Harry Potter and the Wizard's Revenge

II

Wandless

Harry's first instinct was to disarm the hooded figure before him, but he didn't have a wand. It was a little strange to have to adjust to defence without a wand, but he didn't exactly have the time to ponder it out. Every second, the figure's hand was coming closer to Harry and he couldn't just stand there and let it grab him.

Shoving the chair into the figure's midsection with all of his strength, Harry jumped up onto the table, poised to spring down onto the figure if necessary. Mrs Figg behind him was still frozen in position, but she had unthawed enough to hiss, "Why aren't you using your wand?" at Harry. He couldn't answer. He didn't want to tell his assailant that he was wandless. The hooded figure would have to find that one out on his own. And hopefully Harry could figure something out before then.

The figure doubled over as the chair impacted, but the wand stayed up and pointed at Harry. Growling with rage, the figure threw the chair out of the way like it was made of matchsticks. It crashed through the kitchen window, sending shards of glass showering over the wilted flower beds. Harry jumped from the table, aiming his kick at the wizard's head and trying to grab for the wand as he flew past.

His hand was travelling with too much speed for him to actually be able to grab hold of the wand, even if he had been the youngest house Seeker in a century back at Hogwarts, but he did succeed in knocking the wand out of the stranger's hand and out the window to join the remnants of the chair. Now they were both wandless. At least the fight was evenly matched.

Harry hit the ground and started running, trying to get to the window, and the wand, before his attacker had time to figure out that he was missing his wand. His attempt was only partly successful. He had made it halfway through the window, cutting himself on the points of glass that remained stuck in the frame before he felt hands grabbing his ankle and hauling him back through the way he had come.

Harry stretched frantically, trying to get close enough to grab the wand. It was eerily reminiscent of the way the scene had played out that morning in his room. His fingertips were almost on the wand when it started moving out of reach. Only this time it wasn't merely Uncle Vernon's wrath waiting for him at the other end of his body, but an unknown wizard who had appeared out of nothing.

He could feel the glass tearing into his flesh and the blood rolling from the jagged wounds, but he forced himself to try and stretch just a little further, hopefully far enough to grasp the wand. His efforts were in vain. There was no way that he could reach the wand, it was simply too far.

But his grasping hands did close on something else. In the impact with the ground, the chair had come apart and Harry had managed to brush his hand against one of the splintered legs. It wasn't a wand, but at least it could do some damage to his attacker.

Spinning around and pulling himself up so that he could reach the figure on his feet, Harry swung wildly with the makeshift club, trying to come into contact with something that would stop the hooded figure. At first he was only finding empty air, but then he heard the resounding clunk of wood connecting forcibly with something solid. One of his ankles was suddenly freed and Harry swung sideways, flesh catching on the broken glass.

Kicking his free foot wildly, Harry tried to pull himself up enough to swing the club at his attacker again. The jerking of his foot was enough to make him slide backwards, toward the wand, once more. Twisting so that the hand holding him also came into contact with the razor-sharp glass, Harry tried to pry the fingers out of their hold with his foot, wincing as he kicked his own flesh deeper into the daggers of glass.

Instead of growling with anger, his attacker was now all but whimpering with pain as Harry's kicking forced their combined flesh into the bits of broken window ever further. Despite the pain, Harry kicked harder, desperate to get free.

There was a howl of pain and the grip slackened. Harry fell to the ground and pulled himself towards the wand. He closed his hand around it and bounded to his feet, biting back screams of his own. There was blood running thickly from gashes all along his torso and legs.

He saw his attacker for only a moment. The hooded figure was clutching his hand, a piece of glass glittering wickedly in the sunlight from where it protruded from the back of his hand. Turning the black hood around to face where Harry stood, wand clutched in his hand, the figure motioned his hand and disappeared. The breeze created by the Disapparation blew the cat food coupons from the fridge.

As the last of the papers fluttered to the ground, Mrs Figg turned around to confront Harry. "Why didn't you use your wand?" she demanded incredulously.

Harry stared at her in surprise. "I don't have it." He had thought that that much had become obvious.

"What do you mean, you don't have it?" she queried in disbelief, staring at his bloodied hand as he clutched the stranger's wand .

"I dropped it when I was leaving and couldn't get to it," he answered, turning to walk around the front of the house to the door.

"You can't go around the front," Mrs Figg said authoritatively. "The neighbours will see and you know how they like to talk." Harry looked at her as though she had lost her mind. The only entrance through the back of the house was only for cats. Unless she wanted him to crawl back through the window.

"But…" he started awkwardly.

"Just climb through the window," she continued as if he hadn't started to speak. "You don't want the neighbours suspecting anything. I'll go get the iodine."

Harry sighed heavily. He figured that if the neighbours hadn't been alerted by the window shattering or the screams, they weren't going to notice if Harry walked around the front. But there was no sense arguing with someone who wasn't there and he climbed gingerly over the windowsill, trying to not cut himself any more than he had already done. And keeping his eye open for the sudden appearance of another attacker. It wouldn't do to be taken by surprise again. Next time he probably wouldn't be so lucky.

