Winter Lord – Through Snow and Memories II
WMoC: Hey, loyal fans (for, I assume, only the loyals ones are left at this point). Sorry to be so late of this. Truth be told, I had this chapter ready (unedited, though, mind you) in…. um…. December. Real life's been hectic; I had to move to an apartment for the first time, start up college again. Ugh. It's a mess. Still, that doesn't really excuse the shit long wait. For that, I apologize.
Moving on, this chapter is the second part of the previous one (obviously), and the two count as a prologue of sorts. This is the last time we will be experiencing the HPverse, folks, so say your good-byes. Ah! But do not fear, readers, for we are a whole new world, one of mutants and supers, treachery and war. Strap in your seat belts and get ready for the ride of your life! Our story begins.
Disclaimer: I, WalkingMassofComplexes, formerly 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
It was a perfect and warm, summer Saturday in June when the Alleys were razed to the ground.
The day started off normally – as even days of tragedy and devastation often do – with a rising sun and peace in the souls of the magical citizens. Voldemort had been killed just three and a half years earlier, and though their world was still in the beginning stages of recovery, the deep wounds inflicted upon their society were steadily healing under the bandage of a hope for a better future. Most of the buildings, shops and homes alike, had been rebuilt, and business was once again flourishing. Even in Diagon Alley's darker sister, Knockturn Alley, the atmosphere was lighter and the streets were crowded with all kinds of life; aligned with the Ministry, steeped in the Dark Arts, misunderstood and thus wrongly classified as Dark anyway, whatever the case, all were welcome there.
It was looking as if the magical community were heading toward a golden age, full of contentment, innovation, and positive changes. So, the general mood was joyful as the shoppers and residents flooded the Alleys, most appearing early in the morning in order to purchase the best of the supplies. Catering to this, vendors lined all the streets, most of their goods food for the breakfast-hungry witches and wizards. The scent of fresh bread and cooked meat filled the air enticingly, and the calls advertising these wares assured that nowhere in the Alleys was silent. It was a picture perfect scene, something straight out of a novel, untroubled by the worries of the world.
The last fragments of Voldemort's influence were still being drug out and eradicated. There were Death Eaters loose and roaming the lands, but most were hiding away deep in some hole, trying to evade the aurors furiously hunting for them. The concentration camps' victims – muggles and no little amount of muggleborns – were slowly returning to what little normalcy they would ever hope to achieve now, their freedom much welcome after all these years. The weapons of war, both magic and machine, had been laid down, and all seemed well.
But, as all good things eventually do, this peace came to an abrupt end.
It started with a feeling in the air, an ominous sensation, as if a great prophecy of doom had descended upon us. It was an intangible but heavy thing blanketing the Alleys like a thick fog. It didn't build up to this, instead appearing in an instant. However, the feeling did not leave as fast as it had come, lingering malignantly.
The shopping witches and wizards all at once slowed to a stop, almost as if it had been planned. They looked about in confusion, their accompanying fear clear as day on their faces. I, too, was not unaffected, and a chord resonated within me, screaming of danger. Though there was nothing to be found as a cause, and we were all the more disturbed for it.
I had also stopped walking, standing tense in the middle of a Diagon Alley street with the rest. My ears strained to hear what my eyes could not see, and at first, I caught nothing, only the silence permeating this unnatural stillness. Then, it came to me: the sounds of flapping wings like a giant murder of crows swiftly following the aura of omen they carried with them. It lasted for a few precious seconds and was our only warning before a massive black cloud came into view above us, its long, trailing mass starting only as a pinprick next to the bright sun. It didn't stay that way for long.
The cloud rapidly grew bigger and moved until it had engulfed the sun, swallowing the sky with its massive jaws. It was abruptly dark in the Alleys, as if a chunk of time had been stolen away in an instant, bringing the day once more to night. The only light by which to see came from the floating balls of light inside the shops. They were a relatively new invention and quite popular, these colored spheres that resembled will-o-wisps with their fiery bodies and almost-sentient existence, and so littered a vast majority of the buildings. They came in every color imaginable, and it showed in the rainbow light cast upon the streets beyond their confines. The orbs, originally intended to be cheery, only created a strange, ghostly effect now, a graveyard full to the brim with death, past and future.
In the dark, there was a lone screech, shrill and angry, that was loud among the silence of the frozen crowd. Their fear, already winding through the Alleys like veiling smog, thickened and clogging my nostrils with its pungent scent. The Blood Gem stirred and rose at an alarming pace, its presence agitated and strangely protective, and in that, I knew something was wrong, so very wrong.
The flapping grew louder, entering a volume which the people around me could finally hear. Whatever the cloud was made of was obviously very near us, yet still, the darkness persisted, and it lead me to wonder just how many there were. I had no time to linger on this question, however, because a scream – high and feminine and human – sounded, a fair distance away but clear in its pain and that certain fear felt when the last of one's life slipped like sand through their fingers, their most precious commodity lost forever and unstoppable in its escape. The smells of blood and fresh death reached me seconds before the witches and wizards began to panic all at once. Immediately, the crowds began to surge in all directions, pushing and grabbing in blind desperation. There existed no propriety nor any sense, only the loud, overwhelming instincts of an animal cornered.
