²Chapter 23: Magecraft
"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." - William Shakespeare
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Levina wasn't happy with the way things were going. She kept half of her attention on Harry's ultimately foolish and suicidal attack, and the other half of the surrounding Forest. She was crouched on a branch, perching halfway up a malformed oak tree as she scanned the slowly dispersing group of Wizards, who stood around looking weary and worried.
The white-feathered magpie ruffled its way into a position next to her, looking far more at home than she did. "Spoiling for a fight?"
The woman glared, still holding the hilt of her sword with one hand, the other outstretched and ready to cast a spell. She started to speak - to point out that Voldemort would be certain to return, to kill off Harry and Leone, to capture the daemon and retrieve the Myrrh Cage - but it was needless.
Because there, suddenly breaking silently through the trees, were the Death Eaters.
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Harry's trill of final, panicked desperation halted the daemon as soon as the notes broke through his phoenix beak. Syneeta started, wet black eyes widening in a look of fearful revulsion that was all too human, before she gave a hissing screech and pushed the black web.
Harry, surrounded by the magic, felt it ripple against him as though it were water. As he slowed and stopped his hurtling rush to the daemon, he already knew it was too late. Not even his stupid, self-sacrificing bid could stop the daemon which was now -
Pushing the obsidian mass somewhere else. Harry could see it fading as though to somewhere else, the strands of daemonic magic finely woven together - and suddenly, the net was gone. He could sense it, still there, poisoning the pure mana; but it was somewhere under the 'surface', hidden elsewhere. Stretched out thin like a
Cloth.
A cloth to cover something, to hide something.
The Eclipse.
A cloth to hide away the Sun.
The Eclipse.
Started by the triumph of darkness over light, first metaphorically, now in a literal sense. A human sacrifice on an altar, and now eternal life of the Five would become eternal death - of all life on Earth. No light, no photosynthesis; no plants, no grazing; no animals - and without plants or animal life, no humanity either. Within days - perhaps hours, if the apocalyptic spell stopped heat as well as light - everyone and everything would be dead.
And for the past six seconds, the Sun - unimportant and invisible in this strange other-world - had been blotted out. It was unnoticeable here, lit entirely by the warm glow of the blue mana...
But back home, back at Hogwarts, back in England, back in the plane of existence he had thought was the only one up until a short time ago - back there, people would be looking up the sky, in shock, bewilderment, confusion, horror, terror...
And it was his fault.
Syneeta still stood, two dozen black threads wrapped around her clawed fingers, gaze now fixed on Harry; and there was something there - some flicker of apprehension. Harry could see from the way the glistening threads disappeared into nowhere that they were connected to the dark mass. The daemon was anchoring the dark spell.
If he could break the threads, stop the connection from the daemon, the cloak was likely to fall apart, to fail. But what was the point? He was physically exhausted, magically drained, mentally fatigued, and his spirit felt as crushed as a two-week old kitten under an eighteen-wheeler.
But if he had no chance to hurt or defeat the daemon - why did it seem so guarded? so uneasy? It had been that way since he threw himself forwards, since he
Cried out.
The song of the phoenix, Harry recalled, strikes fear into the hearts of the impure; and what could be more impure than a daemon, the very personification of maliciousness and evil?
He'd had the power to defeat the daemon all along, though he'd never even thought of it. The very magic contained in his voice - so simple, so obvious, that he hadn't even realised it was there.
Harry opened his beak to sing.
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Lord Abyssay allowed a small smile to grace features that looked as if they were carved out of ice. Another cigar was lit. "It's going well," the noted the cold, impersonal voice. "Proceed as planned."
The aide bobbed his head in acknowledgement, and left the room, pulling the magnificent oak door closed behind him with a barely perceptible click. There was silence, but for Abyssay blowing a plume of smoke into the air and the rustle of papers as they were checked. The peer paused for a moment, re-reading a particular document.
A frown, changing to a look of interest, and then an anticipatory smirk.
"Harry Potter," Abyssay purred to the empty study, "When are we going to drop this neatly-packaged little bombshell on you?" The smirk grew wider. "If you survive, of course."
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Harry sang.
It wasn't anything special, no more than any other phoenix song was. It was beautiful, unquestionably - not heart-stoppingly so, not enough to reduce a grown man to tears; but certainly enough to make Syneeta scream in agonised terror at this assault, throwing the six-fingered hands up to her long ears. Harry could guess why - a tiny trickle of black fluid was oozing out, and he knew without doubt that this was daemon blood.
