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Linked on my profile is The Story So Far...
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An Old and New World
by Lens of Sanity
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Chapter Twenty: Fallout
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"Y-you set off an Atomic Bomb?"
The disbelieving question was uttered from the lips of the one truly good person Harry Potter knew. A teenager, who had nice parents, liked books, and was wrapped up in this whole thing for reasons he could not begin to comprehend. Hermione Granger watched the apocalyptic cloud of destruction in a state of numb shock.
"Yes," Harry confirmed, finishing off his cool, fresh tasting beverage. "I detonated a nuclear weapon on British soil."
They all watched in silence for a while, with nobody really knowing what to say. Luna had been frowning at first, but it took her only a moment to conclude in Harry's favour.
"Have you any idea what you have done Harry?" Dumbeldore asked appalled.
"A fair idea yes," he nodded.
"When the ICW finds out about this they-"
"Won't do shit!" Harry interrupted. "I am aware of the ICW treaties you helped write, back when that Dark Lady working with Grindelwald was taken out in the Hiroshima explosion. And that is why I intend to lie about what happened here."
"Harry, you cannot just..." said Tam and Albus at the same time. Though it was the redhead who completed their thought, "You can't just do something like that. It's horrible. How many people were in that city?"
He did not reply, but as always noticed the troubled across look Fleur flawless face. She was however simply standing there, not permitting herself to become involved.
"Harry, the Compacts," Dumbledore attested, "all signatories are duty bound to assassinate each and every one of us for what you have done."
"I'm going to lie about it, I've thought it through," Harry stated again. "Besides, if they do make a stink about it, I can tell them you had no knowledge of it beforehand. I'll go as far as to swear an Unbreakable Vow as an assurance of my completely honesty. It was for this reason I went to such lengths not to tell any of you beforehand."
"Are you certain it wasn't because we would have stopped you?" Hermione challenged.
"Yes Hermione, I am certain you could not have stopped me from doing it."
"Then why?" Tam asked, taking a stand at her side. "What were you thinking?"
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"...were you thinking?"
"What can I say? It was the right thing to do," Harry said starkly, and noting the dubious looks waved them into silence. He set about pouring himself another drink while thinking about how he was going to explain. "I am not going to spout some pretty words and claim it was all for the Greater Good or anything. Because let's face it that kind of goodwould be relative, as well as a load of horseshit.
"Still, it was my decision to make. A person needed to carry the Dark Mark just to get in, and we used a not-yet-invented principle in brewing the Essence of Snape potion. This meant there could not have been a single innocent in that city. So I chalked it up to being a military target, and therefore fair game.
"A fission device was the only way I could think of to destroy the whole thing in one go. Bella and I spent a good portion of the Malfoy gold, spreading around enough cash and confunding enough Muggles to track one down. Thanks largely to a water bottle filled with Veritaserum, we eventually found this guy in a Turkish bazaar who had three. They had been lifted from the Russians now that their country is decommissioning, and he was selling them for US$40Million apiece."
"You gave an arms dealer that much money?" Hermione exploded, it was getting worse and worse.
Shaking his head, Harry corrected, "No, Bella put him under an Imperius Curse, and I killed him once we took the weapons," he breathed. "Gods alone know what would have happened had some religious group of crazies got one. And anybody who would sell something that dangerous to the highest bidder is the kind of person who would be enormously improved by death anyway."
"But we had already escaped," Hermione pointed out. "Why did you think the city needed to be destroyed?"
"Luna?" Harry asked. "How many times has the City of the Dead been successfully infiltrated, in this timeline and the other future?"
"Other than this morning, precisely zero times Harry," she promptly replied.
"Albus?" Harry went on. "What is the sole real weakness of a Jabberwock?"
The old man frowned, before slowly replying, "They cannot leave their magical forest. Even should one be slain that forest's magic will eventually permit it to respawn."
"Tam?" his green stare moved onto the redhead. "Even should we kill Voldemort forever... do you believe he would have ensured the Jabberwock's instructions would still be followed?"
