Winter Lord – Through Snow and Memories I
TBL: Hey, all! Welcome to the presentation of a new epic of mine: Winter Lord. It's one of my new favorites, tying with Scourge at the top of the list. I was going to post the first chapter when I had the second one done, too, to make sure that I could stay committed to this. However, since I've got Chapters Two (Through Snow and Memories II) and Three (That Which Does Not Belong) completely outlined, I decided to post the first chapter ahead of time, since I figure that's enough to know I'll stick with this. Hopefully, this won't end up as another deleted fic. Though, I must say, reader feedback does help in keeping me interested in my fics (hint, hint).
Random trivia: did you know this started out as a Naruto crossover? Yes, indeed, it did. (Be glad it didn't stay that way... XP) Then, it was just an HP fic, no crossover. Now, it's an X-men crossover. This time, though, I'm sticking with my choice, so X-men it is.
Just to clarify, this is a crossover with the X-men COMIC series, NOT THE MOVIES. So, if you see anything you don't recognize, just know that I'll try to explain it as well as I can. Though, just so you know, I'm not caught up with the current issues. I'm still somewhere in the seventies (1970's, that is)! Or eighties... I'm not quite sure. That and I'm a(n extremely) slow reader. Thus, I'm not getting to the nineties any time soon...
Also, my memory is... weird. I'll probably remember what happened but not the exact order when the events occurred. If you spot a mistake, please tell me. (Well, in Chapter Three and on when Harry actually gets to the X-men 'verse.) I absolutely hate when I get things wrong in my favorite fandoms.
Full Summary: During a trip to the Ministry of Magic with Ron and Hermione in their quest for Voldemort's horcruxes, Harry comes across an unusual wand. It is the Western Wand, the tool of ice and snow thrown down by the gods long ago with the power to command a Season: Winter. It's a power Harry hasn't seen the likes of before, seemingly without boundaries and shrouded in mystery.
But, even with his might as Winter Lord, it's not enough to end this new war for the wizards' world born from the ashes of Voldemort's reign. So, he sets out to travel in Siberia in search of the elusive Winter's Keep, the mythical palace of Winter where his answers lie. He comes to the edge of finding these, Winter's Keep in sight, when everything suddenly goes so very wrong. By his own mistake, Harry is killed just before reaching his goal.
However, this is not the end, for when nine stars align in another universe after millions of years, he is flung to a planet previously untouched by life. He finds his way back to Earth shortly after, but it is not the Earth he has known all his life. It is a universe where there are no witches or wizards, only people with superhuman abilities called mutants.
Though he is still Winter Lord, Harry struggles here in these new surroundings, besieged on all sides when he is thought to be a mutant of extraordinary power. But, this is not the biggest problem, for he wasn't the only foreign being brought to this universe by the powers unleashed by the aligned stars. Nine beings for nine stars – and not all of them friendly.
Together with what few allies he has, Harry must stop these new evils. But, doing this is no easy task.
Warnings: violence/blood/gore, torture, language, changed timeline/AU/AR, dark plot and characters, original characters, crossover, character deaths, possibility of mentioned pairings (heterosexual and/or homosexual), anything I can think of
Pairing(s) (dominant to least dominant): none (main), undecided (mentioned)
Disclaimer: I, Tainted Blood Lust, do not own the Harry Potter franchise. I also do not own the X-men franchise. I make no money in writing this.
Enjoy.
X
I sat around the green, magically-contained fire with Ron and Hermione, gazing into its mystifying depths with little regard for the world outside my thoughts. My friends also stared with that same look, and the play of shadows upon their faces made them appear unearthly. It was a comfortable silence that blanketed us, the kind born of a friendship that needed no words to communicate. We were in the magical tent bought so long ago at the start of the horcrux hunt, and the familiar surroundings comforted me. It felt like home. But, I knew, it wouldn't be home without Ron and Hermione. Even if I was in Voldemort's base, there would still be a piece of that feeling if the two were there with me. My lips briefly twitched at the thought, attempting to lift into a smile that would never surface. It was the farthest I could get to smiling in sheer happiness and was, most importantly of all, genuine.
All three of us had the same subject in our heads, and in coming back to my original train of thought, that almost-smile instantly disappeared to be replaced by a frown more severe than usual. Voldemort tended to have that effect on people.
Despite having been on the run for three years, in a race to find Voldemort's lifelines before the half-man could hide them well enough, like a twisted game of keep-away, he was a subject we often blocked from our minds. It was, at times, a futile effort, but with each day's purpose revolving around destroying horcruxes, we at least needed to try to find reprieve. It should have been easy that day, easy to forget the slowly-creeping reign of the Dark across Europe and the ever-present fear of loss that was not so much fear as a dreading of the seemingly inevitable, when we had destroyed the last of the horcruzes at long last. We should have been celebrating our hard-won victory, rejoicing, doing anything but sitting here in silent, dark contemplation. And yet, after scaling desperately uphill that cliff called war to the green lands of peace, we found ourselves not in restful fields and by tranquil waters. No, what we found was the top of a mountain overlooking the beginning of a new path, and it was most certainly not the one we had hoped for.
It had taken Voldemort's summons, those messages with ink of blood and parchment of lives, to make us realize that peace was a myth and that this new road in our sights was one of lava, its corpse-lined path twisted and forever winding on. He woke us up from our dreaming to cold, cruel reality and made us aware once more. Strange, really, how much a goal could cloud one's mind. The mind, so focused on getting to the end, became blinded to everything else, to the outside of this glorified finish line. I had wondered then, stunned and disoriented, if this was why many dreamed of bigger things, of ones unobtainable by any means. To keep striving all the time, after all, meant that the fog would continue to squeeze serpent-like around life as one perceived it. Ignorance was bliss, and none more than those with this veil stripped harshly away knew how very, very true this was.
