Hello people. *Snape actually nods his greetings this time* He's remarkably civil tonight. People better watch what exists in their goblets… heh.
Okay, as many of you noticed, the pawns are all set. We now enter the final part of this story. I was wondering though, and I would like your opinion. Should I bring Voldie down with the end of this story, or let him off again? This is going to be my last story, so I won't make any more sequels. It is up to you: Closure, or escape? I await your views on the subject.
Okay, Chapter 16 *hit play*
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"What was said, verbatim, is the following: 'Attack piece meal, use the boy. He kept slurring Potter's name. Then, there was the curse that nearly killed Potter, that took up the rest of the talk," Snape said evenly as if dictating the ingredients of a recipe. Remus sighed.
"That isn't much news- we all know the gist of Voldemort's goals."
"No, I think that we actually got a good heads up," Dumbledore said cheerfully.
"He wants to use me, possess me again, doesn't he?" Harry muttered, toying with the edge of his glove. Sasha caressed his fingers whenever they brushed past her head.
"We will not let it happen. Professor Snape will help you fight intrusions in the same way that he did to Miss Zabini. We don't have time for proper instruction. I dare say in your case it will be easier to handle," Dumbledore said as he got up.
"Because I'm blind," Harry shook his head a little ironically, remembering a past conversation he had had with the Potions Master.
"Needless to say the only place that I can train you is the Room of Requirement, and it will have to be early in the morning, Potter," Snape said quickly, and Harry nodded.
"Poppy will return any moment now," Remus reminded them all, and Snape immediately shifted into Sombre. The wards to the infirmary were pulled down and the professors left. There was much to do, in a rather little time. Harry heard Remus walk up to the approaching steps of the school matron, and low murmuring occurred. There was the usually huffing of objection from Poppy, then Harry heard her approach.
"It seems that you can't be kept on a bed long enough, mr. Potter, even if you don't play Quidditch anymore. Here, drink this," she said cuttingly and put a goblet in Harry's hands. Harry drank it all- it was tasteless and cool like water. Pomfrey took the empty goblet from his hands and handed Harry his wand and clothes.
"You can leave, dismissed. BUT- don't look so happy just yet. You are to come here three times a day for the potion you just drunk, or you will end up here and there is no one, not even Merlin himself that will be able to get you out of here again. Am I understood?"
"Crystal, Madame Pomfrey," Harry smiled, speaking in his low, quiet tones again. Soon enough he was out of the infirmary, tapping his way around with his cane towards the care of magical creatures class. Hermione had told him that today would be especially interesting.
***
Bellatrix was desperate. The potion that was working in her was showing no notion of fading, and it was clouding her mind while still letting her know what was happening. Frankly, it seemed to her as if she was being slowly deprived of proper senses. Her vision was not to be trusted: she was seeing things with odd colours, wiffs of presences that just couldn't be there, the lighting in the room kept shifting from very bright to almost dark. Her hearing was, too, faulty: she couldn't be rid of that damnable voice that was laughing in her mind- a voice of a dead man that was, in all accounts, both angering her and giving her the creeps.
"What is it, Severus, back from the dead only to play pranks on me!?" she screamed as she teetered here and there in the room, trying to look through her ingredients and ready-made potions to stall the effects of the potion. The cackle in her ears boomed. Bella, Bella, Bella… always thinking superficially. I should have expected it, with the husband you chose, the voice chided and laughed again. The laughter was making her dizzy. She blinked many times, and replied scathingly, like a madman to his voices:
"Oh right, I should have chosen the social misfit instead, and be cooped up in a 3 by 4 room making potions. Is this about dumping you Sevvie? Was that really that traumatic?"
Bella, if I really was traumatized, I wouldn't use a prank potion on you 16 years later- I'd use a poison then. You really are making all the wrong connections, Snape's voice echoed in her mind, making it difficult to follow the whole sentence immediately. She was very close to using a curse on herself to just make it all stop. She peered through the haze and multicoloured kaleidoscope and saw a vial of potion that helped clear the mind of influences. She reached for it, but she was seeing double, and so the bottle toppled and fell on the floor, smashing. More cackling in her head, and she started to feel desperate. She had another dose of that vial, but it was in the cupboard on the other side of the room.
She tried walking, but her legs didn't know how to calculate the steps on a floor that she perceived was rippling. She fell over her own footsteps, and cursed. She went on all fours instead, and started heading there. This was going to take some time.
***
Snape's head was leaning back in the armchair in Dumbledore's office, his hands limp on the armrests, his eyes closed in concentration. Remus and Sirius entered with the glass container of the letter that had killed Fudge. Dumbledore nodded to them.
