Shrrrick, shrrrick.
Shrrrick, shrrrick.
The noise dragged him relentlessly into the waking world. Drawing a shuddering breath, he gagged at the reek of blood and shit. His eyelids flew open. In a sliver of clear vision, a dark figure stood hunched under a flickering light; the rest was a blur. He attempted to lift his hands to adjust his glasses, then winced when a rope cut into his wrists. Tied behind the back.
Regarding the figure with apprehension, he forced his disoriented mind to think. Memories were slow to trickle into his heavy, swollen skull. Fighting off nausea, he swung his head back and forth to settle his askew glasses onto the bridge of his nose.
He almost wished he hadn't.
A guttering candle set in a niche cast its feeble light on what looked like a natural cavern. The rag-swathed figure had its humped back to him and was honing a pair of rusty cleavers against each other. Before it stood a rough-hewn table atop which gleamed something golden. To its right, lined along the wall, squatted misshapen barrels filled to the brim with things that didn't belong outside a body.
Swallowing back bile, Harry averted his eyes from the dark puddles that had formed on the floor underneath. He craned his neck to look around, then released a shaky sigh when he saw Tony, still in possession of all his limbs, slouched in a corner. Pushing toward him with his tied legs, he took stock of his inventory; finding his wand inside his malletspace nearly made him faint with relief.
It took six kicks before Tony finally stirred. "Papi," he mumbled with a dopey smile.
Harry added another kick for a nice, magically powerful number.
"Bwuh?" Tony exclaimed, his eyes shooting open. "Whass tha' stench?"
The rhythmic shrrricks ended in an abrupt clang, and the figure turned about, treating Harry to the sight of the ugliest physiognomy he had seen in his life. Sickle-sized warts protruded from its wrinkled, grubby skin, its misshapen potato of a nose crooked off center and overgrown with swampy nostril hair that dangled to its scabbed lips. One jaundiced eye bulged, while the other was hidden under an eyelid that sagged with the weight of an oozing boil.
"Holy shit," Tony breathed, "it's a hag."
Harry giggled. "I noticed."
Tony sent him a perturbed glance. "What the hell's wrong with you?"
Watching the creature shuffle toward him, he gave the question serious thought. "Hmm. Reckon I might have a concussion."
The hag hobbled up to him and pinched his cheek with its gnarled, yellow-nailed hand. He tilted his head back, his fingertips brushing the coarse rope tying his wrists to make sure he could vanish it at a moment's notice.
"Pasty and succulent," the hag croaked. "Not as tender as a child, but no leathery farmer either—your meat will make a yummy feast."
He stilled. "Huh... How come it's a bloody hag who speaks the best English around these parts?"
She leaned over him, and her putrid breath made him dry-heave. "Going to begin with your soft fingers, always a delicacy. Nibble off the skin, gnaw on the flesh, suck the marrow out of your juicy bones..."
Harry thrust his pelvis at her. "I got a juicy bone for you right here."
Her double chin wobbled in laughter. "Feisty, you are. Just the way I like them." Turning, she limped back to the table. "Mayhap I'll start with your friend, let your fear settle in... Fear always makes the meat that much sweeter."
"Mate, this isn't funny," Tony yelled as the hag picked up the cleavers. "Stop messing around and fucking blast her!"
"If you insist," he drawled. Pulling his bindings into his malletspace, he extended his right hand and materialized his wand. "Confringo!"
The hag barely opened her jagged maw before her upper body exploded, the spray of gore extinguishing the candle and plunging the cavern into darkness. Harry's glasses helpfully adjusted, showing him the chunks that splattered the table... and the crimson stain on the wall... and the pinkish blob that clung to the ceiling...
Squelch.
Well, the floor, now.
Wrenching his gaze away, he cleaned the blotches of blood off his robes before applying a Bubblehead Charm. The fresh air tasted unimaginably sweet.
"A... a little help?" Tony called out.
"One sec." He created a light for Tony's benefit, just in time for the hag's lower half to teeter and slump over with a wet thud.
