Author Name: creamtea-from-FAP
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: PS/SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OoTP, HBP.
Genre: Book 7. Adventure, thriller.
Main Character(s): H. D. Beta: Anise. Some test-reading by SUM.
Ship(s): Ships are touched on as part of the narrative, but the story isn't about the ships. Ships are: H/L, D/Hr. These ships: H/G, R/Hr, D/G are included – but not in a good way!
Summary: ALT BOOK 7: STORY ALREADY WRITTEN AND BEING PUBLISHED WITH FREQUENT UPDATES. FORTY CHAPTERS. What's it about? Love potions; emotional shoot-outs, expulsions, hex-fights, fist-fights, kidnappings, bank-jobs, secret weapons and castle-battles. And … DRACO!
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Chapter 35
Dementors reared overhead as Harry stood on the lake-shore and instinctively half-crouched under the crash and smoke of barrages of spellfire. Inferi milled in a lowing, seething mass at the base of the castle walls, Aurors on the far lakeside pointed wands at them whereupon they thrashed about amongst themselves.
Harry tried not think of who the Inferi had been when they had been alive.
Although many of their clothes had rotted to rags, about half of them seemed to be attired in suits and formal dresses and the other half in – of all things – shorts and summer-frocks.
The earlier activity among their own Inferi had not gone un-noticed by Ministry monitoring teams and an Auror crew – 'Scrimgeour's boys', the ones who had been in on the Inferi plan - had hurriedly been despatched to check the lake 'situation'. Upon arrival, the garbled cries of townsfolk – Harry Potter! Harry Potter! – the bristling explosions of the Head of Hogwarts, the wailed half-explanations of the sobbing Tonks and … the dead school-child … had seen them reporting hurriedly back to the Ministry.
There had been suppressed panic among the Auror team, fearing that the school-girl had been killed by their Inferi. They had been almost relieved when it had emerged that she had been killed by someone who had been acting under the Imperius for Bellatrix Black.
A dead school-girl? Bad for the Department's reputation. But it would have been worse if it had been as a result of their use of Dark Magic.
A horrified Professor McGonagall had swept back to the castle.
Luna Lovegood's body had been temporarily transferred to the sanctuary of the church.
Then the giants and Dementors and Inferi had attacked and the wards had gone up with the Aurors still trapped outside.
Flying above them, having recovered his broom from the rocks but unable to find his Cloak, Harry had pitched erratically, hoping to go un-noticed by the Dementors clustered about the castle walls. He had angrily dashed tears from his face even as they fell: for all that Professor Dumbledore had sacrificed Ron and Luna to save Malfoy from becoming a murderer, it had all happened anyway.
And then there was what Malfoy had said about Sirius.
When Harry had appeared – flying in low – he had stubbornly stood before Scrimgeour, all dirty face and tear-stains and split lip, all swollen jaw and bruises, almost daring the Aurors to make something of it.
"Nice night for it, Harry."
"I've had better, Scrimgeour." Harry's voice was very thick and rough, "Going to try and grab me again?"
"Rather late for that now, don't you think?" Scrimgeour waved a hand at the whole crazed arena as screams and spellfire deafened out.
Dementors swooped above them, held off by a canopy of various strengths of Patroni. Harry noticed that Scrimgeour made no effort to add his to the number.
"I'm a little short on happy memories, Harry."
"Aren't we all?"
Aurors and Ministerial aides ran about wildly. Ministry staff from all and any departments were there, some panicking and some with their sleeves rolled up, looking grim.
Harry even recognised the bespectacled wizard from 'Muggle Relations' whom Malfoy had spoken to at the Reception. He even thought he saw Umbridge scurrying about, looking hysterically panicked and screeching something about 'the centaurs are the secret threat! They are the Four Legged Fiend!'
Most of the wizards looked away from her as though she were an embarrassment.
Scrimgeour gave her a disgusted look, "Can someone kindly escort Madam Umbridge from the scene? She may be of more help back at the Ministry."
A Ministerial aide scampered after her, but looked as though he didn't hold out much hope of succeeding.
In the darkened chaos, hardly any but Scrimgeour recognised Harry – his scar covered by the dirt on his face.
Away in the mid-distance, Harry caught a flash of bubblegum pink: the ex-Imperiused Tonks. She was flailing about wildly, sobbing, driving anyone away who might come near her, looking like she might collapse into a sobbing heap at any second. Her face was crumpled, soaked with tears, contorted with grief under the sudden weight of her dreadful actions.
She had armed the Death Eaters, spied for them, tried to steal the locket Horcrux for them.
