Anthony stood next to his teacher with what felt like ice in place of his
heart. The worlds spoken to him were curt, brief, succinct; but such images
were in there, oh, so many, and so much clearer and more frightening for
the cool detachment with which they were spoken.
But then he shook himself - he thought of the Deputy Headmistress, and the famous Auror duo of Potter and Weasley, and thought that there was no way they could have endured so much that was so awful, if they were barely more than children at the time. But the last words had stopped him cold, and something in the back of his head told him, yes, they could, just not very well. And now that treacherous little thought wanted to know how...
His voice, when it finally made its way out of his throat, was very small.
"It wasn't?"
****
He felt almost like laughing. The boy wanted to know? Was it that? And he felt a tug at the corners of his mouth, and a wave of bitterness welling up almost painfully in his chest. The boy's voice held a terrible curiosity in it, and so he would, of course, oblige.
He didn't really hear the words that he spoke. There was little conscious thought involved in the clinical transcription of events - all was turned inward on his memories...
The watching boy was among those who scrambled towards the teachers in the flickering firelight like drowning men to rafts, and with exactly the same mad desperation and single-minded determination for something, anything, to cling to. The adults were not grieving their fallen, he noticed; they were too busy trying not to die themselves. By the restless flames he could make out his Head of House as he tipped something down Flitwick's throat, while Madam Pomfrey worked on the tiny man's shattered ribs. The watching boy looked upward as a screech from somewhere above shattered the star-vaulted heavens; a harpie fell towards earth directly overhead, only to be incinerated twenty feet from the ground. The firewall, it seemed, worked as a fireroof as well. That was, if not quite enough to be encouraging, then at least a relief. Just as long as those damn dragons didn't try anything...
As soon as the thought entered his head, he felt like kicking himself - he had forgotten a chief rule of the world; it wasn't quite magic, but it was a law of narrative flow, which was damn close. Even now, a creak of leather high above and a slow whoosh of displaced air made everyone look suddenly upwards, and a hush of fear washed over them again. They could not yet see what assailed them - the firelight may have been something to see by, but in places where it couldn't reach it only served to make the shadows deeper.
But there was no mistaking what it was as a thunderous roar made the earth shake. Some of the younger children started to scream and cry, the result of which was a scramble to quiet and comfort them.
The dragon was huge, even bigger than most if its lumbering silhouette was anything to go by; and the watching boy could do nothing but wonder what kind it was. The file system of his mind threw up a card at random. *Oh, I know that shape,* he thought dazedly. *It must be a Ukrainian Ironbelly... funny,* he thought, as two gleaming red orbs caught the firelight for a moment, *those eyes really do look like Voldemort's...*
He noticed, frozen though he was in fear and too rigid even to move, the teachers had scrambled forwards. They now stood, side by side, with numerous aurors and other adults alongside, but they did not seem to know what to do. In the tense silence, all that was heard was the huge flap of the dragon's wings and the low flutter of the flames. Then a low, urgent voice said:
"Children, listen to me. When it tries something, don't run; it will see you if you do. Stay as still and as quiet as you can. I mean it! You have to trust us, all right? You *must* trust us." Remus Lupin hadn't taken his eyes off the dragon, and his mouth had barely moved when he spoke, but for some reason, unfathomable to the watching boy, the surrounding children seemed comforted by his words.
It was then that the dragon finally came into view, but what it did when it did anything at all baffled them. It seemed to turn over, hovering upright - almost on its back - in mid-air, and started to gouge at the firewall, tearing at it with its immense claws; and to the horror of all, it seemed to be working... The watching boy heard his Potions teacher say something very unteacherly under his breath.
Snape turned to McGonagall; their voices were low, but the watching boy was both close enough and lucid enough to hear them. "We have to get them inside the castle," McGonagall was saying. "They'll be safe there, they-"
"Safe? *Safe*?" If that firewall falls... The protective spells are gone - they fell, Voldemort tore them down, you saw that! This firewall is the last defense left, and we can barely keep that up! You honestly think mere stone will stand up to *that*?" Snape's hiss of a monologue ended with a tense wave in the direction of the grounds, and the watching boy bit back a gasp. While dividing his attention between his classmates, his teachers and the dragon (which continued to claw at the firewall with an intense concentration that he knew to be unnatural, nay, impossible in the animal) he had entirely failed to notice anything going on outside, but now he saw...
