70
Alice ran from the Fiendfyre, any chance she might have had of sticking with Snape effectively annihilated as flames crashed across the ground between them before blazing almost sky-high. She didn't look back; the fire was too blinding. She just ran, hoping Snape had made it, hoping Barty Crouch, Jr. hadn't, and trying not to panic at the ominous sight of Dementors fleeing the fire all around her.
Running without a mouth left her desperate for air, the lingering taste of blood on her tongue a constant sickening reminder of what she had just suffered, of her helplessness as Barty Crouch cut and tortured her. Her hummingbirds flickered, and she banished the memory, swallowing the blood as well as she could without a mouth and thanking Merlin Snape wasn't one to hold a grudge. She'd hexed him badly after the incident with Lily in their fifth year, and here he was, saving her from potentially irreparable facial damage and possibly even from the Kiss. She owed him a gift basket if they ever got out of this horrid place. A big one.
The Dementors' mist rolled around her, faster than she was, leaving her feeling chilled and, completely illogically, vulnerable, as if the mist had offered some protection from the fire. There was an openness behind her, and almost a sense of light, but even as she turned toward it, she felt something red shoot past her face, burning her cheek.
She stumbled, out of terror more than anything, expecting the Fiendfyre to swallow her whole. But when she turned it wasn't Fiendfyre she saw, it was Lucius Malfoy racing toward her, his arm raised to cast another spell. She saw the green forming at the tip of his wand, heard the words on his lips, and staggered to her feet again, dodging and trying to gasp for air through her nose.
She was at the edge of the mist, faint hints of daylight pouring in around her even as the Dementors' chill remained. As she twisted to fire a spell back at Malfoy, she felt the mist changing course, moving back toward the Fiendfyre, or where the Fiendfyre had been.
Had Crouch ended the spell, then? Or was he dead? Would that alone have ended the Fiendfyre? She thought it could survive after the caster's death...
Her hummingbirds guarded her, and she managed a Shield Charm and vicious Cutting Curse within seconds of each other, but Malfoy dodged the latter and circumvented the former by cursing the ground beneath her feet. Snakes burst out of the frozen earth, striking at her as she stumbled backward. She felt a hand touch her arm, and flinched at its clamminess, easy to feel through her torn robes.
She just wanted to get out of here.
But it was like Moody's training exercises. There was no end. Through the mist, she saw another Death Eater materialize, this one unrecognizable, his face burned. He lashed out at her even as Malfoy did, and despite all her training, despite her fury and her skill, she found herself stumbling backward into the mist, barely able to defend herself, let alone take down the Dark wizards it was her duty and her job to fight.
And it didn't matter what she did, how much she retreated - they could still see her, because of her Patronuses. She didn't realize this until she heard one of them shout, "There - the lights!" and promptly found herself the target of half a dozen blazing spells. As soon as she did, she let out a relieved breath through her nose, knowing she could beat them.
Keeping only one small hummingbird to herself, concealed behind her body, she sent the rest flitting away to her left, into the mist. And the Death Eaters, to her satisfaction, followed.
She was careful to keep her body between the Death Eaters and the Patronus that had stayed with her, and not once did they turn back, though she knew there must be some small glow against the mist. Maybe they assumed it was daylight creeping in; maybe they were too focused on the glow ahead of them to look behind. In either case, Alice was the one with the advantage now.
She took Malfoy down first, because the other one was so clearly injured, and therefore, she hoped, the lesser threat. Her paralysis spell struck Malfoy right in the middle of his back, bringing him down in a crunch of snow that drew his friend's attention immediately.
But rather than turn to fight Alice, he dodged aside, into the mist, out of sight. Alice sank into a crouch, keeping the Patronus within the shadow of her body, sending the flock out into the mist to either find or at the very least disorient the other Death Eater.
Yet her ploy, so successful the first time, seemed useless now. The Death Eater didn't take the bait. Raising her wand, she was halfway through casting Homenum Revelio when she felt the tingle of that same spell washing over her.