"Bloody hell," Tony muttered, going green in the face. Taking short, rapid breaths, he stared assiduously at his lap while Harry freed him. "When I said blast, I meant it as a figure of speech. Couldn't you have used a nice clean Stunner?"
Vanishing the ropes with a tap, Harry tilted his head. "Are you seriously feeling sorry for a man-eater?"
"No, but I definitely feel sorry for myself for seeing that." Tony's hand dipped into his robes to retrieve a handkerchief, which he pressed over his mouth and nose. "See my wand anywhere?"
Harry went over to siphon the gore off the table. Once its scarred surface came into view, he discovered five wands along with a Potions knife, four golden teeth, and a fat ring with a Graphorn relief on its face. Appropriating the other wands, he extended Tony's back to him. "Oi, take a look at this."
"The Moravetz crest! She must've tricked them too... but then, where..." Tony's gaze zeroed in on the barrels. "Oh hell." The color drained from his face, and bracing himself against the table with one hand, he doubled over and vomited.
"Looks like they met"—Harry pushed up his glasses—"a graphic end." He frowned when all he got in response was violent retching. "Who's a weak-stomached sissy, again?"
"You're going to bring that up now?" Tony said hoarsely, before ducking his head to cough and spit.
"Oh, toughen up." Despite his feigned nonchalance, he studiously avoided looking at the barrels. "As soon as you're done puking your guts out, we'll give these poor sods a burial and return to the village wands blazing. Lenka has a lot to answer for."
They emerged in the middle of the gravel road with a reverberating crack of double Apparition. Not a soul was in sight, but wisps of smoke were rising gently from the chimneys of the houses ahead, their roofs colored orange by the impending sunset.
"Sure you're alright?" Tony asked. "That's a pretty big lump on your head."
Harry probed the back of his head. "I'm fine. Strike while the iron's hot, and all that."
Tony nodded, tiny sparks shooting out of his wand as he tapped it against his thigh. "So what's the plan?"
"If she's here, bag and tag." He started walking along the road. "If not... well, I'm sure someone will take exception to our presence, and we can just direct our questions at them."
A set of crunching footsteps joined his. "What, we're going to just waltz in there?"
"I'm not above making lots of noise and threatening to level some buildings. Whatever it takes to smoke her out." Harry's wand appeared in his palm, and he clenched it tight. "She can do weird wandless magic, so try to knock her out from a distance."
Tony made a strangled noise. "Not that I'm not plenty pissed off myself, but I'd rather not fight an entire village."
They neared the farmhouse on the outskirts, under the eaves of which the crone they had seen a couple days ago sat like a permanent fixture. At their approach, she stood and hobbled indoors, clutching her back and making unintelligible noises of distress.
Harry waved in her direction. "How many people have you seen carrying wands around here? I bet less than a quarter are actually magic. The rest are just living in the know."
"A shovel over the head would still hurt," Tony murmured, eyeing one such implement propped against the nearby barn. Nevertheless, he stayed at Harry's side as they strode openly into the main street.
Unlike the periphery, the center of the settlement teemed with locals enjoying the balmy evening after the day's toil. Children were playing hopscotch, filling the air with laughter. The windows of the houses shone with warm light, and appetizing smells wafted through the air.
They walked several dozen steps down the street before a surly man smoking outside his door spotted them. The cigarette fell from his lips as he stared at the wands in their hands before yelling to his neighbor.
More people turned their way, and a palpable wave of dread washed over the village. Mothers ushered their children indoors, window shutters banged closed, and in no time at all, the street became deserted. A little dumbfounded, Harry had to remind himself to keep moving as his gaze flitted around in search of Lenka's tangled brown mane.
As they passed the bend in the road, he saw a flash out of the corner of his eye, and his wand twitched to envelop them in a shield. Tearing it down as soon as the hex was blocked, he aimed at an ajar window of the cabin the attack had come from.
"Glacius."
The cone of glacial wind slammed the window fully open, coating the glass with rime and freezing stiff the curtains behind it. Swearing rang out inside. Harry kept a watchful eye on the cabin as he resumed walking, but no further attack came.
