There is Danger Ahead
Together, Voldemort and Dolohov had descended deeper into the mountain, their wands lighting the way. They had reached it without incident, though the fighting was very fierce all along the front, a matter hand to hand, knife to knife, with every weapon mustered at point-blank range. His troops were trying to fight their way through to join up with them even now, and cut the 25th Corps off after the impudent daring of their offensive.
And that entire world seemed to recede further and further into a distant memory, the closer to that horrifying Door they reached.
The damage to the halls was unrepaired. Impossibly ancient, the collapsed stone served as a reminder of the punishing battle with Bellatrix and Hermione that had been fought here. Dolohov swore he could remember the exact spot where that dark tendril of power had obliterated Amycus for all time.
The two paused, and Voldemort turned to face him, directly before the door. It made Dolohov uncomfortable. He had never stood this close to it before, and the last time it opened, anyone who had stood this close would have been obliterated by the spreading tendrils.
"My Good Man, you will be remembered as the foremost of my servants, the finest of my Lieutenants. I will praise you, and your line will long prosper," Voldemort declared, in a rare example from his reptilian lips, of extravagant flattery.
"My Lord, what is your command?"
Voldemort produced an obsidian dagger, set in a hilt which glistered and glimmered with sigils, wrapped with leather made of human skin.
Dolohov stared, feeling very cold and, dare he admit it to himself, very nervous. "M'lord?"
"Take it. Kneel."
There was no negotiation or hesitation. Dolohov took the dagger, and knelt.
And then Voldemort knelt in front of him. He began to lay out, carefully, some ritual elements, which seemed made from human bone, and other things, more ancient and more magical. He traced, in an indecipherable sigil, some ooze upon the black stones. The rim of the door began to glow with a blue light.
"When I tell you, stab me in the heart as firmly as you can, Dolohov."
"My Lord?"
" Obey! When I tell you, stab me as firmly in the heart as you can," Voldemort's eyes blazed with fury. "The door must not be allowed to open all the way. It must not be allowed to open all the way. Do you understand me? I will not have the power to close it when it begins to open. Only stabbing me through the heart with an obsidian blade will do it, and you must do it before the door opens fully, do you understand me?"
You must act precisely and quickly to save the world from that nightmare, Dolohov thought, with a cool chill all through his soul, as he readied the dagger. "I am ready, My Lord. I will do as I am commanded."
"Good." Voldemort began the ceremony then, and as he did the blue glow spread through the caverns. With it, came a rumbling through the mountain, from an unknown source. It did not seem to emanate from the door. He was now chanting, in an unfathomable, incomprehensible tongue. And then he ripped the upper part of his robes off, and bared his chest.
The door's frame glowed, but the door itself remained an impossible pitch black, a surface so smooth that it was like it didn't exist, with no imperfections at all in it, which swallowed up the light.
And then it began to open. The crack revealed a star, millions of stars, billions. Dolohov, in a wordless horror, saw entire galaxies in the crack in the door. He saw the infinite vastness of sidereal space seem to stretch out over them as a tendril, the first, smallest tendril began to appear.
The door yawed wider, and the tendril shot out—toward his Lord and Master. Oh Gods…
There were no Gods here. But unlike the luckless Amycus, Voldemort had no fear, and Dolohov had no cause to fear for him. The whisper of a smallest touch of the darkness came, but instead of vanishing Voldemort entirely, there was a gasp, almost erotic, from him. " Close the door!" He screamed.
Dolohov plunged the blade deep into Voldemort's heart.
The tendril, which had been growing, which had been starting to merge with Voldemort's body, which had been turning it into a black shadow, abruptly vanished. The door slammed closed, with a dull strange thud which seemed to reverberate through the entire Earth.
Dolohov drew in a ragged, desperate breath, and looked with horror to his Master and to what he had done.
But Voldemort just looked down, to where black ichor gently oozed from the wound in his chest, and laughed. "Very good, my good man. You struck cleaning, when you needed to."
And then the Dark Lord toppled over, gasping, groaning, thrashing, writhing. From his shoulders, baby snakes thrust their way from the bare skin and began to grow, hissing and writhing.
His eyes turned solid black.