She dodged immediately, and a spell burst into the snow where she had just been crouching. Homenum Revelio! she thought immediately, and this time it was she who caught him. She cast a fire spell at him, something broader than a simple curse, and heard him let out a furious shriek as the flames caught his robes. Then she was running at him, firing curse after curse before he could banish the fire and disappear back into the mist.
But he was fast, too. She had to throw herself sideways to avoid a Killing Curse, and barely got a Shield Charm up before he sent a fire curse right back at her, the flames licking around the edges of her shield with alarming heat.
She was winning, though. He was still on fire, still struggling to put it out in between shooting spells at her. She caught his arm with a paralysis spell, and watched in satisfaction as his wand dropped to the snow.
Then a spell came wheeling out of the mist to strike him in the back, dropping him.
"Hey!" she tried to exclaim, indignant that the final victory had been taken from her, but her sealed mouth stopped the sound. Scowling, she peered into the mist for her would-be rescuer, already making out the shapes of multiple Patronuses in the mist.
Of course. James Potter and Sirius Black. And the weird Peverell boy.
"Lily?" James called out.
Alice sent a couple of hummingbird Patronuses flitting toward his face. She heard Sirius say, "It's Alice," his tone one of distinct disappointment.
"Is Lily with you?" James asked, before catching sight of her face and gasping. "What happened to your mouth?"
Alice glared at him. With so many Patronuses around, she felt fairly confident she could reverse Prince's Transfiguration safely, and did so with a decisive wave of her wand. "Nice to see you, too," she said. "No, I haven't seen Lily - I saw Snape a few minutes ago, and Hermione Granger a few minutes before that, but we all keep getting separated."
The Peverell boy brightened at the mention of his friends, but neither James nor Sirius looked particularly relieved. "C'mon," James said. "Let's keep looking." His stag Patronus kicked its hoof against the air, looking impatient.
"What about the Death Eaters?" Alice asked.
"You're the Auror," James said. "Do whatever you want. We need to find Lily."
Alice hesitated, but given the choice between staying behind to secure the Death Eaters and finding her best friend, she wasn't sure she could put being an Auror first.
"Let's just tie them up," Peverell said, apparently more capable of recognizing the necessity of dealing with them.
"All right," Alice said. "Malfoy's over there…"
They secured the Death Eaters quickly, removing their wands (Alice resisted the urge to snap them) and leaving them to the Dementors, fully aware that the Dementors might not be willing to treat them as allies indefinitely.
"Serves them right," Alice muttered.
"Glutino!" Peverell said, and Alice watched in dissatisfaction as Malfoy's lips glued themselves together. Rolling her eyes, she did the same for the burned Death Eater. He moaned, half-conscious, as the spell pulled at his burned flesh.
"All right," Alice said, looking around. Sirius and James were long gone. "Which way'd they go?"
Her hummingbirds answered before Peverell could, darting off into the mist before looking back.
"Guess it's that way," she said.
Savage woke in a heap of pain and snow, her lungs desperate for air, her bruised, mouthless body barely able to provide it. She understood clearly now why Hermione Granger had panicked in the Ministry interrogation room; the sensation of not being able to draw in a full breath was torturous, even more so because she knew she had been suffering like this even before she regained consciousness.
How long she had been lying in the snow, she didn't know. She could still feel the wretched cold of the Dementors, could see their shadows above her, although none had bothered to come close to a victim they could not Kiss. There was a sense of movement, of currents of purpose, in the shadows above her. The Dementors were no longer passive, hungry guards. They were actively seeking their prey.
Grunting against the pain, Savage sat up, her ribs aching, her head pounding, her heart despairing and miserable. But the Dementors' attention was not on her, their hungry mouths not gaping in quest of her hope and happiness, and she grasped at the traces that remained, trying to hold them close. She needed to preserve her sense of self, if she was ever going to conjure a Patronus.
