Disclaimer: Read carefully in case I am accused of twisting my own logic – it has never been mentioned that the protection keeps people in, only that it keeps people out. This will be important later…
Note: *Kimmeth hoofs it up to London, kidnaps Ramin Karimloo and prods him with a knitting needle until he sings.* And weeks pass, and months pass, time runs dry, still Kimmeth does not update… Sorry folks, at least it hasn't been TEN LONG YEARS! Ok, enough with the LND references. I'm here now, with a double bill no less, so that I don't leave you hanging on a cliffie for another however many months. I'm sorry for the mega delay but it's been stress central here!
Previously on C&I: Well, it's all go! The Order has stormed the Ministry but it hasn't gone quite as to plan as they hoped and they now have a hostage situation and a rogue werewolf on their hands… Back at Hogwarts, Voldemort has turned up at the castle gates baying for blood. Thankfully the staff have invoked an ancient protection (no, not an Argyle Sweater of Doom) but how long will it last?
Chapter Sixty-One
The Wiles of the Serpent
They had all known, somehow, that it would happen that evening. The indescribable tension in the air, that had been in the air ever since Harry had unwittingly revealed Snape's true allegiance to Voldemort, had been building up all day until it was unbearable, screaming to be released. Indeed, Harry had spent the majority of the day – lessons having been cancelled whilst the staff held various crisis talks – staring out of the windows of the Gryffindor common room, watching the gates and waiting for something, anything to happen. It was the waiting that was the killer, that fear of the unknown that could only be dispersed with the arrival of that same unknown.
Well, it was not a complete unknown that they were anticipating. Sooner or later, Voldemort's army would arrive at the gates baying for blood, and no-one, least of all Harry, had been at all surprised when this had come to pass. Now they were waiting for what happened next, something that none of them could predict. Voldemort's ultimatum had gone out, and Harry had found himself suddenly the centre of attention; he could sense the eyes of everyone else in the common room boring into him and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He turned and faced the rest of the gathered Gryffindors, most of them members of Dumbledore's Army, all wearing looks of a fierce determination and protectiveness that their house's symbol would be proud of.
"Let him come," said Ron simply, under his breath. "You aren't going anywhere, mate."
Harry was touched by the camaraderie, but there was something in the back of his mind telling him that even if it did come down to a battle, Voldemort storming the castle with the express intention of killing him, there was still something else. It would still not be the end, no matter how hard they might fight or, dare they hope, how victorious they might seem to be. His thoughts had immediately turned in that direction as soon as he had heard Neville working out a plan of action for getting the rest of the DA together and forming some kind of defensive strategy, as soon as he had heard mention of the Slytherins.
Nagini. The final horcrux. She was still out there somewhere, and she needed to be killed before Voldemort himself. If this was to be the definitive battle – and from the size of the attacking and defending forces it certainly looked as if it was going to be – then Nagini would have to be destroyed first. It was a task far more easily said than done. Harry sank into one of the unoccupied armchairs, trying to look interested in Neville's plan but all the while desperately trying to work out the logistics of a nigh-on impossible task. For a start, he did not know where the snake might be, where Voldemort might have hidden her for safe-keeping in the wake of the destruction of the rest of his horcruxes. Even if he did have the faintest clue as to a location, he faced the even more unenviable task of getting out of the castle in order to do anything about her. The building was in a lockdown and if he tried to leave by any sort of conventional method then everyone, especially Professor McGonagall, would know about it, and he did not think for a minute that the headmistress would approve of his setting foot out of the safety of the castle's confines in order to venture into enemy territory, however noble his mission was.
"Harry?"
"Harry?"
It took Harry several moments to realise that Ron and Hermione were attempting to talk to him, and he tore his gaze away from the middle distance to focus on their concerned faces and knitted brows.
"What's up?" asked Ron. "Well, the obvious excepted."
Harry made a quick glance around the common room at the rest of the Gryffindors, mobilising the DA as they were. Although they did not seem to be paying any attention to him in his little corner and were far more interested in what Neville was saying, he still didn't think it prudent to start explaining his train of thought out there in the open.
"Not here," he said to Ron. "Let's go somewhere private."
The others nodded their assent and Harry led their way to the boys' dormitory for want of a better meeting place.
"The final horcrux," he began, once they were safely closeted in the room and unafraid of unwitting eavesdroppers. "Nagini. She'll be out there, with Voldemort, and we've got to destroy her before we go for him."