One of the Jabberwocky defending a forest from people going against Voldemort's will, should he die it would still be attempting to do fulfil that goal.
"Yes, I see," Tam spoke aloud once her chain of thought ran its course. "The Holy Forest needed to be destroyed, and we did not have the necessary time to torch the whole thing using Fiendfyre." Then a longer pause, slow and with deliberation, "I am with you. I do not like it, but a weapon of mass destruction was the best thing to do."
"Ethically-" Dumbledore began, before a room full of people combined to face him with an identical look. One which screamed "Weaponised Baby," at the top of its lungs. And that the only reason they were not saying so out loud, was because of Hermione's presence.
"I want to go back to France 'Arry," stated Fleur, a small somewhat tentative voice.
Harry didn't miss a beat and took from his pocket a large metal ring, stowed the whole time they spent in the City of the Dead. He'd had a feeling she might ask, but was hoping it wouldn't be needed.
"The activation phrase is 'Carry me to Carcassonne, Goodbye Harry,' and it must be uttered in your distinctive timbre."
The stunning woman did so, locked as she was by his big green eyes. Did she look a little sad?
As soon as Fleur and his portkey vanished Harry let out a long sigh, "I should have kissed her when I had the chance."
Slowly Harry turned to the one person remaining who counted, "Here's the deal Hermione; I don't like it, but still decided that this was the best course of action. For various reasons, nobody else in the room but you matters, and I want you to go away and think about it. Then in a few days, you are to tell me whether or not I'm evil. Understand?"
Hermione looked so shocked at the order she could not speak, so simply nodded once.
"Someone show Aunt Petunia to her room please, I have to go do a thing."
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Luna was overlooking the charred remains of the Holy Forest while Harry left the room. It was a masterstroke, nothing short of it in her opinion. She didn't think the others really understood just what kind of place the City of the Dead was, or had been she supposed would now be more accurate.
A thermonuclear weapon in a magical war.
Luna was astounded. She would have never thought of that in a hundred progressions of the Zodiac; rabbit to rabbit once every twelve years.
It was not lost on her that Caerbannog seemed to be leisurely circling the recently destroyed city, and on later investigation would learn that the ship was maintaining a huge dome of energy which prevented the radioactive fallout from escaping. Harry really had thought of everything. He even intended to fund scrubbing the area clean using the last of the Malfoy Vault.
"What thing does he have to do?" Hermione asked after their friend had left.
"Do you want to guess, or shall I simply tell you?" Luna replied. Rolling her eyes at their predictability she continued. "In as much detail as you can remember, what happened to Harry following the Hall of Prophecy battle?"
"Erm-," said Sirius, thinking back. "He made sure Tonks was alive didn't he? And that Bellatrix would be treated in the Hospital Wing."
"The next time I saw him, he had shown up with Tam and it was the next afternoon," Hermione added.
"Eight members of the Order of the Phoenix died at the Ministry," Luna reminded them. "He locked himself in the Room of Requirement with three bottles of firewhiskey, and an alcoholic grade hangover remedy," she paused a second before finishing. "Harry hates killing people, or getting them killed. The only reason Tamsyn managed to capture him so easily was because he had fled Hogwarts early the next morning so as not to have to talk to anyone," the blonde took another breath. "Exactly the same thing happened after Malfoy Manor, when he'd connected a Killing Curse with someone other than Voldemort for the first time."
These revelations caused an appreciable amount of introspection. After a time Dumbledore took his leave, as did Hermione accompanied by Fawkes. Tam followed shortly after, and with a nod Sirius left the two alone.
"So Mrs. Dursley, what do you think of Harry's home?" Luna asked blandly. The woman was clearly overwhelmed by everything that had happened and did not respond. "Come on, I'll help you find someplace to sleep. Even though it's not yet noon, I'll bet you're as in need of a nap as I am."
"B-but," Petunia stuttered. Eventually vaguely managing an "Impossible!"
"Quite," Luna agreed. "One piece of good news however; your estranged sister is probably going to recover from her death. If Harry has anything to say about the matter at any rate."