"She's over there!" Tony shouted loud enough to alert every last corner of the settlement.
Harry's head swiveled forward, and he broke into a run. Lenka stood in the front garden of a large house at the edge of the square, in the company of a rotund man with grizzled hair and the fanciest robes he had seen on a local. The man tugged her toward the house by her upper arm, speaking insistently, even as she dug her heels in and yelled at him.
Skidding to a halt, Harry flourished his wand and chanted a single verse of the Anti-Disapparition Jinx; it would only last a minute, but he hoped it would be enough. He then rushed after Tony, who was sprinting ahead like a man possessed.
Their approach stirred the locals into action. Lenka whirled around and vaulted over the fence, taking off across the square. The man was less sprightly, exiting through a gate and trampling onto the middle of the road with his wand raised.
"I won't let you hurt her!" His stubbly jowls quivered as his aim alternated between Harry and Tony. "Leave my village, butchers!"
Harry snapped off a Stunning Charm on the go; the man parried, but Tony's simultaneous Trip Jinx caught him in the flank, and as he flailed his arms to regain balance, a second jet of crimson laid him low.
"That's bloody rich, coming from you people," Harry snarled, resisting the urge to kick him as he passed. He consoled himself with the thought that the old fart was going to wake up with one hell of a headache after that fall.
Tony didn't waste his breath, his shoes steadily pounding the pavement. Lenka was almost across the square now, her coattails flapping as she bounded over the puddles from the recent rain. Harry put on a burst of speed as his extended wand spat out one Jelly-Legs Jinx after another; none connected, but it forced Lenka to glance over her shoulder and dance out of the way.
Lungs pumping like bellows, he urged his burning legs on. She neared the boundary of his Anti-Disapparition Jinx, and even if he tried to renew it, he was so winded he was likely to muck up the incantation.
Running up to the churchyard wall, Lenka jumped, but a jab of Tony's wand made groping hands burst out of the fieldstone and grab at her. Lenka crashed into them with a cry, then kicked off the wall, yanking her robes out of their stony grip and falling onto the pavement.
If she was hurt, she didn't show it, flipping over before the hands could reach her and dashing off along the wall. Tony continued reshaping it to bar her way, the grabs of the transfigured hands almost lecherous. It seemed less a structured spell and more a manifestation of his desires.
Harry worried for his best mate sometimes.
Tony grunted in frustration as Lenka continued weaving through the hands like an an acrobat, slowly but steadily pulling ahead, until she slipped out of his range. Harry reached within for a last burst of speed before sliding to a halt and taking aim. His Stunner grazed her shoulder, and her left side drooped. Stumbling toward the wall, she slapped a palm atop it in preparation to vault over, but the pavement underneath her morphed into a tentacle that wrapped around her ankle. A cry escaped her lips, curtailed by another Stunner hitting her between the shoulder blades.
"Nice," Tony gasped, running up.
Harry clutched a stitch in his side, panting. "Right back at you."
Straightening up, he shuffled toward Lenka. Slumped in a puddle that soaked the midsection of her robes, she looked frail and pitiful, but he only had to recall the cold emptiness of her eyes when she left them to die to make his blood boil.
He stooped to brush his fingertips against her wrist, and her body vanished. Metal jingled as her clothes collapsed, and a golden chain spilled out from under her collar. He pulled her robes aside to reveal an amulet inscribed with illegible symbols centered around what looked like a reverse Mannaz rune.
"Don't touch it," he warned, nudging the amulet aside with his wand.
Tony rolled his eyes. "Contrary to your opinion, I can keep my mitts off gold."
"Good to hear you're making progress." He poked Lenka's sodden clothes to stow them. "Wrap the thing in a handkerchief and levitate it into your pocket."
Tony did just that before straightening up. "Mate, you might want to hurry."
"Why?" he asked, fishing a pair of knickers out of the puddle.
"Over there."