In my own bid for freedom, I managed to make it to one of the many shops to the side, though not without minor damage. I quickly shut the door behind me. The gesture was hopeful, childish, and, above all, useless in its attempt to shut out this monster come out of the woodwork, though I had scarce known fear of such a thing.
The broken plate lay an open sin between us, a tiny boy cowering and terrified, and an obese man with the trigger temper of a bull and the means to carry out his threats. He merely stared at me for a moment, face deeply red and eyes apocalyptic with fury. He didn't need to yell at me about my lack of worth to anyone; I was already well aware of this fact. The little burden in the cupboard under the stairs was I, wanted nowhere and useless to the world. And he knew I knew. Still, the broken ceramic could not go unnoticed, so when the fat paw smacked me upside the head and sent me hard into a wall, I had long foreseen its coming. I wished I could have said I was prepared, but while I had full knowledge of what was to come, I was never ready for it, for the pain and broken bones and screamed words.
As he stomped closer, a memory briefly fluttered through my mind of Dudley ordering Petunia to check under his bed for monsters. The simpering, horse-like woman had obeyed her son and searched under the bed (and in the closet and in the dark corners and, by the end, the boy's whole room). She had found nothing but empty food wrappers, so proclaimed her little Diddums safe after more coddling. I remembered it distinctly because I could never ask such a thing, even if Petunia would have indulged me. I already knew the monster that stalked me, and its name was Vernon.
Again, a great, hulking beast shadowed me, but this time I didn't know its name or face. It was more of a sensed thing than anything physical so far, like an invisible cloud of smoke feeling its ways through the Alleys with insidious claws. It pried open minds with brutal force and injected its acidic venom there with glee, until there was nothing human left and only that bare, basic shell – primal and wild with fear.
There was an ember within me, brought upon by the Blood Gem as it shifted in my soul, that kept the poisonous gas at bay though, for which I was glad. However, it couldn't fully drive away the mind-rending sensations, so I was left in a half-state. I felt the very human part of myself, with its cowering and mindless pleading, war with the Blood Gem's influence, as strong and resilient as its crystal body and holding a great, otherworldly power. Their clashes took the whole of my attention, blinding me to my physical body and surroundings, with a painful intensity.
Time passed, though I was unable to even acknowledge its existence, until eventually the Blood Gem managed to wrestle control. Now, I was not fully the Blood Gem, but nor was I in total control of my mind and body. It was a compromise in the face of this shadowy, faceless monster. I accepted this, but it felt strange, if not quite unnatural, as the Blood Gem had temporarily separated Harry James Potter into two parts, like peeling away the skin from an onion. I could feel the thoughtless scaredterrorhorrorcowersubmit churning in a deep hole, locked away in some dark depth, while the rest looked out the window of a Diagon Alley shop with almost careless eyes at the death and fire on the other side. I felt disturbed at this, but in the same instant, did not truly understand the feeling.
Outside, a young child, barely Hogwarts age if I had to guess, slammed into the glass before me, as pale as parchment if not for the blood rushing down a large gash on his forehead, staining his skin. The stream of red was thick and had quickly covered his eyes, leaving him unable to see the chaos around him, ironic in its mercy. There was a single orb of light nearest the boy, and its mustard-colored presence colored him a strained, sickly tone. It made the situation all the more real for a brief moment, blinding with implications, until the Blood Gem forced that down, too.
The boy turned to the light like a moth to a flame, his expression hopeful beneath the blood and his world paused for one moment in the face of this simple event. Then, time came falling back with a crash for the boy, dragging him screaming the whole way down.
A black shape suddenly slammed into the boy, the force of its crash landing on his back sending them hard into the glass. The store's window didn't shatter, but it was a near thing, as large cracks spread out in a spider's web from the impact. The child's hands clawed frantically at the glass in a desperate bid to escape, leaving streaks of red down its surface, and his screams only seemed to blend in with the symphony of the Alleys' other victims all voicing their own agony. The thing on his back answered him as the mustard-colored orb highlighted long, jagged claws dragging into the boy's face. The shrieking cackle was a hellish noise that could freeze blood to a stop, a fitting backdrop as those searching points found his lips, forcing their way inside to rip the boy's screaming mouth and unzipping the flesh until two flaps hung down grotesquely from an open view of his bared and bloodied teeth.
I watched dispassionately as the thing tore into the child with vigor, shoveling out his eyes, tearing the skin from his body, and shredding his future as easily as the child's frail body. When he finally laid still in a fleshy mass on Diagon's cobbled ground, dead and broken, the shape shrieked in victory on his corpse, and as it spread its wings and took off to continue its chaos, the mustard-colored light caught the thing in full for a brief moment, allowing me to see what exactly it was – a juvenile gargoyle.
It was a nasty creature, all fatal points and hard, unbreakable edges, and looked far more sinister than the only picture I had seen of one, nestled in an ancient, tiny book of forbidden things in a desperate quest to find a cure for this plague named Voldemort. It resembled no single other beast but instead stole the worst of each and strung them together with hellfire.