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Scampering after Hermione, Tam noticed that she was with that damn bird again. She didn't know how people could stand the noises it made. The sounds felt like nails were being dragged across the blackboard of her very soul. Harry had always been indifferent to the effects, take them or leave them, although he still got along quite well with the Phoenix. That was probably because of the whole battling side by side in the Chamber of Secrets thing. Hermione and a few others always felt strong and uplifted, but Tam really hated being around the immortal creature.
Sucking up her discomfort she closed on her target, seeing that the woman was visibly upset.
"How are you holding up Hermione?" Tam asked reaching her. That untameable flow of hair was even more wild than usual, and when she eventually responded it was with agitation.
"Harry, he-, I, accessory to mass murder, I-," Hermione tried to verbalise what she was going through. "...then, asking-, and I'm the only one who..."
In that instant Tam came to a decision, a firm resolution that she knew of one sure way to calm the other girl. Pushing her lithe feminine body up against the chestnut haired teenager, she kissed her. First contact of her full red lips caused the woman to freeze in shock, but slowly, hesitantly, Hermione broke and began kissing back. It went on for a long perfect moment, and the avian took its leave in a blessedly silent flight.
Hermione's first moan of pleasure snapped her out of what was happening, and back to the realities of the situation. "N-no. What are you doing, we can't!" The teenager scrambled, "I am a girl, girls don't do this..." and the last, clearly an accusation, "You're a girl!"
Not fazed in the least by this reaction, Tam's eyes narrowed predatorily and Hermione got just a little bit scared, "That is just it though, I am really not."
Pressing both the brunette's wrists above her head with one hand and pushing the woman up against a wall, Tam held the girl in position with the ease of her ritual enhanced strength. Tam's predatory gaze was stronger than ever as it stared into her for the longest time. From the other girl she then took a forceful kiss. Hermione struggled at first until her traitorous body sagged in blissful submission.
A final sane thought cried out in a small voice before being cut down:
What would my parents think?
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Luna eventually decided to forgo her nap in favour of butting her nose in where it was not wanted. She'd hit the Muggle with a minor spell from the simplest Earth Seal, and Harry's relative had decided to sleep for a while. Five minutes' walk past the library Luna approached his door and noticed with little surprise that it was covered in security charms, and greater surprise when she discovered he'd went with a Shroud of Athena.
"You're spending way too much time with Riddle," the blonde commented to the aether.
It took an involved few minutes to place a slash in the construct, and alter her magical signature enough to slip through the security without setting it off. Eventually she whispered the "secret" password and eased open the door. Harry had somehow already finished one bottle, and was working steadily through the second when Luna flopped down beside him, taking a big swig of the offered drink.
"Pretty flowers go boom!" Harry declared sensibly. "And some pretty flowers go; 'Wee! Wee! Wee!' all the way home!"
Luna already wished she were more drunk.
"I knew y'know," the inebriated "world saviour" intimated, "Knew as soon as you brought her, that she'd leave once it happened." Then a burp and an unnaturally loud shout, "BOOM!"
"Yes Harry, boom," Luna agreed. "Honestly, I would have done precisely the same thing had I thought of it."
"Yeah," he said, downing the final a third of his second bottle of firewhiskey. Had he been a Muggle, he'd have died of alcohol poisoning by now. Accidently switching to French as fluent as any native Harry continued, "How though? I mean, the little ponce is a blood purest, and she's not even totally human... An-and worse, she watched the ponce kill me, didn't she?"
Wow, he must be even more hammered than I thought. Even pissed out of his mind Harry never lets this much slip.
"Honestly, I couldn't tell you," she admitted to her partially conscious companion. "I've never gotten close enough to either of them to make any intelligent comment."
"Huh, figures. Useless time travel." he said. "I think the Wizengamot's gonna' buy the pile of crap I'm gonna' feed them a' least."
