A/N: Bide ye safe.
Chapter 10
Instinctively, Harry froze. For a moment, his breath hitched in his chest until he belatedly realised that he probably didn't need to worry. Whatever mistake he'd made that had brought the Batman to Arkham, he could neither see nor hear him even if he did move. He may as well have been a ghost.
He inspected the figure before him in more detail. He was tall and extremely muscular. How much of that was the costume he was wearing, and how much of it was the man underneath, Harry could not be sure. That costume looked to be made out of some kind of hard-wearing fibre, though much of it was also covered in solid armour plates. It made him look very dangerous indeed.
He wore a matte-black cowl that covered almost his entire head. Only his mouth and jaw were left unprotected. Flat, white eyes glared out from beneath a demonic scowl. Around his waist he had a belt of little yellow pouches, the only piece of colour on the whole outfit. He wasn't moving, but his stance was tensed. Some of the Arkham inmates had noticed the Batman's sudden arrival, and the corridor was soon clamouring with their catcalls and insults.
The Batman was completely unaffected, and stood like a statue. Those blank eyes set against the mat black of the cowl did funny things to his thoughts, though. It was almost as if the Batman really could see him. At the very least, he knew Harry was there somewhere.
As Harry contemplated whether he should simply apparate away and return to interrogate Poison Ivy later, a small device appeared in the Batman's hand. Harry paused, fascinated to see what plan the Batman had to try and combat magic, of all things. His gaze didn't leave the general direction Harry was in as he pressed a button on the side of it. There was a short delay. What had it done? Then the sprinkler system came on, and he was almost immediately soaked to the skin.
More importantly the invisibility cloak made him invisible, not insubstantial. His outline was revealed in the haze of water.
Shit.
Before that thought had even finished forming, the Batman was in motion. A black-armored fist rocketed towards Harry's head. He tried, but even his quick reactions weren't enough to completely avoid it. It clipped him on the side of the head as he tried to lean out of the way. The force behind it, even just as a glancing blow, was enough to send him sprawling to the floor.
He tried to pull out his wand, but the Batman didn't give him even a fraction of a second to recover. He tried to disentangle himself from the cloak but there was no time. The black apparition picked him up effortlessly with one hand and threw him against the wall. Harry's skull cracked painfully. His vision swam.
No time to think, he threw himself to the side and landed painfully on the ground. Batman's heavy boot missed him by a fraction of an inch, and gouged a significant divot in the solid concrete wall.
That gained him less than a second. He rolled over, and was able to free his wand. Before he could bring it to bear, the Batman was on him again. He understood why there was so much debate on just what the Batman was. There was no way any ordinary human could have strength and reaction times like the Batman did.
A knee buried itself in Harry's chest and the sheer power behind the attack was enough to lift him into the air and back into the wall again. He managed to keep his footing as he landed, but with the wind so effectively knocked out of him, he could barely breathe, let alone cast effectively.
Some things didn't require much thought, though. A banishing charm, aimless and unfocused blasted the Batman back. Harry was at last able to gasp a few deep breaths, refilling his bruised lungs.
The banishing charm wasn't enough to stop the Batman though. He didn't even lose his footing and instead performed a perfect back-flip to land, balanced and ready, on the balls of his feet. Harry tore the cloak off and stuffed it hastily in a pocket, all attempts at stealth forgotten. He couldn't afford it continuing to get in the way. As he removed it, he felt a sharp pain in his left arm, which had been the first thing revealed when he began pulling it off.
He glanced at his arm, there was some kind of shuriken protruding from it.
By looking at the wound, he'd given the Batman the opening he needed to close the gap again. He looked back up to see a black-metal clad fist closing the last few inches. He felt it strike the centre of his face, and heard his nose crack as he was thrown once again to the slick floor. Pain bloomed, and blood began streaming from his ruined nose. Darkness started to crowd the edges of his vision.
He'd known pain before, though, and it didn't stop him. Even as he was landing, ropes snaked out from his wand and flew towards his attacker with such speed that they should have been impossible to follow.
Follow them, the Batman did. Somehow, he was able to track the movement of the ropes well enough even to avoid them. In a feat of incredible dexterity, he jumped against the wall, bounced off it to avoid most of the length of rope. A final forward roll saw him once more within striking range of Harry.
Harry saw the Batman's boot swinging towards his head with a sense of unstoppability. A moment later, he was plunged back into darkness.
o-o
"Wake up!"