Most of the juvenile was a bulky mass of deadly muscles, its front-most arms alone able to tear a bull in half without much effort, and its back legs were springy like a frog's with just as much potential power. It was made in such a way to best facilitate its favored method of hunting, a unique process in which the gargoyle swooped down upon its prey upon almost-silent bat's wings and then stuck to its victim's back with barbed nails and a strangling vice-grip. Then, its second pair of arms, long and spindly appendages with dexterous fingers, ripped and shredded until there was nothing left but a bloody mess of bone and flesh.
Gargoyles were not monsters found wandering the lands, instead slumbering deep, deep under the surface, waiting like end-of-days specters for their cue to erupt from their lava-dens. For them to attack Diagon Alley would be an impossible thought if not for the reality playing out before me.
However, the worst had yet to come. Gargoyles were beasts that swarmed under one banner, the workers dying, killing, living solely for their leader. The Matriarch or Patriarch had yet to arrive, and until then, this slaughter was but a toddler's fumbling. Outside, the unnatural darkness still persisted as the remainder of the horde buzzed like locusts, watching hungrily for their own turn to gorge.
But speak of the devil, so he shall appear.
An abrupt quiet fell over the Alleys, the sort thick with anticipation, silence before doom and the hush before the headsman's ax. The colored, magical lights seemed somehow dimmer, and a shroud of stillness covered the whole of us. Just on the edge of the sickly, mustard light in front of me, a single gargoyle's image was caught, and it stared unceasingly at a point in the blackened sky.
Then, like the birth of a god, the Alleys were suddenly thrown into bright, piercing light. Blazing like a miniature sun, the grand finale stretched its liquid fire limbs high from its perch atop the white stone roof of Gringotts. It was more horrible than I could have imagined, a torturous nightmare come to life as it took in the death and destruction wrought by its kin with a mockery of eyes, twin voids blacker than anything and desiring only to consume all in its path.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl at the great titan's command, and the remaining wizards were as frozen like rats, wide-eyed in the face of jag-toothed jaws. I could feel the sensation too, though less acutely, and was never gladder for the Blood Gem. What little that slipped through the cracks as the crystal crept further and further was no more than instinct, an overwhelming need to flee and weak-kneed paralysis.
The horde's leader shifted its massive body and dug thorny talons into Gringotts's side, gouging heavily-warded stone as if it were butter. I watched in horrified amazement as the goblin fortress started melting, white-hot globs slugging down like wax. It passed its empty gaze over us, heavy with judgment. Then, jagged obsidian shards reflected destruction as the gargoyle parted its jaws to belch black and noxious fumes that billowed furiously then disappeared into the forced night.
The whole of my attention narrowed unto the beast's maw, unto this single moment where death seemed so very certain. Any second now, flames and darkness and death would spew forth like bile and the others would swoop down to shred my skin and bones like paper and we would all burnburnburn –
The Blood Gem ripped away another layer of Harry James Potter forcefully before I had fully fallen into that pit of despair the gargoyles created. As the ravings of a cornered and wounded animal faded, I could hear that the horde's leader was cackling, a high and wheezy sound that froze my blood. Abruptly, the gargoyle stopped and gave a few closing huffs of amusement full of smoke.
"Oho! The magic flesh-meats still like fool deer in the open field!" it hacked out in a voice like stone grinding against stone, and the wizards of Diagon lost their focused attention on the monsters' imminent firedarkmeltingbonesripshredtear. Instead, it was on the leader's apparent sentience, its ability to speak and reason. Death suddenly became doubly horrifying in that it was not a mindless beast, destruction and savagery an uncontrollable nature, that lead the wizards there, but a being fully able to consciously spit in the face of morality.
As if it could read their thoughts, the monster began cackling again, and this time, the Alleys' inhabitants were aware of the sound as it filled the air, grating on our ears and slowly choking all logical, sane reasoning. The swarms of juveniles copied their leader with higher, shrieking voices, and with their hive-minds, it was eerily coordinated. The result was one malicious sentiment echoed over and over and over until all that Diagon Alley existed as was endless dark and laughter.
By some unseen cue, they all stopped as one, and the horde's master spoke again, "This one never tires of the flesh-meats. They think and think, and toil and toil – never to arrive! The magic flesh-meats before this one amuse it so with their futile existence. This one thinks they try too hard, by far."
Its kin snickered briefly, amused by our plight, and the whole scene was strangely reminiscent of a mad king giggling on his throne while his court parroted him with hyena-laughter and worshiping eyes. It lent an air of surreality to the situation, and distantly, I felt hysteria bubbling up with its own mad giggles, before the Blood Gem forcefully stamped it down.
"This one would feast and return to the home of fire," it continued, "but Howell Amergin Kiffin has shown the Kin that the flesh-meats mate like the hare that is certain the fox will not catch the scent of easy prey. So for a time, this one will allow Howell Amergin Kiffin to parley with the Kin."
The gargoyle's mood shifted as freely as the winds, and it spoke as if we were all at some grand party, discussing the affairs of the world over tea. The changes were made all the more stark as its countenance morphed again, coming to rest on a completely different note. Its ending comment held the most sanity of all and was thus the most disturbing of them. "The Kin wish their first meal after slumber to be of the magics. Who is this one to deny them?"
X
Some amount of time later, I was still trudging onward through Siberia's wasteland of Winter. The hours and minutes blended together now, and the days were as endless as the snow. I knew, distantly, that finding Winter's Keep – an icy fortress half-lost to legend and a last, desperate plan for an all-or-nothing wager – wasn't a task I could afford to take my time with, but no matter how I fought to keep it otherwise, time was a relative concept now, flowing steadily on without anything to mark it.
