A/N: See disclaimer in Chapter 1.
Sorry for the long wait. Many thanks to the Alpha Fight Club crew for their help on this, particularly respite, darklordmike, scaryisntit, BennyS, and Voice of the Nephilim.
Chapter 6: Don't Disrespect the Lemming
"You can't just go torturing someone because you have issues with his lifestyle," I said, trying to keep my mind off of what my better half was doing with her tongue.
Tom was equally irritated. "It wasn't torture. I was merely using discomfort as a mild incentive for this 'Tommi' to reveal vital information about how his abomination came about."
"And his screams—they were aquiescence?"
"Precisely." There was a long pause.
"There's nothing wrong with being gay, you know," I said.
"I merely wished to know what malevolence the waif wreaked to pervert my soul fragment so."
I shrugged. "Maybe Ginny didn't do anything?"
"Impossible. I'm no sexual deviant."
I smirked.
"I'm not, you imbecile! And even if I were, five years wouldn't have been enough time to change me into... that."
"Well, your diary's spending ten years in the Malfoy House of Hair couldn't have helped matters any. Draco's as bent as a butcher's hook and his father wasn't exactly the most masculine of your Inner Circle. Didn't you say he was always the first to kneel?"
"He did wed a woman of incomparable beauty, though."
My thoughts turned to Milenka and I decided that Tom and I would have to agree to disagree.
Tommi shouted. "Come on, girlfriend! You let him dangle that thing inside you and you just lie there?"
Ginny made a sound that sounded halfway between a moan and a "mmph" and I coughed loudly, trying to keep my eyes on the pages of the book I was pretending to read and my mind off Ginny and Colin. Soul Bonded, she was soldiering on, insisting that they continue their relationship.
I spoke up to break the silence. "As I was saying, the bloke I met in the Chamber of Secrets was, shall we say, extraordinarily well groomed...."
"As are all Slytherins of good breeding."
Molly's voice interrupted us. "Dear, you're going too fast. Hold it in your lips more and tease it with your tongue."
"And breathe through your nose," Tommi added, "or you'll gag."
"Exactly. Listen to the nice boy—he's done this before," Molly said.
Ginny backed up, panting. "Mum, I can do this by myself!"
Colin said, "Huh?" Ginny had said that aloud, apparently.
"Well, you're not doing it right," Molly grumbled.
"Who said I wanted your help? Leave me alone!"
"Well, I never..." Molly and Ginny started arguing with one another.
"And manicured," I said in a loud voice. "The Tom Riddle I knew had impeccable nails."
Tom growled.
"What I can't figure out is why McNair stabbed Ginny the first time around. I caught the look on his face—it was like he was possessed or something," I said, turning a page.
Tom thought for a moment. "What was the exact wording of the prophecy, as it pertains to our killing each other?"
"Either must die at the hand of the other..."
"There you have it. I used to refer to McNair as my 'Hand of Discipline.' I often asked that he deliver pain unto those who refused my orders."
"But that doesn't make sense. He wasn't my hand; he was yours."
"And what did it feel like when your Bond-mate perished? As if you died, perhaps?"
He had that right.
"Don't think too hard on it, Potter. Prophecies are rarely intelligible without imbibing a strong narcotic."
"I only wanted to help," Molly said hotly. "Now start again, and this time, hold it a between your lips and pause before you take it inside you."
"And be sure you tell him you like it in you," Tommi answered with a wink. "Boys just lurrrrve to hear that."
"Back to the matter at hand, Potter," Tom said. "I fail to see the importance of my soul fragment's nails. It's merely a sign of proper breeding."
"Right. Because the Gaunts were so very refined."
"Silence!" he roared. I'd pushed his buttons pretty thoroughly.
Ginny moaned and closed her mouth around Colin's offering.
Tommi giggled. "Oooh, now it's all soft and squishy."
"But the color is good," Molly said. "A nice healthy red, and tasty too. I wouldn't mind some of that myself, though I don't have a body anymore." She sighed.
"Should I swallow?" Ginny asked.
"Yes, dear," Molly answered. "It's better to do so before your mouth gets full and you dribble down your blouse, unless he's the kind who likes having to clean up messes."
