Chapter Ten

Hastur the Unspeakable

THOOM!

Harry turned his head around and saw the girls taking positions behind and either side of the Stone. Padma looked up at him with pride and confidence. Hannah and Su were equally as hopeful. It seemed as if the light emitted from the Stone of Fal washed away the negative emotions.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

The four of them looked from side to side and behind them as sounds of Apparition filled the air. A dozen and then two dozen Aurors appeared. Then more Ministry personnel followed: Hit Wizards, Obliviators, Unspeakables, and a sundry of clerical, and other support personnel arrived until the hill was littered with volunteers.

A last CRACK revealed none other than Minister Shacklebolt looking up at Harry atop the Stone of Fal.

"Hey Kingsley!" Harry called out with a big grin on his face. "Glad you could make it."

The tall black man waved. "Lo, Harry! Sorry, we're late."

THOOM!

Hastur's extremities had made it within striking range of the bottom of the hill. Harry judged another two steps and things would get nasty. "Tell your people to back up. I need this thing near the Stone!"

Kingsley used a Sonorous Charm and directed the Wizard force. "Flanking positions! Drive it to Harry!"

THOOM!

Hundreds of tentacles lashed out and slammed onto a few shield charms knocking wizards fifty or more feet back. Harry watched as they tumbled out of sight over the hill. A rainbow of colored curses showered the air  as everyone threw every type of curse imaginable at the horror before them. Cracks of Apparition sounded all around when wizards disappeared to safety and reappeared in a more advantageous point of attack.

Harry looked down at the furious visage of his lover. "Padma!"

Her face turned upward in expectation.

"Get the girls to help me tilt this thing toward Hastur!"

He looked back up. And saw the creature barely fazed by the makeshift army's attack. Its crab-like claw held a number of wizards in the air, snapping them in half and releasing their bloodied bodies to the ground like so much offal. Harry felt the Stone of Fal shift underneath him and almost lost his balance. Quickly he dropped on his butt and applied a Sticking Charm to hold him as his girls readied him for his attack.

A ear splitting roar issued forth form Hastur eating through the magic of the Stone. Harry felt the beginnings of spine-shaking terror devouring his confidence.  "Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry," he chanted with impatience. "A little more… a little more."

"THERE!" he screamed.

The Stone of Fal shuddered as it stopped and Harry got a wicked smile on his face. Applying a Sonorous Charm he yelled out. "HASTUR, YOU PASTY-ASSED BITCH! OPEN WIDE!"

Shoving the Elder Wand down into the hole he drilled out with magic earlier he cried, "ERRUPTUS!"

The stone shook as the massive amount of consecrated potion he earlier filled Dagda's Cauldron and secured to the bottom of the Stone, traveled up and jetted out. Harry grabbed on to the Stone for support and screamed. "TAKE THAT IN THE FACE, BITCH! WOOOHOOO."

The milky white substance shot out of the top of the Stone of Fal and arced high and long splashing the two-hundred foot monster in several of its serrated-toothed maws. Steam billowed from wherever the substance splashed and Hastur roared in pain and anger.

"DO YA LIKE IT WHEN I DO THAT YOU EVIL FUCK!"

The geyser kept erupting like a fireman's hose covering Hastur until he shifted positions. THOOM!

"TURN IT!" Harry yelled down at his girls. "OH SHIT!"

The Sticking Charm applied to the seat of his jeans couldn't withstand the strike of a single four foot thick tentacle the slammed into Harry wrapping around him and ripping him off the Stone. The golden-white light emanating from the Stone immediately failed.

Panicked screams surrounded the area as insane, vile, evil blanketed the hill. The majority of the witches and wizards turned and ran in any direction but toward Hastur. Some dropped their wands and were effortlessly scooped up by the withering appendages and crab-like pinchers. Some were tore apart while others were snapped in half.

THOOM!

Hastur made his way to the top of the hill and reared back and roared in triumph. Padma, Su and Hannah took cover at the base of the Stone, trying desperately to hold on to whatever sanity they still possessed.  Padma looked up and almost wept at Harry's death. He hadn't stood a chance against the Old One, yet he held his ground and went out with bravery and his stupid childish wit that she was just now learning to ignore.

Burning hatred coursed through her veins as she turned back around to Su and Hannah. "Get me up there." At the scared look on their faces Padma carried on. "Harry's idea was good. It was hurting Hastur. We need to turn the tide back on our side or we've lost."

Su braced herself against the Stone and hauled Hannah up with her. Together they hurriedly levitated Padma near the top of the Stone where she applied a Sticking Charm and laid herself as flat as she could against the top. Thrusting her wand down the hole she cast the same charm Harry did before.

