PHOENIX ASCENDING VIII-- In the Name of the Father
He sat in the rubble: uncaring, unheeding as the world ended around him. Sirens blew, homes burned, and children died as he sat lost in his own personal maze of apathy.
A gentle cooing noise brought him back to reality. It was an owl. Gabriel dropped Moody's cane to absently stroke the bird's head, noting how his fingers made black lines of soot across its delicate tawny feathers. The owl gave an appreciative chortle and held out his leg for Gabriel to untie the letter bound there. Once the folded parchment came away in his hand, the owl was gone, a tiny speck of white fluttering deeper and deeper into the abyss of city night.
Gabriel unfolded the note, half-expecting some inane death threat from Moody, half-hoping for a consultation from Malfoy. But it was none of these things. He traced his finger along the loopy script he knew so well, staining the parchment with soot. When Gabriel was through with reading, he tossed the letter onto the ground beside Moody's cane and stood up. Without so much as a farewell to his wasteland of a home, he disapperated, leaving the letter to proclaim its words to a night too full of blood, and screams, and dying:
The tests are done. Come to the lab before Malfoy sees the results. Always the best, Hilly.
----
Harry awoke cramped, his body moving up and down as if he was at sea, bobbing forever on a life raft, never to set foot on dry shore again. But as he opened his eyes and memory flooded back, he realized that he was farther away from a sea than he had ever been in his life.
"Good," a voice remarked from somewhere above him. "You're awake."
Harry slowly managed to slowly sit up. He was in some kind of wooden wagon, skins, boxes and silks of all colors piled around him like dross. The ceiling was made up of the same translucent white fabric the horsemen had worn over their faces the day before. "Who are you?" he said quietly, staring up at the man who had spoken to him.
The rider gave a laugh and bent down to his knees so he was at Harry's eye level. From his friendly manner, Harry knew it wasn't the swordsman who had stolen him away from his friends the day before. "My name is Innoch," he said lightly. "Sixth horseman of the tribe of Anan. And you are?"
"Harry Potter," Harry said weakly, not quite sure what at all to expect.
"Are you a legionnaire? Turk? You're not a Egyptian." The horseman asked this all rather quickly, and despite the fact that Innoch and his companions had violently kidnapped him the day before, Harry couldn't help but like him.
"No," Harry said. "I'm a Brit."
"Filthy savage," Innoch remarked in a not at all unfriendly way. "The Romans are terrified of your people. Is it true that you spike your hair, paint yourselves blue and run around like mad-men?"
"Er..." Harry found himself rather taken aback. "Not that I'm aware of..."
Innoch did not get a chance to reply because at that moment two men climbed abruptly into the wagon, one of whom Harry instantly recognized as the horseman who had taken him the day before. The other looked scared out of his wits, wringing the sides of his robe in what could only be incredible fear.
"Sir, its like I told you..." the second man began nervously, crumpling his robe up in his hand.
"What you told me is impossible!" The lead rider spun around, his whole frame radiating anger. "Mysterious men who vanish when we chase after them! Bandits who burn our villages by shooting fire out of sticks of wood, and then summon snake demons to hover above your houses! Men who take nothing but our infants, who show no interest in our silver or our livestock! This I cannot accept, Harran! Why do you tell me such tales? Why?"
"It's the truth!" the nervous man ventured, his voice cracking horribly on the last word.
"I've heard stories, Anan," Innoch said quietly, addressing the rider. "Stories that back up Harran's words."
"See?" Harran, the nervous man, gestured towards Innoch. "Your son-in-law believes me!"
"Silence!" The horseman rounded on Harran, who shrunk back into a whimpering ball under his gaze. Slowly, the rider turned to Innoch. When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous. "And what are these tales you've heard?"
Unlike Harran, Innoch didn't back down under the rider's gaze. "Like I told you last night. These bandits steal our children, and then sacrifice them to their horrible snake-god. It is said they are building a fortress in the deep desert, a stronghold of dark magic, where only evil can enter--"
"Silence!" The rider cut him off and began to pace up and down the wagon, his hand clenching and unclenching around the pommel of his sword. "That's thirty villages they've attacked and burned in the last month, and whenever we try to go after them they simply vanish like specters. All they take is our children and yet, they do not sell them as slaves. However, I cannot accept is that they are evil demons sent to haunt us by displeased gods! It's madness!"
"Their leader, sir," Harran tentatively ventured from his tiny ball of submissive silence. "The one with the silver hand. I tried to stop him-- I tried to fight sword to sword as men do. But he only laughed and gripped my blade in his silver grip, crumbling it between his fingers." Harran helplessly held up his own hands to illustrate his point. "How can we stand against that? How can we ever stand against that?" he trailed off in despair, his voice close to a sob.