The two worked their way through the third bottle pretty much in silence, and when Harry finally fell into a dangerously alcohol fuelled slumber, Luna commented in a slur, "A friggin' 'ope so. They'll kill us without sec'nd thought if ya don'."
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Draco's life had been full of ups and downs in recent history. On the approach to the final major security section on Level 42, he nodded to Mr. Gibbon, musing over his situation. He'd killed Potter. That was when everything had really started to change. Not only was he one of the Inner Circle due to his efforts on behalf of the Dark Lord, but the successful execution of his hated rival had brought with it a sense of having accomplished something, as well as some renown amongst his fellow Death Eaters.
Flanked by his twin Bodyguards Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle, Draco continued across the winding passageways of Level 43, through increased security, making his way toward the next staircase, and yet further down. This was a long trip, he knew from past experience.
With the notoriety earned from his—admittedly fairly lucky—dispatching of their enemy, Draco had been offered a personal lesson in magic from the Dark Lord himself. The near unprecedented nature of this gift made it something of great worth, not just from what would be learned, but for the prestige offered within the organisation.
The lesson itself had been quite painful.
Draco had been ordered to go all out, to do his utmost to defeat and if possible kill the Dark Lord. Unforgivables were expected not just allowed, and he'd snapped off more than a few Avada Kedavra curses in the attempt. As well as the best of the Dark Arts he'd been able to pick up from his father and various other sources.
He hadn't come close of course, and the dodging exercise at the end had been, well nothing short of agonising. "Dodge now!Crucio!, Crucio!,dodge! Crucio!" he shuddered reflexively approaching the stairwell to Level 45.
The thing he remembered most from the first lesson however, had nothing at all to do with magic. Draco had been given insight none of his other tutors had ever before offered, so he'd thought long and hard on its meaning and more importantly real world application.
"Why was it that no member of Slytherin's line—those of high magical power and purest blood—had taken the world and attempted to reshape it as it needed to be reshaped, for more than five hundred years?" had been the question posed to him by the Dark Lord.
Draco had been recovering from a series of vicious Cruciatus Curses at the time, so his mind may not have been at its swiftest, but he'd been unable to come up with an answer. Nor was he particularly confident he fully understood the question. However the Dark Lord was rarely verbose in his questions and less so in his explanations, therefore Draco listened well while Voldemort was being so.
"You have the blood Draco, and should be rightly proud of your ancestry, as I am of mine," he'd intimated in his distinctive sibilant tones. "Yet it is by wand and will and magic that will make you who you should be. Those who stand on their ancestor's shoulders, rather than by their own mind and magic, will inevitably find themselves shorter by a head."
Finally making it to his destination on Level 49, Draco sat on his large chair, in his plush office. Across the hall was the simulacrum only he and six others knew about, and everyone else believed to be a valuable prisoner.
Draco had at first failed to understood the Dark Lord's words. He was a pureblood, he could trace his family tree back more than eleven generations of purebloods. This gave him the right to rule over the lesser Magicals. This was what he'd been taught, and was what he personally believed.
Taking a sip of the small glass of Champaign following a hard sleepless night's work, Draco nodded to himself. One did not discount the Dark Lord's opinion, especially not when he seemed to be teaching something important. It had taken the loss of his father, and time working through the duties he now had forced on him as Head of Malfoy, before the instruction had permeated.
Greg and Vince were purebloods from old lines, vassal houses to that of Malfoy. And as good as those two could be with a wand on occasion, they did not have the will or the magic necessary to make themselves great. Not in the way the Dark Lord had described.
Potter's surprising return from the dead during the Wizengamot meeting hadn't really effected Draco's status at all, but it made the note he'd received so many months ago, all the more intriguing:
We appreciate the good works you have achieved during your time in the United States.
Enjoy this fine wine courtesy of my private stores.
—Gerard Delacour
His family didn't shout if from the rooftops, but they hadn't always been blond.
There was a massive blast of heat and a shuddering explosion, Draco was taken from his seat and slammed into the far wall. Everything went dark.
