Chapter Seven
The Cathedral
It should be noted that Harry Potter seldom engaged in a process of self-reflection. It was one of those traits that he had rid himself of as a matter of survival in the adverse environment of the Dursley home. As a child trying to survive, Harry had had relatively few options open to him. Capable of inferring his relative status in the house, even before he could fully understand the meaning of the word "freak", the unconscious part of his mind had begun the not inconsiderable task of reorganizing itself in order to generate the optimal coping strategy for its young charge. In order to prevent himself from becoming a docile, weak-minded little Huffelpuff, Harry eradicated his self-concept. Simply put, Harry didn't concern himself with how others conceived of him. He did not permit the impressions of others to guide his actions. If he had, then he would have taken all the abuse and scorn heaped upon him by the Dursleys during his tender, formative years and internalized it. He would have become a lump of dough.
Instead, the perceptions of others simply bounced off him. That is not to say that Harry didn't react to praise or to scorn. He did. It just meant that praise and scorn did not change him. That is why his fame never went to his head, and that is why he had such violent reactions to both said praise and said scorn when he was forced to acknowledge them. He could not acclimatize to the way others thought of him. It was the reason he was so sound in his conviction that Sirius was being tortured at the DOM. The opinions of others did not guide him. Paradoxically, it meant that forcing Harry Potter to do something was nigh impossible, and that manipulating him was child's play.
It was this final realization after the DOM that made Harry do what he had unconsciously bred himself to not do for the past decade. He had to think long and hard about who he was. In those soft summer days at Privet Drive, staring out the window while he went about shredding his DADA textbooks with a pair of scissors, Harry had reflected on just how skilled Dumbledore and Voldemort were at manipulating others. Sure, power got you pretty far, but alone, it would never get you the top position. Minister of Magic. Chief of the Wizengamet. Dark Lord.
For those kinds of positions, you needed cunning. Money helped too.
Harry wasn't prepared to delude himself into thinking that he could outwit Albus Dumbledore or Lord Voldemort. They had decades of experience, transmuted into overwhelming spheres of influence; not to mention keen intellects through which to utilize those experiences. The best Harry could hope for would be to slip underground. Disappear. Enjoy a life of utter seclusion in ignominy, away from the roots he had built in the British wizarding community. He might even have to go all muggle. Certainly the European wizarding communities would be out of the question, and probably all the English speaking ones as well. This left him with very few options, though he was confident that it wasn't all hopeless. The prophecy said that neither one could live while the other lives. Harry wasn't prepared to take that line literally. He wasn't even sure how much stock he took in it at all. It's not as though he were in danger of spontaneously combusting if he failed to kill Voldemort by his seventeenth birthday.
If the prophecy were to have any meaning at all, it would either be the case that circumstances would conspire to bring Harry and Voldemort into a confrontation that would lead to one killing the other, or, that, so long as they both lived, neither would be able to achieve a certain level of success in the pursuit of their respective goals. The latter interpretation seemed dubious. For the most part, Harry had enjoyed the last five years of his life. Sure, he had shitty moments, but didn't everybody? Despite having been scared witless by the Triwizard Tournament, he had still enjoyed it immensely. He had exalted in the feeling of besting the Hungarian Horntail, just as he had felt exhilaration by getting the Triwizard Cup with Cedric. But then again, perhaps it was simply the case that Harry's victories were inexorably tied with Voldemort, and that, more often than not, they grated against Voldemort's endeavours, tainting his successes with loss. But Harry couldn't help but wonder what would happen if he simply threw down the gauntlet and joined Voldemort. Didn't the prophecy rely on Harry and Voldemort having incongruous personality profiles? Was the prophecy simply relying on the likelihood that Harry would feel enmity towards the murderer of his parents? But then it occurred to Harry that the prophecy really predated his parents' murder altogether. Voldemort never would have even targeted the Potters if it hadn't been for the prophecy in the first place. The strength of it - its meaning had only grown out of the content infused in it by Lord Voldemort.
It made Harry wonder: if a prophecy falls in the forest, and no one's around to hear it, does it necessarily come true?
The answer to that question was simply: no. Unless, of course, everything's rigged so that Voldemort did hear the prophecy. The entire project smacked of higher beings pulling strings, and that was something that Harry found he didn't like. He had always resented authority, and the idea that there was some kind of super authority, something several orders of magnitude above his understanding grated against his entire sense of individuality. Briefly, Harry considered just trying to obliviate Voldemort and himself. And Dumbledore, for good measure. And maybe he ought to kill Trelawney just for safety's sake. Voila, no prophecy.