"The secret keeper is duly occupied. Severus is already in mind link with her, but I would advise you to be quick enough- We don't know how she will react."
"Yes, Headmaster," Sirius said and opened the lid of the glass box. Remus took out his wand and Sirius smiled, his eyes twinkling dangerously.
"Let's find out where the snakes hope up, then," he said and with Remus, the powerful cast to break the Fidelius Charm hit the envelope in the box full tilt.
***
Bella had reached the cupboard and had managed to get the vial securely in her hands, when a power that was shearing, white hot in pain went through her mind, searching harshly and quickly for the information that only she could reveal.
"No! You won't get away with this!"
Really, shouting is no good now, Bella. Rictusempra! Snape's voice in her head said and she felt the tickling charm take effect even if nobody had casted. The laughter, together with all the other distractors from the potion, was making her mind unable to keep up any defense.
Bellatrix's husband entered at her lab at that moment, taking in the scene, not really understanding what is going on. Through her giggles, his wife told him to help her drink it.
"Drink what?" he said, and Bella rolled around, disturbingly reminiscent of the crazy ones in St. Mungo's. Her eyes were not focusing, and she was leering here and there, but she was repeating as if it was a mantra:
"Must drink-must drink-must drink-drink-drink!"
Lestrange saw she was holding a vial in her hand, that she was trying to get to her mouth but some other, invisible force was impeding her. Immediately, he grasped her fingers, took the vial and poured it in her throat. Bellatrix groaned, but the physical movements stopped. She looked drunk, but still more in control than before.
"Potion… going to… EEEEEEKKK!" she screamed, arching backwards as Snape asserted his control completely at that moment, and for a few brief seconds Bella's mind was open and defenceless. It was all the remaining Marauders needed to extract the information they wanted.
You have been most helpful, Bella. Have fun making an antidote while under the effect of the potion.
***
Remus and Sirius clapped their hands in a high-five motion as they saw the enchanted parchment's smooth surface adorned with the name of a place:
The Dark Lord may be found in Hastings, where the Dragon can be summoned, where the Magic flows forever.
Sirius skimmed the paper as he handed to Dumbledore. "For a twisted, Dark Witch, Bella has a knack for the poetic in her mind," he said with a smirk. Remus smiled with amusement, then looked to where Snape still sat, in the same limp position as before.
"Is this normal?" he asked Dumbledore. Albus nodded.
"The task that he undertook was very energy consuming. But I believe a hot cup of chocolate will restore a good deal of what he lost. After we bring him to his senses, of course."
"Do we really have to?" Sirius smirked as he pointed his wand at Snape and said "Ennervate!"
Snape gasped to awareness, his body moving forward as if he wanted to hurl. Remus helped him not fall off the armchair.
"Severus? Are you well?"
"Of course I am not bloody well, Lupin!"
"He's just fine, judging by the snarl," Sirius grinned. "We got the Big Bad Voldie's addy!" he said as Snape slowly straightened up, looking like he had spent far too much time in a roller coaster.
"Thank Merlin that you are not as incompetent as I feared. Bellatrix's mind is not too hospitable," he said. Albus handed him a cup of hot chocolate, and for one of those rare moments, Snape did not refuse it.
"So, were is it?" he asked.
"Where the Dragon can be summoned, and Magic flows forever…," Albus said with a twinkle in his eyes. Snape's own widened in realisation, and the Headmaster nodded.
"Yes- I do believe that Tom Riddle is at Stonehenge." After the small silence of awe from all three younger wizards, Dumbledore said cheerfully to Sirius:
"I believe that we should alert and mobilise the Aurors now, Sirius."
***
Blaise Zabini knelt in front of Voldemort. It was only her in the room and Lucius Malfoy. For the first time since her initiation. Blaise felt her heart skip in beats. It was always dangerous when you were summoned alone, instead of with a crowd. Professor Snape had made that quite clear. It was not, of course, that she didn't know why she was there. She only hoped that she would carry out her task properly.
"So, Blaise," Voldemort said, drawing the 's' again, "tell me more, about the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix."
"My Lord, the only place that Dumbledore would hide Malfoy is there, because he believes that there is no way around the Fidelius Charm that protects it."
"Have you found who the secret keeper is?" Lucius asked.
"No, I haven't," Blaise said, and as soon as she had uttered it, the Cruciatus hit her- but only briefly.
"I do hope, Blaise Zabini, that you have not taken up my time with insignificant information," Voldemort's eyes flashed with the morbid threat. Blaise managed to get on all fours and she shook her head.
