Chapter Eight
Getting It On
Kingsley Shacklebolt, the acting director of the Order of the Phoenix, stood at the head of the kitchen table at Grimmauld place. "Here, here," he said, tapping his wand on the table and effectively bringing silence to the two dozen or so Order members. "Let it be written that the 7236th meeting of the Order of the Phoenix has commenced." Kingsley then went on to outline the particular items on the agenda for the evening, which an enchanted quill was dutifully writing down on parchment. Once complete, the Order then proceeded to turn their attention to the first item on the list of topics - namely, the search for the horcruxes.
"Ahem," Moody said, stomping over to where Kingsley was standing and taking his place. "The search for the horcruxes has, sadly, failed to yield any results. We've combed through all of Albus's personal possessions, and all the records surrounding the whereabouts of You-Know-Who for the last fifty years in an attempt to track his movements. While we've identified a number of leads, we are still no closer to securing the missing items that contain fragments of his soul. So far, we have identified twelve distinct possible locations that may hold some significance for You-Know-Who, and, of these, we have searched four. We should be able to investigate the remaining-"
Moody's report was cut off by the distinct sound of clapping that was emanating near the entrance to the kitchen. Immediately, all heads turned to stare at the vacant space, including Moody and his electric blue eye, which seemed to be squinting in search of the origin of the sound.
"Who's there?" Moody asked gruffly, his one good eye narrowing and his hand already snaking toward his wand.
Shacklebolt and Tonks did likewise, and, soon, half the Order members were readying themselves for a fight.
"Harry?" Ginny asked uncertainly.
Then, slowly, as if coming into focus, two people materialized. One a girl, and one a boy.
"Hi all," Hermione said cheerfully, looking about the place. She made a show of polishing her nails and looking around. "Not much has changed, it seems."
Griffin was content to remain silent and instead took to leaning against the wall. At the sight of Hermione and the strange boy, half the Order members relaxed their grips on their wands. All of them except the Aurors and the Weasleys.
"Who is he?" Moody asked, gesturing to Griffin, his wand still raised. "And how'd he get past the wards?"
"His name's Griffin,' Hermione replied. "And as for the wards, I just transfigured him and carried him inside."
It was Ginny who responded to this, her eyes never having left Griffin. She pointed one manicured finger to the lean, handsome young adult and said one word. "Horcrux."
This seemed to have the desired effect, for, after the meaning of Ginny's word implanted itself in their minds, they began to realize what it signified, and the lot of them began drawing their wands once again.
"Now, now," Hermione said, waving a finger in an admonishing fashion. "Is that anyway to treat your guests?"
Moody sent a fast, wordless stunner at Griffin, who did not so much as flinch. Even as the spell impacted, he drew his wand and fired a single killing curse at the retired Auror, who dodged. In less than five seconds, the kitchen was filled with the light of spellfire. Together, Griffin and Hermione raised a wandless shield powerful enough to withstand more than half their spells, the remaining ones being absorbed by Griffin's tough constitution. Not unlike the showdown between Raven and the Weasleys at the Burrow, the Order members were locked together in inordinately cramped quarters, and were easily picked off with remorseless killing curses by the dark witch and dark wizard.
"Avada kedavra, avada kedavra, avada kedavra," said Hermione almost lazily, two of her three curses finding live targets.
Griffin did the same, one curse landing on Fred Weasley as he dived in front of his little sister.
Eventually, a particularly fierce bone breaking hex punched through their combined shield and hit Griffin right in the chest, effectively breaking two ribs. As powerful as Griffin and Hermione were, taking on twenty people was a lot. Moody and Kingsley switched to killing curses, having already seen two of their allies dropped and realizing the terrible situation they were in, given the superior magical strength of the dark duo.
"Avada kedavra."
"Avada kedavra."
Griffin and Hermione deftly parted ways, letting both spells slide between them as Hermione conjured a long whip made of flaming razorblades, while Griffin took on Moody and Kingsley in a two-on-one firefight.
Hermione twirled her whip so that it curled around the advanced shield that Bill was using to defend people, and effectively impaling him through the throat from behind. A spray of blood jetted out to either side and momentarily distracted Remus and Tonks, who then had to dive out of the way as the whip came crashing down just moments where they both had been, leaving a smoldering chair behind where Jorge Petersen, one of the less known members had his face stripped off, leaving the white bone of his skull showing, and the pink of his now bleeding gums, before he fell over dead, his brains eventually leaking out of his nostrils. Three stunners impacted Hermione's wandless shield, shattering it and numbing her arm, forcing her to narrow her body as a killing curse sailed by. She brought the whip down in a long curving arc and let it detach itself from her wand, so that it wrapped around George Weasley's wand arm, severing it from the elbow down. Already, Hermione had fired off two killing curses into the milieu of remaining Order members, taking one down while dodging one bone-breaking hex and taking another bone breaking hex in her left arm.
True to form, Hermione did not feel the impact at all, as she had already taken a pain dulling potion before entering the fight, and instead responded with a swift explosion hex to Diggle's head, putting enough force behind it to blow his brains out in all directions. Ginny managed to peg Hermione with a stunner in the thigh, before getting a face full of a severing charm that snaked lacerations across her entire face, causing her to flinch backward and drop her wand as she tried to manually, wandlessly heal herself.
Ginny's stunner had the effect of deadening Hermione's leg, so that she collapsed to the ground, though she managed one more killing curse, which lit up the room in a brilliant flash of green, taking George's life, before Hermione was hit with a pair of stunners to the chest and a bone breaking hex to the shoulder.
Meanwhile, Griffin found himself facing two fearsome aurors, both of whom were magically strong, professional dark wizard hunters and who were backed by loads of experience. Still, the soul bonding ritual he and Hermione had performed had nearly doubled his magical strength, giving him the ability to raise a shield that could deflect ten stunners. He began by firing a pair of killing curses at Moody, who he figured would have difficulty maneuvering with his leg. To his surprise, Moody responded by pirouetting expertly on his wooden leg and firing two killing curses in response, which Griffin had to summon a chunk of wall to intercept, along with a killing curse from Kingsley. Neither seemed to have expected Griffin to be able to summon such a large object and cause it to break away from a fixture as solid as the walls in Grimmauld Place, because Kingsley took an evisceration curse directly to the chest, which ripped him wide open and sprayed blood across the ground as he fell over, an expression of surprise plastered across his face.