Assuming that he didn't go down the road of trying to evade the prophecy, Harry still found himself faced with some issues. The first was that it appeared that Voldemort was the one doing all the instigating. Since the start of the whole prophecy fiasco, it had been Voldemort who was the one trying to kill Harry. Not once, not ever, had Harry tried to do the Dark Lord in. Which made sense, given that he was just a kid and that he had learned of the prophecy a mere two months ago. Still, it rubbed him the wrong way that, since he was apparently the big bad bogeyman's equal, he still was the one playing mouse in the relationship. Shouldn't he be just as much of a predator as the Dark Lord? And yet it was laughable to think that he could.
There was something about the way that Voldemort and, to the same extent, Dumbledore, used magic that differed from the way other people used magic. It wasn't even power so much, though Harry recognized that both Voldemort and Dumbledore had that in spades. It was something else. They both had a level of finesse, or perhaps the right word was control. Back in the graveyard, Voldemort had used magic to force Harry to bow. Harry knew of no spell that could do such a thing. And that was the crux of the matter. What Voldemort did with his wand was not limited to the admittedly vast array of spells out there. No, he simply willed something to happen, and he had used his magic to effectuate that will. And that was something completely different from what Harry and his friends were learning in school. There was a flexibility to magic, a fluidity about it that Harry could only barely conceive of. Despite all his studies with Kingsley, he had really only scratched the surface of what it meant to wield magic. Sure, Harry could conjure fire. He could actually conjure quite a bit of it, assuming he had his wand, of course, but to enjoy the control that would allow him to transform that fire into a tightly coiled whip capable of lashing out and searing anything in its path was beyond him, And Harry didn't even want to think about the kind of control that would be necessary to actually lasso another wizard, the way Dumbledore had done at the Ministry of Magic. And then, on top of that, to see transfiguration on the level of transforming that very same whip a magical elemental conjuration, into a giant snake...
It frustrated Harry.
And to top it off, the only time he had ever seen anything remotely comparable to the control exhibited by the two most powerful wizards in England was Faith, of all people. Somebody who couldn't even be classified as a witch. Ever since he had met her, he had been irritated by her. It was more than just the fact that his unicorn danger sense found her loathsome. It was her unbridled arrogance. Her seeming lack of attention. Her erratic behaviour. Still, when push came to shove, she knew how to control whatever magic was bestowed upon her with incredible precision, and Harry was slowly coming to accept that it was that fact, and that fact alone, that made her so formidable. As far as powers went, hers weren't unusual. Harry estimated that she was about as resistant to magic as an adult werewolf, which meant that three or four simultaneous stunners from professionals could take her down. He suspected her powers increased when she was in a murderous rage. The reductor curse he had hit her with was an order of magnitude above the stunner, and it hadn't even knocked her down. He would probably caution at least six solid stun hits just to be safe. Whatever the case, the simple fact was that she could go from shaking your hand to crushing it within a tenth of a second and she could do so while maintaining complete control over her faculties and her capabilities. It had become clear to Harry when he had been sword fighting her what she was trying to do. She had been trying to coax his magic to the surface. It hadn't worked, as far as he could tell, but, despite that, he had learned a valuable lesson anyway. He had been watching her twirl, and duck and dodge and utilize her weapon in the myriad of ways that she knew how, and he had come to realize the power that was simmering underneath the surface of her skin, and, more importantly, the overwhelming, omnipresent control that she exerted over that power. It was fused with her very being. It was something that she had embraced on some visceral level, and which had become a part of her, like her very skin. It had molded to her mind, body and soul.
All that mattered was that her energy - her magic, for lack of a better term - it was always there, waiting to be used, conveniently able to be called upon at a moment's notice, with the merest thought. Chances were, her magic was so finally tuned to her needs that it knew before she herself consciously registered need of it, and so performed all the operations she needed of it in real-time - the very instant it was needed. Without delay. It was that which made her so formidable, and it was that which she had been trying to communicate to him. Despite all his powers, Harry lost precious seconds drawing his wand, focusing his magic, saying incantations, calling his magic, releasing a portion of it, and then clamping back down upon it. It was tedious, and cumbersome and it made Harry look like an idiot.
