Take Me With You
How It Began
By Anne B. Walsh
Author Notes:
Standard disclaimers apply; what is JKR’s is not mine. Sorry for not updating any of my in-progress stuff. I’ll be back to it as soon as I can. In the meantime... enjoy, I guess. This will be either a two- or a three-shot. Just in case you missed the summary, there is a great deal of nasty stuff in here, so if you’re young or easily influenced, you might not want to read this.
Welcome to the film screening from hell.
Harry Potter sat with his face to the corner of the darkened room, keeping his eyes off the seven scrying spells shining their varied images onto the walls behind him. He couldn’t stay this way much longer, or the same innate magic powering those spells, the magic of the wizarding manor house where his Pack and Pride were being held prisoner, would turn him around by force. It would hold his head still and his eyes open so that he had no choice but to watch, and it would not let him go until the obscenity being enacted at the other end of the scry was finished.
If I turn, at least I can choose which one I see.
Not that any of them are better than the others.
He got to his feet and looked over his shoulder, into the depths of the first scry.
A blond boy his own age sat slumped at a table, his rich robes and the wand handle visible in his pocket contrasting sharply to the dull misery on his face. Above him, a metal cage swayed on the chain holding it to the ceiling. Flickers of frightened whiskered face and tricolored paws and tail hinted at the occupant Harry already knew.
"The dear twins I gave to their father, as is proper," said a high, cool, amused voice in Harry’s memory. "He chose to restore to the boy the tangible signs of the place the son of such a house should occupy—removing his magic temporarily, of course, to prevent any little accidents—and confine the girl, in her charming Animagus form, in an unbreakable cage which shrinks a little with every passing moment. Unless the boy swears fealty to his father and myself within the hour, she will be crushed to death by its bars."
The next two scrys held scenes practically identical in set-up—each showed a girl and a boy separated by a thin partition, the boy pacing restlessly like a caged animal, the girl sitting quietly on the bed her section of the room held. The redheaded boy ran his hands through his hair, then slammed them against the walls as though hoping something would give; his sister, in the other scry, fingered the neck of her robes, her face taut with anticipation. The brown-haired boy leaning on the other side of her partition with his eyes shut reached into his pocket and brought his hand out empty several times a minute, and the blonde girl who awaited the red-haired boy twisted a silver bracelet on her wrist, a small, fond smile on her lips.
"We must not waste pure blood over the scruples of its current vessels." The voice was back, chuckling to itself as it spoke. "Both the young wizards fall readily enough under the Imperius, and what witch could resist such strength? These four will produce the first soldiers of my new army." An outright laugh, the memory of which made Harry shudder. "Whether they wish it or not."
The central scry displayed a room very like Harry’s own, lit only by the flickering light of a spell for magical seeing, its one occupant torn between knowledge and ignorance. This occupant, though, was female and dark-skinned and delicate, and in her hands she gripped a tiny vial. The small whimpers she emitted had their effects not only on Harry, but on the figures displayed in the two scrys to the right of hers. In one, a broad-shouldered man hurried around corners and through corridors, changing into the form of a great black dog whenever a floating figure in black robes tried to intercept him, always shifting back as soon as it veered off. In the other, a woman with skin darker than the girl’s knelt at the doorway of a room, her face in her hands.
"Your sweet sister must decide for herself, with all the clarity and intelligence fourteen years provide, whether life is still worth living when her beloved has so enjoyed himself with another. Her parents will be allowed to hear her cries, but in different ways—her father will think that she is just ahead of him, around the next turning, but her mother, her beautiful Muggle-born mother..." A long, self-satisfied sigh. "Her mother will hear her daughter weeping, and know how to release her. She will know the same about her husband. She will also know that to come into contact with either of them, to see them or touch them or speak to them, will kill her within five seconds. Can she tell one of them how to save the other within five seconds? I doubt it."
The final scry had taken Harry longer to understand than any of the others; he had only caught on when he realized it was showing him a view from high up rather than at eye-level like the others. Water trickled into the bottom of a pair of holes, in which crouched a brown-haired man and woman, silver collars around their necks and a chain running from one to the other through a tiny tunnel. The man’s breathing was ragged with panic, and the woman’s hand kept creeping upwards as if she hoped to discover some secret way by which she could touch him.
"And what should those whose nature is fire fear more than drowning?" The voice had turned almost musing in this, its final explanation. "They are chained neck to neck, so that one may only stand up if the other lies down, and they know already that the water will rise beyond the level where they may both breathe. And like your own room, Harry, everything in that room has been charmed against their fire magic, so it will do them no good trying to melt their collars or boil away the water. I wonder whether his chivalry will force him to sacrifice himself for her, or his animal nature will come forth and he will kill her in his struggle to survive?"
Harry turned away from the last scry to face the first again. His brother still sat immobile in the chair, his sister paced in the cage high above. Already it was noticeably smaller than it had been. There was no more time to waste on memories.
If there’s a chance anywhere, it’s here. He’s free and he has a wand, and she still has her magic. If they could just touch...
The cage was unbreakable, he knew that, but there was still room between the iron bars for a human hand to pass through. So the only remaining question was, how to bring the cage where the particular hand in question could do so?
As long as he forgot that my magic isn’t just limited to what’s around me—that I can burn anything that I can see—
Harry focused his eyes on the chain holding the cage to the ceiling, brought his will to bear, and concentrated.
If this didn’t work, they were all going to die.
Author Notes:
Speed of more directly proportional to response. Quantity of more directly proportional to what you want to see. Let me know.