Chapter Two of The Unspeakable
Spells of Purgatory: Prologue Part Two
He hesitated.
He was fucking stuck in place, immovable and doubtful.
There was something there, on the cusp of his senses, just out of his reach. If he could only grasp at its meaning…
The air was alight with sensuous illusions.
The first things Harry noticed when the wards broke apart were the sudden presence of foreign smells and sounds, which had been hidden by the magical layer Harry had just torn asunder.
The peculiar and abrasive mixture of sulphur and scorched flesh reached Harry with a potency that threatened to leave his throat gagging and eyes watering. Together, if Harry considered it, the blend of odours revealed an easily solved mystery that Harry chose not to dwell too much upon.
Defiant screams and cursed orders of panic pealed off the chilly, night air, clinging to the opaque roof of endless tree-crowns like a prophecy of untold misery. Like something from a nightmare better left forgotten ascended the crimson sky of Voldemort's unseen reign.
He hesitated still, heart beating that old beat of fear and determination. Fighting for dominance, the emotions, the basic instincts, threatened to overwhelm him, to unhinge the legs away beneath him, and leave him an easy victim for the unforgiving world around him.
Inconsequential thoughts of mundane shit passed through his head in a maelstrom of escapism. He wanted to leave, yes. Of that there was no doubt. Yet, another part – in some fucked-up dark corner that had come to accept the sheer madness of his life – revelled in this, revelled in the fear, in the scarred, soul-wrenching black fire in his gut, which swirled and swirled and swirled until he was a dizzy mess of tangled, incomprehensible emotions.
He jerked off with his left-hand. The thought made him pause, because what the fuck! He was right-handed, killed and performed magic with his wand – wands – firmly clasped in his right-hand, but he jerked off with his left-hand…
Why was that?
Fuck that shit. Meaningless pursuits of escapism, of nightmares and daydreams, to take the edge off, to take away the top of his dread…
But what a fucked-up thought it was.
Harry heard the panicky shouts and hurried footsteps of his upcoming adversaries. He could see the hole in the trees, the entrance, into their camp – into the cesspit of dark intentions and awry desires.
Harry could feel the pain of Voldemort, his realness, lingering on the trees like an ominous note of vengeance.
Well. It was a long way down the rabbit hole and all that trippy shit.
He contemplated the concept of fear, and searched himself for any sign of it that needed eradication. There was a small segment, for he wasn't suicidal – though fate and prophecy seemed to point in that way, anyway – but Harry knew it was not that which distorted his resolve.
He didn't fear the Death Eater, no matter the amount of them. They'd meet him when he chose to make his presence known – as he had prepared for. They could throw themselves onto his path to no avail. He would strike them all down within mere moments if he unleashed his formidable power and skill upon them.
No. Death Eaters alone wouldn't hold much of a problem tonight; it was what they clasped in their filthy hands that Harry dreaded, what they held caged down there at the end of this path Harry treaded.
A dragon.
A real fucking dragon.
"Okay. I did promise Nathan I would survive…" Harry murmured to bolster himself, to find some semblance of comfort he could seek courage from. Staring down the path, however, and hearing the occasional low rumble of the dragon, made such a thing as courage seem beyond Harry's capabilities at the moment. "And Dumbledore would be very disappointed if a mere dragon managed to get the drop on me."
He would be disappointed, for dragons weren't nearly as frightening as Harry made them out to be. But childhood traumas could be a powerful thing.
Powerful things indeed.
Oh well. A Killing Curse would make it easier, he imagined. If he could muster the want to kill, that was. He hadn't been able to do that before. Ever.
And, Merlin… he had fucking tried.
The path evened out further below and disappeared underneath the white sheet of snow-covered trees, the soft blanket of white hiding their anxious, hurried actions and the beast of fire from his gaze. But they were there, in the forest, awaiting his arrival.
And then the world stilled. And in that stillness, a screaming abyss of doubt, of fraying sanity, filled the void with its oppressive presence. The heavy sounds of defiant shouts and hurried footsteps died away. The low rumble of the dragon died out in a hush of feral anticipation – leaving only the awful, soft wind rustling the very nature round him.
They were ready. They were expecting him now.
Nothing fucking mattered anymore. Right?
"Well," Harry said as he felt something click into place within him, into an apathetic calm of indifference. "Better not keep them waiting, then…"
Apathy. Turns good men cruel. Composed. For nothing matters if you don't give a flying fuck.
He set his body in terrible motion, eyes detached and alert. Coolly calculative.
As he moved amongst the ebbing winds of unseen origins, he could make out the coarse, steady sounds of his own footfalls against the jagged, rocky path, crunching ominously like far-away whispers behind a veil of death.
Crunch, crunch, crunch…
Near and near he went to the edge of the forest, descending the path and descending into the inner-demons of his heart, of his past. His eyes continued to be alert, scanning and considering everything, and his wand was tense and outstretched ahead, humming with prepared spells, like the various instructors had drilled it into his head over the years, in those dreary, dark rooms of anonymity.
Constant Vigilance, soft, scornful whispers of dread filled the space in his head, his memories, his divided fuckin' souls. They should have sounded like Moody, but they did not; they sounded like Voldemort, slithering in the darkest corners of his own heart, hissing, and Harry tried without a shred of success to contain the shudder that went up his spine.
Fuck! He was pathetic.
He stepped onto the threshold of the forest, which was placed in a valley in-between the Northern Mountains, beneath the dying light of the sun and the coalescing Northern Lights, and something prickled at his senses.
Something wizardry.
"Avada Kedavra!" a male voice snarled darkly from Harry's right. A vast, howling wind rushed at him like a giant gutter stabbed through the very air with an unstoppable, concussive strength.
Harry was faster. He had already moved. The sound of the most dreaded spell in the Wizarding World dispelled the last fragments of his worries, replaced it with a sense of recognisability; he had been here before. He had been on the receiving end of that curse far too much of his life – in the green light of mortal peril, he found something he was cursedly familiar with.
The fear of death.
He spun about on the uneven road, flicked his wand and conjured a silver shield of solid mass – thank you, Voldemort! – which, though it buckled beneath the vast power in the green jet of death, held strong against the curse that was said to be impossible to block.
Impossible is nothing. Just ask Voldemort. Immortal fucker!
Harry was still kicking.
Before he knew he was doing it, acting on the age-old instinctual parts of his soul that tethered one to life, he jabbed his wand in a decidedly aggressive manner. A jet of crimson light poured out of the tip, slamming into the shocked Death Eater's face and rendering him unconscious an instant later.
The silvery shield fell away into nothingness.
The Death Eater fell to the ground and landed atop a small pile of snow with a soft, almost imperceptible thud… Which rocketed like a fork of thunder across the entrance, booming and onerous.
It drew with it a roar of explosive force, as Death Eaters came out of hiding all round Harry and became alight with the force of frenzied ferociousness and sheer believe, almost clamouring over each other to get at Harry.
Harry, weaving about quickly and waving his wand in a series of intricate motions, magic trailing with slow, golden wisps, detected seven Death Eaters all around him. As the first wave of magic, a multi-coloured web of spells and curses, screamed at him with forces unbound, he knew he was once again thrust into the fray.
The first line of defence was upon him.
The golden wisps took form, and a golden web of power encompassed him as he stopped the fluent motions of his wand. The dome of gold hid him from their gazes, giving him a moment of distraction. And Harry, who was keyed into his own Anti-Apparition ward, disapparated almost soundlessly as the curses struck and shattered his shield with ease.
