Disclaimer: The setting, the characters, etc. are not mine…but the plot is. I somehow think the probability of this happening in the real Harry Potter universe is slim to nil…
A/N: I would just like to with Undead a very happy, though slightly belated, birthday. Yes, my dear readers, I have been writing this story for over a year now. I'll miss it horribly when it's over; it's become like an old friend to me…Though I think I'll start an L/J fic when this one's over…I wrote the first page or so over a year ago as well, but then never got to finishing even the first chapter. This one turned out better anyway. Enjoy!
Chapter 17 ~ The Battle of Light and Darkness
Lucius Malfoy threw back his head and laughed.
"As if you puny wizardlings could do anything to harm me," he sneered. "Your friends will be dead before you blink, Harry Potter, and I will take you back to the Dark Lord to await his pleasure."
Harry stared into his cold, gray eyes unblinkingly, challenge in every taught muscle. Lucius's lips, if possible, curled even more.
"Kill the redhead and the girl and bring the other to me," Lucius hissed to his demon bodyguards. The rest of the students had long since fled the Common Room for the relative safety of their dorms.
The demons didn't so much charge as appear before the three, their dusky skin darkening the entire room with dancing shadows. One targeted Ron while the other slunk toward Hermione.
Harry panicked. One demon was on either side of him; he couldn't get to them in time to save both of his friends – but if he didn't decide soon, he would lose both of them anyway. His blood froze in his veins and he felt again the awful lassitude which had enveloped him as he watched Ginny die.
"Immobulus!" shouted Hermione desperately as metallic black claws reached for her neck. The demon shuddered and ground to a halt. For a moment, it seemed that it might shake off the spell and continue, but then it froze, motionless, its mouth twisted in a snarl. Hermione let out a long shuddering breath.
Her yell had broken Harry out of his stasis and he leaped in front of Ron, brandishing his sword wildly. The demon's lipless mouth twisted into a grotesque parody of a smile. Harry swung the sword wildly, his body shaking with rage and adrenaline, and landed a glancing blow on a dark-skinned shoulder.
The sword burst into brilliant silver-blue flame and the chunk of dark flesh was incinerated before it reached the floor. The demon winced and retreated several uncertain steps, looking over its shoulder at its master.
"Get on with it," snapped Lucius Malfoy.
The demon advanced again, more cautiously this time, angling its injured shoulder away from Harry and his burning sword. Harry could feel his heart pounding with great, shuddering convulsions.
"Harry!" Hermione screamed. His gaze flickered to her for a second, saw the other demon breaking jerkily free of Hermione's charm – and the demon reached for him. He swung the sword wildly, felt it connect with a substance the consistency of tough leather and then come free. The demon's hand dropped to the floor with a thunk, burning brightly. Its black, lipless mouth opened and let forth a shrill keening reminiscent of a mandrake. As if Harry's hand had a life of its own, the sword whipped around and bit into the demon's neck, jerked itself out and then plunged into its chest. The black-skinned demon collapsed to the floor, dirty blue smoke oozing from its burning wounds. Its claws clutched weakly at the carpet for a moment and then its entire body exploded in a mushroom cloud of musty-smelling mist. Lucius Malfoy's eyes rolled back in his head and he stared at the world with milky orbs before following his servant in collapse.
But Harry had no time to think of him. The other demon was bearing down on Ron and Hermione, who were both throwing random spells at it, seemingly with no effect whatsoever. Every once in a while, it would twitch as if stung by an insect but then continue its slow pursuit, looking rather as if it was wading through mud. It was so intent upon its prey that it failed to notice its master's indisposition. Harry stalked behind it, raised his sword with an aching arm and thrust the sword between the demon's shoulder blades. It shrieked and fell forward, dissipating into smoke before it even touched the floor. Harry was left, sweaty and disheveled, staring into the shocked eyes of his best friends.
~*~
Ginny's mind screamed and roiled and rebelled against the steel claws holding it captive. Her vision wavered from black to green to white and back again. Liandra's voice echoed in her head.
"Finally I was able to erect a barrier between the sleep and my mind. And if I pushed it forward, I was less under control. If I got it all the way to the front of my mind, I was free. D'you see?"