But her wand was not in her hand. She vaguely remembered it slipping from her fingers as the Dementors converged on her, remembered it falling from the sky, forever out of reach. She had still had a mouth then, hadn't she? How had her mouth been conjured away?
There was only one answer. Prince - Prince must have done this. Prince had saved her yet again. But where was he? Had he slowed her descent as she fell? Somehow, she didn't think so. She wouldn't be so battered if he had. She had fallen, and the fall had been just short enough that it hadn't broken every bone in her body. The snow, of course, had helped.
But she needed to find her wand. Before searching for anyone else, Prince or Alice or anyone, she needed to be armed, with not just a wand but a Patronus. There was only so much of this a human could take, and Savage could already feel her control spiraling away from her, cold memories rising up to choke her.
With an effort, she suppressed them. Turning her head made her dizzy, but she forced herself to look at the snow around her, searching for any sign of her wand. It couldn't have fallen far from her. She didn't think the Dementors had carried her away from where she had dropped it. The whole experience was a miasma of despair and horror in her mind, but there was no reason the Dementors should have taken her anywhere else. There was no reason they should have done anything but try to Kiss her.
Her fingers searched the snow, finding nothing, not even a fallen twig to give her false hope. The snow was smooth and unbroken.
She was still too dizzy to stand, so she crawled instead, stretching her hands out before her, blinking in the gloom and trying to make out anything besides the gray of the Dementors and the faded white of the snow. Nothing. The entire world was formless. And all around her, there was silence, broken only by the occasional rattling breath from above.
Her memories were beginning to creep over her again when she heard, above the rattling, the tiniest whimper, like a little baby. For a moment she dismissed it; she must surely be hallucinating, on the edge of some memory she had not yet identified. But there it was again - a pitiful sound, helpless and vulnerable. It was impossible to ignore. Abandoning the search for her wand, Savage turned this way and that, trying to find the source of the whimpering.
Her fingers were brushing snow aside almost at random when she saw, in the midst of the gloom, a strange orange tuft of fur trembling just a few inches away.
Fiend, she thought, even as the creature emitted another pitiful mew. She was mostly buried in snow, but Savage scooped this away and lifted the kitten up to her chest, automatically trying to say something comforting and managing only a mouthless mewling sound herself.
But the kitten seemed to recognize her, and burrowed into her robes. Savage tried to check her for injuries, but the Kneazle seemed more interested in warmth than anything. Her mewling almost immediately intensified to a demanding yowl. She wanted something.
Prince, of course.
Savage looked around again, already knowing the shapeless snow hadn't changed from the last time she looked. Prince was nowhere to be seen. And Savage wouldn't be any good to him even if she found him, without a wand.
But luck seemed to be with her, now that she had the quivering kitten concealed at her chest. Her wand was sticking out of the snow not five feet away. She grasped it with a feeling of triumph that would have manifested in a smile, if her mouth had not been a stretch of blank skin.
It was perhaps a risk, but the moment she conjured her Patronus, she reverted her face back to its proper form. Her deep breath sent pain racing along her ribs, but she didn't care.
"That's better," she said, patting the lump of a kitten beneath her robes. "Now, let's find your Prince."
It was easier said than done. Her first dozen Homenum Revelio spells revealed nothing, and even the brilliant light of her tiger Patronus illuminated nothing but the endless mist. She had no firm sense of where she was; Alice had veered off course when the Dementors attacked them, and though Savage could identify true north with a simple spell, she had no idea where she was in relation to the mountain with the Death Eaters' cave.
There was nothing to do but stagger along and keep searching.
She moved in ever-widening circles out from where she had fallen. It was time-consuming, perhaps a waste of her limited energy, but she was having trouble concentrating through the pain, and picking a direction would have been futile; she had no idea where her allies might be. Her progress was easy enough to track, given the dragging footprints she left in the snow. With each successive circle, she moved a little farther from where she had fallen, the range of her Homenum Revelio expanding into the mist.
