Chapter 5:
Escape from Nightmares
The invisibility of the man's vehicle counted for nothing in the wake of a being capable of altering every individual organ in their body to that of any other organism. With the sense of smell like that of a bear, eyesight of an eagle and hearing of a moth the Freak made for a perfect bloodhound to follow.
Or so its' creators had assured them.
"Suspect has turned onto the a619 motorway heading west towards Chesterfield!" Auror Tonks spoke over her hand radio as they trailed behind the vague mirage of a man riding a motorcycle.
"Roger that. Sending backup eastbound in your direction." Came the response from the Chesterfield police chief.
Soon enough the Aurors that had chased the suspect down and forced him to land caught up to Yaxley and Tonks. At his signal, they spread out in order to cast a wide net of masking wards and potential vectors of spellfire. The Unspeakable's creation, on the other hand, had already closed the distance and was nearly upon their target.
A loud pop later and the hooded figure appeared, visible, atop the nearest semi-truck. It was a ballsy move, apparating while traveling well over 80 kilometers per hour, and required the presence of mind to match the speed of the target point. The target didn't so much as flinch upon reappearing which told Yaxley he had matched the trucks speed perfectly, or else he would have gone flying from the change in momentum.
This guy was good. It had to be Potter, right? He didn't want to be the first person to claim the Dark Lord was wrong about him being dead, buuut.
What was more impressive was that he'd waited for a particularly strait stretch of road to ensure the starting and ending points matched in direction of momentum as well.
The target cast some kind of wide area lightning charm at the creature, and his own motorbike, that left sparks of bright yellow and white echoing between the two. Yaxley recognized it as one of Mad-Eye Moody's favorite spells. It caused no physical harm but was the closest thing to the cruciatus a light-side wizard would use in order to cause pain. Pain that forced the twisted creature to vault ass over elbow.
Potter followed this up by leaning over the truck's cab and casting some kind of spell at the driver, as well as the driver of an adjacent rig, before apparating back to the seat on his now visible motorbike.
"Did you catch what spell he used on the drivers?" Yaxley yelled over the howling wind in his ear.
"Not a clue! Maybe a confundus?" Tonks offered.
Hmmm. Not likely. Potter would never cast a spell like that on the driver of a multi-ton vehicle, assuming the psychological profile on him was to be believed. It would cause a massive crash and pileup and put too many lives at risk. They would sooner cast an unforgivable on somebody.
"Alright!" Harry called out to the shade of Regulus Black. "I cast the imperius on them. Now try possessing one."
Regulus, who had tried and failed to possess the drivers before, gave him a curt nod and flew to the nearest truck cabin. Harry watched in the side mirror as the glazed look of the driver faded and was replaced by the aristocratic smirk common amongst all of his godfather's relatives.
So, he was right. Shades summoned by the resurrection stone can only possess people placed under the imperius. Question was, did the person need to be placed under it by the wielder of the stone, or could he summon an army of shades and send them out to possess every person under the unforgivable's tender ministrations regardless of caster? More importantly, why were they be able to possess anybody at all, let alone an imperius victim?
Questions for later.
"Ronald Bilius Weasley! Hermione Jean Granger!" He yelled into the resurrection stone.
"Ron, switch places with Regulus. Hermione, take control of the other driver." He ordered as soon as the flying spirits materialized.
"But I've never driven a semi before!" Ron yelled back.
"And I've never driven at all!" Hermione added.
"I'm not expecting you to drive particularly well, if you catch my meaning." Harry countered, giving them a well-used look that only they would normally be able to decipher.
They each gave him a knowing nod and did as instructed, just as a pair of broom-riding Aurors broke formation and closed in on him.
He barely swerved out of the way in time to avoid a familiar red stunner and accompanying explosion hex impacting the asphalt he'd previously occupied. It was then that Ronald - now in a body several decades older and many stones heavier than he was in a previous life - swerved his re-appropriated vehicle and nicked one of the Aurors. The nick from such a heavy box of steel moving at such high speeds was enough to shatter his broom, and likely every bone in his body, sending him to the ground below where he became little more than a crimson smear mark.
