The silence didn't last long. When Ron finally stopped shaking from the aftereffects of torture, he roused Hermione to form a plan. The two of them began talking in low tones about escape once again, though Harry noted with grim amusement that they weren't trying to figure out how to take him with them anymore. They seemed intent on overpowering their guards and obtaining wands, then "figuring the rest out."
Something else no one had mentioned was the fact that Voldemort had undoubtedly been called. How long before he showed up in person?
Their time was only running out.
Luna woke sometime during the conversation, but stayed silent, staring at Harry. Her eyes were unnervingly focused.
Harry thought that perhaps she knew what he intended to do.
Harry let his friends talk, and he waited.
It had likely been several hours by the time the door was slammed open. Hermione and Ron both shot to their feet and squashed their backs against pillars, hiding from the death eaters. Luna scooted backward from where she'd been sitting with Ron to the shadows at the base of the back wall, just a few feet from Harry's tank.
"Make yourself at home, goblin," Draco's voice sneered.
"Ooh, I want to see the fishy," Bellatrix cooed.
Harry kicked gently, pushing his head above the surface of the water. He had the largest piece of netting he'd been able to salvage from the pieces Luna had cut away from him clutched in between his hands, kept as far away from the transparent wall of the tank as he could manage. The water was cloudy enough that it should make the shapes in the water indistinct, at the very least. Hopefully, the death eaters would think any odd shadows were a part of his body.
"Aunt," Draco began, only to be interrupted by her screech.
"Potty fishy could live in a potty!"
Harry narrowed his eyes, looking over the edge of the tank. Hermione and Ron were both tense, silent, waiting. Bellatrix's demented laughter filled the cellar as she skipped towards the back wall, leaving Draco scowling near the door. He had his wand out, pointed into the darkness of the cellar warily.
"Show yourselves!" he shouted. His eyes kept darting between his wandering aunt (what a positively unfortunate relation) and a short figure hovering in the shadows a scant twenty feet from the doorway. Draco had called the person a goblin, and with that knowledge, it wasn't too difficult to see the hooked nose and pointed ears.
The goblin's eyes glinted strangely in the dark.
"Hold on, they're planning something," Draco shouted, but Bellatrix only threw her head back and cackled. Her wand appeared in her hand, spinning.
"You're just like your daddy, always such a coward," Bellatrix taunted. Despite her words, she slowed, her eyes darting around the cellar with a manic glint in them. "Come out then, little mudblood, little blood traitor, come out wherever you are! Hm, if I find you, I get your fingernails, how's that?" Her entire body twitched, and her face split with a grin.
Can I imperio just her, or will it affect everyone in the room?
Near the door, Draco made a decision. He snapped his wand towards the goblin and hissed a body-binding curse before moving further into the room to back up Bellatrix.
Hermione and Ron met each other's eyes, and Ron gave a small nod.
In the second before Bellatrix stepped between the pillars concealing his friends, Harry assessed the situation. With Draco backing her up, and Luna shivering on the floor, the odds were two wandless and tortured wizards against two armed and healthy death eaters. Harry glanced at Luna. She was watching him.
Harry had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
"Come here, come here, come here," Harry began chanting, focusing on the two death eaters, the words ringing out into the water and the air above it in an impossibly melodic aria. The cellar and all its occupants seemed to freeze, and Harry clenched his fists, repressing his feeling of utter ridiculousness.
They can't understand the words anyway.
"Both of you, come here, come to me. Come take a swim. Think how refreshing it will be. How hot you both are, so busy torturing people and kidnapping goblins, how nice would it be to lay in a bath and relax?"
Okay, he felt absolutely insane.
But no one had moved yet, so he wasn't completely botching it.
When he'd compelled Hermione, he'd really wanted to convince her, though.
Okay, I have to want to get close to Bellatrix and Draco.
Ick.
He tightened his hands on the netting, and tried to soften his voice; tried to make it persuasive.
"Come on, think about the cool water, think about how relaxing it will be. Bellatrix, you look like you need a bath, I've got one right here. Draco - "
He paused as Bellatrix walked towards him, her eyes glazed and fixed on Harry.
Harry glanced at the others, seeing that all their expressions were clouded and unfocused.
Bellatrix hesitated as he stopped, though, so he hastily started up his singing again.
"That's it, come here, come take a bath Bellatrix. Come on, almost there, almost there…"
At the same moment, Draco, Ron, and Hermione stepped towards the tank as well. Luna was crawling towards the tank from the side.
Crap, I've got them all.
He continued crooning to them all the same. He was pretty sure he could make sure only Bellatrix and Draco got hurt.
"Right up to the edge of the tank, that's good, that's good, come here Bellatrix," Harry continued, holding himself so just his eyes were above water. The moment he had to lift his head from the water his song would turn to screeching, and he was pretty sure that sound was jarring enough to break through any stupor. "Draco, you look so sweaty, come here and clean up. You wouldn't want to look unpresentable for your lord, would you?" Harry crooned.
That seemed to solidify Harry's grip on Draco's mind. The blond stepped up next to Bellatrix, face slack, eyes fixed on Harry in apparent fascination. Harry's friends ambled up behind them, eyes wide and blinking. At least they were doing that; Bellatrix and Draco were both completely still.
"Come here, climb in," Harry sang, pushing himself to the back of the tank to make room for them. "You just have to get in, that's all."
Bellatrix smiled, eyes distant, and vaulted herself over the tank's edge to land with a splash in the water next to Harry. She sank beneath the surface, black lace fluttering around her, eyes half-lidded, and reached for him. Harry shuddered as she touched him, barely shoving his revulsion aside to continue focusing on the magic in his voice.