It wasn't just that the daemon couldn't physically stand his continuing song - phoenix song could make a human flee in fear, and the onslaught was far more effective on a daemon.
Her concentration was breaking on the threads she was holding, half-petrified with horror; and finally her remaining courage was drained away. She had held her ground as long as she could, and now, with oily blood trickling slickly down from ears, nose, eyes and mouth, she snapped free from her frozen state and gave one final wail of anguish before turning tail and fleeing to - where? - but she was gone, and it was all that mattered.
The instant that the daemon had abruptly vanished out of the strange surroundings Harry had found himself in, the threads broke, evaporating like water in brilliant sunlight speeded up a thousand-fold. The lingering, pervading sense of the 'cloth' vanished too, without its link to the daemon, blinked out with an instant.
Perhaps twenty seconds had passed since the daemon had succeeded in bringing darkness to the Earth; and now, at the end of those twenty seconds, it had fled, defeated if not dead; most of its power gone, weak and injured.
Harry thankfully lapsed into silence and flicked as he had done once before, back into the real world, and back home.
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He reverted back into Human form the same moment he returned, throat healed.
It was a moment later that he realised he was facing Voldemort and a small army of thirty Death Eaters.
He frowned. "Okay, what idiot invited the Dark Lord?"
Voldemort gave an easy smile, and Harry was sure he heard a few sniggers from the assembled Death Munchers. "Potter," Voldemort yawned, waving a hand lazily. "Still defiant, I see. I wouldn't expect otherwise, of course, but it's good to see my expectations haven't been let down."
"Delighted to be of assistance," Harry said snarkily. "Are we done here?"
The Dark Lord gave yet another smile, this time indolent and easy-going, which looked quite wrong on his snakelike visage. "Not quite, Potter. There's still the small matter of killing you, which I assure you won't take up too much of our time."
Harry raised an eyebrow, desperately trying to think of something he could do that didn't involve his completely drained magic. "Says the guy who's already tried - what, five times now, including a couple of hours ago? Yeah, you've been really efficient so far. You'll end up in a management job any day now."
Worryingly, Voldemort didn't seem at all concerned. If anything, he looked positively happy. "Ah, but that's where we have a differing of opinion Potter."
"I thought the differing of opinion was on the whole 'kill everyone I don't like' part," Harry muttered, briefly wondering exactly why he was trying to provoke Voldemort into killing him sooner rather than later.
"You see," Voldemort continued, pretending not to hear, "you always get out of my little death-traps thanks to your mother's love - which is quite used up now - a phoenix - of which, you'll note, there is none - or a wand-trick. And I have been reliably informed that thanks to your new wand, there'll be none of that nonsense again."
He was silent for a moment. "Oh yes," he added thoughtfully; "There's also the fact that we have quite a few hostages behind you. Feel free to look - I'd rather shoot you in the front than stab you in the back, anyway."
Harry swivelled around: and behind him, frozen silently in place, were more than thirty people, most notably Aurors and teachers, staring helplessly at the scene before them; some eyes panicked and scared, others grim and proud. More importantly, Dumbledore was there too, helplessly immobile as the rest of them; and all were bleeding, some profusely.
Harry gritted his teeth and turned slowly back around, where Voldemort was languidly pointing his wand at him. "They'll be dead just after they've seen their precious saviour die," he said conversationally, stirring more grunting sniggers from the Death Eaters; "And by the way - so will these two."
As he finished speaking, Draco Malfoy and his two flunkies, Crabbe and Goyle, exited from behind the thick expanse of trees, smirking pitilessly. At Malfoy's wand-point walked Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley, blank-eyed and vacant.
"They've been under Imperius for the past fortnight, Potter," crowed Malfoy, grey eyes gleaming wickedly. "Such a good friend that you didn't even notice!"
Voldemort's grin widened to show two gleaming white fangs as he watched Harry's horrified face; "Goodbye, Potter. Avada-"
And then, there was darkness.
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It was the moment Levina had been waiting for; the sheet of daemonic magic had covered the Sun eight minutes ago, judging from what she had seen as she watched Harry's actions in the other Realm - and the light, which took eight minutes to reach the Earth, was suddenly blocked.
She had twenty seconds to take action and release the spells she had prepared, and take action she did.
As panic and confusion swept through the Death Eaters, yelling in bewilderment in the sudden near-complete absence of light, she muttered the shortened incantation to free the prisoners from their immobile states and leapt down from her branch, disposing of the Notice-Me-Not charms, and drawing her sword.