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Draco woke an indeterminate length of time later with every fibre of his being screaming in agony. It wasn't like the feeling of a Cruciatus Curse—more a "my eyes sting like they've been swabbed with bleach" feeling—running through his muscles and joints, even his lips and under fingernails.
He'd been injured. That much was obvious.
"G-uh, Urg!" was about the most sensible statement he could manage, while shaking some of the clouds out of his mind.
Eyes cracking open he noticed that his office was a shambles, and that Vince and Greg were down with pretty nasty injuries themselves. Clumsily retrieving his ten‑inch unicorn wand he set about casting some diagnostic spells on the two. Concluding that there was very little he could accomplish here, Draco stuck a medical stasis charm on them and transfigured their injured bodies into snakes, which were in turn pocketed using shaky hands.
He spent the next forty-five minutes in partial consciousness, recovering as many people as he could. Those who were still alive at any rate, given that a fair percentage of them seemed not to have survived... whatever had happened. Draco killed the thrashing simulacrum and pocketed the Rowena Founder's crown, one of the four items all senior Death Eaters had been charged with defending using their very lives if need be.
Once he'd made his way up to Level 42 checkpoint's door, Draco learned that nothing above remained at all. Any Death Eaters who had been stationed inside the rest of the tower had obviously been slaughtered. Draco activated his emergency portkey back to Malfoy Manor, and having not really believed it would work, he was surprised to find himself in the main hallway.
A frantic woman with long blonde hair came barrelling into the entrance hall, all proper decorum long forgotten, and Draco managed a few words, "Hello mother dear..."
Whatever he was going to say was lost by means of his introduction to the floor.
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No Muggle in history had ever experienced a hangover like it. This was mostly due to the fact that consuming enough alcohol to earn one like it would result in a person's death. In the event that said person did not have innate magic coming to their aid anyway.
Harry would never learn that it was so bad that it broke through Voldemort's advanced soul Occlusion, or that the sensation on his end could be described as a big warm hug; uplifting and pleasant.
He managed to get to the shower and turn it on full belt, just below boiling. There was an evens chance that his clothes were still on, and zero chance they could be rescued from all the vomit staining. Harry downed the tiny tar-like potion and stood under the scorching blasts of water. With one eye barely cracked open he watched the black sticky beads of toxin force their way through the pores of his skin, oh the delicious sobering pain of it.
It felt like someone was separating all of the negative fluids from his body and pushing them with agonising bluntness through his skin. Oh wait; that's exactly what the potion was doing, and it hurt like fucking crap!
Thirty minutes later he was clean, dressed, sober, and ready for a new day.
He made his way through a number of corridors, across the bridge, and up a few flights of stairs. Eventually coming to the flight deck where Sirius and Dumbledore were having a muted discussion. "What's up Doc?" he asked, gnawing his breakfast carrot.
"No sign of Hermione," Sirius informed, causing Harry to shrug. She'd decide as she would, there was no point rushing her.
They talked for a while and Dumbledore eventually voiced his chosen course of action, "I intend to spin back six hours and make an assessment of our current situation. I have no doubt there will be questions."
With that he pulled out his personal Time‑Turner and Harry managed to keep a straight face—albeit barely—as the Headmaster vanished from sight.
"What's so funny there Harry?" Padfoot asked, noting his godson's amusement.
"We're in an airship," he replied shortly. Not ten seconds later a silvery Phoenix coalesced between the two, and spoke with the old man's voice.
"There is a Wizengamot meeting at six o'clock this evening, do not be late" then a pause, "And I did not appreciate your prank Harry!"
This caused the raven haired man to burst out laughing. Sirius was confused for a moment, before he figured out that Dumbledore must have reappeared a mile up, with nothing but clear air to support him. "Oh I wish I could have seen his face."
"Yeah," Harry laughed in agreement. After amusement faded he moved his godfather over to a set of Control Runes. "It looks as though I'm going to be busy, so you're going to have to do this."
"Hm?" Sirius replied looking over the softly glowing runes.