"Pull the dagger… Pull it…" Voldemort commanded in soft, ragged gasps as he spasmed on the rock.
Dolohov lunged forward and extracted it from the snakes, which grew to full size from his Lord and Master's shoulders.
Voldemort calmed, and ceased to be in pain, and after a few minutes of resting and breathing hard, extended his hand for the dagger, which Dolohov wordlessly returned to him.
"Help me, my good man, for I am weak now… But must soon to be strong, to destroy the impertinent traitor."
"My Lord?"
Voldemort struck him. "You fool. Bellatrix. She has taken advantage of my weakness… She is going for Nagini, but I am in no condition to stop her. Help me to be ready. They are coming. This is not the end—it is only the beginning of the end. We must be ready to face them!"
One window-ledge to the next, scrambling off of the lintels and featherweighting herself with a spell so she could throw herself up to the next level, then doing it again. Spells and bullets skittered off the rock and at each ledge she flung out a Protego, a quick, frantic shield, while nonverbal magic shot smoke around her to obscure herself.
It was like swimming uphill. She loved every minute of it, how couldn't she? The window in front of her was the blasted open one, the place they were keeping Nagini, and she made her last lunge, taking the time to spin around behind her and catch someone running through the courtyard with a Confrigo. Serves you right to expose yourself. Triumphant, she continued the follow-through of her wand motion to spin toward the entrance, and throw herself into the already-shattered room.
Bellatrix's wild, magically enhanced lunge up the wall of the building got her into the room all right—and face to face with a giant magical snake that she'd just irritated, and the two or three shocked Aurors who hadn't been defenestrated and were trying to figure out what to do with the suddenly hostile Nagini.
Nagini, however, knew what to do with her. The massive snake immediately lunged, and began to coil around Bellatrix, leaving the elder witch with a strangled cry before her chest was sharply constricted.
"Oh, ugh, fuck!" And then she could barely draw breath at all.
It did, however, force both of the enemy wizards to back down from their attacks. They understood that they were under absolutely clear instructions that if Nagini was harmed in the slightest, their lives would be forfeit.
So they had no way to attack her with Nagini wrapped around her body. Convenient. I'll just die by fucking snake! Her eyes rolled and she saw ceiling panels. Fucking muggle ceiling panels. They looked like the cheapest, most awful and forlorn things, hanging in strips of cheap metal. I spit on you, Riddle, your last command post has cheap muggle ceiling tiles. Her eyes started to black out.
But Tamar was right behind her, having left a chaos of explosions and fire-causing spells behind her across the quadrangle. As the Georgian witch lunged through the smashed window, she snapped a Bombarda straight between the two Morsmordre Aurors, who couldn't range on her with Nagini, still busily squeezing the life out of Bellatrix, in the way.
Bellatrix gasped for breath and tried to ask for help. Nagini was getting ready to lunge with her teeth.
Then a Confrigo set one of the bowled over wizards on fire.
Let her work, Bellatrix thought, and forced herself to concentrate with all of her strength. Her magical golden arm, after all, was not being crushed, not being denied oxygen, and had the strength she needed in it.
She jabbed her metal thumb into Nagini's throat, and pushed. The snake hissed, and screamed. As Nagini writhed, Bellatrix attempted an offhand Accio—summing her trapped wand from one hand to the other.
Gleaming gold held the bent wood.
"Stupefy!"
The flash of green behind them mercifully came from Tamar's direction, and signalled an end to that side of the fight, as Nagini relaxed around her. Shouts and pounding feet echoed from below. They would not have peace for long.
"Bellatrix?" Tamar turned toward her, dusting off her trench coat with a dapper turn of her off-hand, and her expression relaxing when she saw the woman alive, with Nagini stupefied. "Ah, good."
Bellatrix couldn't resist a defiant smirk, gasping air urgently through her lungs and forcing the words out for sheer spite's sake, at the universe, not Tamar, who she was starting to like. " As long as she's wrapped around me, it will be easy to get out of here."
"Well, I suppose you're right." Tamar reached out and took her arm.
Bellatrix didn't have enough time to fully process that it was probably an awful idea to be dragged sidealong when you had just nearly had the life choked out of you by a giant snake, who was still constricting your breathing.