"Erruptus!"

Once again a geyser of the milky white Consecration Potion jetted out of the tip, shooting in a wide arc into the raised form of Hastur. It was almost impossible to miss at any angle now that he was so close. It would take almost a full minute to lumber out of the way and during that minute, Padma was going to shoot as much of the holy love juice as she could.  

Pieces of severed Hastur fell to the ground all around. Smaller pieces of tentacles that had been chopped off by the small army of wizards made it more difficult for Hastur to do its evil best, but even the flailing remains still posed a deadly threat.

Padma flinched as grey ichor sprayed against her and the Stone from one of the wounds, and she screamed when she felt something grab her ankle. Twisting away she looked down swinging her wand along.

"Hannah!?" she gasped at seeing the Auror and her partner along side stuck to the Stone.

"Su and I are taking turns … just in case," Hannah yelled back.

Padma frowned, but admired their courage all the same. "Stay down."

"Inversio!" a voice rang out over the painful yell of Hastur and the geyser of milky Consecration Potion ceased its flow ending in a painfully slow dribble at the tip.

Padma panicked. "What the hell?" She shoved her wand back in the hole and yelled, "Erruptus!"

She waited for a moment for something to happen and then tried again. "Erruptus Magnus!"

The earth shook again and she couldn't tell whether it was Hastur moving or …

The Stone of Fal violently shifted and felt as if it was falling, but it never did. Padma looked up and watched in horror as Hastur had finally done something smart. The creature advanced so far up the hill that it was standing on its hindquarters and towering over the Stone and thusly most of the wizard army and the girls attached to the Stone. Hastur was going to drop its great bulk atop them and end the resistance in one fell swoop.

Cracks of wizards Disapparating sounded as they deduced Hastur's intent, and Padma flinched and closed her eyes. "In the next life, Harry."

The Stone of Fal shook once more and then Padma felt a rush of air blowing her hair back. She opened her eyes and looked down at the earth falling away. Confused she looked back up and panicked.

"JUMP!"

Casting the counter to the Sticking Charm she pushed against the Stone and dropped through the air as it rocketed toward Hastur. She twisted before she could build up too much speed and Disapparated. A crack sounded closer to the ground where she Apparated and she slammed into the unyielding earth a half second later.

She was stunned as a wash of blackness enveloped her field of vision.

O_o

Harry swung through the air tight in Hastur's grip. The thick tentacle squeezed tighter, exerting pressure all along his ribs and legs. His lungs strained in tight gasps as he tried his best to keep his chest expanded. "Sectumsempra!" yelled Harry slashing his wand crossways across the tentacle. Muscle snapped underneath the alien skin and Harry felt the monster's appendage slacken noticeably until it dropped him into freefall.

He gasped in a breath of relatively fresh air, considering he was mere feet away from something that hadn't taken a shower in about a billion years. Fifty feet from the ground he felt something else grab a hold of him. Swinging his head around he spotted one of the Aurors he had worked beside at the Ministry. "Harrington! Fancy meeting you here."

The Auror's face was taught with strain as he held the back of Harry's duster and dove for the ground. "Hang on, Harry! We're coming in fast!"

Five feet from the ground, Harrington dropped his cargo and watched as Harry tucked and rolled. The Auror didn't see the claw-like appendage in front of him until he was snapped out of the air and torn in half.

"Dammit!" said Harry as he jumped to his feet and saw Harrington's body fall, in two pieces from either side of the huge claw. "Accio broom!"

Harrington's Nimbus 2001 whipped around and shot at Harry who grabbed it and flung himself atop without waiting for it to stop. He made his bearings toward the Stone of Fal and leaned into the broom. It almost seemed that Hastur knew his destination and went to block him with everything that could reach.

The creature rose up off the ground and threw dozens of tentacles and crab-claws in Harry's way only to be daunted at every pass while the former Quidditch player was in his element.

Getting a clear view of the entrance to the Mound of Hostages Harry raised the Elder Wand and gave a quick clockwise spin of his wrist. "Inversio!"

Due to the sheer number of limbs Hastur was throwing, Harry couldn't wait around for Dagda's Cauldron to reverse itself on the bottom of the Stone. He trusted, instead, in Padma to redo the Eruption Charm as she had when his concentration was broken with his abduction.

