Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
WARNING: Unabashed, big fucking cliffhanger.
Chapter Ninety-Three: Many-Legged
Harry wondered how the Obliviators would conceal this one.
The iron thestral flew south with steady wingbeats, now and then hiding behind a cloud when Harry thought they could get away with it, now and then dropping back so as to almost let Voldemort's flesh-dragon close its teeth on its tail. Sometimes they were high enough to be sure most Muggles wouldn't see them, but not often. Harry wondered what kind of tales would follow them, and whether Scrimgeour would be angry with him for forcing the Ministry to cover up a flight that he wouldn't have wanted happening in the first place.
If I wonder about that, he admitted to himself, I can keep from wondering if this plan is actually going to work.
During the periods when the thestral pulled ahead of the flesh-dragon, he worked grimly, emptying himself of as much absorbed magic as possible and tucking it into the Midsummer knife and the gaps in the stones. It had been essential that he gather as much power as he could. Now that he had it, it was essential that he not be carrying it when they arrived at their destination.
"Do you still think you can possess him?" he asked Draco over his shoulder, as he pressed another smooth fold of power into the blade of Light. The knife accepted it with a purr. Harry thought it helped that they were riding through the anniversary of the long-ago day when it had been forged.
Draco visibly shuddered behind him; Harry could feel the tremors through the hands that gripped his waist. He let his own hand fall, caressing Draco's fingers and wrist. "It's all right if you can't," he said quietly. "Tell me. It only needs to be for a few minutes, but you can possess the knife, as we agreed. I'm going to leave it with you anyway."
"I'm not—that is, I think I can do it," said Draco, his voice firming. They ducked around a cloud, and then rose up into a clear blue sky. They'd left the storm of Light behind when they left Hogwarts, and now Harry thought they were somewhere just south of the Scottish border. "But I'm worried about the other parts of it. What happens if you get consumed?"
"That's why I'm shifting the magic I hold," said Harry. "Otherwise, I'd be in incredible danger when that thing came out. But it goes for the strongest target, and Voldemort is the strongest target—or he will be once I finish shifting all this magic." He was almost finished, he thought. He'd pulled back to his ordinary magical core, and that way he was less strong than Voldemort was.
"Do you think he'll really follow us into what he has to know is a trap?" Draco asked, as they hurtled around a looming cloud-mountain in front of them. They'd already gone through a few clouds that big, and both Draco and Harry had found it unpleasantly cold and hard to breathe. "He'll have to suspect when we reach it."
Harry twisted around so that Draco could see his grim smile. "And that's where you come in," he murmured. "That's the second reason I need you to possess him, so that he doesn't just Apparate back out. I think I've made him too angry to consider it, but I've been wrong on Voldemort's psychology before. When and if he starts suspecting, you'll be there to give him something else to think about."
Draco shut his eyes and leaned his head on Harry's shoulder. Harry turned back forward just as a blast of the flesh-dragon's oily black breath curled around them and began stinging his eyes and nose again.
Draco coughed, then shrieked in pain. Harry didn't want to think about why, and anyway, he couldn't see the cause in the choking murk. He squeezed Draco's hand on his waist by way of reassurance, ground the stump of his left wrist into Draco's other hand, and urged the thestral up until they cleared the fog.
He turned around to check on Draco, and realized that the flesh-dragon's breath must have stung the wound on the side of Draco's face and neck, the one carved by its teeth. Draco had his eyes closed and was sweating, and the wound had turned a nasty purple color all around its edges and opened again. Harry grimaced. He'd already tried to heal the injury, and it refused to obey the basic healing spells he knew.
Maybe I can ease the pain, though.
He laid his hand on Draco's cheek and murmured, "Dolor haurio."
Draco's face eased, cautiously, as though he didn't trust the relief creeping through him. Harry grunted as the painful sensations flowed into him, instead. He accepted them, though; he'd long been used to more severe agony, and at least it didn't open a wound on his face to match Draco's. He was going to need all the speed he possessed when they got to their destination, so he didn't want to be slowed by slipping on blood. He faced forward again and continued flying.
"Thank you," Draco whispered.
