Chapter One: The Horntail is the Least of my Problems

Warnings: Slash of the Harry/Draco variety, blood and gore.

I made some major changes in accordance in reviews! Please read again!

Shit

Fuck

BLOODY HELL!

The obscenities that had been littered around his mind finally lifted off the floor and were put to good use as another stream of fire scorched past his ear. He hopped to the left, avoiding the worst of it, but adding to his list of injuries a lost eyebrow and scorched shoulder

The Hungarian Horntail sent another vicious breath of fire straight at him, giving him no choice but to duck and roll in the dust stirred up by the battle. The slanted golden eyes had a cruel tint, and an air of malevolence that made him think something else was controlling the dragon.

He winced as a claw scraped across his injured shoulder.

Then again, maybe it was just like this naturally.

Harry's eyes drifted down from the dragon's face to a weathered collar that seemed oddly familiar. The obscenities reached a crescendo. As bloody unlikely as it was, it was the same dragon that he had faced off against in the Triwizard Tournament. The collar, while burnished and mangled, still held the emblem of the tournament. There were deep, angry scratches surrounding the collar, probably where the dragon had tried to scrape it off, obviously unsuccessfully.

And evidently, the dragon remembered him.

Howling, it raised then slammed its enormous front legs in a show of dominance. The claws scraped ominously across the floor, making Harry wince at the noise. He had a feeling that this time, an accioed broom was not going to help.

As he flung another curse at the dragon, thoughts of disbelief rang through his head, intercepting each other in a confused muddle of shock.

How the FUCK did it get here? Hadn't Voldemort split his soul over 20 years ago?

Unless…he had been changing the methods of defending and position of the horcruxes throughout the years. That would explain why his current map had led him to a seemingly dead end and any inside intelligence they had gained was curiously outdated.

After running through a list of curses and defensive spells in his head he came to the conclusion that he was quite possibly royally screwed. The spells he had learned in Defense Against the Dark Arts unfortunately did not cover insane Hungarian Horntails. Flipping over to avoid a nastily sharp claw, he voiced the spell that had sprung to the front of his mind.

"Levicorpus!"

The Horntail shot several feet off the ground, giving Harry a couple seconds to think before the spell disintegrated. The dragon crashed onto the cave floor, creating an echo that darted around the cave. Its stagger, as it wobbled perilously to its feet, could've almost been compared to that of a drunk.

His mouth was now too parched to voice the last spell. Even if he could say it, there was no guarantee that it could penetrate or even slightly harm the dragon's diamond-hard hide. His panicky glance at the dragon told him he didn't have much time left before those murderous eyes were once again focused on killing him. As he struggled to breathe, his eyes traveled down to the dragon's delicate underbelly.

There was no time to even debate it. Those golden eyes that had gone cross-eyed with shock were shaking the spell off and narrowing at him.

"SECTUMSEMPRA!" The howl cut his throat painfully. A cough splattered blood down the front of his robes while he tried to remain standing.

But that was nothing compared to what was happening to the dragon. A fatal slice had slit down the underbelly of the dragon, fast draining the dragon of her deep burgundy blood. Harry looked away, a grimace passing across his face. Seeing any creature in a position like this was horrible. The dragon's screams of pain had at first almost deafened him, but they were now winding down to soft growls and whimpers, a misty glaze covering her eyes. She stepped forward, making a last attempt to kill Harry, but she only succeeded in splashing her blood over him as she shuddered and slid to the ground.

Harry stepped back and imitated the dragon as his knees weakened, his legs sliding to the ground. His wand slipped out of his hand and bounced lightly before lying still on the floor, gathering bloody spots from the carnage. Harry leaned back on his hands, gazing up at the ceiling while regaining his breath. The cave ceiling might've been black, but then, he couldn't be sure. The darkness that lingered around the sides of the cave seemed especially prominent in the space above him. He tried not to dwell on what could be up there. In the background, he could hear vague shouts and the fizzle of a spell. Harry debated briefly about going back to help his friend battle against the Basilisk, but there wasn't enough time. He had a feeling that Voldemort had some sort of ward that would alert him to trespassers.