Tony pointed to the opposite side of the square, where a veritable mob was forming around the fart in fancy robes. His head was bandaged and another man was supporting him by the shoulders, but he appeared to be out for blood, clutching his wand as he glowered in their direction. Many others held wands too, but some carried pitchforks, axes, and torches.
Harry didn't find the sight amusing in the least, especially after the old man gave a furious shout, and the mob began advancing. Rising, he squeezed his eyes shut and felt for the jinx he had erected.
"My jinx doesn't reach here." Why had Lenka chosen to run instead of Apparating? He shook his head. "Go, now."
Tony nodded and spun on the spot, vanishing with a soft pop. Harry swept his gaze over the angrily jabbering locals before following suit.
He reappeared in a secluded forest clearing where they'd left the tent, the surroundings darkening for an eyeblink before his spectacles adapted. Seeing Tony nearby, he slid down against a tree trunk with a relieved groan.
"Mission fucking accomplished."
Tony squatted beside him. "You realize this is kidnapping, right? If the Aurors merely wanted to question us before, they'll now be looking to chuck us into whatever the Slovak counterpart of Azkaban is."
Harry waved him off. "I have a feeling the locals knew exactly what Lenka was doing. No way they'll be calling the authorities... they might search for us themselves, though."
"Well, they won't find us here," Tony said, rising. "Let me add a couple more wards just in case before we get started."
The words rang ominously in Harry's ears, and he asked himself how far he was willing to go. Without Veritaserum, and neither of them being a master Legilimens, their options were limited to making threats and following through. He shook his head; they would ask their questions and see what came of it. Despite what everyone around here seemed to think, they weren't thugs.
He looked into his malletspace and frowned. While he couldn't put his finger on it, he had felt from the outset that something set Lenka apart from the other villagers, and that impression only grew stronger up close. Yet there was nothing remarkable about her bare form, save perhaps for the hue of her eyes and her wiry physique. From what he could gauge, she weighed even less than her petite frame suggested, as if she were some kind of...
"Bird," he whispered. "Merlin's balls."
Tony paused in his pacing around the clearing. "You say something?"
"It's her, man. It's her!"
Tony blinked. "Yeah, the callous bitch who lures people into traps and leaves them to be eaten. I'm about done, so get her out and let me give her the what for."
"Lenka's the harpy who blasted us out of the sky!" Now that Harry knew what to look for, he wondered how he'd missed the resemblance to begin with. There even were dark specks dotted across the back of her arms.
"How's that even..." Tony glanced down at his breast pocket. "The amulet!"
He nodded. "My thoughts exactly."
Tony flash-stepped across the clearing and grasped his shoulders. "Get her out."
"Okay, okay, hold your Hippogriffs." Slipping out of the painful grip, he stepped aside, and under Tony's unblinking stare, laid down Lenka's robes so she wouldn't have to sit on the damp ground. "She should still be conked out, but be prepared for anything, alright?"
Tony bobbed his head and motioned him to get on with it; he didn't seem to have grasped Harry's words at all. Extending his hand, Harry brought her out.
Back under the influence of time, Lenka's body began transforming before her butt even plopped down on the robes. Long dark feathers sprouted across the back of her arms, rustling softly as they formed wings. Her fingers elongated slightly and her nails became talons, but her hands retained their shape. Her feet underwent a more drastic change, turning into four-toed claws, their pebbly texture giving way to tan skin halfway up her calves. A patch of downy feathers below her slim waist preserved her modesty. Her hair remained a mess of brown locks, and her face only gained a little aquiline sharpness.
"I'm so glad you convinced me to come," Tony breathed.
Harry wrenched his eyes away. His own interest had been entirely scholarly, of course. "You're still up for this, right?"
"Yeah," Tony said, shrugging off his robes, "but let's cover the poor thing up first. It's wrong to ogle her like this."
Harry watched with amusement as Tony struggled to thread Lenka's feathered arms through the too-narrow sleeves before settling for draping the robes over her front. "Whatever happened to 'callous bitch'?"
"I'm sure she had very good reasons." Tony met his incredulous stare. "Think about it. From her perspective, she was just protecting her kin. I wonder how many of them there are..."
