It took hours for the shot to wear off enough for him to use any magic. In that time, he he was allowed to stay at the overhanging growth of rock after the queen left it. He stood looking through the thick, grainy barrier that separated him from Iece. He just wanted to feel her in his arms and was so close. It occurred to him that once his magic returned, he could hold this woman's daughter captive in exchange for release. He could turn the tables around. But no, now that she'd convinced him that she wasn't going to harm Iece or him, it wasn't in his heart to do to her what she was doing to him. It wasn't necessary. This had to be the strangest hostage negotiation situation ever. Instead, as he waited for the arrival of Snape and his abilities, he watched his daughter sleeping in the arms of that blue child. It creeped him out, but he told himself not to lose it now. Getting Snape here was a great gain in progress.
He remembered to put himself back in the classroom that he shared with Snape in their memories of Hogwarts, and show him everything that had happened in the last hour. He felt and heard nothing from Snape's side, so he wasn't sure if his efforts were effective. At some point, he grew tired and sat down on the pillar of stone that was holding him up to the swollen growth. This caused his neck to strain as he had to look up to keep his eye on Iece. He refused to leave the spot. What if she opened her eyes, fully conscious and missed the opportunity to see him? He couldn't chance it. What was she dreaming? Was she hungry? What was that thing doing to her?
For minutes at a time, he lost awareness of how uncomfortable his body was, or how worried he was that Iece was actually experiencing something dangerous, which might affect her her whole life. Don't think about trauma, don't think about cross-species contamination, don't think about it. She's alive, she's sleeping, she's safe and we're going to leave here together.
When he'd convinced himself that she really was safe for the moment, he closed his eyes and concentrated on visiting the classroom with Snape, if only in his memory. They stood at the board and Harry imagined Snape in as much detail as he could remember. He felt him, what it was like to stare into that closed expression, those cool appraising eyes, and meet that dark stare. In an instant, a red crystal sphere popped into his mind. Yes! Snape said to use it as their mutual signal, like knocking on the other's mind and asking to be let in. Something in him remembered it, even when his fried critical thinking had not. Or maybe it was Snape signaling to him. Either way, Harry got excited and in his inner vision, held the red crystal up for Snape, then launched into a visual explanation of what he'd been told was going to happen. As he imagined himself telling Snape as many details as he could, he made and effort to flash imagery on the blackboard, and even better, pull Snape into some of the rooms and experiences he had undergone so far.
He put Snape in this world as much as possible, until he forgot that he was actually teetering on the limited surface of a small diameter of rock platform and could fall off if he forgot how close to the edge he was. Four people could stand on it, probably, but that didn't give him much room to risk forgetting where he was at all together.
He looked up at what he could still see of Iece's sleeping face and gave this too, to Snape. "Come save her," he whispered. "Save her."
He added, "The queen is looking for you. She could feel you in my mind. Get out in the open. Let her find you. I'm not sure but I think she's connected to the energy currents that travel through the planet. She's got some kind of beacon built into her head. This is a wild card, but I think she can use it the way dolphins use sonar. She can tune into you and find you, just based on my perception of you. Be careful. Just go to an open space for a while. She'll send her wizards for you. They'll want you to suppress your magic."
He waited for a response from Snape, without getting one. All he wanted to do was grab Iece and apparate with her. He couldn't hear Snape's voice or feel the movement of his thoughts as he had in his bathroom days ago. How many days? The guy had said three? The way this place shook, did they even have the time to invent some magical impossibility before those rebels, or whoever they were, brought the place down? Did the queen say she'd lived like this for years? No wonder she was weak, by her own standards. She seemed like she was meant to influence through sleep or some kind of psychic submersion, not managing and manipulating outcomes as clumsily as humans. That seemed beneath a race of people with such long life spans.
