Note: There it goes chapter 10. A little later than usual, as I have been on a trip, and didn't have much time to write. My poor beta has been working around the clock to have this on time. Yet, it's finally done. Yei! ; ) We hope you like it
And now …
Welcome to:
SPIDERWEB
Chapter 10-Falling down.
The branches of the great tree were hanging tiredly, weighted down by the years, the hawthorn, mistletoe and ivy, which had been growing on him.
The moss that covered it like a mantle, was of a discolored grey. And his trunk, that rose in the forest as a tower, had the fragile dye of old crust.
The news had affected deeply the great father of the forest.
" Soul, how could you have left him go? " The sigh as wind between his leaves, fell on the elder vela accusingly.
The acromántulas that were climbing over the great Father of the forest, fidgeted. All of them knew the vela. As old as he was, nearly everyone in the forest did, but now their silent gazes were like mirrors, for all the recognition in them.
"Harry is not a boy any longer, he's a man. None of us should forget it." Soul answered calmly, before the tree.
Where others would have bend with respect, Soul had never seen the need. They knew each other for so long, though the spirit sometimes forgot the bows of familiarity that tied them together.
The branches waved softly, in a non-existent breeze, the fret of leaves turning into a disagreeable sound.
"You know how much we need Harry, how much depends on him. And now that finally he has found a submissive, you allow his return to the human world." The words came out soft, scarcely discernible. Delicate and aggrieved. "Perhaps you don't value the life of all those that live in the forest?"
Soul shook his head tiredly, a shig weighting in his old fallen shoulders.
"You know that's not true. I have always valued the life of the forest. More than I have valued any other thing. You, better than anyone, should know it." The old vela raised his gaze to the great tree. His blue eyes were veiled by age, opaque, yet, nevertheless, the pain that was reflected in them by a moment, was bleeding still, in spite of the decades that had passed.
A twig got up to rub his cheek. An almost remorseful cares. Soul put a hand on it, as if to retain the delicate leaves against his skin. But the contact was so soft, that the spirit might have liberated himself, almost without trying, if he had wanted it.
However, none of them resigned the touch.
"Why, Soul? " The words were a strange ripple, probably … Soul thought that there was sadness in them. But if it was, he could not say.
"I wanted to give them time." He mumbled.
For the first time since the vela began to speak, something more than surety dyed his words. Slightly sweet and sour, and fragile … "Time to know each other, away from the responsibilities that would have pressed on Harry otherwise."
"These responsibilities will not disappear because you have sent him far away from them." The spirit sounded so tired and elderly…
"I know. But we have taken so much from this young man… doesn't he deserve the opportunity to be happy?" His old wrinkled fingers, caressed the dry leaves resting on his skin.
oOo
(Draco)
The ground trembled violently.
Draco and Raksa stumbled on the wave that vibrated through the stone like an earthquake, but they did not fall.
"Wha-?!"
Gingy entered running hysterically, stumbling in his hurry to reach them, screaming with a high voice senseless things, Draco did not have time to try and decipher.
"SUT UP!" Draco's shout managed to silence the domestic elf, but did not stop his ears for being twisted between his little hands, eyes enormous and tearful.
The castle trembled again, shaken as if something immense had struck it. Powder started falling from the black stone of the ceiling. But this time, Draco was prepared and he managed to remain standing without stumbling, the elf, on the other hand, tripled, and would have hit the wall, had Raksa not been there to grab him.
"What's that?" asked Raksa
Malfoy did not answer, already taking the first clean tunic of the wardrobe, and gathering the boots and the coat left in the ground.
Raksa turned to Gingy, with an amiability Draco had deemed him incapable of.
"What's happening?"
The elf whined on the verge of crying, and Draco felt his patience quiver while he dressed with almost violent movements.
"… w … us … .we … "-big teardrops glittered in his glassy bulging eyes.
Harry put a hand on the shoulder of the domestic elf, kindly bending towards him.
"Calm down Gyngy, you can say it." the serenity of his voice managed to calm the little one enough, so he could suck up his snot, and finish a phrase.
"… We are … are being attacked."
Draco closed his fists a second, with the cords of the boot he was tying, pressed between his fingers.
