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Chapter 8:
Tom didn't return that night.
He wasn't certain if he had been waiting for the other, but he must have been, because his eyes kept drifting to the low gates which remained resolutely closed.
The last rays of sunlight had long since been swallowed into the depths of the black canvas, and the temperature had taken a sharp plunge without the warmth brought by day. He had no idea what time it was, but either way the wizard showed no sign of turning up. Harry shivered slightly as he huddled closer to himself, drawing his legs as close to his chest as possible. Beside him the Wyr Tree remained as a small curious plant, its leaves twinkling with silver.
Perhaps he's avoiding me, Harry thought to himself morosely. After all he had been the cause that they were now at odds with each other, and he was the first to wage the cold war. Maybe this was Tom's reciprocation.
Harry didn't find the reason very plausible, but he was too numb with cold to come up with any other explanation. He was still wearing his jacket (he didn't get the chance to take it off before he'd left the orphanage), but even that was proving insufficient to protect him against the deepening autumn chill.
Eventually Harry grew tired of waiting for Tom to appear. The tight feeling sitting in his stomach ever since the day he'd turned away from Tom hadn't lightened, and it only grew a shade heavier as he reluctantly climbed to his feet, but Harry didn't pause his steps.
He hadn't come up with any ideas as to how he was going to clear up this mess, he'd simply turned up knowing that Tom would know what to do. And now even that plan had been thwarted. Harry let loose a short sigh between his lips. He wasn't sure if he would have the courage to return a second time, but he also knew he couldn't go on waiting pointlessly in the cold.
Briefly Harry considered returning to the orphanage, but he immediately discarded the idea. He didn't feel up to facing the music just yet, and besides he'd already told Scrooge he would be coming later in the day. While he doubted Scrooge would actually go searching for him, he still had a fairly good idea how cross the old man would be if he arrived at his cottage in the middle of the night. Scrooge didn't like being disturbed, especially when he was sleeping. It was already late enough as it was.
The thought of the cramped, topsy-turvy cottage warmed him somewhat, and it was with these thoughts that Harry pressed on, gritting his teeth against the sharp gust of chilling wind.
Harry was already well away from Middle Street, and was cutting a short-cut through the newspaper man's back garden when he heard a commotion going on. It sounded too far away for him to make out anything, but suddenly a sharp flare of blinding light shot up into the darkness, a street away from where he stood. Harry stopped in his tracks. For a brief moment he was convinced to dismiss them as fireworks, but the wind abruptly changed its course – and the smell of acrid, pungent smoke filled his nostrils.
Something was on fire.
Even as the thought crossed his mind another sheet of flame rose high into the sky like a bizarre pillar of fire before falling back into the dark, this time nearer still to where he was standing. The stench of smoke only grew more putrid. Harry felt a trill of alarm run through him. What was going on?
A part of Harry sensed what was going to happen before it actually did. Even before he'd joined Jack's gang, Harry had always held an ingrained survival instinct; and perhaps it was this instinct that spurred his liking towards dark and caliginous places. While the other children used to fear the dark, Harry always felt safer under the shrouding cover the shadows provided. But now while he was still standing in the backstreets, a place only few could claim to know well let alone navigate, and well hidden from any source of light – Harry suddenly felt very much vulnerable and uncertain. The silence around him was suffocating; it was as if the quietness were a silent scream of warning to him, of the danger that would come.
And quite suddenly, it arrived.
All around him, sharp cracks started to echo both up and down the alleys and streets. The sound set his heart to a fluttering non-rhythmic beat, and with a rush of déjà vu he recalled when he'd last heard it: the time he'd been standing outside Mr. Higgins' house eavesdropping on the two robed men conversing. Except that this time, it wasn't a single quiet pop; instead, it was multiplied a hundredfold, reverberating eerily in every direction and setting Harry's nerves on fire. His hands were clenched by his sides, numb and frozen not by the cold.
He couldn't stay here. It was only pure instinct, but instinct had always saved his life and had yet to prove him wrong. Harry didn't need to think twice. He sprang into action immediately, taking off with unnatural swiftness towards the left, where he'd yet to see evidence of any disturbances.
