Chapter 12: The Battle of Hogwarts (part one)
Summary:
Return to Hogwarts, and the battle. The italicized portions are directly from the text, and some of the rest is borrowed and edited.
Chapter Text
Tonks opened her eyes, saw that Remus, Rincewind, and the great orangutan were with her, bounced up to her feet with a fierce grin - and Aberforth Dumbledore was pointing a wand directly at her chest.
"Incarcerous,"he shouted. Thick ropes fell around the four of them.
"This is the second time I've seen you and Lupin tonight," he said in a low growl. "I've never seen the other fella or the ape. I duel to kill - you have five seconds before I cast the Blasting Curse. Talk fast."
"Protego! Stupefy! Diffindo," Tonks yelled, and a blue shield fell around them as Aberforth tumbled backwards. The ropes binding them severed easily.
Remus stared at her. "Wandless magic? When did you? – I didn't know -"
"Mother and I have been practicing at the full and the day afterwards," she said grimly. "I wasn't going to argue with you."
"I wanted you to be safe! I thought you were resting – the last moon was on the 12th, and Teddy was born on the 14th! I never wanted you to come – " Now that they were actually back at the battle, his anxiety reared up. "You could still go home. Apparate to Andromeda's."
She glowered at him, and brown hair flamed into hot pink. "I'm an Auror, Lupin. Always. I can't go back home – we already died, yeah? So shut it. We're in luck and haven't set off any Caterwauling Charms yet." She turned to Rincewind, who was holding onto his hat and looking dazed. "Let's haul him inside, quick."
Rincewind hesitated a moment, and the Librarian bent to the fallen man and carried him through a wooden door into the Hogshead Inn. It was lit only by a single candle, and Rincewind could barely make out a picture on the wall. It was the size and shape for a portrait, but no one was painted in it. There was only a long dark tunnel stretching away.
"Good," said Remus. "The passage is still here."
Rincewind had travelled around the Disc and across many countries, so he kept silent as Lupin pulled the edge of the portrait open. The painted tunnel grew larger and larger, and finally a real tunnel appeared in the wall of the inn. He tried to appear nonchalant, as if he'd often walked through pictures.
"Come on," said Tonks, and unshrunk their broomsticks. She and Remus quickly transfigured several bandages into a cloth chair, and motioned the Librarian to sit. They slowly levitated him, and strapped him into the chair, and the chair between their brooms.
"Got your buttocks on?" Tonks smirked at Rincewind. "Keep up!"
The Roundworld witch and her husband swung their legs over their brooms in a coordinated fashion and pushed off. Rincewind mounted his with a sour mouth. He hadn't been on a broom in years, not since he was chased by several orders of wizards in the forest of Skund. He and Twoflower had escaped on an old witch's broomstick. They'd gone up to the stratosphere and seen the sky swept clean of stars, with only a single baleful red star ahead of them. Then their fall had been broken by a flying rock, which finally landed on top of two giant, upright slabs in the middle of a mystic stone circle. And that had barely been the beginning of his travails with the Eighth Spell inside him. Even that, though, had been better than this – that broom had had handlebars.
He'd asked Remus about it, and received a short, perplexing answer: "What do you think this is? Sirius's motorbike?"
Now he was on a broom following two wizard speed demons. It was one thing to race across the sky, at least when there weren't any clouds. No one had ever said you could race underground. Their passage began to slope up, and then they rounded a final curve. Tonks whooped as she took it, and was shushed ferociously by her husband. The Librarian shrieked "EEEEK EEEEK! OOOK!" and then the passage ended at a set of steps. Tonks and Remus set the Librarian down gently, but it took a minute for the ape to open his eyes and let go of the straps.
"Come on," called Tonks, having shrunk their brooms, and already bounding up the steps. "We don't know how much time we have before…" she stopped talking. Before they were killed, Rincewind knew. Before the whole catastrophe avalanched on them again.
He followed her into an enormous room which looked like the interior of a sumptuous tree house, or perhaps a gigantic ship's cabin. Multicolored hammocks were strung from the ceiling and from a balcony which ran around the dark wood-paneled and windowless walls, and there were bright hanging tapestries of heraldic animals.
