Facing Danger
Chapter 44: When the Battle's Lost and Won (Year 6)
By Anne B. Walsh
Tiny quote and images in middle of chapter disclaimed.
"It's called a spear for a reason! Use the pointy end!"
"Shut up and let me fight!"
"I would if you looked like you knew what you're doing--no, not like that!"
"Maybe you'd win more if you didn't micromanage your pieces," Draco said, leaning back against the wall of the Pride's den-room. In the center of a circle of cheering chess pieces, a pair of pawns, both rather battered by now, were circling one another warily, the black one giving Harry surly looks for his unsolicited advice.
"Maybe I'd win more if you didn't always take white," Harry grumbled, getting up to hang on one of the ceiling-mounted bars in lieu of finding an age-adjusted Shrinking Solution and leaping into the Ring of Death (Padfoot's personal adaptation of wizard's chess, which he otherwise considered "too boring") in his pawn's place.
"Aww, does ickle Harry have a problem wif being all black and evil?" cooed Draco.
Harry's answering glare was rendered less furious than he'd probably intended by his position. Swinging upside down from one's knees, robes threatening to obscure one's face at any moment, was not the optimal position from which to glare furiously.
"Behave over there," Hermione called idly from the armchair where she and Meghan were sprawled side by side, reviewing Hermione's notes from the opening weeks of third year Transfiguration. "Don't make me turn you into newts."
"Can you?" asked Meghan with interest.
"Not yet. Ask me at Christmas."
"Ooooh." Meghan favored Draco with a grin that scared him much more than Harry's glare, then turned back to the notes with renewed attention.
"Why do we have to have scary smart sisters?" Harry asked, dropping ungracefully to the padded floor as the pawns attacked each other again.
"Would you prefer stupid giggly ones?"
Harry shuddered. "Good point."
The black pawn found a weakness in white's defense, and both boys leaned in eagerly, calling encouragement to their sides. "Yes, that's it!" Harry enthused. "Get him, go, go, go--"
White stumbled and went down, black's spear driven into his stone heart.
Draco's growl of mock anger died unvoiced as his pendants went colder than he had ever known them.
Across the room, Hermione gasped and Meghan's wordless cry of dismay turned into a shrieked "HARRY!"
Green eyes, squeezed half-shut in glee, flew wide open in surprise, then turned terrifyingly empty before rolling back in their sockets as Harry pitched forward towards the chessboard.
Harry struggled against the slick, taut fibers holding him.
What just happened? It felt like a Portkey but it can't have been, I didn't touch anything--maybe that emergency one Dumbledore gave me last summer at the Dursleys' is set to activate whenever the pendants get cold, but you'd think he would have told me that--also, I could do without the headache, and what do I have to be happy about? Unless...
His vision cleared sufficiently for him to look down at himself. He was only half there, the colors of his skin and robes pale and washed out, his whole body translucent. The silver cord leading back towards his physical body led between two blocks in the nearest stone wall, offering no possibility of escape in that direction. The net in which he was tangled hung from the ceiling of a round tower room, chill and bare except for a small table and a throne-like chair near the opposite wall. And in the chair--
Sometimes understanding what's going on doesn't make things better.
Sometimes it makes them a whole lot worse.
In the chair reclined Lord Voldemort, perfectly at his ease, his red eyes fixed on the gleaming tabletop, where Harry could dimly see moving forms and flashes of light. The evil wizard didn't seem to have noticed Harry's existence yet.
See how long that lasts.
Panic closed his throat, but Harry forced it back open. Falling apart or giving into his fear would serve Voldemort's purposes perfectly. The trouble was, so would getting angry, which was the other obvious choice at the moment.
So go for a non-obvious choice. Play for time. Keep him out of my head, keep him away from my body, and help's bound to come within a few minutes. It's not like I was alone when it happened. Meghan's voice screamed his name again in his memories, Hermione's hand darted into her robes for her pendants, Draco's face lost its over-the-top glower for an honest look of shock and concern. They know what they're doing. Probably have me home before everybody gets back from Diagon Alley. Then we'll work out what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again...