A day ago, Harry would have been envious. But not now. Not now that he understood Faith a bit better. In her world, you couldn't sacrifice speed like that. It would get you killed. It would get you killed, because your enemies would use that time to smack you down. No, you couldn't sacrifice that speed. Even if it meant sacrificing other things.
That's what disgusted Faith so deeply about Harry's use of his wand. It hadn't been the case that she had been blind to the incredible array of things that Harry could do with it. Nor was it the case that she was envious at his abilities, like he had thought at one point. No, it was that she had assessed his abilities in the context of her own experiences fighting vampires and demons, and she found his skills lacking. The ability to disappear and reappear at will, to repair shattered objects, to conjure and transfigure and charm were all very useful abilities in their own right, but they meant little if you were dead before you could do it. And Harry realized that that was the way a person like Faith assessed everything. In terms of the speed and efficiency with which you could kill or be killed.
It was a rather disconcerting feeling to be found lacking in an area that Harry thought he was pretty good in, though if he were honest with himself, he had already been aware on some visceral level about these kinds of problems. He himself had been frustrated by the seemingly endless list of curses that could be used to incapacitate or kill somebody. The good old, Goddamned spleen expulsion curse. What use was a million lethal curses if they all suffered the same weakness? Even the big bad AK. Even with Voldemort's ever-feared killing curse, there was enough time for Harry to recognize the curse and for Fawkes to swoop down and intercept it. The curse couldn't have been travelling more than twenty metres per second. While that was nothing to sneer at, no wizard was going to manage to take down more than a few oncoming assailants before succumbing, whether it be other wizards, slayers or other magical creatures.
Surely, there had to be a better way. Not all magic was so slow. Like the animagus transformation. Many of Faith's questions had started making cracks in Harry's preconceptions about the way magic operated. Magic could transport people instantaneously across vast distances. It could conjure objects out of nothing, transform things from one to another. These were not mere parlour tricks. These things could easily redefine everything that muggles knew about the world. These things, if muggles were to attempt, would require a battery of super advanced technology hundreds of years away. Most likely it would be impossible to replicate at all, and, at the very least, would require enormous amounts of energy to perform. So where was all this mystical energy? Was it all really inside him? Why wasn't there a better way to use it? Why did he need a wand?
It was hardly the case that magical creatures needed wands. Not dragons, not unicorns, not phoenixes, not dementors. But then again, they couldn't do a million and one different things with their magic. Sure, phoenixes were immortal and all that, but they couldn't cast spells. Couldn't they? They did have the ability to lighten objects that they came into contact with, which seemed suspiciously like the Featherlight Charm. But as far as Harry knew, they could only do that through physical contact, whereas wizards, with the aid of wands, were capable of doing it at a distance. Moreover, it seemed that, despite having relatively few abilities at their disposal, magical creatures were particularly adept at those abilities that they did have. Phoenixes, for example, were capable of apparating even through the strongest anti-apparition wards. And dementors were capable of using some form of hyperlegilimancy to consume people's memories. The more Harry thought about it, the more he came to the conclusion that humans sacrificed something in order to enjoy the multitude of magical powers that they wielded. There was a cost to being able to transfigure, charm, ward, enchant, shapeshift and do all the other things that they were able to do.
All of Harry's musings on his life and magic and the world were roaming about his head in a sort of free-for-all. He was having a difficult time putting the pieces together to form a comprehensive picture of the situation. In this respect, Harry was a lot like slayers. He was good at the low-level logical analyses, like tactics, but when it came to the more abstract games, involving strategy, he was rubbish. That was why he found himself tied to a tombstone in a graveyard witnessing the rebirth of Lord Voldemort, and why, simultaneously, he was the person most qualified to escape. It was also, perhaps, why he meshed so well with the unicorn psyche.
After having been dissuaded from going out in search of Faith, Harry had been keen on getting to Umbrella central. However, Jill had managed to talk him into joining her on her crusade to secure some sort of artifact that would gain them access into the deeper recesses of Umbrella's research facility. Part of the reasoning was that the cathedral was safer at the moment and Harry really needed to have a bit of time practising hunting zombies. Harry wanted to explain that he had the power to do line of sight apparation, and that he could transform into a winged horse with a wickedly sharp horn perfectly capable of skewering zombie heads, but something in the way Jill looked at him held him back. Possibly he was detecting through latent legilimancy some sort of anxiousness or perhaps disquiet. Whatever it was, it was alerting him to some possible danger in telling Jill.
