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Chapter Forty-Nine—Night of Mouths
Harry is rolling the instant he lands, his instincts and protective magic shrieking in his head about what awaits him.
Because he's rolling on the ground, the Stunner goes over his head, and Harry has his wand in his hand when he jumps up. He barely waits to catch a glimpse of a dark robe and a pale face in front of him before he cries out, "Serpensortia!"
The snake that lands on the grass in front of him is a large cobra, not the usual snake created by the spell, but then, the Speakers have been working with him on how to modify some "ordinary" wizards' magic, too. Harry speaks in a hiss without acknowledging the way the wizard in front of him has already stepped back. "Attack everyone who isn't me. Don't obey them if they speak to you."
The cobra responds with a long spurt of venom in the Death Eater's direction, and Harry reckons that's as good as he's going to get. He spins around to look. He's in the middle of the same dark forest that he visited in his dreams when Theo came along.
He spares a moment to be fervently glad that Theo isn't with him this time, that no one except the conjured snake is with him. Part of him has already accepted that he's going to die here. There's no reason other people should have to.
"Harry Potter."
Harry's scar flares with such pain that it nearly takes him to his knees, but he's pretty good at resisting pain. He faces Voldemort, who is a hulking purple-black monstrosity on crooked limbs, his mouth open so that Harry can see the flesh-ripping teeth like a shark's.
"You will do what I want, and perhaps I will let you live."
"No," Harry says on principle, while senses he didn't know he had light up a part of Voldemort's body for him. He stares at the patch of mutilated flesh that forms Voldemort's "elbow" on his left arm, not understanding what his magic is telling him.
"You could have a less painful end if you would submit to me."
"I doubt that, with the Dark Arts depending on pain as much as blood," Harry retorts, in English this time, because now he understands and his switch back to Parseltongue might take Voldemort off-guard with any luck. The glowing patch near Voldemort's arm was made of the muscle of a snake.
Voldemort starts to respond, but Harry doesn't give him the chance. "Serpents! To me!" he roars, and then turns and runs into the forest without looking back.
He's in time to see Voldemort's elbow break free and attack the rest of his body, and Voldemort gives a scream that's as much surprise as pain. Probably more surprise than pain, Harry has to admit to himself. Voldemort has to have command of serpent magic that Harry doesn't even know about. Harry just hopes that he can distract him long enough for—
There's a warning pain in his face, and someone charges at him from the side. Harry flings himself to the ground and rolls again, sure from the shrilling agony down his nerves that this is a werewolf, although in human form.
"Confractus dentes!"
The werewolf might be in human form, but he howls like his lupine one when his teeth break and the shards fly down to embed themselves in his mouth and throat. Severus taught Harry that one, back when he still thought Remus might prove a danger.
Harry scrambles up and keeps running again. He has to find a clear patch, somewhere where he can cast the complicated magic that should get him out of here. He knows from the deadness in the air that no one will be able to Apparate to him, and that Portkeys aren't going to work.
Someone grabs his ankle, and he trips. Harry rolls over and sees a conjured snake, this one a boa, wrapped around his leg.
"I do not obey you, snake-man," the boa announces before Harry can even say anything. "My master is the dark one."
Harry settles himself and snatches at one of the lessons the Speakers taught him. It came hard and falteringly to him at the time, which is one reason that they didn't concentrate on it much, but it snaps into his mind now, bright as a diamond.
Maybe stress is all I really need, he thinks to himself, and lets his aura flare around him like a cobra's hood. "Look at me."
The boa recoils the minute it does, and Harry stumbles to his feet. There's cackling behind him and cracking noises that mean it's time to go, and all Harry can think is that he probably won't be able to hold out for much longer.
Severus races towards the center of the screaming crowd, ignoring the way that various people try to grab his arm or speak with him. He's sure that he'll find the answer to his questions near those screams, and that's all that really matters right now.
When he forces his way through the ring of students and judges and shouting spectators, it's to find Minister Fudge standing in front of Marietta Edgecombe, who has her hands clenched behind her back and a look of furious satisfaction on her face.
"You have to tell us what you did with him!" Fudge is shouting.
"I don't have to tell you anything," Edgecombe says haughtily. "It was just a way to make sure that Potter participates in the Tournament, that's all. He can't sign up and then make a mockery of it. It's just not the way things are done."
"Miss Edgecombe." Severus doesn't mistake the way his voice chases away the satisfaction on her face, but at the moment, he's more concerned with something else. "Look at me."
She does, trained to obey as most of the Ravenclaws are by the idea that they won't lose points if they do what he wants promptly, and Severus dives into her mind in his least gentle Legilimency in years. People are still shouting and trying to ask him questions and Fudge is tugging on one sleeve, but Severus is watching the memory of her thrusting the sapphire on a chain at Harry.
The chain she knew very well was a Portkey.
