Chapter Fifty: Storms

Harry had barely recovered from the last wave of chaos that had swept through the Otherworld when Rasheed went stiff, mouth open in a silent, agonized oh of surprise.

Roan caught the eshu as he fell. Harry had enough strength to sit up – with Draco's help – and watch as Severus went to help the prostrate man.

"What's wrong?" Harry passed a hand over his eyes, but the blurry bits at the edges of his vision would not pass.

"I don't know," Roan bit out as Rasheed shuddered and lay still. Snape put his pack on the ground and sorted through it, finding a pale pink liquid secured in a small vial. He tried to get the eshu to drink the potion. Rasheed's irritated push almost spilled the contents over them both.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Rasheed groaned as he sat up. Snape's black glare didn't seem to deter him in the least.

"Then what…"

"Tyche is gone," Rasheed said.

"We already knew that. Harry said her name while he was…away," Draco snapped at the man.

"She is dead," Rasheed seemed to pay no attention to the glares of the Slytherins. "She is gone and now whatever it is you are looking for has moved. Do you know why?"

Harry felt his breath catch in his throat. Draco's hands clutched at him. "Yes," Harry croaked. "We know why they were moved. But we don't know where."

Rasheed got to his feet with Roan's help. He held out one hand, eyes closed, nose twitching as he turned in a slow circle. After a long second of silence, he sighed and opened his eyes.

"Your query is not here," he said. "They have left the Dark and have gone into the Aboveworld."

Harry clenched his hands into fists as Draco cursed a blue streak in his ear. "Can you still lead us to them?" he asked Rasheed.

"Only through the Dark is my nose the best. Aboveworld…" Rasheed spread his hands and shrugged.

"Wait…wait," Draco shifted Harry against his chest so he had a free arm. "I have an idea."

From the angle Harry had turned his head he could see the gleam in the Slytherin's eye. It touched something inside Harry's chest, causing a cold tingle of yes-Path-move and was gone.

Draco held up a thick piece of chalk and brandished it in the air. "Get us to the nearest, most powerful signpost," he said. "I'll do the rest from there."

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Black Manor had seen better days.

Bill sat back on his haunches and considered the wall in front of him. They had turned every closet inside out. All the cupboards had disgorged their contents onto the floor. Bill had been the one to slam a fist into the wall, destroying plaster and drywall in a puff of white dust. The empty space beneath his fist had infuriated him, so he had taken both hands to the wall and ripped it open from floor to ceiling.

Remus and Sirius started in on their rooms moments later.

Still, they had come up empty handed. None of the rooms on the first or second floors had yielded anything, though some of the contents of the closets were a bit stomach turning. The collection of dried eyeballs in a sterling silverware case was a surprise none of them were ready for.

"Bill," Sirius stood in the doorway of the wrecked guest room. Remus had been the one to go through the family bedrooms – even Harry's – as he had a touch more caution than either Bill or Sirius had at the moment.

"Find something?" He stood, ignoring the ache that had taken root in his lower back.

"Not…exactly." Sirius frowned and glanced at the ceiling. "There's one more place left to look."

Bill followed his gaze. "I thought there wasn't an attic?"

"There isn't. Well, sort of."

The stairs were hidden behind a steel door covered in curses and locked with a handful of different devices. They didn't bother trying to find the keys. Bill's years as a cursebreaker eliminated most of the protections. Sirius' command as Head of the Black Family got rid of the rest.

The attic was warded by a triple web of spells. The hair on the back of Bill's neck stood up straight as they mounted the rickety stairs. If it were possible, the resounding call in his head grew louder, causing the migraine to spike into liquid agony behind his eyes. He put out one hand to steady himself and shuddered as a host of long-legged creatures scuttled away under his hand. He drew it back and wiped his palm off on his pants.

The attic of the Black Manor was like a smaller floor of the house, with the peaked roof slanting above them. Windows were set into the dusty walls, allowing some light into the dark place.