Keeping the internal monologue running with one part of his mind to stave off sheer terror, Harry reached up with another and summoned fire. It responded sluggishly at first, as though this were not its natural home, but finally he had enough that he felt capable of using it on the ropes confining his spirit-body.
They may not be real ropes, but if it walks like a hippogriff and talks like a hippogriff, it might as well be a hippogriff.
The ropes parted reluctantly, but they parted, and within a few moments Harry slithered out of the net and landed in a crouch on the floor. His shape shifted as he dropped, so that it was Wolf who wrinkled his nose at the musty odor of old scales and dry stone infusing the room, then settled into a sit and waited with predator patience. Packmates will come soon. We will fight the hunter and then we will return to den.
They had better come soon, whispered a voice of worry. You only have two hours to be out of your body before it starts deciding you're not coming back--and that's when you left voluntarily. What's it going to do when you've been yanked out like a bad tooth?
Quiet, you. Wolf snapped his perfectly good set of teeth in the direction of the worry. The sound, unphysical though it was, broke Voldemort's concentration as Harry's escape from the net had not, and Wolf found himself on the receiving end of a penetrating red gaze. He started to growl defiance, but Harry pushed forward and took control, filling his mind purposefully with the memories he used to power a Patronus--the day of Padfoot's trial, the winning of the Quidditch Cup, his first kiss with Ginny--
"Hmm." Voldemort broke off eye contact. "How very clever of you, Harry. Rather than trying to close your mind against me, something at which you seem woefully inept, you fill it with the emotions you know I most dislike. But how long can you sustain such a tactic?"
Harry stood up human and leaned back against the wall. "As long as I have to," he said, stifling a yawn in favor of queuing up his next set of memories. Would anything from the Triwizard Tournament do? Fighting the dragon and rescuing Ron from Crouch-Moody, perhaps, though that had a lot of dark overtones Voldemort might be able to use for himself, so best not. The second task had always been one step from disaster, but the all-Pride pool party beforehand had been fun. Into queue it went. The third task--
No. Just no.
But hold on a tic. Harry felt a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, and allowed it to have its way with one of them, though it nearly turned into a second yawn. I'm going too fast. There was something before the third task, remember? Something silly and shiny and frivolous--everything Voldemort hates and despises--not to mention, it takes up plenty of time, which is exactly what I need right now--
The other memories gave way as Harry laid a hand against his pendants and concentrated.
"As long as you have to?" Voldemort repeated, tracing a pattern with his wand on the tabletop he'd been watching when Harry had arrived. "That may be quite some time, Harry. I don't think you have properly understood what it means that I can reach your mind. That the wall you had in place to keep me out has fallen. That wall had a name, did it not? A particular person with whom it was affiliated?" A final flick of the yew wand, and the picture on the tabletop sprang into three dimensions. "What do you think it means for him?"
Don't look! a voice cried in the back of Harry's mind, but it was too late. He was looking already, and the memory he'd been trying to summon shattered like one of Neville's cauldrons in first year. Moony lay sprawled on the cobblestones of Diagon Alley, a thread of blood tracing a line from the corner of his mouth to the ground. His eyes were half-open, his face slack and expressionless, his arms and legs askew. More blood seeped from gashes on his right hand, which looked as if it had been trampled. The wand lying beside it seemed whole, but how could that matter when Moony was--
The dead don't bleed, another voice whispered. And we know what death feels like through the pendants. This is all wrong. Don't let him trick you!
"Or these two, perhaps." Voldemort tapped his wand against the tabletop again and new pictures replaced Moony's. Harry deliberately unfocused his eyes, though not quickly enough that he didn't recognize Padfoot and Letha struggling against a magical rope that held them back to back, and threw his attention into his memories.
Yes, the first voice murmured, and a sure and guiding hand joined his on the index of his mind. Yes. No matter what's happening to them--a small catch in the voice, quickly smoothed over--we have to fight our own fight. You have to get home safely.
First part's done already, said the second voice, ending the word with a sigh of satisfaction as the memory Harry'd been looking for slid into view. Start through this and watch us for cues. We'll talk more when we're out of here.
Harry blinked twice, signaling assent and forcing away his upstart tears at the same time, and backed a few steps along the curve of the room, sliding his feet carefully along the flexible floor. "I don't like your show very much," he said aloud, making a flicking motion with his right hand, like releasing a Snitch. "What say we watch mine for a while?"
