AEU Chapter 38
Voldemort was back.
That thought reverberated around Harry's cranium until it deafened him to all other inputs. It was such an impossible, unbelievable occurrence that, even though he had known deep down since he first saw the spectre, he was still shocked by it actually happening.
"Ah well then Mr Potter, it seems we have reached the point where we must part ways. I merely awoke you to inform you of my return and so I can watch the light leave your eyes when I kill you."
Voldemort was enjoying this. The man was oozing self-confidence and control as he looked languidly down at the boy. This, Harry thought, was his doom, finally come to collect, the past eleven years a mere trifling of defiance in the face of inevitability. The man still wasn't taking any chances however, Harry has been tightly bound by a vine-like substance.
"Nothing? A shame Potter, you disappoint me. Your father always had such cutting remarks to fire back at me instead of spells. Foolish, indeed. Your mother of course, I tried not to kill but she was extremely determined to do so. A shame that, I'm sure Severus would have loved to have his way with her-"
"Silence, you half-baked fiend. How dare you darken Hogwarts yet again with your presence."
Harry saw Voldemort's mouth clamp into a thin line before his face moved out of sight as he straightened up and looked around.
"And what do we have here-?"
His speechifying was cut off again as a hail of bullets and three spells thundered towards him. The Dark Lord sighed in irritation and swiped his hand around carelessly, diverting all put one of the spells and all of the bullets into the floor. The remaining spell he deflected into Harry.
The boy screeched as his right arm shattered into five pieces.
Fortunately, Voldemort was already being pressed back by bullets and spells fired from Harry's would-be rescuers. The Rakers weren't letting up or wiling to allow the enemy breathing room and time to think. Jericho, Humphrey and two others detached from the main group and ran towards Harry, who had somehow dragged himself a little on the way to where Fawkes and Ginny lay.
"Easy there Harry," one of the men said calmly, as if trying to reassure a frightened animal to lie still, casting a spell to make his patient fall asleep.
Jericho erected a shield around the two medics so they could work in relative peace as the chamber continued to erupt in violence and loud noises, pausing only every few seconds as the firefight flitted in between columns and shadows.
"Why isn't the phoenix over here helping us?" the medic healing Harry's head downwards shouted over the din.
Fawkes seemed quite preoccupied enough to even bother answering that question with a trill or a reproachful glare, as he was currently hunched over Ginny's open mouth, weeping bitterly into her open mouth in a desperate attempt to keep her heart going.
Humphrey, seeing what he was doing and the energy trails curling around the discarded diary and the reborn Voldemort, quickly sent the other medic to stabilise her whilst he grabbed the diary.
'Yes...his first one. Crude but perhaps even more deadly because of it. Well, at least this is the toughest version of him we'll fight,' he thought as the situation around them continued to deteriorate. Humphrey grabbed one of the girl's arms and willed here to remain alive, trying to purge as much of the dark magic out of her body as possible.
Dumbledore, the greatest power the Wizarding world had seen in many a year, was none the less far past his prime and out of practise when it came to duelling anyone near his level in skill or power. Then again, Voldemort had to contend not just with him but with both magical and mundane Rakers. Had the Basilisk or Malfoy survived, the battle might have gone a different way but when Humphrey sprang in to seemingly fight too Voldemort knew he had to retreat or be captured.
"Ssslytherin, your work liesss dessspoiled. Bring down upon the unworthy your might!" Lord Voldemort screamed in a hissing, piercing tongue.
The Chamber of Secrets crumpled instantly, pillars folded and statues shattered as the walls caved in and the ceiling fell.
"Shields up!" a command rang out.
Many magical barriers of varying bright colours burst out of wands to meet with the falling derbies, catching and holding it in place above the heads of the Rakers.
"Dammit, we can't let him get away!" Jericho snarled, frustrated at his target's departure.
"He won't," Humphrey and Dumbledore said simultaneously, transfiguring the rock and rubble into statues and figures which they then animated.