It was not the first time that Hogwarts had been attacked, but it was the first one in which the castle had trembled. At least one of the barriers must had been broken. Yet, it was impossible for someone outside the castle to break them without activating all the multiple alarms in place.
It must have been someone already inside.
"The spy." Fury ignited his veins, bubbling through his blood stream, and turning the word into molten metal.
"Very well Gyngy. You might return with the other elves." he commanded.
The small one swallowed distressingly. His ears trembling.
"Gyngy cannot leave. Master Dumbledore ordered him to monitor Draco Malfoy." his high voice grating on the spy's nerves.
The spy turned to scream at him, his patience running thin, but Raksa was already speaking.
"Imperius." The enormous bulging eyes expanded furthermore, waiting for the orders of the arachnid. "Gyngy, return with the other elves, help them, and do not tell anybody what you have seen in this room."
The use of an unforgivable on the elf, would surely warn Dumbledore, but as things stood, Draco didn't think he would mind.
Raksa's aptitude for casting magic without a wand, caught his attention for a second, -Was it something exclusive of him? Or could all widows focus their magic without help?- but only the second he took to remember the danger lurking outside.
"Yes master." Gingy disappeared with a pop, the exact moment in which Hogwarts's heavy structure started trembling again, squeaking ominously.
This time the quake too powerful to remain standing. Draco staggered …
"Malfoy!" Raksa's arms were around him before he could fall, strong and sure. His nymph-like eyes fixed on him with a violent and protective intensity that made Draco feel …icy. A strange kind of cold seized his entrails, in response to the danger and to the protective contact of the other. A sensacíon that made him tremble … nicely, softly …
He blinked, caught in the moment, trying to understand the sensacíon. The strangeness, and furthermore, the rare familiarity. Since, somehow, it didn't feel his, but at the same time, he owned it with an intensity deeper, than that of any other feeling he had had before.
"Are you ok?" Raksha's deep hissing voice, touched, without him wishing it, with the worry of the black widow awake in Harry's mind.
Such care surprised the blond for a second… Until he remembered the reason behind his protective attitude: the hatchling.
His gray irises cooled to a steely hue.
The new tremor stopped, and Draco took the opportunity to liberate himself from those arms forcibly. Seeking to put distance between the two of them, which his mind needed desperately to recover the composure.
Harry allowed Malfoy to move away, observing him seriously for the first time.
Draco, suddenly, seemed... Fragile.
With the wrinkled clothes shaping his thin body, the ashy pallor of his skin … too pale for a human being ... and the almost broken weariness of his enormous gray eyes.
He looked ragged.
"Malfoy …"
"I'm ok." The words came out hard and flat, credible. But he was not. He was not. And Harry could smell the lie in the sweat of his icy skin. Yet, he decided not to insist, now they had bigger problems to take care of.
Outside their room shouts were starting to be heard.
Draco opened the door and went out to the corridor, where other people living in the dungeons had been woken up by the assault, now coming out of their chambers too, to run towards the stairs and the top floors in nightshirts and pajamas, wands in hand.
Parents were shouting hysterically as they pulled their children along, fleeing. While several members of the order were hurrying to gather the smaller ones in groups they could carry to safety.
Big brothers hugged their kid brothers, who were crying disconsolately.
Scared mothers gave their farewell to their spouses, as they went with the members of the order, their children in their arms. Women and men ran up the stairs, and in the distance, the roar of the battle could be heard.
Harry pulled the hood above his inhuman face, and both went out to the marabunta. However, as they advanced the tide of people grew more and more, until they were drowned by the crowd. Pushed, pulled, and thrown, by all those persons trying to escape.
Nonetheless Malfoy did not seem to notice, fighting to reach the stairs, trying desperately to help repel the forces of the Dark Lord, to save the ones he loved, and who he did not know where they could be among all the madness; His godfather Severus, his best friend Mione, her children Rose and Hugo, who were like his own nephews, and also, the only family member in whom he still could trust, Sirius, and the friend who had trusted in him when nobody had, Remus, and his son Teddy … All of them could be somewhere among all that howling meath. And Draco was rapidly understanding the danger of the situation.
oOo
Inside his ribcage his heart drummed frantically, as each passed second further nailed how grave the assault was.
