Hey, guys. You can call this chapter a diamond jubilee. Kidding. :D Read, and review, folks. Cutting straight to the story.
RikudoNaruto1: Thanks, and yeah, you did think it right Watch out for the next chapters, maybe there we'll see how the brother wand connection works out. Meanwhile, keep reviewing!
xxxLeanniexxx: You wait for my story, and I wait for your review! Haha, sooooo long! You know, that's just my dream come true Yeah, hate that line, I love it ;) Makes excellent cliffhanger material ;) You're both wrong AND right about Sophia, you'll see *wink again* Yeah, Garret! Three cheers for Garret :D Kidding. Don't worry. No, scratch that, DO WORRY! Garret the Great comes! *Laughs evilly* Yes, dear….cute Tom at last! And yes, it is psychological warfare…..a little picture of what the realistic picture of War is….actually I'm addressing the issue of Wars over here a bit…..and so, in this chapter also, you'll find another discussion on it…*spoiler, can't say any more*, the motive is, I'm trying to show how the grimness of War overlaps both Muggle and Wizard worlds….Gellert, is coming. Let's see what the Lion, the Serpent, and our own Harry does! Keep reviewing!
Xiaomaome101: Thanks! Keep reviewing and following A Second Chance!
So yeah, folks, read on!
"I'm afraid, Harry." Tom said quietly, as he and Harry sat against the sofa in the living room, staring at the fire.
After a long session of strategy-making and meeting allies, Harry had returned to his bed, and had tossed and turned, unable to sleep, plagued by the battles and losses of the world he had left behind a million years ago. It had already been…what? Six, eight, nine? Almost a year since Death had sent him back to the past. Apart from one or two appearances, the entity had remained curiously silent till now. Not that Harry wanted to call him back.
So much had changed: Tom, the little, scared, angry boy who might have been Lord Voldemort, had changed his destiny. Granted, Harry thought, he did have a hand in it, but Tom was the one to let Harry into his heart. Now, he was no longer Tom, but Thomas Harold Slytherin, son and Heir to the Lord Harold James Slytherin. A proud scion of Slytherin, cunning, manipulative, yet gentle, somewhat caring. He'd make a perfect Lord, Harry thought, than himself. He was under no delusions: he was playing the part of Lord Slytherin, issuing battle orders, rallying allies, well and good. But he knew there were forces, dynamics at play deep inside his own camp. Old Houses vied for attention, to take back their independence from the Great Houses. Heroes, villains, commoners alike fought skirmishes, played games, to rise up the ladder. Society, was no Army. Here, they played with their tongues, while there, they played with their wands. Harry, was not someone who should be playing the former. He might have enough cunning to convince Salazar Slytherin into declaring him the Lord of Slytherin; but Harry knew himself. It was only time before the disaster struck.
Because he had a strange foreboding in his heart, a foreboding he couldn't quite understand. A sense of unrest, of uncertainty. He couldn't see the way in front of him. It had been relatively easy with Voldemort: he had hunted the Horcruxes while the world had to handle him, then he showed up and had a big, single battle and won. But, this was no Voldemort he was fighting against. It was the First Slytherin, the Father of Serpents.
Harry wondered how Tom was taking it; the War had a curiously unnatural effect on Tom. He had caught Tom practising in the dungeons one day, advanced duelling, firing off sixth year spells though in a body of a twelve-year. That wasn't unexpected; he knew Tom's potential. He had offered to train alongside Tom, and had slowly watched him grow from skills to skills, till, he had enough faith that Tom could hold off an unexpected attack for atleast more than five minutes. He didn't want Tom to fight this War. But he knew the bitter truth: The Wolf would be coming for Tom, as well as him. Tom had to know what to do. But what he had not thought of was Tom coming to him one night and saying he couldn't sleep at all, and Harry had taken him to the drawing room to sit by the fire. That was when Tom said that.
"I'm afraid, Harry."
"You'd be a fool not to." Harry told him. "I'm afraid myself."
"But how is it not foolish to be afraid, Harry?" Tom asked.
"Because fear, brother, fear burrows into you a sense of precaution. You are careful. You review your plans and risks. You look out over your shoulder always for possible danger."
"But isn't it a terrible life to be looking over your shoulder for ever, Harry?" Tom asked.
"It is no longer a life if that act of carelessness takes your head off your shoulder." Harry gently said to him. Tom nodded solemnly, then stared at the fire again.
"What is the news at Hogwarts?" Harry asked.
"I've already given a talking to the Slytherins. All the Prefects are watching always all entrances and outs from the common room."
"Tom," Harry looked at him. "What about the rest of the Houses? Haven't you dropped off any hints to them?"