After all, it was merely the decoy.
Harry appeared a few feet away, in clear sight of the seven Death Eaters, although the distraction proved to be all the time Harry would need. He made a show of raising his wand, slow and deliberate, revelling in the moment, and then he flicked it and five of the seven Death Eaters were swept off their feet with significant effortlessness. Harry didn't remain idle, spinning on his feet yet again and disapparating with a soft crack as another cascade of twin green curses sizzled through the air he left behind.
He appeared behind the two standing Death Eaters, and as they turned instinctively to Harry, he moved into action. Flicking and swishing his wand in two separate motions, magic radiated like an electric charge in the air. He sent one of them flying through the air, his neck snapping sickeningly, and the other buckling down into the ground with enough force to stop an elephant dead.
Naturally, his body gave way with a sickening, wet shredding sound as bones were forced out of their sockets – Harry could see thick white remnants of bones protruding from the man's body, misshapen and splintered.
And, oh God, did he scream! But even the screams, Harry noted, seemed muddled by the touch of his magic, like it was coming from the other end of a long tunnel.
The reaming five Death Eaters were slowly gaining their feet again, albeit a touch shakily, although the defiance showed clearly in the fire of their eyes.
They were no match for Harry.
He mowed them down, his wand trailing his side with thin, curling wisps of dark crimson, brilliant azure and fetid green power on the tip, spells replacing spells replacing yet other spells in a continuous stream of magic that possessed tremendous strength.
They all fell to his wand, screaming in anguish and defeat, splatters of blood drenching the formerly immaculate white snow as the crimson liquid oozed from open wounds. One Death Eater managed to raise a mediocre shield in time, by luck or by design Harry did not know, nor did he care for. The end result proved to be the same. The purple Slashing Curse cleaved right through his meagre shield and tore the Death Eater's body almost in two, a deep slash from left hip and almost all the way to right shoulder, where instantly small pebbles of blood began to trickle out of – then the dam broke and gore and a cataract of thick, crimson blood spoiled the torn black robes he wore.
Harry breathed out and, without sparring another glance at the dead bodies, moved onwards and descended into the forest.
When he turned to round the first corner, an animalistic snarl of pure fury split the night, oppressive in its all-reaching power.
It was a blood-chilling scream, thunderous and blazing. Harry flinched and allowed himself to fall to the side, crouching in the darkest corner he could find as instincts clamoured to take hold of his body.
Fear so vast it could have cloaked the sky in a red-blood crust of misery threatened to overwhelm him, but Harry had almost lost the battle to fear and indecisions once already tonight; he did not plan to do so again.
That dragon sounded pissed, though! But the screams, when he thought about it, seemed to come from far, far away.
Harry blinked. Steeling his nerves, he stepped forth and rounded the corner, truly entering the forest at last. Behind him, the final shafts of scorching auburn rays of the descending sun flittered in the through the entrance, banished slowly by the darkness of the forest as Harry walked on.
He was just about to illuminate his wand, the spell on the edge of his mind, when he noticed that it was unneeded; he could see clearly, as if he was still strolling beneath the face of the sun, although there was no sources of light.
Enchantments of light. Harry mused to himself, impressed, and then, as the sense of the magic descended upon him, another thought followed close after; they had been at this for a while.
The magic seemed… old, somehow. Not Hogwarts-old, but still… It lingered upon the trees; it radiated viscerally onto the very air round him. It stirred Harry's senses. Ominous magic. Black magic.
The amplified sense of magic, the propensity for detecting and unravelling pieces of lingering magic… a genuine feel of inspiration… It had been like that since he was first introduced to the wizarding world. Since the first time he stepped onto the threshold of Ollivander's wandshop. He had felt the magic, then, as tangible and real as touching water was for a muggle. And with Dumbledore's careful tutelage over the years, he had come to grasp the feel of magic with the intimacy of a life-long lover.
It was this feeling of discovery, of detecting magic old enough to have left an imprint upon its surroundings – a foreboding awareness that magical perils were just around the corner – that clung to Harry's heart as he strode onwards.
The first thing he noticed when he rounded the first corner was the suddenly odourless air, like he had entered another world far, far away. Then he beheld the soft blue light that bathed the clearing – or makeshift room – in a translucent, dreamlike radiance.
Then he noticed the Death Eaters, five in total, with wands trained at him. Unyielding. Unafraid. Yearning for his blood.
Harry, wand clutched tightly, raised his hands in a pacifying manner, grin hidden beneath his spells of concealment. "Hello boys," he said, voice cold and edgy, not sounding like his own. "I don't suppose you'll just scatter if I ask real nice, huh?"
A colourful wave of spells answered him, forking at him with deadly intent.
Harry moved into action, wand slashing downwards in a snap. A liquid patch of transparent magic, writhing and reflecting – like a distorted mirror – sprouted to life and wrought as a large sphere before him.
The curses splattered against it and ran like a web of crisscrossing thunder over its skin, small tendrils of different coloured fissures.
Flicking his wand, harnessing the shield and forming it into a hollow dome of water, round edge held forth, Harry charged headlong and reckless into their path; his foes distorted to his vision by the watery magic.
No matter.
He flicked his wand downwards as he ran forth, guiding magic one way, then flicked it upwards, guiding it the other way – weaving it all together in a swishing motion resembling the flick and swish of a Levitation Spell.
The first Death Eater was slammed into the ground as if gravity had suddenly become tenfold upon him, screaming and choking in his suddenly too heavy body and blood; the second Death Eater was raised in a lance of invisible magic, strings seizing around his neck and choking. Blood oozed from the edges of his eyes, as his wand clattered uselessly to the ground.
Another flick saw them, battered and fainting slowly, bound together, only to be consumed by the hollow dome of water that pounced and embraced them with the ferociousness of a lion that hadn't seen food for months.
The three other Death Eaters, motionless, seemed smote by dread at the ease with which Harry had dispatched their fallen comrades. Harry cast his eyes to the men trapped inside the water, and beheld the look of abject horror on them as they hammered their fists feebly against the solid water, drowning. Dying.
The Death Eaters hesitated for only a second longer, staring at the water-dome like they considered ways to dissipate it, then thought better of it and became a flutter of motions and curses.
Harry didn't hold such doubts of hesitancy, didn't hold such weaknesses in the face of a battle. He had been at this for too damn long, seen too much fighting. He was born to do this, born to fight the coming darkness – prophesied to stand against these agents of Lord Voldemort.
And, anyway, it did not fucking matter.
He was born to die.
Harry, moving with the detached sense of purpose that was forged and tempered by the dark knowledge he had gained of his soul, weaved magic through the air. A thick band of dark-grey light screamed out of his wand, shaking and humming with scarcely restrained power.
They fell out of the way, though; rolling and tugging along the dirt-ridden, slightly wet grounds.
Harry stepped forth, his wand outstretched and ready to press his advantage further. A jet of blue light, ominous and opaque on his wand tip, tore through the air, and the Reducto Curse forked like a streak of blue thunder through one of the Death Eaters who was too slow to step aside, turning him into nothing but a fine mist of red blood that scattered floatingly in the windless air.
His mind awhirl with thoughts, he flicked his wand at the mist of thick crimson liquid, forming it, manipulating it.