"Hello, Minister!' bellowed Percy, sending a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who dropped his wand and clawed at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort. "Did I mention I'm resigning?"
"You're joking, Perce," shouted Fred, as the Death Eater he was battling collapsed under the weight of three separate stunning spells. "I don't think I've heard you joke since you were – "
The air exploded. They had been grouped together, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, and Percy, the two Death Eaters at their feet, one Stunned, the other Transfigured; and in that fragment of a moment, when danger seemed temporarily at bay, the world was rent apart.
Harry was half buried in the wreckage of a corridor that had been subjected to a terrible attack. Then he heard a terrible cry, that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind neither flame nor curse could cause.
As Tonks and Remus ran through the Room of Requirement, Rincewind and the Librarian loping behind them, they came to a marble staircase where Fenrir Greyback was savaging Lavender Brown. A crystal ball whooshed past Remus' face, nearly hitting him, and impacting Fenrir's head. He dropped Lavender's body, but shook away the shard of the ball, and turned towards – dear Merlin, was that Sybil Trelawney who had thrown it? He'd be on her in an instant.
"Reducto!" shouted Remus at the other werewolf, who was momentarily dizzy. He shattered into pieces, then into dust, and Tonks shot a startled look at her husband. It wasn't the Killing Curse, an Unforgivable said to be painless, but it was still lethal. This was a war, and no one's hands would be clean tonight. She mentally shook herself and ran onward.
At that moment, the heavy wooden front doors burst open, and gigantic spiders forced their way into the hall, in a large swarm which continued to pour through the wooden fragments. Tonks reached out to the Librarian.
"Now! Get them all!" as they raced on.
"OOK, OOK, OOK," shrieked the orangutan, his lips curled back in a savage glare. He pulled the firing pin out and lobbed them high above the screaming fighters. The first explosion caught two spiders and blasted them into flying black legs.
"Try for a bunch!" Tonks screamed. "See if you can find a big group of them!"
The Librarian nodded and his second bomb took out eight, and the third another five, and the fourth blew apart six.
"Watch out for Hagrid!" roared Remus, and Rincewind yelled back. "What's a Hagrid?"
"The half-giant with the flowery pink umbrella!"
Rincewind shook his head, not having time to wonder why a giant needed an umbrella indoors, and grabbed the Librarian's arm as he was about to launch a fifth volley. "The big man over there! Don't hit him!"
Then a massive foot swung out of the darkness. A creature much taller than Hagrid, fuller twenty feet tall, had smashed an outside window and pulled the stone away to crash into the castle. Tonks spun to face it and braced her feet. "Stupefy!" The giant only shook himself, and Remus turned as well.
"Help me knock it down!"
"Stupefy! Reducto! Diffindo!" yelled Remus, and Tonks continued with "Confringo! Petrificus Totalis! Levicorpus!" Nothing worked; the giant did not catch fire, blow up, or have its limbs paralyzed.
Tonks bellowed "Wingardium Leviosa!," with a racing swish and flick, and this at last lifted the giant about six feet. Then she stretched her arm high over her head, fisted her wand, and slashed downward fiercely. The giant crashed to the floor and kept going down through the stones until half-buried. While it was stunned, a smaller giant lurched around a corner of the castle. It fell upon his larger kin with yellow, half-brick-sized teeth, and they rolled together.
Remus goggled at his wife. "What was that?
"An overpowered Liberacorpus. I've been practicing on trees!"
Her hair was a hot magenta, flashing with purple. Remus hadn't seen her so excited in nearly a year, and gloried in his fierce wife. He'd underestimated her, tried to cage her in the name of safety, forgotten how strong she was. For decades he'd thought no one would ever want him, and then when she did, he'd tried to push her away. "Too old, too poor, too dangerous." That was the truth, but she'd still picked him. Now there was Teddy, and werewolves never had children. He'd taken one look at the blue hair of his son, and his heart both broke and gloried. A family. His metamorphagus wife and metamorphagus son, both rare gems, and he loved them more than he would ever be able to say. He'd wanted to wrap both of them in cotton and put them behind bolted doors, keep them safe from this vile war. She'd left her mother's home to come after him. It had been warded from sub-basement to attic, and all the property around it. He didn't know half the spells Andromeda had used, and wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know. If the Black family knew anything, they knew wards, and some of them might have been lethal Dark Arts. Remus didn't deserve his wife. A beautiful young woman shouldn't risk herself for a shabby old werewolf. But - she had. She was here with him and they were fighting side by side. For each other. For Teddy. If they got through this battle alive, he'd have time to change, to become a different man, but –
"We've got to find Dolohov! He attacked me in the courtyard!" The four of them turned away from the entrance hall, forcing a path. Remus headed toward the courtyard, and Tonks saw him first.
