Disclaimer: Being neither British nor Japanese, it should therefore come as no surprise that I own neither Harry Potter nor Naruto, nor anything from their respective franchises.
CW: Mentions of torture and mutilation.
Needles made of brilliant white lightning chakra sleeted down into the battle, peppering over half a dozen of the Dark fighters. Elsewhere, Death Eaters and their ilk fell to less flashy but still lethal kunai. Many of those attackers still standing turned to meet this new threat, only to be cursed by whoever they'd just been fighting. The rest found their personal space very suddenly invaded by shinobi via Shunshin and were quickly taken out of the fight.
«Iruka, good to see you again.» Hatake Kakashi, Sixth Hokage (Retired) appeared next to him. «Status report?»
«Enemy leader neutralized,» the chuunin said crisply, pointing at the also-crisp corpse in the barrier. «Friendly casualty in the barrier with him, in need of immediate medical aid. Other than that, it looks like the enemy's command structure is mostly gutted, though they still have significant forces elsewhere on-site.»
Kakashi nodded. «We've already got people dealing with that. Once the scene's secure, we'll get the main group of medics in, but it looks like I'll have to call in the Barrier Corps to extract Harry-kun.»
«I'm not sure he has that kind of time,» Iruka said grimly, jumping back down and rushing towards the barrier with Kakashi in tow. Bill and Pandora were already making their own ways over.
"Mr. Hatake," the eldest Weasley son said as he ran up, "tell me you have some way of bringing this barrier down fast; there's no chance my way would get Harry out in time."
"The seal work looks like something I could bring down by hitting it with enough power," Kakashi replied, peering at the nearest anchor, "but given the state and location of Riddle's remains I doubt that'd be very safe, and I've got no idea what effect the bones and runes might have." He shrugged. "I've been focusing on figuring out how to deal with magic enemies, not magic barriers."
"I didn't see any of the Death Eaters use the Killing Curse that entire battle," Pandora observed, studying the anchor herself with a look of disgust on her face. "Only Riddle could have ordered that and made it stick. They weren't exactly going out of their way to avoid killing us, which means that curse in particular might be able to bring the barrier down."
"It probably would," Bill confirmed, "if we could cast four of them at the barrier. Of course, whatever four people it's connected to would die, but depending on what state they're in now that might be a mercy." At her horrified look, he elaborated, "If this is what I think it is, those bones are from four living people that are acting as a power source. The barrier is tied to them, which is why all those Cruciatus curses didn't make it through - only a solid object or a living being can stop an Unforgiveable."
"These victims," Kakashi cut in intently, "would they need to be nearby?"
Bill nodded. "Relatively, at least, probably within five or ten kilometers at most. Range would reduce the strength of the connection, so he'd have wanted them as close as possible."
As soon as Bill had started talking, Kakashi had created two shadow clones that immediately vanished in a blur of motion, much to Bill and Pandora's visible confusion. "I'm getting help," he explained.
Iruka had an inkling of Kakashi's plan, and immediately called out to the twins to ask about the broom-riding forces before asking Bill to dispatch a Patronus messenger calling for brooms to be brought immediately. Less than a minute after the silvery spell had zipped off, Naruto arrived, followed a few seconds later by Sakura.
«Report.» commanded the Seventh Hokage. Kakashi explained the situation as quickly and succinctly as possible. Naruto nodded before erupting in glowing golden chakra as a set of Gudōdama formed in the air behind him.
Bill and Pandora both leapt back in shock, and several other nearby witches and wizards cried out as well, but Iruka reassured them. "Don't worry; he's just looking for what we need to rescue Harry." He directed this mostly at the bystanders that, being unfamiliar with his origins, were still also looking warily at the shinobi currently securing the area (and any prisoners) and administering first aid to the friendly wounded. Even as he spoke, Sakura created a Shadow Clone and both of her went to start treating the worst off. "Oh, and she's a Healer," he added to calm their fears as her hands lit up with green medical chakra.