"Come join your aunt, Draco," he sang softly, letting Bellatrix wrap her arms around his neck and shifting in the water so that his bulk would keep her down.
"What… deafenti!"
A jet of white light struck Draco in the back. Draco jerked away from the tank, his eyes blown wide and fixed in horror on Harry as he stumbled backward. Lucius Malfoy was prowling forwards into the cellar, Peter Pettigrew at his elbow. Both had their wands raised.
"What's wrong, come here," Harry tried, but Draco was utterly unaffected even as Harry's friends leaned closer to him, their eyes still dull. Crap, crap, crap…
Harry lifted his head from the water and screeched.
It worked as he'd hoped. Hermione, Ron, and Luna all jolted, coming back to their senses in an instant. Hermione's eyes found him at once, accusing and horrified.
Ron noticed Draco first. He whirled and tackled the youngest death eater, knocking both straight to the ground. Hermione shook her head quickly and went to help, while Luna used one of the columns as a shield against Malfoy Senior's spells.
Hermione had just wrestled Draco's wand away and Ron had fallen back with a cry when Harry's attention was drawn by Bellatrix yanking his hair. He twisted to face her with a feral hiss, seeing her eyes fully open again and feeling her legs kicking up against his tail. She tried to pull at his head, sharp nails digging into his scalp. He drove his own nails into her shoulders in response, causing the water to bloom with pink clouds of blood. Her scream pulsed against his body, bubbles racing up from her mouth to the surface.
"See if he has our wands!" Hermione's voice shouted overhead.
Bellatrix raked her nails down the side of Harry's face, aiming for his eyes. He pulled his head back and slammed her into the bottom of the tank with a single kick of his tail. She reached for her wand, but it had been dropped somewhere outside. Her eyes were bloodshot and panicked as she tried to push past him, but the tank didn't have much extra room and Harry slammed her back down with frightening ease. The net he'd intended to use floated forgotten to his right. He had thought he'd need it to control her, but in the water, her movements were so wild and weak that he easily overpowered her. She reached out to claw at his neck, her eyes starting to drift closed, and Harry hissed into her face as he pushed her down, remembering her laughing as she killed Sirius, her glee as she tortured Hermione…
"Help me, you imbecile!"
Something hard dug deeply into Harry's side. His scream sent shock-waves through the water, and he tasted blood flowing up into his throat. He lost his grip on Bellatrix, writhing against whatever it was that had lodged in his gills and was pulling him away from the half-drowned witch. Harry screamed again as the thing scraped against sensitive and raw flesh underneath his skin, hooked into the open cavity, yanking on delicate organs. Harry twisted and felt something in his side tear. Blood blossomed over his gills, and the taste of blood in his mouth grew stronger. His movement allowed him to retaliate, though. Still shrieking in pain, he drove his own claws towards the thing.
His fingers met metal.
Harry saw a human rat above the water and understood. With a flash, he drove his sharp fingers higher into Pettigrew's arm. This time, his nails sunk deeply into flesh, and he heard a satisfying scream from above the surface.
"Harry Potter?" a warbling voice shouted.
"That's him, yes!"
Underneath him, Bellatrix slid past, pulled by a set of pale arms. Still grappled by Pettigrew, Harry acted on instinct and slammed his tail and its sharp fins down against her body just before she was yanked from the tank.
The water went from pink to red.
Harry turned his attention back to Pettigrew and dragged his claws through the man's flesh. Pettigrew screamed once again and tried to let go, but Harry had lost Bellatrix and didn't intend to lose another. He let his nails drag twisted, bloody furrows into Pettigrew's retreating arm, then lunged out of the water with a swift series of kicks. He had enough time to see Pettigrew's eyes widen in terror before he'd wrapped his arms over the man's shoulders and driven his claws into the man's back, eliciting a scream. As he fell back into the water, Pettigrew tumbled over the edge with him.
Harry wrapped his tail over Pettigrew's kicking legs and twisted in the water, flipping them so that he was driving Pettigrew down as he had done to Bellatrix. Pettigrew swiped at Harry's head, movements wild and hindered by the drag of water. Harry was hissing again, disgusted by the rat-like teeth and stringy hair, seeing red in more than one sense.
"Take the tank too!" Hermione's distorted voice shouted above.
Harry hardly heard her. He could barely see Pettigrew anymore, the water was so clouded with red. The taste of salted copper had only grown stronger. Blood surrounded him, was inside him, in his gills…
He was breathing blood.
Suddenly revolted, Harry's grip slackened. Pettigrew slammed Harry's head into the side of the tank with his metal hand, and white stars blossomed in Harry's vision. Pettigrew shoved him aside and scrambled halfway out of the tank, feet kicking desperately as he tried to push his belly over the edge, before Harry regained his faculties. Harry lashed out with aching fingertips and succeeded in scraping bloody gashes down Pettigrew's escaping legs.
Harry's scar burst into agony. He lost his grip on Pettigrew, screaming and driving his hands against his forehead. The sound rang through the entire room, amplified by the water, and he dimly heard several other pained shouts above.
"Harry!"
"Crucio!"
Heart racing and head spinning, Harry dragged himself up to look out over the tank's edge with shaking arms. Voldemort had stormed into the cellar, his eyes like fires, his wand raised towards where Harry's friends were clumped together around Dobby, of all people, some twenty feet from the tank. They were reeling back, but no one had fallen… yet.
Harry's arms lost their grip and he slid back into the water, black spots spinning in the red.
Make them leave, make them leave.
"Take them!" he screamed at Dobby from under the water. "Save them! Save yourselves and leave and don't come back!"
A resounding crack split the air.
The room seemed to hold its breath, silent.
Voldemort roared.
8