Voldemort's reply, if he'd had one, was cut off by the music of a piano, chiming a run of descending notes. The run repeated, with the notes doubled high, and a pair of slender figures stepped forward into the light, one in pink, the other in blue.
The Narrators. Harry shaped a bit of the wall into a rest for his elbow and leaned back into it as Hermione's memory-double began to sing about people who dreamed of doing wonders with their lives. And am I making it up, or did she just give me a look this way on the third word she sang?
"Show me what you like, Harry," Voldemort said over the reply of the Ginny-figure about people who didn't plan anything but hid all their hopes instead. "Sharing your memories with me this way can only mean you are allowing me into your mind." He spared a moment's smile for Hermione's line about not being able to judge right from wrong. "So kind of you."
That's all it can mean, is it? Harry blinked twice as Hermione glanced his way again on the repetition of the word she'd emphasized before. You just keep on thinking that, oh mighty Dark Lord. You keep on thinking that as long as you like.
As long as you're thinking that, you won't be thinking about what else might be going on.
The Narrators finished their introduction and waved their hands towards the spotlighted figure of the "boy whose dreams came true." Draco pivoted on the spot, sparing the world's briefest wink for Harry, and the memory swung into the bouncy second number. Voldemort sat back in his chair and looked contemptuously uninterested in the foolish posturing of the dream-people in front of him.
If he only knew I'm using his boredom to keep myself in a good mood...
The entrance of the brothers gave Harry a new reason for worry. Meghan. She never wants to stay behind, but she's also wide open with her Ravenclaw powers. If Voldemort feels anything from her, if he gets his hands on her--
But the little figure in the costume of Benjamin danced her steps without a bobble, and Harry relaxed into his lean once more. Either she's into the dance so far that she's not afraid or she finally agreed to stay home on something and this is just my memory of her. I hope it's the second one.
The brothers sneered their jealous disapproval of Joseph's marvelous coat, while Joseph strutted his way across the front of the imaginary stage. As he proclaimed how handsome he looked, his eyes flicked first to Harry, then back to the scowling Meghan.
Good. It is the second one. Somehow they got her to agree just to look, just to watch, not to come along--and as soon as we get someplace we can talk, they have to tell me how--but that cuts our problems way down. Fox and Neenie and I can take care of ourselves.
I hope.
The portion of the song featuring the colors of Joseph's coat seemed to be causing Voldemort acute pain, Harry noticed. Swallowing a snicker, he amused himself by making the memory a little louder with every color. You dragged me out of my body. You get to live with the consequences.
The final shouted "blue!" actually made Voldemort flinch, and Harry hastily toned the noise back down. Making the enemy so angry that he tried changing the rules was no part of this plan.
Especially since the moment he tries, he'll realize we're not in Kansas anymore. Or wherever his particular Fortress of Solitude happens to be.
It was Ginny's turn to narrate, which in the original show had meant Hermione was offstage. Here--Harry narrowed his eyes, letting them rove around the stage area as Joseph told his brothers about his first dream. Where is she?
A light brush against his sleeve answered the question. He disguised his jump as a lean forward to see the action more closely. "Don't do that," he hissed out the side of his mouth.
"Sorry." Hermione's invisible hand closed around his arm. "Come on, you're hidden now--I put a shape in your place, he shouldn't notice as long as you move slowly--"
Harry eased himself out of position, leaving his attentively listening shell behind. "What's the plan?" he asked, watching Draco finish his second solo and vanish as he went offstage. "Home?"
A brush of hair on his arm as Hermione shook her head. "Too dangerous. Voldemort might be able to grab you again, or even possess you, while we were trying to get someplace safe. We have to take him out of the running for a little while before we dare go back."
"And, of course," added Draco's voice from Harry's other side, "we have to figure out where this someplace safe might be, and how we're going to get there quickly."
"I can help with that one," said Harry, thinking of the gold phoenix hanging against his pendants. "But as for taking him out--we can't do that here. It's his ground. He has control."
"Way ahead of you." Draco's smirk was audible. "Back up slowly, now. We have to make him think he saw us by accident."