My thoughts brought back memories of Voldemort's attentions bestowed upon us, spelled out with the deaths of the lives we three had left behind. They first turned back to not the start of the summons, but the third such of them, when it had finally sunk in, poisonous claws ripping away the first self-made walls.
It had been a Tuesday in August, I remembered starkly, and an unusually warm day in the part of London, a shadowy and broken place by then after the Death Eaters had decimated it, where we were staying at the time. Hermione remained behind to guard our meager shelter while Ron and I scavenged for much-needed supplies under the cover of darkness. I had on my invisibility cloak while Ron hid under the only other one we had, a lucky find in the warded mansion of an old pureblood family we had raided. (Tough times called for tough measures, and their deaths, though brutal and overdone, weighed little upon my mind, lost among the many other lives I had taken. I told myself they deserved it for supporting Voldemort's regime and steadfastly ignored that hungry part of me that enjoyed killing them all and begged for more. I reasoned that they would have been an unnecessary hindrance in the future, anyway, and left it at that.) His was fading in its age, but mine held as strong as ever. I hadn't known it was a Deathly Hallow at the time and passed off its irregularities as coincidences and tricks of a tired mind. Thus, he stuck to the shadows as I stayed alert for danger in the lead. With my attention so focused on this, he was the first one to spot it.
"Bloody hell..." he had whispered in a barely audible voice filled with many things, horror and disbelief being the most prominent. I turned to him, intending to do something (I couldn't recall now exactly what) in response to his words, however quiet they were. Silence, we had learned early on, was something that could tip the scale of mortality toward life in a precarious situation. When I saw his devastated face, ghostly in its paling, I stopped instead. With dread weighing heavily in my gut and breeding more every second, I followed his gaze slowly, reluctant to face the unknown that had already been labeled as Something Bad. When my own eyes laid upon it, I could not fault Ron for his utterance.
There, upon a brick wall littered with graffiti from happier times, was a different sort of message, not of anarchy or territorial claim like those bright and varied paints. It was one line, one line only, hurriedly brushed on in capital, sanguine letters.
OCTOBER THE THIRTY-FIRST, POTTER
They were not a new set of words to me, as I had seen them elsewhere in various places, usually the areas that once held large populations. Somehow, it hadn't actually clicked until this third finding of them, even though the message was obvious when connected with the only other word scattered with these ones (HOGWARTS). Perhaps, just words alone didn't get through; it was certainly a possibility. For, as I saw these two messages written on practically every available surface around us, I also saw the head staked upon the point of a nearby flagpole. Even as I recognized the very familiar red hair fluttering in the weak breeze and the same heart-shaped face I remembered so well, even as the shock and grief overwhelmed me, that stray, out-of-place thought came to me.
So oddly poetic, it said, how her blood stains the old, tattered Union Jack banner. How perfectly fitting.
As Ginny Weasley's brown and soulless eyes stared ahead to nothingness, I suddenly realized what Voldemort had meant.
On that night, we gazed deeply into the magical fire as if to divine the answers to our problems and questions, it was the thirtieth of October. It was the night before we had to face Voldemort in one last battle. Though I wanted to rebel against it, flee back to my ignorance, I could not, no matter how hard I tried. The next day, as inevitable as one's own destiny, we would have to march to Hogwarts, march to meet our doom. I would like to say I thought I was going to spit in the face of Death, but that would be a lie. Yes, I was sure I was going to gaze at Death, but my racing mind favored fear that night.
"Let's do it," Hermione's voice suddenly pierced the quiet. Her words didn't quite break me out of my dark contemplations but still served to hold them at bay a bit, to provide a rope to the surface while I struggled in their black, watery depths. I was confused by her tired but determined statement but didn't get to question her, as Ron voiced this first.
"Do what, Herm?" His face was serious and weary and his expression changed little, but I could still see the shadow of his old self underneath the pain, a small ray of light in this cavern of despair. It made my lips twitch again, and I held unto it for as long as I could, carving it into my memories for later strength in my darkest moments.
"The Blood Pact," she answered. They were three simple words and were yet as complex as life itself. It brought back memories of huddling together in the Room of Hidden Things, of promises spoken in our sixth year in a more innocent time not viewed behind jaded glasses. Emotion briefly stirred in me, a copy of a copy of the happiness felt then, but then quickly settled back to leave me apathetic once more. I couldn't tell if I wanted it back or not.
The Blood Pact was something we had come upon – well, Hermione, to be more accurate – in an obscure little book tucked away, unnoticed and collecting dust. It was a bond a group of people, any number over two, could form with what barely constituted as a ritual (only sharing blood and speaking a spell, really). It was a remnant of ages long past, where bonds of friendship and love could amount to more than those of blood family. It would bind those preforming the ritual magically, a more tangible way of being brothers (or sisters) unrelated by blood. The Pact was simple but lasted forever, so was not something to be taken lightly. Also, it required a deep emotional attachment between the participants, furthering the point that it was very much a commitment.
We had decided to bind ourselves with the Blood Pact near the end of the school year after much deliberation and had been ready to do so. However, the year had quickly gone downhill in an ugly, avalanche-like manner. It was put off after Dumbledore had been killed and buried under the rush of staying out of Voldemort's hands and destroying his horcruxes. As it surfaced again, I could still feel the rightness in this and the love I held for Hermione and Ron. And, I realized, there would be no other time more perfect than this to do so.
"I agree," I said, deep and rumbling voice a bit hoarse from disuse (I had little to talk about these days and thus didn't do so until necessary). Ron gave his own acceptance of this soon after with a decided nod and steely eyes that hid the heartfelt love underneath. A tiny smile was slow to grow on Hermione's lips, but it appeared nevertheless, speaking all she needed to say without ever once vocalizing anything.