«Got them,» Naruto said. «They're together, about three and a half klicks that way.» He pointed off in a direction that would put the site near Hogsmeade.
"We'll go with you," Iruka said in English for Bill and Pandora's benefit, "as soon as our transportation gets here. We should also bring Sakura or her clone, since we're expecting to find at least four injured people. Pandora, you're the lightest here, so you should be the one to carry her." She nodded in assent.
A tense minute-or-so later, the famous Gryffindor Chaser Trio zoomed down into the courtyard and passed their brooms off. Iruka, Bill, and Pandora each boarded one of the Nimbus 2001s, and Sakura (or her clone) climbed warily on behind Pandora. Naruto lifted into the air and flew off, with the three brooms following close behind.
They quickly found themselves at the mouth of a cave just outside the village. It was an out-of-the-way spot, not something a passerby would be likely to discover by happenstance. Inside was a scene of horror, more depraved than anything Iruka had seen during his time on active duty. Admittedly, he'd heard of worse from others, but seeing it first-hand was something else. The four tormented victims in that cave, three wizards and one witch, were clearly the source for the bones used in making the barrier's anchors, and those bones had almost certainly been extracted while they were fully awake. Witnessing just the aftermath of the atrocity committed on those four made even Iruka hope that Voldemort's soul-splitting meant that he'd be suffering eightfold in the afterlife. Judging by Naruto's stormy expression, even the blonde who seemed able to find forgiveness and compassion for almost everyone was having similar thoughts.
After hurriedly examining the scene, they'd concluded that the most expedient way to bring the barrier down without killing anyone was to have Sakura amputate the victims' legs, from which the bones for the anchors had been extracted. It was a harsh solution, but Bill suspected that the amount of Dark magic involved meant it would never have been possible to properly heal those legs regardless of what they did, and Sakura promised to provide prosthetic replacements.
Sakura and several fresh Shadow Clones got to work, using the other four as assistants. She started by knocking the patients out to spare them further suffering before quickly removing the mangled limbs and thus disconnecting the victims from the barrier before cleaning and closing up the stumps and making sure all four were stable for transport. She and Naruto both promised to send a medical squad as soon as they could and asked the other three to wait there and watch over the four new amputees. They then disappeared into chakra smoke, revealing both to have been Shadow Clones.
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It was over half an hour of tense, awkward attempts at conversation to break the tense, awkward silence before the medical squad found them. Once the four victims had been prepped for transport Iruka, Bill, and Pandora flew back to the castle as quickly as they dared. They did slow down coming in to make sure people got a good look at them, though; with everyone still keyed-up and spell-shocked after the battle they didn't want to risk a friendly-fire incident.
Harry and the others were gone from the courtyard by the time they got back. Even the bodies of the dead had been removed elsewhere, though the blood and debris hadn't been cleaned up at all yet. The three of them headed towards the Hospital Wing, but ended up being redirected to the Great Hall. Apparently the large space was being used to house those wounded not in need of urgent or extensive care, along with whoever happened to be accompanying them at the moment, while the Hospital Wing was filled with the most serious cases and nobody was allowed in except medics and patients.
Given the fact that the wounded were very much in the majority among those that had fought, the Great Hall had become sort of the de facto gathering area for surviving defenders without any tasks to occupy them. Cleanup and rebuilding, while important, weren't exactly urgent and nobody was in a state to deal with them at the moment. They could have gone home, especially those with nothing more than scrapes and bruises, and some did, but most seemed uncomfortable leaving the safety of large groups. A lot of them were too tired to Apparate, and nobody was going to trust the Floo until it was confirmed as secure - there'd been too much suspicion for too long of Death Eater agents or sympathizers working in Floo Control.
Bill split off to head to the first morgue (and wasn't it a testament to the battle's toll that they had need of more than one morgue even without considering the enemy dead...). Now that the fighting was over, he figured that his family would be returning there.