"Split up and run for the woods once we're in," Hermione advised as the three siblings backed towards the wall. "We'll send Voldemort the long way around and meet up in the clearing. You'll find it, don't worry," she said impatiently over Harry's half-formed protest that he had no idea what she was talking about. "Just look for us and the trees will point you the way."
Thank you, Hermione, now I understand even less. But there was no more time for arguing. They were almost at the wall, the dream figures of the brothers were advancing in their final formation--Voldemort was rising from his chair, his eyes narrowing even further than usual in anger--Harry saw his shadow stream out in front of him as a light came up behind--
"The dreamer has to go!" chanted the brothers, and in the same breath Hermione shouted "Run!"
Harry spun on his heel, dropped into Wolf's form, and charged across the open plain that had appeared behind the wall. For one instant, a cat and a fox ran on either side of him, and then there were three wolves, or rather, three Wolves, bolting for the cover of the trees ahead. Voldemort was going to have to decide which one to chase, and if Hermione's comments about sending Voldemort the long way around meant what Harry now thought they did, it didn't even particularly matter.
Because he'll never catch us before we make the forest, and once we're in there, it'd take either a miracle or a very determined and pissed-off wizard to find us before we want to be found.
Trouble is, Voldemort fits that last description way too well for my taste.
Wolf skidded to a halt under a handy bush at the edge of the woods, dropped to his stomach, and caught his breath while watching his enemy stalk right past him, wand in hand.
But Hermione and Draco trained in the same school I did. They'll keep an eye on him and make sure he never gets angry enough to start blasting things apart wholesale. As long as we can keep him playing by the rules, we can win.
Because this is our world now. And that means we make the rules.
The clearing that served as their dreamworld's base camp looked just the same as it always had, which discomfited Hermione more than a change would have. Her outside world had been shaken profoundly by what she'd seen in Voldemort's scry, though she'd kept her composure for Harry's sake. Shouldn't this inside world have changed just as much?
"It will if we let it," Draco said, shooting out of Snow Fox's shape. "So we can't let it. We have to keep it totally solid. If there's even one crack, Voldemort will exploit it, and we're all dead."
"You're so reassuring." Hermione combed her hair back with her fingers, then focused on her favorite persona from their nighttime games of Valentina Jett-inspired roleplay. Draco was already halfway to his preferred look, though Hermione suspected he hadn't thought of his current form as a costume for some time.
I almost wish he weren't so comfortable in it. Looking at him makes me hurt. What if we're wasting time playing here when we ought to be out helping--
Firmly, she squashed that thought. We are not wasting time, and we're only playing in the sense that we're setting up a game we know we can win, even against Voldemort. It's the best chance we have to get Harry, and ourselves, home safely.
Nothing is more important than that.
Her own modifications finished, she drew her wand and pulled on its two ends, lengthening it into a staff. A few moments in her training sequences ought to help clear her mind.
As Hermione had promised, her trail and Draco's were easy to follow, and two minutes at Wolf's easy lope brought Harry to the edge of the clearing she'd mentioned. His original intent, to bound straight in and demand the fullest explanation possible as soon as his mouth could form human words, was toppled off its mental perch by sheer amazement as soon as he caught sight of his siblings.
And here I thought we'd left all the theatrics behind us.
Draco, or so his scent proclaimed, sat on a handy tree stump with one knee up against his chest, twirling his wand between his fingers. Harry had to go by scent because the boy in front of him was no one he'd ever seen before, not even when he returned to his human form to make sure he was seeing the colors properly. Thick brown waves of hair, broad triangular face, a middling-dark tan which matched the base shade of his camouflage-dyed shirt and trousers, and--
Ah-ha. Harry grinned to himself as eyes of cobalt blue scanned the clearing, then returned to the circular blur of wand. I knew I'd seen the parts somewhere before, I just didn't know how to take them apart properly. Stupid of me not to think--if he could look like anything, of course this is what he'd pick.
Hermione, standing behind her twin and going through a staff exercise at half-speed, had exercised a bit more imagination in her choice of shape. Delicate ears, furred in orange-and-black, stuck up out of her hair; her eyes, as blue as Draco's, blinked out of a white feline face. The hands curled around the carved wood had sharper fingernails than usual, not to mention a more prominent crop of fuzz along the backs. Altogether, she looked rather like Harry had always imagined Padfoot and Moony's stories about Animagus accidents, though he didn't think he'd be saying that out loud.