Neither Ron nor Hermione said anything in response to the undeniable truth; what could they say?
"What should we do?" asked Ron eventually. "We can't exactly walk out of the gates and say 'hand over the snake and no-one gets hurt', can we?"
"We shouldn't do anything," said Hermione, her voice brittle. "He's being kept out of the grounds; what's the point in risking everything by going out to meet him when we're safe in here?"
"Hermione, he doesn't have the snake with him," said Ron. "Look out of the window."
The others duly looked; there was no sign of Nagini in Voldemort's immediate vicinity.
"If he's got her secreted away somewhere then he's not likely to bring her in with him if and when the boundary fails, is he?" Ron continued. "He's probably hidden her somewhere for the sole purpose of keeping her safe in case some lucky soul does manage to kill him in the eventual onslaught."
"In that case, where do you think she is?" asked Hermione. There was an undercurrent of exasperation in her voice, as if she was trying desperately to stop their fledgling plan in its tracks but was running out of arguments before she had begun. "You can't start combing the country for a snake whilst time is of the essence."
"The Manor, perhaps?" Ron suggested. Harry shook his head. He'd been thinking of possible locations ever since the predicament had first entered his head and was finally coming to conclusions.
"No, I think he'd want her closer than that. She's generally always fairly near him, in previous experience, except when he sends her out to do his bidding. Perhaps the fact that she's a horcrux with a degree of autonomy means he has to keep a closer eye on her." Harry couldn't explain why, but he had the definite feeling that she would be nearer rather than further away, somewhere concealed safely in the vicinity and able to be called upon when necessary. "I think she'll be behind their lines somewhere, a little way off, nice and hidden."
Ron gestured his agreement and Hermione gave a momentary grimace before giving hers.
"I still don't think…" She broke off and threw up her hands in defeat. "Well, if you're determined then I can't try and stop you. Have you given any thought to how you're going to get out and, conversely, back in? The doors and fireplaces are locked down."
There was a long pause of silent thought in the room before Ron answered with a single word.
"Fly."
"Pardon?"
"We can fly. Broomsticks, you know. Fly over the boundary. If Fred and George can do it then we can."
Harry agreed and the two boys pulled out their broomsticks. There was another moment of silence and although both of them looked ready to set off on their perilous mission straight away, there was still one problem that no-one had as yet given voice to.
"Do you know how you're going to destroy her once you find her?" asked Hermione, plainly stating the very problem that Harry was turning over in his mind. "The sword is still in Professor McGonagall's office and I think this is one occasion where she might be a little reluctant to let you have it."
Harry grimaced, whilst he could not say that he hadn't thought of this major drawback, he was trying not to think about the trouble that it would cause until the time came. It appeared, however, that the time had come.
"Perhaps we could just borrow it without her knowledge?" he suggested weakly. "I mean, the staff have been running around the castle like mad things for the majority of the day; there's no guarantee that she'll even be in her office. We know the password. It would be comparatively easy to get in, take the sword and get out again."
"And we haven't exactly been strangers to breaking an entering during our time at Hogwarts," Ron pointed out. Hermione opened her mouth to protest but seemed to think better of it and closed it again at the last minute. Since she had already accepted that she was not going to succeed in talking the other two out of their dangerous scheme, perhaps she thought that there was no point in trying to talk them out of one of the less risky aspects; especially when all three of them knew that there was really no alternative. She shook her head and turned away from them, peering out of the window towards the dread presence at the gates and them up into the darkening sky.
"It's such miserable weather," she said, the statement so completely unrelated to anything that they had just been discussing that Ron and Harry exchanged incredulous looks. "No-one would notice a little extra moving cloud cover in the midst of the swirling storm, would they?"
Harry recognised her meaning.
"Hermione, I knew we could count on you."
"Well, since I can't stop you I might as well help you as much as I can," she said. "Now, don't you two have a sword to steal? I need to work on camouflaging my clouds with the rest of them in case they do end up too noticeable."
Harry and Ron left the dormitory without another word, and they sidled down the steps and into the common room, hoping not to be noticed by the rest of the occupants and have to answer awkward questions about why they'd taken it into their heads to practise quidditch at this of all times. When they arrived in the room, however, they found it near empty, with only a few first years glued to the scene that was unfolding outside the window. The others must have gone off to round up the rest of the DA, although Harry doubted that Professor McGonagall would stand for any of the youngest members becoming embroiled in the now-inevitable battle. He and Ron left Gryffindor tower and hurried through the corridors; the few people that they met were too engrossed in their own goals to pay them or their broomsticks any heed. Here in the open, where everyone was preparing for attack on a greater or lesser scale, they were less likely to attract attention.
