"Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven, which is inspired by the smell of carrion?"
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Chapter 36 ~ Everything Here is Trying to Kill You
ECOTS
The jerking of necrotic toes had been their only warning.
A blasting charm blazed out, slamming into the creature's head, removing what was left of it before anyone else could even try to react.
Regulus stood there, wand practically sizzling, dark gaze resting firmly on what he had done. In the corner of the room now lay a decaying mound of barely recognizable flesh, the neck conspicuously missing a head, the arm still spasmodically twitching.
What was left of the person's skull had been all but liquefied, the utter silence of the room macabrely shattered by the steady dripping of pus sliding off various surfaces to the linoleum. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Regulus Arcturus Black took a double-gloved hand and emotionlessly wiped black pus off the bubble protecting his face. It left an unreal, acrid smear, the caustic wizard not even blinking. "I would suggest," he stated humorlessly, "we stay alert."
The thick splatter of coagulated flesh now coating one side of the bakery's wall bellied no argument. A chunky milky white and gray gunk slid down to the floor with a squelch.
Dean's death grip abruptly released her, Kally practically stumbling in shock.
They'd only just arrived by portkey when that thing's toe had twitched, before sitting up with speed.
The second it'd done that Dean had all but thrown her behind him. Her arm was bound to bear bruises in the shape of his fingerprints.
Now she stared at the lump of flesh, a strangled sound emitting from her throat as she choked on the fetid rank. Behind her she could hear Dean retching, an all new and disgusting splatter making her stomach nearly heave.
"Well that's one hell of a thing to find on the other side of a port key," a Weasley twin stated, somewhat wide eyed in the unlit shop.
The other twin, the one called George, was outright gaping, jabbing his wand incredulously in the direction of the remains. "That was a girl." He looked around at all of them, as if expecting someone to argue.
"Astounding," Regulus drawled, "seven years of Hogwarts' renowned curriculum and somehow you've learned to identify a female. I dare dream of what basic life skills they might impart next."
Fred had recovered far more quickly, casting Regulus a smug smirk. "Life skills? Must have been year seven," he commented idly, twirling his wand. "We got bored, couldn't be bothered to stick around for that one. Needed a better challenge."
Regulus looked somewhat horrified. "And the two of you were the best they had to send?" Growling, he practically hissed, "Well lucky me."
Kally physically choked on the stench, hands suddenly on her knees as she gagged on bile. She and Dean were the only one without a bubblehead charm, the others at least benefitting from that. Someone - she didn't even see who - took pity on her, a wand jabbing her in the back and a bubble immediately ensconcing her face.
There were several more minutes of desperate gagging before the stench had left her nostrils enough for her to function.
Dean retched loudly yet again.
"Two high school drop outs and this," Regulus stated remorselessly, gesturing at what Dean and her were doing. "You will both have to grow stronger stomachs if you wish to survive this."
A flick of one of the twin's wands sent what was left of the torso and limbs rolling over with a deadened thud, a name tag bearing the name Arlen revealed on the girl's once comfortable looking turtleneck.
Now it was soaked with a greenish, black paste, courtesy of the burst boils covering her chest.
Kalliandra tasted more vomit, barely choking it back and struggling to breath.
A hand grabbed her by the back of her shirt, jerking her up from where she had been doubled over, the hand tightening and loosening as subtle reassurance. "You're snogging Harry there Kal, ole Reggie's right, gotta be stronger than that."
"Reggie?" Regulus sounded only slightly like a man contemplating homicide.
Besides her was one of the Weasley twins, Kally still breathing hard, feeling like the stench was still stuck in her nose.
The twin just forced a strained grin at her. "That wizard gets himself in all sorts of trouble after all, so I'll be making it my personal mission to toughen you up." A blue eye winked at her, before the wizard's gaze shifted back to where his twin still stood, gaping at the body.
"But-but it moved."
"Yes George, straight outta one of those Muggle zombie horror flicks we nicked," Fred placated whilst tapping her comfortingly on the back.
"But it-it-moved. And she was hot," tilting his head like a dog, he clarified, "Probably." The one called George was stammering incomprehensibly, gesturing at the girl's boil-covered chest that clearly showed an ample bosom, Fred staring at his brother as if he'd just grown a second, closely followed by a third head.
Abruptly he turned his attention to Regulus, now keeping a firm grip on her shoulder. "Alright Reggie, George is clearly broken. What do you got?"
"That I am surrounded by a hoard of useless, vomiting and sputtering fools, who will invariably attract enough attention to ensure my messy demise?"
Fred snorted, releasing her. He made a quick gesture at his eyes, pointing from him to her to indicate that he was watching her, then slapping his own back to indicate he had hers, before walking over to shake his brother out of it.
Kally sucked in a breath, wondering how she'd just been given a slight pep talk about Potter in the middle of all of this.
She had yet to wrap her mind around how many people had Potter's back, but mentally added the Weasley twins to the list, right alongside that of Tonks, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Ginny, Remus, and Dumbledore.
It somehow made her feel even more alone.
She also acutely missed him, even though she'd only been away from him for all of five minutes. She made a mental note to kick something – possibly him – for that when she got back. Right now she needed to concentrate, not be distracted by Potter's messy black hair, his deep green eyes, his scent-
Shaking herself, she forcibly made a mental note: Fred's hair was slightly longer than George's, who was still sputtering. There. She could distract herself.
Then she really took a good look at the girl's corpse and gagged again.
Regulus turned a rather disapproving gaze on her. "You have smelled worse brewing potions," he criticized, the dark haired man looking unamused.
Now it was her turn to sputter, gesturing at where the twins and dead body were. "Can't I get a pass for-for that?"
His expression practically pursed. "No."
Dean had stood up from where he'd hunkered behind the bakery's counter, wiping something disgusting looking off his chin with his sleeve. "Ugh." Inside the glass display a whole array of confectionaries could be seen.
Each and every single one of them was covered with a fuzzy, thick mold.
Kally almost started gagging again.
From the looks of it, they were in a small bakery. Outside, through the storefront window, lay what appeared to be a pile of half-frozen bodies. The pile was high enough that it physically was leaning against the shop's glass, a mold-covered wedding cake display not enough to block the horrid sight.
The face of one of the bodies pressed firmly against the glass like a child smushing their face against a school bus window, trying to make funny faces.
There was nothing funny about this one. An eyeball hovering over a sunken, gray socket smushed against the cold bakery window, the iris covered in frost as it looked inside at them.
The eye had been green.
George made a strangled sound. "My sister's out there."
"Nope, brother-o-mine. I claimed Ginny. You got Ron," Fred retorted tightly, shooting her a smirk. "Gin's better at pranking than Ron any day of the week. So, dibs."
Dean made a strangled sort of sound, Regulus groaning.
"Get born two minutes later, and all of a sudden your twin's calling dibs for the rest of your lives," George moaned dramatically.
Fred snorted. "Had to share womb space with you didn't I?"
"I had to share that too!"
"Will you both," Reglus dangerously purred, "shut….up? Unless of course you'd like to encourage the dead out there to start to move as well?"
Instantly the group fell unnaturally quiet; the pile of bodies directly outside the bakery was large.
Kally fidgeted nervously with her gloves. All of them now donned a protective bubblehead charm and two pairs of gloves: one was a thick pair of elbow length rubber ones, followed by a simple pair of latex on their hands, pulled over the first pair.
They were taking no chances, but if they woke the rest of the undead up…she figured that even this wouldn't be enough to avoid contracting the infection.
Kally made a face. "You know," she muttered softly, "I was having a perfectly nice afternoon…" And then she'd been recruited to go to Dublin and start traipsing around with the dead with this lot.
"You were?" George bemoaned lowly, "I had a perfectly good copy of Wizards Weekly."
At that all of them shot him a look. "Brother-o-mine," Fred muttered, "we need to get you a girl."
"I had one. Page 12. Her name's Cherise and she likes long, moonlit flights over the beach, absolutely detests public libraries and Ministry-led functions, and her favorite activity is sword fishing."
Kally's brow positively furrowed. "Sword fishing? Don't you mean spear?"
George drew himself up to his full height, posturing. "I mean sword. I read their bios, and I like myself a girl with an adventurous flair."
She just stared at him. "I could have still been snogging…" she muttered this as if feeling distinctly sorry for herself.
"Will all of you," Dean croaked, "stop talking about your sex lives? It's making me severely depressed over the drought in mine."
Fred and George seemed to think about that for a moment, then instantly snapped up, identical deadly glares both aimed at Dean. "Wasn't your last girlfriend our sister?"