Severus controls his rage. If he pulls himself out of Edgecombe's mind as violently as he wants to, she'll be a drooling shell, and that isn't what he wants. Instead, he calls forth a small pearl of his own power and buries it in the center of her mind for later, then slips free and opens his eyes. "Where did the Portkey go?"
Edgecombe stares at him. She knows he did something, but even with the roughness that Severus exhibited in getting the information, Legilimency isn't the first thing an untrained student's mind jumps to. "I—I don't know."
Severus hisses in frustration. She's telling the truth. He twists his wand in his hand and says, "Igor Karkaroff."
The Headmaster of Durmstrang is among those who have been yelling and protesting around the edges of Severus's space, but he immediately falls silent when Severus says those words. That isn't a surprise, Severus thinks as he turns to Karkaroff. They were Death Eaters together, once, and the only times Severus used that voice were when he was about to duel someone who had put him down because of his blood status.
The offender died, always.
"I want to know where the Portkey led," Severus says softy.
"It wasn't a Portkey! It was a way to bind—"
Severus steps close to him. Karkaroff shuts up. Severus's wand is digging into his side, but it's obscured by the way they're both standing and the black robes draped over their arms. "I know that you know it was a Portkey," Severus says, voice low enough that his words are likely hidden as well. "You could not make such a mistake with the magic. Now tell me."
Karkaroff swallows. "I don't know. I swear I don't. I got the Portkey from a man who said that he was sympathetic to my attempt to prove Viktor was the best wizard in the Tournament and this would force Potter to participate. I thought it took him into the maze, but—the magic didn't shift to show him as it would if he was there."
Severus glances briefly at the multicolored projections of the various Champions floating above the maze. "Then you can help me find him."
"Sir! Sir! Look!"
It's Draco's voice, half-strangled. Severus lets Karkaroff go and whirls around, expecting to find that the Portkey has delivered Harry's torn body back to them. But instead, there's a star burning on the ground in front of Draco.
Severus draws his wand, assuming in an instant that it's a spell Edgecombe cast in a bid to get away, although she's so hemmed in by scrambling and shouting people that it was useless. But the star turns to look at him, and then he makes out the form inside it.
One with four legs, sitting on her haunches, and spread wings.
Severus stares. It's more like a phoenix burning than anything else he's witnessed, but not perfectly like that, either. Chaos is elongating her body as he watches, adding edges to her wings and sharpness to her claws. The fire within her is shining through her skin and makes her look all red and gold instead of the normal color of a Hungarian Horntail.
"Get back!"
The voice is so panicked that Severus obeys on instinct, one of the very few times that he's ever permitted that outside of battle. He takes several strides away, drawing Draco with him. No matter how annoyed he is right now with the prideful brat, Draco doesn't deserve to be burned by a dragon in the middle of—whatever this is.
He glances around and finds Charlie Weasley standing next to him, his face ashen. He must have been the one who shouted.
"What's happening?" Severus asks, pitching his voice low so that Weasley will be forced to pay attention to him.
"She's—she's forcing her adulthood," Weasley whispers, while Chaos lengthens in front of her and horns spring out of her face and head like mountains following the clash of continents. "It's something that only a few Dragon-Keepers worldwide have ever witnessed. I never th-thought that this could have been the reason that she was refusing to fly."
"What exactly does it have to do with that? Talk sense, man!" Severus lets his voice rise a little this time, and it seems to be what Weasley needs, because he gives himself a sharp shake and then nods.
"She's preparing to transform herself into an adult version of a dragonet," Weasley says quietly. "Dragonets can't fly. Adolescents and adults can. She—she was saving her strength to do this. I have to believe that she knew something like this danger was coming and she didn't want to expend the weight or the magic on flight until now."
"You're talking as if dragons can see the future." Chaos is flowing with light and flames, and people at least have backed away from her so that she'll have enough room to take off, Severus thinks. He's amazed that she hasn't scorched the grass.
"I'm not supposed to talk about that."
Severus turns and touches his wand to the same place on Weasley, under the ribs, that he used on Karkaroff. "Who are you more frightened of right now, Weasley, whatever Dragon-Keepers' organization you've sworn to hold this secret for, or me?"
Weasley stares at him. Severus drops all the masks, the ones that make him seem like a cruel person and a git to the Gryffindors, but nothing more than a git. Weasley looks as if he's on the verge of fainting before he nods.
"We think they can," he whispers, as Chaos rises on legs that are patches of flesh floating on a coursing river of fire, like hardened lava moving on the part that's still liquid. "There's too much—evidence otherwise. Like mother dragons not nesting months in advance of a bad year, because they know they won't have the food to raise their hatchlings. Or dragons constructing a defensive fortification that they go and hide behind when some threat comes that's so bad they wouldn't survive it otherwise."
Severus watches Chaos. She now looks like a full-grown Hungarian Horntail sketched in glowing reds and yellows. As he watches, she turns her head to the south, gives a deep sniff, and begins to run. In seconds, she's aloft, wings beating and burning, made of lines of sparks.