Harry realised that pretty much everything hurt. His chest throbbed, and his breathing was laboured. He could feel blood trickling down his left arm. One eye was swollen nearly closed, and his nose was a flattened mess that was far past the point of being used to breathe through. A deep, harsh voice was shouting in his ear, and making the dull ache that suffused the part of his head that had avoided a beating pick up in intensity.
"I said, wake up!"
He felt a hand slap his face with some significant force. He opened his eyes, and they immediately found a yawning black abyss below him.
He was tied up, strung up, and hanging upside-down from a building. Standing right on the very edge of the building's decorative crenellations, no more than a couple of feet away, was the Batman. He was not hard to identify. Though the rooftop was dark, the cloud-choked sky was bathed in the orange glow of reflected street lights, and his dark silhouette stood out starkly. Those flat, white eyes, which he noticed were glowing faintly in the darkness, watched Harry with clinical detachment.
With Harry awake, the Batman wasted no time. "Why did you break into Arkham?"
The moments of waking panic had faded quickly, so Harry ignored the question, and instead focused on regathering his thoughts. He was interrupted when he felt the Batman release the rope, and he went plunging into the darkness of the alley below.
A few feet from the ground, the rope suddenly snapped taut again. Harry couldn't stop his grunt of pain. The sudden stop left his knees and hip feeling like they'd been dislocated. He was slowly hauled back up to rooftop height, and he was soon eye-to-eye, once more, with the Batman's scowling visage.
"Talk!" the Batman demanded. "Why did you break into Arkham?"
"Fucking hell," said Harry, after spitting out a gob of blood. "Not much of a one for small-talk, are you?"
It wasn't the smartest response, but Harry was pretty pissed, and his mouth sometimes got the better of him when that happened. He didn't have time to reflect on that, though. No sooner had he said his piece than he was dropping once more towards the ground.
This time, his fall was arrested barely a foot from the ground, and the pain in his knees was worse this time. He gasped, but grit his teeth. He had a few seconds to work before the Batman would be able to haul him back up. His hands were tied, and his wand was gone, but that did not make him helpless.
Using a single finger, he was able to trace a complex pattern, and before the Batman had even hauled him up ten feet, the ropes binding him snaked loose. He dropped a bit more than ten feet to the floor. He was able to twist as he fell, and was able to avoid landing on his head, but it still hurt enough that he let out another grunt of pain.
He didn't have time to spare to feel sorry for himself, though. The Batman would have already noticed his escape. He apparated back up to the roof, as far away from the Batman's last known location as possible.
Perhaps he simply should have apparated away, but Harry was an auror, and there was something within him that rebelled at the thought of running. The moment he appeared, the crack of his poorly controlled apparition alerted his captor. He'd barely even found his bearings in the dark, when he saw the Batman draw and throw one of his shurikens. Thanks to the distance, and the adrenaline pumping through him, Harry watched it approach almost like it was moving in slow motion.
This time he had just enough time to dodge. Though his motions were sloppy due to his injuries, he stepped out of the path of the projectile. He didn't waste any time, the Batman wouldn't allow it. Even as he moved, he snapped his fingers. Dozens of ropes materialised around the dark figure.
In another inhuman display of acrobatics, he was somehow able to avoid them. Every measured dodge and weave brought him closer and closer to Harry. The Batman didn't have surprise on his side any more though. Harry knew what to expect, even if he was missing his wand and his body was screaming at him to rest.
So he apparated again before Batman was able to get close. This time the sound of his appearance was enough to rattle windows, but that was the least of his worries. Instead, all of his focus was on his wand, still tucked into the Batman's belt, and the spell he was about to cast. "Lumos Maxima!" he cried, giving it everything he had.
The Batman was lit up like a supernova as the wand tucked into his belt flared brightly. For the first time, Harry heard something from him that sounded vaguely human; a grunt of surprise. That was Harry's opening. Once again, he focused on his wand and drew on that deep well of willpower that had saved him more times than he could count. He'd performed the wand-light spell like that before, on a dark night in Little Whinging, but his next would be a first. He sincerely hoped it worked.
"Petrificus Totalis!"
The Batman stopped completely.
Silence descended on the Arkham rooftop, broken only by the shaky sound of Harry's own breathing. Slowly, laboriously, the sounds of the city returned. In the distance a dog was barking, probably spooked by Harry's loud apparition. Adrenalin slowly ebbed away, and it demanded its payment.
Harry allowed himself to collapse into a heap upon the ground.
"Fuck me, that hurt." He wasn't sure if he was talking to himself or to the motionless Batman a short distance away.