"It's so frustrating." Tom said. "They always see us as the incarnations of evil. Do you think they'll ever fortify on our words? And there are always the assurances of Dumbledore. Not that Professor Dippet is helping matters by his complacency."
"Professor Dumbledore, Tom." Harry reminded with a smile.
Tom glared at him.
After a few moments, Harry told, "Let me tell you one thing, Tom. Prevention, is always better than cure. If Hogwarts is attacked and they decimate the other Houses and besiege your House, then it would be much harder driving them from Hogwarts and lifting the siege, than it would be if all the Houses are united and work to prevent the breaching of the Hogwarts walls. So, Tom…..you're a leader. Do your work. It doesn't matter what your age is. Lead."
Tom nodded, and said suddenly, "Have you ever cast the Killing Curse, Harry?"
Harry looked at him sharply. "No, Tom. Never. I've cast many dark curses, worse, but never the Killing Curse."
"Why? You use reductos, expulsos, diffindos, and dark curses to kill, so why not use the Avada and make it less cumbersome?" Tom asked.
"Because, Tom, when you use the Killing Curse, it is an absolute thing which you are commanding to occur: Death. You cannot take back Death, Tom. All other curses, all forms of punishments you might take back, make it right, but not Death. This absolution is not our domain; hence it destabilises the soul, and this sort of Murder is often said to tear the soul apart."
"Tear the soul apart…?" Tom asked.
Harry felt a strange apprehension at the question. He felt like he was Slughorn, standing in his office with the Young Tom Riddle asking him about his "academic" project involving Horcruxes. Still, Harry carefully answered. "It will destabilise your mind, heart, warp your brain, warp your very existence, to something which supremely mirrors the despicable act of ordering something absolute in its manner to be exercised evilly. But don't let it plague you now; you won't understand it. After a few years, later." Tom nodded, and said,
"One last question, Harry."
"Fire away."
"From what I've heard from you about the Lion, he seems to be a good man. Why is he on the other side, the bad side, then? Is our side actually in the wrong?" He asked worriedly.
Harry froze. He debated how to answer this question without bringing Gertrude's story into it. He decided. He crouched beside Tom, and looked him in the eye, and said, "Listen carefully, Tom. Nobody is in the Right side in a War. There is nothing right with War. It's just a series of wrongs adding up to such a state that they all fall over in destruction. To kill, to maim, to fight, is not natural. Is not what should happen. But for the right to happen, such is the irony of the world, that we have to do the wrong. I am fighting this War, only for Peace. The Lion, Garret Wilders, is a good man, who Luck has dealt a truly ruinous hand from his childhood. He is a good man, Tom, but inside, he is a bitter, scared man hungry to believe that there is still some good, some honour left in this cruel world. Alas, he is taking another way to right his wrongs, and in his misguided sense of loyalty to The Wolf, he is walking rather not the Path of the Righteous, but the Path of Doom. Such is the pity of the World. I…feel pity for him. He is a just, honourable, good man, but he is only a rose among Thorns. For how long he does survive, Time will tell. Suffice it to say, you will find good men on both sides of a War, honourable men, fighting for their beliefs. But the pity is, one, or both will die."
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It had been nearly three months since Harry had sent Tom back to Hogwarts. Tom had his orders; and Harry knew he would do his utmost to execute them flawlessly. He needed not worry about Tom. He instead worried about the Council Meeting in his own Manor.
Serpent's Lair had seen and had withstood millennia. It had seen bloody battles fought between the Lions and the Snakes, it had seen the Family within it slowly wither into madness, and it had now seen the rebirth of the Line of the Snake in the Lord Harold Slytherin. But it was now seeing a War, which shamed her to the core. For it was the First Father of the Line, the First Slytherin, who was now furiously trampling along the path of madness, bent on destroying and uprooting his own line and descendants. The stones of the Keep had kept out many ambitious Armies before; but as Ages had gone by, weaknesses had set in, the blood-wards had degraded, as the madness took hold of the Line. True, with the presence of the now Lord Slytherin, it was regaining back its power, but it still was nowhere near to the originally impenetrable fortress it was.
And now, it was going to see the Greatest Council since the Days of Salazar, when he was banished from Hogwarts. For this was the council in which all Noble Houses allied to the House of Slytherin, and all Minor Houses under them, would flock to the Serpent's Council to swear their Allegiance to the Lord, and mobilise their armies for War.
The Houses of Trent, Allister, Mersers, and quite a few had defected. Harry had suspected this, but he had no longer the choice to act. They were now, all under the protection of Wolf's stronghold. The Lords were, anyway. Only the innocent, public were left to the attack. Harry couldn't do that. But he could do other things.
