
channel something else once, too. A real prophecy. And it came true."
"Oh Merlin, Harry," Neville moaned. "Your birthday's the same as mine, isn't it? July 31st? It'll be your
nineteenth.
If we don't find this
Cambiare
spell before then, you're doomed, and all of us with you!"
"No, no, let's not jump to any conclusions," Harry cautioned. "When she uttered that real prophecy in front of me, I
misinterpreted it completely. In fact, it was word for word true but the
way
it was worded, I took it kind of back-
wards. So there's no telling what any of this means, not yet."
Ron had been poring over the parchment the whole time Harry and Neville had been talking, but Harry's last
comment had him looking up. "I hope you're right," he commented, his whole face twisting with concern. "I se-
riously hope you're right."
"Why?"
Ron's shaking finger indicated the last few lines of hand-written text. "Who's
one the Dark Lord used to know,
Harry?"
Harry shrugged. "You think I have Voldemort's social calendar handy? I have no idea."
"Yeah, well you ought to know this much. Who's saved your life,
oft,
like it says here, even though he's always
hated your guts and always will? Who, just by coincidence is also
one the Dark Lord used to know!
"
"You can read anything you like into poetry!" Harry scoffed.
Neville was a bit slower to catch on, but it didn't take long. "He means Snape!"
"Yeah, I mean Snape!" Ron snapped. "Now listen:
Cambiare is the key, else unto death yield sky and sea. Invoke
the rite not just in name, for only truth will evil tame. His life oft saved though hate did glow, by one the Dark Lord
used to know, and now to him all will must go, lest twice-filled powers never flow.
" He paused, looked Harry in the
eyes, and said, "Whatever this
Cambiare
turns out to be, you have to invoke it with Snape to make it work."
"Let's hope it's an ancient form of
Avada Kedavra,
then," Harry muttered tightly. "Not that I necessarily believe
your reading, or the damned prophecy itself, for that matter. I suppose, though, we'd better track down this
Cam-
biare
and find out just what I might be stepping into, here. What's keeping Hermione?"
"You know what it's like searching the Restricted Section," Ron sympathised. "Come on, let's play a round of
chess, get your mind off things."
"I have a Potions essay to finish," Harry growled. "Explain the significant interactions between various classes of
dragon's blood and oil-based reagents, taking into account the implications of cauldron metallurgy."
"Glad I dropped Potions after the O.W.L.s," Neville admitted.
"Me too," Ron chimed in.
"Yeah, yeah, I've just got Hermione for moral support, and she's sneaking around the library tonight. So let me get
to it, then. And Ron? Could you do me a favour? Tell everybody in the common room just to lay off it for a while.
Tell them we don't even know what the stupid prophecy means, and until we do, there's no sense looking at me
like I'll never see another August. All right?"
"Yeah, all right," Ron agreed, nodding as he left the dormitory, Neville in tow.
Harry flopped onto his own bed, fetched his essay in progress, and chewed the end of his quill as he tried to get
his mind onto dragon's blood.
Tuesday, May 5, 1998 7:38 a.m.
Hermione shook her head sadly when Harry sat across from her in the Great Hall the next morning for breakfast.
"Not one reference," she said. "I can look again tonight, but honestly, I don't think it's there."
Harry nodded, though he found his friend's report more than a little distressing. Trouble was, it tended to confirm
the bloody prophecy, all that blather about nobody alive even knowing the spell, it was so ancient. Yeah, so an-
cient it hadn't even made it into Hogwarts' impressive library. For all he knew, the
Cambiare
spell predated books
itself.
Nah, he decided. That couldn't be the case. The name of the damned thing was in Latin, wasn't it? So just how
old could it be?
"What's
Cambiare
even mean?" he quietly asked Hermione as he served himself a helping of stewed leeks. Ha,
leeks for breakfast? The house-elves had really strange ideas about meals, but somehow, they always hit on
things he liked, so he wasn't complaining.
