Wizard Under The Troll Bridge

Abby Ebon

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Disclaimer: This one does not own Harry Potter – or Hellboy.

Note; …I've now read Seed of Destruction/Wake Of The Devil, though it isn't really connected to any particular reason that you've had to wait for a bit longer then anyone really likes to for this story. Even I'm a bit perturbed, because this is a good story, and it holds more of my interest then I'd like to admit to.

Beta(s):

artscribler, (as of 11/4/09) who edited this chapter, then shortly had a bad day. There were no internet, and no saving of editing. Yet the editing work is still good.

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Smoking In Sewers

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"Shit, sure wish you'd tell me what the hell just happened to you," Dung spoke the words aloud, his voice high with nerves; it only echoed back at him in the sewers. Hearing it – his fear, his own insecurity – Dung could not help it when he took a shaky breath. That he asked, even though Harry was a cat and could not answer, told Harry that Dung trusted him more then he let on.

With as much dignity as Harry could muster – for he forbid himself to squirm his discomfort at being helpless in the arms of another wizard – he cried out his command; put me down, dolt.

"Merow!" Harry was promptly obeyed, though the scratch of Dung's ragged nails at his ears might have been a bit underhanded. Dung jerked his hand away only when he seemed to realize what he was doing, so Harry let it go. It wasn't worth the effort of holding a grudge.

Still shaky from nerves, Harry stood from his crouch; the same hunched posture that carried over to his human form from when he was on his feet and hands as a cat. Harry didn't know why, and so long as his transformations continued to carry along smoothly, he didn't much care why. Rubbing grimy fingers on his jeans, he glanced to Dung who had looked away from him while he was in the midst of the transformation. His pale face was a little flushed. It could have been from the flicker of fire his lighter had spurted to life, or the cigarette that was already smoking at the end; but Harry didn't think so.

Dung raised the lighter, as if to offer, but Harry shook his head in a negative. The flame sputtered out with a click. It was just as well.

"I saw Sammael," Dung flinched a little at Harry's claim, though it was certainly not because he doubted it, only that he was looking more and more uneasy; it was as if he wished Harry hadn't told him, even though he had asked, "or at least, how Grigori Efimovich Rasputin freed him. I know how to undo it." Dung's tensed shoulders eased, and even as Harry turned away from him, Dung watched him with a mix of wary regard and lazy confidence. Harry couldn't understand it.

"An' how is that?" Dung asked his voice not above a whisper, then taking a deep drag from his cigarette. Perhaps it did something to calm him. He certainly appeared steadier than he had been, Harry had seen it for himself – it had taken more then one click for the lighter to spurt out flame. It had to be something muggle.

"I will kill Grigori Efimovich Rasputin." It was stated so matter-of-fact, so reasonably, that Dung was nodding in agreement before his ears had quite caught up with his brain. When he did, he choked, quick fingers plunking the cigarette from his lips before it would fall.

Harry watched him, dark amusement glittering in his forest eyes. It was, perhaps, unfair to thrust Dung into the midst of this. Still, it hadn't been necessary for Harry to startle him so badly and that, well… that was only because he felt burdened down by Dung, "escort" or no.

"That so? Call it my own dim logic, but I don't see how burying Rasputin is going to result in Sammael joining him as ashes," Dung mumbled, sounding a bid disheartened. If he had hoped of making this out alive when he took the job, he now likely thought it was a lost cause. It heartened Harry though, that Dung had not thought to abandon him. Maybe that was where the sympathy came from, for when Harry spoke next, it certainly came from somewhere.

"What do you know of Ogdru Jahad?" Dung jerked as if stung, his lip and nose curling in disgust. Dung paused as he brought his cigarette to his lips, breath coming out in a hiss. Smoke curled into an image and hung in the air between them; to the untrained eye it looked as if a flower had bloomed with seven pedals and they had twisted, becoming something frozen and crystallized. Harry nodded at the image, for it was accurate enough.

"Bog'ma spoke of Rasputin; he is their servant, it gives him something like immortality. For when he dies – and he does die – he comes back, yet as you might guess this immortality comes with a cost. He is the vassal to the coming of Ogdru Jahad. They would loath to loose such a willing host," Harry grinned; there was nothing sane in it. Dung worried sometimes if Harry knew – or cared – just how far from human he had come. It was times like these that Dung didn't much care himself. If Harry got information like this so easily, maybe it was worth a bit of a trade.