Cloth covered most of the objects in the attic. A few mirrors muttered from a far corner, the edges of silver just visible in the murky light. Bill could see a few ratty couches pushed up against one wall and a locked, glass covered bookcase standing silent sentinel next to it.

"Well, then," Remus said from behind them. "This might take a while."

They moved with more caution in the attic. Bill left the bookcase to Remus, who had started exclaiming over the various titles behind the spelled glass. Most of the objects found underneath their cloth masks were just what Bill had been expecting from any other type of attic – headboards and chairs. The occasional trunk full of moth-eaten clothes from an era long past.

Some of the other finds were not as…tame. The oblong shell Bill had found in one corner opened up to a belly full of spikes, some of them with what looked like dried blood on them. A scold's cage was on top of a pile of rusted thumbscrews and foot breakers. Bill had not asked why they were in a child's toy box, painted bright blue and red with the name Pollox lacquered on the top.

But when Bill touched a dusty wooden trunk, half buried under a pile of broken wizarding toys, he knew they had found it. The sounds in his head crested to a triumphant shriek and then faded away. His shout alerted the others, Sirius fell to his knees next to Bill, helping him fumble open the locked trunk.

Inside, laying on a bed of crumbling velvet, was a curving, brass horn.

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Lucius was laid out on the plush couch of the Head of Slytherin's apartments and struggled to find his breath.

He ached more than when the Dark Lord had put all of his former servants under the cruciatus curse. The last visitors who had made it to the castle had been Auror Rayne, accompanying a flustered Healer Fabing. The Auror had not been pleased by the sight of the exiles claiming the Slytherin common room as a temporary home, but Lucius had had no time to vent his ire at the irritating man. He needed what little strength he head left to keep from ripping off his badge as Head of House and running mad into the night.

The drain had not been bad, at first. The constant confinement, a long day and night of waiting, trapped in a set of rooms with only children as runners to keep him informed – that had been what had taxed him to the edge of his endurance at first. Lucius was used to being able to command the secrets of society at a whim – to wait for red-faced first years was not an acceptable alternative.

Sometime during the night, however, the tide had changed. Lucius had scarce been able to walk from the bedroom to the couch without the world reeling around him. As the day progressed, he had been unable to leave the couch unassisted. By the afternoon he had forbidden anyone from trying to move him at all.

Lucius knew he was a powerful wizard. Courted by the Dark Lord himself, when the crazy old bat was sane and as smooth talking as any salesmen Lucius had ever met. Being near the Dark Lord, some said, was like being next to a vortex of power, wild and breathtaking and hard to resist. Lucius had understood that call, that desire to bask in power. He had wanted to call it his own, when he was younger.

He had never put much stock into the abilities of the Heads of House at Hogwarts. His distain for Slughorn and McGonagall's obnoxious favoritism was something he had put up with, not explored. But now, now he would no longer look at them and dismiss them out of hand. Even the Hufflepuff woman, the irritating gardener – all of the other Head of House were still able to move about their rooms, tired, yes, from the strain, but not collapsed in a chair, sacked breathless by the greedy wards of Hogwarts castle.

He would never underestimate them again.

The time turners were doing their jobs as best as he could have expected. The world beyond the boarders of the wards had become hazy. The Forbidden Forest had melted away into mist. No one could see past the spinning lines of time that kept their small pocket of reality from shattering – but they had a few ways to watch the world beyond their walls.

Flitwick reported that whole chunks of Hogsmead were tearing away. Sprout was tearful in pronouncing the death of several of her specialty plants that were seeded throughout Diagon Alley. McGonagall reported nothing to Lucius, but he had enough to work together a picture of the outside world on his own.

Lucius' breath caught on a shuddering inhale, heart beating fast as the spells he had laid on his lover and son blared to life under his skin. He scrabbled at his left sleeve, tearing back the cuff, sending the cufflink bouncing over the thick carpets. There, in place of his former shame, he had had the finest spell-inker lay lines of protection into his skin, one for Severus, one for Draco. Spells that would tell him if they were dead or in pain, spells that would never let him sleep again if he failed them once more. More, in the lines beneath his skin, he could feel them if he concentrated. It was how he had known they had gone, stepped beyond the boarders of the magic he had wrought, lost to his monitoring.