"Honestly, Harry!" she exclaimed, almost on cue. "I know you've noticed that Latin's part and parcel of every sub-
ject, here! You've got a fine mind; you just need to go beyond the bare minimum asked on each assignment--"
"The spell?" Harry hissed, baring his teeth.
A light blush suffused her cheekbones. "Oh, sorry. Right. Now's not the time.
Cambiare
, then. To change. Some-
times, exchange. Specifically, to give and take reciprocally."
"A change spell?" Harry mused, forgetting his momentary irritation. "Changing what?"
"Or exchanging," Hermione reminded him.
Harry suddenly gagged, and had to swig a few swallows of pumpkin juice to bring it under control. "Oh, no. That's
just bloody disgusting, it is. It can't mean that."
"What?" Ron questioned. He'd been following the conversation since he'd joined them two minutes earlier.
Harry clenched his hands beneath the table, and gritted out in a harsh whisper, "You don't think... Ugh. What if it
means I have to, you know, change bodies with... uh,
him
."
"Ewwwwwww." Ron pushed his plate away with both hands. "Put me off my food, why don't you?"
"Better that than make you vomit it all back up. Imagine if I'd told you at the end of the meal."
"Him who?" Hermione broke in.
"Oh, right," Harry muttered. "You weren't there last night. Neville wrote it all out, what he could remember. I bet it's
pretty close, too. You'll see what I mean." He fished the parchment out of his inner robe pocket, unfolded it, and
tapped it with his wand to release the concealment spell he'd applied. "Not a word," he cautioned Ron. "Not one
word. Let's see if Hermione here reaches anything like the same conclusion you did, all right?"
Ron nodded, and proving he wasn't all that nauseated after all, sprinkled a liberal helping of sugar over his por-
ridge and began shoveling it in his mouth.
Hermione's lips moved as she read the parchment silently, something Harry knew meant she was focusing all her
concentration on the text. When she looked up at Harry, her lips were twisted in a little frown. "Oh, dear. Ron's
right. This isn't good at all."
"What do you mean?" Harry bluffed, darting a warning glance to Ron to keep quiet.
"What do you think?" Hermione returned. "Honestly, if
he
figured it out, you'd have to think I would."
"Thanks!" Ron put in.
"Oh, I didn't mean it that way," Hermione scolded, though Harry had a hard time seeing just how she had meant it,
in that case. "Anyway, the last few lines obviously refer to
him
." She jerked her gaze toward the teacher's dais.
"Who, the headmaster?" Harry questioned, playing dumb.
"Don't."
"What? He saved my life, too, you know, and it's certainly true that Voldemort used to know him. Maybe it does
mean him, though how I'm going to pretend to be the headmaster is beyond me, it really is."
"He didn't save your life
oft
, and do it despite
hate that glows
," Hermione whispered, leaning close even though
there was nobody much at their end of the table. "We all know who hates you, Harry."
Harry couldn't help it. He let his gaze nervously stray to the teacher's table, and sure enough, there sat Severus
Snape, glaring at him as usual, his black eyes practically on fire with hatred. Hate that glows.
"Shite," Harry softly swore. "I have to exchange places with
that?
I have to wear that greasy hair?"
Apparently accustomed to the image by then, Ron said around a mouthful of chicken dumpling, "Hey, it's not so
bad. You can give Gryffindor a bunch of points, and really slam it to the Slytherins. Besides..." A toothy grin met
Harry's gaze. "If you're him, then he's you, so who's You-Know-Who going to kill come July 31st?"
"If he dies in my body," Harry hissed, "I might never get back into it! I'll be stuck being
him
. And let's not forget, he
has an inconvenient mark that burns like Hell itself whenever Voldemort gets ticked!"
"You have one of those too," Ron pointed out, like Harry had forgotten or something.
"Let's keep in mind," Hermione interrupted, "that we really don't know what
Cambiare
does. This is all just specu-
lation, and Harry and I need to cut it short or we'll be late for Potions." She handed the parchment back, unfolded,
so that Harry could spell it again, and watched as he tucked it away once more.
Thursday, May 7, 1998 ---- 11:06 p.m.