"This is even more of a reason the likes of us ought to stay out of it, Harry," Dung licked at his lips, not afraid to admit he was more then a little nervous about where Harry might go with this. Ogdru Jahad was, for wizards and witches alike, the stuff of nightmares. Trifling with it was bad. Worse would be getting it upset. It slumbered, but it could – one day – awaken. The dawn of that day, it would truly be the end of the world, and whatever was not dead would wish it were.

"Still, such immortality gives Rasputin a certain amount of arrogance; he thinks he can never die. Take, for instance, his spell with Sammael. For every time the demon hound falls, it rises twice," Harry was suddenly very serious again. Dung saw plainly then now how much power that would take. It would surely kill any other wizard, and as it was, it was killing Rasputin. There was no telling how many times Rasputin would die between when he set the spell and when they put a stop to this.

"Shit," Dung felt his throat go dry.

"We will work with the weaknesses we know it possesses. Ogdru Jahad is greedy, and though Grigori Efimovich Rasputin is now the only servant of the seven, it was not always so in the past. It isn't likely the habits of Ogdru Jahad have changed over the millennia; Ogdru Jahad still searches the minds and hearts of mortals for its flavor of corruption." Dung thought he knew where Harry was going with this line of reasoning – he didn't like it.

If, as Rasputin lay dying, Ogdru Jahad was occupied with collecting another servant, the spell between Rasputin and Sammael would break – and Sammael, at that point, could be truly killed without being reborn. By the time Ogdru Jahad brought Rasputin back to life, it would be too late.

"We need bait," Dung told Harry, sneering slightly at the thought of anyone willing to open their mind and power for Ogdru Jahad. Rasputin was a special kind of crazy, for not even the Dark Lord would ever have opened himself to such a connection.

"Yes." It was such a simple answer, so very carefully strait forward. It left a lot of room for a lot of tears; some could be mended in time and some would become gapping, ragged holes till the very bitter end.

"I don't like this idea." Though some might have hesitated to tell Harry so bluntly, Dung had never hesitated to admit his was a coward. A coward he was, yes, but a loyal coward. Just because he didn't like facing up to what was probably going to be how he died, didn't mean he would take back his word – or walk away. It wasn't in him to leave Harry more alone than he already was.

Harry wasn't asking him to be bait, he was asking – though in a round about way – to see to it that this was finished, even if worse came to worse; even if Ogdru Jahad swallowed Harry up and spat him out a servant. Dung had never wanted something so bad – wizard-thief that he was – as Harry wanted Sammael dead.

"Nor do I," Harry looked in the distance, frowning – his nostrils flared as he inhaled looking for all the world as if he were scenting the air. Dung felt bile rise in the back of his throat at the very thought and put the bitter cigarette back in his mouth. It was doing what it was supposed to – taking his mind off the fact he stood in a sewer, deadening his sense of smell so he didn't smell much past dirty water and mold.

There were things growing down here that he hadn't thought could. And things he didn't think could have grown anywhere else.

"Do you smell that?" Harry asked, clearly distracted – he'd stopped smelling the air – now he was listening. Dung didn't bother to take a whiff. It was bad enough watching.

"Uhg, yuck, no thanks – what is it?" Dung didn't bother to hide the curiosity he felt. Something about the way Harry was standing – defensive, tensed shoulders, knees bent as if about to take off running or lunge into the dark – clued him in. Harry looked dangerous, and he wasn't hiding it.

That was always bad news.

"Sammael is in these sewers," It was hissed out like a cat would, furious and territorial. Dung knew he should have been expecting it when Harry took off running. But he hadn't, so he cursed, bitterly stomped on his cigarette (even he had no desire to see what a fire looked like down here) and took off after him.

A few sharp turns was all it took for Dung to realize he was lost – and very much alone.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Harry hated swimming in sewer water. It was one thing to live beneath a city surrounded by underground tunnels; quite another to venture into a submerged tunnel that had – likely – collapsed. Harry grit his teeth even as he took from his clothing a bit of plastic wrap; it was what was within the plastic covering that he cared not to linger on.

When the trolls had found he needed to go to the surface twice every two months, for his own health and sanity, they had not let him wander out without means to get back through the submerged tunnels that he loathed.

It was not the darkness, or the smell – or the trash – it was the simple fact that Harry had never learned to properly swim. There was only one way to go about in the tunnels, and that was why he was taking precious time to unwrap the plastic. He loathed being dependent on it. Harry lip curled a little, as if to snarl – though no sound escaped his lips – in disgust at the sight of it.