He let out a shaky breath and then called for his Slytherins. The lines of power had blazed to life once more. They were alive, somewhere, somehow.

Slytherin House needed to be ready.

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Albus Dumbledore was an old man. He was an old man, an old wizard and an even older soul. He had thought he had felt his years before – but it was during the long wait in his office that he had felt them that keenly than ever before.

The long past rolled out before him as he slept at night. Flashes of regrets, better forgot, but too dear to push away. He regretted many things in his long life. He regretted the duty that had bound him away from love. He regretted the sacrifice needed to keep order, a sacrifice he had been able to give but not at the cost of his own heart. He regretted his blindness. He regretted many of the choices he had made, hoping above hope that it would lead them to the future of his dreams.

He let his Heads of Houses work the outside wards and to keep the stability of their dormitories safe. He was a strong wizard, but even he could not save them all, not this time.

Fawkes gave a piercing cry and launched into the air. The phoenix settled onto Albus' shoulder, his soft feathers brushing Albus' cheek. The Headmaster lifted a frail hand to touch the soft crest and then let his hand drop back into his lap.

Albus had seen the storms start before the time turners had been spun to work. He had been able to see them from his office window, the way the sky had turned rusty brown, the strange crackle of sheet lightning flaring on the horizon. The boiling clouds, dark and terrible and heavy with things worse than rain, had eaten up the ground towards the castle, covering all else in darkness. It had hit as the time turners flared to life, the wards holding strong against the storm of temporal flux that threatened the world around them.

Albus had anchored his reserves of magic to the very stones of the school itself. Hogwarts had fed, for centuries, on the influx of ley lines that ran under the foundations. With the time turners taking them one step to the left of reality, the castle's lines of power had been cut, causing the wards to falter. Even before then, Albus had needed to bolster the school's power – the time storms, as the students had taken to calling them – had impaired Hogwarts every time they raked the world over. If Albus had not stepped in, the wards would have long since fallen.

But Albus was running out of time. His strength was fast fading. He could feel the pull of the castle on his old bones, the age of all his years he had drawn breath to serve the Light, to keep his world, all the worlds, as safe as he could make them. Hour by hour the castle pulled more and more from him, until he saw black spots dance in front of his eyes every time he moved.

Worse, from his position behind his desk, Albus could see his long rows of delicate magical objects, hidden behind their protective glass cases. One by one, as the hours ticked on, they broke, some shattering to a million pieces, some crumbling to ash. Each one unique, each one part of the castle and its history.

Albus Dumbledore was running out of time and he knew it. He only hoped he had enough strength to see the storms through, and then…and then.

Then he could rest.

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Scrimgeour leaned against the war table, hands clenching white-knuckled at the edges, surveying the magical map of Britain's wizarding world.

Outside, the time fluxes were ripping apart whole chunks of Diagon Alley. Outside the Ministry walls and wards, which shared a power source with Gringott's deepest level of vaults, outside, the sky was neither blue nor black. The reddish haze that had started up hung low overhead, the oppressive color lending the illusion to heat and thunder. Riots ran wild in the streets. Rufus could not send his Aurors or his Unspeakables out to calm the panic. The Ministry wards had activated its last failsafe, trapping them all inside.

Inside Rufus, he was awash in confusion and rage. The attack on the Ministry – and no matter how harmless some called the pranks, it was an attack, a terrorist attack and from the exiles no less – had created holes in his ranks. The exiles, he had since learned, had fled to Hogwarts and were guaranteed sanctuary there by Albus Dumbledore himself.

Rufus reflected that he should have replaced the aging wizard when he had had the chance.