This seemed to make Moody even more determined. He began conjuring razor sharp ropes to fly around Griffin's shield, while forcing him to maintain both a magical shield and a physical one to block the killing curse. the three-pronged offensive would have surely downed Griffin if he had not already had his magic so heavily boosted. Even still, he was certain he would have to take a severe hit in order to best Moody and return to his soul mate's side, who, he noted out of the periphery of his vision, was weakening. She had just taken a stunner to the arm. Griffin banished the chunk of wall directly at Moody, who had to arrest his offensive to guide the object out of the way. However, to Griffin's surprise, Moody managed to reverse the banishment, forcing Griffin to abandon another killing curse in favour of stopping the object, which he did, only to have to throw it in the way of a blasting hex, which caused the chunk of wall to explode, and, with a whirlwind hex, the debris all came flying into face, making him cough and turn away from the battle, all the while maintaining a wandless shield and trying to summon something else for whatever Moody might have come up with next. Griffin certainly had not expected Moody to then use a whip much like Hermione's to curl around his shields and slash Griffin across his wand arm, forcing him to drop his wand and throw himself backwards to avoid a slice to his throat. Fuck, he's brilliant, Griffin thought, wandlessly summoning his wand and sending a killing curse at Moody's feet, only to see one of them whirl in the air and the other remain still. But even as the killing curse hit his wooden leg, Griffin realized his mistake. It had no impact.
Moody brought down his wand in a slicing motion, sending two slicing hexes a killing curse and the razor whip, all bearing down upon Griffin, who only barely managed to summon Kingsley's body in the way to absorb all three spells and which he deftly used to entangle Moody's whip.
"YOU -!" Moody shouted, clearly enraged at having his protégé's body used like that, and not finding the right word to express his displeasure. Griffin just took advantage of his opponent's anger and swiftly fired a killing curse with all the speed he could muster. Moody tried to whirl out of the way, but didn't quite make it. The curse clipped him on his arm, the poison of the curse seeping up through his arm and through his shoulder. "AARGH!" Moody roared, but it seemed that there was nothing he could do. However, he wasn't known as a powerful and deranged Auror for nothing. Without hesitating, Moody aimed his wand at his own arm and sent a vicious slicing curse at the ball and socket joint, effectively severing his arm off to keep the poison from completely eating his soul, and then, without missing a beat whirled back on Griffin and fired off one explosion hex after another, each one fueled by his mad fury. His shoulder, meanwhile, continued to spill blood as Griffin just watched, wide-eyed, at the freakish spectacle of a man standing before him. Now that's some serious fucking resolve, Griffin thought as he maintained a shield to absorb the explosion hexes, which, despite the strength of his magic, were managing to ooze past ever so slightly and brush against his body. However, it appeared that Moody was not able to keep up the barrage of attacks. His energy dwindled swiftly, and he grew faint from the blood loss that was driving him toward unconsciousness. Eventually, he fired his last hex before collapsing, his wooden leg detaching itself from his knee and rolling away.
Griffin spent the next moment just continuing to stare at the dying old man in wondrous shock, his gaze occasionally shifting to the lopped off arm. Hearing the sound of a bone breaking hex being uttered to his left, Griffin snapped back to attention and just managed to throw a shield over his partner and deflect the spell back at the caster. The remaining Order members, no more than five, which included Tonks, Remus, Ginny, Doge and Arthur Weasley turned as one to face down Griffin, who had regained his composure and his smugness, and who was now standing and leaning against the wall once more and twirling his wand idly.
"So this is the famed Order of the Phoenix," he drawled, making a show of staring at all the corpses. "I confess I was expecting something a little more... formidable. Pity."
"You're not the same one that killed Ron,' Ginny said shakily.
Griffin raised an eyebrow before answering. "No, young Genevra, I am not. I should think that was rather obvious since one of you lot killed him." Griffin shook his head at Raven's stupidity, oblivious to the fact that he and Hermione went in on a similar suicide mission.
"What are you talking about?" Ginny asked, mystified.
"Raven never survived the assault on the Burrow." Griffin shrugged as though he couldn't care less. "Again, that should have been rather obvious. The only thing that can kill a horcrux is the killing curse. Not that I am a horcrux exactly, but my soul bond with Hermione affords me the same kind of protection, albeit not to quite such a degree."
Ginny, who was the only survivor of the assault on the Burrow, had no response. She wondered briefly whether Griffin were lying. If he were not, then there was a distinct possibility that Ron was still alive, somehow. Determined to seek an answer, she queried in her most commanding tone, "The Burrow had an anti-dark magic ward over it. It was never broken. The killing curse couldn't have been used to destroy the other horcrux."
Griffin considered this for a moment, aware that Ginny was waving a hand at the others to keep them from firing a spell at him. Seeing no harm in answering her question he went on, in a musing tone, "I suppose there are extraordinary forms of magic that could kill a horcrux. I reckon certain creatures could do it, like a basilisk. There's also blood magic, and other more obscure forms of soul magic, like rituals and what not."
Ginny shook her head. "There's no way Ron could have performed some sort of soul magic ritual. Nor was there a basilisk around. Besides, we never even found a body. Just blood."
Griffin nodded. "There are certain types of magic that fuse the soul and the body in such a way as to give them unique abilities. This can occur through possession, for example. I recall Nagini mentioning that the counter-charm that saved the Potter kid's life had a similar effect. That kind of magic could possibly destroy a horcrux." Griffin shrugged once more. "I know very little about it."
Ginny nodded. "Fair enough."
"Why exactly are you here?" Arthur asked, fixing his gaze intently on Griffin, who just pointed at Hermione.
"She wanted to kill people. You, apparently, are what she decided on."
"Hermione decided to do this?" Arthur asked incredulously.
Griffin nodded.
"That's not possible. You must be controlling her. With the imperius, or something."
Griffin smiled. "No, she's just about the darkest, most twisted bitch I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. She introduced me to the joys of cannibalism."
"That can't be," Arthur said despairingly. "Not Hermione. I don't believe you. It's not possible."