The splattered blood of Harry's murder, muddled and fetid, coiled in mid-air into something more solid, meaner, and ascended onto the nearby Death Eater, turning his impeccable white mask crimson and shaded.
It was messy. It was war.
It was a fucking slaughter.
Two last standing. Against Harry. The spilled blood of his colleague, which Harry had just splattered onto him, blinded one of them, and he tore off the crimson-smeared mask in disgust. The other was shaking, his wand held unsteadily outstretched before him.
Harry slashed his wand and issued forth another curse. The indented victim shambled out of the way, and was almost fast enough. The curse struck and pierced his shoulder, splintering bones into sharp shads of white and forcing a twisted scream of acrid anguish from him.
Harry blinked. Senses running afire with the decaying stench of death. Flickering fast, Harry snapped his neck across and beheld the emerald fire of the Killing Curse as it blazed towards him. Adorning a lazy grin, Harry apparated out of the way in the last second possible, using his advantage.
Using his momentum.
"Who the hell are you?" the, for now, unharmed Death Eater managed in a gruff voice heavy with exhaustion and desperation. Fucking wizards never possessed an ounce of physical strength, or the inclination to work to attain it. "Who the fuck are you!"
Useless distraction! Harry cursed silently, apparating again and appearing before them, jerking his wand across himself.
The yelling Death Eater screamed as his wand was torn out of his hand by an invisible blast of force. And as Harry swept his wand forward once more, there was a blinding flash of golden light; when the light flickered out of existence some seconds later, the Death Eater had been hurled into a tree, his head hanging at an odd, sickening angle.
Dark fire licked at his peripheral vision, and Harry, with grace granted to him by merciless hours of practice, neatly sidestepped the curse and returned a lance of black fire.
It belted like a whip, swishing and slashing in the air, and Harry motioned at the last Death Eater with his wand. The fire of blackness coiled through the air like a snake, humming with dark power, and struck the already damaged shoulder of the Death Eater in a blast of black, otherworldly flames.
A dull thud as the arm fell from his body to the ground and a scream of the utmost agony accompanied each other. The Death Eater, seemingly delirious with pain, looked upon the hole where his arm used to be attached to his shoulder with utter, frenzied disbelief. Harry beheld the tremor seizing the man's body; as if he tried to move the arm he could no doubt still feel.
The arm, however, lay innocently on the ground at his feet, blood dripping from the burned end. Harry noted that the arm still clasped firmly onto the Death Eater's wand, almost like a silent mockery.
The screams descended into the pitiful moans of agonizing fear. His legs buckled under the strain and gave way. The man fell to his knees, clutching his torn and mangled shoulder, shads of bones and pebbles of blood sticking out and meshing together. Through the agony, he raised his eyes to Harry's.
"The Dark Lord shall-"
A steady throbbing of acrid hatred flared into a chaotic mess of dark fire in the cesspit of his heart. As it always did at the mentioning of the accursed Dark Lord. Harry swished his wand, snarling, and there was a blinding flash of white-hot fire. When the light faded, and Harry could once again behold his work, he beheld the eye-sized hole in the middle of the man's forehead, still on his knees as if shackled to the ground.
There was a tiny rustling of wind, Harry's dark wool coat bellowing round the hem of his dark trousers, and the Death Eater fell onto his abdomen. Slowly, a pool of blood gathered from the wounds on his shoulder and head.
And then the doom of water gave in on itself, spluttering, and it released the two long since dead Death Eaters and fell onto the mangled body and pool of blood before Harry, washing away the red.
And then there was only the screaming stillness of wars ending.
Harry sighed and flicked his wand. The unmasked Death Eater rose off the ground and turned onto his back, settling back down. Harry beheld his features more closely, searching his memory for the man.
Nope. He didn't know him. He thought cynically – as he stared at the man's unremarkable features – it was just the same. A Death Eater was, in fact, always a Death Eater – and one Death Eater less was only a good thing.
It mattered not who the fuck he was. Only his choices mattered.
Harry stood and strode away, coat billowing behind him. He climbed the rickety path up the slope through the forest, eyes guarded and alert once more. His wand, alight with a Lumos charm – for now the darkness seemed to know its true purpose – was outstretched and ready, radiating thin coils of spells around the white light on the tip, to be unleashed upon his foes.
There was more to be fought. He knew it. More Death Eaters. A dragon.
There was a whole fucking load of animosity, air alight with the tremendous force of opposing wills and ideals – foes and archenemies and little boys with scars facing immortal Dark Lords…
The forest thinned out as Harry descended deeper and deeper into its midst. Small patches of holes came consistently amongst the trees now, offering thin shafts of startlingly bright starlight that shone like radiating diamonds in the dark.
For every streak of starlight, the surroundings seemed to grow darker. Like the darkness was so overwhelming it could swallow the light. Like a void of blackness that bent light and air and shadow, gravity and reality – like something out of a half-remembered nightmare.
The shadows held within them magic foreign to mundane magic. Dark magic. Intuitive magic. Magic that could not be explained by mere books or clever rationality. Magic that Voldemort created with the complexity of his mind, that Harry could see and touch and feel, but he never truly grasp.
Harry sighed. He couldn't explain it, not even to himself. Maybe there was a point to be understood in that.
The darkness tethered to the reality around him, like a parasite, highly contagious. Deadly.
Every shadow, every ounce of impenetrable blackness, seemed to hold within it a dragon ready to pounce, ready to demolish. Prowling the wastelands of the forest with poisonous intent, in look of foes to smite, Harry contemplated the idea of allowing his own death by fire. Would the fire truly burn him? Would it truly take? Would it rob him of his life? Or did Lord Voldemort, and the shared connections of blood, soul and destiny, tether him to this mortal coil of wretchedness?
Was death truly the only escape? As Dumbledore seemed to believe.
Was he, when it came rightly done to it, just as fucked, soul-wise, as Voldemort was? Was his soul just as awry, as torn asunder and… retarded as the Dark Lord's?
Deeper and deeper he went, feeling watched, feeling measured and feeling betrayed by his own traitorous thoughts. When he came face to face with a particularly bright, thick shaft of starlight, he stopped and beheld it, barely seeing it, but blinking at it all the same.
There was magic inside the light, different to the blackness yet there with it, like two halves of a whole; it was subtle and beautifully crafted, but it was there for the senses to comprehend if you knew what to look for, if you dared to look for it.
What the fuck was it? White magic? Fuck… Voldemort? No… That magic did not belong to the Dark Lord.
Did it?
Harry, curious, reached out to touch it before he knew he was doing it, his hand steady and moving as if time had become muddled and slow in the dark…
And then he touched it.
There was a tug of force behind his navel, and Harry was dragged out of space, through time, and spat headlong into another, rolling and tucking on the hard grounds. Feeling bogged down by eyes of imminent foes, he snapped his head up, wand-tip ablaze with crimson light as it stretched forth.
Eight wands pointed right at his heart. Eight sets of eyes stared at him, some blank, some malicious, all of them in shades of hostility. Animosity.
"Oh…" Harry blinked, pained by the sudden abuse to his body, breathless and sweating despite the cold, like he just ran through a mile of water. Confusion treaded on the edge distress. Magic could be a wonderfully terrible thing. It could grow to define you or shatter you. Harry knew this better than most. Better than Dumbledore even. Better than all save Voldemort.
Equals and opposites, the prophecy had said. Ah fuck. Only in his dreams.