Ginny did, moaning again as she did. I wished I were anywhere but in my head.
"No proper Dark Lord would be so misguided as that abomination," Tom groused.
"Grindelwald?"
"Touché."
"Your turn—feed him, girl!" Tommi chirped.
"Would you just shut up?!" Ginny shouted. Across the bond, I could tell her cheeks were flushed.
"What's wrong?" Colin asked, setting aside the bowl of strawberries he was feeding Ginny. He wiped his hands on his trousers to remove the sticky, red juice, and stroked her cheek tenderly with the back of a knuckle.
"Nothing," Ginny said, sighing and smoothing her blouse.
"Come on, you can tell me," he said, putting his arm behind her and pulling her close.
"Remember when I told you Mum and Harry were Soul Bonded?" Ginny asked.
"Yeah, your Mum's a lucky lady."
"There was a terrible accident and now Mum's in my head instead of her body and I'm Soul Bonded with Harry too."
Colin stood and paced in front of her for a time. "So... Harry sees and feels everything that happens to you?"
"Yeah," she said, her face in her hands. "Mum too."
Colin paced some more, then stopped, thrusting his fist into the air.
"That. Is. So. Awesome!" He knelt before her. "Ginny, will you marry me?"
"What?!" my wife asked, her hands balled into fists.
"When we do... you know... it, Harry will feel it too—it's like doing it with him!"
"Right..." Ginny said.
"With him! Harry Potter!"
Ginny stood and looked down at her kneeling, soon-to-be-ex boyfriend, who looked utterly beguiled by the fantasies running through his head.
"Fuck this," she said and kicked him squarely in the testicles.
I looked over the assembled collection of Aurors, a professional bunch checking and rechecking equipment, applying protection charms, and quaffing magical boosters and stimulants. They were my crew and had come a long way in the past weeks. I expected that we'd need every bit of their training on this mission.
As I checked my own gear, I took stock of my tag-alongs. Molly was here, Ginny's having kicked her out while she worked on revisions for Transfiguration back at the Burrow. Tom was here too, but far back in my head, and I assumed Tommi was with him. I closed off my connection to Gin as much as I could and tamped down some of my nervous energy.
I stood to brief my team on our take down of the Carrows place. Amycus and his big sis-cum-lover, Alecto, lived together in a stone keep in the middle of a bog. Last time, we didn't have much trouble burying the place beneath several thousand cubic metres of muck, but with the changes this timeline, they were sporting a set of professional-grade wards and multiple layers of traps and animations. I knew the signature well: Flammors and Cackleson, two of Voldemort's Inner Circle still at large, had joined them.
"Travers," I said, drawing in the air a holographic representation of the Carrows compound. "You take Charlie squad and approach from the south just to the left of this ridge here." I pointed with my wand and a section lit up yellow. "The Portkey arrives two klicks southeast, here. Patrols are unlikely, but go 'Dissed' and silenced just to be safe. Intel says the best approach is here, along this path. They've got traps here and here and low-grade animations guarding things here." I pointed to a few other places on the holographic map, lighting up the dangerous areas in red. "We'll be putting a max-altitude cutter matrix over the perimeter—ceiling of five meters—as well as Portkey and Apparition wards. Fly low and hard or your loved ones will be getting bits in a box. All except for you, Jenkins."
The Auror scowled at me. Jenkins was actually reasonably competent and ten years my senior, but he was going through an unfortunate stint of insubordination that started when I was named Captain. He was good with a wand and didn't have a bad head for tactics, but he had a chip on his shoulder big enough to prevent him from taking orders from someone he thought of as an inferior and a Ministry pin-up. The bloke reminded me of Ron, actually, which is why my former friend never cut it with the Aurors the last time around and ended up an assistant manager for one of the Cannons' junior league squads. I obviously couldn't leave Jenkins in command of a squad, so I bumped him down to assistant squad leader and let Travers, my buddy from last time, deal with him.
"Why except for me, Captain?" he drawled. "No family?" That's right—he was an orphan too.
"No bits."
I gestured with my wand and a winding path lit up on the projection in baby blue, several new pockets of danger appearing as red blotches. Travers and the others on his team not named Jenkins nodded. "Your primary objective is prisoner rescue—standard SASA to the bounce point, then Portkey to triage. Keep a wand on them until you're sure they're safe. If you meet any hostiles, you've got the green light to take them out."