Harry turned around and, after taking careful aim, took out the second flyer.
"Avada kedavra!"
The flash of green de-seated the flyer and sent his lifeless body fluttering in the wind like a piece of litter. It was only the quick reaction of his metamorph companion that they avoided being hit by the corpse and suffering a similar plummet to their deaths.
"That is not Harry Potter!" Tonks yelled back to him after righting her broom.
Funnily enough, Yaxley had come to the same conclusion. He retrieved the radio transmitter from the young mother's waist and relayed this new information.
He racked his brain to try and decide who the imposter was. It was somebody far too skilled, far too ruthless and far too fatal to be the bleeding-heart of a boy who favored disarming charms to cutting curses, like the one he just sent at a third Auror whose shield it passed through like water... What the hell kind of spell was that?!
He shook the latest question from his mind and went back to deciphering the previous puzzle.
Was he a foreign Hitwizard the boy somehow hired to activate on his death? The name Kwan Chang-ho came to mind, but that ruthless bastard was never without his companion, James Collins. If that crazed gunman was nearby and ready to provide backup, then they were all in deep shit.
Who did that leave? A turncoat Death Eater?
And then it hit him.
"Malfoy." He groused aloud.
It had been three weeks since Potter had kidnapped the heir. Had Potter won him over to his side? Everybody he knew believed that pusillanimous little shit was too yellow to kill anybody, let alone risk his life for a cause he didn't even believe in. But he had barely ever been truly tested in combat and was a Seeker, so he had the skill in the air to perform the maneuvers they were seeing. Being the son of a Death Eater he also had the training to use the dark arts this man was casting. Potter could have won him over without forcing him to do his bidding under any kind of duress. The Dark Lord had been treating that family like trash, and now that chicken had come home to roost.
"Looks like we have a traitor to kill." Yaxley concluded just as some strange quadruped galloped right past him.
The unnatural creature had regained his bearings, twisting his flesh to something that - in shape and mechanism - resembled a cheetah's lithe form crossed with that of an inferi. Their target must have caught sight of it in his mirror because he hit the brakes hard enough to nearly ram the creature.
The creature's reflexes were such that it leapt aside and clung to the box car of the leftward truck. The one that had rammed the flyer earlier. Now Malfoy, or whoever they were chasing, was boxed in between the two vehicles with the creature, who's limbs were growing spines like that of ice climbing boots and fingers like a geckos. The disgusting feet and red appendages would be an offense to any God who had created the beautiful animals of the earth that this abomination was now imitating.
"Target is boxed in! Move-in! Move-in!" Tonks yelled over the radio and all twenty of the broom riders around them did as told.
Harry hit the throttle and with what little charge the levitation enchantments had gained during this chase, he rose a few feet into the air and turned. With his wheels firmly attached to the side of the right truck box he switched into the highest gear and flew into an arc to avoid the onslaught of piercing, cutting and killing curses that rained down on the gap between the trucks.
He raised this wand skyward and once again cast the spell Moody's shade had taught him, hitting at least half a dozen Aurors with the arcing lightning. Their bodies spasmed so uncontrollably that they lost all hold of their brooms and "skidded-out" as his old teammates called it. If he was lucky one or two of them would crash into the other flyers and send them all careening to their deaths.
He landed Reggie's bike on the roof of the box and hit the brakes.
He held on tight as Ron and Hermione followed through with the plan and swerved towards each-other before pulling back, turning the boxes trucks into a high-speed vice that slammed into each other with an earth-shaking clang.
As the giant boxed of steel crashed Harry saw a grey shape leap up onto the roof of the adjacent box. The disgusting creature had survived their maneuver, but he was sure the two flyers that had tried to approach him from down low weren't so lucky.
Harry released the brakes and his the throttle as Ron and Hermione tried to regain control over their still swerving vehicles, but not before casting an overpowered bambarda at Ron.