It wasn't a moment too soon. Half a second later a sharp crack behind him signaled the arrival of perhaps another wizard. Harry didn't dare to turn back to confirm his theory, nor did he even pause to question if they were after him. He continued to run on autopilot, his legs taking him away and out of the backstreets where more and more cracks could be heard, almost identical to the crackling of fireworks.
Harry burst forth into a pool of yellow light from the streetlamp five minutes later, skidding to a halt at the intersection between Picket-Fence and White-Fence Street. Green eyes scanned all possible routes of escape before a horrifying sight made him startle backwards, and he slid back into the shadows instead.
It was pointless to continue running – he was vastly outnumbered.
Harry had initially thought that he'd been running away from the wizards, but it turned out that he'd been wrong. He'd chosen the left fork of the road which led away from his original destination, because he'd witnessed the flare of burning fire somewhere up North, followed by South. But it turned out he had been running in a full pointless circle. They were trapped.
Before him swarms of dark-robed men were roaming about like bizarre imitations of vampires out of children's stories. Each of them were wearing a white mask which obscured their features, and with a jolt of his heart Harry noted the 'wands' Tom had mentioned before. Every one of them was carrying a stick of sorts, save a few who stowed them under the folds of their cloaks.
Harry didn't understand what was going on, but there was a sinister feeling lurking heavily in the air, like a snare waiting for an animal to pass through – and he didn't dare to show himself. Years of experience had honed his senses sharply, and he could feel the tension running high even from where he stood.
Like the silence before a storm, the night remained unusually quiet. The men continued to roam about the streets, like hunters do before the ultimate hunt. It was as if they were waiting for some kind of signal. Harry tried to sort through his muddled thoughts to come up with a plan, but to no avail. Everything was happening so fast he barely had time to react.
"Greyback!" suddenly, one of the men standing further up the street called out in warning. His voice sounded angry. "You know the orders. It's not yet time to attack."
In response, a man standing directly across the road – Greyback presumably, sneered and tore off his mask in a careless gesture. Harry shrunk back instinctively at the sight. Greyback had been standing directly under the yellow lamp, and his features were thrown into horrifying definition. It was clearly the face of a man, but there was something wrong about it somehow: his teeth were yellowed and pointed like canines, and his eyes weren't human at all. They were a deep yellow, they were wild and roving like a hunter's – a predator. They were wolves' eyes.
"Who does Lestrange think she is? The Dark Lord?" Greyback spat back in retort. He refused to move away from the door in which he had been a step away from breaking open. "I can hear it, I can taste it! All the fun has already begun on her side!" He raised a hand and pointed in the distance, where smoke was rising rapidly.
Few metres away, Harry pressed back deeper into the shadows, his blood turning to ice. He didn't dare to turn back and look.
Fun.
That was the point of the attack. Words he heard in some dim memory from days ago filtered back to the forefront of his mind, bringing with them numbing realization. Hadn't that been what the wizards had been discussing, that late afternoon in front of Mr. Higgins' porch?
…it's time we cooked up some excitement. We've remained silent far too long.
"…I don't see any point of waiting. I can smell young blood inside," Greyback continued to say, temporarily unaware of Harry standing close by. He was busy glowering at the wizard who'd issued the order.
"If you have an objection, Greyback, bring it up to her face!" the other man snarled back, not backing down. "If you're in this unit, you listen to my orders. If not, you can explain yourself to Lestrange after I've made my report!"
Greyback growled menacingly in response, but he shifted out of the streetlight and took a few paces forwards to the middle of the road. Harry's breath caught in his throat. If he was discovered now… he really didn't dare to think of the consequences.
Resisting the urge to turn tail and flee back down the road, Harry held his ground and remained crouching in the darkness, still as a statue. He could only pray and hope he would remain undetected until he got the chance to flee, perhaps cutting straight back to the orphanage. He knew any sudden movement would give him away. The moment the slightest distraction occurred, he would sprint back the way he came and flip over the high wall beside Smith's Alley. He doubted they would be able to follow him there.