SASA—snatch and side-along—was standard operation procedure for a rescue operation like this one, though one had to be careful about sleeper agents. I always use a two-step extraction when I do a rescue: First, the runner team takes the prisoners via side-along Apparition to a preset, secure site within the wards, called the "Bounce Point" or "Bounce" for short, which allows one-way transit to the spot if you set it up beforehand. A Portkey from Bounce allows passage through the Portkey ward. We learned the hard way that you need a good exit strategy so you don't cage yourself in if things get stuffed up. Even Tom's less-gifted minions managed to get lucky on occasion.
Travers nodded assent and stepped back with his team.
I turned to two of the remaining teams. "King, Tonks."
"Aye, Captain," Tonks chirped, stepping forward and snapping a salute. Beside her, Shacklebolt rolled his eyes.
"Game faces, people. Alpha and Bravo will move in from the northwest on my signal. Heavy property damage is advised—don't spare the china." A bit of weak laughter followed. "After the initial assault, Tonks, your squad will leave Bravo to hold the bounce, then storm the place. Watch that you don't fuck Charlie on your way in." She sniffed at the double entendre—her rows with her Weasley ex were legendary among the Order. "Walls are steel, magically reinforced stone, standard stuff. Some offensive wards, but nothing fancy that we know of. You'll have company, both of the wizarding kind and animations. Swamp Things should be the only defenders of concern. You'll need heavy cutters so they don't regenerate. They're animations, so Killing Curses won't work." I ignored the looks I was getting at how I knew this. "You're to take out any hostiles you find, but the first pint's on me if you can leave at least one alive enough to question." I smiled wickedly. Everybody there knew that by "question," I meant what would come to be known colloquially as "enhanced interrogation techniques."
"Um, gov, what's your signal?" Tonks asked, uncharacteristically serious.
"I'll come to that in a moment. Brisbane."
A female Auror with heavy jowls and mousey hair streaked with grey limped forward and nodded. She was one of Alastor's protegés, tough as Ironbelly in a fight. This was our first time working together this time around.
"You and Delta will cover me. I'll be bringing down the wards."
"What!" several of the Aurors asked predictably.
Brisbane's amused rumbling caught my attention. "Kiddo, think you migh' be in a bit over your head? I've seen the intel. Class B phase-reinforcing Andromachean. High class stuff. "
I ignored her slight—she had fifty years of experience on me in this timeline, after all.
Their confusion was justified. Standard procedure called for a sapper crew to peel them back in a controlled, "Ministry approved," i.e. slow, fashion, usually taking the better part of an hour. This is dangerous, both for the crew and the Aurors, who'd have to provide cover in a hostile environment. And problematic too, since it gave the Death Eaters a chance to counterattack or Apparate away either with or without their prisoners. It was the "without" that was of the most concern, since they rarely were left alive. We lost Luna that way last time and, seeing as how she was being shown the tender mercies of Alecto and whoever else the depraved hag had with her, I didn't mind abusing the carte blanche Scrimjob had agreed upon.
I'd found the solution a year too late last time. Over cold Tsingtaos in Hong Kong, a friend of mine, a Chinese Auror by the name of Jimmy Wu, clued me in on an approach of dodgy legality, though my fame helped grease things. Training to use them in the last timeline had taken the better part of eleven months and I had to sell off Number 12 to raise the cash, but it was worth every Knut. Fortunately, as I brought back my memories, I could spare myself the training part. I'd done the Apparitions an hour before to the seedy basement shop just off the Bund in Shanghai. After several minutes of ineffective haggling, which all but wiped out the Strike Force expense account, I walked out in possession of a lacquered wooden box containing a pair of specialty foci.
I winked at Tonks, who stuck her tongue out at me, and placed the box on the table. Whispering a keyword, I waved a hand over the top and it creaked open. Inside were two pairs of discs carved from white jade, the smaller pair as thick as my thumb and the diameter of my palm. Two circles of dark jade were inset in their centers, each of which was carved with hanji characters. The left had the words for "friendly visit." The right had the characters for "bang bang," a bit of onomatopoeia—door knockers. I'd nicknamed the "bang" set, "Ginny."