The cab, engine block and front wheel disintegrated with the same liquidity as the body Ron had been possessing just seconds ago. With their destruction the remainder of the cab and its payload dug into the road and flipped over like an Olympic pole vaulter.
He'd have to make it up to Ron later, but good God was it satisfying to watch that crime against nature get sent flying.
Wait, did it always have wings?
"God-damnit!" Harry yelled as he saw his pursuer now had thick leathery membranes stretched out from his hands to his feet.
He looked a lot like one of those gliding squirrels now. A hairless, burned and bloody gliding squirrel with sharp bits of bone jutting out from incorrect places.
The remaining flyers scrambled to avoid the airborne vehicle and its cargo box. The shattered cans of cola were a more difficult challenge to avoid and left them all covered in the sticky beverage and broken glass.
By the time they finally circumvented the crashing chunk of twisted metal and returned to their chase Malfoy, or whoever the hell it was, had somehow managed to navigate to the front of the truck lineup; some twelve vehicles ahead of him. That bike must have been faster than he'd been leading them to believe.
The creature landed on the roof of the nearest semi and changed his shape once more, to what Yaxley couldn't tell, before sprinting along and leaping to the next one. Let it not be said that the thing wasn't a tenacious little blood hound.
"Go go go!" Yaxley yelled with he help of a sonorus charm to his throat.
The other flyers abandoned their attempt at re-erecting the wards and joined the creature in chasing down their prey.
The only warning to what happened next was the tell-tale tingling sensation of a wide area-of-effect spell before the ground suddenly became a lot shinier than the dry, warm weather would allow. And then came the screeching of tires.
"Glisseo?" Tonks wondered allowed.
She was right. This motherfucker just cast a grease charm onto an entire two kilometer stretch of road!
"Who is this powerhouse!?" Tonks yelled back at him.
But he decided not to even guess at an answer as it was then that the dozen truck pile-up began. One vehicle crashed into another. A third hydroplaned. A fourth and fifth vaulted over like the soda truck from earlier. Yaxley didn't quite catch what happened to trucks six through twenty as it was then that world became not but fire, flying tires and steel.
Who knew there was a flammable variant to the grease spell? It would have been a fun bit of trivia to learn while not flying towards and actively exploding oil tanker, that's for damn sure.
Tonks yelled something that might have been instructions to hold on tight, but it was drowned out by the cacophony of metal on metal, fiery winds and exploding tanks of petrol and diesel.
Auror Tonks proved her old position on the Hufflepuff team had been well-earned as she dived, swerved, ducked and dodged between the impromptu obstacle course of burning shrapnel. His broken bones objected vehemently to each jerk of the broom, but he ignored the pain in favor of watching in abject wonder as they someone flew through a flaming gap between two crashing truck cabins and ducked under the remains of the oil tanker's prolapsed container as it fell back to the ground.
For a full minute they twisted this way and that, entering death defying rolls and turns, until finally endless red and orange gave way to the calm black of night again.
When they finally passed through the last tongues of fire and onto the familiar black road Tonks skidded to stop and they both collapsed onto the hard ground in coughing fits. There they both battled with their lungs to catch their breaths and clear them of the soot and ash.
It took a Herculean effort, but Yaxley managed to lift his shaking and ashen body and turned his head to survey the breath hitched at what he beheld.
"It... It's..." He gasped and stuttered as words failed him.
The flaming carnage reached ten, twenty, forty meters into the air as charred pallets of confectionary, rolls of carpet, battered electronics and the many other products these vehicles had contained rained down upon the earth like the seventh plague of Egypt. Their drumbeat drowning out the screams of his team members and the Muggle drivers as the life slowly, and painfully, left their bodies.
"It's beautiful." He whispered with a sob one would expect from a man holding his newborn baby for the first time.
With shaky knees he rose to his feet and watched, simply watched, the utter destruction before him. It was violence and brutality turned into an art. Destruction so profound it made his soul ache. It was what he had dreamt of in the promise of war his Lord had made but never delivered on.