Dean took a step back instantly, gulping, the back of his foot kicking a mold-encrusted cake that had somehow wound up on the floor.
That was when each of them remembered exactly where they were, sobering immediately. Still, Fred eyed Dean like he rather wanted to snap him in half, cracking his glove covered knuckles menacingly.
Regulus snapped something vicious at all of them, before coldly redirecting their attentions to the matter-at-hand. "This is nowhere near," peering out the window at the nearest street sign, "where we were supposed to wind up from that ineffective portkey."
They hadn't needed his assessment to know that though.
They'd tried to portkey to a location the Order had secured months prior, before the plague had ever occurred, but instead they'd wound up inside a bakery located on a cobblestone side street. They were supposed to be in an apartment complex.
And then the dead had decided to start moving.
They sure as hell hadn't expected that.
Outside the shop's window, over a pile of corpses, an ordinary looking flower pot swung from a lantern post. The loud creaking of its unoiled chain was nerve rattling. The plants blackened, frost-bitten ivy hung hopelessly down, no owner having been alive to take it inside when the frost finally hit.
Their shop window was intact, but looking onto the street…it was in the minority. The majority were shattered, thousands of pieces of glass sprinkled outside the buildings, glinting like glitter in the dim light of the last working street lamp. Kalliandra could hear it buzzing from here.
"Wrong location…wonder why that is," Fred grumbled, not sounding cheerful as he nudged the shop's front door open with the toe of his boot, careful to not touch the handle. He disappeared outside, gaze looking up and down, eyeing every single body as if it might get up and move, attack, like the one inside had.
A metropolis devoid of sound…it was aberrant.
"I thought Spruner had a safe house here," George commented quietly, shaking his head and following his brother out into the shadows.
"Someone obviously put up anti-apparation and portkey wards around our target location, you blithering imbeciles," Regulus scoffed with obvious forgiveness. "It's a marvel we weren't all splinched in half given that's where we were aiming."
Through the door she could hear George's grunt, watching the wizard use his wand to levitate the body of a boil-covered cat out of the street and onto the corpse pile. The feline's corpse sank onto the bloated, distended stomach of a once thin man, unnaturally denting the remains, a hiss of foul air escaping the body from somewhere.
Kally almost threw up again, Dean behind her now, placing a hand on her back as they exited the bakery after the others. "You can get splinched portkeying?" he questioned, clearly seizing on the only normal thing he could – magic.
All three of the older wizards, now spread out upon the still, dark street, looked back at him with identical looks of disdain. "Yes."
"Splinching," George gutturally choked, as if trying to joke, "it's not just for apparating."
Another icy winter gust blew through the shopping alley, sending every abandoned sign and flowerpot swinging, their chains screeching like a frightening soundtrack to the backdrop of death that they stood within.
She nearly jumped.
"Where do we even start?" Dean asked, a welcome shadow in the night. Not a single light burned in any of the windows, all of the streetlamps dim or broken. Only one at the far end of the street still buzzed with any life, and what it revealed…
Was horrific.
Someone had attempted to stack the dead neatly up, as if creating funeral pyres in suburbia. Over the one story shops, against the night's inky blackness, the thick coils of blackened smoke could just barely be made out.
Parts of Dublin glowed an eerie orange near the horizon.
The piles were funeral pyres.
Someone had been intending to burn the bodies, and now they knew why.
They just hadn't gotten to this street yet.
A deadly, sickening type of paste coated every dead creature, including the one inside. "Well isn't that bowel loosening," the one called George commented, a macabre taint to his tone. He still stood by the body, staring straight down.
Choking, she turned in place, eyes cutting through the shadows. Nothing was moving, only the signs and flower pots in the light winter breeze.
Dean repeated his question. "I repeat, where do we start?"
George shot him a look that promised creative forms of torture. "Pummeling you for defiling our sister?"
The other twin just shook his head, ignoring his brother. "St. James' Hospital," Fred replied as if on autopilot, already shifting his backpack off his shoulder and onto a knee, flipping the top open and somehow unearthing a broomstick four times the length of the backpack itself. "That's where Ginny and the others were originally headed. We'll do the same."
The broom was thrown towards George, the older wizard catching it blindly. "We can't help any of these poor bastards anyway." He made a face. "Even if they were hot."
"I repeat, you need a woman. A real one." Fred unearthed another broom and tossed it towards Dean, the dark skinned wizard snaring it with ease. "Kaylens," Fred ordered, "you're with Thomas."
Dean looked at her curiously, expression grim. "Can't fly?"
She shook her head in the negative, feeling like every sound she heard came through a tunnel thanks to the bubblehead charm.
Dean actually grimaced at her. "We're teaching you when we get back, Kal."
Kalliandra didn't have the heart to tell him she'd never be able to fly, so that it'd be a pointless endeavor. He didn't know that she wasn't an actual witch. Not completely.
It made her feel somewhat helpless given their current situation. She was surrounded by danger, and all the wizards with her could defend themselves. She couldn't.
She suddenly understood why Tonks had questioned her about being a liability.
"So," Fred's voice broke through the air, "if someone put wards up-"
"That means they knew where we were headed," George finished grimly, the implication concerning. An Irish Order member, Spruner, had set up a makeshift Order headquarters in Dublin months prior. That was where they had aimed for, so if wards were now there…
That meant someone had found the Order's location in Dublin.
"Either that," Regulus drawled into the dark, "or they put up wards around the entire city. Considerably more difficult, but, an option."
"So we're dealing with Death Eaters then."
"Or well-intentioned good wizards and witches, that didn't want to risk anyone accidentally showing up in hell on Earth."
"Such pleasing options," Regulus muttered, "do remind me to book my next vacation here."
Out there, on an abandoned street and surrounded by the dead, the five of them all went very silent in the dark. It was night, but somehow it seemed darker than usual. It was also colder.
Kally deeply missed the warming charm Potter had placed on her hours earlier. She'd since abandoned his cloak, slipping into a warmer Muggle jacket before they left. They had needed to blend in within Muggle Dublin.
Dean, Regulus and her had succeeded in doing so.
Fred and George had apparently been given the wardrobe of some long dead pimp from the seventies. Fred wore a flashy faux fur coat, while George had leather pants on. Leather. He almost looked like he was trolling for girls.
It was almost amusing enough to make her forget where they were at.
"So...let's bust the elephant out of the room then," Dean suggested. "What was that thing in there?"
"A fluvial mound of pus turned solid, that my twin somehow still wanted to bone?" Fred drawled, his twin giving an exaggerated shudder as they both approached a mass of bodies, wands leveled at them to ensure these ones were still dead.
"The plague has obviously mutated," Regulus spat. "The Dark Lord always was fond of experimenting. He obviously went a bit too far with this variant."
"So…" Dean repeated his new favorite word, "mutant zombies from hell then?" Regulus shot him an icy look, the Gryffindor repeating, "Right, right," to himself as if that somehow made it all better.
Kally actually shivered, and it wasn't from the cold.
The twins were already looking towards the night sky, brooms in hand. Regulus joined them. "There will probably be Death Eaters up there."
George thudded him on the back. "Way to keep a positive mindset, Reggie."
Kally was fairly positive that the only thing sparing George from hexing was what happened next: along the side of the road, at the bottom of a pile of the dead, one of the barely recognizable forms began to abruptly jerk.
All of them nearly jumped, Regulus jerking his wand away from where it had been creeping towards George and to the undead, barking, "Incendio!" at it, a beam of fire unleashed from his wand like a firework and striking the deceased.
Only it wasn't deceased, the spasms of the damned renewing and jerking around, flopping around like an animal that's spine had been partially crushed by a four wheelers' tires. It wasn't quite dead, but its crushed nerves were still sending uncoordinated signals to its legs.
Dean's hand fell firmly on her shoulder, squeezing it, Kally grabbing it with her own for sheer comfort as they watched someone's long black hair shrivel in the flames, disappearing as nothing more than floating ash into the night.
Eventually the spasming dead man ceased to move, his skull sinking in slowly.
The others in the pile had not awoken, remaining still. Yet the fire continued to crackle, burning their clothing, devouring their flesh, sizzling like it was nothing more than a campout's bonfire where they would soon be roasting marshmallows.
Even the bubblehead charm could not entirely keep out the stench of burning flesh and fat.
Gagging, she swallowed. "They're all going to do that soon, aren't they?" Kally said deadenly. Two had already woken up. How long would it be before the rest on the street did? There were over a dozen…
It only took them maybe twenty seconds, and then all four wizards had spread out, fire charms being muttered at all of the piles, at least one undead within the piles beginning to jerk as the greedy tendrils of fire forced unnatural life back into them.