"She is going to him?"
"Harry? Yes, of course. She could sense him no matter how far apart they are. That's the way dragonets do it with their mothers." Weasley closes his eyes. He still looks shaky, but Severus doesn't think it's because of him any more. "She'll save his life."
"She might not arrive in time," Severus says, and draws his wand back to cast a Location Charm. Weasley tries to grab his arm, but Severus casts anyway, and then turns around and subjects Weasley to his stare again. "You had better have a good reason for that."
"No charm that simple can touch her in this phase," Weasley says, voice as quiet as quiet. "She'll only respond to the most powerful magic, Dark or Light. You must have noticed that your charm failed," he adds a second later.
Severus lowers his wand and swallows back bile. Yes, he did sense that, and he hoped that no one else had.
His eyes follow the soaring dragon-shape until the last gleam of her fades into the distance, and then he turns and stalks towards his quarters. He has people to inform and potions to make sure that he has in stock, since Harry might return injured, drained, cursed, or exhausted.
He does not allow himself to voice the dread in his heart, that Harry will never return to them at all.
They won't let him find the space and the peace he needs to enact the travel magic the Speakers taught him.
Harry leans against the trunk of a tree and pants. He has a long, shallow score across his ribs, and half a dozen more minor wounds that are bleeding steadily. Except for the fact that blood might accumulate beneath his feet and make him slip, Harry isn't worried about those as much.
Far more important is the poisoned bite on his arm from a conjured snake, one that isn't going to kill him. Instead, it restricts his movements every time he breathes or shakes his head or runs, and he can already feel it stiffening his muscles, making him turn back towards Voldemort.
Forcing him to obey.
Harry's hatred burns deep and bright and sharp, but he's also beginning to suspect that there might not be much he can do about it. His training with the Speakers was all focused on repelling natural venoms, or at least ones that come with most normal conjured snakes.
At least I can die before he uses me for whatever he has in mind, Harry decides, and he knows that Severus would curse him if he heard that. So would Sirius and Remus, probably. But this is Harry's decision to make, trapped and far away from his friends and guardians. He's read enough about Dark Arts in the past few years to know what kind of sacrifice Voldemort could use him in. He could even make Harry return as an Inferius to kill his friends and family.
No. He won't.
Harry raises his wand towards his throat, because the poison doesn't restrict his movements much right now unless he's trying to move away from Voldemort, and he doesn't think he could accomplish this with wandless magic. He pauses when he sees a shadow shift nearby. The scars on his face don't sting, which means it probably isn't a werewolf, but on the other hand, that doesn't mean he has an ally here. Harry turns to face the shadow as it steps into view.
"Where is my son?" Lucius Malfoy demands.
"Probably at Hogwarts regretting his shitty luck in having you for a father."
Malfoy raises his own wand, and Harry tenses. If he can make Malfoy kill him, that will be better than suicide. If Severus and the rest eventually learn how he died—which Harry is sure they will, from Malfoy's thoughts if nothing else—then it will look as if he simply got overmatched by an adult Death Eater.
Malfoy lowers his wand again and taps it against his thigh. "I will ask my lord to let me make you suffer," he whispers.
Harry manages to shrug, although the poison is already stiff across his shoulders, trying to turn him around like someone gripping him with both hands. "I think he wants me for his own purposes, first."
"Indeed I do."
Harry turns his head. Voldemort is crouching to the left of Malfoy, a nightmare reincarnated. His hands are resting on the ground in front of him but, as Harry watches, a wave of decay sweeps over them, and a huge chunk of meat is missing near the elbow, probably where Harry tore it loose when he commanded the snake to attack Voldemort.
"Prepare him, Lucius," Voldemort continues, staring at Harry and licking around his bloodied teeth. "Make him suffer afterwards."
"My lord."
Malfoy twists his wand in front of him in a whirlwind-shaped motion, followed by another one. Harry lifts his head. The magical venom won't let him move at all anymore. He will have to face this down as best he can.
"Deglubo," Malfoy says, smiling slightly.
There is no facing down what happens next.
Harry screams as the spell coruscates around him, presses down like a red-hot net across his skin, and flays him. The skin rolls off him in huge sheets, with new skin sprouting underneath it as fast as it peels. Harry sways, the pain blossoming into blackness in his mind, and falls towards the ground.
"Lucius," says a distant, impatient voice.
Harry's mind jolts back into motion as Malfoy revives him, and he stares through weeping eyes as his bloody skin soars across the air towards Voldemort, who rears back on his insectile-like haunches to receive it. Harry thinks for a second that Voldemort is going to produce a potions flask or a cauldron and pop it in, and the dazed, inane thought crosses his mind that he should try to remember the details for Severus.
But none of that happens. Instead, Voldemort stretches the skin taut in front of him and bites into it. As he eats it, new skin begins to spread down his body, sprouting out of the sides of his mouth, sheathing the slick purple muscle that encases him.
At that moment, Harry knows how he is going to die.