It's perfect. Strange enough to unsettle His Snarkiness and keep him off-balance, but not so much that he'll realize he's being gamed and try to destroy the whole place. We hope.
On a hunch, Harry dropped back into Wolf's form and cast about for his own scent. His backtrail was clear, but there was another hint, coming from a different direction--
Except I haven't been near that tree.
So why don't I fix that right now.
Examined up close with human eyes, the tree clearly showed a latch on one side and hinges on the other, very like the one in which a pair of seven-year-olds had discovered a battered Quaffle on a particular eventful winter day. Stifling a stir of worry for Ron and the others of the Pride--nothing we can do from here except take care of ourselves--Harry lifted the latch and swung the door wide.
His breath went out in an approving sigh. "Hermione," he said softly, "you're a genius."
Skinning out of his robes, he began to dress for battle.
Lord Voldemort was most displeased. What should have been his simplest victory of the war, the byproduct of an otherwise successful attack, had been almost entirely negated by Harry Potter's stubborn refusal to admit when he was beaten. Still, it was not yet beyond redemption.
His delaying works in my favor, though he does not know that. He thinks he is confusing me, buying himself time to escape my nets. Instead he is allowing me time to comprehend this reality of his creation, to use what I know about him to turn it against him.
The Dark Lord allowed himself a small smile. It should not be hard. By showing me what he uses to defend himself, he has handed me the key to his heart. His family gives him the courage to go on, it seems--so what will he do when I tell him my plans for them, and how soon those plans will come to fruition?
This was going to be enjoyable.
Stepping to the edge of the clearing where an armored figure knelt, helmeted head bowed against the flat of a silver sword with its point buried in the earth, Lord Voldemort prepared his first strike.
Harry held his pose, every muscle tense but his breathing slow and even. The sword under his gloved hands was recognizably Gryffindor's, but the blade was wider and differently pointed than the sword he had pulled from the Sorting Hat, the rubies on the hilt smaller and fewer. Hermione claimed that this was the sword's original form, that it had changed over the centuries thanks to a spell similar to that on the Hogwarts plumbing, bringing it up to date as new inventions became widespread. What this had to do with anything, Harry wasn't sure, but chattering about magical esoterica was Hermione's way of beating pre-battle jitters and thinking it over seemed to be his.
Don't panic, Pearl, he repeated silently, mouthing the words he had spoken aloud earlier. Don't pull the chain too soon. We'll let you know when it's time.
The real-life situation Draco had described setting up in Grimmauld Place, in what Harry suspected was his brother's personal routine for fighting fear, employed Pack-pendants in ways for which they had probably not been intended by the Founders.
On the other hand, they don't like Voldemort any more than we do, so I can't see them objecting.
Hermione had used her pendants in the approved fashion, wearing them double with Harry to slip into his mind with her werewolf curse as cover. Meghan, however, had loosely knotted Draco and Hermione's wrists together with her chain, then retreated to the other side of the room and invoked a blue pendant jewel to allow her to watch their adventures in the dreamworld. If Voldemort looked to be taking over, she would yank the chain loose, freeing Draco from his contact with Hermione and giving the cubs a fighting chance.
And let's not forget her other little contribution. A Sleeping Spell so powerful that it took down not only me, but the Lord of All Things Scaly through me. Though that wouldn’t have lasted three seconds if Fox weren't so obsessively observant about making his dreamworlds perfect. Or if Neenie hadn't been able to get in there and see the reality for him to copy in the first place...
"Yes, yes, we were all wonderful," said Hermione's voice from directly beside his ear. "Now it's your turn, oh knight in shining armor."
"Shame Ginny can't be here," Draco added musingly. "I think she'd like seeing you in mailshirt and helmet."
Hermione's voice acquired more than a touch of smugness. "Silly Fox. That's what reruns are for."
Inwardly, Harry groaned. I'm never going to live this one down. Ever.
But there are worse things than that.
Like not living at all.
A rustling step brought him to full awareness. And here comes the number one advocate for that particular fate of mine...