House Black, Malfoy, Greengrass, Davis, Lestrange, Nott, Avery, Macnair, Rosier, Carrow, had all swore blood oaths of allegiance to Harry, as had the Minor Houses under them. The only other House out of the loop was the House of Fox, of the Foxtrot Islands, whose Lord William Fox immediately took a liking to him, and swore his allegiance to him.
Two decisions had been made in the Council.
First, that the other Houses were cast out of the banners of the Snake and they were liable for destruction and their lands seized. None of the commonfolk would be harmed, but the Houses would be extinguished if Harry and his allies managed to make it out of this War victorious. The lands would go to other minor Houses, Harry would be the decider.
Secondly, on a raven which had been sent to Lord Black, had come a message, clear in its tone: The Ministry has been laid siege to. The Wolf himself was overseeing the Siege. The Siege of the Heartlands, they were calling it.
Immediately, under Lord Fox and Lady Davis, a good chunk of the Army was sent off without delay to the Ministry. They needed the Ministry functioning. If it fell, then Wolf would use the chaos perfectly to install himself at the Ministry.
Thirdly, a snake was sent off in a burst of emerald fire in the fireplace, to the Slytherin Common Room in Hogwarts, where it would slither off to find the Young Heir of Slytherin, and deliver a strict message to him from his father the Lord:
Fortify the passageways. Post guards at each level of entry, set caterwauling charms at the front of every passage out of Hogwarts. Drop off hints to other Houses. Above all, DO NOT go into the thick of the fight. Avoid stray fire, and take up a position if firing does indeed occur. In ultimate cases, send a message to me. Fight well.
Harry looked around the table, where all were in battle armour: Greengrass, Black, Malfoy, Lestrange, Nott, Avery, Macnair, Rosier, Carrow, all.
Something was not right in the air. Something was not right at all. Warning bells were going through Harry's head. No, something was very wrong.
The room lurched violently, as Harry stopped himself narrowly from falling out of his chair, to find that his fellows had all fallen off theirs.
A BOOM rocked Serpent's Lair. Harry sprinted out, to see the cause of it.
(line break)
Elizabeth Davis was moving with near-inhuman reflexes, ducking, dodging, dancing and cutting a path of destruction through the path of the Enemy lines. She did not cast dark curses; she knew that it was no use using up her magical core in that way in such a melee battle. Dark curses were the best in duels. She instead used simple light curses with devastating results; reductos, diffindos, vernanculus coupled with stunners, petrificus totalus coupled with expulsos. End result was, people were fleeing from her. She was determined. Lord Slytherin had set her this particular task, and she would see it done. Those idiots thinking to besiege the Ministry would pay for their idiocy at making such an idiotic move.
She had not married yet; her mother was continuously pressurizing her, as was her brother, to make a match. Till yet, she hadn't found anyone to match her. Of course, there was Lord Slytherin; but she didn't long for him like Greengrass often did(of course, she vehemently denied the fact) but everyone knew that Lord Slytherin was off-bounds. She instead found self-fulfillment in herself; she found good in bringing up the abandoned children left by parents who did not want them(mainly born of indiscretions) and she loved her sewing and duelling. She even planned to further her sewing to extend to a tapestry that she planned to gift the Lord Slytherin, on his birthday.
She prayed often that this War might blow over without ever affecting those little children she mothered over; she was vehemently against children growing up during Wartime. She wanted the threat to be eliminated fast, and hence fought with increased vigour.
"It is impossible, Davis!" Lord Fox shouted. "These are all mercenaries! None of them are actual soldiers! Where are they all! I thought this was a siege!"
"It still is, Fox!" Davis shouted back, as she ducked and twirled through the crowd battling furiously, firing off curses in all general directions, like a pseudo-shield to deviate all curses towards her.
"Only five columns fighting the Ministry Atrium Security and the Aurors! This is not what we came for!" Lord Fox yelled.
In the fray of violence, Davis stopped, and blew the wizard who was rearing to attack her through the crowd, flattening many a people. Her mouth hung open in disbelief and shock; a small cut over her right eye still dripping blood slowly. She only could form one sentence before she could feel the Anti-Apparition wards springing up over the place, blood wards also, darkest magic in its own kind, a magic she did not have the requisite power to fight.
"It's a ploy. It's a ploy to get us from the main guard of Serpent's Lair! People! Find me a way to break these wards, immediately! Serpent's Lair is in danger!"
"We have to wipe the whole lot out; only then can we break the wards!" She shouted to Fox, who nodded and continued fighting. Davis turned and fired off a spell, which cleaved a way through the crowd, but suddenly came to a stop and fizzled out at the wand tip of a wizard, with sand-coloured hair and wearing grey robes.
"Gellert Grindelwald." She spoke with disbelief.