"You two are the ones that attacked the Zabinis," Tonks said.
Griffin nodded.
"And you performed the soul binding ritual," Remus added thoughtfully.
Griffin also nodded to this. "She saved me, actually. I suppose I might even owe her a life debt. It's not clear. Regardless, we're soul mates now."
"So it's true then," Remus said wearily. "She really is dark."
"Remus!" Arthur said, turning to face his comrade. "How can you say that."
"Arthur," Remus said gently and with more than a little fatigue. "Tonks told me about the Zabinis. They performed a soul binding ritual. That's why they're so powerful."
"Still-"
"Arthur, you don't understand. A soul ritual like that requires complete cooperation. Complete trust." Remus shot a glance at Griffin before shaking away whatever thoughts were assailing him. "There's just no other explanation. You saw how she acted when she fought. She was practically giddy with excitement. The imperius doesn't do that."
"I know, but," Arthur said. "I just can't believe it."
"She was always terribly academically minded. I suppose if anyone were to turn dark, it would be her."
"So now what?" Ginny asked, her eyes never leaving Griffin.
"I could kill you, I suppose," Griffin said, "but I don't really feel like it. I imagine you'd rather just go home anyway. Take off, and make sure I never see you again." He then added. "When she wakes, she might try to come after you, so I'd pick a good hiding spot."
Tonks pursed her lips and seemed to consider starting a fight, before she glanced over at Moody's and Shacklebolt's bodies, which, she realized the being in front of her killed single-handedly. Thinking better of it, Tonks gently took Remus's hand and pulled him towards the door, never once turning her back on Griffin. "Come on," she said in a subdued voice. "Let's go. We've no hope of surviving here otherwise. It doesn't help that none of us can cast a killing curse."
Griffin, meanwhile, had turned his attention to Hermione, and was already enervating her. Seeing that she was coming around, the others made a hasty escape, before she could have a chance to try and kill them.
More than anything, Harry felt weary. It had been a long three months since he had last been to Grimmauld Place, since he had rather stupidly broken into Azkaban and duelled Voldemort and found out about Hermione's new hobby. In that time, he had done a lot of thinking, ruminating, brooding, obsessing, worrying, and all around good old-fashioned pondering. And now all he wanted was a nice cup of tea, and a chat with some people.
It was with these thoughts that Harry entered the now eerily silent home of Grimmauld Place. Despite the tangible tingle of death that wafted through its deserted corridors, Harry remained oblivious to the fact that Grimmauld Place was more of a tomb than a home. Almost instinctively, Harry went for the kitchen, as he had probably spent most of his time there in previous years, and, more importantly, if anyone were up and interested in making him a cup of tea, there would be where he would find them.
"I can always make my own, he thought, his magic unconsciously coiling about him, as though it sensed what lay beyond the next doorway.
With a snap of his fingers, Harry launched three dozen distinct blue bell flames which immediately fanned out to all the corners of the room to bathe the kitchen in a gentle blue glow. It was then that Harry stopped, as he stood over the threshold of the doorway that led into the kitchen, where now body after dead and mangled body lay tattered, slumped over the table, on the ground, in chairs.
"What the fuck?" Harry asked to no one in particular. He was suddenly aware of the oppressive silence and immediately whirled around, scanning for any sign of the bastards who had done this. There was nothing, but that didn't seem to be enough for his tumultuous emotions, and his magic, which was now rising off his body like steam from a geyser. "There's a bunch of bloody corpses in my house," Harry said, staring around at all the familiar faces of the Order members. "Why the fuck are there corpses in my house?"
Without even really thinking about it, his magic shot out like an arrow and began incinerating the bodies, reacting to Harry's unconscious desire not to have to look at them any longer.
Harry hardly seemed to notice as Fred's face was consumed by flames. He went to the kitchen table and found a single sheet of paper, with Hermione's distinctly feminine handwriting.
Dear Harry,
If you're reading this, then you've obviously discovered my little gift to you. Consider it an early Christmas present.
Harry immediately glanced up to a nearby calendar that was pinned to the wall. Tomorrow was the twenty-first of December. "Bloody hell," he muttered, reading on:
There are so many things I want to say to you. First of all, I want to tell you that I love you, and that I am sorry. It pains me to have to kill you, but really, it's for the good of all muggle kind. You see, I've realized, as has Griffin, that the true plague on society today is not the muggles, but the witches and wizards themselves. I just want you to know that it's nothing personal. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and all that.
Love,
Hermione
Purveyor of the Mudblood Cause
p.s. if you haven't clued in, merely touching this paper will afflict you with a toxic cobra venom.
Harry just stared in disbelief at the words that, in turn, stared innocently back at him. In a moment, the paper burnt to ash in his hands. He glanced at his fingers where the supposed venom would have seeped into his skin, but he could detect nothing out of the ordinary. He had no clue whether she really had doused the letter in some sort of poison, though he wouldn't have been surprised. "Must be that basilisk shit," he muttered, glancing about and seeing that all the bodies had been vapourized. "Good thing I never told her about it. No doubt she would have found another way to try and kill me."
The first emotion that hit him after having read the letter and realized that death was imminent, was simple bafflement. Harry was simply baffled. It wasn't so much that there was a particular plot point that confused him. It was more that he couldn't quite seem to grasp just how screwy his life had ended up over the last six months. It wasn't supposed to be like this, he realized. He was supposed to have gone off with Ron and Hermione after his birthday, and after Bill and Fleur's wedding, and they were supposed to have done a bunch of research and found horcruxes one by one, with various narrow escapes at each turn. They were all supposed to have been mostly okay, and the trials they faced should have cemented their friendship that much more. He was supposed to have built relationships, connected with people, integrated himself into the Order of the Phoenix, possibly banged Ginny a couple of times - preferably while drunk.
All of that had been ruined. That whole trajectory, that whole plan that had been carefully laid out over the course of his sixth year, all shot to shit and there didn't seem to be a single reason for it. It's because you were a naive little bitch, who thought the Dark Lord would just sit around like a perma-fried pothead, content to send his minions out to do utterly pointless acts of carnage like attack Diagon Alley, which would only serve to cement your resolve without really ever getting in your way.