"You can't."
The three horsemen turned around to stare in absolute amazement at the captive they had forgotten was even present.
"Excuse me?" The leader stared at Harry who gave an instinctive shiver under the rider's gaze.
"You can't stand against them," he said, feeling every single eye on his face. "I know that man."
"He's lying," Harran said quickly, spitting in disgust. "This is one of your slaves, Anan? The boy is trying to weasel his way out of captivity."
"Shhh," the leader, Anan, bent down next to Innoch until he was eye to eye with Harry. "I will give you five minutes to say everything you have to say. If you lie, I will know and you will die. Do I make myself understood?"
Harry nodded dumbly, trying to ignore the lump that had somehow fitted itself inside of his throat. "The man's name is Peter Pettigrew, he supports an evil wizard named Lord Voldemort who is trying to take over the world--" But Anan was already getting up, slowly shaking his head. Harry realized how ridiculous he must sound. "Here," he shouted to Harran. "I can prove it to you. Is this what your snake demon looked like?"
Harry bent down and began to draw the dark mark into the thin layer of sand that coated the floor of the wagon; a skull and snake locked in deadly intercourse that was forever branded into his brain. When he saw Harran backing away in horror, Harry knew his suspicions had been correct. "Impossible," the horseman said, as all color drained form his face. "Its a coincidence, he saw the village, he--"
However, Harry had ceased to listen, throwing his hands into the many pockets of his robes simultaneously, groping for a familiar stick of holly and phoenix feather. It was gone. "My wand," he said quickly, before rounding on Anan. "You took it, where's my wand?"
"Don't give it to him!" Harran was shrieking. "He's one of them! He will kill us all! I saw him! I saw him!"
"I won't hurt you," Harry said quietly, concentrating only on Anan. "You have my word. I only want to prove to you that I'm not lying."
"He's just a kid, Anan," Innoch said from behind Harry, turning from the hysterical Harran with a slight smirk on his face.
"I give you my word," Harry repeated, once more daring to look up into Anan's blazing eyes. Again, that first wave of instinctive fear traced its way up his spine, but then he felt something entirely from Anan's gaze: not a test, not a threat, but simply a muted understanding. Inside those piercing brown eyes, Harry saw something of himself. Silently, Anan reached into his white, billowy robes and pulled out his wand. Harry leapt up and took it in his hand, the familiar dents and scratches never so welcome beneath his fingers.
"Prove it," Anan's voice was hard, his gravely tone unforgiving.
"Flammae pila," Harry whispered, feeling a gentle tingling stretch across his fingers as a ball of red-hot flames roared to life in his hand. He almost smiled at Harran's audible gasp. "Finite Incantium," he said and the flames instantly winked out. "I could burn down a village if I wanted to," Harry said quietly, feeling his audience hang on every word. "I could make myself disappear. I could kill you. Accio sword!" Quick as lightening, Harry turned to face Harran who crumpled with fear as his ruined blade shot across the room to be caught deftly in the hand of Gryffindor's seeker. Harry held up the sword so it hit the faint sunlight filtering in through the cheesecloth ceiling. It was broken off at the hilt; the few inches of blade remaining as twisted and contorted as Pettigrew's own soul. "The man who did this," he said quietly, "is no myth."
At that instant, the wagon ground to a halt.
----
"Well, well, well, what have we here?"
Remus awoke, an unfamiliar weight on his chest. Blearily opening his eyes he realized it was Vix, her dark head nestled in the crevice of his breastbone; her long hair lying spread across his shoulders smelling slightly of roses, motor oil... coffee. It would have been a perfect scene if it wasn't for the fact that Sirius was sitting a few inches away, an incredibly smug expression on his face.
Panic instantly striking him, Remus sat bolt upright, causing Vix's head to drop into his lap. She gave a little grunt and rolled over, sticking her nose into his belly button. All in all, it wasn't that bad of a feeling. "This isn't what it looks like," he began, but at Sirius's loud snort decided to reconsider. "All right, it's exactly what it looks like, but--"
"Do you know how long," Sirius began, a crazy-maniac grin plastered to his face, "I've wanted to find you like this?"
"Sirius..." Remus's tone was about as close to sounding dangerous as he ever got.
"After all those times you dragged me, practically drunk--"
"Drunk," Remus interjected.
"All right," Sirius acknowledged with a knowing shrug. "After all those times you dragged me drunk out of the girls dormitory, I had my heart set on finding you like this. And you know what? I've been waiting twenty years."
"Sirius," Remus began, feeling himself grow pink.
