Thanks for the reviews yesterday!
The poems quoted here are, in order, "Dream-Pedlary" and "The Phantom Lover," both by Thomas Lovell Beddoes.
Chapter Sixty-One: Follow Me Into Night
Harry opened his eyes and sighed. Well, that was anticlimactic.
He had finally managed to separate the parts of his own mind from Draco's over the mental connection they shared, more than a week after the death of Dumbledore. He'd felt his own palms sweating as he lay down and swished through the grass of the Occlumency connection in the direction of Voldemort's mind. Then he'd waited to dream. When he'd gone hunting Voldemort earlier in the year, he'd leaped directly into the middle of the tunnel, and the Dark Lord had been able to control their battle. This time, Harry thought, if he just sat still, the vision would probably snatch him up as it had in the past when he was already sleeping.
And he'd fallen asleep, and dreamt of Voldemort and Indigena Yaxley in a large house, but they had discussed nothing interesting. The movement of supplies to Bellatrix in Durmstrang, the bribery of high-placed Ministry officials—conveniently omitting names—the last names of a few minor Dark pureblood families who might be swayed into becoming Voldemort's adherents. Nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing daring. Harry knew that was probably only coincidence, because Voldemort would have attacked him if he had known he was there, but still—
I hoped it would go better, my first night back.
Harry waited to go back to sleep, and waited, and waited. Every sound seemed to jostle and press him out of the slumber he drifted towards. Draco's snores, light though they were, made his eyes snap open. Blaise muttered and shifted in his bed, and it startled Harry as much as a knife suddenly pressed to his ribs. He curled closer to Argutus, who slept in a warm ball on his pillow, but the snake made a little hissing sound of complaint, and that went home like a curse.
Harry shook his head and sat up, then listened for some noise of Draco or Blaise stirring. Neither did. Harry relaxed and slipped carefully out of his bed and towards the door. Fawkes wasn't here—he had to catch his breath for a moment as sorrow swept over him—and so there was neither light nor song to alert the other boys. Harry padded out of the room and slipped the door shut behind him.
The Slytherin common room was empty except for one sixth-year boy who always seemed to fall asleep there and never woke unless someone shook his shoulder like wind shaking the Whomping Willow. Harry could sit on one of the couches and gaze into the fire and not be troubled.
He found that he couldn't, though. The sixth-year snored lustily. Harry felt his teeth set further and further on edge, and he sighed, shifting restlessly. Finally, after one snore that included a snort on the end, Harry stood and made his way to the door of the common room. Perhaps a touch of cold dungeon air was just what he needed to clear his head. It was too late for Snape to still be awake, almost midnight, or Harry would have gone to his private rooms and asked to sleep there.
He paused an inch from the door. Something is wrong.
He tried to dismiss it as the product of an overactive imagination; he couldn't sleep, and he was tired and cranky and ready to seek a magical explanation for it when he was just too much awake. But then the idea pressed insistently against his brain, and Harry realized that he could feel a large gathering of magic off to one side of the school. It felt like Cremo, or one of the other great fire spells. There were some that burned hot enough to melt stone, and if this one had come this far, then the wards weren't taking care of it.
The wards weaken at night, Harry remembered.
Harry flung the door to the common room open, thinking that he should find Headmistress McGonagall, assuming she didn't already know, and trying distractedly to feel where the spell was burning. The opposite side of the school, he thought, one of the Towers. He would go and help to quench the fire—
Then the darkness unfolded itself in front of him, and Evan Rosier dropped his Disillusionment Charm and stepped forward.
"If there were dreams to sell," he murmured, "what would you buy? Some cost a passing bell, some a light sigh." He aimed his wand at Harry's throat. "If there were dreams to sell, merry and sad to tell, and the crier rang the bell, what would you buy?"
"I don't have time for this right now," said Harry, moving forward a step so that the door to the Slytherin common room shut behind him. He was grateful that Snape had personally strengthened the wards on the dungeons. Unless Rosier had hung about long enough to hear the password, he was unlikely to be able to enter. "There's a fire."
Rosier smiled at him. "I know. I set it."
Harry narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
"I've come to sell you a dream, Harry," said Rosier. "But you were staying in that snug common room, and even the Insomnia Charm I used just for you wasn't working." He pouted at Harry. "So, the fire. It gets people busy so that they aren't looking for you, and I knew it would bring you out."