It's no wonder Hermione ditched your ass, he thought. You were a loser. Still are, when you think about it. Still, you've got to clean this shit up. You've got to clean this shit up, because the longer these fuckheads are running around, the harder it's going to be to kill them, and the more people that you have any vague interest in befriending are going to die horrible deaths. You've got Voldemort killing the muggles, and now you've got these two clowns killing witches and wizards. And they all want to kill you. Lovely.
Real, fucking lovely.
Unlike previous assaults on him and his friends, that old familiar feeling of rage did not consume him, nor did it appear in its new and improved, compact form in the pit of his stomach. Instead, he felt only a numbing emptiness, and a wash of fresh magic that drove him, like a mindless automaton, to do something - anything, and preferably involving lots of carnage.
Harry walked out of Grimmauld Place, the entire building exploding in a burst of flames behind him, the wards shattering, not unlike the many windows that now sprayed broken glass around the burning home.
December 21.
Harry found himself standing atop the tower bridge once more. It was pretty early in the morning, which is the way he liked it. Not being quite six o'clock, London was still half-asleep, the streets only beginning to come to life as people readied themselves for another day of work and Christmas shopping. It was kind of ironic, what he planned to do, since he had decided at some point during his wanderings between his arrival at Grimmauld Place and his present situation, that, if he survived the ensuing fight, he would flee to the muggle world and never look back.
The sky was still a deep, ocean blue, the gentle slope of the asphalt and the cement standing out as somber borders to the myriad of streetlights that shone in endless rows up and down the innumerable criss-crossing streets that made up London's center. As the sun broke over the horizon, its deep golden light touching upon his face, transforming his pale skin to the colour of yellow gold, a burgeoning crest of crimson foreshadowing the bloodbath that would come, Harry began pooling together his magic, oblivious to the streetlights that were winking out below, as the sun's appearance lightened the sky sufficiently such that they were no longer necessary.
Despite being a force that could do just about anything, magic wasn't designed to cause mass destruction. The killing curse, as dreadful as it was, could still only kill people at about a rate of one per second. As Harry had discovered with the Malfoys though, one could always conjure certain items and, with the clever application of muggle concepts, incite pretty major damage. Still, conjuring enough volatile substances to do real damage took a fair bit of time. That is why Harry had to spend a good three minutes pooling enough magic together to generate blasts powerful enough to garner some notice.
You can't just tap people on the shoulder anymore, Harry mused. You have to hit them on the head with a sledge hammer.
After the requisite three minutes had passed, Harry was confident he was ready. Before him hovered a shining white lightning bolt that was perfectly constructed right down to the atomic level. It pulsed, rich with destructive power. "Go forth," Harry commanded softly, his voice carrying despite the torrent of wind that buffeted about him. With an unnatural slowness, the sphere descended, gradually picking up more speed and more speed as it travelled to the ground.
Martha Jodoin was humming "The Battle of Jericho" to herself as she walked down Main Street towards her place of employment. Martha was, for the most part, a good person. She went to church, had a nice job - she'd even taken some time out of her life after high school to go do missionary work in Africa. Martha had good parents who loved her, who supported her through her six abortions, who turned a blind eye when she smoked weed and screwed double-sided dildos with her lesbian friends from university.
It was a surprisingly warm morning for the day of the winter solstice. A fresh fall of snow had hit the previous day, but now the temperatures were back above zero degrees Celsius, and it would not be long before the one to two centimeters of the soft, powdery white substance would devolve into slushy crap, that most Londoners would curse at, as they tried not to get their designer shoes mucked up.
Martha edged her way past a sleeping bum before making her way into a coffee shop, where she secured a cafe au lait. Martha was French by origin, not that she could speak a decent word of it. Still, she refused to call cafe au laits by any other name - surely not the Italian version - cafe latte. To her, it would offend her sense of cultural pride. Similarly, Martha would always cheer for France during the football World Cup, even though she'd never deigned to watch the sport in her life. Secretly though, she preferred fucking Italians over French girls. She found them to be much prettier.
Martha was not what one would call the most sensitive person in the world. Whether it was because she had her first intuitive moment, or because she was worried a bird would shit on her head, she elected to look up at precisely the fourth second before she and her cafe au lait would be vapourized by a streaking blur that resolved itself into a blazing lightning bolt before it hit her.
The blast radius for the lightning bolt, that would send most muggles - even the staunchly atheist ones - fleeing for the nearest church - was fifty metres, or, in other words, the initial blast point would obliterate everything in the shape of a roughly circular disc with an area of almost eight thousand square metres. No less than sixteen buildings were reduced to rubble in the wave of fire and roaring energy that rippled outward, picking up debris with the force of its energy and creating a deadly accretion disc that bludgeoned people to death about a tenth of a second before their bodies were ripped to shreds and burned up in the ensuing flame-energy torrent.
Some people had the opportunity to watch as what looked like a tidal wave tore down the streets, ripping up asphalt and cement and concrete, liquefying or simply snapping streetlamps and sign posts in half and flinging them forward. A few tried to run into buildings, which saved them a few moments, or possibly hours, in which case they would mostly just suffocate to death or die of grievous bodily injuries. One metrosexual male with a grande mocha frappaccino and a toasted whole wheat sesame bagel with low fat garden vegetable cream cheese had a stop sign bash his head in and send him crashing onto his back with whiplash, brain damage and a severed sciatic nerve that left him twitching until his body was engulfed in flame.
"Do you see that?" a kid asked, staring at the carnage. "It's like that movie, Independence Day, with Will Smith!"
"Er, yeah," someone else said. "It doesn't seem to be slowing down any."
The kid blinked, as if realizing that the wave of energy they were watching was in fact approaching them. And, as if a light bulb were turned on in their heads, everybody on that particular street began fleeing. Some legless cripple in a scooter drove smugly by the kid, who tried to grab on and hitch a ride, before being hit in the back with a loose chunk of metal shrapnel. He would not survive, but the legless cripple would.
Towards the outskirts of the blast radius stood the Sunlife building, which was a good one hundred metres high and about thirty storeys. Business people, executives, middle management types and even mailroom lackies all stopped to stare and watch as building after building was swarmed with blindingly bright light. "John, do you see that," Vanessa asked, sipping her coffee.
"Yeah, yeah, I do."
