Chapter Sixty
Original Author Notes -
A/N: Sorry, this has nothing to do with VC, but I saw this (on AOL news, I think) and it had me laughing my ass off. They really got it right who should represent which types of mail, didn't they? :D
"French mail service La Poste is celebrating Harry Potter and friends with a set of stamps and stationery. Starting this weekend, the bespectacled schoolboy wizard appears on stamps for domestic priority mail. Ron Weasley appears on stamps for slow domestic mail, and Hermione Granger appears on stamps for international mail."
They frolicked in a palace as wide as the world itself. Sunlight cut through the verdant ceiling of tree foliage to speckle their coats as they played in their endless jungle estate. Sagehunter slipped through the green, incapable of blending into the background of ivy and vines and ferns with her tawny gold coat and chestnut mane. She was a rare beauty amid it all. Knight pursued the invaluable treasure, the savannah jewel in a foreign land. His land, his jewel, his treasure.
Knight weaved between the trees, shrouded in their climbing vines as they quested for the sky, never losing sight of his lioness.
Ahead of him, Sagehunter paused, looked back over her shoulder at him, and trotted on. Knight merrily gave unrushed chase. How sweet the hunt, and
the only thing sweeter being when he caught his quary.
He pushed through the jungle's mosaic of trees and brush and moss-covered logs on the trail of his prize.
In a stand of tall grass, stalks taller than a field's, not as tall as trees, bold blades with delusions of grandeur, Knight found Sagehunter lying primly, as patient and untroubled as the sky, watching him emerge from the jungle flora. She was waiting for him. In her eyes, steady and penetrating, wisdom… certainty without a flicker of doubt. She knew he'd come to her.
Knight went to her. They met, nose to nose, whisker to whisker. The whole of experiencing one another raced like lightning through their sensitive whiskers, making Knight's brain buzz with the bare touch of her. Knight rubbed his head against hers, journey's end, goal reached, beauty found.
"Harry…"
Knight jerked his head up and spun around, seeking the source of the voice that had cut into the pure wordlessness of nature. He looked but saw only the jungle. But there had been a voice, like a whisper on the wind, ephemeral and haunting. It had said a name, one Knight knew to belong to some other life.
Sagehunter moved behind him and Knight turned his head back to see her sitting and watching him placidly. She still awaited him. If there had been a voice, her ears had not detected it.
Knight started to move toward her again.
"Harry…"
Knight drew up short and whirled around, spitting at the forest for its nymphs that would call such a name. No sound met his challenge. In the time since the ghostly voice had called a forgotten boy's name, their palace had gone mute. The birds did not sing, the monkeys did not chatter, the insects did not chirrup.
Knight pinned his ears back and took a step backward, toward Sagehunter. Disquiet bloomed in his chest and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He scanned the deserted jungle for hints of the interloper who would dare to intrude on his kingdom. He would call out this presence that would interrupt Knight's time alone with his royal companion.
Knight opened his mouth and bared his teeth when, in an instant, the jungle
wasn't empty anymore. Danger-shadows moved, not quite discernable as any concrete form, present nonetheless. The danger pressed closer, inching in a tightening ring around Knight and Sagehunter.
"Harry…"
Knight's ears suddenly pricked when a memory from another life sparked.
Sirius.
"Harry…"
The jungle faded away and he became aware of a hand on his shoulder. With an intake of breath, he opened his eyes to the soft light of late morning. The jungle was replaced by the hangings of his bed at Hogwarts… and the hand on his shoulder, the touch that had roused him from the burgeoning dangers of the forest, belonged to Hermione. She was lying next to him, propped up on her elbow and looking down at him in concern. To Harry's left, the disembodied sound of Ron snoring from his bed completed Harry's return to reality at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
"Mione?" Harry croaked, blinking away the vestiges of his dream.
"You were tossing around," Hermione whispered to the unvoiced question that was breathed with the mere utterance of her name. "Was it a nightmare?"
Harry frowned, truly perplexed as he considered the question. Would he rank that strange dream as a 'nightmare'? Maybe if he'd lingered long enough for that shapeless danger lurking in the trees to take form, but as just after- thoughts of a mind that had seen too much in such a short life as his fifteen years? But then the question of what else to call it if not a nightmare. "I guess so," he mumbled, unconvinced even as he spoke.
Hermione's eyes flashed concern and she leaned in closer. "It wasn't one of your Voldemort dreams, was it?"
Harry paused. For a moment, he thought to answer with 'I don't know', but quickly dismissed that reply as ridiculous. He was not likely to have any doubts about whether or not he'd had a Voldemort dream had he actually, in fact, been in the throes of one. The best indicator of such an occurrence would be his own body. So he took stock. His scar didn't feel like it had been recently burned into his skin with an iron, he didn't feel an insidious sense of poison in his blood, and his bones didn't ache to make him think they'd gone to rot inside. Though there was no question that he felt…
discomfited, rattled. But on the back-end of a Voldemort vision-dream…?
"No…" he answered at length, "I'm not really sure what that was."
Hermione shifted closer, her voice calmer to know it wasn't one of Harry's worst kinds of nightmares. "Tell me what happened in the dream."
Already the memory of the dream was hazy, so vivid in the moment but quick to retreat from his conscious mind, back to the place of dreams. "I was Knight, and you were there, as Sagehunter, and we were in the jungle together, and then…" Harry shook his head. "There was someone calling my name, someone calling 'Harry', but I couldn't see them."
"Did it sound like Voldemort's voice?"
"No… it wasn't… an evil sound. More like… I don't know. But it wasn't that kind of calling. More like… someone trying to get your attention in class without the professor noticing. But there was something wrong there… like, Dementors' shadows were in the jungle or something. Not quite there, but somehow…" Harry glowered up at the canopy of his bed and with a shake of his head gave up trying to put words to the disjointed subconscious experience of his dream.
Hermione was puzzling over the clues, trying to find any significance. Harry wondered if she realized how closely she was dancing to the line that would tip her over into the prevue of divination… and how she would scowl and ruffle at the insinuation if he mentioned it.
As he lay watching her ponder the pieces, Harry's eyes widened when a faint memory from the dream rushed to the forefront of his mind. "Sirius. Sirius was there. Well, not really, I didn't see him, but I know he was there."
Hermione looked doubly alert, pouncing on a detail with some substance.
"Was he the one calling your name?"
"Dunno… maybe." Harry shifted on the bed to rise to one supporting elbow in mirror image of Hermione. Their faces were close enough that Harry could make her out clearly without his glasses. "Do you think he's in some kind of trouble?" he asked in mounting anxiety. Even as he asked, he wanted her to tell him no.
"I wouldn't know, Harry… you're sure it wasn't a Voldemort dream?"
Harry rubbed at his eye to dig out the sleep… and maybe to jar something a little more useful loose. "Couldn't be, could it? I mean, I don't feel like
seven kinds of hell."
Hermione's fingers were suddenly brushing against his brow, at once making Harry feel enormously better about his morning so far. "You're not cold.
Last time you were."
He did recall, on previous occasions when it had been a Voldemort vision- dream, being both covered in sweat and shivering because he was freezing at the same time. But at that moment, dream aside, he felt rather cozy. That would fly in the face of everything that might presume to call his dream a Voldemort vision-dream.
"Maybe it was just a dream," Harry murmured in distraction, "I do have normal dreams now and then. Well, as normal as someone like me could have, complete with Dementors and Death Eaters and all on a good night." When he said it, it made him mostly believe it. And why shouldn't it be just what he said, a dream like any other? Even Harry Potter could have dreams that were not laced with portent.
Hermione started to climb out of bed. "I suppose we could go talk to Dumbledore just the same."
Reflexively, Harry reached out and stopped her. "Don't go, come back to bed. I'm sure it was just a dream."
Hermione eyed him speculatively. "You sure?"
He wanted to be. "Must have been, right? I don't feel wretched, and I always feel like death warmed over when I wake up from a Voldemort dream… yeah, I think it must have been just a regular dream this time."
Hermione didn't budge for a moment, still halfway out of bed, then she gave a grave nod and snuggled back down into the blankets with him. Harry drew her close to him and tried to give up the dream to the feeling of holding her. It would have been much easier if there wasn't still something nagging at him, a bur in the back of his brain, but he dismissed that as the normal reaction after a normal, everyday bizarre dream. Having a snuggle with Hermione certainly helped a great deal toward easing his mind of any of its post-dream misgivings.
Hermione slipped her arm around Harry's body and nestled snuggly against him. The dream was beat back that much further, and Harry was content to see it go. "You know," she mumbled comfortably into his chest, "I'm actually not looking forward to term starting again."
Harry gasped teasingly, "Hermione Granger, not looking forward to classes? What manner of polyjuice-guzzling imposter are you and what have you done with my Mione?"
Hermione giggled. "All right, I am looking forward to classes, but not term, if that makes sense."
"Not particularly."
"Well, it will mean me going back to sleeping in the girls' dorm again. I don't imagine your other roommates would be quite so accommodating of me creeping in here and bunking up with you."