So she got sick and fainted as they disapparated and reappeared straightaway in Van.
Larissa was proud of the fact that Master Flyorov had taught her how to milk a cow. Though she had never explained to her parents that a muggleborn professor at Koldovstoretz had decided to help explain to her how animal husbandry could be used in Shamanry by having her spend a fortnight at a Kolkhoz in the fast-vanishing days of the Soviet power.
Larissa had never quite gotten used to the idea of being a farmgirl, though, and especially in this case she had had to use magic from the first to calm the cow, which was, here in Chernosvyat, essentially feral. And she had too much sympathy for the cow to want to make a regular practice of this anyway—she supposed that if she were a wild animal, she'd have tried to kill anyone who grabbed her tits.
That's probably just how tired you are, she objected silently to herself at the mildly absurd thought. There was still a significant uncertainty in how to actually take down Voldemort, as the servant of the monstrous power. From time to time, Larissa thought back, hard, to try and remember in Musasir if she had seen a Golden Mace.
Well, no matter, it will come together or it won't. She finished the milking and checked her chrono, worried about the time. They would still have to return to Yerevan, and then make their way from there to Van. And it would be critical to know what the others had learned as well and to put it together—all of which required time.
Then Ron spoke up. "I see a light, crossing the field. Someone's coming."
Larissa spun up and away from the cow, turned to face the light, a twitch in her muscles, her wand ready. Draco swung in at her side, giving her a tight smile.
The group faced a man, white of beard, in wizarding robes like those of Persian, blue with the stars set in them. But he was there, and immediately recognisable. Ginny gasped.
The expression froze on Ron's face—one of horror and determination.
Harry stared in wonder, tinged with a rapidly growing sense of horror. "Dumbledore. Was this a dream? Am I still dead, but I was just dreaming before? I…"
"Ah, Harry," he shook his head and looked around the group, his expression somewhat blank, somewhat detached. "It would be best if we were all dreaming, in this terrible world. This is exactly what I was afraid of, so many years ago, when I faced Grindelwald," he became, looking around them, at the tears, the expressions of shock.
Draco, stiffly frozen against his fiancee's side, and Larissa, staring with cold composure, and her wand still firm in her hand.
"The magical and muggle worlds have collided, and the death and destruction has been unimaginable. And it won't stop here, Harry," he continued, sadly. "The kind of future Narcissa Malfoy envisions is one where magic is put in the service of a vision very, very similar to Grindelwald's. She proclaims her commitment for British democracy, but she will … Implement Gellert's vision, just with her hands concealed on Parliamentary levers of power, rather than openly displayed at the head of a mass movement."
"What's wrong with Grindelwald's vision? It was advocacy for a revolutionary vanguard of wizards to create a better future for all of humanity," Larissa finally spoke, and stepped into full view. "Many of my professors thought he had been led astray, but was by no means wrong. Technology and the wizarding world are coming to a collision, were, rather, before the war. The Statute can't hold in the face of General Artificial Intelligence. What are you doing here, Supreme Mugwump? What are you getting at?"
"How very much like a good Koldovstoretsy aristocrat you are," Dumbledore chuckled. "Indoctrinated in the Black Arts and radical social theory, and still a pureblood through and through, right at the side of young Mister Malfoy. Harry, these people are not your friends. Come with me, and we can find a way to end this war, without making the situation worse."
Harry was frozen in place, trembling. " You're dead," he finally said, quietly.
"You were, too."
"The Law of the Water of Death is clear," Harry mustered. "One at a time. How…?"
Oh, I think I know, and there's nothing good about it. Larissa's cold blue eyes were unblinking and her wand held firm as she stepped up toward Harry's side. "The Master of the Deathly Hallows is not the same as the Master of Death, Harry, Voldemort has all three and he serves the Darkness Between the Stars. He can use them in ways that no other living being can. Dumbledore is not truly alive and he is not truly here of his own free will."
Harry froze in place, the expression on his face widening, from shock and a growing sense of cold hatred. Larissa could see it so clearly.
He is an animated puppet of the Dark Lord, she thought to herself.
"How do you know, Larissa?" Harry finally forced himself to ask.
