Chapter 6
When he woke the setting sun was directly in his eyes. It had been dawn when he had gone to sleep, yet he felt tired and sluggish; not refreshed after having slept the whole day. Putting on his spectacles while dangling his legs over the bed he hunched, feeling the weight of everything that had happened just over the past two days.
From discovering Sirius was the Hidden Hand to hunting for Death Eaters in Africa, to enthralling Narcissa, and killing the owner of one of the most putrid souls he had every seen, he had had no time for the usual demons that haunted his mind. The series of crisis had kept him from thoughts of his dead family and the fact that he would never, ever be able to save them. But, as always, they were the first thing in his mind when he awoke – he spied the whiskey glass by the window. The sun’s last orange rays lit up the liquor like it was a jewel, sending its color to dance with the light on the wooden floor of the bedroom.
Walking to the glass he weighed doing the right thing and not drinking or giving in and just easing his mind. A little won’t hurt either way, won’t help or harm, he rationalized taking a nearly pious sip. Glancing out the window at the sun he noticed movement on the street. The neighbors were peeking out of their houses and coming to stand opposite the Dursley home looking at it with shocked faces.
Harry frowned wondering what was going on, searching their expressions for some clue till he noticed a tall man with a fuzz of hair covering his face and head catch his eyes and smile pleasantly. Anywhere else he would have returned the smile, but the man dressed in a muggle long coat was Sirius Black or rather Mortfidèle – his vertically slit black eyes glinted in the dying sun.
Everything slowed and sped up as Harry whipped around dropping the whiskey glass to the floor where it shattered. He transfigured a door back on the wall where it used to be, but before he could open it, blood spilled from the slit under the door. Riding the wave of blood came black finger-long insects of some kind. One look at them and Harry knew they weren’t natural: a string of green eyes stared up from the ridge on each insect’s back, running down its length, too human to be anything but demonic.
“Son of a bitch! You sent a demonic plague!” Harry screamed not caring for once that his rage was translated into a child’s voice. “Inflamare!”
The insects writhed in pain and escaped the flames but were not killed; more poured over the blood slicking the floor. Harry pulled the door open with a shield around himself, prepared to conjure fire more magically powerful than the simple ‘inflamare’ charm. A wall of sound struck him stunning him to stupidity as he realized it was the screams of his relatives and the blood pooling into his door was from his corpulent cousin rolling in the hallway. The plague insects crawled over him so Harry couldn’t see anything of him; their mandibles in place of legs were biting and tearing out of him all the while their ridge lined eyes stared humanly at Harry. Blood spurted from the spaces between their myriad bodies ravaging Dudley.
Before Harry could try and save his cousin the abominations sprouted wings from the sides of their ridges and suddenly the air was thick with them. Harry was blanketed in a night with miniscule green eyes measuring him like he was an interesting oddity. They swirled around him hiding all light and sound but the buzzing of their wings.
It had taken them only a moment but the beat of their wings like a devilish war chant had penetrated his mind to make him feel as if he had been drowning in the malevolent cacophony for hours. They tightened the wall around him about to plunge their pincers and puncture him like a balloon taught with blood.
As if from very far away he heard his own voice speaking in an ancient, nearly extinct Greek dialect. His incantation conjured a lit candle of pure white wax carved drawings in it showing gods on errands. Harry held it in front of himself like a shield. The wick on the candle hissed and spat as the creatures tried to get close to him and were burned in blinding silver flame. Harry leapt forward thrusting his hand deep into the living ball of green eyes and they burst into motes of silver light, destroyed.
“If you summon demons’ plague I will call divine grace, you bastard. Precor Hera!” he chanted the second part of the spell in an enraged cry and the very sound of Olympus’s war drums thrummed from the candle, sending a shockwave through the demonic plague of a million lidless insects swarming his house.
The closest burned in the silver light and the furthest poured out of doors like water, leaving streaked blood on the walls and floor. Harry caught sight of Dudley: naked, lacerated, and trembling like the picture of ground meat alive when it shouldn’t be.
Harry stared at him in horror realizing that Dudley was the conduit of the plague. His wards wouldn’t have allowed Mortfidèle to attack without him realizing it, but he hadn’t planned against this. The stain of dark magic on Dudley, the very dark magic Harry had cast on him, had made him such an irresistible Trojan’s horse for Mortfidèle.