After binding ourselves magically for all eternity on the eve of our final confrontation with Voldemort, for the first time in years, a real and fully formed smile, bursting with happiness and filled with a fraction of peace among the hell our lives had become, stretched upon my face as well.
The cracked, concrete ceiling ready to fall apart above me came into view slowly as the last remnants of my dream slipped through my fingers like sand. My thoughts on the few fragments I could remember were bitter, not hate-filled but holding pain and anger all the same. The faint regret laced with longing deep within me was quickly smothered and buried. Wishing for the past did nothing in the present.
I lay there in my temporary bed that was more a pile of furs than anything else and I kept my breathing deep and steady as I stretched out my magic to check for danger. It was a habit I had developed in the beginning of the war after Voldemort, when there were many wizards eager to collect the bounty on Harry "Absolute Zero" Potter. (It was quite the jackpot, at six million pounds the last time I checked.) Obviously, none of them had succeeded in their goal, but there had been a few close calls when I was still developing the skill.
Finding nothing but a few animals a kilometer or so away, I finally relaxed a bit. There was still a certain tenseness in my frame, but it was one I always carried with me, ready to spring into action at any time. It was one of the reasons I remained in the land of the living.
There was no noise beyond the howling of a harsh, Russian wind while I packed up what little supplies I had. I couldn't shrink them with magic, unfortunately, as using magic now would be inadvisable. I had many enemies after me, and the most dangerous ones were those with ways to track magic use. There were no towns with any sort of population, magical or otherwise, around here, and using magic, no matter how small the spell, would be like advertising my location with a neon sign. It was an unfortunate circumstance, but I was good at adapting, so it bothered me little.
Unbidden, fragments of memory, little bits of various scenes, of Ron and Hermione flashed across my vision, brought about by the oh so familiar situation. The specters brought forth took the dagger in my heart and twisted it further. Growling lowly under my breath, I forced them back into a dark corner of my mind.
I had survived without them before and could do it now.
X
The Ministry of Magic at night, in the absence of its usual crowd of magicfolk and with the changes Voldemort had wrought upon it, was a sinister place. The shadows seemed to lurk like monsters waiting for just the right moment to strike, and there was a permanently ominous feeling in the air. The walls were a uniform, unnaturally pure white that easily brought to mind the walls of a hospital, plain but suffocating. They both had the same, insanity-inducing effect, cold in their indifference to the suffering inside their confines.
The hallway we were in seemed to go on forever, stretching on without a visible end as it had been for the past ten minutes. There was nothing – no portraits, no statues, no fake plants, nothing to break the monotony – besides the white walls. A panic, born of not knowing how long it was until the finish, was slowly building in me, like a hummingbird, bouncing off its cage in a fast, scared pattern. It just kept trying for freedom, unable to stop even as the repetitive attempts slowly lost their meaning.
We had to be quiet as we moved along for fear of being discovered in the heart of enemy territory. It was surprisingly difficult, as the urge to shatter the maddening silence nagged and nagged at me. Anything, it begged, anything to stop the viciously circling thoughts, to escape their malignant chains as they tighten further. Still, I clamped my mouth shut, lips thinning to a pained line of a grimace. I must have made a small, discomforted sound then because Ron's outlined face, hidden and distorted by a Disillusionment Charm, turned to me, and I could tell he was giving me a worried look, even if there came no words from his barely visible form. I forced myself to calm, only gaining moderate success, though.
I was extremely relieved when we finally came to an almost unnoticeable, unassuming door to our right, and I had to hold back a sigh expressing this. The panic subsided a bit, leaving anxiety to take its place. I rocked back and forth on my heels, the energy in me needing to be released but without many options in that.
Hermione and Ron noticed but there were no comments, aloud or silent, from either of them. She pulled out a small, thin-toothed key from the ever-present moleskin pouch gifted to us. It had a surprising amount of detail for something of its size. Tiny, magically-animated creatures and wizards locked in battle moved about of their own violation. As far as I could tell, there was no set pattern, as with all other animated pieces in the wizarding world. (One could argue that portraits followed no pattern also, but they were painted then bound to that wizard's soul, thus not completely fitting the label of magical animation. It was a concept I knew little of, though, so who was I to debate this?)
It was a skeleton key we had spent almost seventeen months making (a remarkable feat, considering what went into it). It had been a long, difficult project, but the product was well worth it. Essentially, it was a key for nothing specific; it was for everything. Literally, it could unlock any door that existed. I didn't understand any of the mechanics of its making (that being Hermione's job), only the part I had played in its creation. I, the one with the most magical stores, had had to summon a creature from the Netherworld, the realm between the Living and the Dead filled with entities very few dared to call upon. After summoning the foul thing, I had bound it to the base key Hermione had painstakingly carved runes into every available centimeter. Then, instant skeleton key.
The door opened with no trouble, and we went into our destination, catching our first glimpse of the Vault. The Vault was an extension of the Department of Mysteries and the place where the Unspeakables stored the too volatile experiments and items, the ones too dangerous even for them. It definitely took a lot to accomplish this.
The Vault was largely to be considered a mere myth by the population, and thus few went looking for it. Those that did were usually ambitious treasure-seekers, the kind that utterly disregarded danger in favor of riches untold. The kind that always met Death's eyeless face in their search. Every single one that chased after the Vault's goods did not return to claim anything. It was presumed they were dead, even without physical proof, but personally, I believed they were captured to be experimented upon. It would be just like the Unspeakables – and the Ministry as a whole, really – to do that. Even before Voldemort had taken it over.