Beyond the firewall, in the inky darkness, the Death Eaters were throwing hexes at it with the same single-minded fury that had possessed the dragon. They were visible by the constant inconsistent flashes of the fireballs and curses and complicated spells that were being hurled towards them; and it seemed they did not mind when one of their number was taken down by a furious acromantula or a charging unicorn. The watching boy could see the wall ripple and jump under the barrage, with what seemed like increasing intensity. Now almost all the children started screaming again, shrieking in fear - they had seen what the watching boy had, and it scared them to the core.
Then the watching boy heard a hoarse, vicious voice from the other side shriek "Avada Kedavra!" There was a burst of horribly familiar green light, and for a second time seemed almost to both speed up and slow down-
There was a very surprised and, he thought, rather unspectacular "Ungh" from a second year girl next to him, who fell dead in a heap at his feet.
****
Anthony clapped his hands over his mouth, swallowing bile. His stomach seemed to have dropped earthwards with each dispassionate, neutral word that the professor uttered, and now his insides felt horribly liquid. He looked in horror at his teacher, looking for some confirmation that he knew how horrible this was. He looked into the cold depths, turned elsewhere, inward, and he found... nothing. No emotion. His teacher, he realised, was too frozen, too locked in memories to actually comprehend the magnitude of what he was saying.
Maybe it was better that way. Anthony could form his own conclusions and emotions from what was said rather than how it was said. His teacher was good at that. He remembered him casually reeling off a list of deadly toxins and examples of their use only a few weeks ago, with nary a flicker across his face to betray what he thought himself. His professional detachment made it a lot easier to think about the whole thing as distant and far away.
But Anthony knew that this was no distant thing, no historical event far beyond the recall of mortal man - these wounds were very fresh, much more so than he could ever have comprehended. He knew that it wasn't professional detachment he could see in the professor's eyes, but hollowness. And still, he needed to know, because if he didn't then what incentive would children like him have to keep the dark away?
Then his teacher's eyes met his, though it seemed a moment before they actually focused on him.
****
He shook himself almost physically from his memories, momentarily distracted by a flicker of movement at his side. He looked at Anthony, and for a moment, he wondered what the boy was doing here - where were the hexes and the Death Eaters? Where was the stench of battle? And then he remembered that it was no more than memory now.
The boy's hands covered his mouth; if truth be told, he looked slightly sick. His guileless eyes were wide and horrified, but, the professor was almost pleased to note, still held a morbid need of knowledge. Good. He did not want the boy to start something - the very reason he had chosen to tell Anthony in particular was the fact that he knew that this boy was not one to make hay. Anthony wouldn't tell anybody; but he would remember what he was told this night, and someone /had/ to remember. Let the headmistress keep her policy of protecting the ickle children from the big bad world. Sometimes you needed a monster to remind you what courage was for.
He mentally reviewed this statement and nearly wrinkled his nose in disgust. Courage?
And then he thought, yes, because sometimes, on very rare occasions, sneakiness and subterfuge were just no substitute for that sheer enraged fearlessness that made no task insurmountable - as long as the adrenaline lasted...
Outright hysteria engulfed the students left standing. A collective cry of dismay went up, and all started to scream and sob; the watching boy stood very still as the headmaster and the heads of house left standing ran to the young girl.
It was, some may have been surprised to learn, the first time he had seen Avada Kedavra used that close to him. He found himself regarding the sprawled figure almost clinically; she was not someone he knew - he could vaguely remember seeing her face at a sorting ceremony, but that was all. She looked very pretty, in a young, naive sort of way. Her long chestnut hair spread around her slender face, which seemed stupidly peaceful. *She barely knew what hit her...*
He vaguely registered a hushed argument going on between the three teachers, but it sounded less angry than it did scared, panicky, desperate. He dimly acknowledged the press of adults around them, including Madam Pomfrey, who felt the girl's neck and broke down there and then. And the bloody Terrific Trio came there - Weasel was limping; the Granger Mudblood (funny, how hollow and childish that sounded now) holding him up and looking all Brave Heroine-ey; and there was Perfect Potter, bringing up the rear for once, looking like a ghost...
He looked up and saw, through blurred vision, the trees, the uprooted, walking, angry trees, stomp forward and knit a barricade in front of the failing firewall. His ears didn't seem to be working too well, either; snatches of conversation would float past, some heard, some unheard...
"My gods, their eyes... look at their eyes..."
"-didn't even know what hit her... oh, Albus..."
"-they're coming through! Headmaster, they're coming!"
"Their eyes! What happened to their eyes?!"
"...oh, gods... I know how he did it. Headmaster! He's not gone! He's still here - not alive, he-"
"Peace, Severus, calm yourself! What is it?"