At the Great Hall Iruka dropped Pandora off with Luna and Xeno. The three of them were holding each other tightly, needing the reassurance that they'd all made it through. They were far from the only family Iruka had seen or would see that night doing the same, though for some the sentiment was one of clinging to those who remained.
Iruka's memory of the rest of that night/morning would later blur together, as such times often did. The exhausted chuunin traveled through the castle, checking up on his students, friends, and acquaintances before finally making his way to one of the many temporary barracks that'd been set up (one hosting Konoha shinobi) and practically collapsed onto a cot to sleep.
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Peter huddled tiredly under a fallen tree. As soon as he'd seen the Dark Lord fall against Potter, he'd known it was time to go; the Death Eaters' ship was sinking, so he did what came naturally as a rat. In the chaos of the battle and its end, a lone rat should have easily been able to slip away. He didn't even need to go far, just far enough to get out from under the castle's anti-Disapparition wards. One quick turn later, and he'd have been well on his way to the Continent and thence to somewhere that'd never heard of Peter Pettigrew. It was a big world out there, after all, and now he could find a safe place in it without the Dark Lord hunting him down. Best case would be somewhere without much in terms of a magical government, where he could get by quite nicely with just a few spells on a few Muggles providing him with food, money, housing, and possibly even "companionship" if he found a suitable Muggle girl.
All that was in the future though. In the present, he was too busy trying to make good his escape. It should have been easy, just a straight shot across the grounds to the nearest ward boundary, barely a few minutes under good conditions. He'd gotten about a quarter of the way there when a flash of white caught his eye, and he'd recognized Potter's owl Hedwig circling overhead and instinctually known that she was after him.
Normally, an owl has no trouble taking a rat, but normally rats can't turn into wizards and throw curses at owls. Normally, a wizard has no trouble dealing with a hostile owl, but normally wizards aren't desperately trying to avoid notice from other wizards and strange foreigners that move far faster than they've any right to. Thus it was that the two entered into a sort of moving stalemate, with both of them watching each other, waiting and hoping for a moment of inattention that would let Peter escape or allow Hedwig to swoop down and snatch him.
With the blasted owl overhead, he was forced to change course and head for the Forbidden Forest. There simply wasn't enough cover on the grounds for him to be able to lose his avian stalker, and his instincts told him that if he got too close to the wardline the scarily intelligent owl would attack him in spite of the danger. Hopefully, the Forest would provide him the opportunity he needed to get away.
That had been quite a while ago, long enough that sunrise was now hours past and it was getting closer to noon than to dawn. Peter and Hedwig had spent the time engaged in a life-or-death game of cat-and-mouse, the name of which might be even more apt than it already was if those glimpses of ginger fur he'd seen weren't just a product of fear and exhaustion.
Wormtail rose wearily to his paws. There was no time for him to rest more than a few minutes at a stretch; he had to keep moving before Hedwig's patience ran out or something else in this forest got to him. He'd heard tales of a colony of giant spiders, big enough that they could eat him in either form, and he did not want to find out if there was any truth to them. Regardless, he'd already picked his next bit of cover, a rock a half-dozen meters away next to a small stream where he might be able to get a drink of water and regain some energy. Looking around what he could see from this hidey-hole, he tensed up and dashed, keeping a wary eye on the sky the whole time.
Some might say he should have watched lower down as well, but in truth it wouldn't have helped. Halfway to his target a bunch of star-shaped iron blades buried themselves in the dirt in a rough circle around him.
"You not rat. You are human." He looked to see the speaker, a middle-aged man with Asiatic features dressed in the same outfit as Umino. Peter would have thought the man blind, given his blank white eyes, but the way he met Wormtail's gaze directly and the unnaturally-bulging veins around those eyes suggested that maybe he could see just fine. "You come with us and answer questions. You try fight or run, we hurt you or maybe kill. You change back now."