It took a couple of minutes for Harry to feel up to the task of moving again. He groaned his way back to his feet, and slowly hobbled across to where the Batman remained frozen. He looked like some kind of bizarre modern-art installation, with the searingly bright light of Harry's wand still illuminating him in stark relief and casting a huge shapeless shadow upon the clouds overhead.
Harry plucked the wand from the Batman's belt, and the light faded to nothing. The rooftop was reclaimed by the darkness.
"Episkey," he said. As the healing magic washed over him, soothing bruises and healing cuts, he felt himself relax, and sigh in relief. There was a crack, and small jolt of pain when his nose resumed its normal shape and position, but all-in-all he felt much better. His ribs still ached, though.
"This was all so unnecessary," said Harry with a tired shake of his head. "You could have just asked nicely, you know?"
He got no response from the frozen Batman, but he hadn't been expecting one. Now that he was closer, he could see that the eerie white eyes were actually lenses embedded within the cowl. The chin and mouth visible beneath the cowl looked distinctly human.
Curiosity got the better of him, and he reached up to pull off the cowl. As soon as his hand touched the firm, yet still flexible material he was blown off his feet. A jolt of electricity, strong enough to give an elephant pause, threw him across the rooftop in a mess of flailing limbs.
"Ow," he said after he'd rolled to a halt. It was a good job wizards tended to be difficult to kill.
After recovering once more, a process that took much less time this time around, Harry stood back up and made his way back to where the Batman still stood. Lesson learned, he drew his wand and unmasked the mysterious Batman from a safe distance.
The man revealed looked decidedly ordinary. Young and handsome, with dark hair and bright, angry blue eyes. He looked familiar, but after the beating Harry had received, it seemed his brain was working rather more sluggishly than usual. Some things a simple mending spell couldn't fix, and mild concussions were definitely on that list.
Wait. Harry blinked and forced his eyes to really focus on the man before him. He was Bruce Wayne, the billionaire owner of Wayne Enterprises and a man the whole world believed to be an inveterate womaniser.
"Uh, wow," said Harry dumbly. "Now that, I did not expect."
Harry conjured a squishy chair and collapsed into it as he stared at Bruce Wayne's revealed face. Was this revelation something he could use in his search for Neville? Surely Wayne had more resources than Harry could ever hope to gain, and his knowledge of Gotham's underworld was likely unmatched.
"Okay," he said eventually. "I think we got off on the wrong foot." He shifted a little and grimaced. Good or bad, that foot felt like it had cracked a couple of ribs.
"Now, I'm not here for any nefarious purposes, I was just looking for information," said Harry, making a great effort to sound reasonable. He decided to see what he could get out of the man. It couldn't hurt, he was going to have to obliviate him anyway. "Look, I'm going to release the spell from your head so that we can talk properly."
The moment the spell was released, Wayne's head snapped to the side, as if he'd been trying to break the spell through sheer strength and force of will. As he was a muggle that effort was, while impressive, sadly hopeless. His sharp blue eyes fixed on Harry. "Why are you in Gotham?"
"You really don't do small-talk, do you?" Harry said, impressed that the man seemed so unaffected by being unmasked and encountering an honest-to-goodness wizard for the first time. "Look, I'm in Gotham looking for a friend. Nothing more."
"Longbottom."
It took Harry a moment to realise what Wayne had said. "Uh, yes. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You do own the company he broke into."
"You should leave Gotham," said Wayne, the seeming non-sequitur catching Harry off-guard.
That sounded like a very familiar refrain indeed. Was Wayne somehow associated with the False Facers?
He'd have to consider that later, as the man was still talking. "I'll deal with Longbottom, Gotham is my city."
"Gotham might be your city, but Neville is my friend," said Harry after taking a second to catch up. "He's my responsibility."
The masks, the fact that the False Facers were sweeping in to take over the areas the Batman had supposedly 'cleaned up'. Could it really be a coincidence? Hell, Sionis probably even ran in the same circles as Wayne, they probably even knew each-other. Perhaps he was being paranoid, but he couldn't help it as his mind hurtled down dark pathways.
"You won't like what you find if you stay," said Wayne. There was no note of threat in his tone. It was simply matter-of-fact.
"I don't much like what I've already found," said Harry, allowing himself a sardonic smile. "But I never let that stop me. Now, will you tell me where he is or not?"
Wayne didn't answer this time, instead electing to merely glare at Harry with impressive ferocity.