"Wait! He's battling Flitwick! Over there!"
The two fighters, mismatched in size, were near the middle of the courtyard. Dolohov's signature purple flame spell whirled through the air, and Remus remembered the pain of its lashing. His body clenched, remembering the agony of his tortured organs. Flitwick was half the size of Dolohov, but was dueling him calmly, snapping out a curse which reduced the flame to an ashy loop. Dolohov struck him viciously with another spell which knocked over the tiny man, just as the group reached the two fighters. Tonks rushed towards Flitwick, and Dolohov sneered, switching his stance toward her.
"RUN!" Harry roared, seizing Hermione's hand and tearing down the steps into the grounds, Ron bringing up the rear. Harry had not lost hope of finding and saving Hagrid; he ran so fast that they were halfway toward the forest before they were brought up short again.
The air around them had frozen: Harry's breath caught and solidified in his chest. Shapes moved out in the darkness, swirling figures of concentrated blackness, moving in a great wave toward the castle, their faces hooded and their breath rattling. A silence only the dementors could bring was falling thickly through the night, and Fred was gone, and Hagrid was surely dying or already dead…he despaired and couldn't think of a single happy thing.
Remus tried to get a clear shot at Dolohov, but screaming fighters rushed in front of him. He was pushed away from Tonks; Dolohov was going to kill his wife instead of him, the agony…
Huge orange limbs stretched out in front of him, almost gently picking up people and pushing them apart, clearing a path – but Remus fell down, knocked over in the crush. When he surged upright again, he couldn't see Tonks or Flitwick. Before he could pick up the nearest body and heave them out of his way, defender or attacker, it made no difference, the path cleared again, and he saw the Discworld wizard, still in his silly hat, standing near Dolohov.
"No! Rincewind, get back, he's a vicious bastard! He's the one who killed me!"
The other man scrabbled quickly in the pockets of his shabby burgundy robe and pulled out – a sock? What? Before Remus could blink, Rincewind whirled the sock around his head. It had something heavy in it, a stone maybe, and the sock whizzed around several times, faster. With perfect accuracy, Rincewind lobbed his sock-stone into Dolohov's head, and the man dropped. Remus reached him and saw that Dolohov's skull was crushed; he turned the man's neck rapidly to the side, snapping it.
"Making assurance doubly sure?" Rincewind grinned at Remus. "But the half-brick already did for him. Works a treat, a half-brick does."
"How? – do you always use? – not your staff?" – huffed Remus.
"I have my reasons," said Rincewind. "Where's your wife?"
Tonks had sat Flitwick up and dusted him off. He bowed his thanks quickly to them, and rushed into the courtyard, wand already swooping blocks of stone from the castle onto white-masked Death Eaters.
A hundred dementors were advancing on Harry, gliding toward him, sucking their way closer to his despair, which was like the promise of a feast . . .
And then Ron's silver terrier burst into the air, followed by Hermione's otter, but they were not enough. His wand trembled in his hand. A silver hare, a boar, and a fox soared past as Luna, Ernie, and Seamus cast their Patronuses onward, driving away the dementors.
With a roar and an earth-quaking tremor, another giant came lurching out of the darkness from the direction of the forest, brandishing a club taller than any of them.
"Let's get out of range!" yelled Ron, as the giant swung its club again, and they sprinted toward the Whomping Willow. Ron couldn't find the knothole.
"How – how're we going to get in?" panted Ron. "I can see the place – if we just had – Crookshanks again- "
"Crookshanks?" wheezed Hermione, bent double, clutching her chest. "Are you a wizard or what?"