Later that week, Hermione conceded defeat. There was nothing in the Restricted Section that could help them
better understand the reference to
Cambiare
. She'd even dredged out some old texts written completely in Latin,
and charmed them to translate themselves into awkward half-backwards renderings of modern English, but it was
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Cambiare Podentes: Invocare
by Jordan Grant
Monday, May 4, 1998 7:00 p.m.
Six more weeks,
Harry thought, glancing around at the Gryffindor common room.
Six more weeks until summer.
Is that why everyone is acting so strange? Funny, I've never seen the prospect of summer vacation have quite
this effect, before. Maybe it just seems different because this year is my last at Hogwarts?
That wasn't it, though, and Harry knew it. In the first place, why would summer make everyone depressed? Of
course, it always depressed Harry, but he was different. The others had nice homes and families to go to when
school let out. Families they had missed during the term.
Besides, the sombre mood wasn't some generalized discontent; it had a focus. Worse, that focus seemed to be
him
. He'd caught the mood first at dinner. Seventh years looking at him, and then away, quick little glances full of
worry, though masked the minute he seemed to notice them. It wasn't just the Gryffindors, either. The Raven-
claws had been doing it, too.
And now, it was going on in the common room. Those same distressed peeks when they thought he wasn't look-
ing, and not just that, but whispered conversations in every corner. Conversations about him, or so it seemed to
Harry.
No, it was more than a mere
seemed.
He'd had enough experience of people gossiping about him to have a fairly
good sense for it.
Harry grabbed a sleeve as Ron passed by, and yanked him down to sit next to him on the sofa he'd been occupy-
ing alone. That was another thing. For all this apparent
concern
people were showing him, not a single person
had bothered to actually come talk to him about whatever was on everybody's mind. Harry was sick of it.
"What is going on?" he murmured against Ron's ear. "Why do people keep looking at me like they think I'm about
to die?"
Ron made a noise of distress, halfway between a strangled groan and an attempt to force a laugh.
"What?" Harry demanded. "Talk."
One word came croaking out his friend's mouth. "Trelawney."
Abruptly releasing Ron's arm, Harry leaned back against the back of the couch. "Is that all? So she predicted my
death again. Big deal. She's only been doing it weekly since third year." Then his eyes narrowed. "Anybody who's
taken Divination has heard it all before. Dozens of times. Why spread it around now?"
Ron gulped back a rush of air, his red hair flying wildly as he shook his head. "I heard it didn't happen in class.
Um... Neville went up to her classroom alone, and she acted really weird, not like her usual weirdness either,
and..."
Harry laughed. "It's Trelawney! She's mental no matter how you slice it. Get a
grip,
Ron! I'm not going to die!"
"But that's just it," Ron blurted out. "She didn't predict you'd be squashed by the whomping willow or poisoned by
Slytherins or any of her usual lines. It was more this spooky, really creepy stuff all about You-Know-Who killing
you on your nineteenth birthday. Except she called him the 'Dark Lord,' just like Snape always does."
"What else?" Harry pressed, because by then, Ron was doing a good job of looking anywhere but at Harry, and
that could only mean one thing. There was something more to the story.
His friend cleared his throat. "Something about some old rite called
Cambiare
being the only solution, and how
apart from that, he'll kill you for sure and reign over the rest of us for ten thousand years. The rest of us being
purebloods, by the way. Muggleborns and half-bloods are going to get the axe, one and all."
Harry blew out a long breath. "Okay, well for the sake of argument, assume she knows what she's talking about,
unlikely as that is. I'll just do this
Cambiare
."
"Yeah, well that's part of the problem," Ron admitted. "Word of this actually started going around this morning,
and a bunch of us skived off classes to hunt up the spell in the library. We couldn't find a single reference, not
even after we got the Ravenclaws to help."
"Restricted Section," Harry advised.
"Hermione's there, now. I... er, I lent her your invisibility cloak. And... well, you know. She's snuck in there an
awful lot, so we figured she'd stand a better chance than you or me of finding anything, if it's in there."