The only change here was the temperature, falling and falling to new lows as my path took me ever north. As it was my own domain, I was unaffected by the cold, even if I was aware of its presence. The woman I had brought with me, however, did not have that luxury and even with my Warming Charms, she was so very weak as her body slowly gave up its will to go on.
I wanted badly to fix the situation – and it would be so easy, too. I could have made her a portkey to one of the resistance hideaways I knew of or on the edge of a relatively safe town or somewhere else – anywhere but here. But no, I was certainly no expert in portkeys, and if the Harbingers found her, they could force the information from her or trace the portkey's magic, then they would know where I was and –
No. I couldn't, not when I was this close, not when more than half of Europe was a smoldering ruin and I still had one last way to maybe end it, even if it was a hint of a possibility that barely existed. And so, the woman would stay with me in this limbo, asleep and trapped.
In hindsight, I could have easily ended her life the same as her family's, simply buried her in snow and ice, and resolved the conflict just like that. At the moment, though, the thought didn't even remotely occur. I had chosen to spare her life, save her from her cruel captors and the surrounding nature that held even less mercy in its heart. With my focus narrowed to only here and now and destination ahead, I could only see the path I had picked for myself and not the branching side streets of opportunity all along the way. The boy in the cupboard under the stairs meanwhile laid silent and dormant in this matter, and when the depths of my mind was the only place I could take rest from this endless quest, I wondered at the absence.
In the here and now, I was resting for a moment in a crude ice-shack of my own making, as this far north, there was little in the way of civilization to house us. It was not a completely barren place, though, for the land was sparsely littered with remnants of past horrors. The broken, concrete shells of gulags still stood haphazardly, and I had come across a few of them in my journey. Though they undoubtedly would have provided better shelter, there still lingered the ghost of the suffering of prisoners laboring for a cause they didn't believe in. As a Season Lord, I could, to an extent, feel echoes where the earth had been left with the imprint of great emotion, and here, the black spots of fear and pain wailed to me when I neared. I had made my ice-shack as far away from them as I could get before the exhaustion overwhelmed me, but so entrenched in Winter, nowhere saved me from the chills running down my spine.
I wished I could have kept going and going, following the chilled call of Winter's Keep without break or rest. Even now, as I lay down to sleep on a bed of snow, it tugged at me, the Western Wand murmuring its desire to connect. Still, I was only human, and so the song continued nipping at my heels as I fell into restless dreaming.
X
I woke up dazed and viewing the world as incomprehensible fog, but the unusual state did not last long, as I was abruptly reminded of my surroundings. A wild, aggressive snarl rent the air, and immediately, I was grasping for the Winter Wand, which heeded my call eagerly, with powdered snow and tiny ice chunks circling my form in worried, defensive flutters. As I bade the ice-shack to reveal the world outside – the ice, in turn following unconscious direction to reform as thick, jagged spears in a fortress around me – I absently noted that something was missing but so caught in the moment, it was only a dim echo of a thought, there and gone again.
I stretched a web of magic out, searching visually in conjunction with the other, superior method. Both quickly came upon the source of the noises, a crouched and half-crazed wolverine bearing its teeth at its most recent challenger. I locked eyes with it, seeking the truth of the matter – if perhaps it were an animagus come to fool me, a familiar doing its master's bidding, or whatever else. But no, I was realizing, as the red fog and instincts faded, it was just an animal, starved and desperate for sustenance, willing to take from under a greater predator's nose if only for a bite. Its ribs easily shoved against its skin and its spine made a road map of hardship across its back. The creature's fur was matted with dirt and dried blood, while wounds – old and new – shone red through the many bald patches. Through sunken eye sockets, though, the wolverine's eyes were fierce and bright and alive. If nothing, its will to survive no matter what superseded all else.
Finally, I slipped out of my haze, crystals I hadn't noticed growing receding back to dormancy. And as the stirring winds and tundra back inside my view, I was suddenly struck by realization of the answer to that niggling in the back of my mind. There was a shredded and bloodied body beneath the wolverine, and though it had nearly torn her face clean off, I recognized the corpse as being the woman I had spared from death (though no longer, it seemed).
My first response was to shoo the beast off of its meal, for at least a bit of respect even if her soul had already departed its vessel. I started forward to do just that, and the predator growled in warning and shifted to prepare. Clearly it would not give up without a fight, and so I gathered Winter, unwilling to underestimate its strength, even if it were an animal void of either magic or sentience. The wolverine obviously noted the growing danger but only grew all the more aggressive for it. I matched stares with the beast, my cold rage meeting it head on.
What I saw there, though, stopped me. Even if it were merely a mundane animal, untouched by magic or sentience, its eyes were vastly expressive, and in them I saw desperation and hunger, a cornered and struggling thing that was riding the last of its energy. More than that, I saw something that I had hardly glimpsed even in humans: an indomitable will to overcome the odds and to stare death in the face if only to spit in it. In those eyes, I saw myself in another place and time, and the mirror of it was eerie.