There were no equals to the Dark Lord.
What was that magic? A Port-key, sure as hell, but there was something… something else…
No fucking matter.
He flicked his eyes over each of the eight Death Eaters, features rendered unrecognizable by the dark cloaks and silver mask.
"Well," Harry began, his voice coarse, and his lips dry, "there's been a terrible oversight here, I fear. I was led to believe there would be twenty-five of you. By my headcount, and granted math never was my strongest point, I only get twenty-two. Your dragon wouldn't have something to do with this… vanishing act, would it?"
As if it knew it was being spoken of, beyond the trees behind the gathering of Death Eaters, a piercing, terrible shriek, accompanying with a sudden flare of auburn lights, resonated into the clearing.
"Well." Harry breathed. "There is the dragon, then."
"Who the bloody hell are you?" A Death Eater asked.
"I've been asking myself that for a long time," Harry murmured, then frowned at the recognisability of the voice. "Rodolphus?" Harry inquired, pungent hatred flaring anew, flaring like black flames turned into a swirling mess of madness. "Is that you, old mate?" he asked, voice amicably despite his state of mind.
The Death Eater, Rodolphus, tore off his mask with a snarl of rage. "You dare? You dare!" He paused and seemed to make an effort to control himself, to regain his composure in the face of his unbridled rage and fear. "If you know who I am, and you have come to challenge me willingly, then you are a fool! Do you know who I serve?"
His act of madness seemed rather artificial, but Harry couldn't exactly pin it down to something concrete. He chose not to dwell on it, thinking he had enough to deal with already.
"Serve would be a stretch, I'd say," Harry said mildly, assessing the man with a casual look. His features hadn't changed much since Harry last laid eyes on him ten years ago. His hair was still shoulder-length and with only a few streaks of grey to mark the passage of time. His teeth were barred and yellow, and his eyes were dark-brown and vicious in his lunacy.
"You bloody imbecile! I will kill you! The Dark Lord shall crush-" he cut himself off, apparently fending off the madness that threaten to overtake him, to consume him, with a visible effort. "Who sent you?" he queried, calmer. "Who knows of our dwellings? Who dares to oppose the will of our Lord?"
It didn't escape Harry's notice that the men seemed wary to take actions against him, that most of them seemed faint of will against his presence. Being in their situation, hearing all your friends slowly get torn apart by a single individual, well, Harry could relate to that. He could relate to that because, in part, of the man before him.
Their dread was relatable because of that night – in the Department of Mysteries.
Ron. Hermione. Neville. Ginny. Luna. Sirius.
Death…
The tightly coiled control over his emotions threatened to break, his emotion clamouring to seize control of his heart and actions the moment Lestrange had revealed himself. But Harry prevailed against the maelstrom of old instincts… for now.
That man had been part in the slaughter that had taken everything from him. That man had killed Hermione.
"You know," Harry began, pleasant and benign, though there was a cold, inhuman edge that Harry just couldn't conceal. "I do wonder at you presence here, Rodolphus. I do so wonder. Shouldn't you be home with dear ol' Bella and your child?"
A primal scream of fury issued forth from Rodolphus Lestrange. And a green flicker of death split the air as his hatred bled into his Killing Curse.
Harry, grinning, stepped aside easily, a bounce of vindictive pleasure in his footfalls.
"Or is that Voldemort's bastard child, after all?" Harry said, noting Lestrange's laboured breath. "Like father like son, after all – both running from their children in shame? Was it only when he figured out she was a squib he lost interest and handed her over to your gentle care?"
"Avada Kedavra!" Rodolphus Lestrange snarled with vicious hatred.
Harry, alert anew, swiftly stepped aside once more, bringing forth his wand, into the bout. He slashed it horizontal through the air, at chest height, like he wanted to backhanded something in the air, and a dark-indigo gash, like a tear in reality itself, shimmered into existence and raged towards the eight Death Eaters.
Rodolphus, his eyes at once ludicrously wide and panicky, stumbled backwards and fell onto his fucking arse. His cowardice and clumsiness proved to be his saving grace, however, as the curse struck upon the four Death Eaters standing the closest to Harry and made them catch fire in blue flames.
Dark Magic. Harry knew it all-too-well.
Their screeches of acrid agony split the air in a symphony of broken, burned bodies, and Rodolphus turned and stumbled back on his hands and knees, eyes wide and truly, utterly terrified. "KILL HIM!" he screamed as he finally rose to his feet and, with steps that seemed to be in the last stages of ambulatory drunkenness, vanished beyond the trees of the clearing.
His screams echoed long after he went away. Like a million versions of him screamed from within a void far, far away.
KILL HIM!
KILL HIM!
KILL HIM!
Harry had a fleeting thought that the last three Death Eaters might have been under the Imperious Curse, for surely a sane man would back away from Harry. Fear would demand no less. Surely, they would look to their leader, see his turned back, and then make a break for it themselves.
Surely, that vacant look in their eyes didn't derive from a detached sense of duty towards a monster that valued them as little less than tools to be cast away.
Maybe they just feared Voldemort more than they feared Harry. Harry convinced himself that that must be it, for fighting against foes that were controlled took the small sense of virtue that was left out of his quarrel.
It made it seemed like cowardice instead of bravery, waste instead of necessity.
In the end, like all such things, there could be no mercy, even to the damned and the potentially innocent.
The only female Death Eater of the night shrieked, loud enough to leave Harry's eardrums throbbing, and charged him with passionless efficiency. The two others followed her smoothly. Meticulously.
"Avada Kedavra!"
"Avada Kedavra!"
"Avada Kedavra!"
The curses were said as one, issued forth from three different wands in total synch.
As three jets of green fire descended upon Harry, a huff of laughter bloomed from his quivering lips. Rodolphus Lestrange was here. Hermione's killer! His right eye twitched with something akin to a burgeoned, frenzied madness, an unquenchable craving.
His whole body was shaking, mind walking on the fine edge between catharsis and cessation.
He surged forth, for catharsis, for meaning.
For vengeance!
He twirled on the spot and Disapparated, appearing behind the furthest behind Death Eater and stabbing him in the back with his wand – the tip glowed purple and a sharp edge, like a knife, extended forth and tore through the man's flesh. With a sharp, vicious tug, he pulled the knife of purple magic sideways, trying to rip it out of the man.
It jammed stuck in the ribcage, however; the man's body went rigid in his grasp, and slowly, acrid seizures wracking his entire body, the Death Eater craned his neck around to meet Harry's eyes. Up close, Harry could see the brown eyes clearly; they were afraid, the light behind them fainting fast.
Harry met the eyes coolly.
Two green lights blazed to life in Harry's peripheral vision, and Harry twisted on his feet on instinct alone, dragging the trembling Death Eater with him and using his body as shield. The Killing Curses both connected with the Death Eater's front.
The brown-eyed Death Eater went flaccid in Harry's hands. Harry let go of the body and he flicked his wand, dispelling the purple knife. Then he turned his wand on the closest Death Eater, the woman.
"Sectumsempra!" she spat, flicking her wand hurriedly.
A white jet tore out of her wand, but Harry merely batted the curse away with an absentminded gesture of his own wand, not even touching the curse.
"No, no, no," Harry tittered, waving his wand back and forth at her like he was dealing with a slow child. "Allow me to show you how it's done."
Sectum-
"Avada Kedavra!"
