Spells and Spiders
~*RW*~
And so had Ron. Hermione was somewhere in the basement. But why did they think that capturing her was going to bring Harry to them? Harry and Hermione hadn't spoken for two years now.
But he knew that she was here now. He needed to prepare a bit, but tomorrow he would be back. It sounded like they were going to keep her alive as bait for Harry. But he didn't know what kind of torture she would be put through. The sooner he rescued her, the better.
~*HP*~
Harry felt a pang of guilt. He had to rescue Hermione; she was his friend. And even if they hadn't seen each other since graduation, it was his fault she was in danger. He had to rescue her. They would be expecting him, so he had to be careful. This required some preparation. But tomorrow, he would storm the castle and defeat his rival once and for all.
~*RW*~
Ron arrived at the base the next night. He had done his research. No one had ever dared break into Voldemort's fortress before. But Ron was confident. He had to save Hermione. If he didn't, who would?
~*HP*~
There were two doors inside the base. One was heavily guarded, Harry noticed. The other had only two men guarding it. Voldemort would expect him to take the path less guarded, but he wasn't going to give Voldemort the pleasure of being right. He approached the guarded door, wand raised.
"Surrender or die!" he called.
"Potter!" someone shouted.
"I'm warning you…. You don't have to work for him, you know. You can come and work for me. On the other side."
A spell shot at him, whizzing by his left ear.
"Well, if that's your decision…." He spun around, aiming at the high wall of the tower. Rocks and boulders crashed down, crushing his opponents.
That was a little too easy, he thought as he blasted the gate and ran down towards the dungeons. More rocks fell, blocking the door. There was no way out. He had to go through with this.
~*RW*~
Ron stared at the two gates. One was blocked with rock, and two Death Eaters guarded the other. It would take too much time to move the rock, so he chose the gate with the Death Eaters. Ron took a sleeper bomb from his pocket and performed the Bubblehead Charm on himself. It was a simple Auror's trick: surprise the enemy. When they're waiting for a wand attack, they're hit with the pink dust and fall asleep in seconds. The stuff stays in the air for several hours, invisible, to trap any reinforcements or followers. He chucked the bomb towards the door.
There was a loud explosion, and pink dust was visible for a few seconds. The Death Eaters fell to the floor. Ron rushed through the gate, closing it behind him.
~*HP*~
Harry, wand lit, flew down the corridors. He had no idea where he was going, or what he would face when he got there, but all the passages looked the same. He wasn't even certain that he wasn't just going around in circles. But Voldemort would want him to find the hostage, so he knew he would get there. Suddenly, he heard a girl's scream. He took a sharp turn and ran down another damp hallway towards the sound.
~*RW*~
Ron heard a scream and stopped dead in his tracks. They were torturing her! He lit his wand as he started to run down dark corridor after another. He only hoped he wouldn't be too late.
~*HP*~
Harry saw light near the end of the corridor and slowed his pace a bit.
"Don't worry, Harry," he heard the cold, familiar voice say. "I've worked too hard to kill you in a sneak attack. Come."
Harry walked warily into the light, where Hermione was shaking the bars of her prison cell.
"Harry! Help me!" Hermione cried.
"Quiet, silly girl!" Voldemort shouted, shooting her with a spell. She crumpled to the floor. "Now that I've got you, Harry, I don't need to make her scream anymore. Once our battle is over, I'll probably kill her. I wouldn't want to kill your love in front of you - while you're still in fighting shape, anyway." He laughed.
"Ha!" Harry shouted. "Shows how good your spies are! I haven't talked to Hermione for years! We were friends in school, nothing more. I didn't come because I cared about her safety. I came for you."
"You are here, that's all that matters," Voldemort said, although he looked angry that his spies had failed to give him good information. "I just want you to know that I had my wand replaced just for you. A different phoenix feather. It took me quite a while to track one down." He laughed again.
"I'm surprised you were able to get here so quickly. Of course, I really didn't think you would choose the door with only two guards. You are too clever. However, if you had, you would have been here much faster." He pointed to an entranceway behind him, on the other side of Hermione's cell. "It's a direct route. But Mr. Potter is much too good to kill only two men!" The laugh was starting to scare Harry, as many times as he had heard it before. "There will be no child's play this time! You are a full-grown wizard now, and I will treat you like one! Now bow!"