The large set was basically the same, but each was the diameter of saucepan.
"Harry, what do those characters stand for?" Molly asked, looking through my eyes at the larger set.
"Uh, this one here is 'Fúshòu,' which in Mandarin means 'happy long life.'" It also meant "big tits"—the Chinese are nothing if not poetic—but she didn't need to know that. The other had the character "bàorǔ," or gigantic breasts; it was slightly less poetic.
"I named the set, 'Molly,'" I said to her in my head and from her reaction, I could feel that she was touched.
I slipped a fingerless dragonhide glove onto my left hand and placed the two Ginny cylinders together about a circular insert, then fastened the assembly within a mesh pouch that stuck out from my palm like a tuna tin.
Witches have this saying, "It's not the size of the wand, but how you use it." They're not entirely right in either sense. Size does matter, for wands in particular. The bigger the core, the more powerful the spells you can channel through it, but the harder it is to control and the faster you'll shoot your wad doing it.
What I'd picked up amounted to a set of extremely short, high-volume specialty wands. An Olivander wand might hold a single dragon heartstring. The old guy was good—among the best alive at his craft—but even he couldn't reliably work with more than a single focus. A couple of shops off Knockturn Alley dealt in disposable, dual- and tri-core wands, but they rarely lasted more than a few spells before misalignment blew your arm off.
In contrast, in the Orient a dozen or so centuries back, they worked out how to fuse multiples, but found it took a hell of a lot of mental and physical skill to use them effectively. Fortunately, I had both in spades. Learning to make them was a dead art—the only remaining wands of their type were priceless antiques and nobody alive knew how to use them. Only a few sketchy pensieve memories existed.
To make a long story short, Ginny's core held five heartstrings, all from the same Chinese Fireball, arranged in spiral pattern inside the insert. When I sent her against a ward set, she could overpower most anything, rather like my ex-wife when on a tear.
Molly? Sixty nine. With my hands inside her stocking… well, you wouldn't want to get in our way.
Using the Oriental wands essentially amounted to a specialized martial art, one heavy on shifting around one's Chi—magic to us—and light on the other mystical crap. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't do much with them besides brutalize wards and launch a few high-powered offensive spells, but it was well worth it.
I smirked at the incredulous Aurors. "I'm just going to knock nicely and see if they'll lower their wards for us. Tonks, your signal will be the wards coming down. I doubt it'll be quiet. Teams, get ready. We leave in five."
I closed the box and banished it back to my office.
"This time will be different," I vowed.
Molly heard me. "Harry?"
"Luna's in there. We lost her before and I swore I wouldn't let it happen again."
I felt an involuntary shudder as Molly gasped and both Tom and Tommi noticed, coming to the fore.
"Potter, tell me you're not risking yourself for that abomination."
I couldn't help but chuckle at how the last time we met, Luna had greeted us with, "Hi Harry. Hi Tommi. Hi other Tommi. Hi Molly. Hi Ginny," then skipped away, humming to herself.
"She's a friend," I said.
"A dangerous one," Tom said, retreating in my head. "Come, Tom," he barked.
"It's Tommi, Tommy," Tommi whined, earning him the mental equivalent of a cuff to the head.
"Excellent work, Bravo Company," I said, getting the last of the report from the boots on the ground.
"Harry, I'm so proud of you," Molly said. "You sound so professional."
"Well, I've been doing it for almost twenty years. I should be pretty good at it by now. Things are going to get dicey from here on, Molly, so you might want to tune back into Gin."
"Mom!" Ginny shouted, overhearing me. "Now is not a good time."
"Ginny?" she asked and I couldn't help catching a glimpse and seeing that she was involved in yet another, mostly one-sided "goodbye snog" with Colin, who somehow had made it to the Burrow and whose hands had somehow found themselves beneath her clothing.
"Ginny! You're too young to let a boy open your treasure chest!" Molly yelled. "And where is Hermione? I thought she was supposed to be chaperone!"
"Right, about that..." Ginny said. Hermione's moans could be heard from the next room.
A scream was heard, this time on my end--Luna. I nodded to Brisbane and raised my hand with Ginny's tuna tin.
