Chapter 8
They flew the damn magical horses for what seemed like hours (and probably was, based on the distance between northern Scotland and London). Ziad had never flown before, on airplane or demon horse, so this was a new and unique experience for him.
When the "Thestral" began its descent into the heart of London, Ziad swore to never leave the ground again, to prevent himself from heading towards it at such an extreme velocity.
Fortunately, the Thestral had a more graceful landing than Ziad expected. Despite this stroke of luck, Ziad fell flat on his face.
"Real graceful." quipped Parvati.
"Thanks, I've been practicing."
Luna landed and slid off her mount with unerring ease, and asked, "Where do we go from here, then?"
"Over here," said Harry, and led them into a red telephone booth.
It was rather cramped.
"Whoever's nearest the receiver, dial six two four four two!" said Harry.
Ziad bent his arm and jammed some buttons. Nothing happened.
"Six four two two four, right?"
"No, six two four four two."
"Oh, my bad."
Ziad tried again. A cool female voice sounded, "Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business."
Harry glanced around the booth and said, "Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Ziad... what's your last name?"
"Jarrah."
"-Ziad Jarrah, Parvati Patil, and we're here to save someone, unless your Ministry can do it first!"
"Thank you," said the cool female voice. "Visitors, please take the badges and attach them to the front of your robes."
Eight badges slid out of the metal chute where returned coins normally appeared. Parvati scooped them up and handed them out. Ziad glanced at his, Ziad What's Your Last Name Jarrah Jarrah Ziad Jarrah, Rescue Mission.
"Dammit!"
Parvati looked at the badge and giggled.
Harry whirled on them. "Now is not the time for you two's crap!"
"Sorry."
The floor of the telephone box shuddered and they slid down the rabbit hole towards inevitable doom, or at least a ripping good story.
Harry led them through the empty and silent corridors of the Ministry. Ziad marvelled at the hideous mixture of Fascist, Soviet, and Gothic architecture that constituted the Ministry.
"Damn, they should have hired a competent, or at least sane, architect."
Hermione sighed and said, "Well, they hired Bloody Stupid Johnson, which was clearly a mistake."
Ziad stared at the black tiles and general nastiness, "No kidding. You'd think with a name like Bloody Stupid they would have though twice about giving him money."
Harry stared at them.
"Hello? We're trying to save my Godfather from a mass murderer. A little appreciation for the danger of your situation would be..." he thought for a minute, "... Appreciated."
"Nice."
"Shut it."
They ran deeper into the bowels of the Ministry, taking at least one elevator and passing through a dizzying number of doors. In one room that they entered accidentally, a tall archway with a continuously swaying veil sat on a dais in the center. Ziad was intrigued by the veil, he heard something, an angry muttering behind the veil.
"Somebody's... Whispering behind that." said Harry.
"Nobody's talking, Harry!" said Hermione, tugging his arm to get him to leave.
"Whispering? It sounds like my parents having an argument. Which is to say loud, incomprehensible, and very angry." said Ziad. "I presume what you're hearing is in English?"
"Yeah... I think so."
"I'm picking up some Arabic, and a bit of Hebrew. Some Farsi and Urdu, too."
"Weird..." Harry began walking towards the archway.
"I can hear something too," breathed Luna, joining Harry and Ziad in staring at the veil.
Eventually, after much urging from the perhaps more sane members of their party, they trouped off again towards who-new-where.
Evidently, Harry new where, as upon opening one of the next doors he stopped and said, "This is it!"
After leading them through another strange room and through another door and finally into a massive and dark church-like room full of towering shelves covered in small, dusty, glass orbs that glimmered dully in the light issuing from candle-brackets set at intervals along the shelves.
Harry ran down the shelves, muttering to himself. Eventually they found the shelf they were looking for: ninety-seven.
The group stood bunched around the end of the row, gazing the alley beside it. There was nothing there.
"He's right down by the end," Harry said, "You can't see properly from here."
Ziad whispered to Ginny, "Who is he looking for, exactly?"
"His Godfather, Sirius Black. He's been captured by V-V-Voldemort."
"The guy who killed like a zillion people?"
"Yeah."
"Shit."
Harry ran recklessly down the row, whispering stuff along the lines of, "He should be here, anywhere here, really close..."
Naturally, nobody was there. They reached the end of the row and emerged into the silent, empty candlelight.
"I... I don't think Sirius is here." said Hermione.
They stood there rather awkwardly. Neville was gazing at one of the glass orbs. Ziad apprehensively gripped his wand, "You did say Voldemort was here, right?" he whispered at Ginny.
"Yeah, I did."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
"Dammit!"