. . .
Snape was dying, and Harry kneeled beside him, holding a flask full of his silvery memories. Snape bade him to look into his eyes (his mother's eyes) and then moved no more. While Harry continued to kneel by Snape's side, he heard the high, cold voice of Voldemort again, and this time it commanded him directly.
"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, I shall enter the fray myself, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."
Tonks, Remus, Rincewind, and the Librarian all heard Voldemort, as did everyone else, and even though they hadn't known the voice before, there was no mistaking its insane power.
"That's your sorcerer, right?" said Rincewind.
Tonks and Remus glanced at him, puzzled, and Rincewind tried again. "The one you're all fighting against? The one sending these – giants and spiders and suchlike?"
"Yes," whispered Tonks, and her hair faded to a bone-white color Remus had never seen before. "It's got to be him. I've never heard him – been on raids with other Aurors when we tackled Death Eaters, of course, but never one when he was there. He's out in the Forbidden Forest, and I don't know how many Death Eaters he has, or how many Dark Creatures swore to him."
"I know most of the Death Eaters," said Remus. "Not how many of the other werewolves Fenrir brought – never got a complete count from him, and I never knew Voldemort was going to bring in the Acromantula – those giant spiders," he explained to Rincewind. "I had no idea there were that many in the Forbidden Forest. When this is over, we've got to go in and destroy all the webs and nests."
Tonks knocked her shoulders against him with a faint smile. "I like the idea. When we beat the filthy bastards we'll come back and scour the Forest."
Remus rested his head on hers for an instant. "Yes. When. I know most of the Death Eaters he's got, though. We saw Pius Thicknesse back in the castle – near Fred" – his voice dropped low.
"Don't." said Tonks harshly. "Don't. Fred's gone, but we're here, and Dolohov's down. We'll find Bellatrix so the bitch won't kill me again – "
"That sounds very odd," said Remus. "Time travel. At least we've made it at the right time – thanks to your wizards, Rincewind. That Hex – tell Ponder he's a genius when you get back. What were the plush bears about?"
"Official secret." Rincewind grinned. "I like the sound of that, too. When we get back."
"But I have no idea where Harry is," Tonks continued, frustrated. "We could go with him, protect him if we knew. Even if – if Voldemort kills him and comes to the castle, there will be two more of us to fight him if Bellatrix doesn't kill me."
(They didn't, couldn't know about the horcruxes, the six Voldemort had created, and the one shard lodging in Harry. Didn't know that Harry had to die to make Voldemort mortal, and if Dumbledore had ever told him, Remus swore later, he would have searched for any method to free the boy, his godson in all but name, the one he'd name Teddy's godfather, from that curse. The old wizard had hidden too much and laid the burden on the slim shoulders of a child. Harry was something like Remus; Dumbledore had given Remus a place at Hogwarts, which Remus later realized was to have a soldier ready, a werewolf he could command. Dumbledore had played a very long game with an eleven-year old boy. With two eleven-year old boys a generation apart. He'd used Remus's friends for the first Order of the Phoenix, and Harry's for the second.)
"The Death Eater commanders I know of besides Thicknesse and Dolohov," Remus said quickly, remembering that Harry had only an hour's reprieve, "are Bellatrix, Yaxley, Macnair, Rookwood, Travers, Selwyn, Mulciber, and Malfoy. There are maybe a hundred Death Eaters total. I think he's got dozens of imperiused wizards, but the Order has never managed to find all of those. I'm sure they're in the Forest now. Ministry officials, as well. Where did you fight Bellatrix?"
"In the Great Hall. I don't know if she's there now, but that's where we need to go."
"And your wizards?' said Rincewind. 'How many have you lot got?"
"Not sure either," said Remus over his shoulder, as they passed through the courtyard. "Shacklebolt, the other Order of the Phoenix members, Minerva Macgonagall – she sent out the suits of armor, did you see those, Tonks?"
She shook her head, and he frowned. "There were about a hundred of them. They must have gone on before you came in. We've got the faculty here, the older students, staff here, wizards from Hogsmeade – I think they're going to stage more in – and I know Aberforth is holding the portrait open for them. Well, he will be holding it open again once he shakes off that Stupefy."