She could only stand there, wincing as each fire hex was thrown out, one-by-one, all around her. Staying firmly in the center of the street, closing her eyes was almost tempting.
Each new malodorous bonfire was like a frightening beam of light into the night, and the spells were awakening the things that had once been people.
It was like a kid poking their parents awake, taunting mummy and daddy to wake up. Only they weren't related to these corpses, and they weren't poking them. They were burning them.
"We'll have to hurry now. Anything still alive or dead will definitely see this."
Dean heeded George's warning, already back by her and gesturing for her to get on the broom. "Get behind me, arms around my waist. Don't make any sudden movements."
Kalliandra felt like a deer in headlights, having never flown before.
The shambling, jerking sound of one of the formerly deceased crawling out of a pile of flames, staggering with speed towards them as smoke billowed from its smoking flesh was more than enough to send Kally bolting for the broom.
At the end of the narrow street, swift moving shadows could be seen.
"Everyone move!" The fire is attracting more of them!" Regulus ordered.
Sucking in a breath she snared her arms around Dean's midsection, her friend shouting, "Hang on!" over the crackling noise of flame.
A second later it jerked, her feet unceremoniously yanked off the ground, Kalliandra letting out an upset sound as they entered into the air. Regulus flew alongside them, a chameleon charms cast on them both, a strange, trickling sensation sliding over her skin as she disappeared into the night.
Thirty feet below she could see some of those creatures bolting, moving with speed, tearing into each other.
They had nearly been down there when that had begun.
Kalliandra buried her face against Dean's back, clenching her gaze shut as they headed into Dublin, flying over a military barricade to get there.
She saw none of it.
She kept her gaze tightly closed the entire time.
ECOTS
"So you're saying it might not even be out here?"
Harry ignored Ron, Dumbledore kindly soothing, "The remote possibility may present itself, Mr. Weasley. Though I do feel…" end of his wand emitting a faint, soothing glow, "that we are on the right track."
A second dove slowly emerged from the Headmaster's wand, beak first and emitting a golden glow in comparison to the first one's bright silver.
The aged wizard had filled them all in as soon as the other's had left. He had been reading what was left of Riddle's old, basilisk-stabbed diary from the Chamber of Secrets, and in-between the lines the Headmaster thought he had figured out the location of another horcrux.
They were going to get it.
"If the doves at any point deviate from the other's path," Dumbledore stated rather calmly, "I would like Ms. Lovegood and Mr. Weasley to pay attention to where the golden one points, and Ms. Granger and Harry to pay attention to where the silver one points." The Headmaster did not pause in his unsteady strides, pressing, "There may be more than one source of dark magic within this forest, and we do not want to be caught unaware of one while pursuing the other."
Dumbledore had conjured the first of the doves, the silver one, at the threshold of the grounds, its feathers rustling and emitting an aberrant silver-white glow. The Headmaster had assured them it would show them the way.
It was a spell designed to track the origin of dark magic, and if they followed it would surely lead them to the nearest source. The closer they got, the more that the magical construct's brilliant glow would fade.
Apparently the magic would drive the dove to pursue evil, to seek out dark magic, which meant there was the possibility of not just finding a horcrux, but of encountering every evil, dark-magic laced creature along the way between them and the horcrux's location.
Assuming Dumbledore was right and that it was even there.
The whole premise of Dumbledore's suspicion had been several short entries, where Riddle had detailed the most dangerous places he'd been fortunate enough to explore and live to tell the tale of.
The Forbidden Forest had been close to Hogwarts, and the Head Boy would have been able to access it at night anytime he wanted, without anyone being the wiser. Given that his mind had already been twisted well before his seventh year had been completed, Dumbledore thought it very likely that the pathetic snake would have hidden some horcruxes 'close to home.'
Ole Riddle really had hated his orphanage.
Harry's best mate was still very much fixated on Dumbledore's last comment though.
"Wait, so there's multiple things that want to kill us tonight? Great, just…great," Ron muttered something morose about spiders, obviously pleased and on edge judging from how his fingers had turned to werewolf claws.
If his best mate wasn't careful, he was going to accidentally shred his wand doing that.
"It's the Forbidden Forest, Ronald," Hermione hissed, "I think it's safe to assume that everything here is always trying to kill you."
Harry actually snorted at that one, Luna airily telling, "I think they're really all just misunderstood."
That earned her a death glare from both Hermione and Ron.
Harry just shot her a smirk, right before shoving a branch out of his face, the sound of it snapping loud in the otherwise soundless night. Besides him twigs quietly broke beneath the feet of the others, Ron and Luna's wands held aloft, their illumination spells only penetrating three meters before being swallowed by the Forbidden Forest's heavy shadows. It was like the darkness here literally consumed it.
That hardly mattered.
His friends might not be able to see beyond their own illumination charms or the light of Dumbledore's doves but hecould see just fine.
Something had happened to him. Something still was happening to him. He wasn't sure that he knew exactly what the hell that was yet, but he could see at night. He could react quicker. Trainings with McGonagall had gotten increasingly easier. He healed faster. He was learning wandless magic. But right now…
If anything tried to hide within the forest's thick shadows, he wished it luck.
Harry strode ahead, ignoring Hermione's quiet reprimand, "Harry…Harry you'll trip on something!"
She sounded concerned, but he practically snorted in response. "Not likely, 'Mione." Harry didn't offer further explanation. Of all the things he'd filled them in on, his slow mutating was not one of them. Hermione was smart though, she'd figure it out on her own time and spare him the conversation.
His fingers tensed around his wand, knuckles turning white. Up ahead he could see Dumbledore as clear as day, everything in shades of gray. Eerily the two glowing birds wound between the ancient trees, flying ahead of their small group in a soundless flight.
Still, the forest was impossibly dark.
Hermione spoke quietly from behind him, "Dirige lucemen," a brilliant white light emerging from her wand in the shape of a glowing orb, it streaking out ahead of them on its own mission, lighting up the forest for thirty meters in all directions, illuminating things even past where Dumbledore walked. Now all of them would be able to see.
Harry spared her a glance back, spotting a determined yet satisfied expression pursed on her lips. "Exactly why didn't you do that an hour ago?" he asked. It might not matter to him, but to Run and Luna…they'd been tromping through the frigid forest for well over an hour at this point. He could only imagine their eye strain.
Then again, given that Ron was a werewolf who could change at will now, he wondered if his best friend could also see in the dark. He made a mental note to ask later.
The Prefect flipped her wavy hair back, huffing a frosty breath. "They would have been able to see it from the castle. We're not supposed to be attracting attention."
Harry just grunted. She was right. The last thing they needed was to attract the attention of the students still left and to have some remaining and adventurous fifth years getting the sudden urge to investigate.
No one needed to follow them where they were going.
Still, he couldn't help but smirk. "So no concern about attracting accromantulas then?"
Hermione made a face, but Ron actually scowled. "Not funny, Harry."
"Come on, Ron," he harassed, turning his attention back to the shadows that only he could see through. "Can't tell me you're not missing Aragog. You two were getting so chummy. Even heard there were dinner invitations involved."
Ron made a guttural, werewolf-like sound that was so realistic that Luna actually complimented it. "Very Wolfman, Ronald. Have you been practicing?" The Ravenclaw then mumbled something indecipherable, her wand's light changing to a blue color, the blonde smiling as if pleased at her House Pride theme. "There, now that's much better."
He turned his attention away from them, leaving Hermione to keep them in line. She might still be in mourning, all of them knowing that her parents were probably long dead, but she was still a powerful witch capable of goading Ron into attentiveness with only a reproachful look.
Harry had been on the threshold of the Forbidden Forest not three hours ago with Kalliandra, but then it had been much more pleasant. Now she was in Dublin with the others, and he was here, slogging across the broken-branch and snow covered forest floor towards whatever area felt, in Dumbledore's exact words, the darkest.
He didn't know if he'd ever see her, Ginny, Fred, George, or Neville again. Regulus he could take or leave.
Then again, he really didn't want to go back to the Dursleys.
His only consolation if Regulus went and got himself killed was that he'd be 17 at the end of July, of age, and able to make any and all decisions that he wanted on his own.
Up ahead Dumbledore paused, the glowing doves both simultaneously changing directions.
The Headmaster turned to follow them.
The aged wizard still moved with the smallest of limps, his leg having been crushed in the Battle of Grimmauld, and Harry had noticed. The slight reminder that Dumbledore was mortal bothered him to the extreme.