It seemed to him that they'd had more time than humans to learn better than that. They should've been much more advanced. But that didn't seem right, either. By that logic, million year-old trees had time to evolve into things that could talk, walk, and defend their right to survive. Not the same at all, but no matter how he spun it, she seemed tragic and doomed and it wasn't up to him to save her civilization. If she just went back to sleep, he wondered if she'd have better influence over her people. A creature like that was meant to reign in a completely different and larger field of consciousness, surely.
Why was he even thinking this? He wasn't here to give a damn about her. He took off his glasses, testing the use of his magic by looking for the wheels of light he knew his daughter must've been born with. While he could no longer see clearly through the stone barrier, he knew he shouldn't have to. The wheel would be larger than physical space allowed and not restricted to physics at all. He squinted. Try as he might, he couldn't shift his vision to see. After he'd been there a while, it occurred to him that they were letting him sit there for a reason. He was being observed. He looked around and saw only a few distant guards standing back at the entrance point.
He heard faint echos and rumbling bouncing off of the rock ceiling, but other than that, the watery cavern was silent. He suspected many more beings, including wizards were hiding. They were just as curious as to whether he could regain the use of his magic as he was. As far as they knew, if he were going to attempt something stupid, it would be right here with his daughter. If he could do anything at all to save her, he'd risk it now. So even if he could do magic, he told himself not to let on. Wait until they let him hold Iece. Make them think he was earnest about helping them. He didn't have a fucking clue and had even less hope of solving this woman's problems. If Snape really came, they'd work on their plan while going through the motions for these people. He wasn't God, after all. He wasn't going to shoulder that responsibility.
He thought this without remorse, allowing his frustration to turn his thoughts truly dark.
I'll let this woman and her entire people die if it came to them or Iece.
The thought struck him as evil and shocked him. Who did that sound like? Not him, that's for sure. That cold dismissal was on the level of Lucius or Voldemort. He assured himself, no, I'm not actively trying to hurt anyone. I want these people to be okay, I guess. That's hard to say when they just yanked my kid out of my hands. Why should they live? To be honest, I wouldn't help them if I had a choice. If that's evil, then maybe I need more time to heal from what they've done. I'm not ready to forgive and I don't have to. Snape, where the hell are you? Why can't I hear you?
The more he looked at the lava-like hardness of the formations around him, the more they began to look like an intelligent structure, like the inside of an instrument. Hell, the queen kept calling it a heart, it could very well be the inner chambers of an organ, like standing inside a person's ear. All the shapes around him appeared engineered to specific curvatures, hollows, and slants, as if this place shaped sound by literally bending it. What did it bend it into? So these shapes, big enough for people to walk through, even live in, treated frequencies like math? Multiplied them, concentrated them, reshaped them.
He got an idea. "Hey!" he yelled up at the ceiling. His voice fractured against the rock in echos. He shouted again, not caring if he alarmed those watching him. Maybe he could get Iece to wake up. He listened for any clues as to how the space worked around him. His echoes didn't sound any different than one might expect. This place channels a different kind of energy, he thought. That energy was something the queen lost as her people began to drift away from her.
He stayed there for a long time. No one came to get him. He lost track of how long it had been since he'd gotten an injection. Then it hit him. They were waiting on his magic to come back. They were allowing it. They wanted to see if he would attempt to use it as the queen wanted or attack them. This place must be influenced by other wizards who were protecting the queen, and God knows what else. So there were suppressants at work other than the injections. Iece herself was suppressed, according to the queen. Maybe that's why Snape couldn't get through to him. There was some kind of barrier to magic, and yet he was expected to break through it if he used his magic for the approved purpose. He was only guessing, but after a while, he thought he'd try something.
He remembered Eileen telling him to see the Elder Wand in his hand, remembered manipulating his wheel of life in order to fix his dislocated shoulder, with nothing more that the structure of his imagination, which was somehow connected to his magic. Just because his physical self was suppressed, didn't mean his mind had to be. His hand responded to the feel of the wand that he once held. He told himself that it was still there, just invisible, but very potent. When he was sure that he had the right feeling, he threw a charged intent of magic up at the rock shelf above. He saw nothing. He felt nothing. From somewhere inside of him, Thella's voice bubbled up, "You've got to intend it. Very clearly."