"She's a Dark witch herself, Harry," Dumbledore objected abruptly, as though he were trying to warn Harry of the Black Court being just as bad as Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Larissa forced the smirk down in response. The old man's wand in his hand was not his own, but another, unrecognised one, and it was trembling, old muscles and old skin faintly twitching that held it. "She has given herself to the service of dark powers and old Gods, as many wizards of Russia do. She's telling you things that are not there. You live. I live. Life is clearly possible after death."
"Larissa?" Harry repeated, not answering Dumbledore's appeal, his face a frozen rictus of emotional agony.
Wands held at ready, in hands tense, with muscles twitching. Perpetual gloom casting down upon them. Uncertainty. Misunderstanding. Misbelieving. Disbelieving. Hair triggers, ready at the first onset.
Harry was no neophyte.
In the stillness of the windless vale of Chernosvyat, there was nothing to distract them, no rustling of grass or leaf to dampen the sound of breathing of tension people, nothing to speed up the agonising, excruciating speed of the seconds.
Well, she'd have to explain sooner or later, and it would be like a standoff when she did. She had no choice, she had to answer, and so, she raised her voice, pleasantly accented English, to carry against the still air, to break the stillness, to explain the truth. A subtle tap of her wand, after all, and she could just barely make it out, bit her lip, let some blood trip out, let the pain focus her mind… See the black thread tracing back through the gloom and darkness toward the entrance of Chernosvyat. But it made it no easier to say, and she knew it would be a war of seconds, the moment she spoke. It felt like a trance. "Dumbledore has a-"
Ginny had grown into a tough young woman who could have easily played rugby if she had been a muggle. Without the war, she would have been a first-class Quidditch star. She was brave, but now her entire life had been consumed by this war, since her first year at Hogwarts.
She wasn't afraid of that, and Larissa opened her mouth to scream, to tell her not to, but the words couldn't come out in time.
Ginny flung herself in front of the green bolt that leapt from Dumbledore's wand, unmoving, without an incantation, and tore straight for Larissa Sergeivna Naryshkina before she could finish speaking. Her body was consumed with the green flame, and collapsed down the ground at Larissa's feet, dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Larissa's wand was already swinging up, the motion initiated the moment she had begun to speak, knowing it would be necessary, but too late, too late to save Ginny, too late to stop the nightmare. Her muscles were kicking in, corded and furious, the familiar lethal forms remembered. That woman had been one of her front comrades, through terrible adventures, for years. "Avada Kedavra!"
Green light tore from her wand, fuelled by terrible hate, a terrible hate as cool and steady as any bleak, bitter, black fury of the Iliad or the Oresteia.
Dumbledore dodged it, but he couldn't dodge the intersecting bolt of green light that had leapt from Ron's wand at the same time. He had been ready for the woman of the Black Court to resort to such a measure.
He had not been ready for Ginny.
He had not been ready for the Ron who had become Strelkov.
And he toppled down dead while Ron's face was locked in a rictus of agonised emotion, and a frozen look crossed the gap between Harry and Ron. A terrible silence reigned in the darkness of Chernosvyat.
It was done. The emotions surged up, and overcame the young Russian witch.
Larissa dropped to her knees, muttering, she couldn't do more. "she saved me, she saved me," she muttered again and again, almost in a trance, and quietly moved to Ginny's eyes, to close them, before staring at the body of Dumbledore. "There was a Black Thread leading out of Chernosvyat, a black thread leading to him, if only you'd seen the Black Thread, if only you'd seen the Black Thread..."
The tears were falling freely from Harry's eyes now. Ron, Larissa could see from her own place kneeling at Ginny's side, was too cold to cry about it.
"He desecrated Dumbledore's body, to divide us and defeat us," it was Draco who finally spoke, in a coolly measured and gentle voice, stepping up to her and putting his hands on her shoulders. He had grown so much! Even just since Larissa had known him—she was so proud!
"He desecrated his body, and … Why would anyone check the tombs, whose first assumption is that your enemy will raise the dead, restore them, make them whole, animate them with his own dark power, just to divide and destroy you?"