The thick forest broke, a slight opening revealing a three meter high drop off, the miniature cliffs looking like jagged incisors, waiting to tear into something in the harsh, blinding light of Hermione's spell.
It suddenly struck Harry that they had neither seen nor heard any living forest creatures in over half an hour.
The doves flew over the edge, gliding along the ground near the base of it, moving gently back and forth across the snow covered ground, as if waiting for them to hurry up.
Harry dropped down into a crouch, grabbing the top of the cliff and vaulting down, landing hard on the ground below. His boots actually stuck despite the iciness, Harry turning back and lifting his arms to snag first Hermione, then Luna.
Ron thudded down next to him, only he slid right onto his ass.
Harry actually chuckled. "Smooth."
The Gryffindor Keeper turned werewolf just drug a hand through his red hair, glaring slightly and glancing at the girl's nervously. "Shut it, Harry."
The girls remained quiet, already following Dumbledore, who had somehow gotten down the small cliffs with his bum leg without any of them noticing or hearing him.
They moved deeper into the forest, Dumbledore's pace slowing, gesturing for them to stay closer.
Harry obliged, continually scanning the frozen woods, seeing absolutely nothing stirring in the deep, impenetrable blackness. What he felt though…
A strange chill prickled across his skin, and it had nothing to do with the cold. Instead it seemed to penetrate straight through his thick cloak, getting beneath his flesh. Harry actually shuddered, grimacing at the sensation. Luna let out a slight whimper, the sound from the ordinarily happy girl startling.
The comforting silver and golden lights of the doves suddenly dimmed.
They were getting closer.
ECOTS
They touched down directly in front of St. James Hospital, the entire area utterly desolate. Not a single street lamp was going. Not a single light shone from any business window. The hospital loomed in front of them, completely dark. Its emergency generator had obviously long since died.
Kally detached herself from Dean, her friend actually chuckling quietly.
"Thought you were trying to give me the Heimlich there Kally-kins."
Even though she was still seated behind him, in the dark and chameleon charmed, when there was absolutely no way that he could see it, she still glared. "I'm scared," she hissed threateningly, "of brooms."
"So I wager you're one hell of a bad housekeeper then yea-"
Kally 'accidentally' jabbed him in the side with her elbow as she clambered off the offending object of flight, ignoring Dean's pained groan as her eyes flickered around the dark area. That familiar burning was still there, in the backs of her eyes, but she could see everything.
There was not a soul in sight, but the number of broken doorways and windows…
Shuddering slightly, wrapping her arms around herself to stave off the fierce night's cold, she almost jumped at Regulus' voice, the wizard muttering finite charms to remove their chameleon ones. One-by-one they all emerged in the middle of the street.
Well, at least they could all see each other now.
"No lumos charms. Those things seemed attracted to light."
Dean slid off the broom, almost collapsing as he rubbed at his kidney. "Grand," he groaned, still shooting her a wounded look, "so how exactly area we supposed to see more of those things coming?"
"Night vision goggles," George whispered lowly, sounding like he'd regained some of his earlier 'pre-zombie-movement' spunk. "Accioed some off of those sleeping Muggles by the barracks. Blokes didn't even notice."
A pair of black goggles soared over her head, Kally actually ducking and hissing in annoyance. Dean caught it despite his recently acquired injury, blinking as he turned it over in his hand. "Nice," he admired.
Regulus obviously had different feelings. "You summoned them? If any Death Eaters were with them then you just advertised that wizards were here you blithering fool!"
"Hey now," Fred defended, pointing at first himself and then his brother, "I'm the blithering fool. He's the resident twat."
"A parasitic amoeba," muttered Black dangerously, "has a superior intellectual capacity than the both of you combined."
"Well unless you know of a magical spell that lets us see in the dark…" Fred challenged, waggling his eyebrows as if having caught Regulus in an unwinnable point.
The wizard did not even blink. "Ah yes, because picking up random supplies utilized by the Muggle militia in a plague zone and pressing them up against the mucus membranes of one's eyes is not at all a stellar method of contracting the disease personally." Flicking his wand and causing the remaining ones in George's hands to yank away, crashing upon the icy ground with a clatter, he sneered, "I'm sure they couldn't possibly be contaminated. After all, the Muggle militia has done a stellar job of preventing the plague from getting out of hand, so they must be prodigies of infection control. Their supplies surely won't be tainted."
Dean, who had been experimentally holding the goggles up outside of his bubblehead charm, went wide eyed and instantly dropped them. The sound was loud enough to almost echo.
"I'm surrounded," Regulus half-growled, "by troglodytes."
"Great, just great," George muttered, Regulus having already flicked his wand and incinerated the goggles into ash, "so we'll just stumble about blindly until dawn. Fantastic."
Kally shook her head, her ponytail flopping around inside the bubble head charm as she spun in a circle, surveying the area. "There's no one here," she reported, seeing absolutely no signs of movement. Glancing back at the wizards, only Regulus obviously remembering the unicorn blood, she clarified, "I can see fine right now."
Looks dawned on Fred and George's faces almost simultaneously, putting two-and-two together. As Order members they had to know what Angelina had done to her. Dean however was frowning heavily. He'd opened his mouth to ask something, but George beat him to it.
"Alright then, Kaylens, you take point and let us know if you see any creepy crawlers sneaking up on us." She nodded, sucking in a breath and walking ahead of everyone towards the hospital, the entrance in shambles.
At one point it had probably been rather artistic, all glass with well-polished, curving pieces of decorative metal standing in stark contrast to a cobblestone walkway and a cement street with clean lines. Now though it looked like a bulldozer had wrecked part of it.
A rubber duck stained with black pus lay half-smashed on the ground, as if someone had stepped on it.
Shivering, keeping her voice low, she ducked down beneath a mangled metal bar, peering inside the hospital's once grand entrance. "Should we go in?" Seeing nothing, no signs of movement at all, only more of that acrid black pus that reeked smeared across the ground in frighteningly telling smears.
They were in the shape of hand prints, the poor bastard having clearly been drug across the ground by something.
Kally glanced backwards, Fred right alongside her, looking stricken at the sight of bloodied hand prints. George, however, had several locks of long hair in his hand, wand swishing back and forth behind them, a look of the utmost concentration on his face. "Invenieteam nunc. Invenieteam nunc. Invenietaem nu-"
"It's a locating spell," Fred explained, spotting her expression, the wizard pulling his wand out as if getting ready for something. "We nicked a bunch of Ginny's hair from one of her brushes back at the burrow."
She inclined an eyebrow, her golden gaze already scanning the windows of the buildings within sight. There wouldn't be time for her to not be scanning every single direction every few seconds until sunup. "Burrow?"
"Home," he stated, sounding almost hollow. "Best way to find someone. Get yourself some good ole hair or blood, then ask the wand to point ya."
Turning in place, not having entered the hospital and still surveying the streets on either side of them, she continued the hushed conversation. "Didn't realize there was a spell for that. Kinda cool."
Fed's gaze turned calculating, voice lowering so Dean couldn't hear. "You're gonna make a piss poor excuse of a fake witch if you keep acting surprised by every new magic spell someone uses around ya."
"Given how insane some of the witches here are," she muttered, eyes sweeping past a particularly brutalized wooden door laying out in the middle of the road, "I'll take not getting mistaken for one as a compliment."
The chortle was unmistakable, Kally slyly glancing at him, right before George let out a not-so-quiet whoop in the silent street. "Got it!"
The strands of long hair, appearing brown in the darkness but ordinarily red in the light, were no longer hanging straight down or only moving with the breeze. Instead they were pointing straight out, directly towards a gaping hole in the nearest building.
The mutilated door lay in the street, directly in front of it.
Kally didn't have to see Fred stiffen alongside her. She already knew he would. His sister might be in there.
"Maybe she's on the other side of that building?" she offered, slightly hopeful.
Fred just shook his head though. "No," he morosely muttered, "that spell directs you around buildings if someone's not in it." Spotting her renewed look of confusion, he tapped his bubblehead charm. "Magic, remember?"
"Yeah," she whispered, "sounds a lot like GPS. It doesn't tell you to drive directly through a building. It tells you to go around it."
"GPS?"
"It's a Muggle thing," she muttered distractedly, hurrying forward and grabbing a hold of George's arm. The wizard had started making a beeline for the building. "Wait," she muttered, still looking at every window on the upper floors of the building for some kind of movement. She didn't see any, but…
The dead bodies back on that side street hadn't moved right away either.