What did he want to happen? He corrected his thinking, making his desire very clear. I want to test my magic with this structure. I want to give a bit of it to this structure, to see what it does."
He "held" the wand again, and threw his intent upward.
There was no immediate result. Something flickered, like a light delayed. He didn't know if it was his doing or something else. The place trembled and overhead, a dim ambiance emitted from deep within the layers. It grew brighter as the rock surface took on the translucent quality of the protrusion that currently held Iece and that other child. Stunned hope leapt in his heart. Was this place responding to him? Within minutes, that slight illumination behind the thick rock interior, went opaque again and left him in darkness.
You have to keep trying, he told himself. Make sure that wasn't just a coincidence. You'll figure this out. But just as he was about to cast another burst of intended magic, the place shook more violently. He tried not to be alarmed, remembering that the queen said they'd lived like this for many years. But the ground shook too aggressively, rendering everything unstable. How could anyone live like this? How was this place still standing under such an assault?
Just as he thought this, the entire rock shelf above him, burst into green brilliance. It wasn't this color before. But the rocks had become translucent again and he now saw a huge venous system traveling through the rock interior the way marble deposits create Breccia veins in stone. Only, these were lit up with some substance that flowed through them. Harry saw it moving, like watching a green stream from beneath glass. It wasn't that clear, but he could make out a flowing movement. He had no time to study it. In that same instant, an explosion threw pieces of one of the walls at him, sending boulders flying out into the cavern abyss. The wall nearest to the growth overhead, where Iece was unconscious, shattered. The growth itself withstood an onslaught of dibris. Harry's vision suffered, as the cavern filled with the pollution of unbreathable earth and lung-piercing particles. Out of instinct, he slammed a shield of protection over the structure holding Iece and the other child, before remembering that his magic wasn't working very well. That made him try again, and harder.
He had no idea what was going on and when the air cleared enough for him to see, he had no explanation for what he saw. It all happened very quickly. He squinted through the hole that had been blasted through, and saw people in dark garb, bearing weapons. Muggle guns. He only caught a glimpse. His instincts told him there had to be other technologies at work to do this kind of damage. He had no time to calculate. He sensed other wizards among them. They could've been a rescue team, but something about the aggression they projected, didn't make him want to give them an ounce of trust.
They surely saw him as he saw them, and there was only deadly aim in their eyes. He didn't give them a chance. Whatever they had in mind, he wanted it to ricochet right back at them. His hand lifted, waving in a flash, as if he held the wand he needed. That group of people opened fire. Their bullets sprayed right back at them. Such a scene of gunfire and chaos lit up the interior on their side, that Harry immediately banished their intrusion by thinking of the spell that Dumbledore had used to restore the muggle home in his seventh year, on the day they found Professor Slughorn hiding out in the muggle house and making it appear ramshackled.
Pieces from the blast flew past him, even rising from the cave lake below, and slammed back into place before the invaders could recover from the backfired assault. Once he realized that his magic was back in some measure, he immediately turned to the rock growth with the intention of reaching Iece. She was only a meter or so above his head, encased in the stone. No sooner had the idea to shatter it occurred to him, that something hit him from behind, knocking him off the pillar. Whatever it was, it didn't just push him off, it stunned him, and he couldn't move to cast a spell to prevent his fall. He hit the dark water below, fully conscious of his helplessness. He couldn't even hold his breath to keep from drowning. They let him fall for a full seven seconds, drifting and blind in water, before retrieving him. Water had encroached on his lungs, but he remained conscious enough to realize his mistake and to know that he would have drowned if wizard magic wasn't saving his life.
When he could move of his own will again, he was on all fours, back on the cliff shore, drenched and dripping. He coughed as his wind pipe burned, expelling water. His arms shook, holding up the rest of his body and he could see the shoes of people standing around him, waiting on him to recover. He blinked through the agony of his chest and defeated ego.
