His soul thou canst not have; therefore be gone. –Richard III, I.2.49
A werewolf on the run from the law, an anthropomorphized basilisk, a garden snake, and a Parselmouth disguised by Fae magic were preparing to break into the Ministry of Magic…. It sounded like the start of a "met in a bar" joke.
But it wasn't. The fours' faces were tight and drawn, deadly serious. They knew that the future of an entire race depended on what they did tonight. They knew that they might have only one chance- who knew what the Ministry would do if they failed and the government discovered it? At the very least, they would move the Chalice somewhere less easy to invade. At the worst, they would learn what the silver cup could do- and destroy it.
"Ready?" Pollux asked.
Tyr grunted, every inch of him a wolf.
Merlin, how he loathed using a child like this… but what choice did he have? He had to free his people. And Harry was right- he did have the Dark Lord's memories. He was far older than his twelve (almost thirteen) years implied.
His wolf-self's feelings were a great deal simpler. It did not like that the raven was in danger, but it understood that pack leaders were first in the hunt. And what a quarry they were hunting! It lurked beneath the human façade, almost dancing with anticipation. Soon the pain would end; soon they would be one in truth.
Go back to sleep, the human Tyr ordered. This is a hunt for wit and reason, not raw instinct and power.
Without the moon's strength, the wolf had no choice but to obey. It retreated to the depths of its counterpart's mind, waiting.
"You're sure you'll be okay?" asked Pallas.
Hermione Granger, her true name was. It hadn't been difficult to match Harry's friends with Pollux's companions. Daphne Greengrass/ Bianca Frost had given him a bit of trouble, but that had been quickly resolved by a few innocent questions to Remus.
The bushy-haired Ravenclaw was the oldest of Harry's little gang (excepting Saysa, of course). She was a ripe old thirteen years and would turn fourteen on September 17. Thirteen. Five children, two merely twelve, and the others thirteen, were dealing with this. Five prepubescent students with the world on their shoulders, facing danger in the eye; what a frightening thought.
Merlin and Morgana, he hated this.
"We'll be fine," Pollux assured her. "Relax, Pallas."
Sisith hissed something that made the young witch smile. "Right as always," she admitted. "But you will be careful, won't you?"
"Not to use caution is the height of foolishness," Saysa assured her. "Do you really think we are fools?"
"They'll be fine," Alexander agreed.
Neville Longbottom. Born a day before Harry and Mark Potter, making him the second youngest among the five. Thought to be a Squib for most of his life. Superbly gifted in Herbology, dismal at Potions- probably the fault of his professor.
Tyr glanced at the other two. Apollo Peverell and Bianca Frost- Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass- were the calmest of the lot, probably due to their Slytherin upbringing. They knew that they had planned and predicted as much as they possibly could, so there was nothing left to do but to actually do it.
"Let's go," he said. If he didn't interrupt now, who knew how long the delay would last?
"Right," Pollux agreed, his voice hard. "Let's go."
No one noticed as they Apparated into the Ministry. Tyr and Saysa had been glamored to hide their most distinctive traits. Sisith hid in Pollux's pocket. The Parselmouth himself had done nothing to hide Pollux's tall form. Why should he? His rescue of the kidnapped purebloods back in January was famous, but few people knew his face or name.
It was a bit unusual for people to be Apparating into the building at this time in the evening, but no one cared enough to comment. They didn't realize how truly pathetic their security was, thinking themselves safe behind the full might of the Ministry.
As they approached the pathetic security checkpoint, they squabbled about how "Paul" had been stupid to leave his paperwork in the office and they were going to be late to dinner. "Paul" snapped back at "Sarah" and "Dad" that he'd had a long day, so could they please quit harping on him?
The bored security wizard took their wands (Saysa used Daphne's spare. Tyr, not wanting to find out if his wand was on the Wanted list, used Apollo's spare). He inspected them briefly before handing them back. "We close at nine," he mumbled.
"I know, I know," Pollux grumbled. "C'mon, Dad, Sarah."
The elevator was almost empty. It was after eight, almost time to close up the building, and most evening employees were in their offices trying to finish up the day's work.
Unspeakables and some other wizards got off at five. Other departments (for instance, the Aurors) had two shifts- seven to three and one to nine. No one was entirely certain why the shifts had two hours of overlap, but they weren't complaining. Overlap helped them get more work done and catch up with their friends.