Harry gave a moment to mentally consider Ron snoring loudly a short distance behind his back. It would have been very easy for Ron to make a fuss about Hermione sneaking into their dorm room at nights to sleep in Harry's bed… but he hadn't. He'd put on a show of being rather nauseated, but he'd not presumed to ask Hermione to leave. Last night, he had even turned to Hermione as they were heading up to their separate bedrooms and said, 'well, come on up to our room, then; we both know you'll end there anyway, and I'd rather not get woken up by you sneaking in after midnight'. Not once had Hermione ever woken Ron with her late-night sojourns into the boys' dorm room, and Ron well knew that (it took a small natural disaster to get Ron out of bed), but it was also beside the point.
"Probably not…" Harry conceded, admitting that while Ron might be amenable to the co-ed accommodations, Dean, Seamus, and Neville would more than likely not be nearly as agreeable to sharing their room with yet another roommate, and a girl one at that. Then he smirked wryly when his fellow Gryffindor boys became the lesser of his concerns."Not to mention with all of them knowing you slept here, sooner or later someone would let it slip out, whether they meant to or not. Could you imagine if McGonagall found out?"
Hermione's body shook as she laughed silently. Harry held her just slightly tighter, smiling to himself to feel her body shaking with mirth. "Poor Professor McGonagall," Hermione finally said in an amused voice, "We've given her a fair bit of grief this past year, I'm afraid."
"Not that much more than we do every year." Harry thought longer on that a moment then chuckled. "We're exhausting students to have, I think."
"Probably true. But still, I think she likes us despite all the trouble we cause. She very nearly has to. I mean, she's not about to have it out for her own
house's seeker."
"And I'm sure she likes to boast in the professors' lounge that the brightest witch of her age is a Gryffindor."
Hermione snorted softly then sighed into Harry's chest. "Still, I expect that no matter the good graces we have with McGonagall, they would fall short of convincing her to look the other way at having a girl moving into the boys' dorm."
"Yeah, you're right… and to be honest, you really don't want to share a room with all of them. They're pigs."
"Oh, and you're not?" she countered playfully.
"No. Compared to them, I'm very clean. 'Course, I would be. I mean, I did spend most of my childhood cleaning."
Hermione's hold around him tightened briefly at the glimpse of his tragic childhood, but she didn't linger on it or drawn undue attention to it, and for that he was grateful. That Hermione would know him well enough to let it go so readily, that she would know when it would be best left alone, reminded him anew just why he loved her. And knowing how carefully and correctly she would handle it, he could say it as casually as he had.
He smirked to himself, comforted by the very act of being with Hermione, and without thinking about it he perched his chin atop her head.
Hermione hummed contently in the back of her throat."I love it when you do that," she purred.
"What?"
"That thing with your chin."
"Really?" he asked, perplexed that a gesture as benign as that would touch her so. It was hardly something he'd even consciously realized he did until she pointed it out.
Hermione nodded carefully, loathe to dislodge his chin from its apparently beloved position. "I'm not sure why, but I do."
That in itself was reason enough, in Harry's mind, and he'd have to remember to do it more often.
"So, did you want to have a lie in?" Harry asked softly.
Before Hermione could answer, Ron let out a rather grating, loud snore as he shifted positions.
It caused Hermione to chuckle. "With the lumberjack over there? Kind of ruins the peaceful moment."
Harry could agree whole-heartedly with that."We could cast a silencio on him."
Hermione chortled and buried her face in his chest to muffle her laughter. It made Harry's body fairly hum and the discomfiture that had been planted in his thoughts by his dream was momentarily forgotten. "Tempting," Hermione countered to Harry's suggested course of action, "but it seems a bit of a violation to put a spell on someone without their knowledge." Hermione was quiet a moment as she turned the other options available to them over in her head. After a time, she picked one. "We could go outside."
"For a run?" Harry drew back enough to look down at Hermione's face.
She turned her eyes up to him. "Why not? We've missed a few days of exercise, me more than you since you got in a bit of flying yesterday. And if the weather's pleasant enough, maybe we could go for a walk afterward, just spend some time being together."
"Without a chainsaw Weasley playing backup?" Harry said with a quirk of one eyebrow and a lop-sided smirk.
Hermione gave a tight-lipped smile that said she was really trying not to laugh. "Exactly."
"Sounds like a good plan to me. You want to meet in a few minutes down in the common room?"
Hermione nodded, moved in to give him a quick kiss on the lips, then slipped out of his bed and out of the dorm room without eliciting so much as a twitch of disruption in Ron's slumber. Harry watched her go, his eyes traveling from the gold 'POTTER' on her back to the creamy legs beneath the edge of maroon. She was there and gone without a sound.
Through it all, Ron snored on.
Harry shook his head and got out of bed himself to set about dressing for a winter outdoor excursion.
Their late morning run was at once refreshing and invigorating, even if Harry and Hermione were constrained, upon their promise to Kimmy, from slipping away into the Forbidden Forest and fully enjoying their run as Knight and Sagehunter as they would have done before the Christmas holidays. Still, that vow to a trusted house elf did not stop them from having fun as regular, human Harry and Hermione. There was nary a breeze, so while the white and icy winter landscape would suggest frigid cold, it did not actually feel nearly as chilly as it had looked from the window. Even still, it was cold enough that their cheeks and noses were red after their run around the perimeter of the grounds.
It was closer to noon than the morning hours by the time Harry and Hermione called it quits on the running and turned to strolling through the snow together. Once they'd cooled down from their work-out, the cold of the winter day began to prick at their skin and Harry and Hermione ducked back into the castle long enough to retrieve their coats. Ron had been awake when Harry fetched his, just getting a start on the day from the way he was bumbling around the room in his pajamas. Ron, seeing Harry grab his coat, remarked on the fact it wouldn't be long before lunch was served, but Harry had merely given a nod and wave and rejoined Hermione in the common room. With so few students at Hogwarts, it wouldn't be too terrible an inconvenience to meander their way to the kitchen later when they were hungry… by unspoken consensus, Harry and Hermione chose to resume their walk outdoors rather than share the Great Hall with their classmates.
They were walking along the shores of the Black Lake together, both consumed by the comfortable silence that had settled between them, and they appeared to be the only students outside at the moment. Harry had his hands stuffed in his pockets to keep them warm; he'd not had the foresight to grab his gloves when he went in for his jacket. Hermione, however, naturally thought of everything and held on to Harry's elbow lightly with gloved hands. The lake was frozen over near the shoreline, pearly white ice that met the pure white banks of the snow-covered shore, white on white.
As they neared the beech tree, naked of leaves and branches sheathed in ice, it creaked and cracked under the weight of its own coated twigs as ice gave but never quit broke free its hold of the tree's extremities.
They had no particular destination in mind, they just walked aimlessly. It permitted Harry's mind to wander, and though he tried not to allow it, his thoughts seemed to turn again and again to the dream.
"It's bugging you, isn't it?" Hermione asked into the quiet of their time together.
"Hmmm?" Harry asked, distracted, as he glanced over at her face.
"Your dream," Hermione said and smiled understandingly at him, "it's bugging you. Or at least something is, I can tell." Hermione frowned in sudden thought. "What else could it be, if not your dream this morning?"
Harry shook his head. "No, you're right, it's that dream. Shouldn't bug me, I know, but..." he offered an ineffectual shrug.
"If it's really troubling you, maybe you should speak to Dumbledore about it," Hermione suggested.
He'd been turning that thought over in his head a lot since he woke, if he was going to be honest with himself, and on that at least he was unambiguous in his final decision. He wouldn't bring it to Dumbledore's attention. Harry could just imagine going to the headmaster and explaining that no, he was almost certain it wasn't a Voldemort vision-dream, no, he had no indications that Sirius was in trouble and in fact had not actually seen him in the dream at all but only sensed his presence, but still he'd had a bad dream and could Dumbledore make him feel better about it? The thought turned Harry the more he gave it audience in his mind. He wasn't a child… even when he had
been, he'd not turned to adults for reassurance when his nights were haunted.
"No," he answered Hermione at delay, "I'm not going to go running to Dumbledore with every little thing. What would I say to him if I did? He'd ask right away if it was a Voldemort dream and I'd have to say no, and then it would just be silly that I was even there. I'm probably just making a big deal out of an everyday nightmare, anyway."
"You know, Harry, maybe you dreamed of Sirius because you know he's out there in harm's way. You could still have nightmares about him being in some kind of danger without it having anything to do with your vision-dreams that connect you to Voldemort. It's perfectly normal for you to dream about him. I've had dreams about Sirius, too."
"You have?"
Hermione nodded. "But then, my dreams are only that… dreams. But it illustrates my point. We know he's out there, but we don't know exactly what he's doing or if he's all right at any given moment. We worry, and it comes out in our dreams." Hermione paused and her hold on his elbow tightened slightly. "I dream about my parents, too."
Harry's stomach knotted guiltily. Hermione would never let him say it was his fault that her family was in the danger that they were, but he knew it was the truth just the same, whether Hermione would hear of it or not."I didn't know that."
Hermione shrugged much in the same way he had earlier. "It's not unexpected… I love them and I'm separated from them when there's the possibility that they're in danger. I'm scared for them. Oh, I know they're somewhere safe… rather, the safest anyone can be these days, Lupin made sure of it, but still…" Hermione pressed closer to his side and was quiet for a while, most likely pondering what her parents and grandmother were doing at that very moment. Harry was silent and let her as they walked at a snail's pace over the snowy grounds.
"The nightmares aren't as bad when I'm in bed with you," Hermione finally spoke again, softly as though it was a secret she'd been charged to keep and she was breaking a promise by telling him. "I think waking up and having you there makes me… I don't know, but I just feel better."