"You're welcome," Harry whispered back, even though he didn't think anyone could hear them. A glance over his shoulder revealed the flesh-dragon had fallen behind again. Voldemort was snarling and lashing one hand up and down on its shoulder, as though he wanted to coax more speed from it but was currently unable to do so.
"When we get through this," Draco said, "I do want to go to the Sanctuary. I want to do it as soon as possible. I realize there are details to be settled and deaths to arrange, but Merlin, Harry, I want peace and comfort. I want a period of time when I know that you're not going to die and I'm not going to, either." One of his hands found its way to Harry's chest and urged him back until he lay with his head on Draco's shoulder. "I want to celebrate our next joining ritual on your birthday in style," he murmured, and gently nuzzled the side of Harry's neck.
Harry gave a breathless little laugh, and urged the thestral to fly higher and faster. "That you can think about that when we're in the middle of a flight away from the Dark Lord, Draco, and hurtling towards a trap that you admit you're not sure will work any more than I am…" He shook his head.
"Why?" Draco insisted. "What's wrong with it?"
"There's nothing wrong with it," Harry said. "I didn't bring it up to say there was. It just says wonderful things about you. And probably painful things, but I am not about to mention the painful things when we're on the back of a flying beast a thousand feet in the air and you've already admitted you're nervous."
Draco's arms locked around his waist again, this time with less of the painful, frenzied clutch they'd had when they left the battlefield and with more of a tight hold that said he couldn't dream of letting Harry go. He let his chin fall forward until his head rested on Harry's in turn, and sighed.
Harry continued steering the thestral south, with a deeply absurd sense of, It will be all right. It really will.
Harry felt the tension of the wards even before they arrived, when London was only a distant smear on the horizon. They asked him, in all but a human voice, whether he was sure he wanted to go through with this.
I am, said Harry, and reached for the commanding voice he had learned, of necessity, when dealing with the Black wards and the Black artifacts. Fall. Let us through when we come.
The wards acquiesced. That was the wrong word, really, Harry thought, as he dipped the thestral so that Voldemort's dragon couldn't breathe another cloud of choking murk on them. After all, the wards weren't really intelligent enough to argue with him, or hold a conversation with him. Nonetheless, there had been doubt, and now there was none. It was extremely hard to explain to anyone who wasn't actually linked to wards.
He wondered idly if Draco felt the same way—or did the responsibility for the wards around Malfoy Manor still fall so much on his father that he hadn't ever talked with them the way that Harry had with the Black ones?
"Harry, he's coming!"
Harry felt all his muscles tense, and he looked over his shoulder not for confirmation—he trusted Draco—but because he wanted to see the angle Voldemort was approaching from. There had always been the possibility that he would attack before they reached their destination and their trap, though Harry had been more worried about him turning back.
The flesh-dragon was picking up speed again, half-melted wings flopping desperately in the air. Voldemort's snake wrapped around his waist as the dragon came closer and closer, swaying so that Voldemort could see them. Harry growled under his breath. It might be a good thing to destroy that snake, but then Voldemort would withdraw entirely from the battle. He had to keep his enemy angry, not panicked.
And he had to survive the flight until they could get to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.
Harry clenched his knees on the thestral and waited for the dragon's next attack—or Voldemort's. From the way he was holding his wand, he had given up on commanding his beast to use its reeking breath. A spell was the more likely thing. Harry cranked up his awareness, opened his mind to his instincts the way Moody was always insisting they do in battle, and practically held his breath as he waited.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Harry heard the first syllables, and was already turning the thestral. No shield or barrier could block the Killing Curse; Moody had repeated that hundreds of times to the dueling club students, never mind that many of them had already heard of it from Mulciber disguised as him in their Defense Against the Dark Arts classes last year. He hadn't wanted any foolish heroics, any attempts to charge down a dragon's maw when the dragon was spitting that spell at them.
The beam of green light traveled far above the thestral as they dropped. Harry grimaced as he saw Muggle buildings loom sharply into view. Perhaps Voldemort was trying to chase them into the sight of Muggles—though Harry couldn't imagine what he would want to accomplish with that.
