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Chapter Nine—Dark Star
Sirius's eyes snap open. He turns around and finds himself almost tumbling out of the bed, his fingers closing hard in the blankets twined around his legs.
"Sirius?" Remus's voice comes from down the corridor, with a low buzz of exhaustion behind it.
"Sorry," Sirius says automatically, even as he forces himself up on his hands and knees. There's a tingle going down his spine, and a beating gong inside his head that's a clap behind the beat of his heart.
The last time he felt something like this, Bellatrix came through the Floo.
"Padfoot, what's going on?" Remus sticks his head around the corner of the doorframe, and Sirius forces himself to ignore the very nice bare chest suddenly on display. "Is there some kind of danger?"
"Yeah." Sirius closes his eyes and attunes himself to the wards of the house. They're bouncing and pacing back and forth like beasts in their cages. Something is coming. With a slight motion of his mind, Sirius sweeps the thoughts of Narcissa, Draco, and Harry. They're starting to wake, Narcissa first, as the one most attuned to the family magic, and the others just behind.
But for the moment at least, they're all right. That means the threat is coming, not here yet.
"I want you to take Narcissa and Draco and Harry and hide in the safe room in the attic," Sirius says quietly, opening his eyes and turning his head to look at Remus. He doesn't know what he looks like, but whatever it is, it makes Remus recoil instead of trying to touch him. "Something is coming."
"Something? That's all you can tell me?"
Sirius snarls at him, but absently, because he's concentrating on the wards. There's information radiating from them, but it's streaming through his head like the clear rays of a star, and all he can grasp is that, yes, something is coming, and it's dangerous, and if he doesn't want to—
Sirius snaps his eyes open.
"It's him, Remus! You-Know-Who!"
Luckily, that's the only notice Remus needs to turn around and sprint madly out of the room, yelling for Harry and Cissy as he goes. Sirius spends a moment with his head down, shuddering, and then he turns into a dog.
The notifications for the wards are less clear like this, but in some ways, that's what he wants. He can concentrate on what he needs to concentrate on, namely reaching the outer edge of the gardens and checking on the wards there. And dogs move faster than two legs can carry him right now.
He rushes out of his room and sees Harry standing there with one hand clasped to his forehead. Blood is pulsing between his fingers. Padfoot growls at the scent, and then turns and points his nose firmly in the direction of the safe room. He'll feel safer, too, knowing that Harry is there, behind the strongest wards in the house.
"No, I have to be with you, Sirius. You don't know what he's capable of—the Speakers have been training me—"
Sirius locks his teeth and growls. Harry stares at him with wide, astonished eyes. And then Remus comes up and takes Harry's arm and begins speaking to him in soothing tones, and Sirius just hopes that that means Harry is going to listen. He bounds down the last set of stairs and runs frantically towards the gardens.
Before he can get to the door that leads out onto them, it blows inwards.
And the thickest, darkest magic Sirius has ever felt begins to pour in.
"If I hear that you have come out during the battle—"
"I want to help, Mother."
Narcissa puts a finger beneath her son's chin and tilts it up. Draco stares back at her, trembling a little, but with his arms crossed and locked on his chest. Narcissa wants to sigh. Of all the times for her Slytherin son to adopt Gryffindor bravery…
"I know that you do," she says, and forces her voice to gentle when she sees the way Draco is stubbornly narrowing his eyes at her. "But you cannot."
"I can, too!"
"No," Narcissa says, and at least he flinches a little. It doesn't feel good, making her son flinch, but right now, that's the only indication she has that he's listening. "You don't know the right kind of magic, Draco. There is only one kind of power that can stand against the Dark Lord now, and you do not know how to wield it."
"I've been reading up on Dark Arts!"
Narcissa shakes her head. "I did not mean that. It is a magic peculiar to the Blacks alone, and you do not carry the name." She hopes, for a fleeting moment, that Sirius won't let his stupid principles or his even stupider pride get in the way of using that magic if he needs to.
She hopes he can. She was never privy to the lessons that her aunt and uncle taught Sirius and Regulus when they were younger, and she only knows for sure that she and Andromeda learned to wield it. Bellatrix was too mad, even then.
But if Sirius cannot, then Narcissa is there. And she will walk to her death in the middle of the night before she will allow her son to come to harm.
Draco is opening his mouth to make some other silly argument when Narcissa says, her voice deliberately cold and uninterested, "If you come out during the battle, I will cease all of my efforts to try and help you get Malfoy Manor back."
Draco's eyes are wide, and he looks far more betrayed than he would have if she had slapped him, Narcissa knows. She sighs and kisses his cheek, and then nods to the door of the safe room, where Lupin and Harry have already gone. "Get into that room, Draco."
"Yes, Mother," he whispers, bowing his head.
Narcissa's heart freezes a little as she sees him duck behind the wards, which shine as coruscating wheels of golden-green light. She hopes that he will forgive her and think about it later—think about how serious she is to have made a threat like that.