"If it makes you feel any better, I have no intention of revealing your identity," Harry offered. He really didn't care what Wayne did with his spare time. In theory, as a law enforcement professional, he should probably disagree with what the man was doing. Especially if he was driving out the gangs to put his own people in place instead. But it was just that; a theory. That theory did not account for the reality of Gotham. Zatanna seemed sure that Batman was at least not all bad, and he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, even if he knew he'd be keeping an eye on the man before him.
And, of course, Sionis hadn't given any impression that he was following anyone else's orders. None of it added up.
"Need to draw him out," said Wayne after a moment. "He never stays in the same place for more than a few hours. Black Mask Nightclub, Robinson Parks, Amusement Mile, Coventry, and that's just the last four days."
"You make him sound like a criminal," said Harry. "He's just running from those False Facer people." He resisted the urge to say 'your False Facers' as he was sure Wayne was a good enough actor that he'd get nothing useful. Even then, though, that didn't really explain why Neville hadn't contacted anyone back home for help. Or left the city, a single apparation and everything that had happened could have been left behind.
Wayne quickly cut through his thoughts and jumped right to his inevitable conclusion. "He is," he said simply. "He took over the False Face Society. He's their leader now, the new Black Mask."
"That's not possible," said Harry, and even he could hear that it was instinctive denial, not born of confidence. "Neville is one of the best men I know."
"He had a bad day." There was no humour in Wayne's voice as he spoke. The Batman did not joke. "Sometimes that's all it takes."
"Neville has had more than his share of bad days," said Harry, still not ready to accept Wayne at his word. There had to be something else going on. "He wouldn't do that. He's seen first hand what happens to victims of hatred and violence."
"You think Gotham's thugs and criminals all had happy upbringings?" said Wayne. "They've seen it too. Didn't stop them. They learned one lesson. Better be the one at the top."
Harry stood up, ignoring his protesting ribs and throbbing head. He glared into Wayne's pale blue eyes from mere inches away. "Look, I'm not buying it. Neville would never."
"Are we done here?" said Wayne, clearly realising that Harry wasn't about to buy into his… paranoia? Misdirection?. Wayne returned Harry's glare without so much as a twitch.
He was going to regret it later, he knew, but he couldn't let his suspicions lie. For the second time that night he spoke perhaps his most hated spell. "Legilimens!"
Wayne's mind was as different from Sionis' as it was possible to be. Sionis' mind had been a mess: thoughts, dreams, and memories all tangled up together each bleeding into the other. Not so for the Batman. The moment their thoughts connected, Harry felt himself surrounded by dark shadows. It was not at all like occlumency which, if done right, offered the attacker exactly that which they were looking for, only modified just enough to conceal that which the occlumens wanted to hide. The Batman's mind, for it was certainly more like the mind of the Batman than any man so seemingly ordinary as Wayne, was a trap for the unprepared.
Terror clawed at Harry's psyche as he witnessed memories of demonic bat-like beings that could not possibly have been real. They crowded around him, reaching long arms, tipped with wicked black talons, towards him. Then they were gone, replaced by the rotting corpses of a thousand men, women and children. In front of the rest were an older couple whom Harry did not recognise, but they were dressed richly, and the woman had a long string of pearls around her neck. Each and every one of the people in the crowd stood in accusation, their eyes, weeping blood, pronouncing guilt more strongly than words ever could.
Then, the woman's mouth opened wider than should ever be possible, and from it flooded bat-shaped shadows which immediately leapt towards Harry.
He wasn't sure what made him do it, but within the deathly silence of his own mind he shouted, "Expecto Patronum!"
No patronus materialised, but the memories Harry saw changed suddenly. The shadows evaporated; the monsters retreated. A young child, whom Harry had not noticed, stood up from where he had been curled in a foetal ball. "Mom?" the child said, tears welling in his eyes. "Dad?"
Harry looked back up, and the army of the dead was gone, with only the front couple remaining, but they looked very different. Gone was the deathly pallor, the encrusted blood, and the pale eyes. Instead, they stood before the boy smiling and happy.
"We are so proud of you, Bruce," she said with obvious fondness.
The boy was weeping openly, but he was able to speak between his sniffing. "I try, Mom. I try to help but it's not enough. I feel like I'm falling."
The man set a gentle hand upon the boy's shoulder. "Remember, Bruce. Why do we fall?"
The boy didn't say a thing, but he turned to Harry, and his blue eyes there was the steely resolve he'd seen in the elder Wayne. Quite suddenly, Harry felt like he'd been punched in the head and when he blinked, he was back on the rooftop, eyes locked with those of Bruce Wayne.
