Part two of the exciting first episode of Hero - Heel! (... woot?)
Title:
Hero - Heel
Author: Ileana A. (babygray)
Pairings: ... still working on that bit... but leaning heavily towards
Harry/Severus
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine. This is pure jest.
Warning: AU, typos, parody, and (maybe) some OOC. Rough and un-beta'ed.
Notes: ... This chapter should have been longer, but I couldn't seem to
decide where exactly the Rangers' headquarters is located,
at least not with the headache I have at the moment. That is, I can decide, but I can't seem to be able to type it...
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--Flight, pt. 2--
"I have to 'kill you', huh?" Draco snarled at the Rangers surrounding him as he lifted his hands and lashed out at the four.
Frankly, he would love to do away with each and every one of the worthless fools. He struck Blue Dolphin and Green Frog in the chest, whipping their legs out from under them and sending them crashing against the hard cement even as he sent the bulk of his straps towards the two girls directly in front of him.
Black Fox, agile pain in his ass that she was, dodged the lassoing, only to be struck by a particularly heavy buckle against her head. She too went down, but her friend Yellow Owl was not so lucky. He sneered at his catch.
He hated the Rangers, each and every one. Knowing why Red Dog wasn't there as well, getting his face sliced by Draco's buckles, still brought a smile to Draco's face. Red Dog, with his hotheaded stupidity and lack of brains, always brought the most malicious taunts out of Draco. Frankly, the Ranger deserved being on the receiving end of Umbra's vicious Cheering Charm last month, a charm that had incapacitated the boy ever since.
His sister, Black Fox, with her overbearing cockiness despite being a head shorted than Draco, was no better. Compared to the rest of her foolish Rangers, she was smart, and undoubtedly the strongest of the five, but those weren't redeeming points to Draco.
Blue Dolphin was even worse than the siblings; as least Draco knew what to expect from them. Blue Dolphin, unlike her hot-headed teammates, was constantly shifting. One moment, she would appear half-asleep and lethargic, trapped in some daydream she couldn't shake so that she could properly defend herself; the next, she was sharp and damn near-clever, obliviating everything in her path. Her mutable nature confused Draco, and anything that confused Draco, Draco immediately hated.
He hated the near-consistency of Green Frog, as well, only for the sole reason the boy didn't even have any manly powers at his disposal. All Draco had ever seen him do were weak, girly earth healing spells; Draco doubted Green Frog even had an offensive spell in his arsenal.
But all the irritation, all the annoyance, all the hatred he felt for those four were nothing compared to what he felt for Yellow Owl. He loathed her. He could spit in her face once an hour, every hour, without ever growning tired. If given even half the chance, he would kill her, bury her, dance on her grave, exhume her, defile her remains, and then dance again on what used to be her larynx. The mere sight of her made him see red. The mere thought of her made him tear pillows, clothing, and anything else unfortunate enough to be within reach. He abhorred her and will never stop hating her until he died, though her death would appease him a little.
He sneered at her now, bounded by his straps. Her struggling made his dark pleasure rise with anticipation. He loved seeing her this way, helpless and bound. Her arms were down, and her weapon unmovable, making it very difficult for her to throw some attack against him. The thought of choking her, crushing her to death, excited him.
Black Fox tried to edge closer to them. He easily struck her away, slamming her back down without sparing a glance at the girl. She wasn't what he was interested in, after all. She wasn't the bane of his existence, blissfully trapped like a badger in the grasp of a boa constrictor.
"Have fun playing with your prey, son," said his father at his elbow, toying with the head of his cane, before he disappeared in a poof of green-gold smoke, off to find their boy. Even if they didn't need to find the Lion, his father would not have opted to stay too long. The man never did like getting his hands dirty by engaging in some actual, good-old-fashion fisticuffs. He was more apt in convincing others to do his work for him.
Draco tightened the straps around Yellow Owl, twining one around the girl's neck as he did so. "Any last words?" he drawled at the girl in his grasp.
Yellow Owl glared at him, her brown eyes filled with as much hate and loathing as Draco felt for her, before lifting her head up to the heavens. For a moment, Draco mentally cursed her stupidity. No doubt the Ranger was praying to God for salvation or whatever claptrap goody-goody dunderbrains pray for to that all-loving, all-peaceful god they were stupid enough to believe in. But, something about the gleam in her eyes and the clenching of her fists made him halt that thought.
She couldn't be... couldn't she? If she was calling down on her powers, she still would need her wand to direct the flow of magic, and her wand was at that moment literally strapped against her leg. It was kept immobile by Draco's own straps.
Even as the thunderous storm clouds darkened the pre-dawn sky, he stared at her, frozen in disbelief. There was no way that she could pull off a spell with any sort of power behind it with wandlessly. None of the rangers were that strong. So transfixed with watching the impossible, he didn't have enough time to pull his binds away before she struck.