"While you guys were forging all those Valyrian bullets and going over different plans, I was coming up with a way to contain the radiation released by my big finish," he informed. "I did a crap load of super redundant Arithmancy to make sure my calculations were spot on. Anyway, I created a bubble ward all the way around the City of the Dead and had Caerbannog charging it. Once the ship has completed its one‑hundred and eighth pass, the Eihwaz rune will light up and I need you to activate it."
"Okay," Padfoot agreed dubiously. "What will it do?"
"Collapse the ward," Harry answered. "Hopefully it will take most of the contamination with it. It should do anyways. Getting this thing to work was harder and more expensive than acquiring the bomb."
"No problem. When do you think it'll have charged?"
"A couple of hours probably, so sometime late this afternoon," Harry finished. "Have a scope around the centre after you're done if you get the chance. There might be something cool left behind."
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"Harry, you're going to be late!" Hermione shouted at him. She hadn't made up her mind yet, but at least she was still speaking to him.
"I don't care. I'm not going without it," he stated, rooting through the piles of detritus strewn around his room. "Your hair looks great by the way."
The brunette frowned, it was the fourth time she'd heard that today. Luna came on the scene, "What's he doing?"
"I don't know," she said. "Looking for something apparently."
"A-ha!" Harry declared in triumph. "Found you!"
"Oh that is the coolest thing I've ever seen," declared Luna as Hermione face palmed. "Can you get me one?"
"Sure."
One minute to six found Harry striding confidently into the Wizengamot chamber, wearing full formal attire, and with rampant griffon standing proudly on his shoulder's declaration patch. Long jet‑black facial hair tucked into his belt completed the look, a wise and imposing leader-type like him who was not to be trifled with lightly.
And Hermione thought I should do this without my Senating Beard. She must be crazy.
Taking in this sight, the Wizengamot members who had shown up collectively groaned; he was wearing "the beard" again. Last meeting Harry had attempted to pass zeppelin legislation, citing the aforementioned beard as one of the main reasons they should listen to his arguments. And seeing that he was about to make some ridiculous opening comment, one of the members threw out the reason they were here:
"The village of Little Hangleton, colloquially known as the City of the Dead, has been completely destroyed. What did you do?"
Sighing at having been prevented from making his awesome opening comment, Harry just answered their questions, the whole time quietly mourning his opportunity lost. "I don't remember."
"What?" the Chief Warlock exploded. Not only was Harry wearing "the beard," but he didn't even have a plan to prevent them all from being murdered by the ICW.
"I obliviated myself," Harry breezed on. "Several weeks ago I devised a method of setting off a Fiendfyre Cascade, using a timed rune set..." he smoothly lied, "Lord Voldemort's city needed to be destroyed, and it was the only thing I could think of to pull it off. The Arithmancy involved must have been incredibly complex, and I still recall how expensive was my purchase of the Smokey Black Diamond, a necessary centrepoint for the rune stone.
"Once I had completed the process—which is completely within the rights you granted me when I agreed to help fight your war by the way—Once I'd completed it, I decided that the knowledge was far too dangerous even for me to possess. So I destroyed all of my notes andhad myself obliviated. The ability to destroy an entire city magically is the kind of thing which led to the Atlantis Cataclysm, and I'm in no hurry to set something like that off."
The room discussed this for a while, talking about whether or not it was within his rights, and none of them really questioning Harry's word concerning the true nature of events. Sirius would have scrubbed the area by now, so there shouldn't be any evidence to the contrary.
Unclipping his fake black beard Harry cheerfully swept from the room.
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"Somebody set of a Nuclear Weapon on Our Island!" Elizabeth Windsor, Defender of the Faith, Queen of England, bellowed at the top of her lungs late the next day. "Who?"
"Their Minister has informed me it was one of their more... prominent... citizens," replied the Prime Minister of Great Britain over his phone.
"Bring him too me," the enraged monarch ordered. "Right this instant!"
There was a long pause, some muttering, and what was clearly a muffled conversation containing more than a little heat.
"They are asking whether or not we have zeppelin access."