"I thought I had a pretty good chance with you and Viola Lorenzo, back at Hogwarts."
"Sirius..."
"Then there was Portia," Sirius smirked. "And the Russian. What was her name?"
"Sirius, if you know what's good for you," Remus growled, eyeing his friend threateningly.
"Oh no," Sirius threw up his hands in mock defeat. "I can't possibly fight the superhuman-werewolf strength."
"Damn you," Remus said between clenched teeth.
"I'm not the one with the female harem," Sirius gave Remus his best pious look. "Thou shall not commit adultery--"
A loud snort from Remus's lap silenced them both. Vix was sitting up, an expression of intense amusement on her face. "I've been listening to the whole thing." Shaking her head, she turned to Remus, the smile instantly dropping off her face. "Who's Portia?"
Sirius's laughter rang out across the dunes as Remus turned a rather brilliant shade of red.
----
Romulus awoke with a foot in his face. "Get up," It was Posthumous, his wild-hair and five-o-clock shadow looking especially menacing in the early-morning haze.
"Why should I?" he growled, turning over and burying his face in the sand. His head ached like something powerful, a fire searing away everything between his ears.
"Because I've been kicking your face for the last hour," Posthumous replied, nudging Romulus again.
"Damn you," he said, the words somewhat muffled by the sand.
Posthumous managed to catch the curse anyway, but to Romulus's surprise, he only laughed. "Get up, unless you want to spend the rest of your life wandering around this desert."
Romulus managed to sit up on his elbows, the first rays of sun too bright for his eyes. He blinked rapidly, trying to stop them from tearing up. "How long would I last?"
"In the desert?" Posthumous stood up, considering. "A day, maybe two, it depends if you'd bleed yourself."
"What?" Romulus staggered to his feet, wiping the sleep from his eyes, interested in spite of himself.
"In the deep desert there's no water." Posthumous replied. "So you can drink your own blood to avoid dying of dehydration." He gave Romulus an appraising sort of look. "You don't strike me as one who would shirk at the sight of blood."
Romulus smiled bitterly at the irony. "No. I wouldn't say that."
"You're a survivor," Posthumous said quietly, a faraway look on his face.
"Like you," Romulus said, feeling an almost visceral understanding towards this terribly thin man with the ready smile and scruffy manner.
"Yes," Posthumous replied, meeting Romulus's gaze for the first time. "Like me."
Unlike the rest of him, Posthumous eyes were not burned brown by sunlight and exposure. They were the most brilliant green Romulus had ever seen: a green of foliage, trees and forest, a green possible only where water ran rampant. A green not borne of the desert. "You're not from around here, either," he said quietly.
"No," Posthumous was looking at Romulus as if this was the first time he had really seen him. A faint smile crept across his weather-beaten lips as he shook his head slowly. "No, I'm not."
At that moment, Viktor Krum jogged over the nearby dune, Posthumous's skeletal mule in tow. "She hadn't run far," he said, panting as he nudged the mule towards Posthumous.
"Livia always chooses to run away at the most convenient times, eh?" Posthumous said brightly, addressing the mule more than Krum or Romulus. "She knows we're going to put her to work."
"Livia?" Romulus raised an eyebrow, recognizing the name. He hadn't been a history major at the University for nothing.
"Livia is my mule," Posthumous evaded the unasked question, an idyllic smile painted across his face. "She's named after a real ass." Krum's knowledge of English wasn't sufficient to get the joke and Romulus did not find it remotely funny, so Posthumous continued without getting his obligatory snickers. "Well, now that we have Livia, we may as well go."
"Go where?" Romulus said drolly, his marginal respect for Posthumous dropping as the temperature climbed.
Posthumous leaned back against Livia to consider. "Eventually, if you give us all enough time we're all going to Hades."
"Literally," Romulus spat flatly.
"West," Posthumous said, and it was only when he had leapt astride Livia and set out across the dunes when Romulus realized his question hadn't been answered at all.
----
The five of them were seated around the remains of last night's campfire, Sirius drawing nonsense figures in the sand with Harry's penknife as Hermione grilled Remus on how to best transfigure grains of sand into drops of water. Vix was telling a rather enthralled Ron about drenching Maxmilian Consuedo-Ponce in coffee back in Hong Kong. Apparently, Consuedo-Ponce was one of Mr. Wealsey's creditors, and Ron was taking an immense satisfaction out of his humiliation.
"So," Sirius finally remarked, the previous night's intensity creeping back into his tone. "Shall we start then?" No one said a word, which he took as an affirmation. Lowering his wand to the sand, he muttered in a low whisper, "Ubi es Harry Potter?"