Grindelwald inclined his head in agreement. "It is, My Lady." He said in a slightly mocking voice, and fired off a blood-boiler towards her. She ducked, and replied in kind, and the duel started. Both parties ducked, dodged, moved in and out of the flurry of spells, till she pulled up an overpowered lumos to daze his eyes and hit him on the knees with a bone-breaker. Grindelwald collapsed, and grunted in pain as he struggled to stand. She walked towards him with fury in her eyes. She would see the end of him, this one great ally of the Wolf. She raised up her wand to form the words, but a flurry of movement to her left made her turn and lose one millisecond of concentration, as she saw only a transfigured rooster there. The ploy for distraction was understood, But Davis noticed the movement out of the corner of her eyes too late. Lord William Fox could only watch, helpless, unable to cast a shield through the throng. Not that it would have helped if he had managed to cast the shield. Shields did not stop all curses, and those of the worst kind.
The green jet of light struck Davis on her heart, and she toppled sideways with a look of frozen surprise on her face, into Lord Fox's arms, who had managed to make his way to her by then.
Over Davis's shoulder, he could see a sand-haired man giving him a nod, and disappearing in the throng.
Gellert Grindelwald had just made his first kill in this War.
(line break)
At least five hundred wizards and witches stood behind a lone figure, who was casting spells with an intense look of concentration on his face. Even in the light of the rising moon, his face was eerily familiar.
The First Slytherin had finally come to the Stronghold of his dynasty at last, and was looking up at it with a promise of destruction in his eyes, with an army of a five hundred behind him.
"Oh, Merlin!" Black exclaimed, wild-eyed, all suaveness forgotten. "We've been outplayed! The main part of our Army is stuck at the Ministry!"
Malfoy turned even paler, as did Greengrass and Avery. Macnair and Rosier, from a look from Lord Nott, immediately left. Harry asked him, "How many do we have, Lord Nott?"
Lord Nott answered in a grim voice, "Two hundred and ten, My Lord Slytherin. Only the Minor Houses of Bouchinis, the Salanders, and the Prescotts have remained behind. Each have fifty. The rest are our and yours personal guards; our Armies are all stationed either at our own Keeps, or at the Ministry itself. Anti-appartition wards can be sensed, My Lord, to keep them out and keep us in. I have sent Rosier and Macnair to bring the Minor Houses up to date with the happenings and to immediately moblise. Two hundred and ten against five hundred….." he trailed off grimly, his stance stiff, yet radiating unrest and nervousness.
Harry walked up, and tried to look up at the wards. Black said, "It's done, Harry. We have no choice but to hold the siege. If we can at least get any outside help…." Both he and Harry knew it was unlikely. Even as they watched, all five hundred raised their wands as one and cast, green, poisonous spells, and those all collided heavily with the wards over Serpent's Lair. Harry had already packed away Salazar's portrait, and ordered a missive to be sent to Tom informing him of the situation.
"Prepare all we have, Orion." He told Black, and immediately, both he and Malfoy left. The only ones left remaining were now Greengrass, Avery, and Nott and Lestrange. Harry said to Greengrass and Avery, "Go and fortify the two towers. We'll need those." Both left. "Lord Nott." Harry began. "please round up the House Elves, and gather all the riches of the Castle and the splendour. Transport it out, smuggle it, somewhere safe, please. We'll have need of those later. Thank you. " Lord Nott bowed, and went out. That left only Lestrange.
"My Lord…." Lestrange said doubtfully.
"Go down to the camps, Lestrange." Harry clasped Lestrange's shoulder, and looked him in the eye. "Blast the holes down there with Avery and Macnair, make a tunnel or whatever, wherever it leads, just make sure it's out of the enemy's reach. Get all innocent women and children out, immediately. Let us prevent the loss of innocents first, after that we shall prevent the loss of our own."
As Lestrange left, Harry close his eyes and hoped against hope that the Ancient Serpent Ward would hold against Wolf. He went out, and looked at the sky, the Great White Serpent twisting and dodging Wolf's spells, trying to out manouevr him in order to get Wolf at a disadvantage and bite him to death. It almost succeeded, for it managed to beat away Wolf's wand from his hands, and subsequently, was mere seconds from sinking its fangs into Wolf's body, when the ice cold voice froze Harry's blood in his veins, in a language he knew much.
"Stop." The command was in parseltongue, as Wolf's face morphed into a twisted pleasure of annihilation.
The Great Serpent tried to defy, but could not. No earthly serpent could defy the command of the Son of the Serpent itself, Harry thought with slowly started getting restless though, when Wolf spoke the final words. The Snake had no choice. It was the command of the First Slytherin.
"Destroy Yourself."
The Snake writhed, and broke apart in a great explosion, and the wards of Serpent's Lair, the penultimate defence of Stronghold of the House of Slytherin, fell with a BOOM that threw Harry off his feet.