Harry's eyes widened a fraction in surprise as the other Death Eater sent forth another Killing Curse, interrupting his spell-casting. Swishing and flicking his wand, the body of the Death Eater beside him rose to intercept the curse. Harry managed to get it in the right height and it struck true, leaving him shocked and with a heart afire, but unharmed and still kicking.
"Ah," Harry said, eyes hard and cold despite his affable tone of voice, "now, that was not very sporting, was it?"
With a sharp slash, he sent a wave of concussive force spinning through the air, blasting the Death Eater off his feet. Then he turned to the female.
"As I was saying…"
A pop echoed across the clearing and a white flash of light challenged the darkness for a moment. Then the female Death Eater, gurgling on blood and staring at the space Harry had occupied before Apparating, fell to her knees, clutching her abdomen where Harry's Cutting Curse had torn through.
Harry crept up beside her knee-bound figure, keeping half of his focus on the last Death Eater, who was struggling to his feet. When he reached her side, he pushed the back of her head with his left palm, shoving her gently forward. She fell, soundless, to the ground, face in the dirt. Dead.
The last Death Eater finally gained his feet, shaking, whether it was out of fear or pain Harry couldn't guess.
He yelled something inarticulate… and turned tail and ran, scrambling like a monkey across the clearing towards where there was a tear amongst the trees, where Lestrange had vanished moments before the fight commenced.
Harry sighed. He raised his wand and gave it a lazy flick. Harry's spell pulled him back as easily as if he had caught him in invisible strings. He hovered back to Harry, motionless, bound in unseen ropes. Harry sighed again, wand aloft, face set in stony indifference.
"NO, PLEASE-"
Sectumsempra.
The incantation was spoken only in the recess of his mind, yet it somehow overcame the frightful screams of the Death Eater, and the result was instantaneous. Blood spouted from ghastly wounds onto the frosty ground. The gurgled, wet sounds of a torn throat and strangled, inaudible words spilling with a pained, panicked edge filled the air. A second later there was no sound, only the small drip-drip-drip of blood echoed.
"There, Rodolphus!" Harry called, flicking the body away with his wand. "The last man standing in here! You have nobody left to throw at me. Unless, of course, you hide Voldemort in there."
He didn't-
Something growled.
-But, fuck, Harry almost wished he did.
A vast rumble of an echoing roar resonated suddenly, shaking the air. Then a terrible shriek, accompanied quickly with an earthshattering force – like the very world was quivering now – filled Harry's world with a white-hot flash of dread.
"Oh. Fuck!" No. No, he wouldn't do that – surely not. He wasn't that desperate… And then, at last, another much more vicious and vile snarl of fearsome hunger forked the frosty air, and Harry knew he, Rodolphus Lestrange, had dared to unleash the beast.
"Fuck me!"
It came roaring out into the clearing, cleaving the trees that had cloaked its presence with mere swings of its impressive body. At least twenty feet tall, it towered to the roof of the trees. Harry had seen a Norwegian Ridgeback a couple of times in his life – he could still vividly remember Hagrid's less than stellar experience of parental affection from his first year – but this was different than anything he had ever seen.
It was wearing a fucking armour.
A magical armour of blackness.
Liquid shadows of dark power ran over the natural dark-brown skin of the dragon – horrendous and undoubtedly powerful. Harry could taste the stench of the black magic upon the creature – the magic of Lord Voldemort. The face was narrow and pointy, covered by the flesh of shadows. Two snakelike slits of eyes, crimson and opaque, was the only thing that broke the illusion of a living, contorted shadow. The wings were folded, but Harry could see their dark edges protruding from its back.
Now, Harry knew fear. Intimately. Had known it since he learned to understand the concept of basic human emotions. The Dursleys never laid hands on him – safe for Dudley, that was – but Harry had feared them nonetheless, feared their disgust of him. Ever since he was reintroduced to the wizarding world, he had known the fear of Voldemort better than any other.
Harry knew that fear could drive a man to the edge of reason, knew of its potential to distort, to motivate.
Harry stared at the dragon, motionless and rigid.
Voldemort's eyes stared back into Harry's eyes, into the windows of his soul, and Harry knew uninhibited fear once again.
How…?
Harry was caught in a limbo of indecision.
Rodolphus Lestrange took notice of that as he came forth from where the dragon had just blasted through.
"Fear the might of the Dark Lord!" he screamed as he descended the carnage of Harry and the ruins of the dragon, barely taking notice of the dead Death Eaters scattered across the clearing. "Behold! The dragon has bent to the will of the Lord! BEHOLD!"
Well. Okay.
Harry, barely contemplating his actions, raised his wand, humming in a silent response to its master's spiking fear, and unleashed a discharge of excruciating force – a force of raw magic with which he could shatter the walls of the Ministry itself.
And watched with a rising feeling of panic as it bounced off the shadows of flesh harmlessly. Rejected.
Power alone would not be enough; he had to be precise. Measured.
Harry licked his dry lips, anxious like fucking hell; and though Rodolphus couldn't perceive the action, he still laughed like madness clung to his soul, raucous and never-ceasing. Harry was reminded of Bellatrix Lestrange.
"What is this type of magic?" Harry asked, for some part, a morbid and distant part, was curious. "Dark magic, of course… but it almost seems… sentient…"
And painfully familiar.
White shafts of starlight and black, all-consuming shadows.
The dragon rumbled deep in its throat, an animalistic sound that vaguely resembled a grunt of impatience, though it didn't move to engage Harry in deadly combat. Its red eyes flickered to Rodolphus. Contemplating. Waiting.
The show of intelligence tethered onto Harry's fear, fuelling it.
Voldemort had done the impossible. It was… frighteningly tame.
Lestrange looked at the dragon, wistful, even with a measure – if Harry wasn't mistaken – of envy. "I wouldn't presume to know the extent of the Dark Lord's power," he said and narrowed his eyes. "Or brilliance. I certainly wouldn't dare questioning it." He shuddered, repulsed seemingly by the mere thought. "The Dark Lord's genius is unbound, unhindered by the self-righteous norms of a broken society people like you anchor yourself to."
Harry considered that look of wistfulness. A look that conveyed more than Lestrange would ever dare to voice aloud. It was not often Death Eaters showed any form of hostility to their master. Maybe there was some measure of truth to the rumours.
Maybe Voldemort had indeed knocked up Bellatrix Lestrange. The idea presented an image Harry was quick to banish from his head.
No. It was too fucked up to be reality.
And yet, Harry contemplated, stranger things had happened.
"Do you know…?" Rodolphus Lestrange voice grew distant, void of emotion, void of insanity. For a moment he appeared as sane as Harry was. Which might, when Harry really thought about it, not say much. "Do you know why, in the end, the Dark Lord will be victorious?"
It didn't escape Harry's notice the phrase he had used. Not we will be victorious, but the Dark Lord will be…
Harry shrugged, gaining a sense of peace in his mind by the conversation; the dragon was still there, ominous and crouched on hind legs, and Harry was still on his fucking guard. But for now, it seemed, the dragon was content to let its master and Harry talk.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Heard it all before. Voldemort is an immortal motherfucker," Harry said, then sighed and paused. He contemplated the question further, a rush of anger and frustration coursing though him. "He's a sadistic, sociopathic, narcissistic, monstrous, eh… retarded tosser!"