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Harry himself took a second to realise what was happening, before he remembered his junior school science lessons - eight minutes for light to reach the Earth; and that meant he had just twenty seconds to take advantage of the situation.
As the Death Eaters looked up in alarm at the suddenly invisible Sun, whose light was stopped from reaching them, Harry lunged forwards, towards Hermione and Ginny, ramming past them and ramming Malfoy hard to the ground. "RUN!" he screamed, hoping desperately that this would get through their Imperius-controlled minds.
It did, a little. The eyes suddenly seemed less glazed as Malfoy's hold on them was battered - Hermione seemed to break through almost completely, enough to realise her situation, and for instinct to kick in - survive. Run. She grabbed Ginny, and that was what made Harry know that there was a little part of her that was wide-awake, and threw both of them to the side of the clearing.
Harry drew his wand as Crabbe and Goyle fumbled for theirs, though he knew that he could do no magic, wandless or otherwise until he'd rested - he had another reason for drawing instead. Instead of an incantation, Harry swiftly measured Crabbe's speed and height and then - thankful his physical training was about to pay off - swung forwards to ram the point of his point straight into Crabbe's right eye.
After the sudden explosion of dripping vitreous and seeping white liquid and blood, Crabbe stared forwards in shock, gently lifted his hand to touch the wand as if to make sure it was really in his eye, and then keeled slowly over backwards. Harry slid the wand out as he did so, and turned slightly. Malfoy still lay on the ground, wide-eyed in disbelief, while Goyle's gaze was focused on Crabbe, un-breathing.
Suddenly aware of his surroundings, and strangely untouched by his murder, Harry realised that behind him were screams and shouts of taunts and spells. Despite Harry being one of the most important there, he stood forgotten by all but the two boys in front of him. He watched disinterestedly as an Auror found herself impaled on several enchanted knives, courtesy of a miss by one of her friends, and then tilted his head back to the pair of boys, who were still struck dumb.
"Do you think this is really cool, really clever?" Harry asked quietly. "Is this mature, heroic, Wizardly. Does this make people honourable? Are any of them doing what's right?"
Neither of them seemed to have even heard him, so Harry stepped forwards and ground his heel into Malfoy's hand, twisting it around until he heard two of the fingers snap. That got a reaction, which was Malfoy howling as he finally dug out his wand and flung it, unsteadily, in Harry's direction.
Harry gave a small, delighted, laugh, stepping off his classmate's hand, taking the wand from his grasp, and snapping it over his knee. "That may have been an expensive wand," he informed the boy solemnly, "but you should make sure your wand isn't too much like you. Elegant, made for looks, but nothing really sturdy, solid; far too easy to break."
He looked up to see that Goyle had already fled, in the wrong direction - deeper into the Forest, where he would probably have a meeting with Aragog, or some other hungry plant or animal.
Harry gave his rival a hard kick in the head to keep him down, and pocketed the halves of the boy's wand, before turning around again and wandering a bit closer to the fight. It was practically over; the light side winning, as it usually did; he stepped in an increasing puddle of Professor Figg's blood, and scraped it off into the churned mud, distastefully.
Ajax fluttered over and perched gently on his shoulder. "Clear shot," the bird noted interestedly. Harry looked in the same direction and saw that it was true - Voldemort, busily shooting curse and counter-curse after another at Dumbledore was indeed paying no attention to Harry's direction.
"Haven't got any magic," Harry pointed out. The Magpie gave a little shrug-like bob of his head.
"I'm storing some, just in case you ever needed some in an emergency," he said cheerfully. "What's a Familiar for, if not acting as a portable battery, eh?"
"Batteries are portable," Harry muttered.
Ajax gave another bob. "Not car batteries. Anyway, I've got enough for a couple of Avada Kedavras before I'm all out. Want to take a shot?"
Harry thought about it for a second. "Go on then," he decided, still unnoticed to the rest of the slowing fighters. "Give it to me. I'll only need the one Avada Kedavra, though."
Feeling the magic flowing into him once more; not through the thinned and worn-out conduits, but straight through the strong soul-link, Harry raised his wand and took aim. On the way out though, the words turned out to be wrong. Instead of the sharp syllables of Avada Kedavra came the exotic smoothness of Senta turru.
As he had once cast the spell in the hopes of harming the daemon, now the shards of jagged, aragonite-sparkling ice howled through the air with deadly accuracy, ten of them thrusting their way into the Dark Lord's unguarded back.