Mrs Figg was back in a moment, a small dark bottle in her hand. "This is iodine, a wonderful Muggle remedy. I don't know why wizards don't use this. It's simply marvellous." Listening to her talk, Harry wouldn't have even known that someone had attacked him only moments ago.

She pressed him down into one of the remaining kitchen chairs and pulled aside the shredded remnants of his jeans to expose the worst of the gashes. Taking a rag, she poured the brown liquid onto the area, dabbing it into every little spot. Harry stifled a groan of pain. It was almost comparable to the time that he had had to re-grow all of the bones in his arm.

As she worked her way from cut to cut, she started to lecture him on the importance of having his wand on his person at all times. "You never can be too sure when you're going to need it. If you hope to be an Auror, you're going to have to learn what an important thing it is to have it ready always. That's how people get killed, you know, when wizards don't have their wands ready all the time."

Harry stopped listening. He knew that it was important to always have his wand on him. He would have been dead many times before if he hadn't been in possession of a wand. He wouldn't have taken on Voldemort with only a broken and battered chair leg and been able to walk away from it.

Instead, he started trying to figure out who the hooded figure could have been. It couldn't have been Voldemort, Harry was quite sure of that. Even Dumbledore had said that this time Voldemort was gone for good. And Harry hadn't felt so much as a twinge from his scar since that last battle.

Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, was under house arrest in his manor until a new Minister of Magic could be appointed and he could be brought to trial. There was a cordon of Ministry wizards posted around the manor and they had placed enough charms on the house that even Dumbledore wouldn't have been able to Apparate out.

All of the other Death Eaters that Harry could think of were also either dead or locked away. Bellatrix LeStrange, Sirius' cousin, had been killed. Peter Pettigrew had also fallen in the last battle. It had been a bittersweet spell for Lupin to cast on his former friend. Many others were in Azkaban or under Ministry house arrest, even the ones that still had the audacity to claim that they had been acting under the Imperius curse. This time the Ministry was taking no chances, even though there was no strong head.

But one of the Death Eaters had to have escaped attention, that much was blatantly obvious. They had been lurking somewhere out of Ministry notice and had decided to try and finish what their master had been unable to. Or, they had decided to take control themselves and raise a new army to follow. The last option caused Harry to shudder. He didn't want to contemplate having to face yet another Dark Lord so soon after he had killed the last.

"It'd be easier if you'd just sit still," Mrs Figg complained.

Harry sighed as he tried to replay the brief battle in his mind in order to solidify the details. He didn't want to overlook anything. But even though the action had finished only minutes before, he found himself unsure of whether or not the attacker had appeared behind his left shoulder or his right. Or even how far the hand had been when Harry threw the chair. Or anything about that attacker beyond the black hooded robe.

Straining his memory, Harry figured that he stood at least a few inches shorter than the figure. It wasn't much, but it was the closest to an identifying feature that Harry had. He had been unable to see the face through the shadow of the hood, and the draping of the robe had hidden any of the stranger's physical aspects. Although, Harry noted with some grim satisfaction, there would be one mark on the man's hand that hadn't been there before.

As Mrs Figg worked her painful way up his legs, Harry turned the wand over in his hands. It was really the only concrete thing that Harry had to identify the assailant. And unless the wizard's name had been carved into it, there really wasn't all that much that Harry could tell from it.

Then he sat bolt upright. He might not be able to tell much of anything for the wand, but he did know someone who would be able to. Mr Ollivander remembered every wand he'd ever sold. Surely he could identify this one! Mrs Figg hadn't yet finished with her 'simply amazing Muggle remedy', but Harry stood anyway. He had to find out who the stranger had been.

"Where are you going?" Mrs Figg asked. "I haven't finished yet."

"I have to go," Harry said, moving away from her. "I have to see someone." He didn't want to have to waste the time trying to explain his trip to Mrs Figg. It was more important that he found out who the wand belonged to. If there was a need for it, he would explain later.

Harry dashed out of the kitchen toward the front door. He needed his trainers. Mrs Figg trailed behind him. "You can't go out the front, someone will see you."

It was a legitimate point. He paused midway through slipping his left foot into the shoe. "I'll Apparate," Harry said. "I've got my test."

"And go wandering about looking like that?" she made a point of staring at his ripped and bloodstained clothing.

Harry sighed. "I was planning to go back and get MY wand first. I'll change while I'm there."

And still Mrs Figg had another argument. "What about your aunt and uncle? Do you want to be out of a home?" But by this time Harry had finished pulling on his shoes and was ready to go, despite the warnings.

"They're away in London. They won't even know," he said, turning the stranger's wand over in his hand once more. It would be so much simpler just to walk over to the Dursleys and not have to chance using this wand, but he would be seen by curious neighbours and be reported to his uncle. "Hopefully I'll be back later."

Just as he Apparated, Harry heard Mrs Figg ask plaintively, "But what about my flowers?" Considering the disaster that was her kitchen, he would have thought her half-dead flowers would have been the least of her concerns.