Instead he pulled up and tried his level best to distract Hastur's attention away from Padma and the Stone. Even though Harry could see the carnage Hastur was causing across the hillside he thought the Old One was intent on his death more than any of the others. The creature even went so far as to raise up on its hind end to close in on him and inadvertently allowed the Stone a better purchase in its midsection as it slammed into the ancient creature.

o_O

Padma groaned as she pushed herself up from the ground and with a second thought turned over instead. Kingsley Shacklebolt entered her field of vision and held out his hand. When she grabbed on he hauled her to her feet with surprising strength. Sweat ran down his face and she could see the exhaustion he must have been enduring. Even for the short amount of time the battle had been active everyone had been casting their strongest curses at Hastur.

"Harry's got him on the run."

Padma's shocked astonishment showed with a excited yell. "He's alive?"

Kingsley looked up at the number of brooms in the air and the wizards fighting individual tentacles until he found who he was looking for. "There."

Pride welled up in the center of her chest as she saw Harry evade a snapping claw from Hastur and return a curse of his own.  His trajectory led him underneath the creature and she watched as he cast another curse, or it might have been a charm because she noted something amazing – Hastur was currently in flight.

"The Stone!" She laughed.

O_o

Harry avoided another claw and shot underneath Hastur trying his best to guide the makeshift missile upward. The fleshy substance that was Hastur's underbelly caved inward where the Stone of Fal connected. A green noxious gas was produced where the Stone met flesh from the Stone burning its way through the hideous creature.

It was then that Harry spotted them: Hannah and Su, still adhered near the base of the Stone.  

"Oh hell."

A half second later he closed within yelling distance and made a quick decision. "SU, JUMP!"

The Auror didn't think twice and countered the sticking charm letting her body into freefall. Harry spun in a tight circle and dove. Concentration hardened his face as he reached out his hand. Su tried her best not to scream but he could see the fear in her eyes.

"HAAAARRYYYY!"

Harry urged the Nimbus faster and another second later he had a death-grip on Su's wrist.

"Gotcha!"

Su reached her left hand up to get a better grip. "Harry! Don't drop me!"

He pulled up on the Nimbus and tried to level them off before he plowed into the rapidly approaching ground. "Five more seconds, Su."

He spotted Kingsley and Padma not too far away and he banked to the left  before he saw Padma's face wrenched in panic. The sudden jerk of Su in his hand shocked him almost to the point of losing his grip, but he tightened his hand and double checked see that she was safe. Blood jetted out of her mouth spraying across his body. It was then that Harry saw that the lower half of her body was missing and all life left his friend's eyes.

"NOOOO! Bastard!"

With pained agony running through him he let go the remnants of his fellow Auror and pulled up to make another run when he spotted Padma blow past him. He leaned into the broom and caught up a few seconds later.

"Cover me!" she yelled.

Harry nodded and send Severing Curses after anything that came within twenty yards of them both. Taking a quick glance downward he saw that they had risen a good two hundred yards in the air and Hastur seemed to be rapidly gaining altitude with each passing second.

Padma found her way to Hannah and was keeping pace beside the Stone of Fal as it imbedded itself further inside Hastur's midsection, burning its way inch by inch as it forced the evil creature away from the Earth's bounds.

Still too far away to hear what was being said between the women Harry watched as Padma's face screwed up in frustration.

"Damn it."

Double checking a clear path Harry darted under a swinging tentacle and jetted up to see what the problem was.

"She's scared!" Padma yelled above the noise of the wind.

Harry took a leap of faith and holstered his wand. "Cover us!"

With his free hand he leaned to the side and placed it upon the base of the stone. The keening whine from before sounded above all other noise and the portion of the Stone of Fal that wasn't embedded in Hastur lit up with in a bright white light. Energy soured through him erasing any fatigue he felt from the battle and imbibing and those around him with the strength to endure the panic and terror that had eaten at them.

With her face turned away, Harry couldn't see Hannah's reaction but he could see Padma's relief as her own face eased.

"Now!"

Pieces of Hastur fell around them as the Stone seemed to be burning faster with the added contact with Harry. He looked up and saw what his presence was doing and then back to Padma who was double checking to make sure Hannah was securely on the broom. Dread rose up from Harry's stomach and it wasn't from Hastur's presence. It was from the certain knowledge that he had just deduced.

Padma pulled away from the Stone with a bright smile on her face. She glanced over at her partner and witnessed the resignation on his face.

"What?" she yelled in confusion.

"Go on! I'm right behind you."

She shook her head. "Together!"

"You're too slow with the two of you on one broom. I'll cover your back!"

With a quick look down she nodded and then dove with as much speed as she could muster. Harry took in a deep breath and then let it out. "Being noble is really beginning to suck."

Grasping his knees to the shaft of the broom he withdrew his wand and applied a sticking charm to his hand and feet. He stuck one foot out and planted it against the side of the Cauldron which was still spewing out a massive amount of liquid forcing them higher into the air. Then he let the broom drop away and secured himself firmly to the Cauldron. Now there was nothing to do but wait.