"The Dark Marks! -they weren't just-"
What? He struggled to gain a grip on his senses; this sounded important, and if it could make that voice, that cold, smooth, velvet-over-steel voice sound so panicked and frightened...
"-they bind the life-force of the bearer to him! He /shares/ their life! He's not dead yet! He's Borrowing them! He's riding their minds!-"
"My gods... he's right..."
"No matter yet! We have to get the children inside the castle first!"
"What-!"
"Don't you see? It will be easier to maintain the wards inside, the Castle will help us! EVERYONE! Get into the Great Hall! Quickly, now! Come on! Get the wounded inside first! Come on, you all know Wingardium Leviosa! Quickly now!"
*Oh, gods, any minute now she's going to clap her hands and say 'chop- chop', I just /know/ it...*
Then he blinked, as the world was suddenly dominated by black - odd, he didn't feel faint...
"Come, mister Malfoy. They could use your help."
The watching boy started, and looked up. Snape's face was pale and drawn, and there seemed to be a hell of a lot more lines around it than he remembered; but it was /his/ face, the one that, even for its penchant for subtly ripping you apart, was a strangely comforting one.
"Mister Malfoy."
He realised that he must have been staring. He blinked and nodded his head, and his Head of House gave a small nod and moved on. As the watching boy helped levitate a stretcher - he didn't notice who was on it - he reflected that the Potions teacher could communicate a lot with that one small gesture, more than the other professors could with a sentence, and he only seemed himself when he was impatient or angry.
*Do not meddle in the affairs of Slytherin wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.* He giggled, somewhat nervously, and then - after clapping a hand over his mouth and looking around to make sure no-one had heard him - hurried inside...
... just as the firewall fell...
Author's Notes: *ahem* I really should have done this A/N earlier, shouldn't I? And possibly a disclaimer... and thanks... Well. I believe they shall all be at the end, with a page all to themselves. Thank you for all the lovely reviews so far; by the way, I have a challenge for you: can you guess where I get my chapter titles from? The title should be an enormous whopping hint. I believe the next chapter will be the last - I already have the pivotal scene written out. No, really! The plot bunny attacked me in the middle of Biology class, and didn't let go until I'd written it all down. Then it turned out it was in league with the Anal Retentive Beetle (you can guess the place /that/ little bugger crawls up to make his home), which did not desist its torment until I'd written three damn drafts. No actual school work got done that day. Bastards.
But then he shook himself - he thought of the Deputy Headmistress, and the famous Auror duo of Potter and Weasley, and thought that there was no way they could have endured so much that was so awful, if they were barely more than children at the time. But the last words had stopped him cold, and something in the back of his head told him, yes, they could, just not very well. And now that treacherous little thought wanted to know how...
His voice, when it finally made its way out of his throat, was very small.
"It wasn't?"
****
He felt almost like laughing. The boy wanted to know? Was it that? And he felt a tug at the corners of his mouth, and a wave of bitterness welling up almost painfully in his chest. The boy's voice held a terrible curiosity in it, and so he would, of course, oblige.
He didn't really hear the words that he spoke. There was little conscious thought involved in the clinical transcription of events - all was turned inward on his memories...
The watching boy was among those who scrambled towards the teachers in the flickering firelight like drowning men to rafts, and with exactly the same mad desperation and single-minded determination for something, anything, to cling to. The adults were not grieving their fallen, he noticed; they were too busy trying not to die themselves. By the restless flames he could make out his Head of House as he tipped something down Flitwick's throat, while Madam Pomfrey worked on the tiny man's shattered ribs. The watching boy looked upward as a screech from somewhere above shattered the star-vaulted heavens; a harpie fell towards earth directly overhead, only to be incinerated twenty feet from the ground. The firewall, it seemed, worked as a fireroof as well. That was, if not quite enough to be encouraging, then at least a relief. Just as long as those damn dragons didn't try anything...
As soon as the thought entered his head, he felt like kicking himself - he had forgotten a chief rule of the world; it wasn't quite magic, but it was a law of narrative flow, which was damn close. Even now, a creak of leather high above and a slow whoosh of displaced air made everyone look suddenly upwards, and a hush of fear washed over them again. They could not yet see what assailed them - the firelight may have been something to see by, but in places where it couldn't reach it only served to make the shadows deeper.
But there was no mistaking what it was as a thunderous roar made the earth shake. Some of the younger children started to scream and cry, the result of which was a scramble to quiet and comfort them.