He ran toward Petunia’s and Vernon’s room where he heard the screaming from earlier. Bursting through the door he saw the remnants of the plague leaving. It was too late.
Petunia was smashed against the dresser, a damned smear on the furniture; her front was chewed out but the sides and back remained untouched in some macabre mercy. She was face less. Harry puked on the ground seeing the viscous liquid of her eyes streaming with the blood of her meatless face.
Vernon was on the other side of the bed, apparently having fallen down while trying to fight off the insects. After seeing Petunia Harry didn’t even go close, the pool of blood coming from him and the lack of any noise was enough to tell him that he too was dead.
Rushing back out to see if Dudley was still breathing Harry found the walls coated in the green eyed insects again. They were all buzzing in their rhythmic dissonance raising his hackles.
“Precor Hera!” he cried again, making the wick of the ornate candle spit and hiss as the beat of Olympian drums went out and its light brightened many fold. It touched each creature of darkness destroying it in bursts of silver fire.
But as the light returned to its resting shimmer of protection around his person Harry saw that Dudley had stopped breathing looking like a piece of porous volcanic rock from whom the demons had torn out of. He was dead.
“He was a kid, just a small time idiot of a bully,” Harry said to no one.
A loud creak and crash made him look up to see that the stair case had fallen to the ground floor; he looked around to see that the walls were chewed out too. Another ominous cracking sound behooved him to move. Survive first, agonize second, he repeated a mantra he had taught to and shouted at many young aurors and his own children.
The house was coming down.
Harry jumped back into his secret room, knowing he couldn’t salvage anything and sent a wide pulverizing curse that gutted the room and crushed everything to indistinguishable bits. It was the last thing the second floor could take and the whole thing came down.
Wand forming a bubble shield around him held in one hand and the candle in the other Harry fell to through the floor. The magical sphere bounced him on the jagged corners of the broken staircase setting him flat in the middle of the foyer where he could saw the house crumple upon him.
π
People’s screaming and yelling made him realize he had passed out and was buried under the house. Someone walked over the boards holding him down and he yelled angrily.
“Someone’s here!” he heard the idiot standing over him shout.
“Get off, you’re killing me!”
“Sorry.”
He heard the man move off and all around him the remains of the walls, ceiling, and pipes shook as more people rushed to where he was buried. He tried to move his limbs to see if anything was broken and found his face blinded by the candle as he turned to his left hand. He had somehow been saved by support beams crisscrossing over him to leave him a cubby hole of sorts to be buried in. He had enough freedom to bring the candle close and blow it out, tucking it away in his clothes, where he also hid the wand. With all the muggles around it wouldn’t do to come out swinging a wand.
“Get out of my way. Avada Kedavra!”
“Stop! In the name of the Ministry of Magic, surrender!”
“I don’t surrender to anyone, I am Mortfidèle, Ministry worm. Crucio!”
Shouts of spells, sounds of a magical duel roared around him and he realized that the Ministry must have arrived just as Mortfidèle was trying to get to him again. He’s half Voldemort, no way the aurors can win. He furiously thought of what he should do, anything magical would be suspicious later, but being slowly crushed by the remains of the house only to be found by Mortfidèle later was not an option either.
Oriri Atrox, he summoned his secret magic where it simmered just under his conscious mind. He was prepared and armed, even without brandishing a wand he was deadly when the mysterious power was at his fingertips. If nothing else he would blow Mortfidèle with himself and the house if he got too close. Goddamn it, Sirius! Just run away.
Wingardium Leviosa. The beams and walls covering him began to move gently, Harry looked for spaces between them that he could crawl out of making the muggles and wizards think he had found a mundane and un-magical way to get out. Someone’s screams of agony and Sirius’ deep laugh echoed; for a moment Harry was stunned at hearing the same laugh he had last heard before Sirius fell into the veil of death. He couldn’t believe it was the same man.
Enraged by Voldemort’s schemes corrupting his brave and noble godfather, Harry thrust himself out of the debris uncaring for the cuts and bruises he suffered along the way. He surfaced into a night lit up by magic, a scene he knew only too well. To his horror the people dueling Sirius, still in the long coat he had bought him, were the Accidental Magical Reversal Squad, there to ensure that the International Statute of Secrecy wasn’t broken, not to duel a Dark Lord.