"And the reason nobody thought to tell
me
any of this?"
Ron looked away again. "Well, we just thought it might be better to know what we were talking about, first. You
know, find out what this
Cambiare
even is."
Harry crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back. "That makes sense."
"You aren't mad?"
"No." He felt his lips curving into a smile. "It's really sort of nice, everybody looking out for me. And besides, we're
still talking Trelawney."
"Yeah," Ron agreed, but he didn't sound so sure. "It's just that Neville said that she was really, really dodgy about
the whole thing. Didn't speak in that whiney little voice she uses all the time, but some deep, dark drone that she
kept repeating. And afterwards, when he asked her to explain what she'd been going on about, she didn't have a
clue what he was talking about. Like... like she'd been possessed, or something, and didn't remember her own
words."
Uh-oh,
Harry thought.
That sounds bad. Really bad. Reminds me of third year, when I heard the crazy old bat
actually give a real prophecy, not to mention what I saw in Dumbledore's pensieve, fifth year...
"Let's see what Hermione comes up with from the Restricted Section," he decided, keeping his voice level so as
not to alarm Ron any further. Ron, or anyone else, he realised. By then, most everyone in the common room was
quite obviously trying not to be noticed as they listened in. "And I think I'd better talk to Neville for myself. Is he in
our dormitory?"
Harry ignored the stares as he headed there, Ron in tow.
~
Monday, May 4, 1998 7:16 p.m.
Neville sighed, and shoved a piece of parchment across his bed, his hand shaking. He glared briefly at Ron. "I
worked on it all day, once I was given a chance to think about what I'd heard. I suspect I don't quite have it per-
fect, but it's nearly so."
"Wow," Harry had to say when he glanced down at the neatly inked words. "She said all this?"
"Over and over."
Harry nodded, and read the prophecy out loud:
When the marked one marks his nineteenth year,
the Dark Lord's triumph shall appear.
When one who should have died now dies,
The Dark Lord's glory shall arise.
Ten thousand years he'll rule the land,
his minions given open hand,
all others given unto death
for tainted blood the only test.
And yet remains a ray of hope,
Salvation in a lightning bolt.
As he still lives, all is not lost,
vanquish dark by powers crossed,
ancient rites of ancient days,
and spells that none alive can say.
Cambiare is the key,
else unto death yield sky and sea.
Invoke the rite not just in name,
for only truth will evil tame.
His life oft saved though hate did glow,
by one the Dark Lord used to know,
and now to him all will must go,
lest twice-filled powers never flow.
"Well, that certainly clears it all up," Harry quipped when he finished reading. Shifting on the bed, he cast Ron a
glance, then passed him the paper. "So Trelawney didn't explain this, not at all?"
"Harry, she doesn't even remember saying it, even though she repeated the whole thing three times in a row.
Then she sort of shook her head, all jittery, like she was coming out of a trance, and she looked at me and said,
Did you come for that tea I promised, dear?
But nobody had even mentioned tea! I went back for a book I'd left
behind!"
"So what made you think this was worth mentioning to anyone?" Harry questioned. "Last time I checked, you
were only taking Divination to avoid Seventh-Year Potions. Not that I blame you; I sometimes wonder if I should
have ditched those torture sessions in the dungeons, too. But seriously, Neville. You think Trelawney's an old
fraud, don't you?"
"Of course I do!" Neville hotly disputed. "That's just it, Harry. I can't explain, you had to be there, but it wasn't
Trelawney saying those words. Something else was talking through her mouth, and you can call me a nutter all
you want, but that's the truth!"
"Nobody's calling you a nutter, Neville," Harry sighed. "I just had to know, that's all, if you were starting to fall for
all her claptrap, or if this prophecy concerned you
in spite of
it. 'Cause, see..." he cleared his throat. "I heard her
channel something else once, too. A real prophecy. And it came true."
"Oh Merlin, Harry," Neville moaned. "Your birthday's the same as mine, isn't it? July 31st? It'll be your
nineteenth.
If we don't find this
Cambiare
spell before then, you're doomed, and all of us with you!"