Neville turned, "Harry, look at this. It's got your name on it."
Harry looked at where Neville was pointing.
"My name?"
"Yeah."
Indeed, the orb did have his name on it. Harry reached out and grabbed it. Nothing dramatic or frightening happened.
Unless you counted when a drawling voice spoke out from beyond the confines of the intrepid students, "Very good, Potter. Now turn around, nice and slowly, and give that to me."
Black shapes emerged out of thin air all around them, blocking any potential escape routes. Within three seconds a dozen wands were pointed directly at them. Ginny gasped. For once Ziad failed to produce a sarcastic remark. Parvati silently applauded him.
"Give it to me, Potter," repeated the drawling voice as the first man held out his hand, palm up.
"To me."
"Where's Sirius?" Harry said.
Several of the ominous figures laughed. Ziad noted their lack of tactical clothing. Robes? Siriously? Ahem, Seriously? Ziad silently rejoiced that he had found himself on this expedition while wearing loose clothing better suited to sitting on a couch eating potato chips than looking darkly ominous.
"Don't do anything," Harry muttered. "Not yet-"
A harsh female voice let out a raucous scream of laughter.
"You hear him? Giving orders to the other children as though he thinks of fighting us!"
"Oh, you don't know Potter as I do, Bellatrix," said the leader softly. "He has a great weakness for heroics."
Ziad stifled a yawn. If they had found themselves cornered by hardcore PLO or Hamas extremists they would have been beheaded on international television hours ago.
Harry and the bad guys exchanged quips and threats and shouts until Hermione whispered to him, "Smash shelves!"
Ziad passed it on.
Eventually some sort of revelation occurred with Harry, he got his information from the bad guys voluntarily, and he shouted, "NOW!"
Ziad and the others yelled, "REDUCTO!"
Ziad's spell made a shelf shudder. The others made shelves explode.
They ran for it as the shelves (that had been hit by competent wizards, that is) swayed precariously and began to collapse, bringing hundreds of the glass orbs down with them. Ziad scrambled after the others as they sprinted down the row, firing stunners and shield charms behind them. Ziad felt incredibly useless.
Ziad tripped, and caught a glance of Parvati's horrified face before a shelf collapsed between them, cutting him off and trapping him with a dozen angry Bad Guys. Ziad grabbed a shard of glass and sliced his face and then lay still.
He heard the crunch of boots on broken glass approach.
"This one's out for the count."
"He's unimportant. Leave him."
The footsteps faded.
Ziad counted to sixty three times before opening his eyes slowly. He was alone. He slowly and quietly stood up, and brushed broken glass off his now-bloodstained clothes. He wiped blood out of his eyes and picked up his wand. He slowly crept towards where he thought the exit was. After wandering about for a few minutes he found it, braced himself, and slowly pushed it open.
Beyond the door lay a room in ruins. Broken glass and other debris littered the floor, along with the prone body of at least one of the Bad Guys. Ziad pocketed his wand, knowing it would be useless against even a third-year at Hogwarts, let alone a brutal and obviously powerful wizard or witch. He cautiously made his way through a series of rooms, each as ruined as the last.
He pushed open another door, and beyond it was the room with the arch and veil. Numerous stunned black-cloaked figures were strewn around, but no living soul was to be found. Ziad was feeling scared now. He started running across the room, and threw open doors, panicking.
He ran and ran and ran, and failed to find a single living person.
He ran.
With no other options, he made his way to the atrium.
When he found it, he stopped in horror.
Harry was dueling a witch who may have been pretty once, before she let a Tim Burton fan fill her wardrobe and do her make-up.
She was laughing as she parried Harry's attacks.
Ziad grabbed a piece of rock that had been blasted from the wall and hefted it.
The witch turned her back to Ziad as she casually blocked another of Harry's spells.
Ziad ran.
The witch spun around, her face full of cruel mirth.
Ziad swung his arm as hard as he could.
The witch brought up her arm.
The rock connected with the witch's temple, making a sick crunching sound.
She collapsed like a sack of wet potatoes.
Harry lowered his wand and stared. A steady stream of blood flowed out of the wound on the side of the witch's head. Ziad dropped the rock.
Harry cried out and screwed up his face in pain.
"So, you've smashed my prophecy?" a cold, merciless voice said softly.
A tall, pale, and snakelike man appeared.
"All those months of preparation, months of effort... and my Death Eaters have let Harry Potter thwart me again..."
Ziad just stared, and wisely ignored the chance to make a quip regarding the choosing of the name "Death Eaters" for anything other than a cartoon villain.