Oddly, that made him feel better. Harry smirked faintly. "And I thought you were in my bed because you couldn't keep your hands off me."
"Well, that too," Hermione answered nonchalantly, then snickered. "This could be bad, Harry."
"Huh? What could be bad?"
"I may be growing a bit too dependent on you. What will I do when term starts and I have to muddle through my nightmares all by myself?" Her tone was playful, but when she looked into his eyes, when their gazes connected but for a moment, he saw a flicker of bare honesty in them. She really was concerned about facing the night alone.
Harry swallowed a lump of emotion that lodged in his throat. He wasn't sure what it was, he didn't examine it, didn't want to. It might pull him under if he did. "You send Crookshanks to get me out of bed. I'll come down, and we'll sleep on the couch in the common room," he answered earnestly.
Hermione leaned into him."So you'll be the addiction and the enabler?" Still her words were said with jesting inflections, while the whole of her body language screamed the tenderness and intimacy of their exchange. In their bodies, beyond speech, they were always the most honest with one another, as cats and people. Harry had always found great comfort in that, because he wasn't the best with saying how he felt, but he could show her. His hands
were more fluent in the medium of communication than the breadth of his vocabulary.
Harry stopped and turned to face her. Hermione looked up at him, almost smiling, not quite, but eyes shining. He quaked at the idea that she could 'get past' turning to him, be it for comfort from bad dreams or for affection. "Mione," Harry said gently, staring into her eyes to give him courage, "maybe I'm a selfish prat, but… I don't want you to stop needing me." There was a time when the thought of someone needing him would have been terrifying, because Harry wasn't used to being that emotionally vital to anyone or anything. It was a daunting and crippling responsibility that he wasn't equipped to handle. But it was different now with Hermione. He needed her to need him. He wondered who ended up needing the other more… he decided his need for her was the greater. Without him she was still a brilliant, beautiful witch full of potential. Without her, he was a pathetic, unloved boy with a scar on his head and a target on his back.
Hermione smiled at him, like an angel in the snow, and slid a hand around the back of his neck, stood on her toes, and kissed him softly on the mouth. "I never will, Harry," she whispered against his lips, her breath warming his mouth.
Harry gazed down at her, in wonder at how such an incredible person could ever need the likes of him, and then he brought up one hand and tangled his fingers in her hair. Hermione's smile turned to one side in more of a quirky smirk. Had she been Sagehunter, it would have been the slightest tick of her ears backward.
"I'll just look forward to the day when I don't have to wonder if my dreams mean something bad is happening to the people I care about."
Hermione leaned into him, closed her eyes as though at the altar of a holy shrine, and breathed, "It's so good to hear you talk like that."
That puzzled him. "Talk like what?"
Hermione opened her eyes to look up at him. "Talk about the future as though you have one beyond Voldemort." Harry blinked at her, shocked because he never stopped to consider that he'd been doing it. When Hermione saw that he'd caught up to her observation, her smile turned slightly bittersweet. "You didn't used to."
She was right, he hadn't. He hadn't talked about it and he hadn't thought about it. It was too easy to see his life going no farther than the menace
that was the dark wizard that had robbed him of a proper family, a proper childhood, and quite possibly a proper life. But now he did let himself look past the shadow of Voldemort, to days free of his presence and his threat and his blackness… he wasn't sure when it had changed, but slowly and surely it had.
"I guess now I actually want something beyond Voldemort," Harry commented, almost to himself as he sussed out the truth of it all.
"You didn't before?"
Harry thought about how to say it. "Well, yes, I did, but… vaguely… it wasn't really real, no matter how much I tried to think of it as being likely to happen someday." He turned it over in his head a bit. "Like the way Ron wishes to be rich and famous when he grows up. He dreams and dreams about it, but I don't think he really believes it will happen." Harry shrugged a tad sheepishly as he confessed, "I couldn't picture it, I guess. I just… really couldn't grip it." His expression was touched with a hint of the irony in the whole issue. "Made it hard to really want something I couldn't honestly imagine."
"But now you can? Imagine it?"
Harry nodded. "You drew it for me, Hermione."
Hermione blushed, though why that would strike her so, Harry couldn't say. It was merely the truth as best he could explain it. Before, his future had been one of two canvases. One filled with Voldemort and Death Eaters and pain and tribulations and quite likely his own death. The other was blank.
Harry didn't have a reference to even begin to sketch an alternate future on the blank canvas. He couldn't envision a normal life that was not tangled in darkness and anguish, whether by Voldemort or by his aunt and uncle's not- so-tender rearing practices. He was trying to paint the Sistine Chapel without once ever holding a paintbrush.
Then Hermione came in with her pallet and paints and the blank canvas wasn't blank anymore. And the future she intimated he could have was so much greater than the one of Voldemort that he'd stared at for so long. He wanted to have what she showed him, he wanted it so desperately that he clung to the alternative with a drowning man's grip. He wanted it so badly he began to let himself believe he might live it one day, that beautiful, happy painting in Hermione's loving brushstrokes. Harry Potter began to think he might actually live happily ever after. He wondered if he could ever make Hermione understand how fantastic a feat that was, and just how amazing
she was for being the one to accomplish it.
Hermione beamed up at him, radiant in the noonday winter vista. He leaned closer to kiss her, to show her with his lips how much her artistry in his life was cherished, when movement in the sky drew his eyes upward. His Quidditch training predisposed him to seeing and seeking movement in the sky.
At first he noted only a large bird flapping its way toward the castle. He thought it might be an owl, possibly tawny from the brown coloring. Quickly he realized it was not an owl, it was far too big for even the largest species of owl, easily twice Hedwig's size, and the feathers were more chestnut-gold than brown. Its head was too streamlined for an owl, and just as Hermione turned to see what had captured his attention he realized it was a hawk… no, eagle, for it was much, much too big to be a hawk.
What had drawn Harry's gaze more than anything was the fact that the bird was flying haphazardly. It was barely keeping airborne, flying desperately for a place to land and rest.
"It's hurt," Hermione remarked.
It was. A wounded eagle was fighting its way to Hogwarts, and Harry wondered why it would be so determined to reach the wizardry and witchcraft school when it might have landed anywhere.
Suddenly Harry's body went rigid and cold and his eyes widened in realization. "It's Shylock!"
Hermione gasped and turned at once to look up at him.
It had to be Aberforth Dumbledore in his animagus form… why else would an eagle be trying so very hard to reach the castle?
And the next understanding to sink darkly into Harry's bones was the fact that Abertforth had been out hunting for Voldemort with Sirius… and a quick scan of the grounds did not turn up a shaggy black dog.
"Sirius is in trouble," Harry said with certainty, his heart racing. "Come on," he took Hermione's hand and dragged her toward the castle.
"Where are we going?" she asked as she hurried to match his pace.
"To talk to Dumbledore, either one, I have to know what's happened to Sirius."
Chapter Sixty One
Original Author Notes -
A/N: *sigh* Not that I think it's going to do any good, since I STILL get comments about Harry's eyes being blue in this fic, but just a reminder this is based on movie canon up to Goblet of Fire. Therefore, no prophecy yet, and no horcruxes. This is just to let everyone know that I won't be paying attention to reviews decrying this 'oversight'. It's not an oversight, you just didn't read the A/N, and I won't be held responsible for that. For those of you who are aware of this repeatedly stated fact and are coming along with me on this story, disregard this note and continue on to the chapter. Enjoy!
Hermione found Ron in his dorm room thumbing through a Quidditch magazine while sitting crossed-legged on his bed. When she came in, no longer surprised to have Hermione Granger barge right into the boys' dorm room, Ron looked up and said, "Hey, Hermione…" he glanced behind Hermione, "where's Harry?"
"In the Great Hall looking for you. Put that magazine away; there's trouble, Ron."
Ron sat up straighter and his care-free expression fled, as much for Hermione's demeanor as her actual words. "What kind of trouble?"
"Voldemort kind."
"Shite!" Ron cursed under his breath and got off the bed. "What's going on?"
Hermione gave Ron a quick version of the events of that morning from the moment she and Harry spotted Shylock struggling toward the castle. Early in her recount, Ginny wandered into the room. When the youngest Weasley caught on to the topic of conversation she went very sober and listened raptly while Hermione finished her story with Dumbledore leaving only moments ago for Hogsmeade to put together an impromptu army of witches and wizards to confront Voldemort.
By the time Hermione was finished summarizing the morning's flurry of activity, Ron's skin had a ghostly pallor that made his hair unbearably orange and his freckles stand out like chicken pox. Ginny was stony-faced, the lines of her young face severe and vicious… she had her own personal reasons to want Voldemort dead for the things he'd done to her in her first year.
"So we need to get into Dumbledore's office to use his fireplace. We need you to floo your father at the ministry," Hermione at last got to the reason she'd gone looking for the Weasleys.
"What can Dad do?" Ron asked with a thick swallow, still reeling from the information about Voldemort being so terrifyingly close to the school.
"Tell us what is going on from within the ministry. There's no way here at Hogwarts for us to keep apprised of what's happening with the attack on Dane, but there might be someone inside the ministry who would know more than we do, and it may be your father knows them."
Ron nodded. "Yeah, maybe. Though Dad isn't exactly in the department for fighting dark wizards and Death Eaters. He could know even less than we do, you know."