"No, no, let's not jump to any conclusions," Harry cautioned. "When she uttered that real prophecy in front of me, I
misinterpreted it completely. In fact, it was word for word true but the
way
it was worded, I took it kind of back-
wards. So there's no telling what any of this means, not yet."
Ron had been poring over the parchment the whole time Harry and Neville had been talking, but Harry's last
comment had him looking up. "I hope you're right," he commented, his whole face twisting with concern. "I se-
riously hope you're right."
"Why?"
Ron's shaking finger indicated the last few lines of hand-written text. "Who's
one the Dark Lord used to know,
Harry?"
Harry shrugged. "You think I have Voldemort's social calendar handy? I have no idea."
"Yeah, well you ought to know this much. Who's saved your life,
oft,
like it says here, even though he's always
hated your guts and always will? Who, just by coincidence is also
one the Dark Lord used to know!
"
"You can read anything you like into poetry!" Harry scoffed.
Neville was a bit slower to catch on, but it didn't take long. "He means Snape!"
"Yeah, I mean Snape!" Ron snapped. "Now listen:
Cambiare is the key, else unto death yield sky and sea. Invoke
the rite not just in name, for only truth will evil tame. His life oft saved though hate did glow, by one the Dark Lord
used to know, and now to him all will must go, lest twice-filled powers never flow.
" He paused, looked Harry in the
eyes, and said, "Whatever this
Cambiare
turns out to be, you have to invoke it with Snape to make it work."
"Let's hope it's an ancient form of
Avada Kedavra,
then," Harry muttered tightly. "Not that I necessarily believe
your reading, or the damned prophecy itself, for that matter. I suppose, though, we'd better track down this
Cam-
biare
and find out just what I might be stepping into, here. What's keeping Hermione?"
"You know what it's like searching the Restricted Section," Ron sympathised. "Come on, let's play a round of
chess, get your mind off things."
"I have a Potions essay to finish," Harry growled. "Explain the significant interactions between various classes of
dragon's blood and oil-based reagents, taking into account the implications of cauldron metallurgy."
"Glad I dropped Potions after the O.W.L.s," Neville admitted.
"Me too," Ron chimed in.
"Yeah, yeah, I've just got Hermione for moral support, and she's sneaking around the library tonight. So let me get
to it, then. And Ron? Could you do me a favour? Tell everybody in the common room just to lay off it for a while.
Tell them we don't even know what the stupid prophecy means, and until we do, there's no sense looking at me
like I'll never see another August. All right?"
"Yeah, all right," Ron agreed, nodding as he left the dormitory, Neville in tow.
Harry flopped onto his own bed, fetched his essay in progress, and chewed the end of his quill as he tried to get
his mind onto dragon's blood.
Tuesday, May 5, 1998 7:38 a.m.
Hermione shook her head sadly when Harry sat across from her in the Great Hall the next morning for breakfast.
"Not one reference," she said. "I can look again tonight, but honestly, I don't think it's there."
Harry nodded, though he found his friend's report more than a little distressing. Trouble was, it tended to confirm
the bloody prophecy, all that blather about nobody alive even knowing the spell, it was so ancient. Yeah, so an-
cient it hadn't even made it into Hogwarts' impressive library. For all he knew, the
Cambiare
spell predated books
itself.
Nah, he decided. That couldn't be the case. The name of the damned thing was in Latin, wasn't it? So just how
old could it be?
"What's
Cambiare
even mean?" he quietly asked Hermione as he served himself a helping of stewed leeks. Ha,
leeks for breakfast? The house-elves had really strange ideas about meals, but somehow, they always hit on
things he liked, so he wasn't complaining.
"Honestly, Harry!" she exclaimed, almost on cue. "I know you've noticed that Latin's part and parcel of every sub-
ject, here! You've got a fine mind; you just need to go beyond the bare minimum asked on each assignment--"
"The spell?" Harry hissed, baring his teeth.
A light blush suffused her cheekbones. "Oh, sorry. Right. Now's not the time.