Due to the Unspeakables' hours, the bottom floor was completely deserted. Pollux, Tyr, and Saysa didn't bother to hide themselves as they approached the door to the Department of Mysteries. Even the serpent-woman's glamor had been removed. It hurt her eyes, and she needed to use her serpent sight.
Sisith crawled out of his friend's clothing. The Parselmouth murmured spells under his breath, waving Voldemort's wand. A silver X appeared on the door to the storage area. Once the portal had been marked, he closed the exit.
The room spun around them, black and a streak of silver. Tyr grimaced. His stomach roiled.
The spinning doors slowed to a halt. Without missing a beat, Pollux pushed the X-marked portal open. "Lumos," he incanted. His wand-tip lit up with enough intensity to brighten the entire room.
Sisith led the way. The others had memorized the route, but they all reasoned that it was better to follow someone who had actually lived there.
Tyr's wolf had awakened again. It prowled his skull, watching through his eyes. The human didn't protest. As long as his animal self didn't try to interfere, putting it back to sleep was more trouble than it was worth.
The storage area was filled with everything from rubbish to rubies- three huge rubies set in a band of gold that emitted a low humming noise. When Saysa saw them, she shuddered slightly and edged away. No one asked what her serpent sight had told her about the gems.
They entered the room containing the Chalice of the Moon with a distinct feeling of anticlimax. They had known, intellectually at least, that they weren't likely to be interrupted, but still….
The wolf danced with excitement in Tyr's mind. The man was almost tempted to join it.
Two crescents shined on the handle, lunar phases blazed across the brim. Delicate carvings of plants were carved into the sides. Even to Tyr's mundane eyes, the silver goblet seemed to emanate with moonlight. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Saysa averted her gaze. Her golden eyes were watering. "I'm sorry," she apologized, "but looking at that… is like looking into the sun." She blinked several times, apparently deactivating her serpent sight, and turned back. "I do not believe that there were any extraneous enchantments on it."
Tyr grit his teeth. The wolf begged him to go forward, to drink of the cup and be cured. It bubbled and boiled beneath his skin, fighting its restraints with all its strength. All the werewolf's self-control was absorbed in keeping his animal self under wraps.
Pollux murmured several spells. They shot from the tip of Voldemort's wand onto the silvery cup. He cocked his head slightly, reading the results. "It doesn't have any tracking or alarm spells that Voldemort knows about." But he did not move.
Sisith, who had been lying near his feet, reared up to hiss at him. Pollux listened with a rueful grin. "You're right. I am being paranoid."
He strode forward and gripped the Chalice of the Moon.
The wolf howled in exultation. Yes, yes, yes, y- NO!
The animal tore through Tyr's mental defenses, seizing control of their shared body. The werewolf's mind bounced against the walls of his skull. He was nothing but a viewer, helpless and stunned.
The wolf barreled into Pollux, knocking him over. The two males went flying into a pile of rubbish.
An odd thing happened when Tyr's body made contact with Pollux's. His muscles locked up, leaving him utterly paralyzed. Only his momentum kept them flying forward.
As they fell through the room, the Chalice of the Moon went flying from the younger wizard's hand.
"What the bloody-"
A poison-orange curse flamed through the air where Pollux's head had been half a second before. It collided with yet another heap of unidentified items.
The Imperius Curse.
Protect the raven, the wolf snarled.
The animal relinquished control of its body. It knew that this was a fight for men and serpents- and that it couldn't fight this adversary. It would take too much energy to maintain control of the body on a waxing-moon night.
Tyr rolled, just barely avoiding another curse. Had it hit Harry? No, thank Merlin, he had dodged too.
Saysa grappled with something invisible in the center of the room. Her pupils were mere black lines, her fangs bared in a hiss of fury. She jerked her head, trying to bite, but the crack! of Apparition interrupted her.
The basilisk's body went flying, crashing into the wall. She collapsed. Her form seemed to ripple, just as it did whenever she shape-changed.
Had Tyr been thinking of anything other than protecting Harry from their invisible assailant, he would have worried about what would happen if she reverted. This room wasn't large enough to hold a sixty-plus-foot basilisk.
Something cold washed down his spine. He started, wondering why he wasn't dead yet. Then he realized that it had been a Disillusionment Charm- a powerful one, too.