On their arrival at the headmistress's office, Harry knocked politely and, on receiving no reply, motioned for Ron to wait outside with their brooms. He crept in, prepared for an onslaught by the portraits, but none came. The frames were empty; even Dumbledore's chair was unoccupied. Whether the old heads had sensed the danger that the castle was in and made provisions for their escape or hiding accordingly, Harry could not say; he was simply grateful that his activities weren't under any more scrutiny. It was not really stealing, he told himself, nor was it even borrowing, since the sword did still technically belong to him. He was still justifying himself when he returned to Ron and slipped the sword under his cloak to conceal it.
"Astronomy tower?" suggested Ron.
The tallest tower, with its open balcony, was the only place in the castle where they could theoretically get outside without begin noticed; the rest of the castle's exits were barred and bolted and their leaving through them would have engendered much unwanted attention. All they had to do was hope that the astronomy professor was not keeping a look-out.
"It'll be fine," Ron reassured Harry, evidently thinking along the same lines. "If McGonagall isn't in her office then it's unlikely that Sinistra will be in hers. Besides, we can always fly up the tower if needs be."
Harry had a momentary image of their knocking an irate Professor Sinistra's hat off on the way up, but the comedic effect was completely at odds with the seriousness of the situation and he pushed it to one side. By mutual consent the two boys picked up their speed, increasing to almost, but not quite, a run as they traversed the corridors.
As selfish as the thought was, Harry was glad to have Ron by his side and know that he was not alone in this perilous mission. When Hermione had objected he had not expected Ron to defy her; during the past year he had often bowed to her sound judgement. This time, however sound her judgement, her logic could not work. Nagini had to be destroyed, and she had to be destroyed before Voldemort entered the grounds – and who knew when that might be? Faced with these unavoidable facts, Ron had accepted the dangers that they would face and had accompanied him in spite of them. For a moment, Harry wondered whether it would have been like this if they had not returned to Hogwarts in September, if they had travelled around looking for horcruxes and living from day to day. Would their camaraderie have held out so long? He pushed the thought to the back of his mind and focused on the task at hand; there was no use in contemplating what could have been.
They had just reached the top of the astronomy tower and stepped out onto the balcony when they heard footsteps careening up the stairs behind them and Professor Sinistra's voice, trembling with outrage, roaring at them.
"What in Merlin's name do you think you're doing?"
Ron looked at Harry and shrugged.
"No time to lose," he said.
They mounted their broomsticks and kicked off from the floor, the heavy mist and Hermione's cloud cover providing sufficient obscurity to shield them from the view of those on the ground.
"Come back here! Idiot boys! You'll get yourselves killed! Get back here this instant!"
Harry had never known the young astronomy teacher so exceptionally angry before, and he felt a pang of guilt at causing her such near-apoplexy, but there was nothing to be done about it, not now. They could hear her flinging spells at them to try and pull them back, but they were already out of reach, flying on as fast as the clouds could take them. When they reached the boundary line, where the magical protections that had defended them from harm thus far would end and they would be open to attack from all sides, both boys paused. They hovered for a moment, readying themselves to take that plunge, and then headed out over the gates.
It was like flying through treacle, and Harry could see at once why there was very little precedent for people leaving the grounds in this manner. Indeed, the only previous examples that he could think of were the Weasley twins in his fifth year. The magic was trying desperately to keep them in, but unlike the wards that were currently hung on the castle itself, these were designed to keep potential malefactors out, not to hem people in. All the same, even though the wave of magic was slowly and steadily yielding, Harry felt that he might lose control of the broom at any moment and come tumbling out of the sky into the midst of Voldemort's army, knowing that his previous momentum would return as soon as he was free of the palpable mist of spells that was clawing at him so urgently.
Finally they were through, and it took all their skills as quidditch players not to perform a spectacular nose dive and land in a heap at Voldemort's feet. They were there, in the enemy camp, and Harry would admit to feeling terrified. It was not death that he feared, as such, he had accepted it as a possible outcome of this escapade already. No, he was far more scared of failing in their task, of it all being for nothing. What if Nagini was not where they thought she would be; what would they do then having taken such an incredible risk? Silently they flew high over the heads of Voldemort and his followers, watching them deep in discussion. There seemed to be less of them than when they had first arrived, and Harry wondered nervously what had happened at the gates whilst he and Ron had been engaged in finding the sword and making their way to the astronomy tower. They touched down on the path that led from the village to the school, and it was there that their task began in earnest; trying to find a needle in a haystack, or a snake in the dark.