Speaking of which, I can at least help the Ministry, he thought, and wrapped a Disillusionment Charm around himself, Draco, and the thestral. Voldemort could still track them easily, by the pull of Harry's gathered magic if nothing else, but the Muggles shouldn't see them now.
When he looked back, Voldemort had taken something like the same tactic, as the outline of the flesh-dragon had faded to a shadow. Harry smirked. He doesn't really want Muggles seeing him yet, no matter what he claims. Taking over their world and never fearing what they could do to a wizard, my arse.
Harry kept an eye on him as the thestral dodged and twisted. He hadn't bothered with the Disillusionment Charm before because they'd passed so rapidly over the Muggles' heads, and he hadn't been sure, then, that Voldemort wouldn't abandon the chase and turn back to plague his allies. But he was sure now. Oh, he was sure. A second Killing Curse a few minutes later confirmed it.
"Harry?" Draco asked, when they'd dived so that the Killing Curse had no chance of touching them, and then rose again.
"Hmmm?" Harry asked. He was leaning forward. He'd memorized the map between Grimmauld Place and Hogwarts carefully, and he knew the thestral was flying in that direction, but it might still be possible to miss the house. They were going so fast that they might hurtle over it, and the Disillusionment Charm had put a misty barrier between them and the world.
"You really aren't frightened, are you?"
Harry glanced back at him in curiosity. "Bloody terrified," he said simply. "Or I will be, once this is finished." He shook his head, remembering the fear that had gripped him when Voldemort held Draco hostage. Perhaps I used up most of my terror then. "It might not work, and then we'll have Voldemort in a house full of dangerous Dark artifacts and all this captured magic. That would be terrifying for any wizard. But I think it is going to work."
"Why?" Draco's whispered word brushed Harry's ear like a gnat's wings.
"Because I have faith in you, and faith in myself, and even faith in the monster we need to let loose to make this work," said Harry simply, and brushed Draco's hand with his own again, and then looked down sharply as a familiar, looming shape made itself known. Down! He urged the thestral on with his mental voice and his knees, and the thestral dived.
Harry floated the stones and the Midsummer knife out of his robe pockets with a Levitation Charm as they fell, and tucked them firmly into Draco's. He had to go into the house with only his own magic about him. Voldemort absolutely must be the strongest wizard when they arrived. He told himself that again and again, to keep from automatically reaching for that drained magic and using it to protect himself.
When they flew through the downed wards and he felt the singing begin, he didn't try to fight it, either. He bowed his head and murmured to Draco while he still had enough self-control left, "You know what to do."
Draco squeezed his elbow to the point of pain, but said nothing. Harry took that as a yes.
The thestral landed on the walk in front of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place with a grinding of iron hooves. Harry launched himself off its back and ran madly at the door, Draco right behind him. If Voldemort caught them before they could reach their proper places, there would be bugger all they could do about it.
The door burst open in front of Harry, as if sensing his urgency, and he and Draco parted at the foot of the stairs, Draco flying towards the room where he'd carved his rune circle over the Easter holidays, and Harry running like mad towards the door from behind which the tempting song curled. He could hear legs dancing, and a voice like many voices murmuring, Let me out. Let me out. I must be free. Vates, vates, let me out.
It was practically a relief to give in to that song, to lay his hand on the door Canopus Black had covered with warding spells and to blast Dark magic, the only kind that would work, through them.
Draco slid into his rune circle with a gasp, and, reaching out, drew the Midsummer knife to slit a tiny cut on his finger. Then he squeezed with rough pinches at his finger as he held it above the appropriate rune, eyes on the door all the while. He could hear the grating sound as the flesh-dragon landed, and knew Voldemort would be coming through the front door in a moment, clad in power. Fall, you stupid drop of blood. Why in the world is this taking so long to fall?
The drop of blood did fall, at last, and land on the rune Draco needed it to land on. The circle flared with dazzling power around him, sealing itself. Draco sat back, panting, and then flung his mind outward, seeking the core of Voldemort's mind.
There it was, before him, all blazing, rotting foulness. Draco would have hesitated to dive into it, but he knew that he absolutely had to. Voldemort could not go up the stairs and find Harry before Harry finished releasing whatever the singing beast was.