Still, in the shadowed corners and back alleys of the magical world, it was whispered of, though rarely. Suspicious accidents happened to those who dared speak of such myths in public. So, even if one spoke of it, they did so only when forced to. And, Ron, Hermione, and I had done just that.
I did not shudder nor grow cold as I recalled our very first act of torture upon a magical not among enemy ranks. No, my heart was hardened by now, closed off to the mentality of peacetime. The morals of war ruled now, for that was all my life had become: the ever-expanding battle of the few protestors against oppressive ideals and outright slaughter, against the empire built upon cruelty and domination over the weak.
At the time, yes, I had felt pained emotions, felt my sense of right and wrong shredding away. My mind had screamed in protest while I had almost forcefully directed my body to torture vital information from an unwilling mind. The wizard had been a very minor blackmarket dealer but one with an unusually large amount of connections – and secrets. In any other situation, I would have been impressed with his tenacity in keeping those secrets, even as we cut off each finger joint by joint then melded together the cut flesh with uncaring use of a spelled Fire Whip. However, at the time, it had only shortened the fuse on my already short temper. Luckily, Ron had stepped in before I killed the man, and had pulled the information out with his own techniques.
When we had finally put him out of his misery, Hermione had immediately fallen to her knees with great, heaving sobs. Though she had participated as much as Ron and I, the two of us had only responded in our own stony, unemotional ways. Even if it wasn't obvious, we had all lost something that day, a part of our innocent selves that could never be retrieved or replaced. It hadn't been the start of our descents to damnation but had certainly sent us rolling down faster.
I would have liked to say it was Voldemort that had been at fault for this. Surely, he had planned it. But, I knew, Voldemort had only put a horcrux here for safekeeping, had handed it to a loyal Unspeakable without much thought as to exactly what we would do to destroy it. Yes, the serpent-man always planned far ahead for all possibilities, but he wasn't omnipotent (no matter what the propaganda said). He could not have foretold of the sheer lengths we would go to in order to rid the earth of the plague called Voldemort.
In that, we only had ourselves to blame.
Hermione, ever the clear-headed one, was the first to move forward to start our search. All of us, I was sure, were stuck in our memories, but she could push through them the best. Once she moved, Ron and I could follow her example and tear ourselves away. However, the three of us could only break free from our jail cells – never from the prison built from the past.
As planned, we split up to search for the horcrux among the many, many piles of items, but still kept one another well within sight. Unfortunately, this was the start to a long quest, even if we knew exactly what Ravenclaw's Diadem looked like in very great detail. We had seen it only once before, early on in the hunt for Voldemort's horcruxes. It had been in the Room of Requirement and fairly unguarded at the time. (Though, even I would have admitted, it was clever to hide it there. To expect the enemy's trump to be in one's very own stronghold was of a paranoia few had, and Dumbledore couldn't be counted among them.) Uncomfortable, I tried to push away the memory surrounding my remembered image of the Diadem.
A kaleidoscope inferno raging below in impossible shapes. A claw of flames reaching up hungrily from its ever-shifting rainbow body. A single malicious eye in the center of it all, darkly omnipotent and watching us –
Violently, I shook my head to rid of the memory, only receiving partial success. Still, the phantom feeling of heat disappeared and that was all that mattered.
I continued my careful searching, making sure not to touch anything with my trembling fingers. I was aware of my right hand reaching up to the large, distorted burn scars on my face every so often to lightly trace the hills and valleys but paid it little mind. I could not stop myself even if I sought to, in the face of this particular memory.
We hadn't been searching long when an odd sensation, the likes of which I had scarcely felt before, gripped me with long, barbed fingers. I froze mid-step, eyes narrowing and a nasty snarl rooting itself upon my face. While it was indeed a foreign feeling, it was not wholly so and immediately brought to mind the mental connection Voldemort and I had once shared. It was a violation of the highest order, this forced link, and I would not tolerate this, just as I hadn't tolerated the one with Voldemort at all once I had learned of it. Rather, I had shredded it to pieces with the fullest of my fury, had erased it from existence with all the power I held in my grasp.
But, as I reached out my magic, molded it into poisonous razor-claws to rip the link apart, I found that its twined thorny vines resisted me. Growling silently, I stilled my body in order to turn my senses inward, to fully immerse myself into my mind.
It was a strange and desolate place. Crooked and narrow spires of ice twisted their ways up perilously to a black sky. There were no stars nor any clouds in their depths, nothing but a great white circle – sun or moon, it was impossible to tell. The circle cast no light and simply was, and it had jagged edges, as if it were a hole something had savagely torn in the universe's fabric. The only light by which to see came, instead, from the pit from which the icy spires rose. From the pit, where no end could be seen, came a pulsing light the green of a Killing Curse. Its slowly waxing and waning depths soothed me but doubtlessly, would have unsettled anyone else.
I, from my perch atop the tallest icy spire, surveyed my kingdom with sharp, serious eyes. Upon entering it, I couldn't detect anything out of the ordinary and was all the more enraged for it. My face twisted into an expression to match this, and I knew from experience it was a nasty and intimidating thing that bespoke of mercy withheld. And, indeed, I held no kindness in my heart for invaders such as this.
"Reveal yourself!" I shouted, and without effort, my voice boomed loudly and echoed as if this were a cave. It was my usual rough growl, but was also laced with the tone of power, a sound that could not be properly described with words. This was my mind, and none other held rule here. In here, there were no limits to restrict me; it was mine to mold in any way I desired.
I repeated those two words again, this time stronger, with more power behind them. It was a command that could not be ignored, and the landscape trembled in the face of my might. Below, the pit flashed its light faster and faster, which in turn made the shadows dance in their own foreign, ancient way. Tiny, almost imperceptible cracks filled the sky, their white lines like the earth under an earthquake's siege.