They hadn't moved until they had disturbed them, and two stocky wizards storming a building in search of their kid sister sure as hell would wake some up, assuming any were in that building.
George looked at her, his blue gaze looking almost tormented.
"If I were here when shit went down," Dean muttered, coming to stand alongside the three of them, "a building with no windows on the first floor would have been the first place I'd have tried hiding."
Wetting her lips, shivering as a slight breeze brushed past them, she murmured, "My thoughts exactly."
Then she got out her pathetic excuse of a pre-magicked wand, only capable of casting a few very, very basic spells, and started towards it, using her eyes to try to see what they couldn't without lighting charms.
Fred made a disgruntled sound, now grabbing a hold of her arm. "And where, damsel," he questioned with mock gallantry, "do you think you're going?"
Glancing at where his hand lay on her arm as if it were the parasitic amoeba Regulus had referenced, she shot him a look. "None of you can see in the dark, and if we shouldn't be doing light charms sending you lot in head first seems kind of dumb, don't you think?"
"Yeah, kinda like sending someone who can't hex in head first."
Huffing a frustrated breath at her own inadequacies, she sent her long bangs flying out of her eyes. "So what would you suggest?"
"Shoulder to shoulder?"
Considering that and the large size of the gaping hole in the wall, she finally nodded. They would both fit. "Fine."
Dean was eyeing them both oddly. "What does he mean you can't hex?" He raised both of his eyebrows, clearly waiting for an answer.
"Girl sucks at Defense Against the Dark Arts," George supplied, the hair he had charmed still floating and pointing directly towards the hole in the wall. The way it was pointing…it was almost eerie.
Kally seriously debated kicking him, but it was better than Dean finding out she wasn't a full witch.
Then again, he was probably going to find out anyway. They hadn't yet worked out how to approach that if it came up.
Her and Fred were halfway to the building when Regulus, who had been keeping an oddly attentive eye on the sky, suddenly swore.
"We have company."
ECOTS
It wasn't long before the forest started to swallow even Hermione's light spell, his friend's brown eyes turning almost irate.
"I don't understand it," she hissed quietly, shoving her curly hair out of the way. "It should light everything up for thirty meters. Now it's barely managing to light ten!"
Harry had his own thoughts on exactly why that was, judging from how pale Dumbledore's doves had grown. "I don't think it has anything to do with your spell work, Hermione."
Ducking under a tree root, the five of them having descended into the world's largest ditch, Harry was rapidly feeling unsettled.
Where they were at…it was starting to look familiar to him. "Hey Ron," he questioned, "does this kind of look like-"
His best mate made a strangled sound, his voice unusually high pitched, "Yup."
The look Hermione shot between the two of them demanded explanation, Harry's grip tensing around his wand nervously, their feet taking them below the first of the webs. All they needed was a Ford Anglia.
Harry's explanation was somewhat choked, his head looking up, the towering trees holding even more iridescent, silvery nets perfect for capturing and killing.
"Spiders."
One of the dove's lights went out.
ECOTS
BAM!
The first of the spells struck the street five meters to their left, the pavement exploding in a furious array of shrapnel. Ducking and covering their heads, tiny pieces of concrete rained down like sadistic hail.
Fred's hand snared her arm and started dragging her, nearly knocking her over until her feet caught up to the speed of their sprint. The two of them were bolting desperately for the building, and to think, they'd been approaching it cautiously only a second ago in fear of waking any more of those things up.
They didn't make it.
A cruel voice cut through the sky like a knife, a wave of heat rushing past them, smashing into the doorway, detonating what was left of the wall outwards in a thunderous blast.
Kalliandra screamed, all of them thrown viciously back to the ground by the wall of heat that was blazed out. Curled up and hands over her head in a protective position, she snapped out of it a second later, her head darting up to see that a sizeable portion of that wall now lay consumed in flames, demolished.
She could no longer see George, Dean or Regulus.
Kally scrambled to her feet faster than she had realized she could move, "Protego!" shouted besides her, a shielding charm flying out above both her and Fred's heads an instant before a blinding purple spell struck it, followed by a second, then a third.
Fred's arm looked like it was about to snap under the strain, the twin protecting her.
A half dozen Death Eaters flew in the sky above them, whipping back and forth on brooms and flinging spells as if they were on a spring holiday. Looking around frantically, she didn't see the others. All she could see were flames.
The street had been separated into sides by a vicious line of fires, ones that looked to be growing in size and throwing off such heat that the large icicles hanging on gutters even hundreds of feet away had begun to break off and fall, the sharp points spearing the ground with deadly impact.
"Accio broom!'
Off to the right she barely caught a glimpse of Dean trying to summon one of the broomsticks, only for a cowled form to swoop in and snare it in a pale grip, the Firebolt incinerating before their eyes.
An explosion sent Dean disappearing in a fiery array of smoke and flame, Kally screaming as her friend disappeared. Heart in her throat, she didn't see him. She didn't see him anywhere. For a half second the flames flickered in a way that let her see past them, but the spot on the street where Dean had stood was now empty. He was gone. Heart pounding and knowing she couldn't just run after him, she turned back to Fred.
The other three brooms had just been incinerated, Fred making a furious sound besides her, not able to do anything. If he tried, he'd have to drop their shield.
"Those bastards destroyed our brooms!" He sounded like he was talking about a recently murdered puppy.
Kally winced, more concerned about Dean then their stupid broomsticks, her hazel gaze already searching for an escape route. "The hospital!" she shouted, trying to make Fred hear her above the cacophony of sound assaulting the night.
He heard her.
"Go!"
They bolted for it, Fred's spell finally sparking out as a sickening yellow spell slammed into it.
Their legs vaulted them both over the sharp entry way glass, the two running beneath the decorative metal as a Death Eater cursed it, the metal pieces taking on a life of their own and trying to stab them.
Kally stuttered to a stop for a half second. The long, decorative walkway in front of them was like a horror film. They had ten meters to go before they reached the relative safety of the hospital's actual building, yet every piece of metal between them and there had suddenly started moving, dancing in anticipation of trying to impale them.
There were no other close buildings to run to though.
Overhead the Death Eaters laughed riotously.
Kally steeled herself and ran. She and Fred darted in opposite directions, a metal support slamming into the ground directly between them, the twin firing random spells blindly up into the air. The Death Eaters had the high ground.
Fred dodged a metal bench that had suddenly developed teeth, right as Kally ducked beneath a metal support pillar that had just sweetly tried to remove her head. Kally felt some of her hair sliced off by the sharp edge. Swearing, she fired a stunning spell over her head blindly. She liked her hair right where it was!
They'd reached the building, a Death Eater swooping down and nearly grabbing her, only for a hex from Fred to send the woman reeling away.
"Don't get cut on the glass!" she shouted, hurtling herself past the entrance walkway and into the actual building, tripping and sliding on the floor, her tumultuous hurtle stopping centimeters shy of spearing herself on a vicious chunk of metal It looked like the twisted remains of a flipped over gurney.
Gasping, staring at what she'd almost done despite her own warning she felt a strong hand snag and bodily haul her up.
"Don't need to tell me twice!" Fred shouted, a roof now over their heads and protecting them from the Death Eater's aerial assault.
They both whipped around, wands out and aimed at the entrance, fully expecting the Death Eaters to come running into the hospital any second. Only…
They didn't. Even the metal constructs had stopped moving, only one still swaying back and forth, looking rather like an eager cobra.
The bench that had attacked Fred looked like it had been hexed into a knotted bow tie.
Outside the loud popping of flames could still be heard, Fred stepping forward and eyeing the entry almost disbelievingly. His boots crunched loudly on the shattered glass. "What the…"
Kally's head whipped in the opposite direction, peering down the pitch black hospital hallway, realization dawning on her. "They aren't trying to kill us themselves," she whispered, voice suddenly barely audible. "They're trying to make noise to wake those things up."
A hospital was the first place the plague stricken would have gone, and hospitals had morgues.
There were probably countless dead inside the building with them.
Fred made a choking sound. "Son of a bitch."
"We go outside-"
"They attack."
"We stay in here-"
"Mutant undead attack."
Kally struggled to catch her breath from their tumultuous sprint, blinking to try to clear her vision of smoke so she could see the things coming in the dark at them. The sheer heat from outside was almost unbearable, and it was January. How was a fire that hot?
Fred slid a hand over his bubblehead charm, as if wanting to tug his hair out but unable to. "Well shit."
It was quiet inside. Too quiet. "Do you think the others…" she couldn't quite finish, but didn't need to.