Brick by painstaking brick, she built a wall to separate herself from the evil invading her mind. She watched as the demons attacked Ron and Hermione, as one was frozen and the other blocked by Harry. She was powerless to help, battling for her own mind. At least while her internal battle went on, neither could she harm her friends.
The wall wavered and bent like cloth in a strong wind. A whisper began in her mind, like a tickling feather. It grew and grew from a tickle to an itch to a burning, searing command.
"Attack!"
She struggled like a flopping fish in the talons of an eagle, out of her element and breathless. The strain in her mind told her that soon it would snap like a brittle twig. It was a line she would rather not cross, but she would if she had to, rather than harm these people dearest to her heart. She knew instinctively that any person she touched at this moment would become another victim of Avada Kedavra. The spell would invade their body from her own like a virus.
Her foot lifted without her conscious direction and, in desperation, she pushed just that bit more – and felt something in her mind snap.
Her body flooded with warmth and her mental wall collapsed, for there was no longer anything for it to push against. Her mind and body were her own again and a blue-white power flooded her mind. It coated her vision with a shimmering haze blotched with the shadow of the demons. Even as she watched, the light devoured one of them, coalesced into a brightly burning sphere, and then shot a brilliant ray of light into Lucius Malfoy's shadowed form. He collapsed bonelessly to the floor.
Ginny smiled and directed the light toward the other demon. It gathered round the darkness greedily, licking at its edges, but it was not strong enough to dispel it, or even harm it significantly. She detected another softly glowing, winged presence trying to shape the light, but it had none of her strength and she could see the light slipping through its fingers in shimmering strands. So she built another wall with sparkling blocks of light between the demon and its prey. Even the wall couldn't hold it back completely, and the demon pushed it forward with each step, slowed only slightly, hardly even noticing it was hindered. But it was enough. Harry, shining with blinding opalescent light, plunged his glowing sword in to the shadow, burning it away. The glittering light danced around him in a glory of triumph.
Ginny let out a long breath and the light began to ebb from her vision. It converged in streams and rivers and flowed into her body until she felt she couldn't contain any more. She held a hand before her face and there seemed to be stars moving in orbit beneath her skin.
"Ginny--" Harry said hesitantly. She looked up and saw that he was shielding his eyes with an upraised hand. "Ginny, what's happened to you?"
"What's happened to me--?" she asked, and then paused at the sound of her own voice echoing melodically throughout the room and throbbing through the air, vibrating the portraits on the walls. "Oh," she whispered, and then shrugged helplessly, unwilling to speak again.
"Harry," Hermione hissed, tugging his sleeve. Her face was pale and bloodless and her hands were shaking. "Harry, he's starting to move."
Harry looked at the inert form sprawled across the carpet and, sure enough, Lucius Malfoy's pale-lashed lids were quivering and his fingers slowly clenching into fists.
"It's up to you to break the mirror spell, Hermione," Harry said. "Go on."
She licked her lips nervously and took a deep breath.
"With any luck, this will knock the bloody bastard out again," Hermione muttered to herself.
"'Mione!" Ron exclaimed, "Language!" He grinned hugely at her as she grimaced.
"Boys," she muttered, shooting him a disgusted look, and then yelled, "Finite Incantatem!"
The shimmering golden globe of Hermione's mirror spell leapt into place around Lucius's sprawled form. Dirty blue smoke filled the space between the two spells and Lucius disappeared from sight. The air smelled as it does before a lightning storm, charged with electricity.
A double explosion shook the air and all of them, even Ginny and Liandra, were thrown backwards by the sheer power of it.
Ginny floated back through the wall into which she had been flung and was astonished to see the room once again overlaid with glimmering light. As soon as she entered, it shot towards her as if magnetized. There was a brilliant flash of milky light from beneath her skin which threw the room into sharp relief. Then it dulled into a steady glow.
"Ginny, what is going on?" Ron exclaimed, his voice going up an octave from his normal range.
"I—I don't know," she whispered, trying to keep the echoes of her voice in check. The light…her voice…the stars under her skin…if Ginny had been able, she might have fainted. As it was, she just wanted to run away. Again.
'No,' she thought fiercely. 'Not again. Not this time.'
"You're – glowing," Hermione said, sounding puzzled.
"Um…yeah," Ginny whispered.
"Brightly," added Harry, sounding stupefied.
"Yeah…" she whispered again.
"And your voice--" Ron added.