"I think we might be under attack," someone else said. "You wouldn't maybe want to call - I don't know - the police?"
Vanessa rolled her eyes and pointed to a building from which flames were rising. "You mean that police station?"
"Right, never mind. Reckon they've already got the memo."
The energy that had carried the debris to the fifty metre mark petered out around that point, not quite able to reach the Sunlife building. However, the disc of debris still had all of its momentum and continued onward, chunks of all manner of materials, even surprisingly, a used condom, and a diet Pepsi bottle, smashed into the multitude of windows, and sailed right into the building, killing most of the people who were not on the other side or in enclosed spaces like stairwells and elevators.
Vanessa was cleanly decapitated by a high velocity sheet of mostly intact glass that cleaved her right through the throat, like a guillotine. Similarly, John was luckier, sort of. Both his kneecaps were crushed as he tried to dodge a pair of bricks. Eventually, he would be blinded by slivers of glass that would carve up his face, and he would eventually become a serial pedophile that would commit suicide minutes before his capture by the police.
Nothing in London would be the same. Not for a very long time. And that was just the first wave of attacks.
Just as the first lightning bolt completed its life cycle, Harry had constructed another one and sent it crashing down, this time to a different part of the city.
It only took six more bolts before Harry finally got the attention of his dearest friend.
"YOU ASS RAMMING SLUT WHORE!" Hermione's otter patronus shrieked, as it ambled towards him, hovering in midair. "GET YOUR FUCKING ASS DOWN HERE RIGHT THIS INSTANT!"
Harry just smirked and gave the otter the finger, before throwing his next bolt through it and down onto the University of London. School's for pussies, anyway, he thought amusedly as he watched their main library take the full force of the blast. He almost thought he could hear Hermione's wail of horror at the sight of so many books being incinerated. Come and get me, you fucking bitch, he thought viciously, already conjuring his next bolt. See how it feels to have your whole life turned to shit.
And with that thought, Harry hit upon the very best target he could have come upon.
Dan and Emma Granger were too stunned by the events unfolding on the television to manage to get to work. Normally, they liked to do a bit of yoga at about five thirty in the morning and then make it to their dental office at around seven thirty, so they could have an hour or so before their patients came in. They were, needless to say, early risers.
It had not taken long for them, in the midst of doing the Sun Salutation, their favourite opening yoga move, to hear on the radio about the waves of destruction that were plaguing London. Politicians, and scientists were scrambling to figure out what was going on, while televangelists were claiming they already knew.
"Sweetie, our practice is on Main Street!" Dan exclaimed, stating the obvious.
"Huh," Emma said, listening to the radio.
"And so, God shall smite the sinners...," Farwell's warbled voice was saying, Harry's overwhelming magical blasts distorting the satellite transmission.
"Please, dear, let's get something local," Emma was saying, her gaze still fixed on the television.
Neither of them noticed the tea kettle in the kitchen whistling, which wasn't a surprise, as footage on the nearest news station showed yet another wave of unbelievable destruction. This time detonating somewhere in London's east side. The cameraman managed to transmit an incoming charred head before the news crew itself were swept up in the destruction. The screen turned to static for just a brief moment before switching to a rattled-looking anchorwoman, whose hands were trembling so violently, she could barely read the script in front of her. "Well, as you can see, firsthand, these waves of destruction are still occurring, and we're no closer to an explanation for their origins. We've recently secured a statement from the police, who have indicated that, whatever is causing these attacks, they are not man-made in origin. Scientists are still hoping to find a cosmological basis for these bombardments, which, they say, won't happen until they can fully investigate the blast centers."
"Not manmade?" Dan asked. "What the fuck do they mean not manmade? That's bullshit. Whatever this is, it's going after all the major centers."
Emma shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what to think. I don't think bombs explode like that. Not nuclear ones anyway, and they would know if it were a nuclear bomb."
Dan just looked at her and said, "When have you ever seen a bomb explode?"
"Er," Emma began, uncertainly. "Saving Private Ryan?"
Dan shook his head. "I don't know, Emma. Maybe. Maybe not. I reckon we should maybe take the car and try to get out of here. Before we're next."
"What about Hermione?" Emma asked suddenly.
"What about her? I imagine she can take care of herself, with that whole teleporting thing," Dan said, getting up and shutting the television off. "Right now, we need to take our car, whatever supplies we can put together in the next ten minutes, and take off for the countryside."
Emma got up to follow Dan, saying, "I meant, what if this is that You-Know-Who fellow's doing? What if this is magical? Maybe we should let her know."
Dan just barked a laugh. "Let her know? And how exactly are we supposed to do that? Send an owl? Bloody ridiculous." Dan sighed and stopped at the foot of the stairs. Realizing he was still holding the remote control, he threw it disgustedly to the side. "Emma, it's time you faced facts. We don't have a daughter anymore."
"Dan!" Emma said, shocked. "You can't mean that!"
"Can't I?" he countered, taking a step toward his wife. "What's her favourite food? Her favourite movie? Hell, what's her favourite book?"
Emma just opened and closed her mouth like a guppy.
"And did you see her the last time she was here? Did you stop to even look at her?" Dan asked, his voice incredulous and full of anger. "And that boy she brought with her?"
Emma did not respond. There was nothing she could really say.
"I was scared of her Emma. I was honest to God scared of her."
Before Emma could react one way or another, either affirming Dan's feelings or berating him for having them, the house was swiftly and surely obliterated, Dan and Emma and all the rest of it. Somewhere high above London, at the top of a famous bridge, a mad wizard cackled.
Meanwhile, Hermione just stared gobsmacked at the vector that Harry's last lightning bolt had taken. Isn't that going to my neighbourhood? she asked wonderingly as the sizzling bolt of energy arced across the sky.
And then, with all her might, she apparated herself as close to her parents home as possible, cursing herself for raising anti-apparation wards around the place, and discovering, even as she got there, that the lightning bolt was just seconds from impacting squarely on her parent's home. Hermione could only watch as the tip of the bolt touched down, shattering the rooftop like a hammer on corningware. She could only watch as yet another ripple, another wave, another forming disc of accreted material coalesced, its fury and its power and its destruction as inevitable as the wrath of God, began shredding to pieces all the comfortable, middle-class suburban homes in the area.