The man, clearly the Voldemort everyone was so scared of raised his wand and pointed it at Ziad. |"First I shall dispose of your little friend, who so conveniently murdered dear Bellatrix. AVADA KEDAVRA!"
The spell hit Ziad square in the chest. He collapsed, and his shirt evaporated.
"Damn, that was a good shirt, too!" said Ziad as he picked himself up off the ground.
"..." said Voldemort.
"..." said Harry.
"What's the big deal?" said Ziad.
"Normally people are dead at this point." said Voldemort.
Ziad glanced down at the rapidly spreading bruise on his chest.
"Oh. Well then I guess I prefer this particular outcome."
"You would, wouldn't you?"
A deep voice rang out, "Actually, Mr. Jarrah is not a miraculous case. I simply blocked your spell using Mr. Jarrah's shirt, which is rather ingenious if you ask me."
Voldemort sighed and muttered, "Dumbledore..."
"Indeed, Tom."
"Who's Tom?" Ziad whispered to Harry as Dumbledore and Voldemort began their rather impressive duel.
"Tom's Voldemort."
"So... Voldemort is like a nom de guerre."
"What?"
"Nom de guerre."
"Yeah, I know. What's that mean?"
"It's like a pen-name, but instead of crappy romance novels it's violence."
"Oh. Then yeah."
The duel raged on, and quite a lot of collateral damage was incurred on Bloody Stupid Johnson's masterwork.
Voldemort disappeared.
"Stay where you are, Harry!" bellowed Dumbledore, sounding legitimately frightened.
"Does he just not remember I'm here?" said Ziad.
"You too, Mr. Jarrah."
"Thank you."
Then Harry cried out in pain and collapsed in a writhing heap.
Harry spoke, but the voice that emanated from his mouth was not that of a fifteen-year-old, but instead that of the Dark-Wizard-Formerly-Known-As-Tom.
"Kill me now, Dumbledore... If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy..."
Ziad punched Harry né Voldemort right in the nose.
Harry collapsed and Voldemort appeared in the flesh a few feet away, his face full of wrath.
"You've thwarted me for the last time, Dumbledore!"
"Ok, seriously Voldemort, you are way, way too cartoonish."
"Who even are you?"
Before Ziad could respond, the Atrium filled with people who looked like they meant business, and Voldemort snarled and disappeared.
Harry was immediately tended to by Dumbledore, and dozens of the new people, apparently Ministry employees surrounded him.
Everybody seemed to ignore the shirtless and bruised Lebanese boy as if he didn't exist, and had eyes only for Dumbledore and Harry. Ziad didn't mind, but he felt that he deserved at least a little attention. After all, he had killed someone rather brutally, and he was starting to feel a little guilty about it. His hands were shaking.
The reality of the past hour's events came crashing down on him. Hold up, he thought. I just killed someone! I just broke into the government of a magical country and killed somebody! I just almost got killed by the most famous dark wizard in history!
Clearly, some sitting down was to be done. He cast around for a chair before settling for a large piece of rubble. He put his head in his hand, partly to rest and partly to steady his hands from shaking themselves off his arms.
He felt a hand settle on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Parvati looking at him.
"Thank god you're alright," she whispered. "Thank god..."
He stood up and stared at her, "Are you alright?"
She nodded. "So are the others. Ron's a little messed up, but he should be fine."
"Inshallah."
Eventually, the crowd of officials got over the fact that Voldemort had returned and noticed the dead body lying in the open. They rushed over to it.
"It's Bellatrix Lestrange! She's dead."
"Bloody hell!"
They immediately turned to Harry.
"How'd you manage it, Harry?"
Harry just stared mutely at them.
"Stop bothering the poor boy," said Dumbledore.
"I did it." said Ziad. Parvati looked at him questioningly. He nodded.
The wizards ignored him and continued berating and congradulating Harry, who looked rather put-upon. Eventually Dumbledore grabbed Harry and the two of them disappeared. The Ministry officials milled about uselessly before somebody managed to organize them and send them into deeper into the building to make sure all the Death Eaters were secured.
Eventually the Atrium was empty save for Ziad and Parvati who just sat there mutely as Ziad stared at the woman he had killed.
Author's Note:
Whew, this one got a little more serious (sirius?) than I'm used to writing. I hope it turned out alright.
Also, the reason the fifth-year (Ziad's first year) went by so quickly is because the real stuff is going to start during the summer/next year. Things will happen and I've got it all planned (this is the bit where I knowingly tap the side of my nose while I smile ominously). I really appreciate the few reviews I've gotten, and I hope that more of you do me the favor of writing one. I want to get better, and there's only one way to do that.