Overall, she seemed nice enough, but Harry had to remind himself that she was still a muggle, and that she was operating in an extremely hostile environment. It was hardly the kind of situation in which to spring the existence of the magical world on her. It was possible that she would simply refuse to accept the facts and do something irrational in order to cling to whatever semblance of logic still helped her make sense of her world. That irrational act may very well have included putting a bullet in Harry's brain. While Harry was certain he could avoid such a fate for the moment, he didn't want to have yet another enemy at his heels. Especially not one that was capable of sniping him in the back.
"Yes, that's correct. Keep your feet shoulder-length apart. The recoil's going to go through your hand, along your arm and down through your legs into the ground. You need to make it as easy as possible for this to happen. Otherwise, your hands are going to cramp up by the twentieth shot., and your shoulders won't be far behind. Keep your wrists in line."
"Gotcha," Harry said, nodding and putting both his feet in the required position. It felt strange, holding a gun, he had to admit. Harry had become so accustomed to carrying a wand that the weight, the feel, the size, the texture, the dormant power locked inside the clip had an unreal quality to it. He thought he was doing a pretty good job adjusting, despite it all.
"Good, good," Jill said, surveying his form. "Don't lock your elbows. You want to absorb the impact in your muscles, not your joints. That's better. All right, now you're going to aim." Jill pointed to the cocking hammer and a small nub on the top of the barrel's end. "This here will help you line up your target. Ideally, you want both the hammer and the pointer to line up. The gun should remain level with your gaze."
A zombie across the hall noticed them for the first time. Harry had been waiting for the thing to finally catch their scent or turn around, or do whatever it is they did to ferret out their prey. Now it was stumbling toward them, clumsily navigating a table and chairs that were in its way. It moaned its atonal, haunting moan. Harry had yet to be inured to the sound.
"Take it away," Jill said, stepping back and gesturing at the approaching zombie.
"Here goes nothing," Harry muttered, acutely aware of the severely limited amount of ammunition they had available to train him. He was prepared to make every round count.
Harry fired. And then blinked.
The report was loud. Louder than he had expected, though his dismay at the decibel level was mitigated by his relief that the recoil wasn't as bad as it was going to be. Possibly it had something to do with the fact that even wand spells had a bit of kick.
Jill whistled. "Nice shot."
Harry had not only managed to hit the zombie in the head, but the bullet had punched right through the creature's left eye, cracking the ocular bone and driving itself directly through the ganglion nerve patch, the pressure deflecting it eight degrees so that it angled toward the center of the brain, nicking the vein that connected the right and left hemispheres together. blood began to spurt copiously in its head, the bullet drilling into the back wall of the skull but not quite having the force to punch through. The zombie, once female and with thick, matted chestnut hair, staggered about, its one good eye rolling into the back of her head as blood began to pour out of its other socket.
"Yeah," Harry said, only now, after a few seconds having passed, did his body begin secreting adrenalin and other hormones to signal that he was queued up. He lowered the gun, his hands trembling slightly, though from what he knew not. He certainly didn't feel bad for having killed the zombie. He had killed others in much more intimate and gruesome ways, often at the tip of his unicorn horn, which had proven capable of skewering bone like it were hot butter. There was something clinical and merciless and cold about guns, he decided. Harry understood what it meant to kill with a sword. He even understood what it meant to kill with a wand, though he had yet to do such a thing. Swords were tangible, just as killing curses were. You could see them coming; you could feel it in your bones when that green light surrounded you, promising an end to the world as you knew it. But this business with guns was a whole other animal. Pulling the trigger was too quick, too innocuous, too disconnected from the act of killing itself. You didn't get to feel the impact of the bullet as it met fierce resistance in the form of flesh and bone. You just pulled the trigger, and blinked and the thing was dead. It was so easy, Harry thought he could probably do it all day.
Jill was packing up her belongings and shrugging her shoulder pack onto her shoulder. "Come on," she said. "Lucky thing you're a natural."
Jill's words jolted Harry from his reverie. "Yeah," he said, "a natural." He then turned his attention elsewhere. "So you've dealt with this stuff before, then?" Harry asked, seeking to settle on something that might give him greater insight into Jill Valentine. They began making their way up the top flight of stairs to the bell chamber.