I shouted out my command a third time, and it was demonic, all darkness and promised pain and hellfire. The cracks spread out further and from their focal point of the white moon-sun, widened. There came a screeching howl, like the clash of metal upon metal and the howling of an ominous wind carrying fate and death, and I knew the invader, forced by my command thrice spoken, had made its presence known. It appeared as frost that clawed its way from the edges of the moon-sun as a very faintly blue spider's web.
"Yes, child?" it spoke with a hissing voice that was akin to the language of serpents but was very dissimilar in little, subtle ways that made all the difference. There were other voices under it speaking the same words, as if several beings spoke at once without any coordination. However, it wasn't malicious nor benevolent, simply neutral.
Normally, I would have immediately destroyed it and indeed felt the urge to do this, but I did not, compelled by some strange instinct. Frustrated with myself and the situation, I snarled out, "Why do you intrude?"
"I merely guide you to what is rightfully yours," it replied with a hint of reverence to its words. Despite myself, I was intrigued by whatever it was offering to lead me to. I was well aware of the danger of accepting something offered by a voice most likely originating from one of the Vault's items. There was a large possibility of this being a trap and probably my death as well. Still, my instincts told me that this was none of those – it was an opportunity. And I was never one to ignore my instincts.
"And what is rightfully mine?" I asked cautiously but with a challenge to my words.
"The might of a Season – the power you so desire." Its reply rung true, for we had been fighting Voldemort and his Death Eaters for so long. We were still alive, yes, but we had won the battle, not the war. With each day more, hope faded little by little, and there seemed to be no end in sight. Each and every day, hour, minute, second, I sought to gain more – more power, more knowledge, more belief in that there would one day be a sunrise – as the situation demanded that I take action. But these were things hard to come by, and I was long past the threshold into desperation. At this point, anything to gain an edge, no matter the nature or consequences, was welcome. I didn't know what the voice spoke of but was willing to accept it.
"Then, lead on," I said at last after a period of silence. Having no further use in being here, I ejected myself from my mind's landscape.
The transition to reality was instantaneous. The sights of the Vault were once again around me, and nothing seemed to have changed. Only mere seconds had passed, I knew, and so Ron and Hermione remained unaware of my trip to my mental sanctuary and of the link. I glanced briefly at them to assure myself of their safety then began to follow where the link tugged me to. They, of course, noticed the deviation from my searching pattern but didn't say anything or otherwise act. Even if we were bound by a friendship like no other, they knew my temper intimately, and my rage stopped for no man, friend or not. My mood was becoming more foul by the day, so I was given a wide berth these days.
The link lead me away for quite some time, and soon Ron and Hermione's figures were almost out of view, hidden behind the massive piles. Eventually, I came upon something vastly out of place in the disorganized mess of the Vault. There was a small pedestal made purely of white marble in the middle of a rare clear area. It shone and sparkled oddly in the sparse light, and no dirt touched any part of it. On top lay only a single almost unassuming item: a wand. The wand was a bit longer than average and bore no detailed carvings. The only distinguishing features of the wand were its black-blue coloring that mimicked frostbite exactly and the small protrusions on its shaft that resembled thorns. Even in its simplicity, it was beautiful.
When I was steps away from the wand, it was obvious that this was what I had been meant to find; this was the power soon to be within my grasp. I became entranced by it and the potential it held and so stared intently, thoughts completely stilling for once in my life. My hand reached toward the wand of its own accord, but I didn't try to stop it. The usual warnings of caution and paranoia did not come to me this time, my whole being focused on nothing but the wand.
My hand, once over it, hovered for a brief second, trembling with emotions I could not name at the time, before snatching up the wand with the speed of a striking viper. Immediately, I felt the sensation of cold – the frigid air of the fiercest blizzard, the solid ice and snow of a tundra's floor. I felt Winter in its entirety.
And, most importantly of all, I felt the sheer power I had in my possession now – the might of a Season. It was glory and ecstasy beyond description, and I felt as if I were now whole, only half a man before without realization of it. I was finally complete.
Now, I knew what I was destined to be all along – the Winter Lord.
X
The perpetual blizzards of Siberia had calmed down some, the winds not as biting but the snow no less furious in its onslaught. It was as cold as ever, colder even as I continued to trudge on northwards, and I welcomed the low temperature. It was wonderful to be surrounded by Winter, the kingdom I ruled, and this invigorated me, filled me with pure energy. The other side of me, my animagus form and the creature lurking in the shadows of my mind, relished this energy and stored it away for later use, as was its nature. I felt powerful in a way I rarely got to experience, like I could accomplish anything. However, I tried to not let it overpower my usually clear, calm logic. Cockiness was an emotion I couldn't afford, not in these times.
I suddenly stopped my walking, standing still and body tense with alertness. I strained my already considerable hearing and tilted my head in curiosity as I picked up the slight sound of voices from a fair distance away. I could sense a few magical presences on the edge of my awareness, but it was difficult to discern anything beyond that.
I needed to find out more, though. They could be agents of the forces I fought, the very people I had to avoid at any cost for now. If this was so, then it was a large possibility that they were aware of my location. It was unlikely they knew exactly why I was here – something I had taken great pains to hide from everyone, including allies – and it was imperative that it stayed that way. This trip was one of the last hopes for victory, and by the gods, I would not stop – for anyone.
Thus, I reached out to the spirit of the Winter surrounding me from all sides, invoking its limited conscious. It was a hard thing to describe, built more upon instinct and feeling than anything else. I couldn't communicate with my Season with words but instead used universal sensations that worked just as well. In a way, it was much easier than the complexity of language and could convey more than words could ever dream to.