The snow and ice fell back to their place on the ground, and I stepped back from the wolverine, slowly nodding my head in acquiesce. It was still an animal and thus did not fully understand the gesture, but the creature knew well enough, its snarling ceasing and its body losing its tenseness. Its gaze was thankful.
I bade Winter to gather my things to me and set off once more, alone this time. Though unsure if it were the better option, for the moment I was content in my solitude.
X
The near-end of civilization as we knew it had an abrupt start, and it was a viper's strike upon the world, magic and muggle alike, fangs dripping with poison and a very human hatred. So soon after Voldemort's reign, it had Europe's people in paralyzed shock, the recovering wizards especially so, with the rest not far off. Diagon and Knockturn Alleys' funeral pyre was only the tip of the iceberg, as all around the globe, other massacres occurred simultaneously – Cairo, where the rivers ran red with lives taken with the merciless gunfire of possessed friends and allies; Hong Kong, where unnatural thunderstorms blackened the sun and lightning fell for what seemed an endless week, the metropolis naught but twisted and molten metal by the end; the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka, where three volcanoes erupted without warning within an hour of each other, the skies only ash and flaming debris and nothing except death covering the ground beneath. In the aftermath, there existed no words in any language to fully encompass the devastation and tragedy; the people stood united in their silence.
Emerging from the ashes, Howell Kiffin – the very man the gargoyles had declared their favor to – made a bold, purposeful move to declare himself in all but name a savior raised past mortal chains and their salvation. He laid blame for these events and yet didn't all in the same breath, his grand speeches speaking directly to their basic humanity, to the core that demanded why of what many labeled fate. Slithering through the populace, the men and women Kiffin had brought to his side long before Hong Kong, Cairo, and the others expertly prodded the crowds with judgment and praise, readying them to also accept the same master. He was a new religion all unto himself, the legions of followers growing at a disturbing rate, each with a zealous fanaticism and blind hands eager to spread Kiffin's will.
Meanwhile, the governments, flailing to keep their authority and denounce Kiffin's proposition to break away, wondered at this; how could such a man have started this without their notice, they asked themselves. But they were kings upon their mountain tops, and so, the dealings of rats spreading filth among sewage underfoot had been beyond their vision. Kiffin had seen this truth and had built his empire in the shadows and piss, had constructed a black city from fallen, unwanted trash as if the gods themselves offered it. He had seen opportunity in the forgotten, desolate animals that curled in isolated hatred there, had seen that they would light the world aflame for Kiffin if only he gave them a match and a reason. These were the only ones to know the true depths of the man's vile goals and yet the most loyal of all. Compared to Voldemort, who had coerced and lied to the entirety of his Death Eaters, none of them knowing the full breadth of his plans, I was uncertain if Kiffin was the worse of the two for this.
Knowing the origins of a tale that only ended in death and madness, however, did little good in stopping Kiffin, and thus the governments of the world reacted with bloodshed and violence. Men and women even suspected of proclaiming Kiffin's glory were taken from their homes, the mad prophets singing praises on street sides were shot between one word and the next, and the populations churned with panic and paranoia, their mouths spewing accusations toward anyone if only to protect themselves. Despite these efforts, or maybe because of them, the true jackal-pack circled the bleating herd from dark, unharmed perches, disrupting their orderly lines like a cruel kid with a magnifying lens.
Even when the governments' hasty, scatter-shot bullets finally hit their intended mark, five more Harbingers just replaced their fallen comrade, scurrying like cockroaches crawling among the wreckage and spreading their diseased influence with something approaching immortality. The armies and navies and militias of the world fought Kiffin's forces with all their considerable might, but they were the efforts of a giant swatting at the swarm but not the hive. Attempts to fix this issue were also useless, as his closest followers' loyalty triumphed even in death; nothing could bring them to speak against the shadow-king pulling strings from his throne of shit and bone.
All the while, destruction still ravaged the land, its people desperately clutching their weapons in a terror that allowed no rest. In the moment, the attacks seemed random, monsters clawing their way through dark nightmares to feast their fill before slinking back to the hellish realm they hailed from, their silent, gleaming eyes always vigil for the next. In hindsight, however, they were coldly strategic, setting neighbor against neighbor and luring them to him all at once. And at first, few could readily recognize the true dangers Kiffin represented. We were the prisoners and the war veterans, the ones who saw past his porcelain shell and veil of easily-twisted words to the core wanting nothing he promised and took arms to a single mantra: history repeats itself. Still, acceptance was a heady ideal, one powerful enough to make minds twist hell into heaven.
So as Kiffin and his ilk led a crusade that was equal parts a great, immovable glacier slowly crushing all in its path and a forest forest set to burn the old growth to prepare for the new, pockets of resistance rose from the ashes and crushed the remains. The Harbingers' madness left no territories untouched and so death and revenge eventually bound men together regardless of category, their shared pains beyond any appearance or ability. The union, though, was at once heartening and tragic, for it was sorrow binding them and not a want to coexist. Wizard and muggle, black and white, man and woman – all still hated their fellows; their hatred for the Harbingers just overshadowed those.