"POTTER!" she wailed, as though his very name were an insult, an abomination.
Having some sense of self-preservation, Hermione apparated away before she found herself assaulted by the mélange of flaming shingles that were being flung in all directions as the all-consuming energy blew apart each row of houses one after the other. Having only one destination in mind, and not caring how she managed to do it, she apparated herself to Harry Potter through sheer force of will.
"Hey, Herm," Harry said, waving to her as she appeared atop the tower bridge. He already had another lightning bolt in hand, and he didn't waste any time slamming it down on the concrete slab between him and Hermione Granger.
"CRUCIO!" she shrieked, an inch thick beam of amber energy pooling out of her wand and jetting towards Harry. However, before it could reach, the top of the bridge was blown to pieces, Harry just barely managing to apparate to the other side and impacting Hermione as they were both flung off the top of the tower and sent plummeting towards the rapidly moving river below.
"You want a piece of me, motherfucker?" he asked, shoving his thumbs into her throat and holding on for dear life, praying that she would be crushed and dead before they hit the water. "You want a piece of me? Huh? Well come on, then. Come and take a piece of me!"
Harry charged his hands so that tendrils of energy were now snaking their way through her skin and battering at the simple wandless shield she had managed to erect. Already, bruises were forming around her neck, and it wouldn't be long before she had her windpipe crushed.
"Gurgh," she sputtered, sending drops of saliva spattering across the backs of his hands.
"You crazy, fucked up bitch. I'm going to cut a hole in your worthless, Goddamned throat and then I'm going to rape it until you're fucking dead. How does that fucking sound?"
Harry and Hermione had picked up dangerous levels of speed in the few seconds it took to fall from the top of the tower to the water below. At the last moment, just as Harry expected Hermione's head to be crushed by the impact against the water, she managed to sidelong apparate them in a deft feat of magic, reversing their order so that she was on top, his fingers still wrapped around her throat. Harry hardly had time to comprehend what she had done, or the smug expression on her face, before his head hit the water, snapping upward at an odd angle, with his body following not a tenth of a second later, the distinctive sound of bones breaking and nerves being damaged as his body plunged into the freezing cold of the water, breaking through the thin layer of ice that had formed over top of it and sending his body into a paralyzing shock.
Not again, his mind thought absently as he fought to retain consciousness.
However, before he could do anything as simple as make it to shore, Harry had to contend with his next major problem. Looking up he could see the morning light twinkling down on him through the fabric of the translucent ice, and amidst that grey tableau, he saw chunks of dark objects coming down, and realized, with a jolt, even as hypothermia was warring with his magic, that his last lightning bolt had drilled right through the tower and blew it apart, sending large chunks of concrete and metal and God only knew what else crashing down. Harry first tried to apparate in a desperate bid to escape, but only managed to splinch himself, so that one arm was nearly fifteen feet from him, and, to his horror, rapidly turning blue. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, he chanted, not having the foggiest clue how to reverse a splinching.
Praying this would work, he was just about to apparate back, before a particularly large chunk of stone crashed down through the ice and landed clean on top of his arm, dragging it down into the depths and causing a distinct shearing, effectively cutting the arm off his body for good and causing blood to start gushing out into the freezing water. Harry's eyes widened that much further as he watched the water turn red in a swirl of blood.
Already his magic was fixing it though, and Harry just managed to float himself to the top and break through the ice, so that he could inhale air and not waste vital magic conjuring it directly into his lungs. He flopped down on the nearest patch of ice, praying it wouldn't collapse and send him back down into the water. Already, as his mind reasserted itself, an uncontrollable shivering overtook him as he tried to shake off the initial onset of hypothermia. Unfortunately, it seemed that the bridge wasn't done with him.
From above, the light seeming to twinkle, he saw one of the suspension wires from the bridge snake downward in a wide arc and lash at him, slicing clean through the ice like a giant razor blade and plummeting Harry back into the water, his arm only half-regrown and twitching awkwardly as he tried to swim, and gave up, only to have to dodge another lash of the whip by plunging his head into the water, the whip just grazing his head and lashing off all his hair. WHAT THE FUCK? his mind screamed as he thrust his head out of the water to stare up at the sky, where he saw another pair of suspension cables hitting the water some distance away. Dimly, through the haze of numbing cold and the pain that racked his body, not the least of which was the fractured skull and unknown neck trauma that was still in the process of healing. At first, Harry couldn't figure out what the giant whip-like objects were, thinking that maybe they were one of Hermione's conjurations, though how she could have conjured something so large and kept such a tight control on them was beyond him, but then, after seeing the ones falling in the distance, he could only wonder. That is, until it clicked like a sudden epiphany.
The suspension wires.
Yeah, but, his mind thought, if the wires are falling, then what's holding up the bridge?
Well, the answer to that, was actually kind of obvious: nothing.
Sure enough, when Harry looked up, he saw the first of what would undoubtedly be many cars plunging head first into the river, the headlights shining down like searchlights into the murky depths.
the bridge had contorted into a corkscrew like shape, with innumerable cracks, large and small, running all along its body as the few remaining supports tried futilely to hold onto its massive weight. As surely as the sun rises, the bridge, in all its glory, came plummeting toward the water, most of it in one single, giant heap.
Harry did the only thing he could think of. He swam as fast and as hard as his magic could take him in order to get away from the monstrosity that was at least several hundred tonnes, if not thousands. Like a meteor, the impact of the enormous bridge hitting the water raised two large waves that exploded outward to either side. As fast as Harry was, he was quickly overtaken by the wave and simply carried along, his body raising a physical shield to try and cocoon him from the worst of it, and having to scale back any healing operations, which meant that he was doused in a liberal amount of pain as he was jostled about, his neck fracturing where it had been partially healed, effectively paralyzing him for the moment, forcing him to watch as his mangled arm broke apart once more and began spilling fresh blood.
By now, the blood loss alone was getting to him, making him faint, woozy, dizzy and all around nauseous. After a particular bump, where his cocoon was cracked down the middle, probably by some large chunk of stone, Harry lurched and spewed bile and hydrochloric acid, and, not having actually eaten anything, a wad of stomach lining all across his cocoon, which now mingled with the blood and fresh water that was seeping in.