Hermione had thought of that, but she shook her head just the same. "It's the best we have right now, and it's worth a try.
"Now we all we have to do is find Harry." "He's outside," Ginny said.
Hermione turned quickly to look at Ginny. "What?"
"I passed him on my way in; he said you were meeting him out by the lake." Ginny's eyebrows drew together when she saw the aghast look on Hermione's face to the news. "What's wrong?"
"That git!" Hermione screeched.
Hermione rushed to Harry's still-open trunk and pawed through the contents until she found the Marauder's Map. She hastily drew out her wand and said in a rush, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," and tapped the map with the tip of her wand. The grounds of Hogwarts appeared on the parchment, complete with moving footprints and their corresponding name tags for the occupants of Hogwarts.
She called up the images of the map and flipped to the proper page just in time to see the tiny footprints that bore the label 'Harry Potter' reach the edge of Hogwarts' grounds then disappear beyond the scope and range of the map.
"Bloody hell!" Hermione cursed and threw down the map in disgust. She whirled and ran for the door.
"Hey! Wait, what's going on?!" Ron called, "Where's Harry?!"
"On his way to Dane!" Hermione yelled furiously over her shoulder, then she was gone.
Ginny and Ron looked at one another, shocked.
"He wouldn't…," Ginny gasped.
"Oh, bloody right he would," Ron groused and shook his head.
"Shouldn't we go with Hermione? If she's going to stop him, she may need help."
Ron rubbed at his hair furtively and shook his head. "Don't think we could keep up. I get the feeling it won't be Hermione catching up with Harry so much as Sagehunter catching up with Knight."
"Oh…" Ginny said with resignation.
Ron went over to the Marauder's Map and picked it up. He glanced at the hurrying representation of Hermione as she raced through the hallway and out of the castle in pursuit of Harry.
Ginny shrugged. "Well, we could still contact Dad and see if he knows anything about the meeting at Hogsmeade and going after Voldemort at Dane."
Ron nodded and he and his sister left the boys' dorm and descended the stairs. As they reached the hallway Ron began to glance at the map in his hand. No reason to get caught trying to sneak into Dumbledore's office if there was a way to avoid it right at his fingertips.
They were halfway there when the half-page Hermione had turned to in order to look for Harry on the grounds, since her departure a blank page as most everyone was inside, suddenly spotted with new footprints and new floating name tags.
"Hold on," Ron stopped and peered closer at the new images. There were names emerging that he did not recognize; he puzzled over 'Crabbe' and 'Goyle' a moment, knowing the two Slytherins were not at the school for the Christmas holiday, then he yelped like a kicked dog when 'Tom Morvolo Riddle Jr.' walked its way on to the page.
"What?" Ginny asked anxiously to her brother's outburst and sudden lack of color.
"He's here!" Ron hissed.
Ginny yanked the map away from Ron and looked down at it. Her eyes went wide as saucers when she saw what he had. "But… he's supposed to be in Dane!"
"Well, he's not. I have to tell Harry and Hermione."
"What do I do?" Ginny asked, looking up at her brother frantically.
"Take the map, find McGonagall, show her, warn her! And for pity's sake, be careful!" With that Ron turned and ran. He ran as fast as his feet could carry him… he cursed not taking up running with Harry and Hermione. It seemed to take him hours to lunge his way up the Gryffindor boys' dorm stairwell.
Heaving for breath, he staggered to the closet, threw open the door, and pulled out his new Cleansweep. He noticed Harry's Firebolt missing… no time for that. He raced to Harry's trunk, in such a sad state of disarray from two mindless ransackings, and Ron added his own mess to the anarchy as he threw aside the few jumpers and pants that lay atop Harry's invisibility
cloak. Ron snatched it up and ran from the room.
He donned the cloak well before he was at a door to the outside. With heart pounding, he stood in the doorway and scanned the grounds for sign of Voldemort and his followers. He saw nothing yet, but that did little to ease
Ron's anxiety. He knew they were there.
Ron mounted his broom, firmly fixed one corner of the invisibility cloak to the end of his broom, leaned in, and flew forward. He skirted the ground as fast as he dared, keeping low because the cloak wouldn't do him any good if he was over the Death Eaters' heads and they happened to look up. It wouldn't do him any good if he flew too fast and it flapped in the wind, revealing glimpses of Ron's legs and feet.
So he skimmed the earth, so close that he could see the details in the imprints of shoes in the snow, and he flew agonizingly slow and let the thought consume him 'find Harry and Hermione, find them, don't get caught, tell them, Voldemort's at Hogwarts!'
Hermione ran as she had never run before, legs and arms pumping as she charged after Harry. There was no sign of him ahead of her save for his racing footprints that she followed unerringly. When she was clear of the school, safe from the risk of prying eyes belonging to students leaning out school windows, when she was well and fully fled into the woods in pursuit of Harry, she dropped down without slowing her stride and became Sagehunter. The difference was like that between night and day. It made it seem as though she'd been running in waist-deep water as Hermione Granger. Sagehunter accelerated ahead at break-neck speed, coursing over
the snow with wide paws kicking up drifts of white powder. Her paws weren't made to manage snow, but they managed it better than a girl's dainty feet.
Sagehunter surged forward, ears back and long back folding and bowing at double-time, coiling and extending with each earth-engulfing stride. She found Knight's paw prints where Harry had changed, caught his scent, and ran.
She had to stop him, it was her only thought, a singular purpose in an acute hunter's mind.
Luck was with her, or rather, Knight's impatience to reach Dane worked to her favor. His tracks left the maze of trees that comprised the forest and broke into open ground. It was a straighter course to Hogsmeade, and therein Dane.
It was the break Sagehunter desperately needed.
Sagehunter put on a burst of speed and charged ahead over the open land. At last, ahead, she saw a spot of movement amid the barren trees and white
banks of snow. As she ran harder, drew nearer to the smudge, she made out the black form of a large cat running ahead of her. Knight. Sagehunter poured every ounce of strength she had into catching him. It was a hunt that she must not botch. If she lost her quarry she risked the loss of so much more than she could bear to think on. Failure was not acceptable, she had to stop him.
While still a fair distance away, Knight heard something closing on him from behind as Sagehunter drew ever closer to his racing form. He stopped momentarily to whirl and face his pursuer… when he saw it was her he spat angrily, teeth bared, and spun around. With a deft change of direction, he dashed for the tree line.
Sagehunter raced with all the speed that her feline body could allot her. If Knight reached the trees, if it became a race amid the forest, she couldn't catch him. Her only hope to overtake him was on open terrain. She had to get to him before he was in the forest, in his natural element.
His detour to the woods was not directly ahead of her or him, it was to Knight's left. It provided her the chance to lead her target rather than merely giving flat pursuit… it gave her a little more ground to reach him quicker as he ran perpendicular to her straight line. He knew as well as she where the advantage would go to him, and he meant to use it against her.
He was banking everything on reaching the forest before she reached him.
He very nearly did, and it was with a last moment of horror to think that she might lose him that Sagehunter reached for the last bit of power in her cat body and sprang forward. Knight froze when he saw it coming, fairly flying at him but for the lack of wings, but he wasn't quick enough to dodge her leap. Sagehunter slammed into Knight and they went down in a hissing, rolling ball of black and tawny fur.
Knight kicked and screamed to free himself from her. Sagehunter scrambled to keep him down. Neither used claws or teeth, but they threw themselves at one another with the full of their body weight, trying to joust the other into submission.
They tussled and tangled in the snow for a furious few seconds before Knight fought free of Sagehunter. The two cats jumped apart at the same moment. Knight stood, legs braced, facing Sagehunter and heaving for breath.
Sagehunter faced him just as resolutely, just as winded. When they broke apart, Sagehunter ended up in the way of Knight's path to Dane. It was luck, pure chance, but she recognized her fortuitous placement and held her ground. She would not let him pass.
Knight spat and roared and swatted at Sagehunter in frustration and anger. Sagehunter roared back and crouched, ready to pounce on him again if he tried to run or get around her.
Knight snarled and paced, head low and eyes intent on Sagehunter… studying her as he might a rival, an opponent. Sagehunter met his challenge, eyes just as unflinching as she leveled a glare at Knight. Masters of two domains clashed in neutral territory, the lord of the jungle and the empress of the savannah matched against each other on the snowscape.
Neither could say how such a confrontation would end.
A menacing growl rumbled up from the depths of Knight's throat.
Sagehunter gave a low-thunder growl in answer. The hairs on the back of their necks were erect, their muscles quivering, and always they watched one another with singular intent.
Then they heard the sound of cloth slapping in the wind and a familiar smell filled the air. For a time, both noted it but refused to take their eyes off the other. Then the sound grew louder and the scent stronger. Knight broke first the stand-off first to look for the intrusion, as the scent was coming up quickly from behind him.
From seeming midair, Ron appeared, throwing off a blanket and jumping from his broom, only to stumble from his high-speed dismount crying, "Don't eat me! It's me, Ron!"
For a second, the introduction of a wizard on a broom was utterly out of place in the battleground for jaguar and lioness. Knight blinked at Ron, glanced at Sagehunter who was clearly just as baffled, then he changed back to Harry.
"Ron?" Harry asked.
Sagehunter stepped forward, stepped into Hermione… but she was not looking at Ron. She still had eyes only for Harry, but not in a romantic sort of way. She marched right up to him and punched Harry in the shoulder.