Enemies in a territory. The threat of an invading predator. A strategy for taking down larger prey. The omnipotent, nonjudgmental eyes of Nature, I sent to Winter, easily putting the correct emotions into each. Just the thoughts didn't properly communicate what was needed; the experience needed to be connected with them.
There was a brief second in which the Season took to understand and to do what I requested. It came back quickly, puppy-like in its eagerness to please, and took with it the information I needed. What it brought wasn't quite a visual scene but something that I, as the Winter Lord, could translate into such. The sixth sense message was a very strange way to communicate and had to be transferred to the first five senses in order for me to make any sense of it. Overall, it was a better method than talking or writing, as it conveyed everything as if I were actually there.
And what I experienced wasn't good news at all.
There, trudging through the deep snow with difficulty and grumbling all the way, were two men dressed in that distinctive black and scarlet garb of my foes. They, as usual, had on masks – plain and white with black markings that made a very basic face, the same as all the others – that completely concealed their identities. It was a strategy that worked just as well as the former Death Eaters', inducing fear in the population, that fear of the unknown and of the nameless demons that stalked them from the shadows. More than this, though, was their reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness. The Harbingers, as the forces were called, were things – for they could not be considered humans, only malicious shadows of the copies of what they had come into this world as – to be reckoned with. And how, how I utterly loathed them in a way that words could not fully describe.
My eyes narrowed, glowing Avada Kedavra green and filled with promises, and my face twisted into a nasty snarl, the one that foretold of the wrath of Absolute Zero that was soon to come. I growled viciously, more animal than wizard now. My animagus form stirred from its previous stillness, roused by the thirst for the Harbingers' blood that was an almost physical craving. Being a creature of silent malice, it didn't speak, but I could feel its power, a force that eclipsed a great many, mixing with mine, could sense its agreement with this promise of violence. It wasn't a mindless creature, wasn't senseless in its destruction but as was in its nature, took every opportunity available to experience this. The Blood Gem, as was one of the many names for its kind, was only a part of why I was feared by the masses, friend or foe, but a large one nevertheless.
I began to partially transform the more it mixed with me. Clear crystal now covered my hands and wrists, the sharply angled surface glinting in the sun's light, and was slowly moving upward. My feet and ankles mirrored this, and the crystal also grew in small patches over my face and neck. It stopped appearing after reaching my elbows and knees, and then the substance increased density, not that I felt its effect. I lifted a hand to my face, and my fingers curled into a fist as I imagined the two men's destruction. The crystal was impossibly flexible, like it were merely a second skin, as it always was. I let my hand drop back to my side and turned to stare intently in the direction in which I knew my foes to be. My face was one many had faced upon the battlefield, one that predicted no survivors remaining.
I walked again, heading toward my vengeance. It was a journey spent in silence, for no animals called, no wind blew, nothing moved. Winter was still in the face of my rage, and all the wildlife sensed a great danger, their instincts forcing them to attempt to avoid being noticed. Its effect was disturbing and unnatural; I had no doubts the Harbingers felt it.
As I got closer, the two voices became audible, even with their whispering. Suddenly, I stopped, the cloud of anger dissipating a bit and allowing logic to filter through. These were not voices I had heard before, and that revelation brought back reality. Since they, for the most part, looked alike, one of the only ways to tell apart individual Harbingers was by listening. I had the memories of the inner circle's voices etched into my mind, wrought by fire and forever inscribed. Therefore, I could tell the two were not any of the members I had encountered so far (at least the living ones). They sounded young and were probably new recruits.
This confused me, as I had expected a member higher up on the hierarchy. If these were some weaklings the Harbingers knew I could easily crush, then why were they sent here? I considered that they were actually not here for me and that the Harbingers were unaware of my location. It was a distinct possibility. Still, they needed to be dealt with. I could have walked away without detection, could have disappeared into the depths of Siberia with no trouble, but these things, no matter how young, inexperienced, or uninvolved, needed to die. Underestimating them was a mistake I would never make again.
The ancient castle, a once great fortress and stronghold, was ablaze. Its stone was actually melting in the face of the fire's wrath, and shapes, monsters and creatures from places that should never be touched, thrashed and writhed in their own unique dances of death above the castle. It was a sight straight from a hellish nightmare – no, worse than even that. And, from a high vantage point a fair distance away, where the intense heat could still be felt, there stood five figures bathed in the fire's bright light. Stonily, they watched what had once been theirs turn to ash, just as they had when their former connections had similarly burned.
The red fog reappeared, thicker this time, just as it always did with this same remembrance. I discarded walking in favor of running swiftly to the Harbingers; their imminent destruction could not wait. In no time, I was there, in range and Death riding next to me with its frigid hand ready to knock upon their door. The two men had little time to react as I was suddenly upon them as if I had apparated.
The first one hadn't even gotten a chance to get the briefest glance of me before a flat hand of crystal was slicing through its skull like a hot knife through butter. The appendage entered through its eyes and exited at the bulging back of its head. I retracted the hand as swiftly as I had killed my foe. In the wake of the fatal blow, there was a copious spray of blood. It showered me liberally with red and covered my front like the warpaint of conflict. As the thing's body fell without my hand to hold it in place, a grin, wide and full of shark's teeth, grew upon my lips, one to match even the best of the Cheshire Cat. Oh, I enjoyed this so!
The crystal around my hand, once clear, was now the same sanguine, and the color was spreading up the same arm, though it didn't touch my other limbs. The other Harbinger turned to face the disturbance and stopped in shock – and fear, no doubt – at what lay before it. I eyed it with that same grin and with a wild, crazed joy in my every muscle while wiping my other hand over my torso to collect the blood there. That hand turned red, too, and I began to feel more power course through me as the Blood Gem's crystals absorbed the substance's energy. It was a high drugs could only ever hope to produce, for it was real and not merely delusions.