For a moment Harry was almost convinced that the trick would work. None of the milling wizards noticed an additional pair of eyes watching them in their midst. But at the last moment before turning back towards the house, the wolf-like man suddenly stilled. His wild manic eyes which had been locked on gates leading to Number 10 Picket-Fence Street suddenly turned back to scan the darkness, and they landed directly where Harry was standing.
Harry immediately froze in the dark, barely daring to breathe. He could feel his blood pulsing in his jugular vein, roaring in his ears. Greyback couldn't see him – the shadows provided him ample cover. There was no way that the man could see him unless –
Yellowed orbs met his. Predatory eyes widened -
A green spark flew up into the sky behind where Harry was standing. It wasn't much, but for precious seconds it distracted the werewolf.
The cloaked wizards responded at once to the signal. The man who'd first snapped at Greyback replied in kind by sending up a red flare into the sky, and the other wizards swarmed into action at his order.
With a blood-chilling roar, cursed flames leapt out from multiple wands, bringing with them an ethereal bluish-purple glow. The moment the fire left their wands, hey gathered to lick and frozen hard ground – and instead of dying away at the lack of fuel like they normally should, they only grew in their intensity. They writhed into shapes of hellish creatures, spewing fire from their tongues. And then, with a blood-chilling roar, they cascaded upon the row of houses like the tide.
In less than a second, over in a single heartbeat, the world was set on fire.
For a moment Harry forgot about his precarious position, transfixed in morbid fascination at the sheer enormity of the destruction the fire caused. Nothing about it seemed real or plausible. The sheer heat scorched his face and burned at his skin, the only thing that told him that it wasn't just a twisted nightmare. His eyes were only focused on the wall of fire swallowing the row of houses.
Dimly he noticed that one of the occupants of the second house down the road managed to get out. It was a large beefy man brandishing a gun, but due to the deafening roar of the cursed fire, Harry couldn't make out the words he was shouting. For a moment Harry had almost believed that he could have made it. Then the wizards laughed at his effort, and one of them swiped his wand at the man viciously.
Harry turned away. His blood was roaring in his ears, ringing in a twisted cacophony with the wild shrieks of the hellish monsters behind him as they rampaged through the street out of control.
The sight of the man, who was now writhing on the floor behind his turned back, had reminded him abruptly of someone. His heart thumped so madly that it hurt, his legs nailed in place by a sharp frigid coldness.
Scrooge. Scrooge was at home.
Harry turned on the spot and ran. His heartbeat was pulsing even faster than before as the fear for someone else gripped him and his senses, numbing him to his surroundings. He couldn't feel, couldn't see anything else: all that mattered was his legs flying madly across tarmac and pavement back to that old run-down cottage at the other side of the village.
Behind him, Greyback, who'd been momentarily blinded by the dazzling fires, was alerted instantly at the sudden movement. With a wolfish growl he leapt down the street in pursuit of Harry, leaving the rest of the terrorizing to the others. After all to him the only prize of raids was fresh blood.
Harry was quickly reaching a low white-washed wall which separated where he was from the backstreets. It was initially the way he'd taken before he'd ended up at the T-junction. Greyback snarled and picked up his speed, gaining on the boy slightly. While Harry could outrun most of his pursuers with relative ease, Greyback was a werewolf and had better agility than most wizards.
But Harry wasn't named 'Arrow' for nothing. In a single leap the boy had scaled the wall, landing over on the other side in a fluid motion. Greyback could see the boy continue to run, fleeing down the dark alleys with incredible speed. The werewolf snarled. There was no way he was letting his first prey escape easily from him.
Having succumbed to his wolf's nature so many years ago, Greyback rarely ever used magic, preferring instead to leap straight for his victim's throats and using his claws and teeth to do the work. However this time his closest prey was fleeing fast, and he needed to buy time to shorten the distance between them before making his final leap.
In a flash Greyback whipped out his wand and pointed it at the stretch of wall looming ahead of him. Harry was still running in full pelt on the other side, unaware of the werewolf's incoming attack.
"Bombarda!" Greyback snarled.