"Oh yeah, George is resourceful, and I'm pretty sure Regulus is like a cockroach. He's too mean to die."
She caught the subtle worry he was clearly trying to mask, saying nothing. They'd just had the sprint of their lives, and now things were eerily calm. Too calm.
They had to move.
Making a swift decision, she grabbed at Fred's wrist. "Follow me."
Fred tugged her back, Kally physically thudding against his chest. "Oh hell no. You get killed and Harry's gonna kill me," he hissed into her face. "And I don't know about you, but I don't wanna die, and Harry scares me a lot more than those things do."
She made a sputtering sound. "You can't be serious."
Fred shot her a grisly look. "Rule number one, Kally, never piss off the surrogate brother. Saw him take on a dragon once and he didn't even blink."
Her mouth fell open, a strange sound emitting. "A dragon?" Oh, she had questions. She had a lot of questions. Questions that she couldn't pursue right now though if she wanted to live to ask those questions.
"I can see," she swiftly reminded him. "If something is coming I'll shout clock coordinates, alright?" They couldn't stay there. The Death Eaters or worse, the building, might still be out to kill them.
The Weasley's eyebrows both arched high up, leaving her frustrated. "Like ten o'clock? Two o'clock? Twelve o'clock is straight in front of wherever we're standing, six o'clock directly behind." He wouldn't have to see what he was aiming at if he just aimed where she directed him to aim. Bouncing on her toes impatiently, her eyes darted between the support pole still impersonating a cobra and the pitch black hospital hallway.
Fred looked less than pleased about everything, but nodded stiffly, the two setting off into the hospital at a cautious pace. "Where exactly," he muttered after all of twenty seconds, "are we going?"
"Trying to find a window we can use to scout the situation," she muttered, "and then possibly crawl out of without them seeing us." They had to get back to the others.
In shades of gray she could see the decimated waiting area. Potted plants had been flipped over, dirt spilling out across the marble flooring, an ornate reception area now looking like nothing more than a pus-covered mess.
A dead body, its skin sunken and hollow, lay slumped next to a swivel chair. Breathing unsteadily, she whispered extremely quietly, "Dead chick at four o'clock, but she's not moving."
"Well isn't that reassuring?" Fred muttered, shifting grips and grabbing onto her sleeve now. She couldn't blame him. This was probably the most sadistic game of blindman's bluff she'd ever heard of.
Those damn things were attracted to light though, so Fred couldn't exactly use a lumos spell.
They made it past reception without incident, now in a once carpeted hallway, doors lining it. Breathing deeply she tried the first door.
It swung open, revealing nothing more than an empty office, a reconstructed model of the heart on the counter and several overly colourful posters on the walls, a patient examination bed in the center. Relaxing only slightly, for they were obviously in the administrative section of the hospital and not the patient care section, she felt like their odds might be improving.
Plus, the office had a window, and there was enough orange-red light spilling into the room for them to see.
Releasing Fred she rushed to it, ducking beneath its frame and peering out it. The high wall of flames in the center of the street could still be seen, three of those things standing near it.
Those things had once been human.
One got a bit too close to the two story high tower of fire, the flames licking out and scorching its ruffled sleeve.
The unreal scream it let out, the creature that had once been a woman running as the fire swiftly devoured its entire body, was enough to make her wince.
"Well at least they're not smart," Fred dryly observed from his crouched position alongside her. "Think if we just throw something shiny they'll chase it?"
A breathless laugh escaped her. "What do you have in mind?"
"A bald Death Eater's head?"
And that was when, with their backs to the office door, in a single moment of inattention, that they heard the floor creak.
They both jerked around, shooting up-
They were too late.
A spell sent Fred slamming clear across the room and into a wall, his wand knocked from his fist and clattering to the floor.
The next spell sent Kally bashing against the window, the pane cracking loudly but not shattering. The sound alone would have been enough to attract something had the fires not been so loud.
A wand was now aimed directly at her throat.
The face of Avery sneered at her. "Ah, snagged myself a Weasley and an irritating, Reach," he chided mockingly.
Pain shot through the back of her head, the bubblehead charm having been shattered by the impact, every stench and bit of smoke in the air now assaulting her.
She could feel something dripping down the back of her neck, her vision somewhat blurred. Half choking, Avery's wand instantly waved back and forth in front of her nose. "Ah, ah, ah, I'd hate to have to damage you even more before delivery. The Dark Lord so does like to have his pets intact."
Kalliandra sucked in several quick, rancid breaths, her eyes flickering to where Fred lay slumped on the ground, looking groggy.
His bubblehead charm had also been shattered, but his eyes were slightly open, looking drugged.
She groaned quietly, "Didn't the Ministry catch you last time?" She could have sworn her and Potter had tackled him.
"Didn't the Ministry catch you last time?" he mimicked in a high pitched tone, mocking her. "Do you truly think the Dark Lord isn't capable of protecting his servants, girl?" She could see the reflected flames dancing across Avery's insane-looking face, his teeth jagged and broken. "Now…be a good little pet and tell me where the other ones went and hid."
The most miniscule of movement's caught her eye, Fred starting to move across the ground slowly towards his wand.
It was obvious that Avery hadn't realized Fred wasn't knocked out.
She did the only thing she could do.
She spat directly into Avery's face.
The slap that slammed into her own an instant later sent her hurtling to the floor, everything black for a second. Kalliandra felt something savagely grab her, and she wasn't fully sure how it happened since everything spun, but she found herself once again drug to her feet, pinned against the window by Avery's firm grip.
Avery had obviously drug her back up for more.
"Now, let's try this again…" he practically simpered, his wand menacingly aimed at her skull. "Where…are…your friends?"
Making a pained sound, she blinked furiously, her golden gaze locking onto that of the callous man's. "I don't…"she managed, throat hurting, "actually know." She didn't. For all she knew they were dead. Sounding slightly pained, she choked, "We couldn't decide between the theater or a concert. You know, us teenagers, we never can make up our minds."
Abruptly her body was yanked away from the window and smashed back into it, everything going black for a few fleeting seconds. Her entire form shook, a delayed adrenaline response as she gasped in pain, Avery's demand for her to tell him obvious.
"Okay," she gasped, trying to buy Fred time. "I'll tell you. They're roasting S'Mores, outside. You made one hell of a campfire."
She was bashed into the window yet again.
Kally was fairly certain she'd made some kind of pained sound, her eyes fluttering shut as she let her world spin for a second. She stayed like that for a good few precious seconds, collecting herself.
Avery's grip loosened ever-so-slightly, the Death Eater obviously thinking she was passing out.
That worked for her. Sucking in a quick breath, she got ready.
Then her eyes flew back open as she abruptly jerked to the side, snaring his wrist in her hand and shoving it in the opposite direction, right as a blinding hex flew from it. It shattered the pane glass where her head had just been, searing the other side of her head's hair.
Her elbow slammed into Avery's nose a second later, as did Fred's curse.
The Death Eater slumped heavily to the ground, Kally a second behind him, still seeing black spots in her vision and feeling woozy.
From the spot where he'd been crawling stealthily across the ground, Fred managed to stretch out a leg and kick the door shut, using his wand to move a bookshelf in front of it as a temporary barricade. "That won't hold long," he muttered. "But it at least ought to give us some warning."
All she wanted to do was rub her head, but she knew better than to touch any form of cut with her gloved hand. Instead she settled on wincing, aware that she now had a point of infection entry and was in a hospital in the middle of plague-central. She sucked in a resigned breath.
Fred wasn't doing much better, blood freely dripping from a cut on his face. "Nice elbow."
She smiled wanely. "Nice hex."
"Where'd you learn that?"
Slowly she pressed her gloved palms against the ground, gingerly getting to her knees. "I had brothers."
Fred grunted acknowledgement, getting slowly up himself. A drop of his own blood struck the floor, the Weasley muttering a curse, staring at his latex-covered fingers. "We're contaminated."
"Gee, you think?"
The look he shot her could have killed, "Better hope that cure of yours works then."
Hissing a breath, she shook her head. "Regulus and Snape made it. I just helped. Plus, there's still a chance the infection didn't get in us. No dead things are in here." The side of her head and face hurt, her cheek throbbing heavily with her pulse from where Avery had slapped her.
Fred looked seriously skeptical, but Avery had started to stir…
Still seeing bits of black dancing in her vision, Kally uncoordinatedly snagged his wand out of his hand, snapping it in two, right as Fred hexed the man again, the Death Eater's body jerking.