With a blur of movement, three other similarly-dressed figures had surrounded him. How? How could they have tracked- He spotted that damned ginger half-Kneazle rubbing itself against the calf of one of the foreigners, shooting Peter a smug look, as Hedwig alit on a branch nearby.
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Iruka woke up about fourteen hours later according to a quick Tempus spell that drew odd looks from the couple of other shinobi in the room that were currently awake, and promptly reported in to the nearest jounin asking where he could be of use, but was told that much of the force that had been sent were already stood down. Outside of the medics, who were still working themselves to exhaustion, most of the on-duty ninja were patrolling or on watch securing the castle or assisting the Aurors in mop-up operations and trying to track down those enemy fighters that had fled.
«Leave mop-up to us, Iruka-sensei,» the jounin said with a smile that hadn't changed that much since he'd been an Academy student ten years prior. «You and the locals already handled the hard part. Go check in on your students.»
«Thanks, Kaede,» he replied. «You wouldn't happen to know...» Shinobi were notorious gossips; when information was your life's blood, it was only natural to want to know everything about everyone. Hopefully there'd be word going around about Harry.
«Potter-san?» Iruka nodded. «Stable, last I heard, though it took Uchiha-san some work to get him there. He's still in bad shape and it'll probably be a while before he wakes up, but considering he took down this world's equivalent of Orochimaru one-on-one even being alive's damn impressive.»
The chuunin slumped in relief. «So we made it in time, then.»
«Yeah,» Kaede said, «Still no visitors allowed in the hospital area, though, so you're better off looking for the other ones. People have been moving around a lot as the minor wounded get first aid - medics are all too busy or too tired or both to properly heal them, so scrapes and bruises are just going to have to heal on their own - and as more of the castle's been cleared as safe so they can spread out. You might have to hunt a bit, but since you speak the local language you can probably just ask the creepy talking paintings for help.»
After wandering over half the castle, Iruka finally managed to track down his wayward students. They and the rest of his battlegroup, minus their fallen, were all staying together with some of their other friends in a side corridor two floors below the Gryffindor Common Room entrance. The whole area was filled with the kind of uneasy quiet and brittle smiles of people trying to decide between being happy for their survival, grieving for those lost, blocking out the horrors they'd witnessed, or regretting those they'd inflicted. The chuunin joined them, doing his best to help them figure out what to do next.
It took less than a day to complete the majority of mop-up operations and piece together a preliminary account of the battle as a whole. Over the coming days, weeks, and months, a clearer picture would emerge and more matters would be resolved.
The defenders had had a very close call at the main battlefront, with their forces almost at the breaking point from the relentless onslaught before the pressure had mysteriously begun to abate. Based on the timing, and the distant boom several witnesses heard, this was presumed to have been due to the Death Eaters haring off to support their master. That would have left the attacking force not only without most of its leaders and heavy-hitters, but also without those able to cajole the more reluctant among the attackers to push forward into the defenders' spellfire.
A short while later, Filius and the others working on the Vanishing Cabinet had finally completed repairs enough to begin letting reinforcements through. The first few squads had secured the Room both to protect the Cabinet and to act as a staging ground. With their beachhead secured, the first echelon poured through as quickly as the Cabinet allowed. Hatake Kakashi led this group; Naruto had apparently wanted to do it himself, but been pointedly reminded by his friends and predecessor that the Hokage's place was in Konoha, particularly when they were sending a substantial force away from the village. That didn't stop him from sending a couple of Shadow Clones to assist, luckily for Harry.
Already knowing the current status of the battle thanks to the mirror connection, they were able to keep their plan updated even before the Cabinet was ready, so once they'd all assembled in the Room they immediately went to work.