He couldn’t let Mortfidèle kill them.
He couldn’t let them kill Sirius.
He couldn’t let anyone know he could do magic.
He couldn’t waste time being undecided, because just then Mortfidèle turned his attention to him.
“You survived? Oh I knew Voldemort should have killed you instead of going for your sister. No matter, I will correct all his mistakes,” Mortfidèle spoke cheerily as if he were sitting with him for tea. He sauntered over cursing, casting, and bewitching while talking to him.
Voldemort’s homicidal streak with Sirius’ sunny personality, just what I need, Harry thought as he climbed back over the broken brick wall. He watched the wizards and witches try to circle Mortfidèle and find an opening in his defense but it was impossible.
The dark wizard cast magic like conducting an orchestra; beauty so precise it was deadly. They were falling to his spells contorted, petrified, in prisons conjured inside their minds, not even breaking his stride as he moved as the inevitable toward Harry.
Harry stopped. His magic was there, all it lacked was his will. He would wait for Mortfidèle to get close enough and then…no, I’ll go to him. There was no time lost between thought and action: Harry gamboled over the destroyed house’s rubble, hardly aware of his own injuries and shortened the distance between himself and the contender for Dark Lord.
“Finally you start working with me. Come, come!” Mortfidèle cheered him on, waving his wand with a flair and thrashing the Squad wizards literally into the ground making the asphalt buckle where he slammed them.
“Drop your wand, you are under arrest!” a bass voice magically loud distracted them both; the aurors had arrived.
Bloody Hell! Harry cursed knowing that even if he could handle obliviating the four Magical Reversal Squad wizards and witches the Aurors were a completely different kettle of fish. They expected someone to obliviate them and were prepared. He couldn’t do what he was planning on.
“Cheers! Sit down for a moment, son. I will be with you after murdering this runt.” With that Mortfidèle sent a decapitation hex straight at the wizened Auror and turned back to Harry; only to receive a brick in his face.
Ordinarily an attack of opportunity like that wouldn’t work, but not a little bit of wandless magic made the brick into a rocket. Mortfidèle fell down tripping over the debris and into an inconvenient hole to the cellar.
“Oh that’s a mean throw!” a young woman’s voice came and Harry looked to find her running up to him. His eyes widened in happy recognition of a very young Nymphadora Tonks, younger even than when he had first met her.
“I play cricket a lot,” he explained with a weak smile.
“Intern Tonks get down here and bring the boy, now!” the wizened Auror shouted, and Tonks without any preamble lifted him in a fireman’s carry running nimbly over the ten thousand bone breaking and ankle spraining hazards. Harry’s heart was in his throat as the athletic girl bounced him thinking she’d break his and hers neck any moment with a comically tragic fall.
She didn’t fall until reaching level ground.
But she managed to elbow him in the kidneys doing it.
Harry cried out feeling tears in his eyes as she apologized. An explosion silenced them all. Harry rolled in panic crouching to a ready position and saw the Aurors who had rushed to apprehend Mortfidèle in the cellar blasted into the air. Instead of following gravity’s call they stayed suspended in air with chokers of blue smoke around their necks slowly killing them.
Mortfidèle apparated in their midst favoring a leg and a bloodied face, but without missing a beat cursed the remaining Aurors with a dark curse Harry had last seen his own son use. Their limbs were transfigured into each other so the three wizards became a hideous spider looking creature, keening painfully in inhuman voices.
The way to Harry was clear for Mortfidèle save Tonks who Harry realized with alarm had taken a dueling stance with not a hint of fear on her face. Harry searched the night and the mob of muggles and remaining M.R. Squad wizard for anyone who could help. Most had fallen back in favor of giving the Aurors room but only their captain the wizened looking one was left and his spells were being deflected behind Mortfidèle’s back without him even looking.
“Move girl, I have a bone to pick with the runt about all my Death Eaters being killed,” he said with his free hand wiping sweat off his brow, while he easily took care of the Auror captain, heedless of his furious spellwork.