It was a mad plan, but someone had to help Harry do it and not die.
Draco took a deep breath and leaped through Voldemort's barriers, possessing him.
A locking spell faded away. Harry smiled. He was very nearly one with the song now, which thrummed in his brain like strings of silver given a voice, and was finally able to say something other than the banal pleas for freedom it had been giving for so long.
Thank you. You will not regret this. I am not of this world. We are not of this world. We will show you such things as you have never seen, such wonders as wizardkind never tells of. Only open the door, and let us show you…
Harry thought that was a good thing, a good idea. He knew he had fallen into compulsion—knew it and rejoiced in it. He was so tired. The revelation he'd had on the field when Voldemort took Draco hostage was one he would rather not have had, and had raised questions he would rather not answer. He would have liked nothing so much as to collapse and let others take over his life for a while, normal people who knew better than he did, and here was someone who would do it for him, if he would only listen to the song.
I can have my free will back when I want, can't I? he asked the creature, and it sang to reassure him.
Of course, vates. Would we compel someone who is dedicated to free will forever? No. Only let us go, and you will see the extent of our compulsion. There is a meal waiting for us downstairs, a powerful wizard. That is wonderful. That is exactly what we wanted. We will go free, and eat, and then I will come back upstairs and teach you what compulsion and free will mean.
Harry smiled, and closed his eyes, and another locking spell faded from the door. The many legs danced in anticipation.
Draco realized almost at once that possessing Voldemort was going to be different from possessing either Dumbledore or Snape. Yes, both of them had been powerful wizards, and both had been Legilimens.
Neither had had, as Draco was quickly discovering Voldemort did, the ability to possess someone back.
The moment Voldemort felt the intrusion to his mind, he tried to grasp and read the thoughts of the intruder. Draco slipped free of the hold and plunged further into the reeking insanity of the Dark Lord's thoughts. It felt worse than the choking cloud of breath he'd experienced from the flesh-dragon. He had to pause, gasping, and Voldemort caught up with him.
For a moment, he felt his own will melting, or being shoved away into a tiny corner of his mind. For a moment, he felt his own body in the rune circle, horribly present around him when it shouldn't be, lifting a hand as if he would smudge the runes and let himself out—and let Voldemort have access to the stones and the Midsummer knife that he carried, filled with the magic Harry had stolen.
No. I won't let that happen. Draco was already ashamed enough of how Voldemort had managed to use him against Harry on the battlefield, and how he had gone tamely along with it because he'd surrendered to the sirens' compulsion. That wouldn't happen again. He imagined himself as oiled snake, oiled flesh, oiled thoughts, and shoved away from his body again. He melted through Voldemort's grasp and roiled through the thoughts he carried far from the surface, seeking one that would let him have a solid grip.
Voldemort roared and dived after him. Draco could read enough of his mind now to know that he thought Draco was searching for one specific bit of information, the one that would tell Harry why Voldemort was immortal. He really, really didn't want Draco to find that information.
Well, then let's look for it, shall we? It would be better than Voldemort realizing what Draco was really doing: holding him here until the beast, the better distraction, could come for him.
Draco lunged in and out of Voldemort's thoughts, pretending he knew where he was going, and all the while uttering random words. When he did, they bounced back to him like echoes off those memories that contained their concepts. Normally, Draco could simply see anything in a victim's mind he wanted, but given Voldemort's inherent resistance to possession, he had to use this method instead and hope he stumbled on something worth reading. Heart, mind, love, darkness, sun, immortality, death, necromancy, ghosts, corpses, Inferi, soul—
The shriek Voldemort gave when he heard Draco saying "soul" was devastating. And then the claws of his mind reached down and hooked into Draco, making him scream in pain. It was worse than when he'd awakened after the dream Harry had created to trap the Dark Lord with the false prophecy.
Voldemort turned him over. In a moment, Draco knew, he would read everything, and know what Harry was doing, what his plans were, and even that the prophecy that had lured him to Hogwarts on Midsummer Day had been false.