Tossing the two pieces of the wand to opposite sides of the room, slumping against the wall and breathing quickly, she found Fred looking at her oddly, a slight grin crossing his face. "That's illegal, you know. Breaking a wizard's wand."
"Bit low," she retorted, blowing strands of long bangs out of her face, "on my list of concerns right now."
Fred just smirked, getting completely off the ground now, opening his mouth to say something else-
Only he didn't. Instead he aimed his wand directly at her, a curse slamming out of his wand.
Yelping she threw herself down, Fred's spell striking something behind her.
Whatever it was fell out the window and crashed into the ground with a loud thump.
It took her a horrifying moment to realize that one of those things had nearly climbed through the open window after them. Looking up at Fred, she gratefully gasped, "Thanks."
"No problem," he told, already stalking towards the window and eyeing it suspiciously. "Like I said, you die, Harry gets pissed, then I die, or George, assuming he finds him first, goes into a blind rage, and gets us confused."
Ignoring how that made her stomach flip, she made the Herculean effort to climb back to her feet, muttering, "Who knew being a twin was so dangerous?"
He let out a dark laugh, his brow heavily furrowing as he re-cast a bubblehead charm first on her, then on himself. "Anyone who has ever spent two seconds around my brother and I?" He shot her a wink, adding hurriedly, "Those things are bound to have heard that. More will be headed over here."
Kally's gaze flickered to where Avery lay, unconscious on the ground, and she shrugged. "Well, let's give them something to find."
Fred met her gaze and grinned.
Five minutes later found Avery clad in a transfigured dress, high heels, poofy hat and a feather boa levitated back outside, a permanent sticking charm plastering the man to the hospital's outer wall, just high enough to be out of the reach of those creatures. Unless one had been a spider in their past life, they weren't getting to him, but he sure as hell was going to taunt them.
"There," Fred grinned, "that oughta keep them busy for awhile."
Already headed down the hall, trying to find another exit point, Kally grimaced. "Let's hope so." Finding another office on a different wall of the building, so that they could hopefully exit out of the sights of those creatures currently being teased with a dangling Avery seemed like a decent plan. "I still think we should have just dumped him."
"Yeah, but if they kill him quick then they'll start looking for us again. This way it's a distraction and funny."
Kalliandra made an irritated sound, "Fine, but I'm blaming you if I run into him again and he's still alive." She was really getting tired of running into that particular Death Eater, especially given he refused to die.
"Duly noted."
They found another first floor window that overlooked the trash. It was perfect. There was enough of an overhang that Death Eaters still hanging around wouldn't immediately see them, and the trash bin was metal. It'd make a great barricade if a barrage of spells came at them again.
The office view was terrible.
"View like this, bet this person was high on the corporate ladder," Fred commented dryly, shoving the glass pane open with a slight screech.
They both froze, waiting at least three minutes to ensure nothing undead showed up at the sound. When nothing did they both crawled out of it, dangling from the window and dropping to the ground by the dumpster.
It was only then that Kally noticed the body parts in the trash, giant red hazmat bags torn open, blackened central lines, IV needles and black-pus-soaked gauze spilling out.
She winced, Fred doing the same.
The slightest of movements caught their attention, an instant before a voice stated, "Don't yell."
Both her and Fred's wands were suddenly aimed right at Dean's throat, before they'd even realized that it was Dean.
The dark skinned wizard, the one that she'd feared could be dead, just blinked at them patiently. "Nice to see you both too," he dryly said.
"How'd you find us?" Fred demanded, sounding as if it was totally unreasonable for someone on their own team to have been looking for them.
Dean scowled. "You weren't exactly quiet, plus I figured Avery didn't just pin himself there. Besides," hooking a thumb over his shoulder, "look what I found."
From behind the dumpster emerged the bedraggled form of Neville Longbottom, the wizard's clothes deeply stained, tattered, and torn.
He was alive.
Fred had grabbed Neville by the front of his robes before she was even done processing that. "My sister, brother, now."
Neville looked bewildered. "Ginny's fine. What do you mean brothe-"
Kally didn't hear the rest. She'd turned her attention onto the other one, spinning around and flat out slapping Dean's arm. "You scared the hell out of me, Thomas! Don't do that!"
"Ow!" Dean actually jerked away and rubbed at his bicep, scowling. "Why do you keep doing that? Seriously woman, you're getting violent!"
"Stop tossing me onto brooms and then disappearing into a cloud of flames making me think you're dead and I will!"
"Well so-ah-ree," he sounded out. "What'd you want me to do? Stand there and let the flames snag me? I ran."
The entire time they'd both kept their voices unbelievably lowered, in furious whispers.
Fred actually interrupted their little argument, giving a flippant back and forth gesture with his finger. "You know, she didn't seem even slightly worried until just a second ago," he said, almost conversationally, addressing Neville. "I'm beginning to think she's just violent."
Kally shot him a dark scowl.
Neville actually groaned. "Guys," he tried, making an impatient gesture, "we have to go. Ginny and the others are still up there."
"Up where? Gin better be okay still."
"Well the building she's in is on fire," Neville stated awkwardly, "but they were doing a half decent job of putting it out when I got out to try to find you lot…"
Fred made a slightly strangled sound. "Where's George?" he repeated, clearly concerned about Regulus' whereabouts. "And the Death Eaters-"
"Still out there probably," Neville relayed, wincing. "Look, we seriously have to move. Some of these things might be slow, but the young ones are fast and hella strong. It took four of us to take out one of those the last time we ran into one, so we need a high ground."
Kally swallowed hard.
Thirty seconds later found her and the others disillusioned, creeping slowly across the street. Neville's instructions had been to move slow, stay out of the smoke – smoke wrapped around disillusioned people and made them visible – and to not make a sound.
He'd apparently become an expert at avoiding attracting the creatures' attentions.
Unfortunately none of them anticipated smacking headlong into Regulus and George, who had been doing the exact same thing they were.
As Kally felt Fred trip next to her, the sudden exclamation of, "George!" and "Fred!" was almost as loud as the sound of two bodies colliding.
They could also be heard over the fire.
A second later every dead creature that had gathered around the fire, all ten of them, had turned their attentions in their directions.
Regulus' disembodied voice sounded like it'd rather had enough for the day. "Idiots. Run."
ECOTS
"Now would be an opportune time," came Dumbledore's kindly voice, "to stay close, and to watch the trees." The silver glowing dove's light had already died, the golden glowing dove's light remaining, but barely.
"Couldn't we just come back later?" Ron suggested, sounding very hopeful. "You know, like when the sun's up?"
Harry's neck actually hurt from looking up. They were obviously near the accromantula colony, judging from the spattering of webs in the forest canopy, but they were not at the heart of it. There the webs had covered every surface, straight down to ground level.
Luna's almost poetic voice drifted towards them. "The forest would be a lovely place to make camp. We could tell stories until the accromantulas go to sleep during the day."
Ron made a slightly grateful squeaking sound. To date, Harry had noticed that only spiders and Hermione were capable of making his best mate impersonate a mouse in that manner. "Yeah, strategy and all…"
Having fallen into step alongside the Headmaster, Harry spared a quick look to see what Dumbledore thought. Marching headlong into the Forbidden Forest at night, looking for evil things did seem rather odd planning. What he saw on their leader's face though…
A rather resigned look had befallen the Headmaster, the wizard's gaze growing older in a moment. "I am afraid, Mr. Weasley," he relayed as if the ages of the world were open him, "that to wait, would be to dishonor the sacrifice the others make tonight."
Deep within the Forbidden Forest, Harry could barely hear Dumbledore's footfalls, the man's limp present, yet barely noticeable. What Harry could hear was the sound of his own pulse quickening in his ears.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and it had nothing to do with spiders.
"What do you mean," he croaked into the night, "sacrifice?"
No moonlight infiltrated the canopy towering far above, but Harry still saw the strange shadow in the Headmaster's eyes. "Perhaps," he requested, almost resigned, "another time, Harry. We have more pressing things at present to attend to."
It took him a second to process that.
Then Harry's feet stopped abruptly on the damp forest floor, his jaw setting. "I think right now is a great time, thanks." Then he waited.
Dumbledore too had come to a silent halt, an iridescent thread from an overhanging web hanging motionless near them. The others had also stopped, Ron shifting nervously from foot to foot, tuning in a circle and holding his wand out as he looked straight up.
In the background he could dimly hear the Gryffindor Keeper muttering not good, nice spiders, non-hungry spiders, to himself.