"Yeah. My team was called in to do some follow-up at this old mansion outside the city. We'd lost contact with one of our units."
"And the guys at Umbrella covered it up," Harry said, hitting on the sad end to the story. "That's pretty shitty."
Jill shrugged, as though it mattered little to her. But Harry could tell that the zombie infestation was eating her up inside. There was a tightly coiled, seething miasma of hatred inside Jill Valentine. It was one of the things that made Harry distinctly uneasy about her.
"And there's apparently a bunch of mercs running around?" Harry asked.
Jill nodded.
"And they're from Umbrella," Harry concluded thoughtfully.
Jill began fussing with some sort of broken music box. At first, Harry couldn't understand why she was bothering, until he recalled that the scientists at MedGen were supposed to be absolutely psychotic when it came to securing entrances at key points in their facility. Eventually, Jill managed to rig the box to play the tune as it should, and sure enough, the sound of a soft click indicated that Jill had indeed uncovered something. Part of the music box gave way, revealing a key, which Jill quickly scooped up and looped onto a chain around her neck, neatly tucking the key under her shirt so that it was completely invisible.
"I know what you're thinking," Jill said. "I don't trust the mercs either. But I'll take their help as long as they're offering it. If they want to double cross me afterwards, well, I'll just have to make sure I'm quicker on the draw."
Harry nodded. That made sense. And they certainly won't be expecting me, he thought.
Harry and Jill were currently in an anteroom to the bell chamber. It was bare save for the desk with the music box and a few crates, onto which moonlight was spilling down from a hole in the ceiling. there was a ladder conveniently located to one side. "You reckon there's any point going topside?" Harry asked, taking care to keep his voice low. Jill glanced at the ladder and then at the hole in the ceiling, giving them both a thoughtful look.
"I don't know," Jill said. "The room seems to be untouched. I doubt there was a fight here. Probably it "hasn't been used since before the shit hit the fan."
Harry went over to the ladder and nudged it with his toe. "Yeah, maybe. But the ladder's not where it's supposed to be. Looks like someone climbed up and then knocked it over."
"Like maybe they were trying to find a hiding spot," Jill said, nodding. "And where there's hiding spots, there's bound to be ammunition."
Harry turned to face Jill and scrutinize her. "Actually, I was thinking there might be someone in need of our help," he returned calmly. Harry was starting to find that he didn't care much for Jill's attitude. She was turning out to be a bit too cold-hearted for his tastes. Sure, she had faced zombies before, and sure her town had been turned into an abomination. But really, it was hardly the end of the world. Shit happens. Suck it up.
"if someone were up there, they would have heard us by now. We wouldn't be wasting our time playing this guessing game."
Harry knelt and lifted the ladder so that it was neatly positioned to thrust whoever climbed it up through the square hole in the ceiling. Feeling a momentary bout of bravery, Harry climbed it swiftly, using the one wand spell at his disposal, the Featherlight charm to lighten him sufficiently that he could duck and dodge with speed enough to avoid a claw swipe.
He wasn't sure whether Jill was following up the ladder, but he didn't care. He was surprised to see how spacious the cathedral roof was. He'd expected a barren, wood plateau no more than a hundred square feet. But the roof was at least eight hundred, measuring about fifteen to twenty feet in any direction. There was a modest but well-kept garden of plants and flowers thriving in numerous pots. Harry went over and inspected the nearest one, careful not to approach too closely. He didn't know whether his danger sense was capable of identifying carnivorous zombie plants.
He heard Jill heft herself up from behind him, but did not turn around. The sound of her footsteps slightly fading told him she had gone off in another direction.
Harry glanced up at the stars, and, to his delight, he could make them out almost as though he were at Hogwarts. Stargazing had never really been his thing, but now, standing atop a glorified church in an American Midwestern town, Harry felt once again that pang for his only true home. Even though Hogwarts was very far away, he couldn't help but let himself be lost in memories of nights spent under Professor Sinistra's impassive gaze, he and Ron and Hermione each having their own telescopes for observing the cosmos. He couldn't think of a single interesting memory from any of his Astronomy classes, short of his O.W.L. exam, where his Head of House, Professor McGonagall took four professional stunners to the chest.
"There's nothing here," Jill said, sidling up next to Harry and glancing at him askance. Whatever spell had drawn him back to Hogwarts for those brief moments was broken. He pulled his gaze away from the night sky, acutely aware that Jill was observing him, no doubt making mental notes, calculating, contemplating, trying to understand Harry's psyche.