The door of the safe room begins to swing shut. Once it's closed, it will blend with the wall of the house, and no one but Sirius will be able to find his way to it, unless someone opens it from the inside. Even Narcissa's memory of exactly where the door stands will be obliterated when it is shut.
And then someone sprints out from behind it, just as the door swings the rest of the way shut and keeps Lupin and the children inside.
The child. Narcissa stares down at Harry Potter, his forehead bleeding and his eyes wide and his face pale and green serpents coiled around his neck.
"You will weaken the defense," she whispers, ready to call out to Lupin and get him to open the door again so that Harry can go back inside. "Sirius will be paying attention to you instead of fighting—"
Potter lifts something that glints on his hand, so brilliant that Narcissa has to shield her eyes. But she is well-aware that it has the brutal red glitter of fire.
"Chaos left me this," Potter whispers. "And Chaos burned him, burned one of his wands, although it couldn't be the real one because I know that he's using another one." He swallows. "It's the best weapon we have to use against him."
Narcissa is about to argue, to say that Sirius's Black magic is the best tool they have against it, but then they hear a scream from downstairs. Narcissa knows it is in her cousin's voice.
They have no time.
Potter leads the charge down the stairs, his winged snake flying ahead of him, and Narcissa follows, not wasting her breath on curses.
Sirius knows within the first moments of the clash that he's going to lose.
Voldemort is by himself, other than a couple cloaked figures standing on the edge of the gardens that seem to be trying to tear down the last of the wards. Voldemort is so powerful that he simply tore a hole in the wards, a jagged place in the back of Sirius's mind that is bleeding and burning and trying to get his attention. Sirius wishes he could blame that for being bowled over from his feet the minute Voldemort's magic touches him.
But it's not that, even as Voldemort's first spell slides off him—he didn't expect a dog—and Sirius rolls back to his feet and transforms into a human. The towering wall of magic that soars towards the sky, blue-black and shining like a wave about to fall, is the thing that is going to make all the difference.
Sirius swallows, and grips his wand. He knows that he can't win against a wave like that.
But he's going to try anyway. For Harry.
Especially because the next second Harry and Narcissa come running out of the house, and Harry yells something at Voldemort in Parseltongue that makes him shriek in rage and whirl around to the attack.
Sirius yells at Harry, "Go back inside!", but he doesn't think his godson is even paying attention. Narcissa runs up to Harry and grips his arm, but two of the green serpents riding his shoulders turn around and bare their fangs, and Narcissa falls back, her face filled with shock.
The Parseltongue hisses fly back and forth for a thick second, long enough for Narcissa to step back to Sirius's side and say, "You know what you have to use."
"No, I don't!"
Voldemort flings his wand up and sends a streak of lightning at Harry. Harry blocks it with a complicated motion of his hands in the air that might, if someone thought about it, resemble a serpent sliding along the ground. Voldemort pauses for a second as if astonished himself, and then laughs and returns to the attack.
"The Black power," Narcissa murmurs, her voice close to Sirius's ear. "The Black magic."
"The wards didn't stop him!"
"That is not what I'm talking about," Narcissa says, and her hand closes down hard on his arm as Harry dodges a dark red curse and then his winged snake tries to get around Voldemort. Voldemort aims his wand at the little thing, but it turns and flies back to Harry's shoulder before he can get a straight line at it. "Your parents did not train you in the art of the darkness?"
Sirius freezes. Of course they did. He knew how to do it before he went to Hogwarts.
But he literally hasn't thought of it in years. He couldn't use it in Azkaban, since it would have had no effect on the Dementors. And just the thought of using it here, where he might not be able to control it and Harry is nearby, is enough to break him into shivers of terror.
This time, Voldemort flings a curse that Harry can't block, although he lifts a fiery shield that seems to muffle the impact. But Harry flies backwards and collides with the side of the house, a bruise blossoming across his temple and his neck hanging limply for a second, and Sirius's resolve hardens.
"Yeah," he says, and runs forwards. He has to be close to Voldemort. He can't chance not being.
And the air around his hands begins to twist and darken.
"Get up, get up! We can't let him win!"
The soft, urgent hisses of Lion in his ears seem to come from another world. Harry braces himself against the bulk of Grimmauld Place and shakes his head, but that doesn't stop the ringing. He really hit hard when the curse broke through his shield. Chaos's firestone didn't prove so effective after all.
And Voldemort is stalking towards him now, his teeth bared like stumps in his mouth and his red eyes full of sickening humor.
"You thought to strike down me with Parseltongue? The wizard who is the last of the Slytherin line, who has studied it more than anyone else?"
Harry finally gets his feet underneath him, thank Merlin. He staggers up and glares, and pauses when he notices the speculative look Voldemort is giving him. Well, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters but surviving the next few moments, and the ones after that, and the ones after that. And doing something to make sure Voldemort can't harm Sirius and the other people here with him.
Harry cares more about that than he does about anything else. He meant what he told Lyassa, that he doesn't think he'll survive the war.