Before today he never had the words to describe the future he craved, but at least now he could provide a pensive memory as an example of how he envisioned redecorating the entirety of the Muggle world.
"That, I ... I don't." Nymphadora sputtered as she picked herself up as well.
She was favoring an arm. Must have been hit with some shrapnel during her outstanding flying.
"I wager to guess the suspect escaped?" Yaxley asked rhetorically in the same bored droll he always used, only now he had to fake it.
Tonks glanced at the stretch of pristine road behind them and back to him before giving a dumbfounded nod in affirmative.
"Who in all that is right and holy was THAT!?" She asked, nearly pleaded.
"I have no idea, but I am dying to find out. And you are right, that definitely wasn't Potter." Yaxley lied.
She glanced between him and the hellscape they narrowly escaped, then to the direction their target had fled before she managed to recompose herself.
"So, Harry really is dead..." She reasoned. "And this is somebody new?"
"Or somebody old who has been waiting in the wings for his chance to rise." Yaxley told her. "My money is on your blonde cousin. Maybe he's really been a Slytherin this entire time and hiding his real capabilities."
She scowled at him as if it was the most ridiculous idea she'd ever heard.
"But didn't Harry kidnap him?" Tonks asked. "Why would he save Harry's Muggle Relatives?"
"Oath of fealty? Unbreakable vow thrust upon the boy to continue Potter's fight?" Yaxley suggested. "It does explain how he managed to take Number Twelve. He is the next male descendent in the black family line."
Potter could have easily just handed the title of Lord Black to Malfoy in his dying days. That or the more obvious truth was at hand. Potter was alive, and that was him. Hell, that was probably both of them. There had been a side car on the motorcycle. With an invisibility cloak or sufficiently powerful disillusionment charm somebody could have been aiding the other from the side cart unseen.
"It's finally begin." He realized aloud.
Tonks looked at him with great confusion and what might have been concern for his sanity.
"What? What's begun?" Tonks asked.
"The war." He answered, barely keeping his voice steady in his euphoria. "At long last, the war has begun."
His entire squad. Dead. The gift from that immortal alchemist? Destroyed. His mission had been an utter failure, and yet he couldn't be happier. He would have to report his theory that Potter had turned young Malfoy until he could decide how to act on this new information. He thanked his heavens he never took the mark, for now he may very well be doing battle with those who were.
"And Auror Tonks." He said to the young woman.
He waited for her to look him in the eyes.
"Make certain your version of today's report does not include my conclusions. Only your own testimony and conclusions. And kindly don't mention my hollering over the comm that I thought it was Potter." He told her. "Oh, and I believe you've earned visitation for your son and... husband this weekend."
That certainly wiped the shock and horror from her face, only for it to return when they heard a final crash resounding over the dying embers. Some unrecognizable chunk of charred debris was flung aside and from underneath stepped a figure from nightmares.
Veins of fiery embers crisscrossed a body formed wholly of charcoal. The human shape, unseeing, walked towards them and like shards of stone cut from a sculpture his body fell apart while with each step. It grew smaller and cleaner as it approached until a mere meter away from Yaxley stood a mass of flesh and bone.
It twisted and writhed like a boggart indecisive of its' next form with the sound of grinding meet and cracking bones until it reshaped into a child. Naked and unblemished, but smiling in that fake, plastic smile he was growing uncomfortably familiar with the creature spoke.
"I apologize for my failure in this mission." The shapeshifter said, having finally used what remaining uncharred flesh he had left to form a new body. "I do hope you are not so dissatisfied with my performance that you wish me to self-terminate?"
Yaxley could merely shake his head, too stunned at the creature's impossible durability.
"That won't be necessary." Yaxley said. "You put on a simply marvelous performance, and I cannot wait to tell your creators all about it."
If possible, the creature's smile grew even wider.
Harry turned off the engine and kicked up the stand for the motorcycle before easing himself out of the seat.
He was home.