The Harbinger's eyes glued themselves to its fallen comrade, and there were horror and disbelief in its voice when it managed to get out, "J-Jones? Jones, man?"
They were the actions of one seeing death in the battlefield for the first time, the world shut out as their mind struggled with this new and horrible experience. Obviously, the thing wasn't very knowledgeable in the ways of war, had not witnessed its tragedies and its devastating effects. Maybe once, long ago, I would have felt pity or perhaps even sympathy for the Harbinger's plight. I had, after all, been in this position at one time. But, that was the past, and nothing save hatred filled me now.
I executed it in the same manner as its comrade, my hand sinking into the thing's skull as easily as before. More blood covered me and tainted the previously pure snow. I stared at the corpses with satisfaction and absently licked up the blood around my lips. I barely noticed myself scooping up more from my chest to also consume.
My high started to fade little by little, that red fog lifting from my senses to leave behind logic again. My breathing, heavy from the excitement, began to calm, as did my pounding heart. My grin weathered the changes, though, as present as ever.
A scream, high and feminine, broke through and pushed reality in my face all too soon. The pleasurable haze now completely gone, my grin dropped in an instant. I reacted instantly, turning around in a split second to face the intruder with a hand raised, fingers curled into mock claws, in that direction. It was instinct to reach toward Winter instead of my wand, and so, snow swirled heavily around my hand, floating only by the power of magic and weaving about in no discernible pattern. The white had specks of red mixed in, and those impurities were further accented by the matching crystal they surrounded.
I saw, however, that what I faced seemed to be no danger, and so my rage calmed a bit. I lowered my hand, eyes locked solely on the three people in front of me. Snow still swirled about my form, though, as a means of instant defense. One could never be too careful; appearances were deceitful things.
As I eyed them, my mind calculated the situation and what to do about this. Obviously, the three, a man, woman, and little girl, were muggles. It was a disturbing thought that Winter hadn't sensed their presence, but I knew that Winter was a magical force, especially since its master was magical. As such, muggles were, for the most part, invisible to it radar. Only a search specifically for muggles would yield any results. Lamentable as this was, I still had three of them to deal with.
Under my cold, green gaze, they cowered in their own ways. The woman, dressed in multiple layers of worn and shredded clothes, hunched in on herself, arms hugging her own frame tightly. Her eyes looked downward, hidden by a matted veil of hair that had been golden once upon a time, in a submissive manner. She shivered harshly, whole body shaking violently over and over. Which cold she shook for – the chill of Siberia or the glacial, uncaring core thinly veiled within me – remained to be seen.
The girl, obviously the older two's daughter by her looks, hid behind her mother in clear terror. She too shook, from what little I could see of her. Her tiny hand, skeletal and heavily caked with dirt, clung to her mother's clothes with a tight grasp that made her bones stand out even more. She was as skinny as her parents, the starvation forced upon them obvious.
My face hardened, the lines upon it deepening in hatred. The Harbingers knew no bounds, indeed. Killing, torture, spying – acts of war – were one thing, but this – this! – went beyond that. I had never starved mere, helpless muggles for the fun of it. This was –
...No.
Memories, vile things that were no less true, rose up to invade my thoughts. They came forth from their shallow graves to forcefully remind me of a similar crime, a crime I had committed.
Wide eyes made even larger by the thin face and hollow sockets they stared out of met mine, their color, once a vibrant blue of the purest hue, faded and drained. They pleaded with me but did not ask for life, to continue on and survive another day. No, they asked only for Death's embrace, that sweet, sweet release from what life had become. What lay beyond was an unknown, but even if only fire and brimstone and pain was what awaited him, he would go there, for it was bound to be a better torture.
When I had tried to erase the memories from my mind, I had buried them hastily, because digging with the shovel of regret was a painful experience, one that left scars and created the callouses of indifference. Thus, it was easy for them to claw their way out, to again pierce my mind with their poisonous, barbed limbs.
They scolded me, asking me how I could forget everything I had learned – how I could forget that war had no boundaries. Because, that was what war did; it destroyed the walls separating right and wrong. It did this by forcing men to ignore their sense of morality, took the justice of peacetime and buried it for the sake of winning.
In war, morals were not only forced into hiding; they were violated, sometimes beyond redemption, and twisted, sometimes beyond recognition. Mercy became a weakness – the essence of wrong – and utter annihilation a strength – the essence of right. The world became reversed, a grotesque parody of what it had once been.
And, I was in the very center of this perversion. I had been born by the fires of strife, a prophecy dictating my fate and making my whole life at least one of the many faces of war at all times. I, as a child of war, suffering my cloak and bloodshed the paint upon my soul, followed the moral code of my birth: anything was acceptable.
So, I knew it wasn't my place to judge the Harbingers, only to, as an enemy of their forces, destroy them. I had done deeds as vile as theirs, and to condemn their actions was to condemn my own.
"I'm no' gonna le' yeh hurt 'em!" the man yelled out, interrupting my thoughts and breaking apart the memories into nothingness. He stood defensively in front of his family, arms spread wide with a rigid spine. I could barely hear his voice over the howling of the wind, and matching its volume, it was weak and filled with tremors. The courage in him, in those words, wasn't false, though, as there lay a fierce protectiveness within the man, a certain willingness to save his family no matter the cost. Yet, there was also a profound terror, that of a man with the knowledge of Death's shadowy figure looming over himself. Every being feared having their own mortality thrown brutally in their faces, even for the most just of causes.
The man's gaze, a single eye that was wild with emotion, locked with mine briefly before quickly darting away. Perhaps, he saw the weighty decisions in my own, the judge, jury, and executioner ready to determine the sins of any man and then exact the toll.