"I wouldn't trust you to sell me a treacle tart, Rosier." Harry fixed his eyes on the passageway beyond him. He could use a blast of magic that would spin Rosier into the wall, knock him out, and bind him. He started to build it. "And I'm going to help with the fire now, thank you."
"I thought you might be like that," said Rosier. "Some people are simply too ungrateful, even when all they've ever wanted is about to come true." He reached behind him, into the corner where he'd been standing, and tugged something else under a Disillusionment Charm to his side. "So I brought someone else to talk to you about buying your dream."
He dropped the Charm with a flourish. Hermione, pale and silent, stood in front of him, shivering when Rosier moved his hand to touch the silver collar around her neck. Harry froze, recognizing it.
"Isn't this a pretty thing for the naughty girl I caught sneaking down to visit her boyfriend?" Rosier crooned. He nodded seriously at Harry. "And of course you know what this pretty thing can do, since you used one of them to kill Mulciber last year. I've modified it a bit, you know. It'll explode on my command. A nonverbal spell, just a twitch of a thought. Or it'll explode in an hour from the time I first offered you your dream. And you've already used two minutes of that." He smiled at Harry. "Will you buy your dream now?"
Harry did his best not to remember Mulciber's death, the shards of silver that had sliced open his throat. If the same thing happened to Hermione, he could not live with his guilt. He kept his eyes fixed on Rosier's face. "You haven't said what this marvelous thing is that you're offering me."
Rosier applauded silently above Hermione's head. "You do pay attention when you want to," he said. "Excellent. 'Marvelous thing' is an excellent description for this dream, Harry. You should have been a poet yourself. You would have ended more happily than the poet selling dreams did, you know. Tried to cut off his own leg and then finally poisoned himself. Poor, miserable man. He really couldn't stand being a Squib."
"Tell me what it is, Rosier," Harry said, seeing the way Hermione's eyes widened, knowing another minute had passed, and now trying not to think about her in Rosier's hands for an hour or more.
"A way into Durmstrang," said Rosier.
Harry stared at him.
"You saved my life in the graveyard," said the older wizard, with a sigh, as if Harry were rather dim. "I don't like it, but there you are. And I still have some friends among the Death Eaters. I've told you that before. I've acquired a Portkey that will take us inside the school with disturbing the lightning ward. There, I rather think we should be able to kill Bella, and even have some fun with her before we do. Wouldn't you like to do that, Harry? I know that you're a saint sometimes, but you're human, too. You must want revenge on her for what she did to your hand. A dream come true, like I said."
Harry laughed in desperation. The sound bubbled out of his throat in a way that made Hermione's eyes widen, and he forced himself to stop. Four minutes wasted. At least.
He took a deep breath and shook his head. "Why in the world should I trust you, Rosier?" he asked. "For all I know, that Portkey might take me anywhere, and I've never thought you would be someone to honor a life debt. This isn't a dream."
"Thus my naughty little girl here." Rosier began stroking his fingers through Hermione's hair. He'd put his wand away in his pocket at some point, which Harry didn't remember passing. "To make sure that you do. If you don't follow me, then I kill her, Harry. Not to mention that all those children in Durmstrang keep suffering under Bella. I've heard that she's ordering them to fuck each other now. Do you really want to be responsible for that?"
Harry hesitated, shivering. Rosier swept all of Hermione's hair away from her neck and bent to place a kiss on the silver collar, crooning, "Sweet and sweet is their poisoned note, the little snakes of silver throat, in mossy skulls that nest and lie, ever singing, 'Die, oh! die.'"
It was the way Hermione stood very still as Rosier's lips passed near her skin that decided Harry. He burst out, "Fine! I'll come with you to Durmstrang. Just leave her alone."
Rosier smiled at him and let Hermione go with a shove at him, so that Harry had to catch her. He did, and spent a long moment looking into her eyes, trying to smile in reassurance. Hermione did her best to smile back, but her eyes shut, and she huddled against Harry as if trying to erase the memory of what Rosier had done to her.
"It'll be all right," Harry whispered to her. "I promise, it'll be all right."