Draco fighted to advance faster, but it was almost impossible. The stairs could be in another world entirely, for all he could reach them.
Nonetheless he continued pushing ahead, determined. Raksa followed closely, not allowing the waves of people to separate them. Charging ahead pass anyone who interposed between him and his submissive, no matter who the one was.
The castle trembled again, much more violently that before, the whole structure groaned, and several fragments of the ceiling fell down. Enormous pieces of rock that smashed people under them. Horrible crawling sounds of bone being ground to pulp.
The shouts grew to be unbearable. Howls of horror, panic and agony. Everything got out of control. The crowd wanted to escape, and there did not seem to matter who was the one between them and the exit.
Draco was pushed violently, stumbled. If he fell down he would be trampled by the crowd. Someone struck his legs, he lost his balance completely, and panted knowing he was going to fall under the feet of the howling mob, as he stretched an arm trying to grab something in a last desperate gesture of survival… Raksa's claws closed around his wrist, pulling him towards the refuge of his body.
Draco fell against the powerful torso, and the arms of the viuda surrounded him protectively. The widow's chitin, hard as steel, plates, acting like a shield against the marabunta around them.
Malfoy panted, hyperventilating, the anxiety of the whole situation striking him with violence. He had to find Rose, Sirius, Severus, Mione, Remus, Hugo, Teddy… before it was too late!
Even now, if he found them, they could still fight back. Even escape if it was the only option left.
Everything trembled again, more shouts, shrieks, more pieces of the ceiling falling on them. The whole structure resounded as struck by a gigantic monster. Enormous fragments of rock fell on the crowd, squashing the wretches who were trying to escape.
All sanity got lost.
Harry caught Draco against the wall, protecting him from the rain of stone, his body as a screen against the unleashed hell.
Some of the wizards and witches tried to stop the rocks with magic, but almost at once became obvious that it was not having any effect. The Dark Lord seemed to want to demolish the castle on them, and somehow he had found a way to stop any protective magic from touching the stone. A work that must have taken months to develop, years to plan. A task he could have never completed without help.
"The spy." The word torn and drowned in his head, while he saw over Raksa's shoulder, how people were trodden by others, were pushed, WERE KILLED in their attempt to flee.
He listened to the shouts of the moribund ones. The roar of the crowd fallen into madness. It was like hell itself had fallen on them. A hell in which Raksa alone kept him standing. Protecting him with his body. Sheltering Draco from the blows and pushes, with everything he had.
…
"Draco!" the shout scarcely stood out from the cacophony around, but it light inside him like a spark. He turned his head, trying to see the one who had called him. "DRACO!" this time stronger.
And he saw him.
His godfather, Severus, was fighting to reach them. He opened his mouth to call back … And the whole of Hogwarts inclined to its side, part of the bases, finally, giving up under the assault.
The world seemed to come down with the collapse of the castle, in a wave that threw them against the wall in which Raksa and sheltered them, with the violence of a level 7 earthquake.
Draco got paralyzed seeing it happen in slow motion, his mind slowed down with pure horror. Knowing that they would be killed. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see the impact happen. And he felt the guardian curl around him, covering him with his body, before the wave hit them squarely.
The impact was brutal.
Everything trembled, shouts, howlings. The blow threw Raksa against Draco almost squashing the spy with his musculature, the powerful arms anchored in the rock the only thing that managed to prevent it, giving the blond a minimal space to shelter in.
They were swallowed by the tide of meat.
The whole structure of the building continued trembling, this time continuously. Hogwarts was falling on them. Blood splashed them both when more rocks detached from the structure and fell on the rebels. An ominous crackle that threatened to deafen them, and the whole top floor started falling down.
Raksa roared.
In his small human form, he couldn't protect Draco. Instinct burned him within. And he suddenly didn't mind if they saw him for what he was, since in any case, they were dead if he didn't change.
The still conscious ones around them shrieked in pure horror, while Harry roared again, and his body destroyed the tunic as he transformed, growing and expanding up to the enormous acromántula that was his animal form. His corpachón taking up almost the whole width of the corridor. The ceiling finally gave in. And he bowed as tight as it was possible, keeping Draco under his body surrounded by the protective cage of his legs.
With a last crackle Hogwarts fell down on them.
It will continue