Shaking off the dust still pouring down from the now vast hole in the castle's foundations, the group then split in two, with the majority storming after Voldemort down a narrow side passage that had been revealed through all the destruction whilst the medics and Jericho stayed with Harry and Ginny.
It was at this point that Harry woke up.
"...Oh. Did that all happen then?" the boy said from his resting place on the ground.
"Yeah...sorry about that," Jericho said simply, taking in the partially bruised forms of the blond man and the creature.
'That kid killed both of them?' he silently questioned himself.
"I...is Ginny okay?"
When no one answered for a moment Harry's face fell even further, causing one of the medics to quickly reply, "She's in a bit of a rough spot at the moment Mr Potter. You'll both be alright when we get you to the hospital wing though."
None of the four people currently conscious quite believed that however, since Fawkes had still not stopped his ministration and Voldemort was still at large.
"That book, you have to destroy it," Harry said suddenly.
"What?" Jericho answered, raising the boy up slightly in a half sitting position.
"Voldemort had a book, her...his diary. He used it to come back."
"Don't censor yourself kid, we're all Rakers here. Is it a Horcrux?"
"Yes...or, I think so. Voldemort said it was when I asked him."
Jericho raised a hand to his face and held it there for a second. So the maniac was back then, this wasn't some trick or other force.
'We just started this hunt for those blasted things, and the second one we find restores itself? This is NOT good.'
"But...it's empty now, right?" one of the medics said uncertainly, glancing over at the plain black book like it was going to suddenly attack him.
"Don't know," Jericho said, "Doesn't matter. We have to wreck it anyway, right?"
"Right."
The captain nodded and made to stand up but quickly knelt back down again when he saw Harry's pale complexion and glazed over eyes.
"Hey! Stay focused son. Don't doze off on us now, it's just getting interesting."
Jericho knew that stopping Harry from either going into shock or thinking about the events of this night were temporary measures but he really didn't want to be the only person there when it happened that Harry actually knew.
"Listen, you know about these things right? All that studying you do? Read anything about killing them?" he asked now, trying to stimulate a response, even though he possessed the means to destroy the book already.
"Erm..." Harry's mind was foggy and his recent memories were...no, no, that wasn't him was it?
"Harry?" the man prompted again, the two young medics deciding to devote themselves fully to fixing Ginny now rather than have Fawkes nip their fingers again.
"Oh sorry," Harry said, shaking his head slightly, causing a burst of pain to run through him. "Oh...ow, that's sore. Er, that's not really a Horcrux anymore but..." he tailed off.
"Go on, what do you know?" Jericho urged, getting up and picking the diary up.
"You have to put it beyond magical repair. So, I don't know. Fiendfyre I guess? Uncle Padfoot's family developed that spell extensively for this sort of thing."
"Well, there's that but this room is fragile enough as it is," Jericho attempted a joke.
Harry smiled slightly then turned to the other two adults.
"Is she okay?"
"...She's alive," one said after thirty seconds of deliberation.
The other was a bit more positive, "I think we can move both of you now. Captain, could you...?"
"Of course," Jericho said, taking out a bulky but small pistol that looked as if its barrel had been squashed against the handle. A bright and dazzlingly light shot out of the gun and blinded the all for a minute. The diary was obliterated when their vision returned but Jericho still insisted on scooping up the empty vessel's ashes into a midnight blue bag before levitating Harry up, which earned him a scowl from the boy and led him out through the way they came.
"What was that?" Harry asked.
"Gift from Father Christmas," Jericho said distractedly.
Harry didn't have the energy to snark back and so just kept trying to stay awake.
The party reached the bottom of a large pipe, its wall's slick and slimy from years of usage.
"Umm, so is there another way up or..."
Jericho looked down at him, "Just because you got hit on the head does not mean you have to start acting stupid boy. Magic, remember?"
At his words, he flicked his wand and a set of spiral stairs burst from the sides of the pipe, leading up from the darkness to bright light at the top.
"Aww hell!"