"So long as we're back in fifty minutes," said Rosier brightly. Harry looked up to see him holding a smooth, flat white stone that was probably the Portkey. "And be a good girl, Hermione, and don't tell anyone what that collar around your neck does. I can feel it vibrating if you speak."
Hermione nodded, her eyes still tightly shut, her face as pale as parchment.
"Good girl," said Rosier tenderly, and then motioned to Harry.
Harry took a few steps forward and reached out to grasp the stone, knowing as he did so that he was betraying other people. Snape had trusted him not to leave without permission, and now he was doing that. McGonagall could use his help to contain Rosier's fire, and now he wouldn't be here to help. Charles and Thomas and his other allies had assumed he would leave the Durmstrang problem up to those who had the time and leisure to do the research. Draco would be infuriated that Harry had left the common room at all when the wards were weak.
But he looked again at Hermione in the moment before his hand closed on the pebble, and he knew that he would do the same thing again—for any of his friends or allies caught in the same predicament, really. No one deserved what Hermione must have lived through in the past hour, what she was still suffering with the delicate touch of the silver collar around her throat.
His hand closed on the stone. Rosier cried out, "Portus!"
The world around Harry dissolved into patches of green and black and white as the Portkey sprang to life. He felt a moment's wonder that it actually was a Portkey and not some magical weapon designed to kill him, and then he had to wonder, of course, if they would actually get where Rosier claimed they were going.
They did, or they appeared to. The Portkey deposited them into a small stone room that looked like a closet to Harry, from the brooms and mops in the corners. And it was cold. He shivered as the ice seemed to cut through him, and wind, though of course they were shut off from the open air. He looked at Rosier. "Is it all right to cast a Warming Charm?" he whispered.
Rosier, who was looking out the door of the closet, shrugged. "So long as you make it wandless. Bella would feel any magic cast with a wand right now."
Harry cast the charm, and immediately felt better. "You don't look cold," he observed, as he came up beside Rosier, for the lack of something better to say.
He could only see half Rosier's profile, since the man was busy peering up and down the hall, but he made out the smile. "When you've hung on thorns intent on eating your heart for two months," said Rosier softly, "cold doesn't seem to really matter anymore, and neither does hunger, and neither does sorrow. Poetry does," he added, as if he thought he should clarify that for Harry. "But poetry always matters."
Harry shuddered. In other words, Yaxley's torture made him even more insane. Well, Harry would have been surprised if it hadn't been so.
"This direction," Rosier said abruptly, and wrenched the closet door open. Harry jumped at the sound, but walked briskly behind him as they headed towards a great space of light and warmth. How long did Hermione have? Forty-five minutes? If they were lucky, Harry thought.
They halted in the shadows just outside what Harry knew must be Durmstrang's Great Hall, and Rosier gripped his shoulder, holding him still. Harry fought not to just tear the hand off him; it would make too much noise. "There," Rosier whispered. "There she is. I don't know what object she'll have attached Ariadne's Web to, but it won't be too far away."
"Object?" Harry whispered, wondering, once again, if this had been wise. Perhaps Rosier really only had brought him here to fuck with his mind. But, once again, what could he have done?
Rosier nodded at him. "Ariadne's Web can't be broken from the inside," he murmured. "And she can cause death or pain to anyone in it with the twitch of a thought. From the inside, it really does look just like a single, smooth, seamless web, the way a spider's web appears to a fly trapped inside it. But from the outside, you can see that it's attached to some object in the caster's possession. We have to find out what that is and destroy it. Otherwise, you can shred the web, but she'll just reestablish it by linking the threads back to the object, like a spider using the same chair leg to weave its web as before."
"Would killing her work?" Harry asked quietly.
Rosier nodded. "It would, but we still have to identify the object. That's the weak point, the one where you begin shredding it."
Anyone else, Harry thought, would have told me that in reverse order to the way Rosier did. But given everything else he had to be irritated or frightened about, this was a very minor complaint. He took a deep breath, and turned his gaze fully into the Great Hall, which he hadn't dared do before.
It didn't resemble Hogwarts's Great Hall. The ceiling was lower, and not enchanted. The walls held carvings in the stone instead of banners, showing what Harry assumed was a series of battles; he couldn't tell that much about them from his angle, which was low on the wall, around a corner, and in the southwestern portion of the hall. A pile of cloth in the corner said that tapestries might once have hung here, but Bellatrix had removed them. A single large, round wooden table stood in the center of the room, with children sitting stiffly around it.