He choked, sputtering when he could, "Impulse reaction. I didn't mean to… won't try that again. I'm sorry."
He wasn't, of course, but they had the upper hand. He hardly knew what had happened, only that an attack appeared to come out of no where, he reacted to save Iece, not realizing that he'd regained the use of his magic. When he could look up, he found himself surrounded by Backaal guards holding those stone discs. He looked for the wizards among them, thinking these were the ones who had stunned him. Instead of seeing them, the others parted to let the queen step through.
Reproach could be seen in her face. Her tone was grave. "You see, we can still defend ourselves. This is what will happen if you attempt to use your magic against us. You are still alive because your betrayal actually prevented our enemies from breaking through. You, no doubt, think they are on the other side of that wall. They are not. They are leagues away and this stronghold is guarded for many kilometers all around. But because they work with wizards, they have the ability to portal through. The shaking that you feel, is when they create a successful portal. The second they do, my people aim my intent with their weapons and I seal the breach. The earth still listens to me. However, they have never hit the innermost part of the heart until now. Something about your magic, gave it away. The chambers in this cavern responded to you, however briefly. We witnessed movement in the channels that run through this temple. I am reluctant to kill those who would kill me, for they are still a part of me. But if they reveal themselves through another show of aggression, I ask that you do not interfere. Let me deal with them."
"My daughter was right in the path of that blast."
"So was mine. Thank you for saving her. Going forward, if you must help, use your magic only to restrain the enemies, unless I tell you otherwise. Should another explosion occur, those loyal to me will aim their plates which amplify my wishes. The portal created by the rebels will be their undoing."
This sounded off to him. She didn't sound like she was ready for a war that was already on her doorstep. She didn't sound like she knew what war even was. "You're just going to wait for them to get closer and closer? You have to be ready to kill. You have to get them before they get you."
Harry felt silly for explaining the basic concept of fighting to her, but she accepted this with something reminiscent of human pity. "Mr. Potter, there is nothing you can do to another, that you do not do to yourself at the same time. You may not feel the effects for many years later, but all of it is one body. I am a child of the earth. No one knows better than I, how injustice and lack, affecting one continent, affects them all. Our life-force is in the water and that is carried through the circulatory system of this planet. We underground Backaal filter all the pollutants, emotional and physical, that pour from the conflicts of your civilization. To murder my own, is to poison my own system. I would hold them back until I gained the ability to restore full function. Then I won't need to."
This made very little sense to Harry. "Then ask yourself if going against your own nature and having a child out of selfish desire, is worth putting your people through this."
She stared at him. "Not that I answer to you, but it is. Now that I have her, I cannot un-have her. Those who betrayed me, did so long before I birthed her. Because of her, their fear has quickened. But they want me dead so that they can be free of my connection to them. With or without her, they would kill me."
"Then I don't know how to help you. Using my magic, apparently, lets them pick up on where we are. If they do it again, you'll have to kill them." Or I will, he wanted to add.
"I know." Her long hands clasped in front of her stomach.
"What about my friend, who can help? Have you contacted him? How long will it take for him to get here?" He remembered how his body had felt hungover and jet lagged when he awoke. He blamed it on their nefarious tactics to get him here, adding, "If you let me keep my magic, I can get him here much faster. Let me apparate and get him. You're holding my kid, it's not like I'm going to do anything to jeopardize her life. Let me bring him here right now."
She tilted her head. "Follow me."
Her slender back was to him once more and he had no choice but to follow. She wouldn't answer his inquiry. "Where to now? I want to stay with my daughter."
"Your child is safe. The rebels only found this chamber because their frequency weapons honed in on the effects your magic had on our temple. If this happens again, I will kill them. No doubt, with such abilities, they are operating from a primary base that is central to their strategies. If I strike into the portal they create, their weapons will suffer an outage. Their power grid will go dark and they'll need time to recover. They think I am afraid to kill them. I am hesitant, but not afraid. Their numbers and force will not recover easily."