"If I was an evil wizard, where would I hide my snake?" muttered Ron.
"Over there," said Harry, pointing over to a cluster of trees at the side of the path. Something pearlescent was shining dimly in the weak streaks of moonlight, and it could obviously not be anything natural. As they moved closer, they saw that it was the shimmer of a glamour, catching the occasional light and betraying its presence in the thick underbrush. Through the glamour could be seen a cage of pulsing magic, and in it was Nagini, curled up languidly with her eyes closed, seemingly asleep, or dormant at the very least.
"How do we get to her?" Ron whispered. "I doubt You-Know-Who's spell can be broken with a simple wingardium leviosa."
Harry crept up to the cage, keeping a look out on all sides so any other protection that Voldemort might have put in place to guard his final, and thus most precious, horcrux. At this late stage he would not put anything past the other wizard. He stopped a few paces short and started, fancying that he heard something, and all of a sudden the full weight of the idiocy of his plan came tumbling down on him. He had walked into a trap, he knew it, Voldemort had expected this, of course he wasn't going to leave Nagini undefended...
"Harry!" exclaimed Ron. "What are you waiting for? Do something!"
Harry looked around him and listened carefully for any more signs of life before continuing. He thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye but as soon as he turned to look at it, it was gone, and Ron showed no signs of having also spotted it. It was really too quiet for his liking but he couldn't remain frozen like a deer in the headlights for any longer; the more time they spent out of the castle boundaries, the more they were leaving themselves open for attack. He walked around the cage, and he wondered how to get past it. As much as it disgusted him to try and think like Voldemort, he found himself trying to imagine how his enemy would retrieve the snake in a hurry should he need her. It struck him suddenly, the idea coming into his head almost unrelated to anything else. Parseltongue. If he could not get to Nagini, perhaps he could get Nagini to come to him.
As he opened his mouth to speak, a terrible thought occurred to him. It was more than likely that Nagini, like the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, would only obey her master's voice. Still, he thought, he could at least try. He had managed to fool the gates of Malfoy Manor… Maybe the cage was constructed under the same principles and he could attempt to fool that as well.
"Open," he hissed, the sibilant language as always seeming to have a life of its own when he spoke it; sounding like English in his ears although he knew it could not be. At first nothing happened, but then the shimmering glamour disappeared and the cage faded. Nagini woke, lifting her head off her looped coils of tail and opening her eyes, fixing him with an unblinking yellow glare.
Harry lost the ability to move. Somewhere in the fuzzy background, he could hear Ron calling to him, but the words were indistinct as another voice echoed inside his head, speaking to him without seeming to go through the medium of his ears.
Hello, Harry.
The voice was low and smooth but undeniably female, and Harry was immediately struck with the impression that he was speaking to Nagini herself, much as he had spoken to the boa at the zoo all those years earlier, before any of his magical capacity had come to light.
I'm afraid that your journey ends here.
Harry was still unable to move, transfixed by the snake's eyes to the extent where he felt he had been petrified by the gaze of the basilisk. He knew he needed to move, he knew that all he needed to do was swing the sword in his hands and bring it down into the snake, but he couldn't do so, fighting a losing battle with his mesmerisation as he was.
Prepare to meet your end, Harry Potter. It will be very quick and painful, I assure you…
In that moment, Harry realised why Nagini had no additional protection. Like the other horcruxes before her, she could protect herself, and even more so given her own high degree of sentience unrelated to her magical capacity. She raised her head back, her jaws wide open and the venom shining on her fangs, ready to strike, but Harry was still unable to move, still entranced by the voice of the horcrux inside his head.
It will only take a moment, it hissed to him, crooning almost.
"Harry, no!" There was a rush of air as something heavy hurled itself against his chest, pushing him backwards, and the world went momentarily black as his head cracked against the ground. Simultaneously, he heard something, although it was as if his ears were full of cotton wool; everything was muffled and fuzzy… A roar of pain and another voice, a third voice, but he could not make out the words. Before he could regain his vision, he felt a hand grab his shoulder and the familiar jolting sensation of apparition.
Note2: Why do the chapters that give me the most stress and writer's block whilst writing them always end up the longest? Never mind that, onwards! For once I haven't left you on a cliffie!