"Harry! What the hell are you doing?"

He snapped his head around and saw Padma and Hannah keeping pace beside him.

"Get out of here, Hastur will…"

"He's not fighting anymore." Padma yelled. "I think the Stone has killed him."

Harry looked from side to side and saw whatever remaining tentacles hanging loosely,  and the roaring that the creature was emitting had ceased. But he shook his head.

"He wouldn't be here if here was dead."

The glow from the Stone visibly increased with a sudden lurch.

"Get away. This thing's going to blow."

Padma shook her head. "Give me your hand, Harry!"

Exasperation overtook the Auror. "Fuck off, Padma before both of you get killed!"

Hannah cupped her hand to Padma's ear saying something Harry couldn't quite make out.

Another bright pulse of light, outshining the one before surged once more from the Stone. Harry closed his eyes against the light before it blinded him and when he opened them he saw that Hannah was reaching out to touch the Stone. He swung his free hand up to bat hers away when she grabbed him. To Harry's growing horror he realized that Hannah wasn't grasping his wrist tightly; she was stuck to him.

Another pulse of light blinded him. They were coming rapidly now, only seconds apart.

"Let go!" He screamed at Hannah in a panic. "I don't know what's going to happen."

Padma closed the remaining gap and grabbed the front of his duster pulling Harry with her free hand. "You go, we go."

He watched the seriousness in her face and understood what she was saying. They were just as stupid and noble as he was. Figures.

"We're probably going to die."

Hannah leaned in. "We just saved the world. How am I going to top that?"

The light pulsing was making it hard to see anything other than dark shapes of his friends.  "It's not everything it's cracked up to be."

"Oh, Harry," Padma started after remembering something. "Just thought you might want to know that whoever the Stone of Fal reacts to like this is supposed to be High King of Ireland. Destiny and all."

The rapid pulsing of the light had almost become a constant when Harry laughed into the empty air below.

"Hail to the king, Baby."

Then Darkness.

End.

O_O

Alternate Ending

Author's notes: You can enjoy the ending of the story if you liked it or keep reading and see where Harry and Company might wind up.

Then Darkness.

So fucking cold. The only heat was coming from his companions as they held on to each other. There was no light, no sound, no earth, no sky. But there was thought which would be wonderful if he was telepathic or something. The only sensory perception he had was touch and the only thing he had to touch was himself and his friends. Well he had more than enough time to touch himself when he was a teenager. At least the his friends were girls.

He couldn't imagine spending eternity floating around in nothingness touching, oh, say Ron.  

Magic didn't work here. The Stone of Fal had grown dark and silent. The Cauldron had stopped spewing it's potion. Hastur was gone. Disappeared, or whatever happens when a immovable evil object meets an irresistible holy force.

Time ceased to have meaning. It felt as if they had been floating there for days, weeks, eons. The only thing that kept out sanity intact was the basic form of communication we used, writing on each other's palms with our fingers. They kept it basic. Scared. Cold. Horny. Well, the girls kept it simple.

O_o

On the hill of Tara, in County Meath, on the Isle of Ireland stood two very tall men. One dressed in a shoulder to toe black cloak. A hood covered his head and showed nothing of his face except a bit of nose and a three day growth of stubble from his chin.

His companion spun on him with impatience. "If they find out about this we are both dead. I don't know about you, but I think this is a really bad idea."

"Calm yourself," the cloaked figure said with a slight British accent without moving so much as a wrinkle of his attire. "The beings trapped beyond were not meant to be there. It is either a choice of leaving them there and dealing with the resulting deterioration of the walls enclosing them or releasing them now and hope I am able to close the rift in time."

The shorter of the two raised the thick shaft of wood he was leaning against and slammed it to the ground. "Yeah, but if we leave them there we can have the backing of the Council behind us when the hole… oh forget it."

He stood there tapping his foot and whispered, "Greater good, greater good, greater good."

The tall man leaned his head backward and looked up to the sky. "Now might be a good time to step back."

The smaller man looked up, shock showed on his face. "Stars and Stones. What is that?"

 

 

 

 

Final Author's Note:  This was originally going to be a lurch into The Dresden Files Universe. But knowing how I am lately I don't want to start something and not be able to finish it thus leaving you all hanging. After I finish "Taste of Blood" I might come back and continue Sarcastic!Harry's adventures but for now this is it. I hope it was enjoyable to you and if it was then leave a comment. If it wasn't then leave a comment as well. I have fairly thick skin. Thanks either way.