Harry bowed slightly, not taking his eyes off the snake-like face.
"Arach Jurus!" Voldemort shouted. Something large and black started to slip out of the end of his wand. "You've defeated two of my best monsters. Now prepare for the third!"
A gigantic spider squeezed out of the tip of the wand. Harry backed away. "Lumos Solem!" he cried, and a blast of blinding light filled the cavern. The spider screeched and scuttled off towards the doorway that Voldemort had mentioned earlier. Voldemort was still shielding his eyes, and Harry took this opportunity to hit him with a Cruciatus curse. He wanted to see him suffer before he died.
~*RW*~
There was a blast of light at the end of the passage, and then a weird scuttling noise. It was creepy. Then he heard screaming, but it wasn't the same voice as before. It was a man's voice. Was Hermione battling her captor?
The other noise was coming closer. It echoed horribly around the wet walls of the dungeons.
Suddenly, Ron realized. The wet, dark tunnels, the screams…. This was his dream! And if it was really coming true, he was about to meet the biggest spider he had ever seen.
~*HP*~
Voldemort struggled to his feet. "So, you're not afraid to use the unforgivable curses?"
"Not on you."
"Well, then, that should make things a bit more interesting."
"Less talk and more spells," Harry said, "Or are you too afraid to fight me?"
"Afraid? Ha! I've been waiting eighteen years for this day. I'm enjoying this, Potter. Can you deny me that?"
"Serpensortia!" A snake slithered out of Harry's wand.
"You want to play with snakes? What? You forget I'm a Parselmouth?"
"Wouldn't it be wonderful if one was your downfall? Kill him," Harry hissed.
The snake slithered towards Voldemort and took a bite.
~*RW*~
The spider appeared around the bend. Ron gasped. It filled the tunnel. It had giant pincers, long fangs, thick hairy legs, and eight red glaring eyes. It hissed at him, then charged.
Ron didn't know what to do. Terror rooted him to the spot. He always woke up before the spider was about to kill him, but this was no dream. If it got him, he would never wake up.
~*HP*~
The snake sunk its fangs into Voldemort's flesh. He shot it with his wand, exploding it into bits. "Fosforus!" he shouted. Harry was hit in the chest with a great yellow beam, which forced him back into the wall. He slid down and felt blood over his eye. Wiping it away quickly, he stood, not ready yet to give up.
~*RW*~
The spider spit venom at him like a snake. Ron was able to dodge in time; the venom only burned his robes. He shot a Conjunctivitis curse at the spider, hitting a few of its eyes. The spider, half blinded, blundered around, hitting Ron and knocking the wind out of him. His wand skidded across the floor. The spider lunged again, and there was no time to grab it. He had to face his fears. It was only a spider. Yeah, a spider with poison spit and creepy-crawly legs.
Suddenly, there was a loud thump from somewhere else underground. A few rocks fell, hitting the spider's head. It dazed him for a moment, and Ron grabbed for his wand, but the spider, in its rage, kicked it out of reach.
Think fast, Ron told himself. They're torturing Hermione! Without his wand, he shot a blast of fire at the spider, catching one of its legs on fire. The spider screeched and thrashed about, trying to put it out. Ron grabbed his wand and pointed it at the underside of the spider.
"Coupos!" he shouted. The wand shot out and cut the spider's belly. Green blood spurted everywhere. But it was still alive and the fire now seemed to have put itself out. In a last ditch attempt, the spider grabbed Ron with its pincers and started to squeeze. It lowered its head and bit his hand, trying to make him drop the wand.
I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, Ron thought. Suddenly, deep in his memory, he saw the classroom. Moody and his three spiders. The Unforgivable Curses - "the use of any one of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban." Ron had to save himself to save Hermione, and he wouldn't let her die just because he was scared.
"Avada Kedavra!" he shouted. The spider dropped dead on the spot, dropping him in the process. He landed on the stone floor. His body ached, but he wasn't too badly hurt. He stood and climbed over the spider to the end of the passage.
~*HP*~
Voldemort was breathing in short gasps as the snake venom flowed slowly through his bloodstream. Harry's back hurt immensely, but one of them was going to die that day, and they wouldn't stop fighting until it happened.