But he does hope he doesn't die here, when he hasn't done a lot of damage to Voldemort.
He licks his lips and hisses back, "Did you know that the other Parselmouths think you're corrupt and a stupid example of our kind?"
Voldemort jerks to a halt as though Harry has slammed another shield up in front of him. He stares at Harry with narrowed eyes, then sneers and says, "There are no other Parlsemouths."
"Then where do you think I learned the magic I used against you? Do you think I'm enough of a genius to figure it out on my own?"
Voldemort sneers, but it's half-hearted. Harry's intrigued him. Good. He wants to know more about the other Parselmouths.
Now if only Harry had a plan beyond "survive the next few seconds," everything would be perfect.
He holds Voldemort's gaze and reminds himself that "survive the next few seconds" is the foundation of everything that comes after. He clenches his hands in front of him and adds, "They're really upset with you. They helped me mainly because they hate you."
An enraged hiss answers him, and then Voldemort says, "I have had enough of your cheek," and adds, in English or Latin or whatever else you want to consider it, "Crucio!"
Harry flings himself to the ground, and manages to get under the line of yellow light that strikes towards him. But he knows, as he rolls back to his feet, that he won't manage to dodge for much longer. His head is still ringing, all his muscles ache, he's afraid for Lion and his conjured snakes, and his magic just isn't as strong as Voldemort's. That's all there is to it.
Then someone comes charging in from the side. Harry only has the chance to see that it's Sirius before his godfather springs on Voldemort and clasps him with hands that look like they have spinning blades of darkness around them.
Voldemort goes down in a heap from the charge, but he's back on his feet in seconds, and Sirius screams as Voldemort lashes him with some curse. Harry can see his godfather's blood on the ground, and he—
He goes a little mad.
"I'm the one you want to kill, not him!" he shrieks, sprinting forwards. Lion is flying behind him, and the green snakes have fallen off somewhere. Harry doesn't care. He wants to stop Voldemort from killing Sirius more than he's ever wanted anything, even his next breath. "Come on and face me, you coward!"
Voldemort's lips part in something that only looks like a smile because he's doing it with his mouth. "Since I believe that it will hurt you worse than anything else," he hisses back, "of course I will do this."
He draws his wand back—
And then, incredibly, overwhelmingly, he is the one who screams in pain.
Sirius doesn't know what kind of curse Voldemort hit him with, but it's some cousin to the Cruciatus. And yes, it sends endless pain ricocheting through his body, and he knows that he won't be able to stand any time soon.
But his parents tortured him like that when he was a child. Him and Reggie. Merlin, he hasn't thought of Reggie in years, and now he seems to be thinking of him all the time, or at least since he brought up the wards around the house.
The curse doesn't cripple him. Sirius raises his hands, and the Black magic, the power they took their name from, coalesces around his hands and spreads further away. It's slow. It's been years since he bothered to remember the training.
But some things, like his name, have remained with him through the years in Azkaban and the Dementors. And he would do anything to save Harry, including taking up magic Darker than this.
The Blacks are named after stars. But they took their surname from the darkness between those stars.
And that's what Sirius unleashes on the monster hissing at Harry. The cold of the absolute void, the darkness without light.
The cold seizes Voldemort, and he doesn't move, perhaps can't move. Sirius feels a tingle of it himself, but it doesn't harm him, this magic has never harmed the Blacks, and he clamps his hands on Voldemort's arms.
It only takes a few seconds of holding him, while Voldemort struggles, screaming, and as much as Sirius's flesh revolts at the notion that he's touching skin at least partially taken from his godson—
It's worth it, to watch both of Voldemort's eyes burst and his skin flash-freeze and fall away from him in large black flakes.
He's screaming, hissing, tossing his head back and baring teeth that look like stumps covered in oil. That isn't smart, because Sirius can take advantage of it and he does, thrusting his hand into Voldemort's mouth and straight down his throat. And then he no longer has a voice. Sirius chuckles despite himself at the thought of what the void must be doing to his vocal cords.
Voldemort staggers away from him, and Sirius sighs. It was probably too optimistic to hope that he'd kill the monster, especially since he survived being a wraith and possessing people or animals for thirteen years. But he's won for the moment, and that's all he wants. As Voldemort Apparates out through the hole he already tore in the wards, Sirius turns and faces the two Death Eaters who are still working on tearing through the wards themselves.
They're motionless with shock, and they don't move fast enough.
Harry crashes into him and clings to him, shaking like Sirius used to after a session with his mother. Sirius clasps him close, so that Harry won't look up and have to see what he does next, and brings the wards down and across.
The Death Eaters fall into two meaty halves. Each.
Sirius bows his head and holds Harry harder, dismissing the magic from his hands with a quiet effort of will. It didn't hurt Harry, of course, since Sirius didn't will it to and he had better control than he remembered, but he doesn't want to forget about it and hurt someone accidentally.
All his kills, from now on, are going to be on purpose.