"OW!"
"You idiot! What the hell did you think you were doing?!"
Harry scowled at Hermione, who was standing beside him with clothes and hair sopping wet, a bruise blooming on her jaw, and her hands on her hips in a pose of pure fury as her eyes blazed at him. For once, she was no less a lioness for having resumed human form.
"I wasn't going to wait around for Voledmort to kill Sirius because he's not part of the 'bigger picture'."
"Did you even listen to a word Dumbledore said? To a word I said?"
"I can't leave him to Voldemort!" Harry bellowed. "I know you all seem to think it's the only thing I can do, but you're wrong!"
"V-V-Voldemort…" Ron gasped from his knees in the snow.
"Sirius knew the risk involved in going against Voldemort. Merlin, he's done it before! He spent years in Azkaban for tangling in the affairs of Voldemort during the war! He would not have done it again if he didn't fully understand the danger and accepted it."
"V-Voldemort…" Ron choked.
"Bugger that. Maybe I'm not ready to accept that I just stood around while my godfather died," Harry shot back acidly.
"Vol-Voldemort," Ron blurted, louder this time.
"What?!" Harry and Hermione turned as one to snap at Ron. Ron gulped in air. "Voldemort's… at Hogwarts… right now." Both Harry and Hermione went stone still.
"He's… there," Ron gasped.
"What?" Hermione noticeably paled, and Harry had no caustic retort to fling at her. "How do you know?"
"Marauder's Map told me," Ron said, at last catching his breath.
Harry and Hermione looked in shock at one another. "But… but he's supposed to be in Dane," Harry stammered.
Hermione gasped when it suddenly made horrifying sense to her. "Oh, no! Harry, it was a trap! A trap no matter what you did. He let Aberforth escape to get word to us about his location. He counted on you finding out what happened to Sirius and forcing this issue. Damnit, Voldemort set you up regardless of what you decided to do. He'd have you captured at Dane when you went to save Sirius or he'd capture you at Hogwarts when attention was focused on Dane!"
"Come again?" Ron asked, bewildered by the leap Hermione had made.
"Think, Ron. Voldemort's never come near Hogwarts himself because he was scared of Headmaster Dumbledore, he knows he can't take him on single- handed, but—"
"Dumbledore's not at Hogwarts," Harry said sickly, "he's at Hogsmeade putting together an attack force. An attack on a decoy."
Hermione nodded. "Leaving the school vulnerable. And if you went to Dane, Harry, you'd be walking into the unknown… who knows what kind of ambush they had planned for you if you showed up to rescue Sirius."
Harry would throw up about that later. Now, he had a choice. Sirius or those left behind at Hogwarts.
In the distance, like a tree crashing to the ground, there was an explosion that thundered through the air and seemed to vibrate up through the bottoms of their feet. It came from the direction of Hogwarts. All three looked back toward the school in distressed, gloomy silence.
Harry went over to Ron where the redhead still knelt in the snow and extended his hand to help his friend to his feet. When Ron was standing Harry looked first at him, then at Hermione. They were both watching him closely to learn what he would do. Somehow, it was left up to him. With finality, Harry said, "We have to go back."
Hermione was stolid in her resolve. She would not argue this time. Ron looked ill but he gave a nod just the same.
"Dumbledore was right," Harry said gravely, "this all ends today."
Chapter Sixty Two
Original Author Notes -
A/N: I don't know how necessary this is, I didn't think it was that bad, but in case others would disagree with my estimations be forewarned that there is gore and violence in this chapter.
They returned to the school much as they had left it, Harry and Hermione as Knight and Sagehunter for the greater speed it gave them when covering ground, Ron on his new Cleansweep with the invisibility cloak balled up under one elbow. They'd all agreed it would be pretty pointless for Ron to cover up on the way back. In the company of a jaguar and lioness, a wizard on a broom (particularly in the vicinity of a magical school) would be the less conspicuous sight for a passerby to notice of the trio. It seemed ludicrous for him to try and hide under the cloak.
It seemed to take an unbearably long time, since Knight and Sagehunter had barely had a chance to catch their breaths after their initial race then their ensuing tussle before they were asked to run again, but they were at last coming upon landmarks they knew with great familiarity. Then it was caution that slowed their pace.
They ducked into the cover of the forest as soon as they possibly could and stuck to the trees, avoiding open areas and roads leading to the great castle. The senses possessed by Knight and Sagehunter aided in their undetected approach to the school.
As they crept close to the tree line, knowing they might have to discuss and formulate a plan of action, Knight and Sagehunter returned their forms to Harry and Hermione. Together, the three friends crouched to avoid being spotted by the enemy and took in the scene before them. They could see that the explosion they had heard from afar had effectively deprived Hogwarts of its hospital wing. Hermione clutched Harry's arm tightly when they saw the rubble that stood where once the hospital wing jutted from the castle proper. The pinch of her fingers on his bicep said all that he was thinking. 'Aberforth, Kimmy, Pomfrey'. Only as an afterthought did the fate of Draco Malfoy, lying witlessly in a bed of his own inside the hospital wing, flit through his mind.
But there was no time to worry about those that might very well already lay dead amid the stone and debris of the hospital wing. There were people still alive that demanded Harry's attention, though from the looks of things they might not stay that way for long.
The area in front of the main entrance to Hogwarts was full of people. The great doors of the castle were shut and the enormous portcullis down, but that served little purpose considering the hole blown in both that had granted the attackers access to the school. It looked as though the wood and iron had been little more than paper that a giant fist had punched through.
Students and teachers alike were gathered on the grounds, held in a cluster like sheep surrounded by a circle of wolves. Black wolves, Death Eaters in coal-colored robes with skull-like masks, who paced a bloodthirsty noose around the survivors of the initial raid. There should be more than those who were pressed together in a knot of fear, Harry noted with cold certainty.
Were any of them just missing, or were all unaccounted for individuals dead? Harry surveyed the scene, touching the jaguar to better see the situation that lay before them.
The first to draw Harry's eyes amid the captives were those that were no longer standing. Lavender Brown was on her knees, crying as she clung to a limp body sprawled partially over her lap. From her tears, it could only be Oliver. Harry wondered if the elder Gryffindor had tried to do something bold and fatal, like protect Lavender in a display of gallantry. If he had, he'd managed only to pay for it with his life.
McGonagall was crouched down, shielding a waif of a student (Merlin, had Harry ever been that small?) with her arms while trying to tend to her injuries at the same time. The little first-year was bleeding from the head and seemed on the verge of falling at any moment. Ginny was among the
prisoners, she was hard to miss with her red hair. She was hurt. Harry couldn't see for certain how badly, but she was holding her right hand up to her chest, cradling it. From where they stood, it was not the color it should have been. Not flesh-toned but black and red. She was hunched over, whether from internal injury or just the agony in her arm he couldn't say.
Whichever was the case, Ginny had not let the pain drop her. She was standing as best she could, never taking her eyes from the human jackals circling the huddled survivors.
Ron tensed at Harry's right. He'd seen his sister and the state she was in, though assuredly not as well as Harry saw it. To Ron's credit, a sharp intake of breath was all he did in reaction to the sight. Harry half feared Ron would dart out in blind anger to try and defend his little sister. Instead, Ron held himself still and waited, watchful and alert.
Hannah Abbot was curled in a ball on the ground, shivering and crying and holding her torn clothes to her body with a palsy grip. Harry didn't want to think of what had been done to her, not when there was a beautiful young witch next to him, looking to enter into the same fray as he. Professor Flitwick was trying to comfort Hannah, with the one arm left to him, but she flinched away from him every time he tried to touch her.
Snape was still alive, but his privilege to the status of being counted among the living seemed on the cusp of being revoked. He'd been singled out from the other professors for reasons that hardly needed clarification. He was apart from the pack of Hogwarts survivors, on his knees with his hands tied behind his back. The Death Eaters were striking him mercilessly, with hand, fist, wand, knife… anything they fancied. They were playing with him, trying to draw a cry from him with every blow. Harry had to credit the Potions master his damnable arrogance… he wasn't cracking to their whims or giving them the pleasure of his scream. Though his face was bloody and bruised, he did not give them the satisfaction of breaking.
Professor Sprout was standing before a quartet of frightened students, like a mother bear looking after her cubs. She had her arms splayed wide, guarding her charges, what of the survivors she could handle claiming as her responsibility. When a Death Eater came too close she kicked and yelled at him… the Death Eaters seemed to delight in watching her have a fit, like a tethered mad dog, and goaded her, counting coup by jumping in and poking her with the ends of their wands only to sidle away with a laugh before her feet could catch them.
Hagrid was nowhere in sight, and that did not bode well for the massive groundskeeper. He would not have run with the school in danger. He would
not have abandoned the students to save his own life. Harry decided that their dear Hagrid was probably dead, very likely slain trying to save Fang from the Death Eaters when they came busting down his hut's door. It would be just the sort of thing Hagrid would do, putting himself last even after a dog. Harry noted that there was no sign of Fang, either, and he lamented for a second that Hagrid had failed. Had Hagrid been alive, he would have been terribly aggrieved to learn his Neapolitan mastiff had been killed.