Our combined force was mighty indeed, especially so as ideas and weapons mixed to greater effect, and we even appeared to be making progress for a time. But in the back of our minds, we shared among us another thing: a premonition, more gut feeling than anything but intense and forever nagging in ways words failed, of stones dragging us down even as we swam toward the surface with all our strength. No matter how much we tried for the opposite, the only distance we gained was toward the open, eternally waiting arms of the black and frigid ocean bottom. Slowly, steadily we weredrowning.
X
I no longer knew where I was, only the ice and snow and that horribly beautiful song like a tide in the back of my mind, slowly but steadily eroding any sanity I still clung to. Nothing existed – nothing mattered – but Winter now, the crunch beneath my feet, the wand branding my skin like dry ice, and the pull to venture on and on and on to the Winter Keep. I wasn't a man on a desperate quest to save my world anymore. No, I was now a marked soul trudging toward certain doom, and I could finally see my headsman waiting with his smug, black smile and ready axe before me, for not far into the distance, there lay a towering pillar, the husk of a dead god looming menacingly over its domain. It was a knife's edge of pain and pleasure, to be repelled by screaming instincts and drawn in by the temptation of incredible power hovering just there in equal measures.
And so, my remaining journey was weighed in the hours and minutes and excruciating seconds until I could finally touch its dark glory. If I had been aware of its entirety, I would have labeled the journey as harsh and never-ending, but even the fierce snow storm that was punishing its surroundings paled, becoming but an insect's bite in comparison.
Slowly, I trudged on and on, through the cruel cold and through the sensation of slow erosion, until finally – at the end of my strength and the edge of an abyss into madness – I stood before it: the key to the Winter Keep. Here, where I could at last bask in its magnificence, the jagged monolith's poisonous allure was oddly muted, and pushing aside the dull, tired tendrils of it, my gaze beheld the structure unclouded. I took in its strange, organic shape, from the tip that just touched the clouds, forever straining to stab into the heavens, to the base, where thick roots of ice met to twine up together from a gaping crack sundered into the earth by some great power long past. All along it, the figures of clashing titans and beastly legends fought each other and bathed in their bloody victories. They weren't carved by the hands of worshipers, though, but rather ran its length in bubbled shapes so natural it appeared as if they would leap forward any moment in one unified, ever-shifting mass of horror.
There was but a single part separate from the cohesive whole, and that was the huge, monstrous remnant of some nightmare-beast near the top. Its grinning, carnivorous skull was the highest, caught by the ice that spiked through its jaw all the way to just behind its left-most eye cavity. From the base of the skull, thick segments of neck bone curved down to a rib cage tightly grasping the javelin of Winter, continuing on as spine again to bury completely into the ice. Defying gravity, the bones of the monster's arms were still frozen in mid-leap, clawing the sky with wicked talons.
Stepping within mere meters of the shrine, I became trapped within that same sphere of influence, the unsettling certainty that time was indefinitely paused here, leaving the world still and stagnant. I felt an invisible weight lift itself from my shoulders, and I was left unmoored to reality, floating adrift in an empty, unfeeling void. Here, the terror that had so underlined Winter's dual-noted song, pressing heavily upon my nape but smoothed by the deep, sweet pitches of pleasure and power, now outweighed its counter, stealing my breath and chilling my veins. Suddenly, I was a speck of dust – no, less than even that, infinitely small and forever beyond any understanding of the vast universe – caught in the unfortunate gaze of a force as large and powerful as the very stars themselves. The smallest fraction of its attentions seemed to scorch my skin to ash and scour my existence away without thought or effort, and I was left bereft of any intellect or sense in its grasp.
And twining and threading through my being, the Western Wand's murmurs and exaltation ran like an impossibly old river, steady and sure through all hardship and as lasting as time. Over and over and over, it repeated only one word until it was all I could hear. I plucked the word from my mind and spoke it aloud, a prayer and sentence to damnation all in one desperate, relieved whisper.
The world around me shuddered at its sound, an anxious, trembling lover reunited at last, and beneath my feet, the ice-roots began to pulse with strange life, their crystalline lengths shining like prisms with joy. The earth and snow here knew their master's name well and strained their bosom for release, needing to meet their other half. With the very sky holding its breath in blissful anticipation, I granted the universe that name a second time.
The snow-covered ground shook to its roots, shuddering in ecstasy at its presence in the air, and the column of ice and faces twitched as well, bubbling and swirling with excited energy, its silent bays and roars begging me to finish. The snow heaved and writhed in rolling waves like white dunes, and the rock and earth below it shivered in equal measure, their forms filled with the anxious energy of the pure, raw magic nosing its shell and ready to burst free. The very air around me was charged so heavily as to fill my lungs like fog and it too seemed alive, the strangely soothing gale carrying the faint notes of a song long forgotten and as old as the universe's first truths. Winter caressed my body and lay cloaked upon it in a thick blanket of translucent prism rainbow. At the epicenter of it all, I could find not a single human word or emotion to describe the full breadth of what I felt, only close my eyes and sink into my Season.
However, as I basked in Winter, a single different chord ran underneath the current, faint at first but gaining volume swiftly. It was a lurking, dissonant thing, and even its very subtle removal from the norm was enough to make it jarring as it slithered through this purity with a devil's hand. I could feel it in my bones, rattling and grinding.