What little reports he had from the muggle world showed a far harsher picture. The wizarding communities had some protection because of the wards the builders had set up, rituals the oldest of the construction companies still made at the site of any new building. Even the unintentional wards still offered the people an edge off the worst of the storms. They had gotten reports of newer settlements being hit the hardest, those without the old protections. Some of the shops were ripping themselves apart as the devices inside shattered and took the building with them. The entire Firebolt factory had gone up in flames. It was one of the last reports he had gotten from the outside before the wards cancelled any outside communication.

The muggle world was worse. Even the non-protected areas of wizarding Britain were still buffered by the very existence of magic – it somehow resisted the smaller storms that wrecked havoc with delicate muggle technology. Rufus had read report after report of muggle military bases going up in flames – and sometimes worse, as he read in one report about the detonations of nuclear devices in the United States. The muggle world had gone mad in the hours after the second, stronger time flux had flashed over the entire world.

In the wizarding world, Rufus had had centaurs to deal with, as well as an entire bank that had vanished into thin air. His councilors had run mad at the news – most of the family fortunes having been stored in the vaults of Gringott's bank. Reports of wild werewolf gangs filling Knockturn Alley had turned out to be false – but they had lost the team of Aurors sent to investigate the claims to a horde of wild-eyed rioters who had torn the men's wands from their hands and beaten them to death with bare fists.

There were times when Rufus regretted not invoking martial law.

They had lost a half-dozen other Aurors to more accidents and ambushes. Two of his Aurors had been in the middle of appariting back to the Ministry when a time flux had hit. The pair simply…never returned. They had been two of the youngest Aurors in his ranks as well. It had been a hard loss to swallow, but Rufus had been forced to move on without a moment of silence, without a curse, Merlin, without even a stiff drink.

He could have used an entire bottle of firewhiskey.

The reports of civil unrest in the muggle world were worse than that of the wizarding world. The various military regimes were gearing up for war – though against whom, Rufus was at a loss to say. London was full of chaos; rioters looted the stores, setting fire to the buildings and gathering in centers, drinking and inhibiting other various illegal drugs in attempts to ease the coming of the end of the world.

The places that provided any sanctuary at all were the holy sites. Temples, churches, synagogues and mosques were packed cheek to jowl with the devout and those panicked enough and lucky enough to find refuge in the ancient walls of faith.

Rufus had received word that the Temple to All Gods had been open – at least until the last time flux that had closed everything down. Rioters ran wild in the crowded outside, all of them desperate to get inside the walls. He had heard of a desperate call for the adults to pass their children forward first, but the plea for mercy went unheard as man after woman pushed inside.

In the muggle world, Rufus had heard report that the whole of the Vatican City and Mecca were first thought safe against the time fluxes – with some secondary reports that places like Athens and Thebes in Egypt were holding out against the storms as well. But as the storms grew worse, the cities began to feel the effects, until it was just the holy places that stood against the battering storms. There was report of murders and unrest all over the world, growing worse as each hour passed.

Rufus bowed his head as the chaos of his own Ministry washed around him. Gods above, he drew a deep breath and suppressed the prickle of tears. Gods above, if you've ever cared for us at all, help us now.

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The normal rules of House solidarity had long been thrown to the four winds. Sasha had thrown her proper pureblood propriety out along with it and had dragged Seamus off for a nice…encounter after the time turners had been set and brought to life. Sasha was a determined girl and there were a few things in life she planned on experiencing before the end of the world, propriety be damned.

After, Seamus had stayed in the Slytherin dorms, content to watch her as she flittered about, checking the time turners, the notes and avoiding Blaise's knowing eye.

Still, when the nervous energy ran out and the hour grew late, Seamus had stayed and she had no wish to send him elsewhere. They had shared the wide couch in the common room together, preferring to stay near the hearths for any emergency floo calls from other parts of the castle. She had gone to sleep that night with Seamus pressed against her back and a warm arm draped over her side. She had not slept so well in ages.