I could see that his left eye had been gouged out completely, the untreated eye socket sunken in and beginning to ooze yellow pus. The sand in his hourglass was swiftly nearing its end, another grain gone as another second passed, and the infection only sped this process up. Faced with his inevitable demise on the horizon, clearly visible and waiting, his fear was turning to resignation, and it was apparent in every line of his face, every muscle in his body. Such a man, not fearing of Death, was uncaring of his actions and their consequences; such a man was dangerous.
Impatient and unnerved with the period of silence caused by my lack of response, he cried out, "I won't le' yeh! I won't!"
I continued my silence, for I could not promise him such a thing.
Finally deciding on what to do with them, I reached out my hand toward the two females huddling together. Recognizing the threat this presented, the man's eye widened, and the protectiveness and fear for his family etched themselves upon him. However, he quickly overcame his immobilization, and with a senseless roar of rage, he charged recklessly at me. He had no weapon but his hands and so stretched them forward with his fingers crooked like claws, the long and yellowed fingernails only enhancing this effect.
Annoyed with him, I flicked my hand to the side, effortlessly commanding the snow to knock him aside. It hit him with considerable force, and his limp body landed hard some meters away. He wheezed painfully, blood spilling from his mouth to taint the snow, and did not otherwise move.
"Charlie!" the woman screamed shrilly, having eyes only for the man. She ran to him, momentarily forgetting her daughter in her grief and thus leaving the child behind. The girl, her anchor to standing and to safety gone, fell down easily, a weak cry of pain escaping her. The snow beneath her buckled a bit under her feeble weight, conforming around her like wet clay.
The snow similarly warped when the woman's knees hit it as she fell before the man. Once there, it seemed she no longer knew what to do. Only thoughts of save him, save him, save him ran through her head, the desperate mantra of someone witnessing the slow, steady death of their anchor to reality. As the center of her world crumbled back to ash and as her trembling hands realized their helplessness in this, another thought, small and numb with horror, cried out from beneath all others: I can't.
"Oh god..." she said, and it was more a simple exhale than anything else, a whisper lost upon the wind. The woman's mouth moved in expressions of disbelief, and these words were too lost in the wind's cruel, unfeeling tendrils.
I watched the scene with an impassioned face, appearing unaffected by its tragedy. It was a guise to hide that small, small part of me that was weeping, that wailed mournfully for me to reach out and fix it. It was made of the embers of me before the wars, before this madness. That little bit was the boy in the cupboard under the stairs, the one that knew only the name Freak. It knew nothing of the merciless world, only of spiders and darkness and hurtful words, and yet longed to see the outside in full. It had endured, had suffered and knew that allowing the same to befall others was unacceptable. It had been in that pit of despair and would not wish that upon anyone.
But, the boy in the cupboard under the stairs was tiny and so was smothered by the larger of the whole, not completely gone but buried for the moment.
I focused on the girl again and saw that she was weakly trying to push herself back up. She didn't get very far, her shaking limbs giving up after a few seconds to drop her back to the cold. Each time, she rose lower and lower until she had no more energy to expend. There was a sad and resigned look about the girl when she found that her arms would not move more than a few twitches. It should have been out of place on one as young as her, but her innocence had long since been torn away and shredded beyond repair.
I didn't prolong her suffering as I killed her. I directed the snow to gently cover her in a coffin of Winter. There were no sounds, none beyond the wind and the woman, nor were there any struggles from the girl as she quickly slipped into an eternal sleep. Her systems failed swiftly, urged on when I further lowered the temperature with my powers. Under the vast white, I imagined her face was serene.
I watched that spot for a while, body still, as the landscape painted over the imperfection with a brush lacking judgment. It wasn't long before the snow was again uniform.
I turned to the last two muggles and found that the man was dead, his chest unmoving and his exposed body parts the black-blue of frostbite. The woman was curled over him, arms holding tightly even in her exhausted, cold-induced sleep. Her chest raised and lowered with life, but it held a slow pace to it, one that slowed with each passing minute. It was obvious that she was soon to join her family.
I pointed my hand in her direction, intending to end her existence, but hesitated at the last moment. The small boy named Freak rejoiced and rose up on the powerful but frail wings of hope. It urged me to help the woman, let her live when she would not have otherwise on her own. My outstretched limb shook lightly as I fought myself about it.
Finally, I put my arm back down to my side with a sharp swipe and a dark growl. With harsh movements full of frustration and reluctant defeat, I took out the Western Wand and waved it at the woman in familiar but long-unused motions. The Warming Charm I cast took a bit more power than usual but was sufficient in bringing her body temperature back to normal. Her skin, once extremely pale and faintly blue in places, slowly gained a rosy tint.
I put the wand away and walked over to the unconscious muggle, the crunch of the snow underfoot audible in the sudden hiatus of the wind. I stared at her face, tense even in sleep and still weighty with the suffering she carried, in one last contemplation before, with a few gestures, making a stretcher of ice to carry her. I commanded the snow to carry her unto it, and her landing was as gentle as I could make it.
I then turned away to face north and began my journey once more with a swift pace. Fueled by the tattered remnants of better days past, the woman on her icy carrier followed behind as silently as a shadow.
X
END of Through Snow and Memories I
TBL: Hope you readers liked it! It certainly was fun to write, so expect more soon. I'm going to work hard on this fic because it's another main focus of mine (the only one aside from Scourge), as opposed to a side story (Breathe Not His Name XD), which I would put off often. Soooooo, you should expect a new chapter to come out in another two months (...or so). See you then!
The few. The proud. The strong. The reviewers. Be a reviewer today. Help your writer.
8/1/2012