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Chapter 43: Out of the Frying Pan…
Harry hovered somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, or else between life and death. It was hard to say.
Snatches of conversation reached him in his limbo.
"That boy's a danger to us all," an American had said during the first such instance.
"A danger?" The second voice was smooth and accented. "How do you suggest we would have dispersed the mob without him?"
Then there had been a long gap until the next sounds reached him.
"I've never seen anything like it, Alastor. Not even from him."
The short scrape of a chair against a stone floor. "Aye."
Then he was lost amid the void again, taunted by flashes of his mother with a dagger at her throat, by a tapestry of woven silver, and by the sound of high, cold laughter.
Dusk was coming when he properly came to. Outside the window was a twilight sky speckled with that night's first stars. "Kalloway? Are you awake?"
Harry rolled over and peered at where those words had come from. A narrow doorway led out of the bedchamber. Standing just inside it was a tall, broad man with dark skin and a bald head, wearing a red cloak trimmed in gold. "Kin-Shacklebolt."
Kingsley turned his head to look at him. The gold earring swayed from his right ear. "How do you feel?"
Harry stretched and grimaced. "Have you ever fallen off your broom from high enough up that it leads to everything hurting worse than hell without knocking you out or breaking anything?"
"I'm… afraid not."
"Well, I'd say it feels an awful lot like that if you add in a deeper ache you can't quite place."
"Exhaustion?"
"I'd say so." Harry moved his arm and felt the Elder Wand resting safely in its holster. "If I remember all that happened, that was a lot of magic."
"Everyone is muttering about it whenever we get a moment's rest," Kingsley confessed. "None of us have ever seen its like before."
"It was a bit more than I was going for." Harry's hope had been to tear up a small section of the street and shape the stones into an angry snake, then imbue them with enough magic to resist most curses. "I should have realized that would get out of hand. It was never my forte."
A ripple washed over Kingsley's face. "I would ask what exactly it was if it was less impolite."
"It wasn't really a spell at all. Like I said, that's not my forte."
Kingsley scratched his head. "I'm not quite sure I follow."
"The conventional way to do something like that would have been to enchant the stones, or to use Spreadhadh Talamh, though I'm not sure that really counts as conventional."
"Spreadhadh Talamh?" The words were mangled inside Kingsley's mouth.
"Oh, right." A ball of yearning bubbled up in Harry's throat. This Kingsley would have no way of knowing what that spell was. The fact left him feeling more alone than ever. "It's like Fiendfyre, but rarer and with earth instead."
Kingsley stiffened. "I wasn't aware there was anything like Fiendfyre."
"Most aren't." Harry swallowed past the yearning strangling his speech. "Fiendfyre itself was thought to be a myth for centuries before it started popping up not all that long ago."
"What are these others?" Kingsley asked. "If there's one for earth, I assume the same is true for air and water?"
"Yes. They're called the Elemental Incarnations of Hatred, if you care to give them a proper name."
Kingsley nodded to himself. "That does seem like what you did."
"It was sort of my touchstone. I've seen something like it done before, granted on a smaller scale. I'm actually not sure if that was Spreadhadh Talamh when I saw it, but it sure as hell looked like it. I sort of just aimed for what I'd seen. The problem was I was going off of pure intent and trying to cut out spells entirely, since I know I don't have the control for something that large and focused. It got away from me a bit." Dread coiled in his stomach. "Shit. The stones, the city — are they—"
"Fine," Kingsley assured him. "The road will have to be rebuilt and some property was damaged by debris when the snake collapsed, but magic can right all that easily enough. That sector of the city was evacuated days ago."
"Good." Harry exhaled. The dread uncoiled in his gut and he slumped against the pillows. "Good."
"Are you up for much?"
Harry swung his legs out of bed and pressed his feet into the floor, testing their strength. "I won't be giving a repeat performance for a while yet, but I can manage if I'm needed. Why? What's happened?"
"Not much. It's only been about six hours. There's just a meeting in a few minutes."
Harry took an experimental step. There was a slight trembling in his thighs. Less than expected. "All right. We'd best be heading there, then."
Astonishment flashed across half the faces sitting around a windowless room ringed in armchairs and draped with fur hangings. "Well I'll be damned," Moody said with a slow shake of his head. "The boy wonder has risen."
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me that." There was a tightness in his throat as Harry took a seat between Kingsley and the Frenchman who had vouched for him that afternoon. "What have I missed?"
"You are the Kalloway boy?" A bulky wizard wearing the red and gold of a venator and with a High Martial's badge asked from his place behind a desk.