Fiend, though still tucked within her robes, had poked her head out and was alternately eyeing the tiger Patronus and surveying the mist with plaintive mews. Savage was fairly certain, from all the wriggling, that Fiend wasn't injured. The mewling didn't sound pained, only worried.
Worried for Prince. Savage wished she knew what had happened. She wished she knew a lot of things. How this flying, healing, Fiendfyre-casting, self-proclaimed former spy had managed to save her after the Dementors had taken her. Where he had come from, and who he really was. How he was related to Severus Snape.
Most of all, whether he was still alive, and un-Kissed.
And Alice - Alice had still been on broomstick, the last Savage remembered. Was she still? And what about the others, Prince's allies, all those teenagers? How far did this mist extend?
Even with her tiger Patronus guarding her, she could feel the weight of the mist pressing down on her, as if her aching body was actually being crushed beneath it. She felt trapped, claustrophobic even with her breathing so labored, and most of all frustrated by the knowledge that if the mist would just clear, she could likely see everyone she was looking for, dead or alive. It was morning, after all. Bright daylight should have illuminated everything, and she still had her Omnioculars in her pocket. Instead she was surrounded on every side by this hideous gloom.
She shook away the weight of it, forcing herself to ignore the pain in her limbs and focus on her task. Her circling had begun to take her past identifiable geographic features - trees over here, a frozen stream over there - and she was almost certain the Death Eaters' cave was to the east of her, and that she was currently circling through the valley sprawled out beneath it. It felt better to know - or at least to suspect - the location of the cave. If Voldemort returned, he would surely go there first, and very little could be worse than stumbling on him unawares, especially if what Prince had said about his invincibility was true.
And that was another problem, one that she needed to discuss - with Prince, with Moody, with anyone who truly wanted Voldemort dead. If Voldemort had indeed taken steps to protect himself, then how could they win? Did Prince know how to remove those protections? Setting aside her curiosity about him as a person, finding him was undeniably a tactical necessity. He had valuable intelligence, and it was about time someone sat him down and made him talk.
She imagined those dark eyes staring at her from across an interrogation room, and told herself to get a grip. Her head was spinning though, and she was starting to suspect she had a concussion. And those dark eyes were so unsettling.
Ahead of her, the silver tiger suddenly turned its head, at the same moment Fiend twisted against Savage's neck and meowed. Startled, but sensing from her tiger's calm patience that this was not a threat, Savage peered in the direction the two felines were looking, waiting for something to appear.
It did, only moments later: a faint white glow that grew stronger and brighter as it illuminated the mist, before the Dementors drew back, the mist unfolding to reveal a silver doe.
The voice it emitted was young and female. "Lily and Ginny are here. Please follow me."
Savage nodded, her tiger falling into stride beside the doe. It was clever of them, sending the doe to find her. She should have done the same, rather than wandering in those circles. She tried to draw in a deep breath, past her injured ribs, but couldn't breathe fully. It was a comfort to have the fuzzy warmth of the Kneazle kitten pressed against her throat. Between that and the undulating, mesmerizing glow of her tiger, she felt a sense of safety surrounding her.
Definitely a concussion.
Beyond the glow of the Patronuses, she saw the first hint of another light, orange and flickering. Fire. She wanted nothing more than to curl up beside it. But no; they had to get out of here, had to find the others. They could send the doe out again, start tracking down the rest of their allies. Between the three of them, they could conjure enough Patronuses to spare.
"Look!" a girl's voice said - not Lily, she thought. Ginny. Ginny Peverell.
"Who is it?"
"It's a tiger - I think that's Savage's."
"Yes, it's me," Savage said. Her voice was rough and punctuated by her uneven breathing, but the girls, in sight now, both looked relieved.
"You look awful," Ginny said. "Sit down, let's have a look."