Harry barely noticed. What he did notice was that Dumbledore's eyes still hadn't regained that familiar spark. He looked old, rundown, and Harry found himself feeling nauseous.
"Harry, maybe the Headmaste-"
"Sorry Hermione," he cut her off, gaze locked on Dumbledore's, "but when someone refers to what two of my brothers, my sister, my friends, and my girlfriend are out doing as a sacrifice I find myself a bit curious about it." Harry had went from being focused on the task at hand to being focused on that single word: sacrifice.
He'd let the Headmaster get away with keeping him in the dark before. Not now. Not ever again.
Harry grimaced, staring at Dumbledore. "Ron's with me," he said staidly, "given that three of his family are part of that."
Off to the side Ron grunt-squeaked his solidarity. Luna just hummed.
Dumbledore's eyes no longer twinkled behind the half-mood spectacles. "Very well, Harry," he said, sounding somewhat resigned. "I did promise to not keep things from you, even if this is neither the time nor the place." Sounding as if he were thinking better of it, but aware that Harry would not be moving until it was addressed, he continued, "Perhaps I should thank you…for reminding an old man of his promise, of when that applies."
Harry didn't budge, not an inch. Thus far he had remained calm. "It applies," he stiffly stated, "now."
Overhead one of the branches swayed ever-so-slightly, everything else within the forest impossibly still. "The horcruxes Harry, they are a very part of Voldemort's spirit."
He just grunted in response. He already knew that. "Go," he grunted, "on."
The forest's silence was absolute. Not a creature stirred, that alone unnerving. Harry's grip clenched on his wand, every muscle in him growing taut as he waited.
"Tom will be able to sense when a part of his soul is in danger. If we are to prove successful tonight," Dumbledore told heavily, "then he must be thoroughly distracted, and the events transpiring in Dublin proved to be an opportune method for that."
It took him a second to understand.
And then suddenly he did.
Something sick and twisted writhed within him, Harry's throat clenching so tight he almost couldn't breath. A distraction for Voldemort…"I hope you're referring to just the plague."
"If I could only make you such assurance."
Harry's head physically throbbed. Dumbledore couldn't assure him of that…. "What do you mean," he repeated again, tone taking on a dangerous tilt, "by sacrifice, Albus."
The shadow that crossed the wizened man's face was probably no different than had Harry physically slapped him. "I mean, Harry, that Tom is well aware that Order members are in Dublin tonight, so that his energies may remain focused there, rather than here."
The words hung heavy on the air, the biting cold of the night having nothing on what Dumbledore had just told them. The moss he stood on barely seemed solid, rather like his crumbling reality.
Only before he could speak, before he could make his throat actually work, Ron beat him to it. "He knew we were sending them?" his best mate croaked, only that capable of tearing his attention away from the webs. "How in the blimey could he possibly know that?"
Dumbledore looked almost sad, his blue gaze calmly resting upon first Ron, and then him. "Because I ensured it. First, through Severus, and second by allowing a new Death Eater to accompany them." The Headmaster paused, smiling sadly. "They are not yet aware that I know. Though I confess….I rather hope the atrocities they witness tonight might sway them."
At some point Harry's arms had begun to physically vibrate, the wizard unable to articulate a solitary word. Even Luna was now frowning, Hermione's breaths seeming to be coming quicker somewhere off to the side.
"But-but you couldn't-"
"Sometimes to ensure that an important battle is won, Ms. Granger, one must be willing to make the hard choices," Dumbledore told, not unkindly. "This, I fear, was one of those choices."
It was as if Harry was there with them, but hearing everything through a tunnel. The words all sounded so normal, so benign. They were just words, but they might as well have been daggers driving into his stomach.
Ron was speaking now, sputtering. "No one there was a Death Eater though. They-they were all Order members, and Dean, but-"
Harry felt like his last bit of innocence had shriveled up and died. He forced down a bitter swallow, grinding through clenched teeth, "Don't you get it, Ron? There's another spy." Turning his blazing gaze on Dumbledore, his tone grew coldly furious. "You're sacrificing them like pawns," he spat. "Like they don't even matter."
"Their safety is always my concern, Harry," Dumbledore frowned, looking disturbed that they did not yet understand. "It is why I sent so many with them, when I would otherwise have a plague zone entered with only one or two to lessen the potential casualties. This…it was to ensure them the greatest odds of survival."
Something inside Harry snapped.
"Greatest odds?" he repeated darkly. "Greatest ODDS?!"
"Harry," Hermione warned, Harry cutting her off.
"No, Mione! He," jabbing his fist at Dumbledore, his words hissed lowly, "sent them off like pigs to a slaughter! To get them killed so we can find a damn horcrux!" Rounding back on the Headmaster, he fiercely demanded, "Do they even know it's coming!? DO THEY!?"
"Regulus," The Headmaster stated, unblinking in the face of his anger, "has been warned and will be…mitigating the situation."
"My sister and brothers are there…" Ron's voice was vibrating with something stunned, like he was having trouble processing what he had just heard.
Luna also frowned. "Neville is there."
Harry's fists tightened, his arms vibrating with barely suppressed rage, his voice unnaturally calm. "How is killing a horcrux worth it if you lose your own people in the process?" he hissed. He didn't give Dumbledore a chance to respond, this time screaming, "HOW!?"
"Harry!"
He rounded on Hermione, only for a quickly cast spell to slam into his mouth, magical duct tape silencing him. She looked ready to cry, standing there holding her wand. "I'm sorry, Harry," she plead, half whispering, "but look where we're at? You can't scream. They'll hear you."
Something akin to pure hate shown in his gaze, but it wasn't for Hermione. For her he offered her a purely furious look that promised words later on, a wordless incantation muttered in Harry's head, the duct tape abruptly disappearing from his mouth.
The look on Hermione's face would have been priceless had he not been so furious.
He turned back towards Dumbledore, his voice thick with venom. "You betrayed them. You betrayed us."
The Headmaster, the one he'd looked up to as a type of grandfather, looked like he had aged twenty years in the span of five minutes. "For that, I am sorry. My decisions have not been easy to come by."
The muscle within his chest was pounding. It was pounding hard enough for his vision to blaze nearly red. Dumbledore had sent them, he'd sent Ginny, Fred, George, Neville, Dean, Kally into Dublin knowing they might not come out. "You sent them in there with a damn near execution order!" he threw at the old man, the anger pumping through his veins blinding. "Why them? Why'd you send THEM!?"
The wizard met his gaze steadily, unwavering. "Who Harry, would you have preferred be sent? Those less suited to the task I set for them would have failed."
"They're already set UP to fail," he snarled. "You betrayed them." Something dark and powerful was rising in him, and he could feel its rampage. Breathing hard, barely suppressing the desire to lunge at the Headmaster, Harry's hatred boiled over.
That was when an accromantula dropped down to the ground, its eight hairy legs slamming into the dirt with a thunderous impact, its fangs bared, venom dripping promisingly from them, the thing going for Hermione's back.
Harry's hand darted out, his gaze locked onto Dumbledore's, feeling the power running through his blood.
He scowled, growling, "Bad timing."
A second later he'd snapped his fingers, the accromantula's neck snapping like a twig.
His wand still hung limply, unused in his other hand.
And it had been so very easy.
Voldemort had been right. Hate was a powerful ally.
Gaze dark, darker than anyone had ever seen it, things warred within him. The desire to run for help, to get to those in Dublin before it was too late, fought with the desire to strike Dumbledore down, which fought with the desire to find the next horcrux so that they could kill it, and then kill Voldemort, who was responsible for all of this.
The only thing that kept him back from the brink was the reminder that the only reason he so intensely desired to lash out was because he cared for those that had been thrown to Voldemort's hounds tonight. He cared for them, and because of that…
He couldn't become like Voldemort. He couldn't. No matter how tempting that was right now.
Besides him Hermione tremulously said his name, as if trying to reach him. He heard her, but his mind was busy thinking on other matters. On strategic placement, on what the hell he should do.
Reality was, right now they had already been in the forest for hours. Whatever was going to happen to the others in Dublin already had.
Even if he somehow apparated directly there, he would already be too late.
Harry knew damn well which option he had to choose, even if he didn't like it.
Raw power flooded through him, sparks of magic igniting on his hands like bits of a cindering flame. "You better pray," he threatened lowly, his voice reverberating through the very marrow of all that heard it, "they come back alive."
With that Harry abruptly turned, an all-new sensation flooding him, one that felt all too familiar.
He was a horcrux. He now knew beyond a shadow of a damn doubt. He knew….
Because he could feel the other one calling to him.
"We head that way."