She had killed Luna Lovegood.
"Tonks claims she was Imperiused," commented Scrimgeour. "Of course, they all say that."
Somebody passing, snorted with ill-humour, "Probably trying to come up with some excuse for why she's been shagging a werewolf." He laughed and mimicked a high, female voice, "I never fancied him, the Imperius made me do it."
Harry punched him, and Scrimgeour had to pull Harry off.
Harry was roaring – but he wasn't sure what at.
"No Percy Weasley?" someone called.
"Not here, Lord knows where he is. Always knew he didn't have the stomach for a fight."
Harry looked up sharply to see who had responded and was hit by a shock like a thump to his chest: it was Draco Malfoy. And then realised it wasn't – he was looking instead at the person whom Malfoy had 'worn' the face of at Bill's wedding-reception: Francis Dashwood.
The real Dashwood was now taking the chance to blacken Percy Weasley's reputation and Harry recalled something else from the wedding: that Dashwood regarded Percy as 'career competition'.
"That's Weasley all over, Sir," persisted Dashwood to Scrimgeour, playing politics while there was a war on, "– okay in the office but useless when it comes to the real thing."
Harry flashed a hot, angry look at Dashwood; he disliked this Dashwood, the real Dashwood, in a way he hadn't disliked Malfoy's Dashwood at all.
Harry recalled the wizard riot at the Quidditch World Cup, when Percy had stood up to be counted like a man, even though he had only a few weeks out of school at the time and could have been expected to hang back without any shame: Percy Weasley was nobody's coward.
An Auror broke in, "Still no Cursebreakers, Sir! The Gringotts top-brass has put a Cursebreaker Retardius within a five mile radius of Hogwarts, so any Cursebreaker who does manage to turn up, won't be able to fight."
"Gringotts were offered incentives by You Know Who, rewards if they simply chose not to fight," said Scrimgeour. "It looks as though they have made their decision."
"They were offered incentives? Why couldn't you offer them incentives!" yelled Harry, turning suddenly. "Why were you so stupid and stubborn about it!"
Scrimgeour's mouth went hard and he looked away.
Beneath the withering cold of the Dementors and the whoosh of spellfire, Harry wildly told Scrimgeour all he knew about Dawlish, Cuffe, Bagman and others being Death Eaters.
Harry steeled himself to say it, knowing what it had cost him, "There were Inferi in the lake!"
There was a pause.
"I know. They're mine."
Harry almost choked on his outrage.
"They are the ones struggling against Voldemort's now," Scrimgeour persisted, "I knew he'd be building an Inferi Army somehow, so as a counter-balance, I knew I would need one."
"They're …?" Harry felt a boiling, churning, bubbling wrath. "They're yours?" He glared at Scrimgeour with the blazing-eyed rage of a Basilisk. "They killed Ron Weasley!"
"They were guarding the lake, Harry."
"Where the hell did you get them all from! Did you kill all those people to make Inferi?"
"We got the Inferi at Brockdale Bridge."
Then Harry remembered the far off Bank Holiday Muggle bridge collapse. He recalled the rotting beach-clothes half of the Inferi were wearing.
"You killed them all?"
"No – the bridge collapsed. There was a huge loss of life, we simply took the necessary advantage of the situation."
"The necessary advantage?"
"They were already dead, Harry! The situation was already a disaster: we simply made the best of the opportunity it represented!"
"Just like Amelia Bones, was it? Was she an accident too?"
Scrimgeour shot Harry a shocked glance and then quickly recovered as a Ministerial aide ran up.
"Minister! Our Inferi are barely holding, and we're not making any inroads on the giants. Their leader – Golgomath – is wearing an indestructible battle helmet! Really, what kind of idiot gives a pure-blood giant and indestructible battle helmet?"
Harry interrupted, glaring hot-eyed at Scrimgeour, his words gritted, "Did you kill her?"
Scrimgeour hurriedly waived the aide away.
"Kill who?"
"Stop playing games – you know who: Amelia Bones. Smashed to death? Killed in a 'nasty incident' while locked in her own flat? She was practically the Minister elect. Only someone who knew her security details inside out could get in. And with her alive, you'd never have made Minister. Did you do it?"
"It was an accident."
Harry felt a thump of overwhelming shock – Scrimgeour wasn't even denying any involvement. There was no ''I wasn't there'. He was saying that he had done it, but it had been 'by accident'?
"What? You beat her to death by accident?" Harry could hear the cracked laughter in his own voice. "What did you do – keep accidentally Reducto-ing the ceiling so it kept on falling on her – but ooops?"