Accioing his Firebolt that had been knocked aside earlier, he hopped on and became airborne once again. Regardless of whether he thought the dragon was dead, he was taking no chances with the Horntail. Even a dead Horntail. He could feel a trickle of guilt running into his stomach at leaving his friends behind and in danger, but going back to aid them would only endanger the mission. Harry leant forward on his broom, urging it to go faster as they passed the grotesque corpse of the dragon.

"Lumos…"

He jerked his broom to a halt, his mouth silently falling open at what he had just stumbled across.

The cave tunnel had expanded to form a dazzling crystal cavern that left spots in his eyes, the cave glittering from some unknown source of light. Harry quickly averted his eyes, performing a quick shading spell across his face. Once he had gotten over the grandeur of the cavern, he felt his mouth drop even farther as he saw an exquisite mansion reflected in the pale colourless floor of the cavern.

He glided over top of what seemed to be a mirror reflection of an absent mansion. Harry lowered his face to gape at the sheer majesty that swirled around it like an aura. The chestnut roof stretched high up, glinting slightly with eaves of burnished gold. The deep red brick gave it a warm feel, so unlike what Harry was used to dealing with when it came to Voldemort. Windows dotted the walls in perfect correlation with each other. The gardens that lay about the mansion complimented it with lush greens and pastel pinks. It seemed like harmonious place, where someone would want to live forever.

A luminous orb appeared now, beckoning him to enter this paradise. He stretched his hand out to join it as the orb grew larger, gaining a more pointed edge while it made a pleasant whizzing noise.

Wait.

A whizzing noise?

Harry whipped his head around and barely managed to avoid the glowing stalactite, which crashed into the floor that had seemed to be liquid only seconds before. Shards flew into him, sending him and his broom reeling backwards. Harry could only hold on and brace himself for the inevitable collision. His flailing arms caught a rounded object in the air and he felt that old feeling of being pulled through time and space from his navel.

Harry opened an eye tentatively, expecting to see Voldemort and a slow death. Instead, he found himself under grayish skies and approaching that same manor that he had been so transfixed by before. Only, the grandeur he had seen had disappeared, leaving only a pitiful ghost of its former glory, for while this was undoubtedly the same mansion he had seen before, this was a broken, defeated, utterly unfunny parody of it. The vegetation that had once filled the grounds with vibrant colours were now rotting browns and bare skeletons of tall trees. Broken glass lay in dangerously jagged pieces for an unwary visitor to step on.

The most striking and troubling feature of the mansion was by far was a bleached skeleton that was tied to the gate, its limbs in a cruelly spread-eagled position. Strands of white-blonde hair still clung to the skull in long strands leading Harry to believe this victim was female. He nearly retched at the gaping hole in the middle of the ribcage shuddering at the pain she must have gone through at the time of her death. He did not care to ponder what else she might've gone through.

Taking care to fly high and over the monstrosity of the main gates, he flew through a hole that had been blown in the walls of the mansion. Upon entering, he did puke, emptying whatever had been in there to the ground far below.

Dead house-elves had been nailed around the inside of the manor, a single piece of wood through their chests serving to keep them up there. The expressions were frozen in look of horror that struck a chord in Harry's heart. He was now glad he had not consented for Hermione to come along. He imagined at this point she would be beyond the point of consolation.

All the floors had been blown away in the mansion, leaving it rather like a box, with the remains of expensive tapestries, bits of papers and shreds of cloth littering the floor. Once proud statues of dignified ancestors were now little more than rubble, their features lost in the destruction.

Harry didn't pay much attention though to the debris that marred this place. His attention was being drawn towards a lone figure in the centre of the room, facing away from him. Whoever it was facing away from him in a high-backed chair and seemed to have dark brown hair. His lip curled up in disgust as he neared, realizing that the person's hair was not in fact brown, but a much lighter colour covered in blood.