"Yes," Harry responded. "I'm guessing you're Krum."
"Da." The man had Viktor's jaw and nose. Streaks of grey slashed through his thick, brown hair and there was a cool dispassion in his eyes. "Vadim Krum."
Harry dipped his head. "It's a pleasure, sir."
"Do we suppose we could get on with things?" Moody snapped at them. "We're losing daylight and my patience usually goes with it."
"Da." Krum turned to the men from his squadron. None of them had said a word so far. "Report."
The smallest of them spoke up in heavily accented English. "Quiet. Too quiet."
"No activity in this sector of the city?" Krum asked.
"In no sector of the city," the same man answered.
"How many were rounded up?" Harry asked. "I sort of missed the aftermath."
"Just over a thousand," Rookwood told him.
"So around a third," Harry murmured. It was a good result.
"The main force scattered," Krum said. "We've seen no sign of most."
"They're a bunch of selfish swaggercocks," Moody muttered. "Not a drop of discipline in the lot of them, all mismatched rags and no sign of proper ranks. Froze like they'd seen a ghost when Kalloway dropped down, then ran like snivelling children when things turned 'round on them."
"We're not concerned about the force itself," Krum said. "It will be no real threat without the leaders."
"They'll just fall apart," Harry added. "Unless someone else is there to put them back together. There's nothing connecting them; no bonds, no discipline, no structure."
"That's what we have to make sure of," Krum agreed. "That there's no one left to put them back together."
A frown crept its way across Harry's face. "What does that entail?"
"We've got a rough plan," Moody informed him. "'Krum and I have been drawing it up ever since scraping our way out of the frying pan. Now that you've shrugged off your Sleeping Beauty phase, we can go over it."
"The short version is simple," Krum began. "We take the riot's leaders and show them off in a very public way tomorrow morning."
"That sounds like a solid plan." Why had Harry suspected grimmer work? It was not as though they were going to murder a bunch of rioters in cold blood. The fatigue must have made him jumpy.
It was a good plan that had Moody's squad and a quarter of Krum's dividing into groups of four. Each one contained a seasoned leader, an expert in wards, a healer in case things went south, and someone whose specialities lied in the realm of combat.
Harry wound up alongside Moody, Morrison, and an Egyptian wizard named Ramses. Harry's eyes could not help but follow Kingsley as he grouped up with Rookwood and two of Krum's men.
Rookwood. The Elder Wand shuddered against Harry's forearm. The traitor might well be the answer to his most burning questions.
Perhaps he could isolate Rookwood on a mission of some kind in the not-so-distant future. The difficulty would be tearing the information from him. His association with Riddle would have to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, or else he would have to be the victim of an unforeseen tragedy.
"All right," Moody told the three men in his small group, "we've got the tallest task of the lot, so listen close. A man named Andrei is said to have been the head honcho behind all this. Slithery sort of man. Lots of money on the down-low, but not as far as the law's concerned. Quiet, simple man if you ask most who know him. Really, he's a cold-hearted bastard with a mind that cuts like a knife. Or at least that's what Krum thinks. That's our target, but we don't want him knowing that.
"See, there's another bloke named Anton who most think is behind things. Loud and cocky kind of rich, he is, and a looker too. All charismatic, like, the sort of man who can talk a simple lad into doing just about anything he pleases."
"So he's a decoy," Ramses said in his soft voice.
"Aye, and a damn good one, too. Krum got men up close to where we think he's staying and the whole place is swarming with guards. Not that they're trying to look like guards, mind."
Morison sniffed. "Meanwhile, Andrei is shut up somewhere with subtler security."
"Andrei's shut up somewhere with subtler security, but we don't know where and he'll know the moment Anton's been attacked."
"Unless we stop it," Ramses murmured.
"Do we want to stop it?" Harry asked.
Morrison frowned. "Why would we not want to stop it?"
"I see two possible scenarios," Harry explained. "The first is that Andrei gets notice about Anton being attacked and flees somewhere far away. The second is that he gets the word and assumes it means he's safe, so he stays shut up where he is."
"Good lad," Moody praised him. "Not only do we not know where the slimy fucker is, we don't know what he'll do when we find out."
Morrison wiped a line of sweat from his bald head. "That seems problematic."
"What's the plan?" Ramses asked.
"The plan's that we're splitting up. Morrison and I'll wait on the same building we came in on. We've all seen it before, so there's no worry about apparition."
"And us?" Harry asked, gesturing from himself to Ramses.
"You two will be paying Anton a visit." Moody looked them up and down. "I won't lie to either one of you, you drew the short end of the stick. You'll have to deal with the guards. The good part is that you won't have to make it all the way to Anton."