Bog'ma called it gillyweed. It was supposed to be a plant for all it looked like slimy grey-green rat-tails. Once you swallowed it whole and the taste of rubber faded (it was better to do that, then chew), his fingers and toes would be webbed and he would grow gills at the side of his neck and ears. It didn't matter if Harry couldn't swim then, he'd survive underwater for as long as gillyweed didn't ware off.

Harry carefully didn't pay much attention to what he was putting into his mouth (if he did, he wouldn't want to all the more) and tossed his head back, swallowing visibly. Quickly he took a step into the water, and opened his eyes. He didn't gag or choke on the water as he still half expected to do every time he did this. The gills were already working to take oxygen from the water.

Quickly, he kicked his feet, keenly aware that he had already wasted too much time. His mind raced with what he knew about Sammael. Surely, there were at least two now – of that, he had seen proof of for himself. They had chosen the underground darkness, and subterranean water; it was warm down here.

Harry smiled then and it wasn't a pleasant smile. For if he followed the nature of Sammael it meant – as with most demons – light and fire would be most effective.

Harry didn't have much time to dwell on his leap in logic, or have a second backup plan. Or to take into consideration that he was underwater and planned to burn something while it was swimming at him, likely trying to eat his face and aiming to rearrange his intestines.

For any other wizard, this would amount to suicide – even with magic – but life among the trolls (and with Tom Riddle in his head) had amounted to the chilling philosophy that if it killed him, he probably deserved it.

In that was Harry's greatest strength – and weakness; he wouldn't take in the fact that he could be killed. Certainly in the past he had been injured, yet always survived. Wizards were, after all, long lived and harder to kill. No one knew just how hard, not even Harry who tested those limits. Harry didn't rely on his magic; that was wise, as his magic was as whimsical and unreliable as nature itself, turning a fine day into a flood. What he did rely on was his survival instincts.

Which were screaming at him to flee, even before he laid eyes on the golden marble-sized spheres that were Sammael's eggs in the sewers warm, dim water. Harry narrowed his eyes on them, unaware of the flare of green as the thought crept into his mind, trickling to his magic – burn within.

Another smile, this time more sinister, crept over his features even as those eggs began to simmer and boil from within before his eyes. Confidence that he could do this to even Sammael itself, full grown, filled him.

It was fleeting.

Harry hadn't thought that Sammael, in any incarnation, would be maternal.

Demons, after all, rarely were.

As his instincts screamed that he turn around, he did. Then, as so rarely done, looked upward in time to see Sammael diving down upon him, jaws agape and teeth boldly visible in the dim waters.

Harry, feeling suddenly clumsy in the water, managed to turn out of the way. It wasn't enough. Sammael's claws tore into his arm, bleeding him, even as Harry narrowly escaped. Water vibrated with a growling snarl of suppressed fury, for all Sammael clung to now would be revenge; behind its frill, tentacles-whiskers slithered furiously.

Sammael came at him again, having learned how awkwardly Harry moved underwater, determined now to get a hold on him. With arms flung forward, and claws reaching, the finger-digits with deadly claws curled to grip onto him. It did not bode well, lingering on what Sammael might do to him if the hell hound managed to grab hold.

Harry heard only his blood behind his ears. It was only later that he managed to put together what exactly happened.

From behind, a hand grabbed his injured arm. Struggling and crying out did him no good, and he was dragged between two chunks of an arch that had caved it. It was a narrow opening. Harry knew, vaguely, that he was being saved even though he saw his own blood in the water and was weak by pain. Harry hadn't known he was injured so badly.

A face, unrecognizable in his pained haze, peered down at him. Fragmented, the memory in the museum rolled over him like a summer thunderstorm…unstoppable, exhausting, merciless – needful.

(A…being that he, even as a troll and wizard, had never seen the likes of. He wondered what his neighbors would think, or tell him. Harry studied the blue skinned one, as he knelt by a sword, studied it in turn. Black eyes wider then human, though eerily like a shark-gaze seemed to see things that were not here now, but had been. Harry felt a creeping sensation along his fur, as if a spider were creeping up along him unreachable. He brushed it aside, careless, watching as the blue-hued being jerked in reaction as if he had been struck. )

This was that same blue hued, shark-eyed, being – close up.

"I am Abe. Are you…?"

Then there was only the pain, and muddy grey edges became sharper blackness.

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Note; no, I'm not telling you "where Tom is" just yet…sorry, we need to go a bit more foreword then where we are. Or, rather, I just need to figure out why the heck he is where he is… do you, as your going to sleep, have a thought and think "yeah, that what is I'll do, its perfect" and then you go to sleep, and in the morning then can't remember that thought?

It's rather like that.