The Raker squad collectively dived in all directions to avoid another huge rock being thrown at them.
The chase through the tunnels had been disgusting and horrible, dredging through centuries of sewage and muck at speed had made Raker Unit 2's uniforms...well, a darker brown than before.
Following that, the restored Dark Lord had seen fit to trap the entrance, which led out into the forest, with a caterwauling charm, which caught all kinds of monsters' attentions.
It turned out that three trolls and a Cockatrice had banded together in the newly formed Let's-eat-humans club and now the wizard and non-magical soldiers were fighting hard to stay alive.
"We have to go," Humphrey said, grabbing Dumbledore's arm.
The old man soberly looked around at the brave souls fighting around him and then back at the frowning man in front before nodding. The animated stone warriors were helping them out and it was feasible that most of them would survive but...that didn't excuse the fact he would be abandoning them here...for the greater good.
'I thought I was finished with this,' he thought sadly.
"Rakers, cover us. We're going after him!" Humphrey ordered before hurrying away, following the energy stream that was rapidly decaying in visibility to his senses, meaning either the Horcrux container, the girl or Voldemort himself had just died.
It probably wasn't the latter.
Voldemort stood above the sleeping village and for the first time in his short existence, felt...unsure. He had no real plan, no real identity other than that of the memories and abilities of a demented madman whom had created him by accident and unknowingly made himself far weaker over the years since.
Why on earth should he willingly become Lord Voldemort?
But he was, wasn't he? That was all that he was, that was the whole point of the Horcrux.
It had worked. He was alive again...or was it rather he had created new life? Because Voldemort didn't see the past memories he had of the former wizard to be particularly appealing. Clearly, the man, and now he too because of it, was a deeply troubled individual, a coward and a fool of the highest order. His predecessor, himself before he was himself, had had the wizarding world in his grasp with naught but an old man and his bunch of lunatic followers to oppose him. And yet the world was not beaten. His old self made unacceptable errors and fatal flaws in judgment that the new...thing, was quite repulsed by its creator, of sorts anyway.
What should he do? What to do, what to do?
Should he announce himself to the sleeping village or simply leave and build his strength? Stand and fight the school staff as they pursued him? He supposed it did not matter in the long run, since that meddling old fool was sure to tell everyone he was back anyway, spoiling the surprise, however he knew the original Lord Voldemort would have...no, he was Voldemort.
Wasn't he?
A burst of burning irrational rage filled his mind, overpowering his own new thoughts as what remained a significantly large part of his thought process; that of the Horcrux designed to restore itself to Lord Voldemort in full, forced its way into his deliberations. The figure reeled and nearly fell as he experienced pain for both the first time, and the first in a long time. Disorientated and somewhat confused, the Horcrux creation turned to flee into the night till his mind settled one way or another.
And then a voice filled his inner ear before pouring into his mind and ensuring his body into its thrall.
'Then again, returning to life then celebrating with a bang will sound much better than being chased from a boarding school by an eighty year old man and his toy soldiers,' the Dark Lord reasoned before looking down at the strip of wood in his hand.
'This is a magnificent wand Potter. I'm sure it was wasted with you.'
They were flying, fast enough that the ground became a blur beneath them, as they sped towards the castle boundary.
'Can you locate him?' Dumbledore mentally asked.
'Yes...just about. We have to hurry if we want to apparate to him though,' Humphrey replied, before concentrating on avoiding the branches and brambles that marked the edge of the forest. Soon they would see the wall and once over that, they could resume their fight with Voldemort.
The pair alighted softly on the grass just before the gate before swiftly passing through. A faint orange glow was visible in the distance in the valley below, emanating up from beneath the thick tree line.
"Strange, it's several hours till dawn," Humphrey said confusedly.
Dumbledore however paled and stopped cold. He had seen such a glow before, fifty or more years ago and yet still burned into his memories, into his nightmares.
"No..." he murmured faintly to himself in horror.
"Hogsmeade. He's cast Fiendfyre in Hogsmeade."