"Knock, knock," I whispered and moved through a brisk kata as I drew my magic up. The hairs on my arm stood on end as raw power sloshed into my limb. I exhaled most of my breath, then pushed my hand forward, palm extended, and pressed my magic through the stubby wand.
A brilliant, meter-wide bolt of hot pink exploded from my hand and slammed into the hemispherical outer-ward, shattering it instantly and blasting through to the inner ward. The smaller dome lit up in rivulets of white lightning, a network of glowing veins that crackled and hummed. After several seconds, a loud whistle broke the night air and the magical wall turned blue as the knocker spell was primed. I hefted a gout of purple-hued magic into the array, which shattered it in a deafening thunderclap. Delta squad and I were blown onto our backs from the shockwave.
I sat up a moment later, feeling like I'd given birth to a St. Bernard.
"Hell of a signal, Cap'n," Tonks mused over the comm.
"Go kill bad guys," I said, coughing.
Brisbane helped me up with a smug smile. She, of course, didn't get knocked on her arse. Tough, buff, and gruff. I wondered again why she and Moody never hooked up.
Glurp.
Squee.
Voom.
A Peatbeast, one of the thousands of animated, tarry humanoids guarding the keep, lit up in a blaze of white sparks and Fiendfyre. I'd abandoned the cutters for fire—the things belch up flammable swamp gas and besides, as Phoenix Lord, I'd gotten frighteningly good at the charm. I could even shoot a single fire sprite as a projectile if I wanted to conserve my strength. This was a good thing—I was way past tapped out.
This whole operation had been pretty much bollocksed from the start.
Glurp.
Squee.
Voom.
Another Peatbeast burned. Supposedly, as with the Patronus charm, Fiendfyre conjurations are supposed to have a metaphorical connection to the caster.
Mine's a lemming, hence the "Squee." That I only found this slightly disturbing was itself disturbing.
You don't disrespect the lemming.
I hurdled a fallen tree and twisted my ankle on the way down. Stumbling to my feet, I cast a numbing charm and tried to keep moving—Tonks's squad was getting hammered pretty hard. I heard a woman's screams ahead. They turned to gurgles and I was vaguely aware of Ginny gagging in the back of my head.
"Ophelia!" Tonks half-shouted, half-wailed over the com as the two of us entered a clearing at the same time. The Auror was flushed and I could tell she was on the verge of breaking down. I felt for her—it was her first command and she'd lost another teammate—but none of us had time for handholding.
"Tonks, report!" I shouted, but before she could answer, a brown scythe of energy flared behind her. I dodged, pulling the pink-haired Auror down on top of me, the curse narrowly missing us both. She landed with her knee in my groin, of course. Wincing, I hurled a slashing curse back at a Death Eater, the best I could manage lying flat on my back with one of my squad leaders sprawled atop me. My curse connected—the top half of the man slid backward, while the bottom half toppled forward.
"Heya, sexy," she said, biting her lip. "You bring me anything? Like maybe some reinforcements?" She rolled off of me and we both staggered to our feet.
"Nah, we're boxed in good. Brisbane's doing all she can to hold it together a click to the south. King has our flank. For now, anyway."
"Harry, the wards are too well protected" she said, worried. Then she straightened, her eyes focusing on something behind me.
Glurp.
Before I could turn around, a flurry of blue balls of flame left her wand and struck a Peatbeast behind, turning it into a pyre the color of her hair on Thursdays.
"Ginny, what's wrong? You don't like the taste?" I heard in the background, but ignored it.
Tonks was wearing down fast, I could tell. So was what remained of her team, judging from what I was hearing over the com.
"Shit." I said, eloquently. Bounce was gone, stormed just after the prisoner extraction, and what remained of King's team was holding our flank. Unfortunately, we were stuck—at least seven hundred of the nastiest creatures I'd fought in this world or the last stood between us and the key to the wards. Luna had been bait for a trap.
"I spy with my little eye something tiny and pink..." Tommi chirped. "A wee, wee pee-pee!"
Glump.
Squee, squee, squee.
VOOM.
Okay, I didn't need that image. Another shambling Peatbeast went down as three exceptionally feral, flaming lemmings ripped it to pieces. My spell might have been a little overcharged.