The fight now stopped completely, within an instant, as people became automatically aware of what had happened.
The two Death Eaters who remained alive and conscious froze, and then Apparated away, abandoning their Lord.
Dumbledore stared down to where Harry was, disbelieving.
Harry stepped slowly and quietly forwards, on a funeral march up to where the King of Serpents lay. Then he crouched down, the silence only broken by the muted moans of the wounded and the innocent trills of nesting birds.
He suddenly realised that the Sun was casting its light down once more.
Taking one shoulder, Harry pushed Voldemort's body over, and his heart leaped as the crimson eyes gazed up at him, still watching. "Good shot, Harry," the man rasped.
Harry shrugged. "It was meant to be Avada Kedavra. I don't know why I cast this one."
The dying man chuckled a labouring breath. "No matter. Still a good shot." He stopped the wry smile. "There's something I have to tell you."
"If you say 'I am your father, Luke', I'll be happy to suffocate you," Harry said. The wry grin returned.
"Not quite. This is all a test."
Harry frowned, a little confused. "I know," he said, quiet as if he were talking to a corpse already. "It said in this prophecy... if I defeat you, the test is passed. You're just the warm-up act for the real 'baddies'."
Voldemort breathed out a rasp, shaking his head a fraction of an inch. "No. You don't understand. I'm not just a Dark Lord. I was specially chosen to be your test. I was trained in the Dark Arts. Hell, I volunteered for the task."
Harry stared. Why was Voldemort talking so differently, and what did he mean? The man understood his silence as puzzlement. "All those people I killed... who were killed on my orders... it was all a plan. To get you angry, to find the Phoenix."
Harry started as Voldemort revealed his knowledge of the Phoenix - but now it was starting to fall into place.
"I was manipulated?" he whispered. "The Resistance - they set you up as Voldemort, just to be my test?"
A nod. "Tom Marvello Riddle is my name, just as you thought; kept young through one of the Philosopher's Stones, and all 'my' plans, from creating the Death Eaters, to the Tri-Wizard Tournament and beyond; all planned by the Resistance."
"But - I killed you! You fled your body!" Harry gasped softly, feeling every tense muscle, every beat of his heart and pulse and the very blood rushing through his head.
The man-who-was-not-Voldemort shook his head a fraction again. "Just a ruse - first thought up by Dumbledore, that one in particular. All the while I was said to be in hiding, I was once again working in Resistance HQ. Don't get me wrong; all those people I killed - they're dead. They were tortured. They were terrified. It was a small price to pay."
"Dumbledore know, then." Harry mentioned quietly, recalling how Dumbledore had acted when he described Voldemort to Harry as 'just a powerful Wizard gone bad'. He had been lying, Harry knew now, and it was he who had volunteered the suggestion of murdering Harry's parents.
"Why does your body look like this, then?" Harry asked out of the blue, desperate for a way to find out this was all just a final ruse of the Dark Lord's devising.
The man chuckled again. "Just an illusion, sustained by a talisman around my neck. You can take it off, if you want to see how I really appear."
Harry reached for his enemy's robe collar, and plucked out the fine gold chain, dragging out what appeared to be a simple gold hoop attached to it. He carefully removed it, and watched as the serpentine visage changed into a man; black-hair, neatly-styled. Slightly older than the Ton Riddle who had appeared from the Diary, yet obviously the same man though kept young and alive with the Elixir of Life. Same eyes, same hair, same face.
He was the same man who had visited Hogwarts with the white-haired woman, dressed in Muggle clothes to meet with Dumbledore, and Dumbledore had acted subservient, deferential to this man who had killed hundreds directly and indirectly.
Harry was silent for a moment. "So you work for the Resistance," he finally said, unsure if it was a question or a statement.
The man smiled, pale with blood loss, the grass around him slick and brilliant, glorious red. "I go by a different name in the HQ," he gasped out. "Commander Tom Fallow, at your service. Subject FB/P/26H has completed his function," he said, now unseeing as his eyes became unfocused. "Project a complete success. Mission Accomplished."
And with that, Tom Fallow-Riddle was gone, and Harry Potter rose victorious, in act if not in thought. Ignoring the mangled crowd of stupidly gawping Aurors, and the teachers who at least had the decency to look mildly embarrassed for manipulating and deceiving him all his life, Harry passed them by and walked back to school, hoping only for a hot dinner and bed.
Behind him, several Aurors finally noticed Hermione, who sat with her eyes tightly closed, releasing silent screams.