Neither of them moved for a few minutes, which proved how evenly matched they were. Harry wiped blood off his forehead and wondered if another lightning shaped scar had appeared.
Footsteps down the back corridor. Reinforcements were coming. The battle had to end now. If Voldemort wasn't dead, they would kill him. If Voldemort was dead, they would kill him with all the more reason. It seemed better to die if he had done his job.
"Hermione!" Ron shouted, flying around the corner.
"Avada Kedavra!" Harry shouted. Voldemort fell to the floor, and Harry collapsed.
~*RW*~
Harry had just used an Unforgivable Curse on a human being. Voldemort was dead. But Ron was more worried about Hermione. He rushed to her cell. "Hermione!" he repeated. "Wake up!" Hermione didn't move.
"What did he do to her, Harry?" Ron shouted. Harry stood slowly and went to the cell door. He picked up Voldemort's wand and used it as a key to open the cell.
Ron rushed inside and crouched next to Hermione. As he lifted her up, she opened her eyes.
"Ron!"
"Hermione! Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. Where's Harry?" At this point, Harry sank back to the floor. "Are you alright? What happened?"
"I killed him, that's all that matters." Harry got up, broke Voldemort's wand in half and threw it to the floor alongside the body. Then he Disapparated and was gone.
Ron helped Hermione up, and they headed out of the fortress. They Apparated right into London, right outside the Auror's building. Ron rushed up to his boss's office as fast as he could, dragging Hermione along behind him.
"Ron!" she gasped. "Wait up!"
Finally they were there. He knocked briskly on the door. Gudgeon Post, the Head Auror came out. "Weasley, is it? What do you need?"
"Sir, I don't mean to be rude," Ron said, stumbling over the words in his haste, "but Lord Voldemort was just defeated! I saw it myself!"
"What?!" Post exclaimed. "Are you pulling my leg?"
"No, sir!"
"Then show me where."
Ron led the way back towards Voldemort's secret base. The guards were now awake, but didn't dare try anything on the Head Auror. Post placed them under a Freezing Spell, so that he could arrest them on the way back. They ran down the tunnel Ron had taken into the main chamber. The spider had disappeared - it was the product of a Jurus spell, meaning it disappeared shortly after being defeated. Finally, they came to the main cavern.
"Wow, a body and everything. Good work, Weasley. I'd say this earns you a very large promotion."
"I didn't do it, sir."
"You didn't? You just happened upon a dead Dark Lord?" It was starting to sound suspicious.
"No, sir. It was Harry Potter. It happened like this…." Ron launched into the story of Hermione's kidnapping, with her interjecting along the way. Ron told of how he had found his way into the meeting ("Fine job, Weasley") and fighting the giant spider, at which point Hermione gasped and Post commanded Ron to roll up the sleeve of his robes. Before he had even started, they noticed that his sleeve was ripped; he had torn a piece off to make a bandage.
Post pulled of the bandage. "It's not that bad, Miss Granger," he assured her. "I doubt it's poisonous. But if it is, you'll be able to cure it. Miracle potions are your specialty, I hear."
Hermione blushed, and Ron had a feeling Post knew much more than how to catch a Dark Arts wizard.
"Continue," he instructed, and Ron finished telling his defeat of the Acromantula and his encounter with Harry.
Hermione wasn't much help, as she couldn't remember anything about the battle, but she did verify that Harry was there when she had woken up.
"Potter would have been sure," Post concluded. "It must be the real one." He conjured up a stretcher and brought Lord Voldemort back up to Auror's headquarters for examination.
~*HP*~
"LORD VOLDEMORT GONE AT LAST!" the headlines read. Harry crumbled the paper and threw it aside into the dark corners of the alley.
~*RW*~
Even though Ron had told his whole story, no one could find Harry Potter to give him the credit. Ron wondered if he had survived the battle. But Voldemort was undoubtedly dead - they burned his body and his wand together.
Ron was none the worse for wear, except for his ruined robes and two small fang marks on his right hand, between his thumb and forefinger. And besides a tiny amount of blood, he had lost something else:
His fear of spiders.
~*The End*~
Be sure to catch the next in this series, November.