At the front, the defenders were almost as shocked by the arrival of their reinforcements as the attackers were. Very suddenly, chaos and devastation struck the enemy's ranks: Wizards and witches found themselves suddenly swarmed with parasitic beetles or trapped by their own shadows. Figures in similar dress to Professor Umino dashed into the battle at impossible speeds, striking with a variety of weapons and techniques. Some attackers collapsed after nothing more than the slightest of touches from pale-eyed foreigners. Blasts of lightning, gusts of wind, torrents of water, gouts of flame, and streams of mud erupted everywhere. Through it all, a few people with particularly keen eyes saw a green blur streaking throughout the attacking force, breaking limbs and sending bodies flying.
All told, from the moment the foreigners first took the field, the main battle was over in less than thirty seconds.
The first echelon had been composed entirely of heavy-combat squads selected based on how well-suited their abilities were for fighting against wizards; the Akimichi Clan, for example, would have mostly just been easy targets for the Killing Curse. Once the main battle was resolved, squads began spreading out into the castle to start dealing with the smaller pockets of fighting. Meanwhile, the second echelon began coming through. They were more specialized forces comprising battlefield medics, prisoner-securing squads, and sensor/tracker units meant to hunt down isolated enemies or casualties as part of the immediate mop-up. All but the hunter-tracker squads headed straight to the main site, seeing to the wounded and freeing up more first-echelon units to spread out and secure the castle. The third echelon, mostly medical and logistical support, only started coming through once most of the fighting was reported as being over.
Konoha's leadership spoke at length with the Ministry of Magic, working to negotiate permission to send trained interrogators to help accurately sift the innocent victims from the criminals trying to escape justice, with Yamanaka tapped to handle the more important or uncertain cases. It would take some time for the shinobi in question to be ready, as delicate work like interrogation would be badly hampered by a language barrier. Apothecaries throughout Britain would soon be getting bulk orders for the Linguanova Libation, and not just for the interrogators. Unfortunately a large-scale battle fought in large part by civilian volunteers wasn't something Shikamaru had focused on in his planning, considering it unlikely enough that resources were better concentrated on broader preparations, so only a couple of counselors had even begun learning English. With suddenly hundreds of people likely to be suffering from battle shock, post-traumatic stress, and bereavement, trained counselors were getting pushed to the front of the line for language lessons.
While the responding shinobi had suffered only three deaths and twelve injuries of varying severity, both the attacking and defending wizards had been horrifically mauled. Final estimates put the defenders' losses at between fifteen and twenty percent, with another forty to fifty-five percent injured. The attackers, being the losing side, had unsurprisingly fared even worse; over forty percent were dead and a similar number injured. All of the trolls and giants had been killed, as had about half of the school's thestrals and hippogriffs. It would take weeks to corral and recapture most of the Dementors that had been driven off, with sporadic incidents continuing for months after.
Complicating matters, more than two thirds of the prisoners claimed that they'd been under the Imperius Curse. According to interrogations and investigations, about thirty percent of the attacking force had been conscripted using either the Imperius or more mundane methods such as the taking of hostages. These conscripts had frequently been pushed to the front and used as expendable shock troops, and as such had suffered the most severe casualty rates. Of those victims forced to fight against their will, only about a third survived the battle, and many of the survivors bore horrific mental and physical scars.
On an individual level, two other people Iruka had known were dead: Severus Snape had died near the end of the battle, around the time of Voldemort's death, fighting ferociously in defense of a group of Slytherin Seventh-Years and recent alumni. Sirius, Remus, and Tonks had been working as a highly effective team when Remus got pulled out of position; before the other two could get to him, he was struck in the back with a Killing Curse by none other than Dolores Umbridge, who outlived him by less than sixty seconds. Reportedly her comrades didn't take kindly to someone disobeying their master's orders, and the sadistic witch had died in a hail of Dark curses. In a conversation some years later, Sirius would confess that not all of those curses had been cast by Death Eaters. Rodolphus Lestrange actually survived the blow Neville had dealt him, albeit with his jaw shattered and his spine severed. Given the desperate need for healers by innocent victims and potentially-innocent prisoners and the fact that all three Lestranges had already been under sentence of death for crimes they'd proudly admitted, he never received more than a bare minimum of care. The last Lestrange spent the short remainder of his life as an invalid, unable to speak or move or affect the world in any way, a prisoner in his own body.