And abruptly, there was a sense of foreboding sitting low and heavy in my gut, black and writhing and cold. It gnawed and gnawed at me, picking apart my reasoning bit by bit then scattering it callously. Through the dark cloak of doubt swirling about my mind, however, my will and resolve – the sheer stubbornness that had long been bringing much greater foes to their knees – shined with a light not unlike the sun.
No, I decided with a fearsome snarl, looking every bit the man who had told Voldemort he would be strangled with his own intestines and did just that. I would not go down like this, screaming and bawling and weak. I would take what I had come here for, willing or not.
With a storm of magic and Winter shrieking with me in its center, with the earth and snow roiling like fatal sea waves, with an ancient force blinking down on the lowly speck of dust that dared disturb it, I screamed the name of Winter to the skies.
The universe, for one split iota of time, fell completely still and silent.
Like fog on the wind, the snow storm scattered, the broken tremors of the ground following suite. The thick magic in the air thinned, leaving behind crisp, fresh air that held a pure, untainted magic all of its own. The bubbling ice-spire became visible once more, and upon seeing its pale, ever-changing form, I knew in an instant, knew with solid, powerful belief that something, somewhere had gone horribly, terribly wrong.
There was no Winter's Keep here, nothing to use against my newest enemies, nothing but a dark chill in the air, beyond temperature alone and more a supernatural thing, malignant and alive. The spire was shifting so fast that all its beasts and gods blended together into one nightmare-borne entity, angry and snarling mouths with sharp, hungry teeth forming and fading all along its length, each and every one with that exact same hate.
Afraid and uncomprehending, I could only stare in horrified stupefaction, body trembling. "No..."
How could this be? How could it all have gone so, so very wrong? What had I done?
An almighty crack! sounded, echoing cavernously in the still, and my gaze was forced upward to its source. There, near the ice spire's top, the grinning monster's remains were shaking, perhaps set loose by the ice's movement. No, I realized with a closer look, face paling with knowledge, it was moving – shuttering itself loose from its bonds to break free. And as if it had read my thoughts, that large skull turned slowly in my direction with the loud, painful noise of bone against bone. Unconsciously, I retreated a step, wanting to runoutawayescape from it – from the roiling, eldritch fires black as tar and watching from their bare, bleached sockets. Try as I might, though, I was hopelessly ensnared in their piercing light, hypnotized by the sight of my own mortality in their depths. Below, in the corner of my vision, I could see some part of it moving, and terror caught in my throat, thick and unyielding.
My gaze was abruptly drawn down as a horrible screaming rent the air, to where claws raked against the spire in an effort to free the monster, tearing across the beasts and men. The ice reliefs acted as if alive and thrashed in unbelievable pain, trying to melt away before they were forced back by the ice's motions. Bone still screeched and groaned in the background as it stretched and ground hideously to get loose. All the while, black tar fires glared into me, ravenous and impatient, never once leaving the viridian of my own.
Those hellish fires then began to run down like water and subsumed the monstrous skull in liquid darkness that stretched over it like tight skin. It left still-white teeth in its wake and continued down to the rest of the skeleton. Whenever it brushed against the spire, wyverns and beast-men and hunters alike flinched from it, their rage stilling momentarily to leave fear in its place. When its struggle was enough to level its great talons against snow, the beast's jaws cracked open in rusty motions, presenting the mouths of ice behind it snapping and biting at air, and spoke in a thousand tongues at once, "τʀԑʂϸӑᵴᶊҿґ."
Panic overrode any common sense I had, and even the Blood Gem was useless to me here, as I fled wildly. Behind me, the sounds of the monster's escape ground against my ears and brain and I fumbled to grasp something, anything to stop its horrible screeching. My sweaty fingers fell upon the Western Wand but it was dead wood now, a fancy stick ignoring my desperate pleas. Similarly, Winter lay silent in my soul, somehow pitying without words or presence. As a last resort, I tore my old, battered holly wand from the inner pocket where it had sat, redundant for so long, and shook it wildly at the beast.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" I shouted, the words almost lost beneath the blood pumping in my ears. Faithful as ever, the wand's green bolt of death raced toward my pursuer, a faint, haunting wailing underlining its path. Hope dared to stir in me as the spell struck the monster, warm and fragile in my chest. It even seemed to work, its tar-covered bones slumping suddenly like a puppet with its strings cut. A short bark of triumphant laughter escaped me, my eyes wide with surprise and joy. It had worked! It had really worked! The last vestiges of adrenaline wracked my body with shivers, but it felt so good.
A grin threatened to split my face in two as I plopped boneless to the ground, legs finally having given out. Winter thrummed briefly through my body like a crisp breeze, and a chuckle burst from my lips, exhilarated and half-crazed. Soon, the only thing I could do was laugh, if only so I wouldn't be screaming my terror to the snow.
Now perhaps, I could see what had gone wrong and –
…..clink... clank... clink... creeeeeak
Face white, I turned back to the beast I had felled. "No!" I breathed into the night, disbelieving, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no! No, I killed you! You can't!"
But, against all logic and reason, there it was, ramshackle bones and inky darkness shifting and aligning once more into its nightmare-borne self. Fiery, damning eyes cut the distance between us like lasers, and the judgment held within them was final.
"τʀԑʂϸӑᵴᶊҿґ," it mocked, the echoes of a million civilizations bouncing off each other and the surrounding snow. The sound was thunderous inside my skull, and I covered my ears, even knowing the gesture to be entirely useless.