On a dais at the head of the hall was Bellatrix, sitting on a dark throne, wrapped in furs, and laughing. "Go on," she said to two people on the floor in front of the dais, gesturing with her right hand. "Go on."
Harry looked at the people she was talking to. They looked tall, sixth-year or seventh-year students probably, but from this distance Harry couldn't tell if they were boys or girls; the bundled furs they wore made it hard to be sure. They moved towards each other and tentatively kissed, shivering in a way that had nothing to do with cold, while Bellatrix laughed and laughed.
Harry closed his eyes tightly. He had thought that Rosier's words about Bellatrix making the students fuck was exaggeration on his part, but it seemed they weren't.
"Forty minutes until Hermione dies," said Rosier helpfully.
Harry nodded, and wasn't sure whom he was nodding to. "She won't sense wandless magic?" he whispered. "Are you absolutely sure of that?"
Rosier nodded. "She didn't sense your charm, did she?"
Harry smiled. It felt grim even to him, and whatever it looked like to Rosier, it appeared to delight him. "Then I'll get up on the dais and look for whatever object she's hooked the web to. Extabesco plene," he added, and the spell he'd invented for completely hiding from people arose and enwrapped him. It still felt a bit odd to stride into the middle of the hall with it, but no one glanced at him.
As he got closer, he could see better. The two students Bellatrix was forcing to kiss were a tall girl with an unhappy, pale face, and Charles's son Owen. Harry swallowed a breath of protest and moved forward again, staring intently at the dais. It could be the throne of black rock Bellatrix sat in, or one of the furs wound richly about her, but he didn't think so. Neither vibrated with magic. It was probably some object hidden under the thick white and sable furs, instead.
"Now," Bellatrix announced, "take your clothes off."
Harry felt his shoulders jerk as if someone had pulled on a string attached to them. Owen turned and looked up at Bellatrix, never making a sound. A moment later, though, he did, as he fell down. His right leg was obviously broken, with no more than the slightest twitch from Bellatrix.
"I promise," Bella said, when she had finished laughing at Owen's pain, "you won't feel the cold when you get going. Since it appears that you'll have to lie down on top of him, just do it now." She nodded briskly to the girl who'd been kissing Owen. The girl knelt at once, though Harry could see the tremors racing in her limbs and knew how badly she must want to defy the older witch.
Harry imagined days on days of this, trapped in the school with a madwoman, knowing she could cause you pain or death with the slightest whim, never knowing if rescue was coming, having hope die day by day—
He shook his head and stepped forward, mounting the last step of the dais. Bellatrix looked straight through him, of course. Harry looked hard at her, trying to see any faint strands of a web that might connect to her, trying desperately not to let the sounds from behind influence him.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. The furs wrapped close around Bellatrix's feet and legs, not leaving much room for an object to sit on the floor underneath them. Perhaps something rested in the chair next to her, but Harry couldn't see it, if so; both throne and furs lapped her to the point of making her look like one of the fat queens from centuries ago. Harry stepped up right behind her, reminding himself that no one could sense him, and stared down at Bellatrix's lap, wondering if the object rested there.
No. Not with her. On her.
Harry saw the faint blue lines racing to and away from her right hand, the hand that had once been his before Bellatrix transformed it, and nodded once. That was it, then. Bellatrix had insured that no one could steal the object from her easily, or Voldemort had insured it. Of course they had. They were quite clever, in their own mad, limited way.
He took a deep breath. He would need to drop his hiding spell before he could use the spell he intended to use, since all his magic was currently trapped under the shield with him. And that meant he would appear right next to Bellatrix for at least a moment, and Merlin knew what she might do.
He told himself to be quick, to get on with it. One, two, three—
"Why, hello, Bella."
Harry froze as Rosier strolled into the hall and stood on the far side of the wooden table, smiling disarmingly up at the dais. Bellatrix looked up from Owen and the girl, and her eyes shone like marble. Then she cackled.
"Evan," she purred. "Come home to the flock, did you? Or did you only come to watch my little games?"