But as the day dragged on and they took hit after hit on the time turners, Sasha's good cheer had faded. Fear, cold and tight, had lodged in her gut. She had no idea where her cousin was. She'd had no way to contact him before…before. She was stuck at Hogwarts, and her last living family was lost to her in the chaos she knew, she knew was taking over the world.

She knew it was just as bad for Seamus. His muggle father had no way to protect himself and his mother would never leave him.

"Stop worrying so much," he spoke, his lips brushing her temple. They had taken over one of the plush love seats for themselves.

"How can you tell I'm thinking anything at all?" She lay curled against his side, feet up on the couch, breaking all the rules of feet on furniture the dorm had.

"You have a funny line right here," he touched the spot between her brows, "every time you are."

"Cheater. That's Slytherin logic."

"Perhaps it's rubbing off on me."

"Rubbing off…" She elbowed him in the ribs, cutting off his chuckles.

Seamus grunted as her elbow made contact, but all it ended up doing was tightening his arm around her middle.

There was a rumble and the whole castle seemed to shudder. Sasha's eyes were glued to the ceiling where dust rained down. They had given up trying to keep the once pristine surfaces of their dorm clean. Now they bore each hit with bated breath, tense and shaking as the storms battered the wards.

Seamus' arm was cinched tight around her. His mouth was pressed against the fine fall of her hair. "It'll be all right, Sasha. We'll live through this. Everything will be fine. Harry and your boys will get there in time. It will all be fine…"

But no matter how many times Seamus muttered the fervent mantra into her ear, she couldn't help but doubt that perhaps the vaunted Boy-Who-Lived had finally met with an adventure he would not finish, a quest he could not complete.

Sasha closed her eyes and tried to push the worrisome doubt away.

It was a long wait until morning.

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Blaise had noted Neville's absence just after the ubiquitous return of Sasha and her pet Gryffindor. Blaise tracked Neville out of the dorm and through the empty halls. The dash outside of the castle proper was hair raising. The wards were a flashing sheet of multicolored light, a blur of their reality, darkness, something else and then wild splashes of greens and reds and blues. He could not stare at it for long. It made his stomach twist and lunge for the nearest exit.

The glass of the hot houses obscured the wild light show at the edge of the wards. Blaise found Neville in the back of the ornamental flower section, tending the bright fall of wizarding show flowers with gentle hands.

"I thought those were Professor Sprout's project?" Blaise folded his arms across his chest and leaned against one of the support pillars.

Neville cast a glance and a smile over his shoulder at Blaise – the plants must have told Neville he was coming, Blaise mused. Otherwise, Neville was prone to jumping when he was startled.

"Professor Sprout is…busy," Neville murmured, turning back to the flowers. "I thought I would see to them until she could take over."

Blaise cast a glance up at the heavy paned glass above their heads. The soft shifting sound of semi-sentient plants rustling filled the silence.

"It's pretty," Neville interrupted Blaise's study of the walls. He was closer than the Slytherin had realized. Neville stripped off the soil-stained gloves and set them on a wooden potting table.

"Pretty?" Blaise tilted his head to one side, holding his ground as Neville approached.

"The lights," Neville glanced up, just as a sheet of purple lightning arched over their heads. The ground rumbled beneath them. Blaise caught Neville against his chest and held on as the ground bucked beneath them.

"It's getting worse," Blaise said.

"I know," Neville curled his hands into Blaise's robes.

"We should go inside."

"I'd rather stay here."

"But the glass…"

Neville's eyes were shadowed as he met Blaise's stare. "The glass won't matter if the wards fail."

Blaise slid an arm around Neville's waist and burned his face into the other boy's hair. "You're right. It won't."

The touch of Neville's lips to the hollow of Blaise's throat took his breath away. He pulled back to frame Neville's face in his hands and kissed him, long and slow, neither flinching as the crashes overhead began to come faster and faster.