Slowly, ever so slowly, as if to savor the moment, it came closer, its footsteps light upon the ground but ringing with some strange, preternatural sound. The winds and snow around me grew cold and silent, offering no peace to their Master. The whole of Winter lay dead within me again, and as I wept at its loss, the last remaining shreds of my hope scattered as well. I had failed, failed as completely and utterly as a man could, and the realization of it felt like an open wound in my chest, jagged and empty. My life's choices crashed down around my broken form, yet I still looked my death square in the eyes as its echoing steps neared.
A sudden, unexpected grin split apart my face and laughter broke free, high and somewhat maniacal, and I raised my holly wand in defiance of the natural order. "You think you can take me, fucker?!"
Never let it be said that Harry James Potter, Winter Lord and holder of the Western Wand, Defeater of the Dark Lord Voldemort, and the doom of Harbingers everywhere, went down without a fight.
X
Once upon a time, there was a crooked boy who took a crooked path. He found two crooked friends in a crooked castle, and they walked a crooked mile to defeat a crooked lord. But, in a crooked house with crooked walls, there was only the crooked man thinking of a crooked world.
It was an unusually dark evening tonight, but it was fitting, as if Nature herself screamed for me. I sat alone in the Black Manor parlor, staring and staring at the thing that lay so innocently in my cold fingers. Before me, the fireplace was sputtering its last and flickered sinister shadows over everything. Its dying embers crackled lowly for attention, but I was beyond anything but the key, its thin and fragile ivory teeth, its long stem and delicately curving base loop, the battles waging endlessly in black ink over it. Most of all, I pondered its potential; the Skeleton Key with its infinite opportunities. My hand clenched it tightly, knuckles white, as my lips drew into a thin grimace.
"Oh, 'Mione, Ron..." it escaped into the air thin and pained like a dirty secret. Still enraptured by the key, I could barely register the exhalation's pitiful existence. Thunder boomed and rattled the windows around me, drowning out the noise that escaped my throat. Lightning flashed scant seconds later and illuminated the sheer destruction of my surroundings, the chairs broken to scrap in anger, the shredded wallpaper hanging limp and anchor-less, the stone bared and blackened by spellfire. In the center of the hurricane, I sat hunched in the only whole piece of furniture, turning the key over and over in meaningless patterns.
"I was supposed to get rid of you, you know," I whispered, and it was the same as it had been every night before. "'You're the only one we can trust to destroy it,' she says.
"Heh." A wry, tired smile slipped across my face. "I still don't get why anyone does that. Doesn't end well." The ink battled on, unchanged.
"It was supposed to be the end, you know – save the day then finally get some rest. Except..." I sighed, smile falling, but its bare sound was lost in the rain pounding against the walls. "Nothing ever works out for the "Boy-Who-Lived," does it? Whiny, I know. Ron always used to say that. 'You can't stop now, mate,' he'd say. Guess he was right."
The stem under my fingers was unnaturally smooth and radiated an odd inner warmth from no readily apparent source. It was a hollow comfort in the gloom and rain. Outside, the wind howled its rage then settled back down. Even in the barest of whispers, my next words were strangely loud in the brief break in the storm's noise, "I can't do this alone anymore."
The thunder's roar brought me back, and with one last, emotion-laden glance, I began to move to put the key in its chest again, where it would wait so patiently for the next night. Standing before the old and worn mantle, however, I stopped for a moment, reluctant. Inevitably, my gaze was drawn down to the ivory teeth of my bane. It wrapped me in its promises and power, beckoning, pleading. A brilliant flash of lightning highlighted the room again, and this time, I could just make out the bold, unsympathetic type staring from the mantle's newest addition, a folded piece of official-looking parchment.
'Mr. Harry J. Potter, the Ministry of Magic requests your presence to discuss the matter of your most recent letter to Minister Woolsy concerning the supposed "threat" of a new dark lord. The Minister would like...'
I stared the empty chest then the key once more, lips thinning in a powerful mix of resignation and determination. With weary hands, I shut the lid closed, and turned my back on it quickly. No, I decided. Not this time.
"Never knew why you trusted me..."
X
END of Through Snow and Memories II
WMoC: So! That was Winter Lord the second. How did it fair? To be honest, I'm rather proud it, especially the later scenes. Tell me what think, luvs. Or not, if you're going to be an idiot about things. :P
Anyway, on a separate (but not really) note, I now have a much better outline in my head for the future of this story after so long on hiatus. When I first made it, I was going to do the Days of Future Past timeline with some out-of-universe elements. Nothing too risqué. Now after seeing the back end of the new X-men movie (I was sneaking around in the theatre; I'm so bad XD), I've had the marvelous idea to incorporate the Age of Apocalypse series. In the end, it will truly be neither but instead combine the best features of both (though, most likely on a pre-Dark Phoenix – post-Days of Future Past timeline). Hopefully you're as excited for this as I am.
In case you have forgotten, this will be based on the X-men comics, NOT the movies. Anything mention of the movies is purely in the context of general idea gathering. Don't worry your pretty little heads.
Maybe next time, I'll get the third chapter out sooner. One can only hope.
9/5/2014