Items clanged together, creating a cacophonous din. Pollux's voice breathed into Tyr's ear. "Sisith can see him. He can get to him. We need to distract him."
There were a thousand ways Tyr could have kept the wizard busy. He might not have had any formal magical schooling, but he knew how to wield a wand.
But that was when the unconscious Saysa's ripples turned into actual physiological changes. Most of those changes were unimportant, but one was not.
She grew. Five feet tall and sixty feet long, she expanded into the form a giant green-scaled snake.
Tyr grabbed at Pollux's cloak, dragged him away from the transforming serpent. A tiny part of him wondered if Sisith was all right- the snarky snake had grown on him- but he squashed the concern. Sisith was fine. He could find someplace to hide; he was small enough to avoid being crushed to death. He and Harry, though, were not.
"Parvus!" a man's voice bellowed. Tyr's blood ran cold. He knew that voice; he had spoken with it many times about letting more werewolves into Hogwarts, maybe even starting up an adult education program.
Albus Dumbledore.
"SAYSA!" Harry yelled. Footsteps pounded against the floor. How had he gotten into the room? Oh, wait- of course. Dumbledore had cast a shrinking spell.
The implications thundered through him like a flash flood. Great Merlin, he was taking Saysa!
But he would not do so without a fight. Pollux lacked the serpent sight, but he made up for it by blasting everything and everything. Red spells, green hexes, blue incantations, yellow, brown, black, white…. Tyr couldn't identify half of them.
But the young Parselmouth wasn't the only wizard in the room. The invisible Dumbledore returned fire: red, purple, and magenta, with the occasional flash of green. He had transfigured something into a slavering mastiff, which charged at Harry whenever it caught his scent. The wizard was forced to shoot curses at the immense hound, giving his location away.
Tyr had no idea what to do. Dumbledore was moving too quickly for him to hit. He couldn't see Saysa or Sisith- perhaps they'd already been captured. So he did the only thing he could do and cast a finite incantatem at the mastiff. It yelped once before reverting to its natural form.
The Chalice of the Moon hit the ground with a ping.
For a brief, eternal moment, the flurry of spells stopped. Tyr and Harry focused on the silver cup. Dumbledore, it seemed, had turned his attention to the newcomer, because he loosed an ugly green curse in the werewolf's direction.
Tyr dove to the floor, rolled over debris. The Chalice was close, so close-
"Accio!"
The second it reached his hand, his body clenched up. He was paralyzed, unable to move.
And the cup was visible, a dead giveaway to his location.
"Protego!" Pollux roared in fury, and just in time. Dumbledore's curse rebounded off his hastily erected shield.
Harry must have thrown all his might into maintaining his shield. He ran to Tyr. One hand fumbled in his pockets. It clenched around a green ring in the shape of an ouroboros.
He dropped the ring onto Tyr's chest. He spoke in Parseltongue, but the werewolf knew exactly what he was saying: "Ad insulam fundatorum!"
And Tyr was gone.
Saysa. He had to get Saysa. Saysa and Sisith, two of his first and only friends. But how could he when his adversary was Albus Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard alive?
At least Tyr was safe; that was some comfort.
His magic was beginning to tire. He was powerful, yes, but he was still only a child, and a great deal less powerful than Dumbledore. There was a reason that Voldemort feared him.
He took a leaf out of his enemy's book and transfigured the first thing he found into a poisonous serpent. "The old man harmed a basilisk," he explained between firing spells.
"A King of Serpents?" The snake was enraged. "He shall die for that!" It charged.
The Killing Curse put a quick end to its fury.
Crack!
The noise echoed throughout the room. Harry, wand at the ready, kept firing spells. Hopefully at least one would hit him when he rematerialized.
But Dumbledore did not return fire.
Harry slowed his barrage. Panting softly, he scanned the room. Nothing. No telltale blurs, no strange shadows… no stripe of green.
His heart constricted.
"Sisith?" he called softly. "Saysa?"
No response, so he called again. This time, the black garden snake hissed a reply. "Over here."
The snake wasn't entirely certain how he had been wounded, but he was unable to move. Three of his ribs ached. Harry touched his head very gently. "I'm going to stun you, okay? I'll wake you up when we're back at the Isle."
The serpent nodded weakly. "What happened to Saysa and Tyr?" he worried.