"Golden Lightning Splash!" Yellow Owl screamed, her voice echoing with power, even as the straps tightened around her throat, letting loose a powerful surge of electricity down through her towards Draco. The pure, electrical energy torn through his body, frying his nerves and making his muscles convulse involuntarily.
It lasted forever, that fire that burned him from the inside, and he could smell the smoke coming off of him when the splash of lightning washed off of him mere nanoseconds after it crashed into him. Unable take the pain he was in while conscious, he collapsed onto the cement, defeated for the moment but victorious in the thought that Yellow Owl was as viciously affected by the attack as he was.
Black Fox, recovering from Draco Malfoy's attack, jumped forward towards the fainting Yellow Owl, catching her as Malfoy's leather straps, no longer controlled by the boy's magic, loosened and fell away. "Everyone spread out!" Black Fox cried out as she felt Yellow Owl's breath on her cheek and her pulse underneath her fingertips. "We need to find him before Malfoy does!"
With sharp, anxious nods, Blue Dolphin and Green Frog were off, Blue Dolphin disappearing with a swirl of blue while Green Frog set off in a dash down the street the Lion had run down just moments ago.
Adjusting her grip on Yellow Owl's unconscious body, Black Fox focused on their headquarters, her thoughts on getting Yellow Owl some healing rest. They disappeared together with a loud pop, leaving Draco unconscious on the ground, surrounded by his inanimate buckles and straps, for someone else to find him.
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Green Frog wasn't a runner. In fact, he kind of hated it, and he certainly wasn't what one would call athletic, but there was no way for him to follow the Lion's path otherwise, not if he didn't want the older Malfoy finding him first. The Lion had left a nearly visible path for him to follow, fortunately, a trail of breadcrumbs made from the white power he possessed. The unstable remnants of magic stuck to the pavement where his feet landed with each step; it clung to every wall the boy had inadvertedly touched in his escape. Apparating up and down the breadcrumb trail could disturb the magical remnants, completely wiping away important sections of the path the Lion had left behind, and Green Frog didn't want to risk it.
He didn't know if the older Malfoy was able to see the path as well; he didn't know much about the man's power aside from how he used it in battle. Yellow Owl would probably know. She was always looking up new ways to defeat the Dark Lord and his followers, but Green Frog wasn't as knowledge-hungry as his teammate, and part of him doubted that he would be able to learn everything about the Malfoys or the Dark Lord from just reading a book.
The trail veered to the right, and Green Frog, starting to hyperventilate, took the turn. Straight ahead was a park, and he literally sighed in relief. The area, its perimeter marked by rows of hedges and the occasional oak and holly, was green, covered from corner to corner with grasses, bushes and tall, strong trees. Gasping for air from his jog, he pressed a gloved hand on the trunk of a nearby oak, trying to gauge the magical strength of the place before proceeding.
It wasn't much; trapped in a well-populated place with no real caretaker had left the place weak magically, but not too weak as to be unhelpful. With a quick swish of his wand, he muttered an enchantment under his wheezing breath, making the remnants of the Lion's magic become absorbed by the plants in the park. The visible trail was transformed into one that depended on an affinity with nature to see, an affinity of which Green Frog was knowledgable.
"Found him?" Blue Dolphin asked as she appeared beside him, a dreamy, half-awake look on her face.
"Close," Green Frog answered as he took a step into the park, his eyes on the trail the Lion's magic used to be. The white glowing breadcrumbs absorbed by the grass made them glow with magic for him, a talent he knew not even Black Fox, the strongest of their team, had. Behind him, he could hear Blue Dolphin cast her 'Water Mirror Illusion' spell at the entrance of the park, making them nearly unnoticeable.
Together they made it deeper into the park, towards a dark corner of the wooden area where a glowing, crackling white fire burned silently underneath some bushes. Gently, he pushed the bushes out of the way and found the Lion hiding underneath them, curled up in a fetal position, murmuring nonsensical words to the dirt his cheek was pressed against.
Together, they pulled the Lion out by his ankles and turned him onto his back; neither voiced the worry they felt as they did so. They had seen someone like this before, the murmurs being the only sign that they weren't completely in a coma. As Blue Dolphin glanced about for any sign of the elder Malfoy or their teammates, Green Frog pushed back the eyelids to take a good look at the boy's eyes, dreading what he would see.
The eyes, which under normal circumstances would have, at the very least, dilated pupils, were nothing but an abyss lacking any color or definition. The white of the eyes, the irises, the pupils... all of it was covered in a darkness as black as tar, frightening and unresponsive.
"Umbra," whimpered Green Frog, causing Blue Dolphin to place a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"Maybe White Wolf can do something for him," she said, her voice decidedly sober despite the dreamy tilt of her lips.
Green Frog nodded at the suggestion and gather the Lion in his arms. The boy, though his age, was wiry and thin, and nowhere near as heavy as his baggy clothes suggested. He held tightly to the Lion as he focused his thoughts on headquarters, silently praying he didn't splinch the other boy in his haste. Together, they disappeared out of the park with a pop, followed immediately by Blue Dolphin.