Scrimgeour was starting to look about, apprehensive at being overheard.
"I never meant it!"
"But you still did it!"
"I didn't! I took a – she - she panicked!"
If Harry had been less heated himself, he would have reflected that it was the first time he had ever heard Scrimgeour sounding fraught and defensive.
"I was telling her about Brockdale Bridge. I showed her one of the Inferi, because I knew she wouldn't believe me otherwise. Then she became outraged, saying she was going to have me arrested – How? By my own Aurors? She started screaming she was going to order the Finito of the Inferi and thus lose us our army. We needed an army! She just wouldn't listen. And then she started panicking."
"So the Inferius just killed her – just like that?"
Scrimgeour stilled, finding it within himself to stare at Harry, "It was an accident."
An aide raced up, looking at the skies, "They should be here soon, Sir. At the speed they fly, they should be imminent."
Harry felt his teeth grind, "What is imminent?"
Scrimgeour straightened, "Heliopaths, Harry."
Helio -?
Harry almost screamed with laughter, "There's no such thing!"
"Of course there is, Harry. The Ministry specialists have been developing them: hybrids, a combination of dragon, giant and Thestral. Flying, fast-moving, agile, immensely strong, and fire-spitting."
"You created an entire species?"
Scrimgeour continued as though Harry wasn't screeching.
"Not entirely successfully, not yet. It's still patchy, the strain isn't true: some are a lot more Thestralish, some are a lot more dragonish, some are a lot more giant. We'll get there though: a flying, fast-moving, strong, fire-spitting, agile creature was ideal for eliminating massed ranks of Inferi, so we created it."
"You'll have to Obliviate half of Muggle Britain! People will see them flying overhead!"
"I doubt it. Their Thestral aspects make them invisible to those who haven't seen death. And it's quite amazing the number of Muggles who haven't. They watch violent films, watch violence on the news, even play violent Muggle video games – but actually witnessing someone die in person? They shie from it. They can't even bear to be with their relatives as they expire: real death frightens them, they'd rather pretend it wasn't there. I suspect that surprisingly few people will notice the Heliopaths as they shoot north."
"For God's sake – the Pygmy Puffs being used in there are just the same – experimental monsters!"
"Yes, but they were created by those who wished to destroy society rather than preserve it."
Seething, Harry told Scrimgeour about the Death Eaters, the tunnel, the Chamber; about Hermione and Malfoy being against the Death Eaters, even about the Horcruxes that were with Voldemort - at which point Scrimgeour had started – and then about the mysterious weapon.
"Weapon? What weapon?"
"It's something in the Chamber – it was put there by Slytherin a thousand years ago. It's supposed to 'annihilate all those unworthy to be called wizard' but -"
Before Scrimgeour could take a stance on it, a soaking McNair had half-crawled, been half-dragged out of the lake and had been flung before them.
Harry was so battered by the night's events, that he wasn't even astonished.
McNair looked about wildly, obviously trying to calculate his best tactics.
"Minister! Minister, I was Imperiused! He made me do it! I -"
Scrimgeour coolly pointed his wand, "Stop wasting time and tell me what I want to know."
McNair froze – clearly trying to gauge how much he should tell so as not to compromise any future with Voldemort, should Voldemort still win.
Scrimgeour simply Crucio'd him, letting him writhe, squirm and scream.
Harry rounded on Scrimgeour.
"That's Dark Magic!"
"There's no such thing as Dark Magic, Harry. There is simply magic and the situations in which it is applied."
"You're torturing him!""As you once ineptly attempted to torture Bellatrix Lestrange in the Ministry during a battle. Or did you think that the Ministry building went un-monitored? I haven't got a particular problem with hypocrisy, Harry, it's the lingua franca of politics, but let's not allow it to over-ride the necessities of reality, shall we?"
Scrimgeour returned his attentions to McNair and uttered a civil, smiling, Finito. He jerked McNair to his feet with a few sharp spells. "Now," he addressed the shocked-looking McNair with smiling politesse, "as we have both established our credentials: you as a worthless Death Eater and I as someone not above using your own methods against you, shall we begin again?"
McNair eyed Scrimgeour's wand the same way a terrorised Muggle might eye the barrel of a gun which had been shoved into his face: disbelieving panic.
"Cruc -"
McNair's scream cut off Scrimgeour's drawl. He blurted everything he knew without reservation: the Chamber, the weapon, the Pygmy Puffs, Voldemort's Chosen One.
"We knew all that already," interjected Scrimgeour. "We already know Harry's the Chosen One."