Cambiare
, then. To change. Some-
times, exchange. Specifically, to give and take reciprocally."
"A change spell?" Harry mused, forgetting his momentary irritation. "Changing what?"
"Or exchanging," Hermione reminded him.
Harry suddenly gagged, and had to swig a few swallows of pumpkin juice to bring it under control. "Oh, no. That's
just bloody disgusting, it is. It can't mean that."
"What?" Ron questioned. He'd been following the conversation since he'd joined them two minutes earlier.
Harry clenched his hands beneath the table, and gritted out in a harsh whisper, "You don't think... Ugh. What if it
means I have to, you know, change bodies with... uh,
him
."
"Ewwwwwww." Ron pushed his plate away with both hands. "Put me off my food, why don't you?"
"Better that than make you vomit it all back up. Imagine if I'd told you at the end of the meal."
"Him who?" Hermione broke in.
"Oh, right," Harry muttered. "You weren't there last night. Neville wrote it all out, what he could remember. I bet it's
pretty close, too. You'll see what I mean." He fished the parchment out of his inner robe pocket, unfolded it, and
tapped it with his wand to release the concealment spell he'd applied. "Not a word," he cautioned Ron. "Not one
word. Let's see if Hermione here reaches anything like the same conclusion you did, all right?"
Ron nodded, and proving he wasn't all that nauseated after all, sprinkled a liberal helping of sugar over his por-
ridge and began shoveling it in his mouth.
Hermione's lips moved as she read the parchment silently, something Harry knew meant she was focusing all her
concentration on the text. When she looked up at Harry, her lips were twisted in a little frown. "Oh, dear. Ron's
right. This isn't good at all."
"What do you mean?" Harry bluffed, darting a warning glance to Ron to keep quiet.
"What do you think?" Hermione returned. "Honestly, if
he
figured it out, you'd have to think I would."
"Thanks!" Ron put in.
"Oh, I didn't mean it that way," Hermione scolded, though Harry had a hard time seeing just how she had meant it,
in that case. "Anyway, the last few lines obviously refer to
him
." She jerked her gaze toward the teacher's dais.
"Who, the headmaster?" Harry questioned, playing dumb.
"Don't."
"What? He saved my life, too, you know, and it's certainly true that Voldemort used to know him. Maybe it does
mean him, though how I'm going to pretend to be the headmaster is beyond me, it really is."
"He didn't save your life
oft
, and do it despite
hate that glows
," Hermione whispered, leaning close even though
there was nobody much at their end of the table. "We all know who hates you, Harry."
Harry couldn't help it. He let his gaze nervously stray to the teacher's table, and sure enough, there sat Severus
Snape, glaring at him as usual, his black eyes practically on fire with hatred. Hate that glows.
"Shite," Harry softly swore. "I have to exchange places with
that?
I have to wear that greasy hair?"
Apparently accustomed to the image by then, Ron said around a mouthful of chicken dumpling, "Hey, it's not so
bad. You can give Gryffindor a bunch of points, and really slam it to the Slytherins. Besides..." A toothy grin met
Harry's gaze. "If you're him, then he's you, so who's You-Know-Who going to kill come July 31st?"
"If he dies in my body," Harry hissed, "I might never get back into it! I'll be stuck being
him
. And let's not forget, he
has an inconvenient mark that burns like Hell itself whenever Voldemort gets ticked!"
"You have one of those too," Ron pointed out, like Harry had forgotten or something.
"Let's keep in mind," Hermione interrupted, "that we really don't know what
Cambiare
does. This is all just specu-
lation, and Harry and I need to cut it short or we'll be late for Potions." She handed the parchment back, unfolded,
so that Harry could spell it again, and watched as he tucked it away once more.
Thursday, May 7, 1998 ---- 11:06 p.m.
Later that week, Hermione conceded defeat. There was nothing in the Restricted Section that could help them
better understand the reference to
Cambiare
. She'd even dredged out some old texts written completely in Latin,
and charmed them to translate themselves into awkward half-backwards renderings of modern English, but it was
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