There were only eight Death Eaters in all by Harry's count, but over a collection of women and children well enough to subdue the school. Though not without a fight. It seemed the initial vanguard against Hogwarts had consisted of more than eight Death Eaters… those who had fallen victim to the defensive fervor of the residents of Hogwarts, doubtless professors and students alike, were strewn in the snow, still as death in the lovely white drifts.
Valiant, but not enough.
Harry's every hair stood on end and his nerves seemed to crackle with electricity and the scar on his forehead burned like fire when a black-clad figure emerged from the hole in the castle's doors. It emerged from the shadows like a Dementor, self-assured and unapologetic. Death's harbinger and without possessing the barest fraction of regret for commanding such a dark purpose.
Voldemort.
He breezed down from the ruined school, as easily as one might step out for an afternoon stroll. He glanced toward Snape, beaten and bloody on the ground but still refusing to scream, and appeared bored with the whole affair. "Enough of this," Voldemort said, and with a flick of his wand Snape gargled and seized when a gash was opened in his throat from ear to ear.
Blood poured from his neck, lost in the black of his robes, then he toppled face-first into the snow.
Students cried and pressed closer together as they watched the professor die. Harry held a hand to his head, trying to function past the blinding pain in his scar.
Hermione leaned in closer to Harry and whispered in his ear, "What do we do now?" Ron glanced over at his companions to hear the answer to the barely breathed question.
Harry shook his head and rubbed at his scar, his heart a pulsing lump in his
throat. What to do? He didn't know.
Voldemort glanced at one of his Death Eaters loitering nearby and gave a nonchalant tick of his head, like a master bidding a butler to answer the door. The masked man nodded obedience and reached into the cluster of survivors. They moved away from him as one like a school of fish shying from a seal, and he pulled a squirming, fighting, frightened boy from the crowd.
McGonagall said sharply, "Stop this! Do what you will to us, but let the children go!"
"And why would I do that, my dear professor? Would you have me believe a child is harmless?!" His words started off calm and smooth as venom sliding the length of a knife's blade, but at the end he was yelling. Mad. Completely mad with hate and evil.
"Now," Voldemort turned to the student who'd been brought before him.
"Since Professor Snape was most unhelpful, I ask you… is Harry Potter here?" Harry tensed and his teeth ground together.
The boy shook his head feebly, sobbing and shaking as he wailed in reply, "I don't know!"
Voldemort tisked disapprovingly, "Filthy lies," and with an easy slash of his wand the boy gagged and screamed and coughed out his tongue. Blood dribbled from his mouth to the snow where his tongue lay between his trainers. Soon after, yellow stained the snow at the boy's feet.
Harry shivered in fury. It was like watching a nightmare unfold but knowing he could not simply wake up and make it stop.
Harry was watching in horror the travesty playing out on the school grounds, trying desperately to think of something he could do. What in the name of Merlin could a fifteen-year-old boy do to stop the torment and torture he was seeing? He was so intent on the scene before him that he almost missed the sound of scraping bark to his left. Were it not for the jaguar heightening his senses, he may not have heard it at all, not until it was too late, for neither Hermione nor Ron gave any indication that there had been a sound.
Harry glanced over, past Hermione, into the branches of the trees beside them. A sliver of light reflected off the glassy, lifeless eye of the huge python that had slithered from the trees and was poised in the shadows a matter of inches from Hermione where she was crouched, unaware of the snake's
presence as she watched the tragedy that had befallen their beloved school.
The snake had snuck up on them while they watched their classmates and professors cower; it was within striking distance of the closest of the three friends… that person being Hermione.
Harry breathed in.
Nagini flicked her tongue out to savor the air and its flavor of a healthy young woman. The python was intent upon Hermione so very close to her ready jaws. "Sssssssssweet," the snake hissed in hungry anticipation. The word sliced through Harry's brain in sibilant parseltongue, an alluring language turned vile and malicious by the creature that spoke it.
Nagini coiled to strike.
On instinct, before he could even think, Harry grabbed Hermione, jerked her toward him and away from the snake, and in a second had his wand drawn and was shouting "Reducto!" even as Nagini lunged for Hermione's tender flesh, fangs bared.
The explosive spell boomed around the three friends hiding in the woods. Nagini crashed to the forest floor, a tremendous length of snake missing a head. Her body continued to writhe as Hermione, realizing how close she'd been to death, scrambled back out of the way and stared at the headless serpent.
Ron whimpered and drew his wand, for all the good it would do now against a dead attacker.
When they collected themselves enough to turn their attention back toward the scene playing out before Hogwarts, they found every eye turned in their direction, those of the Death Eaters and Voldemort included.
Harry froze with dread when the implications of that hit him like a punch in the stomach.
"I know you're there, Harry Potter!" Voldemort called in a slimy, insolent tone.
Harry's heart was hammering in his ribcage. The three friends looked at one another, motionless and lost for what would constitute the right thing to do in their predicament.
"Come forward or watch everyone here die!" Voldemort followed his threat with a wand pointed at the frail child in McGoangall's arms. Green flared.
The professor gave a sharp cry of protest and alarm when the child collapsed in her hold, dead before McGonagall could do a thing to stop it.
Harry looked at Hermione, desperate and apologetic all at once, but Hermione only gave him a grave nod and was the first to step from their cover of the forest. Harry and Ron were quick to follow her.
Death Eaters were swarming around them instantly. Hermione and Ron were stripped of their wands. When one of the Death Eaters tried to take Harry's wand, Voldemort stopped him. "No. Not Potter's. Leave him his wand.
Harry and I have a duel to finish."
Harry's scar was throbbing in time with his heartbeat, but the pain was nothing compared to the fear he felt for his friends as they were separated from him.
Harry watched helplessly as Hermione and Ron were herded into the pack of Hogwarts survivors by their Death Eater escort, then he looked purposefully toward Voldemort. Harry approached the dark wizard with insides quaking, but he did not let his terror show. He dare not. It would only work against him. It could only mean he might get his friends killed or tortured if he showed weakness. He didn't look to Hermione or Ron again for fear they would suffer for his hapless glance. Let them be just classmates in the eyes of the Death Eaters… anything but the best friend and the love of Harry Potter.
Voldemort gave Harry a vicious smile, as though he were a long-awaited guest at a gruesome party. "Why, Harry… has it only been a few months? I would have owled, but you've been cursedly difficult to track down these days."
Harry stood tall before the dark wizard, quelling any tendency he felt inside him to be afraid. And he very much had a tendency to be afraid as he faced Voldemort again, the first time since the man had inflicted the Cruciatus upon him. "You have me now, Voldemort… let the others go."
"Oh…" Voldemort looked to his captives calculatingly, looking as though Harry had asked nothing more important than that he put out the dog. "Oh, I'm afraid that won't do at all."
Harry swallowed and stumbled on his words. "You… you said if I surrendered you wouldn't kill them." He cursed how halting his voice sounded to his own ears.
"Well, didn't you hear the pretty words you wanted to hear then? I said
come forward and you wouldn't have to watch them die. You can't very well do that if you're dead first, now can you?" The dark wizard gave a bare shake of his head, looking a tad amused by the very idea. "Let the others go. Really, Harry… did you think I would show such a Dumbledore-like weakness?" Voldemort smiled cadaverously.
Harry spared his own glance at his huddled (and equally doomed) classmates and professors. He let himself seek out his friends only from the corners of his eyes. Hermione and Ron had wormed their way over to Ginny and were bracing her from either side. McGonagall looked close to tears as she watched Harry as he confronted Voldemort… close to tears, but she did not cry. McGonagall was too formidable to cry, but fear was not beyond her capacity to experience. Flitwick was favoring his side where he'd been dismembered, but it had not killed the fire in his beady gaze. Harry had never seen Professor Sprout look so bulldog in her ferocity. Harry had never truly realized before that moment just how much his professors were warriors… warriors who would take up arms at that very instant, but ultimately warriors left without weapons or a means to fight.
"Your wand, Potter," Voldemort snapped testily.
Harry jerked his eyes back to the dark wizard and he itched to draw his wand on reflex. He forced himself to reach for his wand slowly and to draw it deliberately from his back pocket. He didn't want to risk Voldemort presuming Harry was trying to pull a fast one and kill him before he'd even managed to arm himself. It granted him only a handful of seconds, but when they may be the last he would live to see, every second mattered. "We'll duel if that's what you bloody want," Harry said evenly, "but there's no reason to keep the others."
"You see, but there is reason. First, they'll watch me kill you once and for all, the famous Harry Potter, then they'll die. Then I'll have your corpse strung up in the Great Hall over that meddling old fool's chair. Their bodies," he gestured at the whimpering prisoners, "shall attend you; the Great Hall was built for students to fill, after all." Voldemort sighed wistfully. "What I wouldn't give to see the look on the muggle-lover's face when he walks into his precious Great Hall to see his tables of lifeless students and professors, but most of all, you. Let his failure look down upon him every minute of the rest of his life, short as that will be. Never again shall he presume to think he can defy me!" Voldemort moved to stand directly across from Harry, setting the stage for a one-on-one match. "Elegant in its simplicity, don't you think? And I should think the message will be quite clear. Now," Voldemort gave an elaborate bow, black robes billowing. Harry could not mistake the gesture. Voldemort invited the final duel, the last show-down
between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. A part of Harry railed; he'd hoped he'd have more time before it came down to this.