"McGonagall was going to talk to the centaurs as well, I heard. I don't know how they'll respond. They stay away from human conflicts, keep to themselves," Tonks explained to Rincewind. "The main one now is Bellatrix, and don't take time to fight unless we have to protect a student. And find Harry before he gets to the forest!"
But Harry had returned to the castle, carrying Snape's memories with him, and entered a castle gone unnaturally quiet.
"Where is everyone?" whispered Hermione. They passed into the Great Hall, and stopped in the doorway. The House tables were gone. The survivors stood in groups, and the injured were being treated upon the raised table by Madam Pomfrey and her helpers.
The dead lay in a row in the middle of the Hall. Harry could not see Fred's body, because his family surrounded him. George was kneeling at his head; Mrs. Weasley was lying across Fred's chest, her body shaking, Mr. Weasley stroking her hair while tears cascaded down his cheeks.
Without a word to Harry, Ron and Hermione walked away. Harry saw Hermione approach Ginny, whose face was swollen and blotchy, and hug her. Ron joined Bill, Fleur, and Percy, who flung an arm around Ron's shoulders. As Ginny and Hermione moved closer to the rest of the family, Harry had a clear view of the bodies lying next to Fred: Remus and Tonks, pale and still and peaceful-looking, apparently asleep beneath the dark, enchanted ceiling.
He didn't see, couldn't see, the shivering of light over Remus and Tonks, as their images wavered.
Tonks and Remus were still fighting their way across the courtyard, the Librarian tossing his bomblets wherever he could find space, when Harry climbed the stairs to Dumbledore's office. They crossed under the staircase and entered the Great Hall when he was placing Snape's memories in the Pensieve. He saw his young mother meeting Snape; he saw his father and his father's friends – Sirius! begin their taunting on the Hogwarts Express. The years of Snape's life rolled on, and Harry learned that he had betrayed his parents to Voldemort. Snape's life as a spy, and his unexpectedly changed role in Dumbledore's death. If the Pensieve was to be believed, (and why should Pensieve memories not be believed?) Dumbledore had asked Snape to kill him, as a mercy, and to spare Draco's soul. Harry had saved Draco not an hour ago; it seemed he took a lot of saving from himself.
Then the betrayal of everything Harry had believed about Dumbledore. About himself, about the exact reason he'd been taken from the Dursleys back in the wizarding world.
"While that fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to and protected by Harry, Lord Voldemort cannot die."
"So the boy . . .the boy must die?" asked Snape.
"And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential."
"I thought . . .all these years . . .that we were protecting him for her. For Lily."
"We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him," said Dumbledore. "Meanwhile the connection between them grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth. Sometimes I have thought he suspects it himself."
"You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment? You have used me. I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter's son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter…
FINALLY THE TRUTH.
He was never meant to survive. He was the Horcrux finding all the other Horcruxes, and the span of his life had been determined by the length of time it took him to destroy them. There was one left besides himself: Nagini. Someone else must kill her; he must get word to them. His was a different path. He swung the Invisibility Cloak over himself and left the castle. He passed Ginny, and Hagrid's hut. Companions appeared beside him - James, Sirius, Lily, neither ghost nor truly flesh. Was there another? A wavering form which didn't solidify; it might have been Lupin. He passed the Death Eaters and entered the clearing where Voldemort sat.
"No sign of him, my Lord," said Bellatrix.
In a multiverse not far away, DEATH shook Harry's hourglass. The last grains hovered in the top bulb, but they did not fall. A bluish swirl began to surround them. DEATH was reminded of Samuel Vimes, who had had so many near-death experiences he'd come to think of them of near-Vimes experiences. Now it seemed there might be another. This boy, not quite a man - DEATH couldn't smile, having only a skull and jaws, but if he could - he might be having a near-Harry experience.
"I thought he would come," said Voldemort in his high clear voice. "I expected him to come."
Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it beneath his robes.
"I was, it seems . . .mistaken," said Voldmort.
"YOU WEREN'T."