"It pleases you to diminish him, doesn't it? To perceive him as a lesser being?" Normally, Death Eaters were easy to get riled up. Normally, they'd just curse you or run. Speaking ill of Voldemort was always a sure way to get under their skin.
Not this time.
"He doesn't exactly make it hard to perceive him that way," Harry said, almost whispered. "He is a lesser being.
"Then you'll lose to a lesser being."
"No. I won't lose. I might die." Harry shrugged, indifferent. "But I won't lose."
The conviction in Harry's voice bore no argument, which meant that Rodolphus, naturally, didn't agree, didn't understand. How could he understand, not knowing the full extant of the Horcruxes or the connection between Harry and Voldemort?
How could anyone but Harry and Voldemort truly understand?
"Do you know why you'll, in the end, fail like everybody else before you," he said as if Harry hadn't spoken at all. "In the end, you have the same conscious fault. A fallacy in your moral righteousness. Which seem to be inherited by man to man – by wizard to wizard – you encompass the same deficiencies as all those that opposed the Dark Lord before you… you care… you care so much you hurt."
"You don't know me."
"The Dark Lord knows of you. He takes you very, very seriously… Harry Potter."
Rodolphus Lestrange's smirked was anything but genuine, and Harry didn't feel any surprise that Rodolphus somehow knew of his identity.
"He knows something is amiss, that you have grown. But, Potter, he knows your weaknesses. All your life – all your love, all your hate, all your kindness and tolerance and defiance and self-sacrifice. It's all the same thing to him. It's all the same weakness you keep exposing to him. The Dark Lord doesn't love anything, doesn't tolerate anything but his own beliefs – and what he hates usually has a very short life expectancy, you being the obvious exception. He has sacrificed his very soul to achieve victory, to achieve immortality. Ask yourself this, Harry Potter, what would you sacrifice to accomplish what you desire most? Would you be willing to sacrifice your soul, your friends, or your body? What are you prepared to sacrifice?"
Harry didn't answer him, but knew that he would sacrifice pretty damn much if he could turn back the time, or raise the dead, or make Voldemort go away for good.
None of it seemed likely, however, and Harry kept his words of impossible dreams locked away in his head.
Lestrange smiled wryly. "Now, the Dark Lord mentioned that this dragon – with its enhancing enhancements – would be an adequate test of your burgeoning skills. Although he also predicted that in the end you'd prevail." He paused and a flicker of resigned amusement lighted his eyes in the terrible fate of ended lives. "He promised that this would be our last mission for him – not many of those you've slain tonight thought he meant it in the literally sense of the word." He shrugged; a ghost of a smirk curled his upper-lip. "The Dark Lord always possessed a uniquely wicked humour. Easily miss-interpreted."
"Wait, what! You've been waiting for me?" Harry asked. This time he felt genuine surprise. "You knew I was coming – and you knew I'd most likely kill you?"
"Yes."
"This wasn't for the dragons, was it? Not really. This was to lure me here?"
"Yes."
"Why…? Why come here at all, then? Knowing what you knew?"
"The Dark Lord demanded our presence here tonight," he said as if it was the clearest thing in the world. The hard edge of grand purpose flittered into his voice, as if he had upheld a duty sworn to a deity. "Of course we'd be here."
"So, you were willing to sacrifice yourself… for what? For nothing more than a test of my skills and power?" Harry murmured, his brow creasing. He couldn't fathom why they would go along with such a thing.
Lestrange ignored Harry and stepped over to one of the fallen trees. He sat down on the trunk like a man who had nowhere else he'd rather be – like a man possessed of some radical notion that he was suppose to die here, that he was born to die on this particular day, that he wanted to die here.
To Harry, who understood the necessity of dying right, it was uncanny.
"I think," he said, grandly spreading his arms out wide as if he'd engulf the world in his embrace, "it is time – once more after almost a decade of hiatus – to match the powers of Harry Potter… and Lord Voldemort."
His mind flashed back to the Chamber of Secrets before he could control himself. Harry had a feeling it was the first – and last – time Rodolphus Lestrange spoke the most dreaded name in the wizarding world. To his credit, his voice barely wavered.
Rodolphus gave a barely perceptible nod, and the dragon – which had so far acted like a well-mannered dog – snarled itself into a frenzied maelstrom of rage.
And then it was upon Harry.
Snarling and gurgling menacingly in its thick throat, it snapped its massive head at Harry and charged at him with impressive speed, considering the sheer size of the thing. Bat-like wings of blackness, filled with vast slabs of muscles, stretched out behind its scaly back, giving it an ethereal spectrum of darkness.
Pushed to the edge, Harry had done a lot of stupid shit over the years.
This was no different.
Harry whipped his wand up in a flickering motion hurriedly, and felt his magic drizzle out of his wand at his silent command. A dome of shimmering magic clung to the edges of his body, settling deliberately to his skin, and Harry braced himself for the collision.
The darkened, pointy-head of the dragon descended upon Harry and hit him squarely in the abdomen with an otherworldly strength.
There was an ominous scream of thunder that shattered the air, accompanied by the terrible stillness of equal forces cancelling each other out in a stalemate.
But then the small flicks of snow, which had begun falling down from the trees as the dragon charged Harry, was blasted everywhere by the force of the impact, and Harry – the smallest, after all – blasted away, unscarred and whole and yet soaked in a vortex of pure agony.
The magical protection on his skin died away as he soared through the air, gravity fighting to take hold of his body as he descended amongst the trees. The impact had hurt like all fucking hell, but he was alive, alive and jolting.
For now, he realized, as a wall of trees on the cusp of the clearing grew nearer with an astounding hurriedness. He heard the dragon roar in animalistic triumph behind him, and knew it looked bleak.
Lifting his wand above his head, as he laid horizontal in the air, contemplating for but a moment that he soared towards untold agony, towards certain death, Harry flicked it in an intricate manner on pure instinct. His mind cast about the half-remembered incantations and theories of different spells that he had laboriously forced himself to master over the years.
Harry heard Lestrange's shriek of sheer awe and incredulousness as he watched Harry, his form blurring with a powerful hotness, smack into the vast wall of immense trees, wand-tip first, and tear it asunder with a blast of pure concussive force. The power of his spell sent him bouncing back through the air, like a sphere of limbs. Tucking and rolling, splinters and branches crumbling around him, he skipped towards the dragon on the ground, terrible agony seizing his nerves, and stopped, knee-bound on one knee, with his wand outstretched menacingly towards the beast.
Fucking hell!
Harry, knowing desperate measures had been forced upon him, snarled and summoned every ounce of hatred and righteous bloodlust he could from his abused psychosis.
That wasn't hard, though, the hard part was focusing it, channelling it into a want to kill, a need to cause death.
A memory of a memory descended upon him.
To harness the powers of death itself…
The successful usage of the Killing Curse, Harry, is an admission of guilt by its simple implication of your state of mind. It is an admission of not only your willingness to kill, to murder without repentance, but to do so without anything but your enjoyment in the act of murder. The strain upon your mind can make your soul unravel. Not many can form the sheer apathy, the mind of anarchy, needed to empower the spell, and those that can are not fit company for much.
Even cold-hearted murderers have proven incapable of performing the spell.
Nathan had warned him against the Unforgivable Curses, specifically against the Killing Curse. Sometimes, when the choice was between the damage on your soul, or your very life… sometimes the only choice was a lesser evil.
Which one of them that was the lesser evil, living with a scarred soul or death, Harry did not know.