Harry stepped forward and Tonks pulled him back by the scruff of his neck. “The runt is with me, you’ve got to get through me first. Cute coat, by the way, what did you say your name was?” She winked at Mortfidèle and Harry gave her the most appalled look he could conjure.
“You’re hitting on me in the middle of all this?” Mortfidèle asked a little stunned himself.
“Well it really is a dashing jacket. So who are you?”
Mortfidèle gave Harry an unreadable look then burst out laughing just like Sirius. The Auror Captain had crept close enough to physically hit Mortfidèle which seemed to be just what he wanted. At the precise moment the captain swung a kick, Mortfidèle spun disarming the Auror and using both wands to spear him with black swords nailing him to the ground. The Auror howled in pain and Harry noticed Tonks’ face fall; she had thought she was distracting Mortfidèle.
“Expelliarmus!” she shouted and Harry sighed inside almost wanting to lecture the girl.
Mortfidèle caught the spell with the Auror’s wand bouncing it like a ping pong ball. “Really now? Move girl, I like your tenacity, but can you really stand against the Hidden Hand?”
Apparently that title had some meaning because Nymphadora lost the abundance of color on her face. “You’re not real,” she gasped.
I can’t wait anymore, I guess the secret will have to come out. Damned Aurors, he cursed resolving to reveal himself. He spied the M.R. Squad wizard disillusioning himself.
“Enough talk, your friend is trying something stupid, yet again. Stand away from the boy. On the other hand,” he said in a wondering tone, “Never mind, Avada Kedavra!”
Strength borne of fear of his friend’s life made him leap in front of her.
He thought not again before the incantation in his head: Precorara maternum!
A translucent woman with red hair blowing in a gale somewhere beyond the veil appeared with her hand outstretched. The green death shot through her to Harry who had just managed to shield Nymphadora’s heart with his head, he was too small to shield her more - the killing curse hit him dead in the face.
π
Nymphadora had been having the time of her life that summer. Selected right out of her fifth year at Hogwarts by the Auror Corps she had been serving as the go-get-it girl for the department and loving it. Every now and then a senior Auror would take her on a field assignment and she would learn the job.
Her second summer as an intern with the Aurors and they were taking her seriously after she had made a point by morphing into the Director of Magical Law Enforcement and sent them on a wild goose chase through the ministry for a panties thief. Finally she was learning to be a dark wizard catcher and getting a head start on when her official first year as Trainee Auror would begin after her NEWTs; all that before she had turned seventeen.
Old Wayne Rivers had taken a shine to her after berating her like any other young wizard who had pranked the senior Aurors. She had gained more practical experience in investigation and dark wizard modus operandi than even the second year Auror Trainees. So when a call from the Magical Reversal Squad came about a possible demonic summoning and mass magical breach old Wayne Rivers picked her to tag along with the team at the office.
Not five minutes later a cursed M.R. Squad witch used her emergency portkey straight to the Auror department reporting casualties. Old Wayne Rivers had yelled at her for stopping to adjust her sports bra and she hadn’t even minded being humiliated in front of the other wizards because she was excited about her first hunt.
She had rehearsed her opening spells, her official “Hands up!” lines thinking of using the deep grating voice she used to annoy the senior aurors in thinking Mad-Eye Moody was doing a surprise inspection.
All the excitement and dramatic lines had bled away from her mind as she held the thin boy in her arms kneeling in the muggle street. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream and tears streamed from her eyes but her mind didn’t register what was going on. She had seen her own death so clearly but then the boy had jumped in front of her, only reaching chest high - just high enough to die for her.
His green eyes stared blankly up at her getting rained on by her tears.
She looked at the man who had killed him, the man who had said he was the Hidden Hand, a ghost story told of the old war. The man was kneeling in front of her and screaming at the boy his own eyes wet on his bloody face so different from the haughty and laughing dark wizard she had just faced.
“Merlin, I killed Lily’s son. No, no, Harry, Harry!” he shouted and she stared at him in incomprehension. Is he sad for killing him?
“Get away from him,” she mumbled then seemed to realize that she couldn’t hear her own voice. “Get away!” she shouted and he recoiled as if she had struck him.
“Tell Dumbledore the Hidden Hand is back. Tell him he will try to kill Bianca next,” he told her in a dead voice, shrugging off the magical robes the M.R. Squad wizard had sent snaking around his arms, and then he disapparated.
