Take Me With You
How It Proceeded
By Anne B. Walsh
Harry focused on one link of the chain holding up Hermione’s cage. Melt, he willed it. Lose your shape. Fall apart.
The spells around his room, put there to keep him from escaping himself, resisted this use of his magic, but he pushed through them and held onto his thoughts. Heat up. Turn red. Get soft. Melt.
Distantly, through the scry, he heard Hermione yowl, saw Draco’s pale face staring upwards, but all his attention was for that one link, and that one link was stretching—it was bending—
It snapped. Draco shoved the table out of the way and dived to catch the falling cage, coming to rest with it cradled in his right arm, his left hand flat on the floor for balance.
"Yes!" Harry punched the air in jubilation, then stopped, looking closely at the scry. It had gone fuzzy, like a badly tuned television. Voices shouted in its depths, figures moved rapidly back and forth, lights flashed—
The picture came into focus again, and Harry felt his stomach turn over. Lucius Malfoy stood in the doorway of the room, his wand still outstretched towards Draco and Hermione, watching them coldly.
He was the one who put the scrying spells in place. That’s why they went over funny when Draco attacked him. But then they came back, so that must mean...
Almost against his will, Harry found his eyes turning towards his siblings. What he saw sent his hand to his throat, forcing back his immediate urge to be sick. It was worse than he’d let himself imagine.
The cage was unbreakable, it was too small even for her cat body, and he turned her back into a human while she was still inside...
Harry tried to console himself with the knowledge that Hermione must have died instantly, but it did nothing against the sight of her broken body, torn flesh and splintered bone protruding from all sides of the iron cage. Her blood soaked Draco’s robes and pooled around his knees, dyeing his hair and skin a vivid Gryffindor red. Draco, for his part, was covering his face with his left hand, his right still against what was left of Hermione’s arm—
Except it isn’t outside the cage. It’s inside. He must have been reaching for her when the spell went, and now his hand’s trapped in there with her and it’s broken, I can see the bones sticking out—
Lucius crossed the room, stepping daintily between puddles of Hermione’s blood, and used his wand to pull back Draco’s right sleeve, exposing an area of clean skin. Leaning down, he fastened his hand around Draco’s arm and squeezed cruelly. Draco’s face went white under the blood, but the back of his left hand pressed against his mouth and he made no sound.
"Free yourself, clean up this mess, and change your robes," said Lucius, straightening up. "Then come to find me, and we will discuss healing your hand." He started back across the room, stopping at the door to look over his shoulder at his silent son. "Perhaps this will teach you the meaning of ‘off limits.’"
The door shut behind him, and Draco doubled over where he knelt, his low moan worse than a scream. Harry clapped his hands against his ears, but the sound would not be stopped, and he realized after a moment that was because he was echoing it himself, grieving for his sister in the closest equivalent his human form could produce to a howl.
This is my fault, I tried to make things better and made them worse, Neenie’s dead and Draco might as well be and it’s all my fault—
The sound from the scry cut off abruptly, and Harry looked up. Draco was reaching for something, and his face had changed from grief-stricken to calculating, the look he wore when he was about to pay someone back in full. As his hand’s burden became visible, Harry understood.
Lucius took away whatever magic Hermione was able to give him, but that doesn’t need magic, it doesn’t need anything, it already is all it needs to be—
"O happy dagger," Draco quoted softly, regarding the blue-stoned weapon with which Hermione had once killed a werewolf. With its point, he pulled back his robes, exposing the soft leggings he usually wore under them. "Here is thy work. Go to, and let me die."
He sliced deeply across his thigh, and fresh blood shot out, soaking his hand again. Dropping the dagger, he raised the hand to his eyes, staring at it in wonder. "Do you see?" he said aloud, turning it this way and that. "No difference, none at all. So much for blood..."
His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled across Hermione and did not move again. A moment later, the light in the scrying bowl winked out.
Harry pressed his fingers against the inside corners of his eyes, willing back his tears. It’s over for them. It’s over. It was quick—Hermione probably never knew what happened, Draco only suffered for a minute—and now they can go on together...
A stifled scream brought his head around. The next two scrying spells were showing signs of life. Within the rooms holding Ron and Luna, and Ginny and Neville, the partitions had been dropped, and the boys were approaching the beds with jerky steps, obviously fighting the Imperius Curse as best they could.
Who screamed? Luna? No, Ginny.