"Why don't we ask her?" Harry trained his wand on Lenka. "Incarce—"
Tony slapped his hand down. "Don't!"
He clicked his tongue. "Look at those wings! We gotta tie her up before we wake her."
Tony stood his ground. "I'm not letting you defile her with that spell. Let me."
"Heh, right." Harry found himself speculating how his version of Incarcerous would've worked on Lenka given the anatomical differences. Ollivander did say his wand was highly adaptable...
"Done," Tony said, shaking him out of his (again, purely academic) contemplation. Rather than use the spell, he had conjured a length of silk and manually tied her wrists and ankles. "I'll wake her now."
Harry doubted the thin material would hold up to much force, but rather than voice his concern he simply readied his wand. "Go for it."
Tony touched the tip of his wand to Lenka's forehead. "Rennervate."
Her taloned legs kicked violently as her eyes flew open. It took several seconds for her to cease flailing, and she gaped at the clearing before narrowing her gaze at the wizards before her.
"Hello, Lenka." Harry tapped his wand against his bandaged palm. "You must be surprised. That was the second time you tried to kill us, after all."
"They give me weak potion," she snarled. "Next time I drop you off mountain."
He set his jaw. "The locals are in cahoots with you, then. Does everyone know you're leading people to their deaths?"
"Monsters, not people!" She lunged forward, not batting an eye when Tony's robes slid off her shoulders. "Monsters who kidnap and torture my sisters! Hunt unborn child of queen!"
"For the last time, woman, we're not like that," Tony said exasperatedly. "We're not out to hurt you!"
She stared at him, then shook her head slowly. "You almost die, and still not leave. Greed shine in your eyes. All bandits same."
"I don't think that's greed you're seeing, exactly," Harry muttered.
Tony crouched down level with her eyes. "Please, how can we prove it?"
The momentary surprise on her face was replaced by a feral grin. "Let me go and we friends, yes?" She extended her wrists.
Harry laid his left palm on Tony's shoulder to hold him back. "Yeah, not happening."
"I know from beginning you lie," she spat. "I never betray my sisters! I say nothing!"
Tony shot him a glare before attempting to calm Lenka down, but she no longer listened, tossing about and tugging at her bindings. Harry eyed the silk with newfound respect; despite losing his head over a harpy, Tony's conjurations were still top notch.
Wind picked up, rustling the leaves overhead, and soft patter of rain followed. He sighed. It looked like it was going to be a frigid and sodden night.
"Stop squirming, you'll catch a cold," Tony said, holding up his robes. Lenka lifted her head sharply, and he tucked them over her shoulders. "That's better—"
She bent forward, parting her lips to let loose a shrill cry, and Tony swore as his efforts were undone.
Harry wiggled a finger in his ear. "What was that for?"
She craned her neck back and cried again, her voice rising in pitch and echoing across the forest.
"Oi!" He lifted his wand. "Stop it or I'm silencing you."
An answering cry came from the distance. Startled, Harry looked skyward. The rain was intensifying, and the treetops were swaying in the wind. He glared at Lenka, who was drawing in a deep breath, and fired off a much-belated Silencio, but it did nothing to wipe the smugness off her face.
His gaze alternated between her and the tent before settling on the latter, and he set about stuffing the luggage into his malletspace. With Lenka out in the open, her sisters shouldn't be as keen to fling lightning at them.
Halfway into his task, he glanced at Tony, who was traipsing around with his wand out. Rather than erect more protections, he kept watching the skies with a yearning expression, and for some reason, fiddling with his hair.
"What did you put up?" Harry asked. "Can they find us?"
Tony shook his head distractedly. "Not unless we leave the perimeter. They'd see nothing but trees from the outside."
Harry finished gathering the gear and checked on Lenka. She was peering upwards with a look of concentration on her face, her chest heaving with deep breaths despite her sitting still, and after indulging in a moment of lechery, he averted his eyes.