"Just what's going on here, young lady?!" Molly shouted, scandalized. "And just where is your blouse?"
"Molly!" I shouted back. "No yelling in my ear, please."
I heard a wet "crunch" as the lifeless body of one of Tonks's team members was mangled. I could have lived without seeing the creature scoop out a handful of brains and pop them into its maw.
Ginny must have caught a glimpse too—she vomited onto Colin's lap.
"I guess not," he said.
The beast turned toward me. "Glump?" it asked.
Squee, Squee, Squee, I replied.
VOOM. I won the debate. Fiendfyre erputed and mercifully consumed creature and prey.
Brisbane's voice punched through the crackling of the flames, "Potter, Delta can't hold. We're going to have to try to make a break for it if you can't get here and I don't like our chances."
I resisted the urge to curse again. I'd pulled the plug on our Apparition and Portkey blockers once Bounce fell and it was obvious we had walked into a trap. Only then did we learn that a new set of wards had been laced over ours, ones that stubbornly resisted anything we threw at them from within, Ginny tuna nontwithstanding. King ran a trace and found they were tied to the keep's wardstone, guarded by the worst of what we were facing.
A feeling of calm washed over me. I realized what I had to do.
"King, fall back, cover Delta," I said quietly. "Tonks, get your squad to Brisbane ASAP. Brisbane, get a perimeter up and get every wand you have guarding it. You'll know my signal."
I slammed a double Ptolemy, fighting off the urge to cough up a kidney, and gathered what little strength remained. It wasn't a lot. I just hoped it was enough.
I had just one last thing to take care of. "Molly, get into Ginny's head, please. You don't want to be caught over on this side."
"Harry?" Molly said in a small voice. She must have felt my feelings over the bond and knew what I was about to do.
"Harry!" Ginny shouted.
"I love you both," I said. There was an awkward silence in my head.
In the distance, Tonks saluted me with her wand. We shared a look before I nodded to her and turned. I swept my own wand in a wide arc, unleashing an utterly massive fury of Fiendfyre, the largest I'd ever made. With a thousand shrieks, the ground in front of me was consumed by the flaming plague, leaving nothing but blackened ash and faintly glowing embers.
I'd put about everything I had into making them big and hungry, not tame.
"Bloody fucking..." someone said over the com, not bothering to finish, as I hobbled behind the firestorm. It seemed a poetic signature to my life.
I did better than I thought I would, unleashing Hell on Earth and charring half the keep into scorched stone, but my spell extinguished just as I reached the wardstone. Desperate, I screamed the incantation for more fire—more anything—but not a single spark came out of my wand. I face-faulted onto the stone as unworldly weariness overtook me. I'd wrung everything from myself.
"Get up, Potter. You'll die," Tom said, radiating concern.
Glump. Glump.
"Can't, Tom. I have nothing left."
"I do," Tom said quietly. "Take my power, Potter. Seize it. Use it."
"I can't. If I weaken your prison, you'll steal my body."
Glump. Glump. Glump. I was surrounded and Peatbeasts were closing fast.
"And your Strike Force? The Weasley matron? Are you willing to sacrifice them both for your stubbornness?" he asked.
"If that's what it takes to keep you from taking over the world again, yes." One of the beasts leaned over me. It smelled of creamed egg farts.
"Damn and blast, Potter, I swear on my magic that I won't attempt to take over your body! Now take it! Use my power and save us both!"
I saw in my mind a globe of malevolent red come near and, to my eternal shame, I reached for it. I felt Tom's presence pour into me and mine into him. A jolt of electricity rushed through me and I found myself standing, a leer on my face, as I slashed my assailants into tarry smears, my spells leaving my wand without effort. Drunk on his power, I remembered my mission. Cackling, I sheathed my wand and raised my Ginny tuna tin, turning toward the wardstone, the magically reinforced slab of ensorcelled marble that had taunted me so.
"Confringo," I whispered, and I was a god, my fist, a thunderbolt smiting the world into dust.
I was high above the crater that was once a keep, riding a magical shockwave into the heavens.
I was falling into oblivion, my body broken and dying.
And then I heard Tom's voice call out, "Fawkes!"