"You know." The shade of Regulus Black said as they departed the alley beside number twelve and approached the front door. "I really appreciate you trying to bring my bike back, but in hindsight you really should have just hidden it in some foliage and apparated back."
The man, or spirit, wasn't wrong. But this was still a victory all the same. He settled for not answering.
With a turn of the handle Harry opened the door to his godfather's ancestral home to the sound of banging pots and pans. Upon crossing the threshold he further noted the tell-tale sounds of chatter, boiling water and a smidgeon of laughter coming from the kitchen. The further sound of running showers came down to him from the several bathrooms around the house.
Those hostages had wasted no time in making themselves at home, had they?
"Potter!" Came Diggle's voice.
Harry turned to the demolished drawing room on his left to see him and Sirius, as the pizza boy, approaching him. Harry was in the mood for a shower, a meal and bed so he wasted no time on pretty words.
"Hestia and Dudley?" He asked.
"Bandaged and in fresh beds." Diggle answered.
"Death Eaters in the attic?" Harry asked.
"Chained and sedated." Sirius answered.
"Their victims?" Harry asked.
"Coping." Sirius told him. "In the kitchen or washing away weeks of dirt, grime and worse." Sirius explained.
"Kreacher and Dobby?" Harry asked.
"Cleaning up the debris from your battle and making plans to repair the many gaping holes in my ancestral home." sirius confirmed.
Brilliant.
"Well if that will be all, I really must retire for the day." Harry ordered as he made his way to the stairs.
Sirius blocked his path.
"There is, errrr, one other thing you really should see." Sirius told him worriedly.
Harry motioned for his godfather to lead the way and for Diggle to remain where he was. Their trip was rather short as Sirius led him to the tattered and sludge covered remains of Walburga's portrait/Horcrux.
Sirius parted the ruined cloth of the painting to reveal a dark and narrow staircase leading downwards.
Well that sure was interesting.
"I haven't gone in yet. Wanted to wait for you to get back. Seeing as all I have is a sword and a Muggle body. " Sirius explained.
Harry nodded once in approval before drawing Draco's wand for what would hopefully be the last time that evening. He cast a silent lumos and began the descent, with the black brothers following closely behind him.
Harry mentally compared this passage with a mental three-dimensional model of the house in his head. If they were going by sane and normal laws of space, then this passage would be cutting directly through the middle of the kitchen. But seeing as magical abodes tended to alter space dramatically, he had to shake the confusion from his mind.
The end of the passage opened up into a cramped room filled to the brim with stacks of paper, reference books and strange objects that reminded Harry greatly of some in Dumbledore's office. There were several bookshelves and a large desk with an unlit lamp, but what caught Harry's attention was a source of light on the other side of the room.
He dropped the lumos spell to try and see it better. It looked like murky fluorescent lights setup in rings on the ground. As they edged closer, he saw that there were shapes hovering above them, humanoid shapes in fetal positions. As they got closer still, he realized what they were.
Tanks. Cylindrical glass tanks full of water like something out of a science fiction movie, and within each tank was a naked person.
There was six in all. A red-haired man no older than nineteen, with a blonde man of similar age on the left. There was also black-haired gentleman, again nineteen, on the right along with a small blonde girl almost his age and a black-haired boy likewise nearing his age. At the very center was a black-haired woman who was the spitting image of Bellatrix Lestrange, or more flatteringly, Andromeda Tonks.
The others, he noted, seemed malformed. Their facial features, digits and sex organs like melted wax in shape to the point that their eyes and mouths were completely sealed.
"Are they alive?" Harry couldn't help asking.
It was then that he noticed the umbilical cords connected to each person at the belly button and winding down to the floor of their cylinders.
Of all the disturbing things Harry expected to find in Walburga Black's secret study, human clones weren't anywhere on the list.
It was then that Sirius walked past him to aggressively knock on the glass of the middle tube. To Harry's surprise the woman's eyes snapped open.
"Rise and shine." Sirius greeted. "Mother."
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