"It's a trick," Harry guessed. "One of us breaks in, then the other watches for whoever flees the property to fill in Andrei and trails him."
"Close," Moody told him. "You'll step inside, just to be real sure whoever's watching thinks Anton's lost. But you'll step outside again after a minute and follow the canary's trail while Ramses stays back and wards the place up real tight, that way we don't have whatever guards are left trying to follow us."
"How will I see the watcher flee, and how will I know where he apparated to?" Harry asked.
Moody removed a small disk from the pocket of his robes. "Hold onto that real tight when you're inside, then wait for it to flare hot. Squeeze hard when it does and it'll track the canary's trail." Moody removed a second disk of the same design and handed it to Ramses. "Make sure Kalloway can apparate from inside the place, then make sure the guardsmen can't once he's flown the nest."
"And then you'll apparate to wherever I end up, using the connected cloak pins," Harry surmised.
"Aye, but we won't be joining up with you right away. Whenever you get where you're going, drop the canary and take the bastard's place." Moody offered him a crystal vial filled with a mud-like substance.
"Polyjuice Potion," Harry murmured. "That way I can take the runner's face and sneak in to see whether Andrei flees or stays."
"If he flees, he'll do it right away and take you with him, that way no one can show up and squeeze the details out of you," Moody told him. "If I feel you apparate again, we'll know to follow. If you're in the same spot, then we'll crash the party."
The loss of Moody in his own world hit Harry like it never had before. When Voldemort had killed the grizzled auror, Harry had been too consumed with hunting horcruxes to grieve properly. Now he realized what his side had lost and wondered how different things could be if a strategic genius like this had endured throughout the war.
"Kalloway, Ramses — you both got all that?" They saluted and Moody gave a stiff nod.
Harry felt a wrench behind his navel and then the room blurred out of sight. Ramses cursed under his breath when their feet slammed against a flat rooftop. They had landed near its edge and the man had almost fallen.
"You all right?" Harry whispered.
"Yes," Ramses responded in a voice like wind through bare branches. "Thank you."
Harry looked out over the rooftop's edge. They had left Bucharest itself. Shadowed pillars and shining lights made up the city skyline several miles in the distance. Far nearer was a flat expanse of grass extending from the farmhouse they had landed on to the edge of a dark forest. Tall trees stretched off to left and right for farther than the eye could see.
"That's going to be a problem," Harry muttered. Near the forest's outer edge was a small castle made from plain, grey stone. "Guards could be hiding in any of those trees. For all we know, a small army could be waiting just out of sight."
"And no fire," his companion grumbled. "It would be seen for miles."
"Yes." That had crossed his mind as well. Their plan would fall to tatters if Andrei was preemptively alerted. "That eliminates the easiest way of flushing guards out."
"What about the earth? Could you tear out a few lines of trees?"
"Normally I could. This morning cost me, though. I think I can pull it off if we really need me to. I'd rather not, though. I'd be next to useless after."
"So we lure them out the old fashioned way." Ramses pointed to where men prowled the castle's grounds. Most of them were pruning hedges or else cleaning windows with their wands. "Moody said the guards were trying to not look like guards."
"I remember." Harry squinted through the shadows. The glow from large windows was the only light they had to go by. "There aren't as many as I thought, which probably means most of them are in the trees."
"Exactly." Ramses made frantic motions with his hands. "They will all come running out."
"Some will stay in reserve, but you're right for the most part. If the guards outfront start having trouble, the others will have to expose themselves."
"Can you?" Ramses asked. "I need to take down the wards."
Harry flexed his fingers. "I think so."
Ramses clasped his hand. "Good luck."
Harry returned the man's firm grip. "And you." He drew the Elder Wand and disillusioned himself, then grimaced. This won't be fun.
A conjured gust of wind blew him into the air and a summoning charm had him speeding toward one of the castle's turrets. Seconds later he was on the grounds, moving through the grass on silenced feet. Think. Anything too flashy was off limits, as was the Imperius Curse. Given how few restrictions venators were under, violating one of the ones they were supposed to follow felt unwise.
His lips twisted into a grimace. There was no forcing one of the guards away to cause a scene off in the distance. That would have been his preferred course. It was the only one he could come up with that would avoid bloodshed.
A tall man in his middle years stepped around a hedge just feet in front of him. Harry aimed his wand. The things we do in war. "Obliviate," The other's eyes unfocused.