"So this is how you see yourself," Voldemort said, his tone a delicate cross between enlightened and mocking. "The noble protector of virtue, as your ancestor was before you. Or was he?" The final three words came forth in a venomous hiss as the Heir of Slytherin invoked his line's gift. "Your ancestor was nothing but a killer for hire, a doer of other men's deeds, who never dared to strike out on his own and forge a path for himself! You think you are a hero by virtue of the blood of Gryffindor? You know nothing! I will tell you the truth that Dumbledore himself is keeping from you--"
Harry exploded to his feet, wrenching the sword free and swinging it around in a controlled arc. Voldemort's final hissed word broke off in an unserpentine squawk as the sharp edge sheered neatly through his outstretched hand, clipping off three fingers and sending his wand flying.
"What makes you think I'm going to believe anything you tell me?" Harry said coolly, bringing the sword up to guard. "You're a liar. You lie easier than you breathe. How do I know those pictures you were showing me were even true?"
"You know... because... we are here," Voldemort wheezed, cradling his maimed hand against his robes. Despite the pain, his face split into a manic leer. "Gryffindors... always so quick... to deny the obvious..."
His left hand shot out in a summoning motion, and the discarded wand flew back towards it. Harry swiped with the sword but missed, turning the motion into a shoulder roll to try to get out of the way, but Voldemort was bringing the wand down--
A bolt of white light shot down from one of the trees surrounding the clearing and arched into a shield over Harry. Voldemort's snarled "Crucio!" ricocheted off at an angle.
"The only obvious thing I see," said the brunet Draco, dropping from his sniper post and bringing his wand to salute position, "is that you're outnumbered." He squeezed the wand lightly, and a beam of light shot from its tip, curving back towards him, then dropping directly towards the ground before it bent one last time to meet the wand's grip end. Voldemort blinked at the resultant shape, for which Harry couldn't blame him. He'd done a bit of goggling himself at what Draco called his wand-bow.
It's a bit showy for combat, probably just as well he hasn't worked out how to do it in real life yet, but it could help us a lot if it fires nonverbally like he claims it does...
Voldemort twitched his wand towards himself, binding up his hand and apparently easing his pain, since his breathing slowed towards normal. "Outnumbered by children," he sneered, "just as my Death Eaters were outnumbered by fools at Diagon Alley, but still they triumphed. I thought Wormtail would prove too tempting a bait for your loving Pack-parents to turn down." His voice dripped disdain. "Apparently they prize revenge over returning home safe to their dear little cubs. And now they will do neither. How very sad."
"I wouldn't be so sure," Harry said, coming back to his ready position. Draco curled his fingers around the magical bowstring and drew it back, an arrow of light materializing as he did. "Maybe you'll be the one who won't go home tonight."
"With only two of you to fight me?" Voldemort's thin lip curled in disdain. "One of whom I can control if I so choose? I somehow doubt--"
As quickly as that, he struck, jabbing his wand towards Draco's feet. Harry swung the sword at it a second time and sliced an inch from its end, sending a shower of sparks across the clearing as Draco dived to one side to avoid them. Voldemort jerked the wand back over, sparks and all, and fired a spell towards Harry which Harry managed to partly deflect with the sword blade. The bit that got through hit him in his chain-mail-protected stomach, sending him over backwards with the wind knocked out of him but no other damage he could feel. Draco was drawing Voldemort's fire, ducking in and out of the trees, making taunting faces, but even the Fox couldn't keep that up forever--
"Ennervate," whispered a voice in Harry's ear, and his lungs suddenly began to cooperate again. "We'll distract, you strike," the voice went on. "Hurry, before he figures it out!"
Harry nodded and pulled himself to his knees, watching as Hermione bounded across the clearing, wailing a feline war cry as soon as she was far enough along to get Voldemort's attention without bringing his eyes onto Harry. Draco seized the moment and disappeared into the boughs of the nearest tree, where he shielded Hermione from Voldemort's first spell and augmented her return shot through her staff with one of his own. Voldemort staggered back under the double blow, but came upright again in frighteningly short order, his eyes shining with madness.