Beside them, Prongs stood proudly, one hoof pawing the ground. When Harry came to himself again, the brilliant creature nuzzled at him. It was a strange sensation, with all of the warmth, and none of the touch. Then, task complete, it evaporated into a million motes of fading stardust.
"What did you do?" Wayne growled, and his tone was so deep and menacing that it spoke to something deep within Harry's bones. He took a step back.
Harry cast a wary eye over the still petrified man. He wasn't sure exactly what he had seen, but for some reason he found himself doubting his earlier suspicions. There was something in those memories, or were they some kind of dream? There had been shame and guilt, alongside the terror and fear. Bruce Wayne blamed himself for whatever had happened to his parents, that much was clear.
It was hard to see such a man as an unrepentant gangster and murderer.
"Nothing you need to worry about," he said, and he rolled his wand between his fingers. "I guess it's time for you to forget about all this."
"What?" said Wayne, suddenly sounding worried. His breathing became shallow and erratic.
"I don't need you chasing after my friend like he's a common criminal," said Harry. After a bit more thought he added, "And to be honest, I'm still holding a bit of a grudge for the way you spread my nose across my face."
Wayne didn't respond, but his rapid breathing continued. It was strange, though. Despite the seeming panic in his breathing, his gaze stayed stoic and unblinking.
"Stupefy," said Harry, and for a moment the rooftop was illuminated in shades of dark red, and Wayne's head slumped. He then followed it up, "Obliviate."
He removed any memories concerning either Neville or himself. He was sure that the man, who seemed to be far more intelligent than anyone gave him credit for, would work it out again given time, but it would give Harry a few more days. He just had to locate Neville, and get him home before the Batman was once again prowling Gotham, on the hunt for him.
Harry pondered what to do next. There were any number of options. He could leave him on the rooftop, though that would probably clue the man in that something had happened when he was unable to remember how he'd got there. He could move him somewhere else and leave him, which would slow him down some more, but there was no guarantee that he wouldn't be found by one of Gotham's less savory residents before he awoke.
There was no doubt that Harry disliked the man, but he wasn't going to sign his death warrant. No, he would have to make sure the man was safe, and hidden. The easiest way to do that was to simply drop him off at his home.
The only problem with that plan was that Harry had no idea where Wayne lived. A thought occurred to him and he checked his pockets until he found the map he'd picked up soon after his arrival in the city. Next he pulled out his communication mirror.
"Zee."
There was a short delay before his reflection melted away to reveal her face. He could see stacks of books behind her, and there were visible clouds of dust floating in the air around her. Her hair was mussed, and one of her cheeks was creased. "Did I wake you?" he asked, grateful to take his mind off the darker thoughts his evening investigation had yielded.
The tired and unamused gaze he got in response was answer enough. "What happened?"
"Just a quick question," he said. He held up the map. "Wayne Manor. Where is it?"
That drew a frown, and the mirror turned away from her face for a moment. When she returned she looked a little less like she'd just rolled out of a bed made of books. "It's to the north of the city, see that area west of the Robert Kane Memorial Bridge? That's it. Why? Is he in danger?"
Harry glanced at the man in question, both frozen and unconscious before they returned to Zatanna. "No, no danger. I just need to check up on something. Thanks. You got anything?"
She shook her head tiredly. "Not really. There's some stuff on what the Books actually are, but there's nothing to suggest he actually knew the location of one."
"Well, I'll be done here in maybe half an hour," Harry said. That was probably enough time. "I can come over and we can go over what we found together. I need to run some stuff by you too."
"Well, you can try that," she said before yawning loudly. "But I won't be much help as I'm going to go to bed. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Your place. Night Harry."
"Ni—" She'd already broken the connection.
Harry tutted out of a kind of Hermione-ingrained habit. That was a bit rude. He checked his watch. 4:23am.
Maybe not so rude then.
With a careful motion of his wand, he transfigured Bruce Wayne into a real tiny bat of the kind Uncle Vernon had once found in the attic. The bat was deposited into a pocket, and a few seconds later, the dark outline of a Merlin was winging its way across the city.
A/N: This chapter probably annoyed some folk. Some will be annoyed because Batman got the better of Harry, while others will be annoyed that Harry got the better of Batman. I'd be interested to hear how people think a fight like that would go, where Batman has surprise on his side, but imperfect knowledge of Harry's abilities.