He swung around in a large circle around the person on the off chance that they were still alive. Harry slid his wand out from inside his robe, aiming at whoever the person was. There was no way he'd be caught off balance again by Voldemort's traps.

Taking in the scene, he covered his mouth to avoid loosing his breakfast again. What lay before him was a cruel mockery of a ceremony that might've taken place in this house before. A single white table that was supported by two intertwining legs held a small silver tea set. He couldn't determine yet what food was on the table, but to be honest, he didn't really care. A hand holding a teacup still full of tea connected to a tattered and bruised body. He swept forwards and down, landing opposite the person. As he suspected, it was Helga Hufflepuff's teacup. As to who was holding the teacup, he didn't know. Harry sat down opposite the person and studied the area for traps. Waving his wand, he cast a few revealing spells, but if Voldemort had laid the wards he could be certain they wouldn't be revealed or dismantled by any spell he could muster up.

Playing the ever-stupid Gryffindor, he went and detached the cup from the person's hand. He examined it, somehow expecting it to be more…extraordinary, something more powerful than what seemed to be a rather boring teacup. He leant in to see if he could tell who the person was.

Probably some death eater that had displeased him.

A straggle of blonde hair hung in front of glassy gray eyes. A flash of green caught his eye and he gasped as he recognized the Slytherin crest. Then this could only be Draco Malfoy. He nearly swatted himself for not realizing this at once. But then, purple and black bruises had distorted his angular face. Hatred suddenly welled up in Harry and he kicked the chair Malfoy was sitting on, causing the boy to thump onto the floor, his chair clattering and skidding to the side.

Malfoy groaned and stirred.

Harry, who had been on the brink of flying away, fell off his broom in surprise, joining Malfoy on the floor. He couldn't believe that Malfoy was still alive, not with those grievous injuries. His leg was in at an impossible angle and there was a knife in his side. But, against all odds, he was alive. Harry crawled over and felt around his neck for a pulse. The unmistakable beat was there.

This definitely made everything a thousand times more complicated.

Hermione held her wand it one hand, her hair in the other, and was also grinding her teeth. The grinding went on continuously while she took turn vanishing the Basilisk's remains and anxiously twirling her hair, ripping out pieces accidentally.

She didn't have a second warning before a small pale hand swatted her in the head, bringing all fretting and ripping out of hair to an abrupt stop. She gave the owner of the hand a piteous look, asking why she had deserved such an action.

Ginny just glared back, blue eyes flashing in annoyance.

"Really Hermione, we'll hex you too and leave you here if you don't stop."

"But what was that for?"

"For being a prat and worrying too much." Hermione let out a strangely pitched hiccup, then proceeding to uncertain laughter. Ginny stared at her, before joining in. The two girls were laughing uproariously, tumbling to the ground in an assortment of hiccupping and belts of laughter, punctuated by tears.

"It's not fair, is it Gin? That we h-have to do this?" Hermione's tear-streaked, reddening face was only inches from Ginny's. "I mean, where did we sign up for this kind of work? I bet this isn't a job –hic- listing at the Ministry of M-Magic. Bet there isn't any FUCKING wizard…or witch who'd want to be doing what we're doing right now. We're not even near the top in magical ability, so why do we have to do it all our bloody selves? I tell you, it's not FAIR."

Ginny only laughed harder at the frazzled witch. "You should hear yourself right not Hermione. Cursing like a goblin. What would your parents think?"

"Actually, I'm sure they wouldn't be surprised. All that mud in your blood has to go to some use."

Ropes slid out and ensnared the two girls, tying them in thick black cords that only tightened as they struggled. Beside Severus Snape was Ron, immobile from the ropes currently so tight that his cheeks had an ugly purple tinge. His curses had been muffled by a black piece of cloth. Hermione would've laughed if the situation wasn't probably going to lead to their deaths. He was practically eating it in his attempts to swear Snape to death.

Snape reeked of death, or more specifically rotting bodies and blood.

Funny, I never knew I what dead bodies smelt like…

Black enveloped her vision as a muttered spell cracked against her skull.

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