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Hermione had built a fort out of books when she was a child. Her parents had had the picture framed and put up on one of the hallway walls in a place of honor. They had joked that her first experience with books had shaped the rest of her life. She wished she had had the chance to tell them that it had and that she loved them and that she was sorry, for all and every little thing she could think of in the long wait of day to night to day again.

Colin found her in the morning, slipping into the empty library with warm plates in his hands. Madam Pince had taken oaths to the castle to sustain her sets of wards on the library, so she was confined to her rooms, unable to scold them for bringing food into her sacred temple of knowledge.

"You should eat," he slid a plate in front of her, along with a set of silverware. She made a face, but tucked in. He slid in next to her, working at his own plate.

She had not liked him, in the beginning, when Tom had introduced her to the small group of exiles he helped when he could. She had not understood, hadn't cared why they fought or why they were so determined to blow off the Ministry and break all the rules. It had taken a few weeks for them to earn her trust – and it had taken longer for her to earn their respect, but in the end, she figured it had been worth it.

"The traps you gave me worked wonders," Colin said into the silence.

"Where?"

"At the Ministry."

"…Oh."

"Quite the prank, I'd say. Never figured you for that type."

"I'm not."

"Friends, then?"

"…Not exactly." Fred and George had taken a while to respond to her letter. It had taken her longer to send it in the first place. She had not wanted to contact them, to open old wounds better left healed. The distractions for Colin had been necessary, though, and she knew she had not near enough talent to come up with them on her own. So she had swallowed her pride and written to them, calling in every debt she could think that they owed her.

Their response had been…strained. There had been a dearth of things they had sent her, enough joke bombs, booby traps and other assorted items that she had more than enough to pick and choose from to send with Colin. It was the news that they had sent with the package that had troubled her most.

Charlie's tenure as head of the Weasley family was still strong. Their mother, they had written, had taken a visit to St. Mungo's along with Ron. She had yet to leave the recovery ward by the time Hermione had received their letter.

As for Ron…well. They had had good news and bad. The good was that he had finally woken from the poison-induced coma he had been in since Corner's attack. The bad news was that Ron had not handled the return to his body well. He, too, was still at St. Mungo's, but in a different type of coma, more of a state of catatonia that the Healers could not seem to draw him from.

Hermione made a face, the news of Harry's torment at the Healers of St. Mungo's putting a different spin to the twins' letter. She had meant to write to them, to urge them to take Ron from the hospital, but things had gotten too sticky in her life for her to spare any attention for them. Now, a small part of her had wished she had taken the time to write. She was firm on smacking the sense out of that part of her.

"Did I bother you?"

She blinked out of her thoughts, and found Colin staring at her, his plate empty and pushed away while her own eggs had long gone cold.

"Blast," she muttered and waved a warming charm over her plate. She didn't miss the hungry way Colin's eyes followed her wand.

"You have your own, now," she said, not turning to meet his gaze.

"…It's not the same."

She nodded, curling her fist tight around the handle of her wand. "Yeah," she agreed. "It's not." She couldn't imagine what it would be like to have her wand snapped in front of her eyes, feel the connection lost. Her wand was almost like an extra limb, a part of her she kept close to her side at all times. To lose it would be like losing a leg or worse.

The castle shook as a vicious roar of thunder seemed to erupt right over their heads. She jumped, her plate rattling, books falling from their shelves as the whole library was moved by the force of the storm meeting the wards.

"Can you imagine what it's like out there?" Colin propped his elbow on the table and studied the murky sky outside the high windows.

"I'd rather not," Hermione pushed her plate away with a sigh.

"If it's affecting us like this…"

"I'd rather not play let's imagine, thank you," she winced at her own tone, but did not try to take back her words.

"Your family?"

"I have one, yes."

He touched her shoulder, but she pulled away. "They could be fine," he offered.

Another storm hit the wards, then another a second after. The walls shuddered and the racket of books falling to the floor echoed in the room.

"I doubt that," she said in a breath of calm between storms. Then the next series hit and they were too busy hiding under the tables as parts of the ceiling rained down to talk more.

End Chapter Fifty