The murmur of rain became a constant thrum, interspersed by gusts of howling wind. He retreated under the the nearest tree to don his pointy hat. The Impervius Charm placed more than a day ago hadn't faded during its time inside the pocket dimension, and a fleeting thought that he could somehow exploit this crossed his mind.
A screech came from the skies, much louder than before. Raising his wand, he looked up, but between the sheets of rain and the dense foliage, he saw nothing.
"She sounded so close," Tony said wistfully.
Harry gave him a flat stare. "Don't do anything stupid."
He glanced again at Lenka, then furrowed his brows. She had managed to rise and hop a few yards, but rather than flee, she simply stood in the middle of the clearing, panting as her sinewy muscles tensed. He trained his wand at her. What was she doing?
Another screech reverberated, a little farther away, and Harry craned his neck to ascertain the direction. Its echo was suddenly drowned out by a rising roar, and his gaze flicked back to Lenka. A whirlwind surrounded her feathered form, picking up pine cones, twigs, and soon her and Tony's robes, whipping her hair around her contorted face.
"Stupefy," he incanted, but a lash of wind stung his eyes and threw off his aim. The whirlwind swelled into a tornado, tugging at his sleeves and nearly plucking his wand from his fingers. "Petrificus Totalus!"
Lenka stiffened and toppled as she stood, yet the wind surged stronger still; staggering backwards, he hugged a tree trunk for support. It wasn't a moment too soon, for the tornado exploded resoundingly, bending the trees around the clearing outward with creaks and cracks, and ejecting the debris it had gathered into the skies.
The rain that had ceased for a second resumed with renewed intensity, and Harry patted his head to find his favorite pointy hat missing. Lightning blazed overhead, and as he raised his head sharply, he fancied he spied a winged silhouette under the clouds.
"Alright, mate?" he yelled, pushing off the lopsided tree. Successive cries came from above, different in tone—two harpies were on their trail if not more. He edged towards Lenka's prone form, squinting against the downpour.
"What the..." Tony exclaimed, limping into sight as he brushed twigs out of his windswept hair. "I didn't know they could do that!"
One more flash came, and this time Harry unmistakably saw a humanoid figure soaring above. She must've followed the shockwave, for she flew in circles without straying too far from the clearing.
Harry pointed up. "Stop being so impressed and get ready for a fight."
Tony laid a palm atop his forearm. "We can't! If we hurt them, they'll never believe us."
He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. Tempted as he was to discard Tony's opinion when it came to the harpies, his words held merit.
As he racked his brain for a way to communicate their peaceful intent, there was a whoosh of air, and the harpy he had spied descended into the clearing, the beaded braids of her auburn hair fluttering with the beats of her wings. Her eyes widened as they centered on Lenka and the two wizards looming over her, and with a shriek, she swooped down, twisting mid-air to extend her clawed feet at Harry.
"Ventus!" The gust of wind blew her back. There was something satisfying about using elemental magic against its master.
"I said no fighting!" Despite his reprimand, Tony didn't even look at Harry, his gaze glued to the copper-plumaged newcomer who flapped her wings to steady herself, her angular face a mask of hate.
He squinted at the rainy skies, spying another flier approaching. "What do we do then, smartass?"
Tony continued to stare at the harpy as though transfixed. When she pounced at them again, he stepped forward and waved frantically. "Hey, stop! We just want to talk!"
To Harry's utter lack of surprise, she didn't slow her dive in the least; he jerked his wand up to release another gust, making her talons rake the air rather than Tony's kisser. "Get real, they're not here to chat!"
Wrenching his gaze away from the fliers, Tony crouched next to Lenka, who glared at him mutely. "I know you don't believe me, but we're not enemies," he said in a disheartened voice. "Finite Incantatem."
She wriggled away, spewing a stream of obscenities only half of which was recognizable English; some didn't sound like a human language at all.
"Please tell the others we want to help," Tony pleaded, but her imprecations drowned out his words.
Harry tracked the two harpies circling overhead with his eyes. "Now what?"
Rising to his feet again, Tony said the first sensible thing since they arrived in the forest. "We run."