Savage was guiltily aware that she, the Auror, should have been taking charge of the situation, not this adolescent girl.
"I don't know anything about healing," Ginny said, with a grim look. "You've got blood on the back of your head, did you know that?"
"I can help," Lily said, coming closer. "I'm not an expert or anything, but I know a few of the basic charms."
"Send the doe out again," Savage said. That was the first priority. "Find the others."
"Find whoever's closest," Lily said, glancing at her doe. It nodded and bounded away into the mist.
"The horse, too," Savage said. "The tiger will be enough for us."
"You heard her," Ginny said, and the horse set off at a gallop.
"All right," Lily said, "let's see what we can do about -"
Fiend yowled suddenly, her fur on end, her claws digging into Savage's throat. Ginny reacted first, grabbing Lily and throwing her down into the snow. Savage ducked a moment later, just before a spell struck the campfire and exploded.
Lily cried out. Ginny dragged her away from the fire, and Savage, keenly aware that there was now only one Patronus among them, crawled after them, casting a Shield Charm over the girls and flinching as a spell cracked off it only half a second later.
She couldn't see their attackers. The fire was reflecting off the mist, rendering it opaque, and what was worse, she couldn't extinguish it; whatever their attacker had done had rendered it brighter and stronger, making it impossible to hide.
Another spell struck the Shield Charm, only a second before a jet of red light exploded in the snow in front of Savage's face. She had seen where it was coming from, though, and fired off an answering spell, hearing the crunch of snow as someone either fell or dodged out of the way. Then there was nothing but flashes of light, the flickering cracks of the duel, Savage half-lying, half-crouching in a dizzy, furious heap as she jabbed her wand again and again in the direction of the enemy.
But the enemy, unsurprisingly, was winning. Savage suspected there was only one Death Eater darting back and forth in the mist, but the bastard was fast, and clearly skilled. It was all Savage could do to hold the Death Eater's attention, to hopefully give the girls a chance to get away.
But they couldn't go far. The tiger Patronus was racing back and forth through the air, holding the Dementors back first here, then there, but always just barely in time; sooner or later either the girls or Savage would be unprotected, and she wasn't sure they could call their Patronuses back.
It was when a Dementor came close enough to be clawed by Fiend that Savage, ducking down into the snow, ceased her relentless dueling just long enough to Transfigure her face again. The lack of air was an immediate hindrance, but it was better than a lack of soul.
Now she had to move, though. Her seconds of cease-fire had given the Death Eater the chance to go after the girls, and that was exactly what the scum had done. Savage staggered to her feet, firing another curse in the direction the Death Eater's curses were coming from, though she still had yet to see the Death Eater's face. Fiend was with her, leading her, she hoped, toward the girls, who had masked their footprints and were nowhere to be seen.
Savage's tiger was still bolting overhead, sweeping the space in circles, but whether Ginny and Lily were still within that circle was difficult to tell. Changing course, Savage ran not after Fiend, but straight at the Death Eater, feeling her tiger compensate for the new direction, and seeing at last in the silver glow the first hint of her enemy.
The figure was small. Even as the light struck her, Savage heard a cackle, and knew exactly who she was dealing with.
Bellatrix Lestrange.
For a moment, Savage was caught off guard: she and Prince had, after all, left Bellatrix wandless, paralyzed, and Disillusioned in the snow. But someone must have found her and freed her, or else she had somehow managed to free herself, and somehow she had acquired a wand. At any rate, the other witch must have known she was visible now, for she made no further attempt at concealment. She laughed again, an angry, taunting laugh that seemed to feed the spells breaking out of her wand. Savage blocked them, one after another, but Bellatrix was fast. Savage would have been a match for her on a good day, but this was not a good day, and she had the distinct, unnerving impression that Bellatrix was toying with her.
Savage gritted her teeth. If this was the end, so be it. But she would be taking this Death Eater filth down with her.
