Quidditch League Round Thirteen (no main prompt)
Prompts:
setting: dystopian!AU
quote: "Never bring your heart to a witch fight"
The sun had yet to crest the hills, but the man stood silent before the wall of stone, waiting for his challenger to appear.
No one knew when or how the stones had appeared. One day, after the storms during Harry's eleventh year had ended and the landscape had reformed, they were simply there, as if they had always been. And two by two, the challengers came.
Harry had heard the stories. As the cities had fought to regain their place in the political structure – despite sudden losses in resources – they had sent out scouts to inform them of what news they could. These scouts had returned and told tales of hideous beings, humanoid in origin, but boasting an evolutionary amalgamation of steel, chrome, and cybernetic organs.
Had the storms created these beings? Had they somehow fused together various elements of the world around them into new and terrifying life forms? Or had these creatures always existed, and were only now emerging, opportunistic in the face of the chaos before them?
No one knew, but it had set the tone for the rebuilding effort. Schools and libraries were put on hold, and walls and weapons were prioritised. Word came of nearby cities forming alliances, which begged the question: against whom? Surely all cities were allied against the creatures. They had an implicit alliance, no formality required.
Therefore, it must be an alliance against each other. New partnerships were formed to counter the rumours. Defences were armed in the direction of enemy cities, and the threat of the unknown was investigated ever deeper. The Justice Treaty, proposed before the storms, lay forgotten. What need did the cities have now for peaceful mediation of grievances, when they were faced with starvation and death?
The stones were discovered. Scouts had described in visceral detail how man and woman alike from every city would throw themselves onto the mysterious battlefield bordered by stone twelve feet high. The scouts had shown recordings; grimy, shadowed recreations of fights that the scouts shuddered to recall. It made a ghastly scene, they had insisted, to see the ancient stone painted fresh with blood.
Harry had joined the scouts, eager to see what they had seen. Paired with a young man named Draco Malfoy, he had set out to discover what he could.
"Keep up, Potter," Malfoy called behind him. The swamp was mostly silent as they waded through, careful to test each step for the sudden appearance of a quagmire. "The stones are this way. I can feel them."
"Oh, can you feel them, Malfoy?" Harry snapped, jabbing his stick down in front of him to test the ground. "How special you must be. Do you think you're 'at one with the earth' yet?" He could feel them too, but that didn't mean he was going to give up the chance to annoy Malfoy.
Malfoy snorted. "Tetchy, are we, Potter? I suppose I'll forgive you. I'm sure I'd be getting cranky if I was as dastardly unfit as you, too. Must be hard, wheezing away at the slightest hill-"
Harry lobbed his stick straight at Malfoy's head. It landed with a satisfying thwack. Malfoy gasped.
"You absolute-" He broke off mid-sentence to launch himself at Harry, dragging them both down into the mud as they wrestled.
Harry got a solid hit on Malfoy's shoulder and hauled them both upright. "Quit it," he hissed. "We'll be caught."
They glared at each other, chests heaving. Harry wasn't sure when his opinion of the blonde man had changed from fierce animosity to something more complicated, but it was neither the time nor the place to acknowledge it. He turned away.
In the distance, the arena loomed. Previous scouts had chosen distant trees as vantage points, too scared to come further. So the two men climbed as close as they could - closer than the other scouts had managed - and hid high amongst the branches. They saw what the other scouts had not.
From sun-up to sun-down, blood stained the walls while the cybernetic creatures watched. Mounted atop the wall, silent as the dead, they oversaw the challenges. They listened to the petty squabbles that had drawn the citizens here to settle their debts. Then, with the pause of a single heartbeat, they would nod in unison, and the fight would begin.
The creatures aided them. The woman who was accused of theft had her arm torn from her, but in its place a steel gun formed as if grown from flesh, the motion over so quickly that Harry could not trace its origin. The man accused of rape was torn in two, his torso balanced only on his knuckles like an ape, while the man's face wore an expression of shocked disbelief. But legs quickly grew, twice as tall as before, the gears inside grinding together through oily grit.
An idea began to form in Harry's mind. A memory, perhaps a cause. But it was too soon to say. They left, returning to report what they had seen.
This new information had changed things. What were the creatures doing? They were clearly intelligent, and clearly uninterested in the cities. It was the people themselves that the creatures were interested in. Clearly some form of magic was involved in what were now being termed 'witch fights'.
After a long discussion with Malfoy that spanned several days, Harry had put forth his idea. The initial laughter had faded, overcome by a shocked silence. It was possible. Impartial justice at the hands of a computer had most certainly been part of the Justice Treaty. How much progress had the scientists made before the storms?
The older, still unresolved question: why had the storms ever come?
Harry had left the final question unsaid, but he could see it on all their faces. Had they created the creatures? In Harry's mind, the answer was clear, as was the future course. The creatures had to be stopped. Justice in the hands of heartless, soulless creatures was no justice at all.
Others, it seemed, had not shared his certainty.
"Draco, this has to be done," Harry said through gritted teeth. His head was pounding and his eyes were watery from lack of sleep. It was well past midnight, and Harry was fast losing the patience to keep his voice at a suitable volume for their dorm room.
"You'll kill us all!" Malfoy hissed back. "And when did I become 'Draco', anyway? You falling in love with me, Potter?"
Harry raised his eyes slowly, the challenge evident within them. "And if I am?"
Malfoy's eyes flashed, the emotion within them hidden just as soon as it was visible.
Malfoy sneered. "Then you're an even bigger fool than I gave you credit for."
Harry slammed his fist down on the table. "We have to change this. We have to fix this."
"What does it matter? So, a few people here and there are too immature to resolve their differences on their own. Who cares if they get killed? If you provoke these creatures, we'll all be killed."
"It's not a few people here and there." Harry ground his fingers into his temples, trying to massage away the pain. "It's everyone. We're all subject to their will. Sooner or later, we'll all fall. Unless we stop them now. Were you always this much of a coward?"
Malfoy smiled, his eyes cold. "It isn't cowardice if it results in the greatest number of lives saved. It's logic." His voice was clipped, devoid of emotion. "Don't you want a chance to live? A chance to receive all that life has to give?" The words were loaded with meaning.
Harry chose to ignore it. "I want everyone to have that chance."
Malfoy continued to smile. "You are the worst form of betrayer," he said quietly, before he turned and left.
This morning, drawn by an inexorable force, Harry had walked miles to the arena. He knew he was being called to fight, but not why. Had the Council seen fit to dispose of him this way? Had they, like Malfoy, determined his ideas too radical? Had they chosen to embrace the creatures in the hope that the creatures would then keep their distance? Weak, the lot of them.
The sun rose, and with it came the man who had challenged him, rising from his position against the opposite wall, hands casually in his pockets.
"Scared, Potter?"
Harry was terrified.
"What is my crime?" he shouted, relieved when his words carried strong and true.
"You are too blinded by justice," Malfoy yelled back. If he was scared, he did not show it. "You would damn us all."
Harry shivered as Malfoy's words carried the weight of premonition. He knew then, what help he would receive.
"And you are too practical and cold. You refuse to let your heart guide you." The wind carried Harry's words as the final rays of the dawn burst over the wall.
He saw Malfoy smile. "Well that makes things easier for me, really," he said with a smirk, though a flicker of fear finally shone in his eyes. "Didn't your mother ever tell you? Never bring your heart to a witch fight."
The sight of Malfoy's chest being ripped apart was the last thing Harry saw with his own eyes. When he reopened his torn, bloody lids, the world was fresh and new, his purpose crystal in its clarity: to kill, in the name of justice.