The seemingly insignificant jet of light leapt from his wand and thundered towards the low wall. Greyback watched with malicious satisfaction as green eyes widen as a massive jagged crack ran through the hardened brick at the impact. He saw the brief shock flitting across the boy's face, a split seconds before the concrete exploded.
The effect was massive. The explosion sent shrapnel, brick and debris hurtling through the air, digging into pavement and knocking out streetlamps. The two streetlamps standing nearest to the point of impact groaned heavily as part of the wall collapsed against metal, and with a huge crash they toppled one after another onto the road, snapping at cables and pulling down the rest. A stray spark of cursed fire from the raging inferno caught the wires, and abruptly the streets were lit up by a dazzling chain of fire.
There was no way the boy would have survived it. He'd been standing far too close to the wall, and the streetlamps had collapsed one after another upon his path, where the Fiendfire had spiraled out of control to lick the earth, as if the roads were but dry grass. In a single act the tarmac had become a sea of flames.
But the boy did what would have been impossible, even for a wizard. It happened so quickly that a normal man would have missed it completely. It was only because Greyback was a trained hunter and predator that he caught a glimpse of what had transpired. For in that single flash of that moment when the boy had turned back, Greyback saw green eyes flash a molten gold – and it was, as if the boy stopped time itself.
It was little more than half a second, barely enough for Greyback blink, much less let down his Shield. He told himself it had only been a trick of light. A reflection of the golden flames in the boy's dying green eyes. But a second later when his vision cleared, he saw that the boy was still running… - at the very far end of the road.
…
...
-X-
Severus Snape was in a foul temper.
He'd been looking forwards to a long-overdue rest over the weekend, but Selwyn had abruptly brought a Muggle town to Bellatrix's attention – and the half-crazed witch had jumped at the opportunity for another Death-Eater raid. The rest of the Death-Eaters had been contacted and informed, and much against his own will, Dumbledore had insisted that Snape showed up to divert suspicion. As a result he was now involved in a raid in some rural Muggle village, witnessing a thousand murders instead of grading potions essays.
It was a bleak situation to say the least.
Just like the rest of the Wizarding world, Snape had once, foolishly believed that the war had ended the day the curse rebounded and struck the Dark Lord. Even if Dumbledore had warned him otherwise, it was difficult not to get his hopes up despite his natural pessimism. But standing now in the midst of more destruction and gore, Snape could only scorn at their naivety.
Even if their leader had been destroyed almost a decade ago, the Death-Eaters did not stop. While they might have fallen into disorganization and subsequent ruin, Voldemort's right hand Bellatrix Lestrange had taken it upon herself to pursue the fight until her Lord returned. She persisted in organizing raids in the Muggle world, attacking Wizarding towns as the Death-Eaters slowly chipped away at the number of men the Ministry had. The pureblood witch was crafty as she was resourceful, and a little reward here and there – and the Death-Eaters were mostly content to follow through her ideas. Those who sought positions in the Ministry got what they wanted, the bloodthirsty werewolves satisfied their lust for fresh blood, and the Death-Eaters got to live up to their pureblood ideals by destroying more Muggles.
As a result the Death-Eaters continued to pose a large threat to the Ministry, and Snape's position as a spy was never terminated.
Snape was currently lurking in a darker corner with an invisible Shield and Notice-Me-Not Charm cast over himself. Even if he'd turned up, most of the Death-Eaters knew his distaste for gore and blood, so they mostly left him alone as they ravaged through the small Muggle village, setting houses on fire and torturing the unfortunate victims they found to be alive. Snape's job was to ensure that no 'Muggle filth' escaped them before they were through playing their games.
Snape had just turned his back on Mulciber and his latest victim when he first saw the strange boy. At first he didn't see the other fully, but he caught a glimpse of hauntingly brilliant green eyes enough to capture his attention. Just a brief flash before the small figure melted into the shadows.
Immediately Snape turned away from the position where the boy had been standing. He knew that the boy was still there, cleverly concealing himself in the dark – but Snape was wary of approaching the other. If he revealed the child's position, doubtless the boy wouldn't live for much longer.