The students and professors watching nearby went deathly silent, each seeming to understand they were about to watch history be born, regardless of which way the winds of fate blew today. A terrible or glorious moment remained to be seen, but an unforgettable turning point in magical history either way.
They would see Harry Potter defeat Lord Voldemort, or they would see the Boy Who Lived die. Harry couldn't begin to predict which outcome would prevail. But he need not speculate, because the moment was upon him.
He'd know soon enough.
Voldemort rose from his faux-courteous bow and eyed Harry.
Harry tensed, his spine stiffened, but he knew if he didn't bow as a proper dueling partner would to his opponent he would only be forced to do it with a stab of pain in his gut. He'd danced this deadly waltz before, and he'd just as soon avoid needless, pointless agony. With rigid muscles, he dipped just barely at the waist.
Voledmort smiled. "Shame that it's only before your death that you learn your manners," he said lowly. "Farewell, Harry Potter."
Voldemort brought up his wand, almost too fast for Harry to react, but the jaguar was quicker than the young man and it took control of his hand.
Harry's wand rose in a split-second to meet Voldemort's attack.
"Avada kedavra!" "Expelliarmus!"
For a surreal moment, a second of time that stretched to the end of eternity, it was like the graveyard all over again. Light leapt from each wand tip, great snaking ropes of liquid light that rushed together as brother wands embraced one another. There was a flash of light when kin magic met, the power in the wands flared against each other…
Then the white light turned a savage red and raced back toward Harry's hand as the disarming spell backfired. Harry cried out sharply when the light of the priori incantatum engulfed his wand and crackled in a biting snap of pain against his inner wrist. It was as though lightning itself had reached down and licked white-hot heat straight into his bones.
Harry dropped his wand and grabbed his right wrist with his left hand. Vaguely, as though from a telly left on in another room, he heard gasps and screams from his classmates, his friends, his teachers. He heard the Death Eaters laughing. More than anything, though, he heard Voldemort cackle in glee.
"Problem with your wand, Potter?"
Harry looked down to where his wand lay in the snow and stared stupidly a moment as he wondered who had replaced his wand with a fake. The wand at his feet was blackened and charred, smoking in the snow. That couldn't be his wand, his wand was not that color… but he knew the burned length of wood was his wand. And that it was useless now.
He looked up in abject horror at Voldemort, who was smug with pleasure. The Death Eaters were closing tighter around them, around him and the Hogwarts survivors, sensing the impending death stroke. Harry darted a look around at Voldemort's supporters drawing nearer, and then he looked to the crowd that stood poised to watch him murdered. He saw faces full of terror, each face so alike in the fear it wore that they may as well have been one face with one expression. Harry caught Hermione's eye where she stood at the periphery of the group of students. She was watching him, and there was some fear in her eyes, some, but there was something powerful and commanding, too. Something decisive and purposeful that woke something in Harry, drove from his thoughts the mind-numbing, muscle-paralyzing idea that he was about to die. Not yet. Not just yet, he still had Hermione waiting for him. He had a life to live with her, and he would not let Voldemort rip it from him.
Harry turned his eyes back to Voldemort, the pain in his wrist subsiding to a fiery ache… he willed himself to ignore it, he could ache later, when he lived. Harry straightened from his shocked posture of unexpected pain and mortal fear. He drew back his shoulders and stood unflinching before the dark lord. He had nothing to throw at the wizard, but still he grew unafraid before the very monster that had killed his parents and set the events leading to this exact moment in motion.
Something flickered in Voldemort's eyes at Harry's drastic change in manner. He didn't like the newfound confidence in Harry, but he was not about to think the boy could do anything but die. He would strike down impudence as well as anything else, though from the glower that claimed his hideous features it was not nearly as sweet a thing as the death of a terrified victim. Voldemort was annoyed that he would be denied the pleasure of his victim's pure, thick terror before dying, but it would not turn his course.
Death Eaters crept ever closer, slavering for the kill like omega dogs begging at the alpha's frothing muzzle.
"Time to join your father and mudblood mother," Voldemort snarled in distaste at Harry.
Harry tensed in readiness.
"Avada kedavra!"
Harry gave over his form to Knight. Knight leapt with agility and power beyond human to the side as the green light of the killing curse scorched a black hole in the snow where once a boy named Harry Potter stood.
Knight's leap of escape flung him at a Death Eater. He could see the man's eyes widen through the holes of his mask, showing the whites around the irises, as Knight slammed into him, claws burying themselves in the Death Eater's chest as they both dropped to the ground with a dull thump. Knight did not remove his claws from the man's chest, instead he dug them in deeper. And he ripped. With all his might he ripped. He tore through robes and skin and muscle and bone and the killer under his claws flailed and twitched but, in the end, died. It seemed to happen in a single second.
"What is this?!" Voldemort screamed in indignation as he watched his minion torn to pieces before his eyes.
Knight whirled atop his corpse dais and roared at Voldemort, teeth bared and claws red with blood.
For a moment, cat eyes met eyes that were the nearest to snake as a man's could ever be.
Then Voldemort went mad with rage. "Kill them all!"
Knight looked sharply to the cluster of Hogwarts students… only to see a ferocious lioness lunge from the crowd at a Death Eater who'd made the mistake of standing too close. He brought up his wand to fling a hex at the lioness in self-defense, but Sagehunter was too quick, too fast to be bested by human reflexes. She surged past his defenses, closed her strong jaws around his neck, and with a jerk she tore out his throat. He closed his hands around his ruined, bleeding neck as he fell to the ground with a wet wheeze.
Then everything began to move at once. McGonagall and Sprout started yelling at the students to run, herding them away from the thick of the newly
erupted battle while the Death Eaters tried to make sense of the beasts suddenly let loose in their midst. Three of the Death Eaters came to their senses enough to realize their prisoners were attempting an escape and they moved to stop the fleeing students. They were met by fierce fists and feet from professors striking out at the attackers while the students ran for cover.
Ron tackled a Death Eater who had the ill fortune to try and stop the escaping captives by grabbing Ginny as she moved past. Ginny wretched free of the Death Eater's hold and then Ron was on him, clobbering him with fists and kicking fiercely and screaming incoherently the entire time. Ginny was standing a few paces away, wide-eyed at her brother's rage, but when the Death Eater reached for his fallen wand she leapt forward and stomped repeatedly on his hand.
Knight looked around sharply for his next target. Sagehunter had felled another Death Eater. She'd hamstringed him and he was lying on the ground on his stomach, screaming as the lioness crept up his back with unsheathed claws sinking into his body like a cat treading along the back of a couch.
Another Death Eater took aim at her with her wand.
Knight streaked toward the Death Eater targeting Sagehunter, a blur of black fury, and toppled the diminutive Death Eater with hardly a bit of effort.
Knight clamped his teeth around the slim neck and bit down. He didn't tear out her frail little throat, but his long canines piercing the thick, sweet jugular veins served just as well. Blood filled his mouth, a rushing warm staccato against his tongue, and the struggling body in his grasp began to twitch and jerk without purpose. With a thick crunch and a sudden give under his teeth, his prey ceased to twitch.
A sear of pain tearing across his shoulder made Knight scream and loose his hold on the Death Eater's thin neck. Knight looked up to see Voldemort staring across the distance at him, venom in his eyes, his wand drawn.
Knight smelled blood, and from the pain he knew it was his own. He knew he was hurt, but the adrenaline in his veins prevented him from feeling it beyond the first shock of injury. If it did anything, it only stoked the fire of his rage.
He growled and turned slowly to face his enemy.
For a second, the two stared at one another amid the activity buzzing around them, sizing the other up, each resolving to end the other's life.
A flash of brown from the edge of his vision caught Knight's eye… as well as Voldemort's. Both spared a glance to see Sagehunter chasing down a Death
Eater who'd turned and fled.
Voldemort raised his wand… but not at Knight.
Knight screamed in sudden understanding, in panic, but it was too late. Sagehunter took to the air, claws extended as she sought her prey, reached for all-too-frail human flesh to snare with fang and claw. The curse from Voldemort's wand caught her across the back, a gash raced across her flesh and tore open a bloody valley in her skin, and she gave a piercing scream.
Blood splattered across the white snow. She was twisted in the air from the force of the curse hitting her, cart wheeling, like a kitten tossed from a moving car. She flipped and landed on the ground with a sickening thud.
And she didn't move.
Knight roared. His vision went red with unparalleled anger. Pure animal rage swallowed him whole.
Voldemort, smiling equally from self-satisfaction and anger, turned back toward Knight to finish him.
Knight raced straight for Voldemort, mindless of anything but making the kill.
Voldemort aimed his wand with unconcerned aplomb. Knight wasn't doing anything to try and dodge the blow; he was charging blindly toward the dark wizard. He would be an all-too-easy target. Voldemort, aglow already with his victory, bellowed, "Avada—" but before another sound could slip his lips, his wand flew from his hand. It jerked away from his grip as though plucked by an invisible hand. Voldemort looked in confusion at his empty hand a split second, looked in the direction his weapon had gone, then he turned wide eyes on Knight when the swiftly encroaching danger registered in his sadistic mind.
The black beast was upon him.
It all happened in less than five seconds, five fateful marks of time, but five seconds of forever for the locked foes.
Knight rose up before the dark wizard, drew back a great foreleg and clawed paw, and raked it down across Voldemort's body with an ear-splitting scream.