"Only the latter, I'm afraid, Bella." Rosier bowed to her, sounding sorrowful. "Because, as the poet says, dear and dear is the poisoned note—"
"Oh, don't bore me with your poets, Evan," Bellatrix snapped, and wriggled her thumb. Harry saw a girl at the table lurch upright, choking. "You know I don't like them. And don't get any closer to me, or you'll be the cause of at least one girl's death." She nodded to the child she was choking.
Rosier laughed. "Do you think I care, Bella?" he asked, drawing his wand. "Who insured that the children were alive as they hung outside Ottery St. Catchpole, after all, and that it took so long to get them down?"
Harry shook his head. The information that Rosier had been responsible for the Children's Massacre in the First War was indeed startling, but he couldn't let Rosier control his actions. A girl was choking. Owen lay on the floor with a broken leg. Regardless of what Rosier had in mind, or didn't, Harry knew he had to strike now.
He dropped his Complete Vanishing spell. Bellatrix sensed the rush of magic, or perhaps only the sudden presence of someone beside her where no one had been before, and turned her head to stare at him.
Harry didn't wait. "Sectumsempra!"
And as if it had been a year before, as if she didn't know what she was doing, Bellatrix lurched backward from the curse with a scream, and lifted her right arm to defend her chest and face, and the spell neatly sliced her right hand off at the wrist. The hand soared across the dais, spinning and sending blood up and down in obscene pinwheels, but Harry had been waiting for that. "Accio hand!" he called, and the grotesque thing turned and flew straight back to him.
He held it close for a moment, looking at it. There was no sign that it had once been his hand, and sat on the end of his left wrist. Bellatrix had changed not only the direction of the fingers, but the complexion of the skin and its size, so that it fit on her own arm. Harry found that he didn't feel much as he held it. Resentment, of course, but far more resentment of the way she had treated the children in Durmstrang. He shook his head and began to gather his magic.
"You'll never destroy it, Potter!"
Harry looked up. Bellatrix, covered in blood, bits of bone sticking out of her right wrist, handless now—and, Harry could also clearly see now that the furs had fallen away, with her breasts gone—was laughing at him like a maddened werewolf. She shook her head, back and forth, back and forth.
"It was yours! You'll want to retain it, keep it, charm it around and put it back on your wrist!" She leaned forward, as if conveying a great secret. "You could, you know," she whispered. "It would be easier than finding out what curses I used on your arm and removing them all. There are curses under curses, Potter, traps under traps."
It took Harry a moment to realize what she was saying, and then he stared. Had that really been why Voldemort and Bellatrix chose to link the Ariadne's Web to her right hand? Because it had been his, and they thought he could never bring himself to destroy it?
"You don't know me at all," Harry whispered, and spoke the spell aloud, just because he could, not because he had to. "Concremo!"
The fire burst from his right hand, augmented by a blue tinge that Harry thought came from the phoenix fire he still hadn't learned to control, spreading up and down his palm and fringing it in flames. They ate Bellatrix's hand from the inside, turning the fingers to blacked bones and then to ashes, boiling the blood, withering the skin and then eating it entirely. The blue lines of Ariadne's Web leading from it puffed into nonexistence. Harry stepped back, casting a Levitation Charm, and the hand hovered in midair, burning, so that everyone could see it. Bellatrix watched with a gaping mouth. Most of the children were either uncomprehending or taking large breaths as they seemed to realize the web that had held them was being destroyed. Rosier laughed aloud.
When the fire finished, then Bellatrix began to scream, hysterical, mindless cries that made Harry wrinkle his nose. The very last of her sanity was gone now, he knew. He thought about capturing her and taking her along. He could give her to the Ministry. Under Veritaserum, she could tell them much about Voldemort's plans. And with the object she'd linked the web to destroyed, she wasn't about to reestablish it.
Rosier cast the Severing Curse. Harry swung around, ready to deflect it if it was aimed at him or one of the children, but it struck past him and laid Bellatrix open from breastbone to ankles. The way she screamed then was something Harry knew he would hear in his nightmares for the rest of his life, and the furs lost their black and white color under the flood of gore from her body.
"Finish her, Harry!" Rosier called out, his voice high and tight with excitement.