The dragon was huge, even bigger than most if its lumbering silhouette was anything to go by; and the watching boy could do nothing but wonder what kind it was. The file system of his mind threw up a card at random. *Oh, I know that shape,* he thought dazedly. *It must be a Ukrainian Ironbelly... funny,* he thought, as two gleaming red orbs caught the firelight for a moment, *those eyes really do look like Voldemort's...*
He noticed, frozen though he was in fear and too rigid even to move, the teachers had scrambled forwards. They now stood, side by side, with numerous aurors and other adults alongside, but they did not seem to know what to do. In the tense silence, all that was heard was the huge flap of the dragon's wings and the low flutter of the flames. Then a low, urgent voice said:
"Children, listen to me. When it tries something, don't run; it will see you if you do. Stay as still and as quiet as you can. I mean it! You have to trust us, all right? You *must* trust us." Remus Lupin hadn't taken his eyes off the dragon, and his mouth had barely moved when he spoke, but for some reason, unfathomable to the watching boy, the surrounding children seemed comforted by his words.
It was then that the dragon finally came into view, but what it did when it did anything at all baffled them. It seemed to turn over, hovering upright - almost on its back - in mid-air, and started to gouge at the firewall, tearing at it with its immense claws; and to the horror of all, it seemed to be working... The watching boy heard his Potions teacher say something very unteacherly under his breath.
Snape turned to McGonagall; their voices were low, but the watching boy was both close enough and lucid enough to hear them. "We have to get them inside the castle," McGonagall was saying. "They'll be safe there, they-"
"Safe? *Safe*?" If that firewall falls... The protective spells are gone - they fell, Voldemort tore them down, you saw that! This firewall is the last defense left, and we can barely keep that up! You honestly think mere stone will stand up to *that*?" Snape's hiss of a monologue ended with a tense wave in the direction of the grounds, and the watching boy bit back a gasp. While dividing his attention between his classmates, his teachers and the dragon (which continued to claw at the firewall with an intense concentration that he knew to be unnatural, nay, impossible in the animal) he had entirely failed to notice anything going on outside, but now he saw...
Beyond the firewall, in the inky darkness, the Death Eaters were throwing hexes at it with the same single-minded fury that had possessed the dragon. They were visible by the constant inconsistent flashes of the fireballs and curses and complicated spells that were being hurled towards them; and it seemed they did not mind when one of their number was taken down by a furious acromantula or a charging unicorn. The watching boy could see the wall ripple and jump under the barrage, with what seemed like increasing intensity. Now almost all the children started screaming again, shrieking in fear - they had seen what the watching boy had, and it scared them to the core.
Then the watching boy heard a hoarse, vicious voice from the other side shriek "Avada Kedavra!" There was a burst of horribly familiar green light, and for a second time seemed almost to both speed up and slow down-
There was a very surprised and, he thought, rather unspectacular "Ungh" from a second year girl next to him, who fell dead in a heap at his feet.
****
Anthony clapped his hands over his mouth, swallowing bile. His stomach seemed to have dropped earthwards with each dispassionate, neutral word that the professor uttered, and now his insides felt horribly liquid. He looked in horror at his teacher, looking for some confirmation that he knew how horrible this was. He looked into the cold depths, turned elsewhere, inward, and he found... nothing. No emotion. His teacher, he realised, was too frozen, too locked in memories to actually comprehend the magnitude of what he was saying.
Maybe it was better that way. Anthony could form his own conclusions and emotions from what was said rather than how it was said. His teacher was good at that. He remembered him casually reeling off a list of deadly toxins and examples of their use only a few weeks ago, with nary a flicker across his face to betray what he thought himself. His professional detachment made it a lot easier to think about the whole thing as distant and far away.
But Anthony knew that this was no distant thing, no historical event far beyond the recall of mortal man - these wounds were very fresh, much more so than he could ever have comprehended. He knew that it wasn't professional detachment he could see in the professor's eyes, but hollowness. And still, he needed to know, because if he didn't then what incentive would children like him have to keep the dark away?
Then his teacher's eyes met his, though it seemed a moment before they actually focused on him.
****
He shook himself almost physically from his memories, momentarily distracted by a flicker of movement at his side. He looked at Anthony, and for a moment, he wondered what the boy was doing here - where were the hexes and the Death Eaters? Where was the stench of battle? And then he remembered that it was no more than memory now.
The boy's hands covered his mouth; if truth be told, he looked slightly sick. His guileless eyes were wide and horrified, but, the professor was almost pleased to note, still held a morbid need of knowledge. Good. He did not want the boy to start something - the very reason he had chosen to tell Anthony in particular was the fact that he knew that this boy was not one to make hay. Anthony wouldn't tell anybody; but he would remember what he was told this night, and someone /had/ to remember. Let the headmistress keep her policy of protecting the ickle children from the big bad world. Sometimes you needed a monster to remind you what courage was for.