Her confidence only frustrated Harry more. Behind him, her guards remained silent, yet prodded him along. They weren't hostile, just expectant, still carrying those discs things. He still hadn't spotted any wizard, though he bet if he took off his glasses now, he could by searching for the wheels. No doubt they were hidden to keep him from attacking them once he was able to do so.
She led him back the way they came, but turned in the opposite direction from the chamber in which he'd first met her. Slender muscles shifted in her exposed back and again he wondered what the hell those holes along her spine were for. He refused to show interest in her anatomy and jerked his eyes to her bald head. Her nape looked normal from the bottom up, towards the top of her ears is where flesh and bone took on a grey texture and lost all pigmentation, becoming see-through. From the back, the light in her translucent cranium floated in a gel or water environment. He couldn't see any brain matter and he should've been able to. Fighting not to be distracted by the spectacle, he resisted as she passed through a door and into the brightness of a shaggy, orange-carpeted room.
From cave to drywall, they had again entered a retro, art deco type of space. It looked like a cafeteria, with vintage, non-working vending machines that were empty, round tables and plastic chairs, a long trough-like sink and a pool table. Harry was so put out by the absurd mix of nonsensical cues, that he was about to demand, what the hell is this place and all this orange carpet bullshit? Why was this place saturated in muggle décor and influence? Weren't they in a temple, many kilometers underground? Weren't they surrounded by some goddamn cave system?
At the same time, his critical thinking told him to calm down and think. All it meant was that at some point, these Backaals worked alongside humans and made them comfortable down here. As his mind fought with irrationality and impatience, the struggle in his brain abruptly stopped when he saw someone he was not expecting standing before an edge-less window that looked out onto the area where he had just been standing. Even though this person stood behind a line of the queen's guards, his presence was so strong he might as well have been standing in front of Harry's face. Harry recognized those heavily draped shoulders anywhere. And the dome and curvature of that head, as black hair pooled around it, down to the cloak. He knew that draped stance anywhere.
"Snape!" He gushed. How? How did they get him here so quickly?
That wizard turned around. While his face appeared too guarded and serious to offer Harry a smile, recognition in his eyes was reassuring.
"How?" Harry asked, shocked. He talked right through the line of people holding those weird quartz-looking discs, as if they weren't there. He carefully watched Snape's face, for any sign of hidden communication or the real thoughts lurking beneath the face that greeted him in front of these criminals. He saw that his former teacher made no move to answer right away and his stare said, proceed with caution.
Harry pulled back on his excitement. They were no where near their freedom, but it did impress the hell out of him that the queen had not only allowed Snape to come, but expedited his arrival. How?
She stood between him and Snape. She replied, "We retrieved your friend immediately. From this portal, we observed you. He has been allowed to ask his questions and I have answered."
"That fast? It took days for me to get here, didn't it?"
"That is a fallacy on your part. We let you think it did. Obviously, we are not limited to your kind of travel. And also lucky for you, this wizard is no stranger to my people. We have worked with him before. He did not have to undergo all of the preliminaries that you experienced. We also know him to be capable and inventive, which supports your theory that he will know best how to utilize your magic."
She turned to Snape. "I am well aware, Mr. Snape, that you submitted to the injection that you yourself invented to disable magic, for the sake of appearing harmless to us. You fooled my wizards, but you do not fool me. You also invented a serum to counter the injection. You were warned of our arrival and you took it. Your magic returned to you within minutes and you stand before me a fully potent wizard. I allow it because my people are at the ready. We do not have magic, but we have other weapons. So far, in the time that we've known you, you've made no attempt to harm us, so you have earned a modicum of trust. But it's fragile and you will be watched as you and Harry work out a solution together."
Snape's chin lifted slightly. He was already holding himself so stiffly, Harry saw little change as he was confronted with being caught. This news was met with cool appraisal, as if he respected her discovery rather than cursed it.