He thought of Ron, giggling and crying at the same time like two parts of him fought for supremacy, as he and Harry stared down on Hermione's lifeless body. Her adolescent breasts were lacerated and half-amputated by the Death Eater, Rodolphus Lestrange, she had been duelling moments before the two of them arrived. Huffs of air slipped out with the spouting blood that still coursed so warmly through her, but she was long gone. Long dead. Ron, though he clearly wasn't himself – the brains played tricks with his brain – had been horrified at his giggling reaction afterwards, and hadn't been himself after that.
Suicide had been easier than living with the guilt… with the knowledge…
The fate of Ron was enough alone to set his mind ablaze in a maelstrom of pure hatred.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" Harry screamed against all the indifference in the world, all the corruption that allowed Death Eaters to thrive within the Ministry, all the hatred that tethered onto his own lacerated soul. His mind raved for justice, for gratification, for a sense of entitlement, for fucking life beyond these shadows he was forced to fester within.
The tip of his wand became alight with the green fire of death… and then sizzled out into nothingness.
Oh.
Shit.
Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy? Bellatrix Lestrange's voice taunted from a string of broken memories. You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain – to enjoy it – righteous anger won't hurt me for long – I'll show you how it is done, shall I? I'll give you a lesson-
Harry wanted to cry against his own accursed softness.
Some part of him, he knew, should revel in his inability. Should celebrate the fact that he was still, after everything that had happened to him, unable to conjure the necessary enjoyment in the act of murder.
But they were at war – even if the Ministry of Magic still refused to acknowledge it – and Aurors of the first war against Voldemort had been able to perform the Killing Curse. Moody, though it later revealed to be a Death Eater imposter, had been able to perform the curse in front of a bunch of snotty teenagers in a fuckin' classroom.
Harry didn't suffer under the illusion that the real Moody wouldn't have been able to do it, too.
Dumbledore might have perceived it as strength of heart, although Harry really doubted it. The aged Headmaster was cooler than most dared to believe. But here, staring down a dragon ready to demolish him, Harry only felt a dull fire of acrid fear and wretched weakness.
"Eh…" Harry flashed the dragon an uncertain smile of mock-innocence. "You don't suppose you can just," -His smile turned savagely defiant an instant later- "roll over and die!"
Harry jabbed his wand, jarring himself into a series of movements, and white-hot flames belched out of his wand, moulding round the clearing.
"HAVE YOU GONE MAD! FIRE! REALLY?" Rodolphus Lestrange, Harry noted, dived out of the way with a scream of surprise, but that was all he saw of the man, for then the dragon drew back his full attention.
The dragon, obviously unafraid by the flames, spread its wings anew and ascended the air, soaring at Harry, opening its mouth, and belching a column of flames of its own, scorching earth and burning the fuckin' air with immeasurable heat.
Harry slashed his wand across his body, panicky and hurriedly, and moulded the white flames to intercept, and they met in midcourse and the world was turned afire.
Blasted half a step back by the ensuring explosion of meeting forces, Harry heaved his wand to the side with immense effort, dragging a lance of the flames aside as he started running sideways across the battlefield. Careful not to stumble on any roots protruding from the ground, he flicked the thick rope of fire back against the dragon with a cruel motion of his wand.
A trunk of a fallen tree, not far from the one Lestrange hid behind, laid on the ground, and Harry threw himself behind the trunk as the dragon, despite the dark protection it was weaved in, howled with agony and rage.
Harry hazarded a look over the tree trunk, and noted with dark pleasure, as the fiendish flames of his curse licked away at the dark skin of the dragon, that he had indeed scarred the dragon. Patches of blackness flickered, shimmered, across its body and died away, leaving only the natural dark-brown scales of the dragons skin beneath.
Harry turned his head and beheld Rodolphus Lestrange. The Death Eater had re-seated himself unceremoniously on the same spot, attentively paying attention to the fight, waiting – as if there was nothing else he'd rather do – for Harry and the dragon to finish their quarrel.
The trees and grounds across the clearing seemed spelled to be insusceptible to the flames, as the grass caught fire, only to evaporated to mere air in a hush of magic. Which made sense, Harry guessed. If you had dragons caged somewhere, you'd make sure that nothing combustible was close by.
The dragon, shrieking and roaring madly, became a chaotic mess of destructive movements as it swirled its enormous tail around itself, lacerating trees like a warm knife through butter. Sniffing the air, it turned its head around at Harry, crimson eyes narrowed with intelligent perception. It shambled forward, drunkenly and yet efficiently, and opened its mouth and unleashed concentrated gouts of liquid flames.
It hit Harry, who raised his wand aloft hurriedly, squarely in the face, and all he knew was fire.
The fire licked away at his skin, tingling, even as the world around him melted away in shimmering, opaque auburn heat. The fire was too hot, too fuckin' magically, and even the magical protection around the clearing struggled to hold back the flames. Trees burst aflame, flickers of dying magic rained down in a multi-coloured array of bursting charms and wards.
Everything became chaos. Chaos. And fire.
Harry sighed. He felt kind of flustered, sure, but otherwise find, although he was getting damn tired of this game. The Flame-Freezing Charm was doing its job, however, and Harry strode onwards through the flames, which coiled around his form. Like it dreaded to touch his skin.
"DRAGON!" Harry roared as he cleared out of the fire, a grin of pure psychosis on his face, for radical notions ate away at his mind – as they always did. "Please die…" Raising his wand before him, he jabbed it down towards the floor forcefully. The vast dragon was forced into the ground as Harry applied a coarse crust of pure pressure by his will alone. Precisely measured intention of his mind guiding it.
It struggled to rise, buckling and shambling, blood and hazy smoke of darkness oozing from its quivering wings. It roared in fiery defiance at Harry, gouts of fire belching from its mouth, only to be restrained and conquered by mere flicks of Harry's wand.
Harry was so fuckin' tired of this shite!
Arcs of silvery spells and jets of crimson curses burst forth from Harry's wand, gouging through flesh and darkness, whilst the dragon struggled pitifully, feebly, against its invisible chains. The crimson eyes burned with malicious pleasure, taking the agony with something like obsessive glee. As if the Dark Lord travelled through the mind of the dragon to behold Harry, besieged – to the point where pain did not matter – by the thought of studying his foe again.
Maybe Voldemort just did not care. A likely possibility.
Two skeletal arms, trembling, reached for Harry with excruciating effort, begging for release in a silent act of defiance against that which controlled it. Shadows and lights chased each other along the skin, flailing magic that was dying as the dragon died at last under Harry's onslaught.
Harry, sweating and panting, cast his eyes in Rodolphus direction. He hadn't moved since he last checked, gazing at Harry as if he had all the time in the world.
What the fuck was wrong here? Something was terribly awry.
He turned back to the dragon, intent upon making sure it was well and truly dead, and spun his wand in large circles over his head. A sizzling stag of flames – resembling his Patronus – rode to life and pounced the creature, eating away at the crimson eyes with bites of fire, until the beast became quite still.
The crimson in the beast's eyes died away into the blindness of sterilized white.
Breathing a quiet sigh of relief, and keeping a careful eye on Rodolphus – the man seemed non-threatening, but Harry took no chances – Harry began to put out the fires with his wand. Finally! A small measure of vengeance was within his reach.
Though the charms and wards put up by the Death Eaters had sustained through most of the fight, some trees had been scorched, and Harry couldn't have it spreading.