"Yeah, nothing here."
"You don't want to go back down," Jill stated.
Harry didn't affirm or deny her statement, not that he needed to. "That obvious?"
"To tell you the truth, I don't want to either. It's nice up here. Quiet. Peaceful. But it's an illusion. It's just the eye of the storm, and if we stay, we'll be swept up when it moves on."
"I know," he replied. "I wasn't honestly contemplating staying. It just takes a bit to absorb, you know?"
Jill did not respond. Harry glanced her way to see if she had registered his last statement at all. In the moonlight, with her face lit by the glow of city lights down below, he could see her face drain of colour. He followed her gaze to the street level, which was at least sixty feet, possibly a hundred down below. The cars looked like ants and humans would have been impossible to spot in the penumbra of streetlights. But Nemesis' form was unmistakable. He was dashing into the cathedral.
"Did he see us?" Harry asked.
"No," Jill responded. "He must have found the dead bodies. It's possible it's just a random search."
"But not likely."
"No, not likely."
Harry pursed his lips and stared out at the dark skyline. For a moment, he just revelled in the injustice of it all. Nemesis had been dogging them every step of the way, and for the life of him, he could not come up with a plan of attack to deal with it. His suspicion that Nemesis was specifically targeting Jill had developed into certainty. Why it was doing so was still a bit of a mystery, but he had a suspicion about that as well.
Still, none of that really resolved his dilemma. Guns were useless against this thing. The detonation of the train car had been nothing short of awesome and Nemesis had been at ground zero when it happened, and that had, as best as Harry could tell, destroyed the thing's arm. Which was small comfort, since it now had hideous, charcoal-coloured tentacles with barbed tips at its command.
Oh sure, Harry could apparate away and say good-bye to the wretched creature. That had always been an option, and still was. He wouldn't even have to go far. Fifty feet would suffice. The thing was only after Jill anyway, and Harry had only crossed paths with it because of that fact. It was even possible, that Harry could use the few meager magical abilities at his disposal to stun Nemesis long enough to escape with Jill. They might even get as far as a neighbouring building, go underground, hide out in a room somewhere. But the thing was, and Harry could see it clearly now, is that they could not evade Nemesis for long. Even Jill had to have realized this. They had been careful not to pass by any windows, where they might have been spotted. They avoided hitting light switches and making noise. Still Nemesis had found them. Presumably, it had tracked them using the few dead zombies Jill had left in her wake. The only reason they had managed this long in the cathedral was that it had taken time for Nemesis to collect himself after the train explosion. He would be harassing them every ten minutes unless they found a permanent solution to deal with him. And with odds like that, Harry doubted they would survive for long.
So Harry was faced with a dilemma. He could either keep running, in which case he would have to employ all his skill and knowledge to making it out of the cathedral with Jill alive, only to have to deal with Nemesis once again in the very near future, possibly under better conditions, possibly not. Or he could make a stand here, and use all his skill and knowledge to stop Nemesis once and for all, possibly failing and dying in the process.
Harry mentally catalogued the magical skills that he did have access to, though strangely enough, he found that he was not wishing for his wand so much. He could see at least a few instances where he would have lost it, or where it would have been destroyed. He was starting to accept that a wand was not that great for either close-up slugging matches, or any situation where reducing response time was critical. Having had enough experience with Nemesis, Harry was certain that, should he have a wand, he could safely deal with the hulk, but he also recognized that it did not solve the fundamental, underlying problem. Harry was ill-equipped to walk into a hostile situation and subdue an unknown opponent. He lacked the speed, the agility, and the endurance to withstand a surprise attack long enough to bring the full force of his tactical processing skills to bear in order to calculate a resolution to the problem. Nemesis was excellent at setting the terms of the engagement. He orchestrated the battles so that they were in confined spaces, in close quarters, where he could maximize his skill set. Nemesis was a Slytherin. It was exactly the kind of thing that Voldemort did. Voldemort never charged out and attacked Harry on his own turf. He always drew Harry out, leading him to his own lair, where he was the master. He did it in second year, he did it in his fourth and again at the DOM. And Harry kept falling for it, always snapping up the clues, thinking his analyses were his own, never realizing that all his thoughts were being predicted, accounted for, even manipulated. That was the magnitude of the battle he was facing against the Dark Lord.