This is so gross, Harry thought, sloshing about in the putrid fluids, before falling into a state of semi-conscious delirium.
Harry's magic pulled him back to reality as the water around him settled, and, once establishing that his cocoon was no longer necessary, vanished it, sending him tumbling back into the freezing water.
"Wha-?" he asked, blinking away the remains of the stomach acids and the blood and bile as he peered about in the water, which, now that he wasn't in imminent peril, realized was actually kind of gross. Is that sewage? he wondered, staring at an unidentifiable blackish goo that was drifting lazily by.
Harry noticed that his hand had mostly reformed, thankfully, and that his neck was only tender. Still, he felt incredibly drained and an overall ache had formed in his body. He had a feeling that, like his failure to regrow his hand after the Azkaban affair, he would not be able to shake the persistent ache from his bones simply by using magic. There were some traumas that not even magic could fix, it seemed.
Harry slowly picked his way to the shoreline and crawled up the embankment until he reached a level grassy patch where he proceeded to evaporate all the snow and create a warm oasis for his body to rest. From there, he just lay down, face first, trying to get the smell of vomit and blood from his nose by inhaling the scent of dead grass. As such, he didn't immediately notice two most unwelcome figures approach.
"Well, well, well well well," Hermione said smugly, nudging Harry's shoulder with her toe. Harry blinked and gaze blearily up at them, noticing with no small amount of satisfaction that Hermione was leaning on Griffin for support and that she had lost one of her hands.
Hermione followed Harry's gaze to the stump at the end of her left arm, and pursed her lips briefly before adopting her fake smile. "Never you worry, old friend. I'm perfectly ambidextrous, and that extends to my wand usage, as well." With her one good hand, she waved Griffin's wand about and silently created a network of magical threads that snaked together around Harry to form a dome-shaped cage.
Harry eyed the edges warily, still hoping that he could enjoy a few minutes of rest before re-engaging them in another battle.
"What's this?" Harry asked, gesturing at the dome.
"It's a cage, obviously," Hermione lectured in her bossy, know-it-all tone. "I rather thought that was obvious, even for you, Harry."
Deciding he wanted answers more than a verbal sparring match, he persisted, "Yes, but what makes you think it'll hold me?"
"Ah, well, it is a rather ingenious creation, if I do say so myself," she said, instinctively rubbing her hands together in anticipation of giving the explanation, before realizing she didn't actually have two hands. Disgruntled, she just said, "The material of the cage absorbs and reflects magic, making it near impervious to magical blasts. It is the ultimate magical cage for holding even the most powerful of wizards, and certainly for holding ones that have few brains." She gave a pointed look to Harry, to make sure he got the point.
"Ah," Harry said, "just checking. Though I do wonder, how exactly do you plan to attack me? I reckon this shield keeps things out just as much as it keeps things in."
At Harry's words, Hermione's smile fell away and was replaced with a scrunching of her face, as though she couldn't quite believe she'd overlooked this fact, and was now desperately searching for a solution.
Harry wondered if the shield guarded against apparation, but, after his snafu with his last attempt, decided not to risk it until he felt it was absolutely necessary. Besides, he wanted to see what his ex-friend came up with next.
Eventually, Hermione came upon a solution. Without saying a word, she, still using Griffin's wand, as her own had been destroyed in the water, snaked razors around the edges of the magical cage and, having made sure that it was suitably dangerous to touch, began shrinking the mesh ever so slowly, so that it encroached upon Harry's body like a slow moving shredder. Griffin, in a fit of inspiration, wandlessly set the thing to rotate around Harry as it moved toward him.
"Bloody hell," he whispered, instinctively throwing a stunner at the thing only to have to deflect it away from him. He quickly conjured a stone shield around his body, hoping that it would be enough to stop the approach of the blades. "bitch," he swore, sensing the blades grinding into his shield, and, as it inched ever closer, he found he could do less and less magic as the energy of the shield interfered with his own magic. Leave it to Hermione to drum up a simple, elegant solution to defeating a superior adversary. Over the din of the blades grinding against his shield, he heard her say, "I did want to make you suffer after what you did to my parents, but I suppose this will have to do."
He took a moment to render his shield invisible, so that he could spy out at the grinning visages of his captors. The shield seemed to be weaker around his feet, because it broke through there first. No doubt his magic felt that his feet were the most expendable body parts. Great, my own magic is going to ensure that I have the most excruciating death possible, he thought bitterly.
Just as the razors were digging lacerations into his heels and lopping off his pinky toe, Harry saw through the haze of pain a sight for sore eyes.
A long trio of blades attached to an ornate-looking trident was currently sticking out of Griffin's head, Griffin's eyes rolling about in their sockets as if searching for the intrusion. Behind Griffin, standing like a specter of death, was none other than Lord Voldemort himself. The razors stopped their approach as Hermione whirled around to place all her concentration on her new adversary. With reckless abandon, she began firing off an impressive spread of spells that Voldemort easily repelled simply by putting Griffin's body in the way of them, and which he sent several in return for, not the least of which was a killing curse. Hermione then switched to doing everything in her power to extricate her soul mate, who was slowly dying as brain fluids were leaking out of the three puncture wounds in his head. Voldemort, still holding onto the handle of his trident, jiggled it like a chef shaking a stubborn piece of steak off the end of his barbecue fork, which had the effect of making Griffin do a little gyrating dance, like a demented puppet.
Enraged at the ruthless and humiliating treatment of her soul mate, Hermione began apparating around Lord Voldemort, executing a number of conjurations and generally making the ground unstable in the hopes of destabilizing Voldemort so she could summon her boyfriend back to her.
Harry, realizing he had only about three minutes before Voldemort annihilated the both of them, searched desperately for a way out of his cage. Come on, you retarded fuckwad, think of something. Harry peered about while trying to maintain a clear head and trying to not be distracted by the vicious battle. Hermione must have done something right, for he vaguely heard Griffin staggering about and moaning, and Harry imagined him clutching his head trying to stop the fluids from leaking out or his skull from oxidizing and killing him.