"Run, Lily," Ginny whispered in her ear. They were Disillusioned, hidden in the snow, protected by the ever-circling tiger that just barely managed to include them in the circle of its patrol. But they could hear Savage and Bellatrix dueling behind them, and there could be no doubt that Savage, bleeding and barely able to breathe, was going to lose. Ginny had to go back.
And they had just seen the one thing that might protect them - there, in the distance, the tiny white glow of a Patronus. Someone was there.
"You have to run," Ginny said again. "If Savage dies, that tiger'll go out…"
She didn't have to explain what would happen then. They would both be defenseless.
"You've just got to make a run for it," Ginny said.
Lily nodded, glancing up at the tiger, wondering how far it would follow her, how soon it would turn back to return to its caster. She knew Hermione Granger had Transfigured her mouth away, but she wasn't sure of the incantation, and didn't dare try it. She needed the tiger.
"Please help me," she whispered.
Then she ran. The tiger followed, its light reflected in the snow Lily's feet kicked up, sparkling with incongruous beauty in the midst of all this horror. In the snow ahead, Lily saw the Kneazle kitten that had been curled up at Savage's neck, its orange fur a comforting splash of color in the gray and white gloom. She ran after it, as fast as she could, stumbling but catching herself, seeing her shadow grow longer and longer ahead of her as the tiger started to turn back, as the mist started closing in.
"So close!" she whispered to herself, even as the Kneazle looked back at her, yellow eyes glinting. Beyond it, she could see the glow of the new Patronus. "Help!"
The Patronus moved at once, darting with grace and purpose that was so familiar Lily almost laughed. It was her Patronus. So it had found someone - someone else was safe.
The Dementors were reaching for her, but the doe swept through them, circling back around and running back the way it had come.
"Wait!" Lily gasped out, but a moment later her mind caught up. It must have left someone behind, someone who was unprotected - it was racing back and forth, trying to guard them both.
But now she was alone, and the Dementors were close, too close. The tiger had left her, her doe had left her, even the Kneazle was too far away…
Lily wasn't sure when her legs gave out. Cold surrounded her, cold and darkness, and she could feel the Dementors and hear the Death Eaters laughing. Did they have her again - had they caught her? Terror seized her, but she couldn't move. Her eyes were shut tight. She thought she felt hands grasping her, cold, clammy hands…
Then light burst over her again, pure and white as moonlight on snow. It was a stag. "James," she whispered.
The Dementors were gone. Lily could see her doe ahead, circling something, but looking as though it wanted to come back to her. Shivering, struck by waves of gratitude and lingering terror, she climbed to her feet and started stumbling toward her doe. The stag stayed right beside her.
But who was the doe guarding? She could see nothing, only a stretch of ruffled snow, as if someone had been rolling around in it. And was that a boot?
She made it the last few yards to where the boot was lying, and collapsed beside it, only to cry out as she realized she had fallen on top of someone - someone lying under the snow. Before she could even begin to start uncovering the person, the kitten started burrowing into the snow, her meows growing more and more muffled until only her tufted tail was visible.
Shaking herself, panting from the run, Lily glanced behind her, searching for Savage's Patronus, but seeing only the distant reddish glow of the fire. Her heart clenched. What if Savage hadn't made it? And Ginny - what about Ginny?
A groan from the figure beside her drew her attention away from the duel she could no longer see, back to the person lying in the snow. Quickly, she started brushing the snow aside, uncovering black robes, black hair - it was Snape.
With an effort, she rolled him over, already knowing which Snape it was, but brushing the snow out of his face to be sure. Yes, there he was - the old Snape. Stranger by far than the already strange Severus she had grown up with.
His eyes flickered open, blinking snow away and searching in a dazed, frantic way for whoever had woken him. It was only then that she remembered the Disillusionment Charm concealing her.
She tapped the top of her head with her wand, and felt the trickle of the counterspell wash over her. Snape's eyes focused on her immediately. "Lily."