McNair looked about in disbelief then gave a high, wild laugh.
"Not Potter – Voldem – the Dark Lor - it's Malfoy! It's Draco Malfoy!"
"What?"Harry and Scrimgeour were at one in their astonishment.
McNair was beyond any circumspection, he was telling everything: negotiating for his life. "It was a plan – a plan right from the start! The Dark Lord had always planned on immortality, but he knew there was a flaw: no Horcrux would stop him from ageing! It's something to do with that! It's some kind of sacrifice!"Sacrifice? Harry was horrified. But Malfoy couldn't be the subject of Death Eater machinations! He just couldn't be! He'd just walked down to the Chamber protected only by the assumption that they would consider him one of their own!
"Give us details," bit out Scrimgeour.
"I don't have any -!"
Scrimgeour Crucio'd McNair again.
This time, Harry said nothing to stop him.
McNair screamed and writhed, yelling high and hoarse. "It's something to do with a Chosen One – that's all I know!"
Scrimgeour took the spell off.
"Details!"
Scrimgeour pointed his wand again.
"I don't know any! It was at the most secret level! Do you think I'd be lying at a time like this?" Scrimgeour jabbed his wand again, evidently he did think McNair could be lying at a time like this. McNair panicked, shrieking. "It's the Blacks! That's all I know! It's something to do with the Blacks!""Malfoy's mother -?" Harry found himself roaring, "His mother wouldn't stand for it!"
"She doesn't know anything about it!" Scrimgeour threateningly jabbed again.McNair backed up wildly.
"IT WAS HIS FATHER'S IDEA! It wasn't a Black who proffered up Draco Malfoy: it was a Malfoy! Parvenus, new money married into old. Lucius Malfoy saw the opportunity for power and position and he took it: whatever the Chosen One is, Lucius Malfoy would be the father of the Chosen One, he would be the man owed favours by the Dark Lord!"Harry was speechless.
"Draco Malfoy was born to serve the Dark Lord!" shrieked McNair. "Offered up as a baby! That was all he ever was: the Chosen One!"
His father had set it all up? And Draco Malfoy was walking into the Chamber, thronged about with those who had always meant to sacrifice him, and he had no idea about any of it?
Harry swiveled upon Scrimgeour, "We have to get into that Chamber. We have to stop them!"
But Scrimgeour was calculating on a far different level. "Why?"
"Why?"
"We know where the Death Eaters are, we know where Voldemort is, we know where his Horcruxes are, we know where that weapon is."
"And?"
"We can destroy them. Destroy it all in one swoop. Use the Heliopaths to bring down the castle upon them. Stamp out this whole thing for an entire generation."
"WHAT? What about Hermione and Malfoy and Ginny Weasley!"
"Three deaths? To save possibly millions? Your mathematics doesn't make sense, Harry."
"There's about a thousand kids in that castle!"
"When we get the wards down, we'll get them out – but we're leaving the Death Eaters in the Chamber. With the wards down, the Heliopaths can get at the job properly: we're bringing the place down on whoever is left in it. The Chamber will be crushed along with everyone in it."
"You don't even know it'll work! It might all be for nothing! The Death Eaters probably aren't even in the Chamber yet. It takes miles to get there!"
"Yes, and if they set off at about when the giants and Dementors attacked, then they'll easily be there by the time the wards eventually crash."
"You can't destroy Hogwarts! It's the school – it's -! The Chamber's miles under the ground! Crashing the castle won't even touch it!"
"It will, Harry. It's a matter of Ministry record that the space between the Chamber and the castle is honeycombed with tunnels," – Harry remembered all the pipes he had seen branching off from the main pipe as he had slid to the Chamber, "- the weight of the castle plus Potion Bombs will do it."
"You cant!"
Scrimgeour swiveled towards him.
"I have responsibilities! I can't just walk away from this. I have responsibilities to the whole of society – both Wizard and Muggle – I have to think about all that, not three children stuck in a chamber!"
"But there was a prophecy! I am the Chosen One! I'm supposed to be able to kill him off. He's in that castle, his Horcruxes are there. You've got to get me in there!"
"The school will fall and the Chamber will be destroyed! The end!"
Harry looked about him wildly – no-one was going to help him! And then, before he could be stopped, he kicked off into the air on his broom.
He knew he must get to the Chamber.
It was all a mess.
Everyone's plans had fallen apart.
But if nothing else, he could still try and save those last three people.
Scrimgeour convulsively reached out to stop him but McNair's expression screwed up in disgust, "Oh let him go, the stupid boy."