If she can snake blades around them, then that means you can navigate between the bars of the cage. Glancing around, he saw that the largest opening he could find, especially now with the razors in the way, was about half an inch in diameter. Hmm, he thought. Well, that's an abysmal plan. Still, it seemed like the best one, and, recalling Krum's half-assed attempt to transfigure himself into a shark during the second task of the tournament in his fourth year, Harry figured he could at least try turning himself into something really small. A fly? he wondered. No, he'd seen that movie once before, and wasn't prepared to go down that road.
"A mosquito? he wondered.
It's gotta be something with some brains, for God's sake, he thought irritably. What the fuck's got brains and can remember to transfigure itself back?
A beetle! he thought. Yes! Thank you, Rita!
Harry immediately concentrated all his magic on himself. He was always rather shitty at transfiguration, and had never really learned the art of doing it to oneself, but he figured he was a better wizard than Krum, and had at least a snowball's chance in Hell of getting it right, if that could be counted as a chance.
Within seconds, Harry found himself staring at the world from a totally different perspective. he tried to glance around, but saw that nothing was as it should be. That is, until he realized that he in fact was a beetle. And not just any beetle, but a dung beetle, no less.
Kafka, eat your hart out, he thought, beginning the march towards freedom. Suddenly, fifteen inches was a bit more of an odyssey than it normally would have been. Still, after getting the walking on all fours down, and traversing the mess of leaves and dirt, he made it to the barrier and found, to his delight that he was perfectly able to traverse the razor blades. Not wanting to spend any longer in the cage than possible, he scurried past them and continued onward until he was safe he could transform without bumping into it.
"FREEDOM!" he cried out, pumping one fist into the air and staring up at the now clear blue sky. And I didn't even lose my balls in the process.
"Glad to see you're enjoying yourself, Harry," said Lord Voldemort.
Harry glanced over to where the duel had taken the trio and saw to his delight that Lord Voldemort was standing over Griffin's motionless corpse, Hermione kneeling beside him, her hands on his head, her tears spilling onto his face. She was sobbing.
Lord Voldemort continued, "These foolish children should not have underestimated my ability to manipulate soul magic. I have severed their bond, which is no doubt magnifying young miss Granger's sorrow ten fold. I have also destroyed her lover completely and utterly, leaving her alone. She no longer has his extraordinary powers to draw upon. She is as pathetic as the day she was born. She is nothing more than a mudblood."
Hermione gazed up at Lord Voldemort through her tear-filled eyes with a mixture of hatred and fear and confusion on her face.
"I was wondering if you would perhaps care to do the honours, Harry," Voldemort said, gesturing towards Hermione, who responded by snapping her attention to Harry.
Upon seeing him rising to his feet, she fell back on her haunches and tried to scurry away, her previous fear now morphing into terror. "H-Harry," she squeaked. "Please, you don't understand. Please, please forgive me. I'm sorry. I told you I love you. I - please we can start over. Please."
Harry just grinned the goofiest, most psychotic grin he had ever grinned before, and it was probably because he was loopy with the swirl of emotions that looking at the girl in front of him incited in his mind, which flashed from one image to the next, all seven years worth of them, from the good to the bad, all the mix of emotions, all of them tainted with the knowledge of her betrayal. "If you're truly sorry," Harry said quietly and in a voice like steel, "then you'll pay the consequence."
"Consequence?" Hermione asked uncomfortably. "What consequence, Harry?"
"What consequence do you reckon there should be, given that you murdered Bill Weasley? Kingsley? Fred and George?"
"Er, well, you murdered my parents. Maybe we could call it even?"
Harry continued to advance, though stalking might have been a more appropriate word. The light of lunacy never left his eyes, nor did the grin on his face. "You have five seconds before I start hunting you down, sugar," Harry hissed.
"Harry, no, please!"
But Harry wasn't listening. The sight of her groveling, begging, pleading for mercy after everything made her sound more like a cheap Slytherin than a Gryffindor, and that, somehow, offended him more than anything. He wanted to tell her to take her punishment like a man, though he wasn't sure the sentiment quite fit, given that she, in fact, wasn't actually a member of the male sex, and saying, "Take it like a woman," just sounded odd. As to the measure of the punishment, Harry was certain he knew what to dole out. Specifically, Hermione Granger had to die, and, by the ultimate fear shining through in her eyes, she knew that he had decided to execute her. The only question that remained was the method of execution. In his punch-drunk, manic, weary mind, he was certain that it had to be personal. It had to be personal in the same way that her betrayal had been personal. He had to exact from her the precise form of retribution that would purge his feelings of hatred that he associated with her, and, in so doing, leave only an empty wasteland of quietude where memories of her would have otherwise resided.
Her death had to be up close, and it had to be physical, and, most of all, he had to see the life being leeched from her eyes, one bit at a time, each sound, each breath escaping her body bringing her inevitably closer to oblivion. He had to feel it, her warm body, her soft skin in his hands, in his grip. That was all he knew for certain, and it was all he needed to know. There would be no curses and no charms and no transfigurations thrown. He would pursue her to the ends of the Earth, wherever she went, and he would crush the life from her body with his bare hands, whether it be strangling her, bashing her face in, crushing her skull between his hands, or simply chewing through her throat with his teeth. With these rambling thoughts flowing through his mind's eye, Harry suddenly felt as though two arms, two hands, were simply not enough. He needed to be all over her, to not stop at any point, to have her in his grip in her entirety. Yes, he thought, every second which he spent staring at her quivering form driving him further into his own hatred. Yes, I will need more. As though it were the most natural thing in the world, Harry stretched both his arms out to either side, and focused, and, before he knew it, two more arms had grown out of his mid-section, and his shirt was shredded away, leaving his bear chest exposed, and, with his hair having been stripped away earlier by the suspension wires, he was left bald and looking more like a demon than a human. "Hanging's too good for you," he said, still advancing. "Burning's too good for you." He pounded one fist against a tree, which had the effect of ripping it clean out of the ground and sending it rolling uselessly down the embankment. "I'm going to tear you into itty bitty pieces, and bury you alive."
"Eep!" Hermione squeaked before she disapparated.
Harry just kept on grinning and followed after her, Lord Voldemort standing around more than a little amused.
Muggles were coming to investigate the commotion, and see if there were perhaps any people hurt from the fall out of the bridge. Lord Voldemort decided, in a fit of whimsy, that he would torture them a bit before going home.