"Well." Larissa slowly rose to her feet with his help. "Harry, I promise you, hold yourself together, because today, we're going to kill Voldemort." She gently shook loose from Draco and stepped up to Harry, and gave him a hug, ignoring the violent way he squeezed at her, desperately, shaken loose from his shock, a terrible fury crossing his face. Then, she shook loose from the young Englishman, and looked to Ron next.
"We have to let her rest here," Larissa murmured, walking up to Ron's side. "Finish the battle first. The place she rests will forever be England, and we will bring her back, too. Promise."
At last Ron found words, still looking at the body of his kid sister. "If it gets Voldemort dead, I'll endure anything, now."
As they talked about Horcruxes, Hermione was starting to realising that there might be another problem with the situation. The obvious answer that Elahaïs had provided was an unwelcome one—there would be no stopping Azi Dahaka if Voldemort still had a Horcrux. They simply had to deal with Nagini, one way or another.
But in another way… "Okay," Hermione was saying, her mind racing from the tea, which Elahaïs constantly refilled for her, and urgently thinking about the battles that her other friends would be facing at that exact same moment. Dimly, she had an uncomfortable, disconcerting worry for Ginny, and passed by it, moving quickly on, unwilling to dwell upon it. "So, The Door closes when it has a link to this world which is controlled—which is given a finite end-point. When a Dedicant to Azi Dahaka gives themselves over, but then stops before their entire soul is consumed, by the sacrifice of their life. They then remain alive with Azi Dahaka's power, yes?"
"They do," Elahaïs looked at her with hooded eyes. "What are you getting at?"
"What's the control mechanism for the gate when we send Voldemort through it? How do we actually make it close?"
"A sacrifice gives you an impulsive moment of satiation for Azi Dahaka which allows the gate to be closed," Elahaïs replied. "So, you send him through, and it's done."
"But he's not alive anymore, not really," Tonks interjected. "Is he still a sacrifice?"
Elahaïs paused. "I don't know."
Hermione closed her eyes, and cursed softly. "it's not recorded, how they closed the gate when they sent Zahhak through it, is it?"
"It's not. My understanding is that it is sufficient; however, if someone sacrificed themselves during that battle… I would not know."
"Who would do that? It would mean the end of their soul?" Tonks' eyes glinted.
"Hmmm. Well. Voldemort hasn't given all of himself to Azi Dahaka. He still has his horcrux," Luna offered. "Nagini, I mean. Perhaps it was …"
"How could we sacrifice the rest of Voldemort's soul to Azi Dahaka without sacrificing Nagini herself?" Hermione interjected.
Luna didn't seem perturbed by the interruption. She gratefully accepted more tea from Elahaïs, looking thoughtful. "Snakes," she said at last, "shed their skin. If Nagini is a woman, the horcrux is a snake."
That was it. Hermione leapt to her feet, in excitement, she just couldn't resist. "Thank you, Luna! Elahaïs, do you know how the Water of Life will … Wait. We could just cut off Nagini's tail before we apply it. Humans don't have tails. Snakes can survive the loss of a tail, even if they can't regrow them like a lizard. It's not an essential part of who she is as a person. But it's an essential part of who she is as a snake. The horcrux might remain with that, and that we can force."
"I know you are enthusiastic to find a way out of this," Elahaïs murmured. "But it may be that the sacrifice is necessary. I am not sure that rampant speculation at this point will help. The Horcrux may not be tainted by Azi Dahaka, but it is still an essential part of Voldemort."
Hermione sighed, and cursed softly. "You're right. It's all unfounded speculation. But… But… There has to be more information out there. I mean, how did Voldemort find out about all of this?"
"Perhaps that's why Nagini is important," Luna looked up to her. "She might know That."
"She would have been there when he researched it," Tonks agreed.
"It's a bet we'll have to stake our lives on," Hermione finally acknowledged. "Well, then. Elahaïs, with your leave, we need to get to the caldera, and recover as much of the Water of Life as possible for this fight, and for healing Nagini."
"Be my guest," Elahaïs laughed softly. "I control the access. I have allowed MinKol to get the top, and the VDV, and you before."
"Then why," Tonks asked as they rose to go, "couldn't you stop Voldemort?"
"Again, the Dark Road—that, that I cannot control. But I will let none of the enemy through the Light Road for as long as I exist— they must come before me, and I am the guard in the mouth of Hell."