The bodies of the Death Eaters faired worse than the trees, though. Much worse.
Burned to pile of ash… ashes…
Harry chanced a look over his shoulder, wanting to see Rodolphus Lestrange's reaction, only to find a wand in the man's hand… and pointing at his own throat.
Harry blinked. "What the fuck!" He raised his wand anew, ready to unleash spells of disarming strength, to end whatever Lestrange was up to now.
"You know…" Lestrange grinned. His grin was of pure madness unbound. Harry was more than a touch disturbed by the casualness with which he held his wand against his own throat, as if he was ready to slice it over at any moment. "It is quite funny how fickle we are, isn't it, Harry…? How odd occurrences in our lives can change us so radically that we are practically unrecognizable to friends or lovers of our former self… or even, perhaps, unrecognizable to our former selves. If they ever were to gaze upon us through a passage of time…"
Harry itched to the side, feeling like a witness to a train wreck about to happen. Wanting to see how it'd play out, and yet wanting to stop it at the same time…
"How would the friends you've lost perceive you now… using dark magic so readily, utilizing a ruthless efficiency while hating yourself so much you can barely breathe… barely move? Oh, the Dark Lord knows of your guilt – he finds it most amusing, at times. At times he wonders… perhaps, in the end, it will be yourself, and your torturous propensity for self-hatred… that will be your downfall." He shook his head, his rambled musings coming to an abrupt end as he stared at Harry with renewed clarity, as if a different person entirely seized control of his body. "Harry Potter, I beg of you! Save her! Save her!"
Harry blinked and beheld the deranged man with a wariness he could scarcely remember having felt before. Like something experienced in another life – or a memory of another life. He said nothing, and waited for what was to come next with guarded eyes.
"I need you to save her. You must save her! You must! She does not deserve this!" He was crying now, and Harry, for some reason, felt a surge of disgust flare within him, as if seeing the accursed Death Eater in tears was an abomination. "My daughter… the Dark Lord's daughter… AH!"
He tore at his own hair, ripping whole handfuls of it from his skull; he did not seem to notice the pain that must surely have followed.
"My squib daughter… she's unwell… Her mother…" His voice came in wild sobs of misery. Harry had never seen anything quite so fascinating. Suddenly, where they had once stood a Death Eater that had to be destroyed, now stood a pathetic person that he could hardly crave to kill as much as he had craved the last ten years… and Harry faltered…
"Her mother will kill her, given time," Rodolphus continued. "If you don't save her, Potter." He made an effort to compose himself, it seemed, steeling his resolve – even as the tip of his wand began to glow with a silvery light, fearsomely close to his throat. "Promise me! Promise me you'll save her! Only you can do it!"
"No."
Harry's uttered word was so soft he thought it a wonder Lestrange had actually heard it, but heard it he did.
"Wha-" He paused, staring with utter disbelief… then threw his head back and laughed, raucous and otherworldly in its psychosis, exposing his throat even further – not that he seemed to care about it.
"Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry Potter – boy," -Harry gritted his teeth in the face of his suddenly condescending tone- "truly a marvellous soul you possess. Such defiance! Such strength! We have stood here before, haven't we? Burning! And you shall stand here again, fighting defiantly in the face of unseen foes of the dark and unconquerable odds – and the world shall drown in the blood spilled by your burning defiance. Born to defy, born to vanquish…"
A coarse look of regret blossomed across his face. Harry didn't dare say anything, lest he would break the spell of lunacy and truth.
"Oh, Harry Potter, please save her – she's… she's the only good thing I ever brought into this world. Do not let her mother kill her, or even worse… twist her. Save her…"
And then, like the whispered breath of thousands of Rodolphus Lestrange's, his voice echoed as his cutting curse sliced his own throat and ended his life in a spray of thick crimson blood.
Save her…
Save her…
Save her…
His decapitated head tucked on the ground, rolling and rolling and forever rolling, and came to rest before Harry's feet, face askew and facing Harry with an almost lopsided look. Staring into Harry's eyes with vacant emptiness. There was a begging note in the edges of the dead eyes, like he, in dead, could see all the undecided intentions on Harry's face.
Save her…
Save her…
Save her…
Harry apparated back to his apartment in the heart of London, sliding through his wards and protections unchallenged.
His living room was mostly barren. Harry had always been a person of few possessions and that hadn't changed when he grew into adulthood.
He sighed.
He was just so fucking tired of this day.
He wondered briefly – as he ran diagnostic charms over his apartment to check everything was as it should be – if he should send a Patronus Charm to Nathan and Dumbledore to inform them of his successful return to Britain. He decided against it; he wanted nothing more to do with this day.
When satisfied that he was indeed alone in his home, and that it had been undisturbed whilst he was gone, he relaxed marginally, although he still kept his wand clutched tightly in his hand.
"Fucking hell," he murmured, stepping across the small living room apathetically; it would, unfortunately, keep until morning. As was the way with such violent emotions.
He stepped up before the large window overlooking the street, sighing. For a moment, Harry just stood there, staring at the city, staring at nothing in particular. He breathed in the stale and cold air, before flicking his wand and summoning a goblet and a bottle of Firewhisky.
He needed a drink after the week he had had.
He swirled his wand, and the goblet stood in the air by itself, seemingly unconcerned with little things such as gravity, and waited patiently as the bottle of Firewhisky hovered beside it and poured him a glass.
Harry, motionless, stared out his window at the buildings on the opposite side of the street. In a window, some floors further down below Harry's floor, a little family of three – father, mother, and son, Harry imagined – were sitting together as the child unpacked different packages – gifts – with what Harry could only imagine was uncontrollable glee.
Oh… Christmas, right… Harry stared at the odd scene, not considering that it might be a private moment he shouldn't be looking at. His emerald green eyes were devoid of emotion. Detached.
He grasped his goblet from the air suddenly, harshly, then, now filled to the brim, flicked his wand to banish the bottle away, and knocked the whisky back in one swift swig. He reached into his coat, and drew out his very own Christmas present – courtesy of Rodolphus Lestrange.
A gleaming wand, pulsing faintly with odd magic, lay in the palm of his hand. A wand Harry felt he had won in battle, although suicide might be a debatable victory. It was, if he was right and by every law of magic that Harry was aware of, his wand now. He went to the only bookcase he owned, plain and black, that adorned his stark white wall. Reaching the top drawer of the bookcase, Harry pulled it open and beheld its contents.
A number of different wands met his eyes, and – with deliberate care – he placed the former wand of Rodolphus Lestrange amongst them, adding it to his ever-growing collection. He didn't know why he always took with him certain wands of his conquered foes. But it had become a habit, of sorts.
Giving the significant amount of wands a last, lingering look, he snapped the drawer shut and turned to his bedroom, intending to sleep until the New Year arrived.
"Merry fuckin' Christmas, Potter," he murmured at last into his pillow as he stored his wand beneath it, clutching it tightly, falling into a hellish sleep of nightmares.
End of Chapter
Thanks to those who have read so far without running away screaming. That's it with the double Prologue; next Harry will talk to Dumbledore, and the character of Nathan Goodwill will be properly introduced. All chapters have been planned out, although some changes, if they suit the story or the characters, can be remade as I go along.
Again, thank you. Leave a review if you have any questions or words of appreciation. Everything is welcome, and will be appreciated. I think. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Have a nice day.