"And your skin--" Hermione said.
"And your…your…eyes--" Harry said, looking stupefied.
"What about my eyes?" Ginny asked, forgetting herself and talking normally. She winced at the echoes bouncing around the room.
"They're full of stars…" Harry replied with awe.
"Eep," Ginny squeaked softly, her eyes going very wide.
"Guys – Malfoy, remember?" Ron interrupted, and their gazes were diverted to the slightly charred figure on the ground, now thoroughly unconscious.
"We need some of his flesh," Hermione said distastefully. Harry and Ron exchanged a glance.
"I'm her brother, I should get to do it," Ron said belligerently.
"I love her, I should get to do it," Harry replied heatedly.
"I've known her longer than you have!"
"Well, I haven't had her as long as you have, so I should be the one to bring her back!"
"The Malfoys have insulted me more than they have you!"
"Not true, they've insulted me just as much!"
"Lucius is an enemy of my dad's, so I should have a claim to him!"
"Lucius is a servant of Voldemort and he killed my parents, so I think I've got a claim to him, too!"
"Stop!" shouted Ginny, not sure whether to be angry or laugh hysterically at their ridiculous antics. "Which one of you is actually going to cast the spell?"
"Well," said Harry shamefacedly, "I can't because I have to contribute my blood to the spell. I think—I think it'd better be Hermione. She's the most talented one of us."
Ron reluctantly nodded his head. "I think magic like that is a little beyond me at this point," he said with painful humility. "And this is that absolute last thing I'd ever want to screw up."
"So Hermione," Ginny concluded, "you get to do the honors."
"But--" protested Hermione, "But I don't want to cut anyone up. It's disgusting!"
"You don't need much," Harry said soothingly. "Just a tiny bit."
Ron pulled out his pocketknife and handed it to Hermione. She took it as if it was a snake – an angry snake which might bite her with venomous fangs – and approached Lucius Malfoy. She stared at him for a long moment and then her expression lightened and she ran to her schoolbag, which was lying across the room, and pulled out a thin, round plastic container. Returning to Malfoy, she scraped the knife over his skin repeatedly and then murmured a spell at the knife while holding it over the dish. With a triumphant smile she replaced the top and presented it to Harry and Ron.
"Voila! Skin cells of Lucius Malfoy!" Hermione said triumphantly.
Ron groaned, "You mean we don't even get to make him bleed?"
"Even a little bit?" Harry chimed in.
"Honestly," Hermione said severely. "You boys are so bloodthirsty. Just because he did something wrong doesn't give you the excuse to follow his example."
"He's a murderer," Ron argued. "I think that gives us a little leeway."
"Oh, come off it, Ron," Ginny said in exasperation, and winced again as her voice boomed loudly enough to rival the ocean surf.
Ron looked at her oddly, sighed, and gave up.
"Now here's the real question," Harry said as he looked speculatively at the sprawled body. "Are there more of them, and if so, where are they and what are they doing? And furthermore, what are we going to do with him?" He gestured at Malfoy.
Suddenly, the Fat Lady's portrait burst open again and the younger Malfoy stood framed in the opening. He was disheveled and even paler than usual. He spared hardly a glance for his father lying unconscious on the floor.
"Potter, get your sorry ass out here right now," he commanded. "We need you."
~*~
A/N: There you have it, folks. I've done my part, now it's your turn. Shower me with lovely reviews and I'll try to get my next chapter out soon. I'm trying to hit 150 reviews before the story's over, so help me out, eh? Thanks oodles! Ah yes, and a very special thanks to Bucky, a reviewer who's been with me from the very beginning, and who gave me my 100th review!
Zaz: Thank you soooo much for the tip on the site. It was really bugging me. And thanks for the review as well! I'll do me best to keep 'em coming.
Bucky: Congrats on being my 100th reviewer! And thank you ever so much. Don't you worry, Ginny will come back to life. I like to torture my characters, not my readers.
Mike: Don't you worry, love, here's a new one fresh off the presses. J
Byron245: Thanks, I will!
Pdlover: Thanks!
Veldan: Well, here's your "precious"…don't hurt me! I know you already read most of it, but I did edit it a bit plus add another couple pages.
CelticKnight: I wouldn't want to kill my readers! So here 'tis and happy reading! Thank you!