Harry woke up after three days, but would spend the next two weeks recovering from his injuries and exhaustion and be left with a truly impressive collection of scars. The rest of S.E.N. and their families moved back to Grimmauld Place while he was still convalescing, though they all visited him frequently once they were allowed to. When he was finally released from the care of the medics and Healers, he too returned to his godfather's home.
Like many other families throughout Magical Britain, those at Number Twelve slowly began to heal themselves, each other, and their society. Not all was well, not yet, but is it ever, really?
Omake!
This was something I'd intended to include in the story proper, but it just didn't work considering the tone of what came immediately after.
About halfway to Hogsmeade, a loud crash behind them was followed by what looked like a badly-injured troll flying by at speed. "Was that..." Bill stammered, "what...?"
Sakura shook her head. "People really shouldn't interrupt Shishou while she's working."
Omake?
I wanted this to be Voldemort's ultimate fate, but that would have fit the prophecy even worse than his canon fate. Thus, it is presented on a "maybe it happened, maybe it didn't" basis.
Lord Voldemort regained consciousness. This was something of a surprise, given that His last memory involved being stabbed and immolated by the Potter brat, so He would expect to have simply found Himself a bodiless wraith once more. It was possible that one of His loyal followers had retrieved Him somehow and nursed Him back to health - Bellatrix, perhaps - but were that the case He would not feel thick straps securing His nude body to a cold metal surface nor a tough, rubbery object stuffed in his mouth.
Where was He? Every breath filled His nostrils with a sharp chemical smell, and soft whirring and humming sounds came from somewhere nearby. As His vision began to return, He could see a bright light shining in his face even through His closed eyelids. Slowly, with much squinting and blinking, He became able to view His surroundings.
He was at the center of a windowless chamber the size of a small office. The walls and ceiling, where they were visible, were covered in plain white tiles. It was clearly in a Muggle building of some sort, as it was lit with electric lights and there were strange Muggle machines along one wall covered with buttons and knobs and television screens and small colored lights that sometimes blinked or flickered.
"Ah, finally awake I see". Lord Voldemort's gaze snapped to the figure that had very definitely not been standing beside Him a moment earlier. He'd not seen any of the telltale shimmer of a Disillusionment Charm, nor heard the rustle of an Invisibility Cloak or the crack of Apparition.
Lord Voldemort glared imperiously at His presumed captor, commanding His release with His gaze and expression. The man (at least He presumed it was a man, though their features were more delicate and androgynous than even Lucius as a youth) was slender and effeminate, with long, straight black hair and pale white skin. His eyes, which looked far older than his youthful face, were surrounded with purple markings and had gold irises and snakelike slit pupils. Did this fool think to imitate Lord Voldemort and His connection to the noblest of all beasts? Even his voice was not dissimilar, high and cold and sibilant, though somewhat breathier than Lord Voldemort's own.
Wait, could these similarities and His captivity be connected? Could this pretender intend to take Lord Voldemort's place, stealing all that He had built?
A rather disturbing-sounding chuckle issued from the figure. "For someone who thought himself a grand manipulator, you are depressingly easy to read." He spoke with a bit of an accent, but so slight it was difficult to place. "No, I have no interest in supplanting you among what few followers you still have. My resources are far greater than your own, and more than sufficient to my needs. Rulership over an entire society would be tedious, anyway, and take far too much time away from more important work."