She continued, "Since you are resistant to our cleansing process and your help is greatly needed, I am willing to skip the bathing ritual for now, that all guests usually comply with. Do not be offended, it is a matter of my health that necessitates such treatment. Otherwise, my guards will have to keep a shield between you and myself at all times. It isn't your species, so much as it is surface contamination, that attaches itself to your person through your engagements with life above."
Harry remembered how he had to be showered before he could stand in the presence of the queen. Leave it to Snape to avoid such indignities.
The queen stated, "I've explained what we are trying to do and you've now seen the effects of Harry's magic on the heart of our system. Unfortunately, you have also seen that it attracts our enemies. Do you have any suggestions so far?"
Snape answered calmly, bending the deepest tones in his voice to meet her air of authority.
"Madam, I do not. I require more time with Harry and familiarizing myself with the limitations of this environment and his effect on it. As you've said, it's taken many years to get to this point of atrophy," he emphasized, "both culturally and physically. It will not be fixed in a few hours. As for hiding my magic, be glad I did. Without it, I could not ascertain the mechanics behind your neural connection to the stones around us. I perceive their intelligence. You share a mind with them, sentient acoustics, as it were. But for all your sensitivity, you cannot sustain the frequencies that unite your people. It is precisely because of my magic that I may be able to help you."
In other words, be glad I was able to fool your henchmen. That is my power and you need it.
Harry watched them. The two faced each other as if they'd reached an impasse. The queen was as tall as Snape and her narrow face iced over into unreadability. The light behind her forehead dimmed.
"Very well," she folded her hands. "What can be done to assist you?"
Hope fluttered in Harry's heart, at hearing how easily she acquiesced. But he resisted any compassion that tried to rise up in response to her frail gracefulness. He forced it back down. This bitch had ripped his daughter out of his arms. How dare she hold them hostage and judge them for hiding the very thing that might save hers?
Then it hit him. She did it to save her kid. She's referring to her people, but her child is dying, if she's to be believed. She didn't attack because she wanted to hurt anyone. She doesn't know how else to save her child. To her, a wizard's magic was the equivalent of medicine. She really was naive in the ways of the surface world. She really was old like stone, inhuman and eternal. She had never had to question her state of being or her affect on others until the dissension of her people. It was like seeing a rock slowly take on human awareness and the consequences that come with it. She had no sense of right and wrong until now, her drone-like civilization had no need for the weight of such choices. Now there was birth, and death, and murder and kidnapping. Her nature-innocence was withering.
Now Harry saw that her blue skin actually bore darkened circles around her eyes. And there, skin appeared the thinnest. He saw veins. He saw haunted years, like looking into the lines of the elderly. He saw illness. Oh my God, he felt himself say. It's her. This place is weak and falling apart because she's injured. She is essentially this place. She tried to have a baby, succeeded, and never recovered from it.
He knew a thing or two about giving birth unnaturally. For a second, a wave of nausea washed over him as he remembered the way his pain had eclipsed his entire identity as he relived that process in a single instance. He swayed.
Snape asked, "Harry, are you okay?"
He caught himself. They were staring at him.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
What just happened? Had she communicated to him? Had he stared into her floating head star and got a download? He didn't like feeling for her one bit. He hated those memories and hated knowing that she was a thing suffering because she was never meant to experience that kind of mental expansion, and yet she had. It was destroying the thing that she used to be.
"Perhaps you've given him too much of the magic-suppressing injections," Snape tainted her confidence. "It's toxic in large doses." He followed with it quickly, "Grant us access to the chamber and leave us for now. We will limit our experimentation to a small area and only after I've placed a shield to retain the effects from being detected. We'll test our magic on the materials around us, gently. We will not use enough to draw attention. We'll try to discover and match the frequencies these canals are responsive to."
The queen pulled back her shoulders. "You realize that you cannot touch the child? She will have to be relocated while you have full use of your magic. This is only to ensure further cooperation."
"Of course," Snape replied.
When they looked at Harry, he nodded. "Let's just get started."
He didn't want to give himself any more time to allow this to continue. And by now, he realized he was allowing it.