"Locatés charm," Remus shot to Hermione and Vix, who were both staring at Sirius with a confused sort of amazement. "It lights a path towards the person mentioned in the incantation, though a Locatés can be easily blocked with counter-spells."
Evidently, Harry had no such wards, for a thin trail of red light shot out of the tip of Sirius's wand, bouncing its way across the desert, heading due west.
----
Gabriel apperated just outside of Hilly's lab, a faint whistle of air heralding his presence as she looked up from a bubbling beaker full of brilliant purple liquid. "Gabriel," she said, her face holding not her usual smile, but something else. Not fear, nor hate, but simply: pity.
"You have the results," he said quietly, suddenly knowing in his gut that he didn't really want to know what Hilly had discovered with her bubbling beakers and laboratory scans.
"Yeah," she said quietly, pulling off her goggles as she waved him forward. "Come in. I think Malfoy set up security cameras, but frankly, I'm past the point of caring."
Gabriel took a step backwards, "If I'm going to get you into trouble--" he began.
"No, don't worry about it," she said, motioning him to come in. "I'm in enough shit already that this won't matter."
Gabriel tentatively entered the lab, the noise his shoes made when they slapped against the floor echoing in the emptiness of his heart, reverberating around the hole burnt there by Alastor Moody. Hilly waved him over to a counter full of files, where he slowly took a seat feeling rather like he was about to be tried by the Spanish Inquisition. "So you did the tests?"
"Yeah," Hilly repeated, sitting herself down beside him. "I have the results-- what on earth happened to your hand?"
Gabriel glanced down at his palm, scorched by Moody's spell and coated with a thin layer of ash. It hurt so much that he had simply ceased to notice it, but Hilly's exclamation brought with it a fresh wave of pain, and with the pain, a new surge of anger. Anger he quickly suppressed. Since when had anyone cared about what happened to him? "Nothing happened," Gabriel said stonily, meeting Hilly's concerned blue gaze with a steely one of his own.
"That's burn isn't nothing, Gabriel," she said, her voice full of concern. Ever so gently, she took a hold of his palm. "Who did this to you?"
"Nothing happened, Hilly," he sneered between clenched teeth as he pulled his palm out of her grasp, clenching it into a fist so that the wound was hidden.
"Was it Moody?" she persisted, staring at him inquisitively.
"No," he said, his voice like steel. But inside, Gabriel was crying. He wanted nothing more than to fall into her grasp, rest her head upon her shoulder and weep. Weep until his tears had run dry. Weep until she comforted him, bandaged his hand, wiping it clean of the pain and soot and evil as his mother would. A mother he never had.
"All right," Hilly turned away, her door closed. "Nothing happened." At her refusal, something inside Gabriel broke. He was unable to stop the sob rising up from deep inside his chest, powerless to keep his shoulders from trembling, helpless as the single tear made its way through the thick coating of soot on his cheek. "Maybe this isn't a good time," Hilly began nervously, unwilling to comfort her one-time friend.
"It's all right," Gabriel choked out as he raised his wounded hand up to his eye, trying to wipe away the tears that wouldn't stop coming, slipping down his palm and mingling with the burn there. It was useless. His resolve, his bulwark, and strength had just been broken, torn down to the ground by a dirty old one-legged man on his twenty-five year quest for revenge.
"You can stay the night at my place," Hilly ventured, laying a hand on his trembling shoulder. "I'll just show you the results in the morning."
"No!" Lost to any reason, Gabriel twisted out from her comforting touch, the thing he wanted most at this desperate moment. "Tell me now. Am I guilty?"
Hilly stared at him for a second, the soot staining his face, the tears still running down his cheeks, his spiked hair haphazard and mussed. Gabriel looked a wreck, and she knew his emotional scars were ten times deeper than any surface wound. Yet, there was nothing she could do except tell him the truth. "No," Hilly said quietly. "But neither is Snape."
"Then who did it?" Gabriel said, his voice finally under control as his shoulders stopped their uncontrollable trembling. Hilly tried not to notice how his hands had left sooty palm-marks on her immaculate white countertop.
"The killer's blood matched up with a fifty year old tissue sample we had taken from Tom Riddle when he had his appendix removed in his seventh year at Hogwarts," Hilly said, shrugging her shoulders in defeat.
"Well that's it!" Gabriel gave her the first real smile she had seen all night. "Malfoy has to finally admit that Voldemort is back--"
"No, Gabriel!" Hilly lashed out, her fragile resolve breaking, amazed at his naïveté. "No he won't! The results of this test mean nothing, since they are not what Malfoy wanted them to be! Do you ever think he would honestly implicate Voldemort? Do you know what will happen now?"