"Unnatural brats!" he howled. "When I rule the world, all cats will be destroyed--" Hermione twisted herself under a spell which shattered a rock behind her "--and the one whose looks you ape will be forever erased from the earth!" This was shrieked to the tree where Draco had last fired from, and coupled with a blast from the sparking wand which shredded it into bark mulch. "He, who should have been my greatest triumph!"
Attempting not to think too much about the possibilities inherent in that statement, Harry scrambled to his feet and hefted the sword. He'd only get one shot at this.
"The line of Godric Gryffindor will be totally destroyed!" Voldemort screamed. "As the Heir of Salazar Slytherin, I swear it! By my own hand, Grandfather--no other is worthy of such a sacred trust--"
Planting the palm of his left hand on the sword's pommel for extra stability, Harry charged.
Voldemort's speech ended in a stifled gurgle this time, as nearly a foot of blood-slimed silver suddenly protruded from the back of his robes. His eyes, already glazing, locked on Harry in disbelief. "This... does... nothing," he whispered hoarsely. "I cannot... die..."
"Maybe not." Harry twisted the sword to break the suction, then yanked it back out, taking a quick step to the side to avoid the gush of blood. "But it does what I need it to do." In the periphery of his vision, Hermione's staff was gesturing.
"What... is that?" Voldemort gasped, wrapping his arms around his belly in a futile attempt to hold in his life.
Harry let his eyes shift to what was behind Voldemort, and a smile of satisfaction spread across his face as a bright green spell-arrow struck it dead center, starting it up. "Why should I tell you?" he asked. "Can't you read my mind?"
Stepping forward, he gave Voldemort a little push on the shoulder.
The evil wizard stumbled three steps backwards and toppled into an oversized outdoor hearth, its flames burning the brilliant emerald of a Floo fire.
"Home," Harry ordered, and Voldemort vanished in a sparkling swirl of green.
"That was nasty," Draco said, jumping down from his perch. "Riding that thing with a gut wound--can you imagine?"
"I don't want to." Hermione was pale under her fur, and her voice was as calm as it could only be when she was clinging to it by the barest clawhold. "We have to get back. He won't take long to figure out how he was tricked. Harry?"
"Coming." Harry pulled his own wand from his pocket, hastily Scourgified the sword, and sent it back to its storage chest in the hollow tree with a flick. Two more flicks removed his mailshirt and the segmented helmet, and he trotted across to Hermione's side looking almost normal. Draco whipped a finger across his throat in the general direction of the woods, signaling Meghan to release his contact with Hermione, and vanished just as Harry grabbed Hermione's hand. Her claws dug into him--he sucked a breath through his teeth in pain--
And his eyes opened to the ceiling of the Pride's den at number twelve, Grimmauld Place. Beside him, the chessmen he and Draco had been playing with were gathered at the edge of the board, passing comment on his appearance. Meghan hurled herself across the room and into his lap, barely waiting for him to sit up. Hermione, fully human once more, slipped a comforting hand into her little sister's, but her attention was on Harry as he dug through his robes.
No kidding. She has no way of knowing, we none of us do, how long it's going to take Voldemort to get over what we did to him, how fast he can recover from dying in a dream, whether or not this will all have been for nothing...
His fingers felt like a bunch of sausages attached haphazardly to his arms. After a few seconds of scrabbling, he hit on the happy idea of grasping the chain at the back of his neck and pulling the pendants up from there. They emerged from their hiding place with a faint clink, and Draco reached out and deftly separated the tiny gold phoenix from the four medallions and the locket. "This is what we want?" he asked.
"That's it," Harry confirmed. "Everyone get a finger on it." He followed his own advice, grasping the carving near its top, and thought with a pang of the last time he'd used this safeguard. It brought me back from the Department of Mysteries. I felt a lot like this, tired and sore and scared, but it wasn't so bad, because Moony was there with me...
He shoved these thoughts away. Voldemort's a liar. And weirdly obsessed with Moony for some reason, but I'll think about that later. Right now, I have to get as much of my Pack as I can to safety.
That's what alphas do.
"Denward bound," he said clearly.
The Portkey activated with its usual jerk to the navel. Having Meghan huddled up against him, Harry found, made for a bizarre combination of forces. My guts feel like they're being pulled out and pushed back in. At the same time.