And here, Harry was having difficulty surviving against Nemesis. In both the Chamber of Secrets and in the graveyard after the tournament, Harry had been rendered wandless. Only fortune had allowed him to survive. He could not expect his luck to last, and he could not expect that he would become skilled enough to retain his wand in every encounter. Wands were fragile. Ron proved that in his second year. And most likely, Harry would have to endure a battery of tests, struggles, encounters with formidable foes of all kinds before he ever managed to face down the Dark Lord. He would likely have to take on multiple skilled Death Eaters, like Bellatrix Lestrange. The thought of her still infuriated him, not just because she had been the one to knock Sirius into the veil, but because she had laughed at him in the atrium. She had been inhumanly fast. Slayer fast, now that he thought about it. Sure, his magic had ramped up his own performance specs,, but she had been in an entirely different league. She had said that her skills were the result of direct tutelage from Lord Voldemort, which meant that Lord Voldemort enjoyed the same superlative speed and agility, and God only knew what else. When Harry faced down Lord Voldemort, he was going to be facing an opponent whose abilities were not entirely known to him, and whose mental acuity was off the charts. Chances were, in an all out firefight, Lord Voldemort would learn about Harry faster than Harry would learn about Lord Voldemort, which meant that Harry had to come in fast and hard and negate any advantage that he would gain, either by demonstrating superior brute strength, or by catching him by surprise in a trap more elaborate than anything Voldemort could contemplate.
Harry's musings were drawn short by his danger sense. He could feel Nemesis drawing closer, making his way up the main steps of the cathedral to the second landing, slowly and inevitably marching towards them. Jill was frantically arranging flower pots, obviously with some sort of strategy in mind, though Harry couldn't see it.
Part of him wanted to just say, "fuck it," and take Nemesis on, consequences be damned. It was the same attitude that drove Buffy to take the slayer potentials into the vineyard. Another part of Harry, however, knew that he needed time to figure things out. At the moment, Nemesis clearly enjoyed the advantage. Neither Jill nor Harry had weapons capable of stopping Nemesis in his tracks. That could change, possibly. Harry had only begun experimenting with his newfound talent to lighten his weight. During their jaunt through the cathedral, he had taken several moments to experiment with his ability, seeing if he could control the extent to which he effectuated the spell. Whenever he had cast magic previously, he had always put his entire effort into it. The idea of moderating his spells had never occurred to him, because he had never generated spells of sufficient strength that such a thing as moderation would become necessary. But now he needed it. It would do no good to negate his weight entirely. It would make him prone to being blown off his feet by an unsuspecting gust of wind.
As skilled as he might become with the application of the Featherlight charm, it was not something that was going to give him a significant advantage against Nemesis. It would make him a more difficult target, giving him speed and agility and a vertical jump that would make Faith envious, but it would not enable him to reliably defeat him. Possibly, he could manipulate the self-application of another spell, like the Flame-freezing charm, or possibly he could find a way to extend the spell past his own body. There were too many unknowns and what he needed was time. Time to practice, time to conduct tests, to figure out his own limits.
By now, Harry thought he had a pretty good idea what Jill was doing. Despite the darkness, he could see the mix of resolve and fear stretched across her flushed face. She was going to use herself as bait and try to trip Nemesis over the edge with the pots. Even if it worked, which Harry doubted, Nemesis would surely take Jill with him. Not that he thought it would work. Jill was too panicked to think straight.
"You, go hide over there," she commanded, pointing to a particularly deep pool of shadow in the far corner.
"You're going to sacrifice yourself to save my life?" Harry asked incredulously. He decided he would have to redo his estimation of Jill before the day was out.
"He's coming," she said quietly. "You need to hurry."
Harry shook his head. This was nuts. She needed to know that he was capable of surviving an assault by Nemesis. Even if all his survival consisted of was apparating away, she needed to know. "Do you trust me?" he asked.
"We don't have time for this," she whispered. They could both hear Nemesis stalking about in the bell chamber.
"Do you trust me?" Harry asked, pinning her with his gaze.
Whether Jill was curious where Harry was going with his question, or whether she just wanted to get him to cooperate, Harry did not know. She said, with more than a bit of hesitation. "Yeah, I trust you." And then, as an afterthought, she added, "Somewhat."
"Come here," Harry said.
"We don't have time for this," she responded, but she complied nevertheless.