In desperation, Draco did the only thing he could do. He taunted, We already know all about you and your soul, you bloody arse, and Harry is going to do something about it in a moment.
There was a breathless pause, a shocked moment before the storm, and then Voldemort hurt him.
Harry released the last locking spell. The door in front of him looked ordinary now, a wavering wooden panel, hardly fit to contain a creature of the magnificence that waited behind it.
In the creature's excitement at being free, it ceased to sing for a moment.
And then Harry recovered his will, and knew what was going on, and rolled out of the way.
The wooden door bulged and tore open down the middle. The creature poured into the world beyond like an exultant string of shit; so Harry felt the compulsion that came with it, now that he awake. Not silver strings, but the trembling voice of a thousand screaming and murdered insects, he thought, shivering as he leaned against the wall and watched the creature heading for the stairs.
It did indeed have many legs, all attached to a segmented dark green body like beads of metal. It resembled a centipede as much as it resembled anything—if centipedes had no head, and many faces embedded in their sides, shielded and then revealed again by fluttering, white, wing-like discs. The faces were all human, all distorted, and all screaming with wide and yawning mouths. The mingled voices appeared and disappeared again depending on whether the wings were obscuring their faces or not. Harry shuddered as he thought of what the faces probably were: the remains of the creature's previous victims.
His speculation, or what he remembered based on what Narcissa had told him about the creature, was right. It ignored him and headed downstairs. It was aiming to consume Voldemort, who was the strongest wizard in the house now that Harry had shed the magic he'd gathered.
Harry sprang to his feet, waited until the last green bead was out of sight, and then ran after it. He needed to be not far behind the creature if he wanted to defang Voldemort. Because even that creature, in the end, was not his ultimate weapon against his enemy; it was only a distraction, to hold Voldemort still while Harry rendered the Dark Lord impotent. He might have depended on Draco alone, but he didn't think Draco could hold Voldemort as long as the creature would.
He hoped, as he pounded down the stairs and caught sight of the creature's last pair of legs just turning the corner, that Draco had managed to hold Voldemort for as long as it had taken him to free the creature.
Draco had never hurt so much.
Everywhere he turned, everywhere he looked, there was pain. He tried to reach out and grasp Voldemort's mind or magic, but every thought turned knife-edged and flung him away. He was bleeding, he knew he was, shedding memories or opening wounds in his mind. And this time, he didn't think they would be so easy to repair as they had been after Harry's dream. Snape wasn't here to heal them, anyway.
Worse, Voldemort was tainting him, bleeding himself into Draco in some way that Draco didn't understand. Or maybe that was just what possession by the Dark Lord felt like. Draco shuddered convulsively as he thought about that, and heard Voldemort chuckle, low, in his ear.
Do you like this, little one? Voldemort asked, in a voice that echoed from everywhere Draco turned, and sparked more and more pain. You were so eager to possess me. Do you not like being in the confines of another mind?
Draco gasped, and then cried out. And then he knew he was back in his body, in the rune circle, and had been forced out of Voldemort's mind completely.
The Dark Lord stood in front of him, his flesh-snake wrapped around his neck, staring at Draco with crimson eyes. It was the most terrifying thing Draco had seen, not least because he could feel the power pounding around Voldemort. He crouched very still, a mouse before the hawk that had already noticed it.
"Little one, little one, little one," Voldemort whispered. "At my mercy, again, and I need no sirens or dragon this time. And I need no other weapon to torment my heir, or press a blade against his throat. He will swear to help me conquer the wizarding and Muggle worlds, or kill himself slowly, by torture, if that is what it takes for you to be free of me."
Draco closed his eyes, his stomach and his brain swimming. He knew he was helpless. His head hurt so badly that he didn't dare attempt possession, and he had no other weapon that could defeat the Dark Lord, or allow them to contend as equals.
"You will begin," Voldemort said, in a gentle, inexorable voice, "by spilling your blood on the rune circle, and opening it, and then tossing those stones and that intriguing knife to me."