Snape allowed his eyes to sweep across the burning landscape, inwardly contemplating his next course of action. He couldn't save everyone, but with discretion he could manage a few. Yet there was no way the boy could survive the raid if he stayed where he was. How was he supposed to get the child out of harm's way without being detected?
Before he could come to a decision however, someone else had noticed the boy. Snape recognized the werewolf at once, his figure blending perfectly into the shadows. Snape felt a rush of distaste for the Death-Eater, followed by a separate chill of dread. He had fairly good idea what Greyback was doing here even when his assigned area had been Selwyn's unit. Young blood.
There was a bang, and a flash of red light, and the boy was sent sprawling onto the rough tarmac. He skidded to a halt a few paces from where Snape stood. Even from the distance Snape could tell that the fall had wounded the boy considerably; his right knee had taken the brunt of his weight, and red was pooling from numerous cuts on previously unblemished skin.
"I was looking for you everywhere boy," Greyback sneered as he advanced slowly. His teeth were already bloodstained, whether from the gash running down his hideous wolfish face or from another victim's throat, Snape couldn't tell. "I don't care whatever tricks you have, they're not working this time."
The boy flinched. He tried to climb to his feet, but he was clearly still in pain. To make matters worse, Greyback's arrival a few more Death-Eaters quickly became more interested in this turn of events. At the new excitement, three of the men circled in quickly like birds of prey, Macnair included.
Snape fingered his wand slowly, hidden beneath the hem of his sleeve. He rarely ever intervened, but the boy was but a mere child – and more than that his sub-conscious had realized something about the boy even if he was determined not to acknowledge it.
Discreetly Snape lifted his wand, pointing it in the direction of the Death-Eaters, but to his surprise, before he'd managed to cast any spell, the three men were abruptly hurtled backwards a few paces by a brutal force. It wasn't enough to knock them out, but a few of them suffered a nasty fall on their backs.
Snape looked around wildly, hardly daring to hope that the Ministry officials would be competent enough to send some men to intervene for once. Given their current it would probably be another suicide mission, but at least they could decrease the number of casualties. But one around immediately told him of the contrary: there was no one around to help.
Who had cast the spell?
Snape cast his eyes back to the scene, his eyes alert and searching.
While the rest had been flung off their feet by the magical force, Greyback had suffered the brunt of the unknown attack. The werewolf had been sent crashing through a solid wall behind him, while Macnair and the rest were currently struggling to stand a few feet away from where their initial spot. Snape's eyes snapped towards the small huddled figure in the middle of the road. The boy was still lying there, alone and unaided. He didn't seem to be affected by this shocking display of magic like a Muggle should; instead he climbed shakily to his feet painfully and half-limped, half-ran down the street. The flames from the burning houses threw haunting shadows upon his small figure as he did. The air was so thick with fear, blood and fire that it was difficult to breathe without casting any spell, but the boy plunged on recklessly, heading towards the clutter of Death-Eaters who were standing in the middle of the road.
The strangeness of the moment struck a chord in his mind. He remembered pausing slightly, his mind puzzled as he tried to figure out the identity of the boy with those curious emerald eyes.
And then he saw it happen.
Three Death-Eaters had quickly cornered the boy before he could run far, but before they'd even had the chance to attack, history repeated itself. A wave of magic rose up around the boy and hurtled the black-robed wizards to the ground with sheer force. But what startled Snape wasn't the repetition of the spell – but rather the castor himself. Because this time, he saw young green eyes blaze with fire reflected off the burning houses, and he saw the boy's mouth open to form words even though he'd been too far to hear them.
But even if Snape ever knew how to lip-read, and managed to do so from the distance, he wouldn't have been able to make out the spell that had been cast. Because more than it was never a spell to begin with, the language in which it was spoken was in Parseltongue.
...
A/N: This chapter was a product of watching too much Merlin. As you may or may not have guessed. Apologies for the cliffie, and feedback would be greatly appreciated. :D
Rating system:
:D for amazing
O for okay
X for terrible
P.S: Any chance someone can drop me a review in German? I'm trying to improve before my exams. :P