He mentally reviewed this statement and nearly wrinkled his nose in disgust. Courage?
And then he thought, yes, because sometimes, on very rare occasions, sneakiness and subterfuge were just no substitute for that sheer enraged fearlessness that made no task insurmountable - as long as the adrenaline lasted...
Outright hysteria engulfed the students left standing. A collective cry of dismay went up, and all started to scream and sob; the watching boy stood very still as the headmaster and the heads of house left standing ran to the young girl.
It was, some may have been surprised to learn, the first time he had seen Avada Kedavra used that close to him. He found himself regarding the sprawled figure almost clinically; she was not someone he knew - he could vaguely remember seeing her face at a sorting ceremony, but that was all. She looked very pretty, in a young, naive sort of way. Her long chestnut hair spread around her slender face, which seemed stupidly peaceful. *She barely knew what hit her...*
He vaguely registered a hushed argument going on between the three teachers, but it sounded less angry than it did scared, panicky, desperate. He dimly acknowledged the press of adults around them, including Madam Pomfrey, who felt the girl's neck and broke down there and then. And the bloody Terrific Trio came there - Weasel was limping; the Granger Mudblood (funny, how hollow and childish that sounded now) holding him up and looking all Brave Heroine-ey; and there was Perfect Potter, bringing up the rear for once, looking like a ghost...
He looked up and saw, through blurred vision, the trees, the uprooted, walking, angry trees, stomp forward and knit a barricade in front of the failing firewall. His ears didn't seem to be working too well, either; snatches of conversation would float past, some heard, some unheard...
"My gods, their eyes... look at their eyes..."
"-didn't even know what hit her... oh, Albus..."
"-they're coming through! Headmaster, they're coming!"
"Their eyes! What happened to their eyes?!"
"...oh, gods... I know how he did it. Headmaster! He's not gone! He's still here - not alive, he-"
"Peace, Severus, calm yourself! What is it?"
"The Dark Marks! -they weren't just-"
What? He struggled to gain a grip on his senses; this sounded important, and if it could make that voice, that cold, smooth, velvet-over-steel voice sound so panicked and frightened...
"-they bind the life-force of the bearer to him! He /shares/ their life! He's not dead yet! He's Borrowing them! He's riding their minds!-"
"My gods... he's right..."
"No matter yet! We have to get the children inside the castle first!"
"What-!"
"Don't you see? It will be easier to maintain the wards inside, the Castle will help us! EVERYONE! Get into the Great Hall! Quickly, now! Come on! Get the wounded inside first! Come on, you all know Wingardium Leviosa! Quickly now!"
*Oh, gods, any minute now she's going to clap her hands and say 'chop- chop', I just /know/ it...*
Then he blinked, as the world was suddenly dominated by black - odd, he didn't feel faint...
"Come, mister Malfoy. They could use your help."
The watching boy started, and looked up. Snape's face was pale and drawn, and there seemed to be a hell of a lot more lines around it than he remembered; but it was /his/ face, the one that, even for its penchant for subtly ripping you apart, was a strangely comforting one.
"Mister Malfoy."
He realised that he must have been staring. He blinked and nodded his head, and his Head of House gave a small nod and moved on. As the watching boy helped levitate a stretcher - he didn't notice who was on it - he reflected that the Potions teacher could communicate a lot with that one small gesture, more than the other professors could with a sentence, and he only seemed himself when he was impatient or angry.
*Do not meddle in the affairs of Slytherin wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.* He giggled, somewhat nervously, and then - after clapping a hand over his mouth and looking around to make sure no-one had heard him - hurried inside...
... just as the firewall fell...
Author's Notes: *ahem* I really should have done this A/N earlier, shouldn't I? And possibly a disclaimer... and thanks... Well. I believe they shall all be at the end, with a page all to themselves. Thank you for all the lovely reviews so far; by the way, I have a challenge for you: can you guess where I get my chapter titles from? The title should be an enormous whopping hint. I believe the next chapter will be the last - I already have the pivotal scene written out. No, really! The plot bunny attacked me in the middle of Biology class, and didn't let go until I'd written it all down. Then it turned out it was in league with the Anal Retentive Beetle (you can guess the place /that/ little bugger crawls up to make his home), which did not desist its torment until I'd written three damn drafts. No actual school work got done that day. Bastards.