"Tyr is fine, and I'm sure that Saysa is around here somewhere. I think she hit her head pretty hard, and then Dumbledore shrank her. I just have to find her."
Sisith did not seem convinced, but he allowed Harry to put him to sleep.
The Parselmouth searched as quickly and thoroughly as he could. He kept his ears peeled- who knew who had heard the fight?
But the only serpent he found was a golden armband. Roman, he thought, but he didn't know enough about the history of jewelry to say for sure.
Should he go through the room again? He wondered, nervously fingering the thin gold. Or perhaps she had been knocked into another chamber. Who knew what all those spells had done?
The other possibility, that she had been captured, he refused to contemplate.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Harry's grip tightened on the armband.
A trio of Aurors entered the room. The Parselmouth held his breath. His heart thudded in his ears.
Maybe they were incompetent idiots. They were Ministry employees, after all. Idiocy was in the job description.
"Hominem revelio," intoned the lead Auror, a handsome black man.
Harry had no choice. He spun on his heel and Disapparated.
Or at least, he tried. It seemed that the Aurors had erected anti-Apparition wards. How on earth had he gotten the only competent ones in the entire building?
The black Auror hurled a hex at him. Muscles whining in protest, he rolled aside.
Red light beamed from his wand, but the Auror dodged the Stunner easily. It hit one of the other wizards, a beefy blond. He collapsed.
The black Auror hurled spells at his enemy. He was good; he knew which incantations could get past protego and which were useless against it. Harry switched his shield type to the Silver Barricade. This spell was stronger, but it took up a great deal more energy.
He was already tired, and the Silver Barricade wasn't helping. It kept him safe, yes, but it also kept him trapped. And while he was maintaining his shield, he couldn't use any offensive spells. His wand was already busy; he couldn't-
Wait a minute, he was wrong, no, not his wand. Voldemort's wand was busy. His wand was not.
Harry smirked, dug a stick of holly from his pocket. Timing would be everything.
Stupefy, he thought, and dropped the Silver Barricade.
He had never used two wands at once before, not when they were casting different spells. Had he been less stressed, less filled with desperate adrenaline, he never would have succeeded. But his fear gave him focus.
The Stunning Spell hit the black Auror square in the chest. His expression changed to almost comical surprise as he collapsed to the floor.
Harry didn't stick around for the third Auror, the one who was still conscious, to figure out that a simple ennervate would restore his comrades. He sent another Stunner after the only remaining threat and hightailed it.
Fortunately, those three Aurors had only been the advance guard. The Ministry knew that something was wrong, and it had sent a trio of scouts to find out what. They hadn't expected that a single unknown wizard could defeat three highly trained Aurors.
The entire Department of Mysteries was covered in anti-Portkey and anti-Apparition wards. The part of Harry that wasn't panicking noted that the Aurors- or, more likely, the black Auror- had thought this through. They had blocked his escape before going in to confront him.
Too bad they hadn't gotten the anti-Apparition wards up before Dumbledore left.
Dumbledore… his heart constricted. Dumbledore had Saysa. Great Merlin, Dumbledore had Saysa.
He forced the awful realization away. He would help Saysa, yes, but first he had to help himself. He couldn't do anything for her if he was trapped by the Ministry.
Besides, that would be embarrassing.
He darted into the spinning entryway, marked the door he needed with a silver X. The room revolved, faster and faster, just as it had when he and Saysa and Tyr came here earlier. They had been rested then, and optimistic, despite the knowledge that something could easily go wrong.
The doors slowed, halted. Harry ducked through the marked portal- right into another tiny contingent of Aurors, who had grown worried about their comrades' lack of response.
The Auror he had collided with staggered backwards. She swore violently. Harry was tempted to join in, but he had better things to do. Besides, he didn't want to give them anything that would let them identify him. He was still Disillusioned to the point of invisibility, but if he spoke, they would know his voice. It probably wouldn't do them much good, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.
He spun, silent as a snake-
"Get him!" someone shrieked.
-but it was too late. Pollux Ophion Riddle was gone.
Yes, the black Auror was Kingsley. It's just Harry's luck to get the only competent one in the entire Ministry.
"Parvus" is Latin for small.
This absurdly fast update is due to my wonderful beta Tetsurga. Chapter 15 will be up within the month.
-Antares