"No my lord. I… I have a way to… to reach Malfoy. And since he is there, by finding him, we will find the Headquarters, too."
"How can you be sure that Draco is there?" Lucius asked again, his eyes gleaming with malice at the mental image of finding his son.
"Because, sir, I overheard Weasley telling it to Potter, during Potions Class. Without Snape, it is quite easy to whisper in the class, and I could hear what they were saying clearly," Blaise said and breathed evenly, to control her brain as well as her mind. There was a pregnant pause, then Voldemort's voice reached her ears, in that semi-satisfied purr that he occasionally used.
"So, what is this way you have?"
***
Draco felt that he was being cooped up for too long, and that he was doing nothing. When he had been at Hogwarts, in the Study Group, he felt that he was useful, that he was part of an army fighting against the very threat of the wizarding society. But now, in the Black house, he felt incapacitated, redundant, useless. And that was a feeling that he didn't cherish in the least. He ran to the living room as soon as he heard the telltale whoosh of the floo. He saw Sirius walking through with a satisfied grin.
"Well?" he asked eagerly. Sirius glanced at him in question.
"Well, what?"
"When am I going back to Hogwarts?"
"Not too soon. Your daddy is quite mad at you still," Sirius smirked. Draco clicked his tongue.
"I can't stay in here and do nothing! I didn't go through all the training in Potter's group to end up in a house feeding Buckbeak!"
"Don't worry, kid. You will get your chance soon enough. For now, it's important that you don't budge from here. Got it?"
Draco squinted at the tall ex-convict, and tilted his head to the side.
"There's some plan behind all this, isn't there? I am not here only because it's safe, am I?" he asked and watched for reactions. Sirius turned and looked at him with a smile.
"Well. You get to see soon, won't you? I have work to do, kid, and people to contact."
Draco licked his lips and watched Sirius go towards his personal room. He breathed and called.
"Sirius?"
The tall man looked over his shoulder.
"Is… is Zabini okay?" he asked hesitantly. Sirius smiled and winked, then walked further down the aisle.
***
All the Study Group except Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy was in the Room of Requirement. Severus Snape pointed his wand to Harry Potter, and muttered the spell for the mind link that would allow him to walk Harry through anything that would need Occlumentic powers. Harry felt the enigmatic presence of the Potions Master surround his mind snugly, then retreat in the peripheral of his awareness.
"Alright, Potter. If the need arises, you will do exactly as I say. No insubordination, is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," Harry said in a puzzled tone. "But why are we all here tonight? It feels as if we are preparing for something."
"Quite right," Snape said.
"Will it involve duels?" asked Fred eagerly.
"Or pranks, at least?" added George.
"Stop that," said Ginny irritably. Neville fidgeted, trying to keep being behind Snape instead of in his line of vision.
"I am glad to see everyone present and eager," came the cheerful voice of Dumbledore from the entrance. Everyone turned to look at the one wizard that could make Voldemort be afraid. Dumbledore walked to where Harry was standing next to Snape. He put his hand on the young Gryffindor's shoulder with a smile.
"Harry, we are, once again, in the eve of a confrontation. I shall need your help. All of the Order, as a matter of fact, has to lean on you."
"You can count on me, Headmaster," Harry said quietly, his eyes staring straight ahead, but determined. Dumbledore smiled, then handed Harry a vial of potion.
"Take this when you feel faint- orders by Madame Pomfrey."
Harry chuckled. Dumbledore turned to the rest of the students in the Room:
"Up to now, you have proven to be most important, all of you, and the Order already owes you a lot. The reason I have called you here is because I trust you just as much as seasoned aurors. I will need you tonight- in a night that might determine the very lives of the wizarding world."
There was a heavy, excited silence in the Room, as it sunk in in everyone's consciousness the sheer importance. Even the Weasley twins had sobered up. Oddly enough, it was Neville Longbottom that broke it.
"Tell us what we have to do, Headmaster."
***
It was in the early hours that the darkness, cold and still, started to shift into forms that seemed to close around a derelict building menacingly. Creatures of the night, from cats to rats skittered away from the influence. The disguise of the building seemed to shift and ripple, until the Ministry of Magic appeared for what it was. It appeared deserted. The dark figures entered silently in the apparently unguarded building, the moon gleaming sinisterly against the white faceless masks of the Death Eaters.
The pawns were moving.
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There you go! The heat goes up, doesn't it? I am slightly tired, so I will answer reviews next time. *Snape gets up and leaves in a swirl of robes* Please tell me what you think about what should happen to Voldie, because the next chapter will define the ending of the story. See you then!