Harry hurried around the castle's outer wall and sheltered himself in the small space between it and the nearest turret. He had no questions about what was coming next. Martial men who had just had all knowledge of their colleagues and what they were doing here wiped from their minds were bound to react in a certain way when they paused to wonder where they were and how they'd gotten there...
A shout came from near the place he had just fled from. Jets of light shot back and forth, then feet were pounding against the grass as other guards responded. He obliviated another five of them as they ran past his alcove. It was important the fighting raged on after the first rogue was put down.
Soon the sounds that reached him were less those of a small conflict than they were heralds of a pitched battle. Harry slunk out of his alcove and lifted his concealment. That had been his cue. It meant the reserves had been committed.
Four men had held their posts near the castle's entryway. The one standing on the short landing some ten feet off the ground was the first to see him. The call of alarm gargled in his throat as a piercing hex punched into his chest and through a lung. The man standing at the foot of the stone stairwell was the next to die. His wand was only half raised when blood spurted from his severed abdomen. Harry grimaced. It was nasty business, Sectumsempra.
A purple curse flashed past him and he slapped aside a jet of wine-red light. Grass snaked up around his feet and hardened into hard stone. Harry batted away a gouging curse and reduced the stone to dust. Two curses missed him and carved deep tracks into the grass. A third fizzled halfway to him and a fourth was intercepted by a flock of birds who had sprung up in mid-air.
Harry clenched his jaw. The fight was taking too long.
Harry swept the Elder Wand in a broad arc as he swatted aside two incoming spells, then ended his gesture with a sharp twist.
Wands clattered out of lifeless hands as their owner's skulls wrenched themselves around with the sound of cracking bone.
Harry winced, half for the grotesque scene and half from the aching warning him against fatigue.
Stepping over the man he had killed with Sectumsempra, Harry ascended the stairs and tore the front door off its hinges with a quick flick of his wand. The silver shield he threw up at the same time flashed as four spells sparked against its rippling surface.H
Harry sent a wave of force emanating from the Elder Wand. Crashes and screams accompanied its sweeping progress through the entrance hall ahead.
Half a dozen guards sprawled like lifeless dolls when it had run its course. Glass from a parade of shattered portraits glittered bright against a dark green carpet. The splintered shards of two tables and what looked to have been three armchairs were strewn around the room. There was a deep crack in the far wall. Dust and pebbles were coming down in a steady spray from the floor above.
The disk all but burned his skin through both cloak and robes and he stepped back outside before the inevitable cave in could catch him in its radius. A shout was hurled at him from not far away. The fighting had spilled out around the castle's entryway.
Harry squeezed the blazing disk for all that he was worth and felt himself jerked forward. The whirl of colours faded and left him standing in a dark alleyway.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Harry had already torn up a strip of cobblestones and used it to block the killing curse. The burst of bright green flames as they exploded illuminated the short walkway and cast the slight frame and pinched face of his quarry into sharp relief.
The flames he had claimed control over halted halfway to their cringing target. There was a burst of scarlet and the man crumpled into a heap. No lines marred his pale face, and smooth, short breaths accompanied the slight movements of his chest.
Anger burned through Harry's blood and faint whispers rose from the wand in his right hand. The boy could not have graduated from Durmstrang more than two years back.
Faces hovered in his mind's eye; Neville's in the Forbidden Forest the night Sirius had died, Dennis's that last evening in the shadow of Mount Othrys, James's in the morning drizzle after Harry had refused to teach him.
Why were children always in the thick of things? Why did society not do more to shelter them? It should have been better here, with Dumbledore in charge; Dumbledore, who had held the wellbeing of his young charges as his top priority — Dumbledore, who had endured threats and insults from the Minister for Magic but snapped when Umbridge dared lay hands upon a student.
Fine then, if that's how we're doing this. A hooking motion with the Elder Wand yanked out a clump of the young man's hair. Harry dropped it into the vial and drank the potion back in one long gulp. Ligaments popped and lengthened. Muscles compressed and coiled tighter. Bones shifted underneath his skin.
His grim expression never changed. If there had been any hope of Andrei being taken peacefully, that hope was dead.
"He featly conuayed himself out of the frying panne…"
— Thomas More
Author's Note:
All right, the three consecutive upload weeks have us back on track after the mishap about a month ago. Chapters will be back on a biweekly basis for at least the next while.
A special thank you to my high-tier patron, Cup, for her generous and unwavering support.
PS: The next chapter will be out in two weeks. Remember that chapters can be read early on Discord and P*T*E*N! All those links are on my profile, and if any give you trouble, use my website's homepage. That site can be found via a generic Google search of my pen name.