"No, Hilly I don't," he said quietly, meeting her quavering gaze.
"I know the truth, Gabriel," she said quietly, her voice breaking. "He's not going to let me live."
"Hilly, I--" he began.
"You know its true," she cut him off, shaking her head slowly. "And the scariest thing is I don't care."
"Don't say that, Hilly."
"Why lie?" Hilly wanted to cry, breakdown, sob, but all she could feel was a sort of numb apathy. She was going to die, and she couldn't bring herself to give a damn. Her emotions were glazed over like a clay pot, baked in the heat of a sun she would never see again. Pushing the specter of ever-encroaching death from her mind, Hilly turned again to Gabriel. "There's one more thing," she said quietly, breaking the silence as she reaching out and gripped his wrist. "Because of the nature of the case, Minister Malfoy had instructed that a measure of your father's tissue be included in the test. I was analyzing it, and I realized that he had AB blood."
"Yes?" Gabriel replied, suddenly growing quiet and looking down at the ground like he always did when his father was mentioned.
our father
"You have O blood."
who art in heaven,
"So?" The words meant absolutely nothing to Gabriel, whose knowledge of Muggle science was about as limited as Voldemort's potential as a kindergarten teacher.
hallowed be thy name,
He would remember Hilly's next words for the rest of his life, "It's genetically impossible for someone with AB blood to have a child with blood type O."
thy kingdom come,
Gabriel felt as if something very hard and mind-bogglingly fast had just hit him between the temples. Despite his pain, his agony, his utter exhaustion, he felt as if a flame has been lit inside of him, a flame burning away everything evil and corroded. The flame of hope. "Are you saying that Sejanus Cox isn't my father?" He didn't even have to wait for her reply before the smile broke onto his lips. Gabriel beamed; feeling that maybe, just maybe, the world might not end after all.
thy will be done,
"I'm saying its genetically impossible," Hilly replied quietly, the heaviness of her tone invisible to Gabriel's sudden joy.
on earth as it is in heaven,
He stared at her, his eyes longing, a sense of such desperation on his face she knew he was being ripping apart on the inside. "What exactly are you saying?" Gabriel's voice was taunt, every word so enunciated that the raw emotion in his tone was palpable.
give us this day
"Since you're my friend," Hilly began, her eyes focused on the floor, "and I thought you might want to know who your father was, I ran a sample of your DNA against our database of the entire wizarding community." She took a deep breath before continuing, her heart in the bottom of her throat. "There's a match."
our daily bread,
"Well, who?" Gabriel found it impossible to keep the excitement out of his tone, the smile from of his face.
and forgive us our trespasses,
Wordlessly, Hilly nudged a file towards him. Eagerly, Gabriel took it in his hands, his eyes instantly traveling to the name emblazoned onto the front. A shiver ran across him, small at first and then unbearable as it whipped through the holes in his psyche, dowsing his tiny flame of hope against the walls of his heart, charring them, burning them down like the floors of his apartment building, until all that remained was a pile of smoking debris, an empty shell, ice clinging to his arteries like angel tears. But Gabriel's guardian angels had forever fled.
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
Hilly said nothing as the file slipped through Gabriel's limp fingers. Neither of them spoke as the papers it had contained flew across the lab and single tissue sample from the folder fell to the floor and shattered open. The tiny piece of organ within rolled out and bounced off of the side of Hilly's cabinet. Wordlessly, Gabriel reached his foot down and stomped upon the pitiful little organ, smashing it against the cold tile floor until his hate welled up inside him like a flood waiting to burst and he had to jump off of the stool.
and lead us not into temptation,
Still, the tears wouldn't come. "Cry dammit, cry!" he yelled as Hilly sat behind him in silence, dead to life already. Striding across the room, Gabriel snatched up the fallen file folder that had started it all. It was now empty, weightless, but his father's name remained printed onto the front, mocking his dry eyes. "You won't let me cry," he whispered to the name as he reached for it, smearing the printed letters with soot, trying in vain to black them out. Still the words Tom Marvolo Riddle grinned up at him.
but deliver us from evil.
You can't black out the devil.
----
thanks to all who reviewed the last one: Kat, Moon, Vanguard, Viktor'sGurl (there will be more Viktor soon! I promise!), aragog, Jen (thought your review was interesting too), NS, Katie Bell, CLS, and of course my beautiful beta- Rowena. what do you think? any comments on the original characters? too dark? fluffy? cliché? let me know please! drop me a line or do review, if you think it sucks or shines (::grin, grin:: alliteration :O) ) please let me know. anyhow, thank you all and love you to pieces :O)