Maybe this is what Voldemort felt like in that dream-Floo...
Harry Potter arrived in the Hogwarts Den laughing.
Nearly an hour later, the sound of an opening door jerked Harry out of an uneasy doze. Draco was already awake, cat-Neenie lifting her head in his lap. Meghan mumbled something unintelligible, then scrambled up as Dumbledore appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. His robes were stained and wrinkled, his face deeply grave and, for the first time since Harry had known him, showing every year of his advanced age.
"Sir?" Hermione said uncertainly, standing up human beside Draco. "What's--" She broke off with a gasp and darted forward to embrace the person behind Dumbledore, her breath sobbing out of her in relief. "Danger, Danger, oh Danger!"
Draco and Harry reached their Pack-mother in a dead heat, Meghan only a step behind. Danger hugged them all fiercely, murmuring reassurances that she wasn't hurt, only shaken up, but Harry could feel her trembling against his shoulder.
She's here alone. Danger's never alone.
What happened out there?
"We were ambushed, in a place where we were unprepared," said Dumbledore, which startled Harry until he realized he must have asked the question aloud. "May I sit? Old legs, I fear..."
"Of course, sir." Harry snapped his fingers to summon a chair, and Hermione raised one from the floor for Danger, turning cat immediately thereafter and taking over the half of her sister's lap that Snow Fox hadn't already appropriated. Meghan sat down on the floor and wrapped an arm around Danger's leg, and Harry leaned against the chair's back. He had the uneasy feeling he might need the support.
"As I think you have already discovered, Remus was badly injured," Dumbledore began. "The Healers hold out some hope for his mending, but caution us not to expect too much. He was struck with several spells at once, including two which were very Dark magic indeed. Dark enough that one of them injured a Healer who was attempting to give him first aid. I do not think it advisable that any more... direct solution be sought at this time." His look was clearly directed towards Meghan, who pressed her face into Danger's robes with a little whimper. "There are several others who were injured, including Fred Weasley, but Remus' case is the worst. I do believe, however, that he will recover eventually."
Bad, but not as bad as it could have been. Harry drew a deep breath and let it out, conscious of every ridge and valley in the grain of Danger's chair back beneath his fingers. Dumbledore doesn't lie. Moony's alive and going to stay that way. It'll take time, but he'll get well.
So why am I still worried?
"There were, in this attack, three people killed," Dumbledore said slowly, his eyes still on Meghan. "One was a young witch of Muggle birth, buying her school supplies for her first year at Hogwarts. Her name was Annette Benson. The second and third are known to us both. Penelope Clearwater, and Frank Longbottom."
Harry felt again the sensation that Voldemort's spell had caused when it slipped around the sword blade and hit him in the gut. Neville's dad? Percy's girlfriend? Why? How? This doesn't make any sense...
Dimly, it occurred to him that finding out people you knew were dead didn't seem to get easier with practice.
Or maybe I just haven't had enough of it yet.
The thought did not fill him with confidence.
On the floor, Meghan had her hands over her mouth, the distress in her silver eyes too deep for words or even tears as of yet. Danger roused her lapful of furry creatures and gently set them down beside her, then gathered Meghan into her arms. "I'm sorry, love," she whispered. "It isn't over quite yet."
Harry's stomach went from immobilized into free fall. Padfoot. Letha. No, please, no...
"We also have people unaccounted for." Dumbledore's words were halting, as though he were trying to find some way to make this news less terrifying. "Three Muggle women, one the teacher who was accompanying Miss Benson, one the mother of Amanda Smythe, and one the grandmother of Terry Boot."
Hermione was shaking her head, her breath starting to come raggedly. Draco sat with his arms curled around his knees, staring blindly into the distance.
"Percy Weasley is missing as well, and we have several eyewitnesses who saw what became of him. And of Sirius and Aletha." Dumbledore looked up at them at last, his eyes as bleak and chill as a rain-filled sky. "There can be no question. They were taken prisoner by the Death Eaters."
Happy birthday to her, she's the evil auth-or... don't forget to revie-ew... happy birthday to her!
More soon... as long as you don't kill me first... *runs away and hides from pitchfork-wielding fans*