Harry swallowed his revulsion. He had no choice; Rosier might strike at one of the Durmstrang children if he didn't, and Bellatrix was otherwise condemned to a slow death. He could use the Killing Curse, but he had no wish to use the Unforgivable in front of a castle of children who had already experienced enough.
He locked his eyes with Bellatrix's and willed her dead, pressing against the parts of her brain that kept her alive with Legilimency. Bellatrix wavered for a moment—using Legilimency on someone insane was incredibly hard, as Snape had taught him—but then her eyes closed, and she sighed, and the screaming stopped. Harry had to turn away. He was afraid he would be ill if he kept staring at her body.
"Well done, Harry!"
Harry glanced at the middle of the Great Hall to see Rosier leaping up and down excitedly and clapping his hands together. The children just stared from around him, their eyes tired and dead and unable to believe they were free.
Harry swallowed. "It's going to be all right," he said, and the same reassurance he had given Hermione rang hollow, even to him. "I—" He shook his head. None of the lies he could speak to them now were at all inspiring. He turned and glanced at Owen, who was fighting his way back to his feet. "Can you cast that communication spell and tell your father that Durmstrang is free now?" He reached out to the lightning ward that surrounded the school and pulled powerfully at it. It shredded easily; they were simple to take down from the inside, as many books had said unhelpfully, maddeningly, to him.
"I can," said Owen steadily. Another boy who looked almost exactly like him came up behind him and supported his head and shoulders; Harry knew it must be his twin brother Michael. A word over Owen's broken leg, and the pain in his face eased. Harry glanced along the table, and found the girl Bellatrix had choked being stroked and soothed by other students.
"Good," said Harry, and turned back to Rosier. "We have to go back to Hogwarts. I want to make sure that you free Hermione."
"Would I do something else?" Rosier asked, and then he laughed and bowed. "Forgive me, Harry. Of course I would. And since you killed Bellatrix so sweetly, doing what I asked of you like an aimed weapon, then of course I will free Hermione." He held up the white stone, and Harry strode forward and gripped it.
They started to whirl out just as other people Apparated into the hall. Harry caught a glimpse of Charles's startled face, and could only shrug before the Portkey took him. Charles, with other parents, must have been watching for the moment the lightning ward fell. At least they were here now, and could comfort their children.
He and Rosier landed roughly in the hall outside the Slytherin common room, and Harry found Hermione standing utterly still, the silver collar still in place around her neck. Rosier strode forward and stood stroking it for a moment.
"Take it off," Harry said. "Now."
Rosier clucked his tongue at him. "I hardly think that you're in any position to be so impatient, Harry. I could still destroy her with a thought." But he drew the silver collar slowly off Hermione's neck, his fingers lingering on her skin. Hermione turned her face away and trembled, then swallowed several times. Rosier laughed.
"The next time I see you," Harry said to his back, "I'm going to kill you."
Rosier glanced at him over his shoulder, eyes tranquil. "I know," he said. "But that's all right. My life debt is fulfilled. I won't ever come near you with as little protection again. Oh, and Harry?"
Harry stood still, wondering if it wouldn't be the best course to kill Rosier now, and ready to do so if he made the least motion towards Hermione.
"Tell Henrietta Bulstrode to watch her back." Rosier smiled at him, and Apparated out, proving once and for all to Harry how weak a state the Hogwarts wards were in. The moment he was gone, Hermione swayed as if she might collapse.
Harry moved forward to gather her in his arms, closing his eyes. He felt helpless. The mental scars Rosier had given Hermione tonight, and the ones that the Durmstrang children had suffered, were beyond his ability to heal or even soothe. Hermione held fast to him and cried frantically, and Harry could be her support, but he wanted to do so much more, and he didn't think he could.
"Mr.—Harry."
Harry looked up wearily. Professor McGonagall stood in front of him, her lips thinned to a precise line, and behind her was Snape, voice gone in his rage. Harry looked down. The fire must be under control, or they would never have left it to come looking for me.
He knew he would face more than scolding; he would face anger and bitter disappointment, especially once they knew whom he had gone with. But that would have to happen. Tonight had been poisonous, full of no easy decisions except in the moment that he had shredded Ariadne's Web. Now Harry had to set himself and face the purging of the poison, which promised to be no less painful.
"Yes, Madam?" he asked.