Harry glanced back and forth rapidly between the two spells, torn three ways at once. He could try not to watch either, but that might trigger the magic that would force him to see and he couldn’t help hearing them in any case; he could watch his best friend, who had never in his life been able to break an Imperius, be forced to assault the girl who had loved his brother; or he could watch his own love try to fight off a boy who had her physically outmatched in every way and was under the control of a mind that hated them both.
At least she’s on her feet. Staying out of the way. Luna’s just sitting there. I don’t think she’s even going to—
Luna reached out and pulled Ron onto the bed with her, leaning up to kiss him.
Either she’s snapped or she’s taking ‘try and enjoy what you can’t stop’ much too far.
Whichever, I don’t need to see it, not after what I just saw.
His decision made, Harry hung a curtain of fire between himself and the spell that showed Ron and Luna. In the next one over, Neville, his face twisted in a rictus-like grin, was stalking Ginny around their small bedroom. Ginny’s hands were clutching the neck of her robes, her eyes feverishly bright as she dodged from side to side.
"Give it up, girl," Neville breathed, his voice hoarse. "You can’t get away." His hand slid down towards his pocket, then pulled back. "Your pretty friend’s decided to make the best of it." He jerked his head towards the far wall, through which now came an unmistakable gasp of pleasure, doubled in Harry’s ears from the spell on the other side of the fire. "Why don’t you?"
"I have my reasons." Ginny tightened her grip. "Come and get me if you dare."
"Oh, I dare." Neville started to close the gap between them, making his steps big and deliberate. "I dare plenty of things."
Ginny leapt out of the way just as he snatched for her, hurdling the bottom of the bed and spinning herself into the opposite corner. The noises were coming faster now from the other spell, and her face wrinkled in distaste, though Neville, or whoever was controlling him, seemed to be enjoying it. Harry stuck a finger into that ear and yawned loudly, concentrating on watching Ginny and Neville, though he couldn’t keep from knowing what must be going through Ron’s mind right now.
He hates that he falls under the Imperius so easily, that he can’t fight it off like I can or Draco could. It’s his biggest shame, that he’s weak that way. How is he going to be able to live knowing how much he hurt Luna because of that weakness? Is he even going to want to live, with that and finding out Hermione’s dead?
Another rush by Neville, another adroit dodge by Ginny, though this time the margin was thinner. Another, and another, and—
Neville’s hands closed on Ginny’s robes and yanked her backward into his arms. "Ha!" He spun her around, grinning evilly at her. "Now kiss me, beautiful. Let go your collar and hold me tight, and kiss me..."
"Hold you?" Ginny bared her teeth. "If you insist."
Her hands shot out and over Neville’s head, a thread of gold joining them. Neville froze, his muscles tightening as though he’d been hit with the Body-Bind.
Her pendants! Harry pounded the floor with a fist in excitement. She’s put them on him—she must be helping him fight—maybe together they can get him loose from the Imperius—
Neville jammed a hand into his pocket, then shoved it against his mouth. His jaw went rigid, his throat worked, and slowly his face relaxed, losing the ugly lines of the Death Eater who had been controlling him and returning to the quiet expression Harry knew so well. "It’s all right," he said, slurring the last word slightly. "He won’t come back now. He knows."
"Knows what?" Ginny caught at Neville’s elbow as he stumbled. "Captain, what’s—"
"In my pocket," Neville interrupted, closing his hand around Ginny’s and guiding it down to the place he meant. "Should still be enough. You can see they work fast." A tremor ran through his body. "Smart of you to think alpha," he murmured, leaning on Ginny. "You’re the boss."
"That’s right. I’m the boss." Ginny drew him towards the bed. "So I’m ordering you to lie down and rest. Understand?"
"Mm-hmm." Neville dropped onto the bed, his eyes already shut. "Rest... I can do that..." Another tremor ran through him, and he was still.
Gently, Ginny reached into his pocket and withdrew three shriveled red berries. "I’d better hurry," she said, sitting down on the floor. "I know they’re watching. They’ll try to stop me if they can." She looked up, her eyes remote. "Harry, if you’re there... don’t be too long. I miss you already."
She put the berries into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Leaning back against the bedstead, she lifted her right hand, the thumb, forefinger, and smallest finger extended. It trembled in the air for an instant, then fell limply into her lap. The scry held the scene in its depths for a few seconds before going dark.
"Love you too," Harry whispered around the tightness in his throat and Meghan’s heartbroken cry from the next spell over.
Author Notes:
So it’s going to be a couple chapters longer than I thought. Oh well. More nastiness next time. Bed now for authors, and remember, reviews make sleepy work days easier...