"But perhaps I should introduce myself, yes? I am Orochimaru," he stated with a mocking, facetious bow, "leader of Otogakure, the Village Hidden in the Sound. I enjoy research, discovery, and novelty, and dislike boredom and stagnation. My dream is to master every jutsu - every spell as you would say - to become the ultimate being. As for my hobby, let's just call it 'self-improvement', shall we?" His grin stretched unnaturally wide at that.
"You, of course, are Tom Marvolo Riddle..." Lord Voldemort focused all His indignant rage at the man. How dare he use that filthy Muggle name that the Dark Lord discarded decades ago as a snake sheds a skin it has outgrown?! "Oh, don't be like that," he gestured as if to wave away an annoying insect. "Dark Lord and would-be ruler of Wizarding Britain, leader of the terrorist insurgents known as the Death Eaters, proponent of frankly imbecilic ideas about proper bloodlines, and most recently loser of a duel with a sixteen-year-old schoolboy. To be fair, I was also temporarily killed by a sixteen-year-old orphan, but I was very ill at the time and I had just spent the prior three years grooming him into one of the greatest warriors our world has ever seen."
"We have a number of similarities, actually," the man continued casually. "Our desire for power, our affinity for snakes, our ruthless pursuit of immortality, and our having been labeled as enemies to the established order. In so many ways we are alike, and quite a number of people familiar with both my world and yours have commented on this." His seeming calm gained a hard edge that spoke of tightly-controlled anger. "What the fools fail to recognize is that almost all of these similarities are purely superficial. I am a scientist, forever seeking new knowledge to acquire and new ways to improve myself. You are nothing but a scared little child seeking to destroy everything around you in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to feel safe. You are almost entirely lacking in curiosity, originality, or creativity. Every time someone notes our similarity is an insult."
"You're not entirely incompetent," he allowed, "considering that even with your foolish soul fragments all dealt with," Lord Voldemort's eyes widened in shock - His Horcruxes, gone? How? "I was still able to revive you. That barrier you created was a clever bit of work, though even there it felt as if you were unknowingly aping me when you used it to trap Harry Potter for your little duel. You did gather a great deal of knowledge most in your world thought lost, rediscovering ancient and forgotten techniques."
"But even now, you still don't seem to have stumbled upon the most pressing question. 'Why go to all the trouble of having my agents retrieve you, spending months of effort and no small amount of resources resuscitating you and healing your injuries?' So disappointing." Orochimaru shook his head. "The answer, Tom-kun, is that unlike you I am curious. I hear about magic and I wish to learn all about it just as I do with jutsu, a process I began even before the passageway between our worlds was opened. I hear about all of these strange and fantastic creatures, and I want to see them, to study them. I hear about a man that thought it was a good idea to tear pieces off of his own soul, and I want to discover exactly what that did to him." That unnatural grin came back, even wider than before. "I hear about an immortal wizard, and I realize that he'd be a wonderfully resilient research subject, one that would recover from all manner of tests, one that I could spend years studying to my heart's content. So, Tom-kun..."
"Shall we begin?"
A/N: And so we come to the end of Book 6. Tune in next chapter for Book 7: Umino Iruka and the Epilogue.
Hedwig and Crookshanks helping catch Pettigrew is partly inspired by a scene in "Souls Abound" by Robst.
It turned out that one of the toughest parts of writing this chapter was actually figuring out how to transition from Iruka's perspective on the immediate aftermath to the later, broader account of things.
Both Snape's and Remus's deaths occurred for similar reasons, from my perspective. Both men were, to a degree, passively suicidal. In Deathly Hallows, we see Remus eager to run off and die a heroic martyr instead of being with his wife and child, and we discover that Snape suffered from immense guilt and self-loathing. If anybody was going to die, it would be those two.
Fic Recommendation: "It's a GOOD Omen" by innocentsmith on Archive of Our Own - A somewhat older Adam pays a visit to another powerful boy in an isolated little farming town. A crossover between Good Omens and a famous short story / Twilight Zone episode
Posted 12 April 2020 (Happy Easter, to those that celebrate it.)