Harry pointed to the setup she had with the pots and then shook his head. "Won't work." He quickly raised a finger to stall her objections. "Nemesis won't waste his time climbing the ladder. He's tall enough that he can just smash the boards out from under us. We don't stand a chance up here."
The resolve waned from Jill's expression. She turned and gazed forlornly between the hole with the ladder and the collection of pots she had arranged, realizing that Harry was correct. The ladder probably wouldn't have supported Nemesis' weight anyway. "I don't want to die," she said finally, turning to Harry.
"Take my hand."
Jill did as Harry instructed, and Harry knew that she was taking his instructions not on faith or trust, but because she had simply run out of options. Like so many others caught in a desperate situation, she was willing to believe in miracles, if it meant retaining hope. Harry just prayed he could give her the miracle they both needed, instead of plummeting them to their deaths. Harry knew that, in some capacity, he could employ the Featherlight charm on another person through physical contact. He knew this not only because he knew that Fawkes could do it, but also because he had done it once before. When he and Faith had escaped from a crowd of zombies on the street, Faith riding him in his animal form, Harry had used his wings to lift himself off the ground and fly. It had been for just a few seconds, but long enough to tell him that he had to have transferred some magic to Faith in order to give his wings the latitude they needed to do their thing.
Now he just prayed that he would be able to do the same thing, while fully conscious and in his human form. Otherwise, there wouldn't be enough left of either of them for Nemesis to stomp on. But since the dying was already a foregone conclusion, he wasn't too troubled by that certain element of risk. Besides, he knew he could do it, just the way he knew he could drive those little beads back into Voldemort's wand. He didn't realize it, but he was queuing up to use magic, the way he did whenever he sensed a brawl coming.
There was an all too familiar roar from beneath them somewhere, and, then, sure enough, as Harry had predicted, a fist came barreling through the wooden boards where the pots had been placed, chunks of wood flying out in all directions, revealing Nemesis' reptilian, leather hand.
"Here goes nothing," Harry muttered, embracing Jill as one might a lover, and then reducing his weight as low as he dared take it, before leaping off the building, using his wings to strengthen his jump. Jill cried out, and Harry felt her jerk in his arms, gravity trying to drag her down. They both plummeted, Harry's wings slowing them enough that the ground did not rush up to meet them as quickly as it should have. The burst of adrenalin that hit him was instantly transmuted into a magical discharge that swiftly enveloped Jill. Harry tried to memorize that feeling of magic suffusing his body for that brief moment, before it left him, causing Jill's arms to break out in gooseflesh.
Jill just clung to Harry for dear life, her face buried in his shoulder, her legs wrapped tightly around his as they dropped the last ten feet to the pavement. Their landing was much cleaner than Harry's had been when he had leapt onto the train. He had learned to keep his wings partially extended to manipulate the air resistance and provide for a more controlled descent. They touched down gently, with no more force than if they had simply been jumping up and down.
Harry reluctantly let go of Jill, the energy used to reduce her weight dissipating into the cool air between them. Jill blinked away the moment of confusion before first gazing at Harry and then glancing upward. Harry followed her line of vision and saw Nemesis silhouetted against the darkness, gazing down at them, his body motionless and serene like a statue.
"We'd best hurry," she said quietly, regaining her composure and beginning the arduous task of reassessing their position and making plans, counterplans, and everything else they needed to survive. Harry just let her do that, continuing to stare up at Nemesis, who merely stared back.
Harry couldn't help but wonder what it was thinking. Was it feeling the loss of its prey just as acutely as Harry was feeling success? Was it baffled? Was it trying to figure out how they had managed to get down to street level? Or maybe it too was quietly assessing, developing plans, building the next stratagem for zeroing in on its targets. Even though they hadn't delivered a deathblow to Nemesis - even if all they had done was run away, Harry couldn't help but feel a great sense of pride, of righteousness, and of success, as though the tables had somehow just turned. They were no longer mere prey, scrambling to duck and dodge and twist out of the way at every turn, hoping and fearing and looking back over their shoulders. Harry had pulled a rabbit out of his hat. He had surprised Nemesis, and Jill, and, most of all, himself.
We can do this, he thought, his eyes glittering in the lamplight with smug satisfaction. We can do this.
With that, they continued their trek towards Umbrella, Nemesis disappearing from atop the cathedral roof and making his way down. He would reach the streets in under three minutes, but neither Harry nor Jill would be anywhere to be seen.