Voldemort screamed… in pain. Four ragged slash marks tracked across his skin. His robe was shredded and torn open, revealing sun-starved, rent pale flesh. Claw marks opened Voldemort from shoulder to hip in diagonal slashes, cuts that immediately bloomed red and spilled over with blood.
Steam rose from the hot wounds on Voldemort's torso, laid open to the cold winter air. Blood fell to the snow as the dark wizard staggered backward.
Death Eaters stopped in their tracks at their master's cry. McGonagall and Sprout, hurrying around the corner of the wall behind which they'd sequestered the children under Flitwick's watch, both witches now armed with branches and rocks to take up the battle as best they could without their wands, stood dumbly and gaped in shock. Ron, straddling his unconscious foe, twisted at the waist and stared at the great dark wizard bleeding all over the snow of Hogwarts grounds. Ginny was stock-still and watching with a bloodless pallor to her skin and a flicker of revenge in her eyes. Knight stood, unflinching, watching his bloodied adversary flounder like the pathetic creature he was.
Voldemort dropped to one knee. He braced himself with a hand while his other tried to hold in his pouring blood. A sharp, offensive scent revealed that Voldemort's intestines had been punctured. The dark wizard staggered, his blood spreading in a vivid rose-red stain on the snow, and he looked up into Knight's cold eyes. With the evil wizard on his knees, he was at eye- level with the black jaguar.
Knight stared back at him, standing with the unflinching righteousness of an executioner. There was no boy there, only a killer animal looking down upon his dying prey. The infamous Lord Voldemort reduced to nothing more imposing than a deer, kicking feebly and bleeding out.
The greatest evil in the wizarding world was nothing more than a wounded animal waiting to die.
And from his face, his twisted, nearly inhuman expression, he knew it. If there was one thing Voldemort knew intimately, it was death.
"The Boy…" Voldemort wheezed sardonically, "Who Lived." Voldemort managed a weak, sinister smile of pointed, stained teeth.
Knight moved in the blink of an eye. He leapt on Voldemort, threw him to the ground, and took the dark wizard's throat in his jaws. He clamped down, teeth sinking through skin and muscle and bone, and vile, bitter blood filled his mouth. The monster even tasted rotten. Voldemort writhed and struggled against the big cat's grip, he scratched desperately at Knight's face, his neck, anything his hideous hands could reach. Knight only bit down harder.
And then the fighting stopped, the body in his jaws went limp, and the
nauseating blood stopped pumping warm and foul into his mouth.
For a moment, the world held still as the black jaguar stood with his kill trapped in his vice-like teeth.
Then Knight, still in a rage at the thing he had brought down, savaged the remains of evil. He yanked and he pulled and he tore, bracing the body against the ground with one splayed paw, until the sinew and tissue gave out, until it ripped apart like a frayed string pulled too tight.
Stepping back, Knight dropped the head of Voldemort to the snow along with a mouthful of scarlet blood. Sightless, slitted eyes stared up at Knight from the detached head, the mouth frozen open in a silent scream before his vocal cords had been severed.
Just like that, Lord Voldemort was no more. A songbird could have coughed a mile away and all those on the front grounds of Hogwarts would have heard it for the complete silence that had befallen everyone.
Knight cared nothing for his stunned mute audience. He left the corpse of his once arch nemesis and hurried to Sagehunter's fallen form a short distance away.
His lioness did not move. She lay in a carpet of her own blood, spilled from the wound that ran nearly the entire length of her back. Knight touched her with his nose, smelled her sweet scent even as he smelled her blood, but she wouldn't move. He could hear air moving through her nose, he could feel her body warmth, he knew she lived… but for how long, he did not know.
He could not handle the thought that they had killed his dear, courageous Sagehunter. It filled him with a blackness thicker than the blood he had tasted from Voldemort's throat.
"No!"
Knight turned at once at the mindless cry. A Death Eater had finally realized what had happened, had comprehended the death of his terrible master.
Four Death Eaters still stood, each in shock to see their master slain.
The one to scream took up his wand, fit to blast the murderous black cat to pieces. The others, seeing action and wanting revenge just as desperately, followed suit. Four wands rose as one to strike down Knight. Knight watched them move to attack him, strangely calm at the prospect that they sought to harm him, but knew that their wands brought to bear against him were
aimed at Sagehunter, too, as she lay motionless on her side behind him. They wanted to hurt her, they wanted to curse her, they wanted to kill her.
It shattered every last ounce of control and sanity he had, each so threadbare already and at last taxed to the breaking point by the notion that the vile creatures before him, pale reflections of the human beings they might have once been, wanted his precious Sagehunter dead.
Knight felt a swell of furious anger erupt from deep within him. It billowed like tsunami waves, it swept over him and past him and through him. It became him and shrouded him and it awaited orders, a storm at his command. A weapon in need of a target, lest it tear him apart from the inside out.
He took in a deep breath… and roared.
At first the Death Eaters were merely startled by the sound, it was loud and resonating and blood-curdling… then the nearest Death Eater began to grimace. He tried to keep his wand steady on the cats, but it wavered as his face twisted further in pain. He faltered and a hand came to his chest, clutched at his ribcage the way a stroke-victim might in the throes of an attack as his heart turned renegade. The Death Eater croaked pitifully and dropped his wand. His whimpers turned to cries and he hugged his chest in unbearable pain. Then came the sound of bones cracking. The Death Eater went to his knees, blood sputtered from his lips, and he cried like an animal as his ribcage imploded. His heart was next to tear itself apart in the storm. With a rolling of his eyes, the Death Eater fell to the snow, dead before he hit the ground, his torso falling inward like a gelatinous mass with no inner structure to support it.
The other Death Eaters suffered similar, simultaneous fates. One clutched at his head in agony, throwing off his hood in his torment. As though the magic were a bug in his ear that he could dislodge. He screamed in pure, untempered pain, until blood leaked from his ears and nose in ruddy rivers.
Then his skull cracked, bone collapsed and shattered to pieces as though squeezed in a mighty hand. His head grew disgustingly misshapen, it lost recognizability as that of a human, and he, too, fell dead.
Another's spine was crushed where he stood… he lived a few seconds in a paralyzed, viciously contorted heap on the ground before he died.
The last of the remaining Death Eaters simply fell over and died, but not before she wept blood-red tears and vomited a pool of crimson on the ground.
No one who was not a Death Eater felt so much as a headache, but they watched what happened to the enemy.
Knight's roar echoed and died away in the winter afternoon and presently he stood looking at the bodies of the last of Voldemort's attack force against Hogwarts. They were nothing more than corpses littering the snowy ground. Everyone still alive was looking at them… and at Knight.
Knight, ambivalent to their stares, turned again to the only thing that mattered. He gently nuzzled at Sagehunter's neck, the hairs of her mane tickling his nose and playing over his whiskers like fingers on guitar strings. He hoped for any sign of life beyond mere breathing, any movement to indicate that she could tell he was there, but she didn't respond to him.
Knight, lost for what to do, stood over her and cried inside… cried as the jaguar could not, but as the wizard within him could. He didn't know what to do for her. He couldn't leave her. He didn't know what to do without her.
He startled when someone knelt next to him. So consumed with the condition of his lioness had he been that he did not hear anyone approach. He turned his head quickly to find McGonagall kneeling beside him, watching him very closely. Her hair was a wreck, she had a raw scrape on her cheek, and her robes were covered in the blood of her students. She'd never looked so frail in all the time that her students had known her. She looked haggard and battered and weary beyond measure, but her eyes were as sharp as ever as she regarded him intently.
"Harry?" she ventured in a careful, soft voice. It was hardly the McGonagall voice they knew without the confidence and unflappable strength behind it. But that was the least of its vulgarity. Her words struck him like an out-of- tune piano key. It was almost obscene to speak after what had happened only moments ago. There were no fit words to follow what he'd done.
Knight returned the professor's look steadily. He willed her to see Harry inside him, because he couldn't leave Sagehunter.
Perhaps she did, because McGonagall nodded once then turned her full attention to Sagehunter. Knight stood by and let her do it. The professor reached out and examined the wound on the lioness's back with careful, gentle hands. Knight watched over the examination, worried and desperately hopeful. It hurt how badly he wanted something to make Sagehunter better.
After a quick look at the damage, McGonagall turned and shouted, "Mister Weasley! Run up to the headmaster's office! Use his floo to summon a
healer from Saint Mungo's! And be quick!"
Ron disentangled himself from the Death Eater he'd clobbered, maybe killed, who knew anymore, and took off into the gaping hole of the castle's gates at a dead run. At the prolonged silence from the Death Eaters (due to their gruesome collective demise), coupled with Professor McGonagall's commanding shout, Flitwick and his charges, the remaining students of Hogwarts, peeked out from around the wall where they'd fled when all hell broke loose. They saw at last the carnage that was left of their afternoon gone horrifically south. Their classmates lay strewn among Death Eaters and the beheaded corpse of the darkest wizard of all time.
It meant nothing to Knight just then. There was only Sagehunter.
While McGonagall watched with concerned eyes, Knight circled Sagehunter to put his nose an inch from hers, smelling her breath and studying her still face. Her lips and chin were red with the blood of the Death Eaters she'd stopped before she was struck down. Her courage and heroism was a ruby red badge on her muzzle and staining the hair of her mane.
With tenderness, Knight licked her brow and then he laid down in the snow to wait for her.