Draco didn't see that he had a choice. When he tried to gather himself to defy Voldemort, the Dark Lord twitched one pale hand, and Draco fell with a shriek as a shock of pain coursed through him. And he could not die. That would kill Harry more thoroughly than to see him as Voldemort's victim and prisoner. He could only try to delay.
Moving as slowly as he could, pretending he was too afraid to move faster—which was very nearly true—he reached into his robe pocket and scooped up one of the stones. Then he dropped it because his hand was shaking. Voldemort laughed, sounding more amused than angered.
Then he turned his head, and his snake pivoted to face the room's door and hissed.
Draco looked up as he heard the tap of multiple feet and the screams. Then he tensed as the creature came hurtling around the corner and headed straight for Voldemort.
And the Dark Lord didn't run, instead staring at the creature as if it were the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. Then it was on him, grabbing him around the waist with two of its legs and drawing him close, pressing his face against what Draco soon saw was one of the many, many mouths in its side. Its body whipped around him like a necklace as he went, unresisting, and more mouths, revealed by those fluttering wings, closed on Voldemort and began to feast—on his magic, Draco thought.
Harry slid around the corner of the doorway, panting. Draco, his hands now as shaky with relief as they'd been with fear, took a moment to squeeze the cut on his finger and coax another drop of blood onto the rune circle, opening it and dropping the protection it had afforded him—and allowing physical objects to cross the circle. Harry held out his own hand, and the stones and the Midsummer knife zipped out of Draco's robe pockets and across the boundary to land in his palm with a smack.
Harry slipped the stones into his robe and spent a moment surveying Draco as he clutched the knife. Draco tried to smile back, but he knew he hadn't fooled Harry. He didn't know how Harry could ignore the sucking beast and its victim to focus on him, but he did.
"Are you going to be able to do this?" Harry asked quietly.
"Yes," Draco whispered. Harry stared. Draco forced himself to cough and repeat it more loudly. "Yes, Harry, I am. I can do this. I can't Apparate, so I've got to possess it. I will."
And Harry bowed his head, accepting that with the faith he had in him, and whirled to face Voldemort, holding the Midsummer knife high. It shimmered in the sunlight coming in through the one window. Draco shuddered. The knife had been forged from the last ray of sunshine on a Midsummer day, Harry had told him, and she was full of magic. He supposed it was only right that she should shine.
Harry spent a moment muttering to himself, as if he were counting. Then the beast turned, and Voldemort's foot lashed out of the protective circle of green body.
Harry stabbed down, plunging the Midsummer knife into Voldemort's calf.
Even Draco felt the rush of magic that followed.
Harry rode the rush of magic through the knife, pushing himself forward with his will, using the power he'd stored in the blade to rise through Voldemort's flesh and blood and straight into his magical core. He would never have been able to do this if Voldemort was aware of himself, of course. But he wasn't, caught in the compelling embrace of the beast, and since the creature was ignoring Harry for the sake of the much tastier meal he'd brought it, he was free of its song.
He dug into Voldemort's magical core, and felt a few feeble defenses shatter before him. Then he spoke/willed the spell he'd chosen into existence, the spell he'd had the inspiration to use when he saw Augustus Starrise and Adalrico Bulstrode dancing at the spring equinox.
"Ulcer regis piscatori!"
The Fisher King Curse created the wound that could not be healed except by the caster, just as it had when Augustus used it on Adalrico—but instead of opening it on Voldemort's ankle, Harry opened it in his magical core. At once he began to spew power, losing it like blood.
The wound would continue to exist until Harry said it should not. Voldemort could still swallow magic—Harry knew of no way to take the absorbere gift, an innate power, away—but it would run out of him again as fast as water pouring into a sieve. Harry knew it would force Voldemort to retreat, to hide until he acquired some means of defending himself.
Voldemort screamed. The pain, and the drain of the power, had awakened him from the beast's spell. For a moment, he wavered on the brink of giving in to the compulsion again, but then he gathered himself up and Apparated, already barely able to do even that much. Harry, yanking the Midsummer knife and his own consciousness out of his victim in the moment before the Apparition happened, couldn't restrain a scream of victory.
And then he had to watch out, as the beast, deprived of its meal, turned to sing to the second strongest wizard in the house.