She looked at the empty place he had been balefully.
“I-I’ll get help,” the M.R. Squad wizard stammered and popped away. She didn’t acknowledge him looking at the boy who had saved her.
The red haired woman appeared in front of her startling her. She was translucent as before but where her face had been deadly furious before it was peaceful and she crouched by her brushing the boy’s hair with her intangible fair hands. She was clothed in a simple robe but the slight luminescence about her and the serene smile made her seem angelic.
“Shh, sweetheart,” she said looking into Nymphadora’s eyes caressing her wet cheek, but the pretty witch didn’t feel the touch even though the woman’s words reached right into her heart. “Be a good friend to my son, make him laugh, and don’t cry.”
Nymphadora’s nodded at the kindly woman’s echoing words and watched her kiss the dead boy’s eyes, able to see their green through her transparent form. Then she disappeared and the boy in her arms drew a desperate breath and flailed trying to get up accidentally slapping her.
“You’re alive?” she screamed jumping up and dropping him off her lap. When he thumped on the ground with a protest she realized what she had done and knelt to grab him again, unknowingly crushing his ribs.
“He won’t be alive much longer,” old Wayne Rivers spoke through the pain of two swords nailing him to the road, “Intern Tonks, if you don’t let him breathe.”
She let him go and he drew an exaggerated breath. “Damn, woman, I thought you were going to suffocate me in your tits.”
Nymphadora laughed and sobbed, relieved that he was alive and in scandalous disbelief at what he had said. She lit up her wand and looked at him in awe – why had he saved her?
There was a wound on his face that bled awfully where he had been hit by the killing curse; most of the blood had been wiped against her chest where she had hugged him. With her thumb she wiped the rest away, saying “sorry” when the boy winced from the pain. A shape appeared under the blood; something she could only describe as a sunburst, a star just at the moment of nova, its streaks of exploding light going out from a pound coin sized perfect circle.
“We should help, I think they might die,” the boy drew her attention from the strange scar to where old Wayne Rivers was hyperventilating.
The sight of her mentor impaled on the ground and the slowly choking Aurors who were usually a pain in her ass but still comrades of a sort made her momentarily forget the amazing magic she had seen. She went to their aid with the extraordinary assistance of the boy, something she would choose later not to share with the Ministry. The fact that the boy had survived the killing curse wouldn’t plague her thoughts till her mentor brought it up, but she never forgot the enchanting woman’s request or that the boy had died for her.
π
Harry stood nearly forgotten at the edge of the lawn and property of No. 4 Privet Drive. The once perfectly maintained house was so much strewn concrete, wood, and metal. Somewhere in there were his relatives. The remains of the house were being crawled over by wizards from the Ministry looking for survivors. He had told one of them they were dead, but the witch had dismissed him with the words “we shouldn’t lose hope, dear.” Harry hadn’t tried to help after that and just stood there with a sense of disconnect; too afraid to know what he would feel if he allowed himself too.
The neighborhood too was inundated with Obliviators, Aurors, Unspeakables from the Demonic Investigation and Containment Squad (otherwise known as DICS), Healers, and a few Ministry higher ups. They had healed his injuries, nothing serious by his standards, except the dull ache on his face left by the killing curse. That had drawn some attention, in fact there was a group of Healers, Aurors, and Ministry brass standing in a tight circle safe in their assumption that Harry didn’t know they were talking about him and shooting him odd looks.
There was a muffled cry of shock and not so muffled sound of a wizard throwing up – he had found Vernon Dursley. Harry watched along with the audience of wizards and witches as his uncle’s remains were levitated out of the ruins. They tittered in horror and disgusted Harry who could only think that Vernon had survived better than the other two. His face was intact and stretched in a rictus of unaccountable agony but under his chest there was nothing but a great open and empty cavity, he had been eaten alive as well. The legs were only marginally connected to the torso, perhaps it was the remains of the clothes that kept him together.
“Come on, lad, you shouldn’t be here,” the owner of the hand on his shoulder said. Harry brushed him off, uncaring of who he was and walked to where the Unspeakables had swarmed around Vernon; their voices loud in unbridled enthusiasm.
He squeezed his way through, heedless of the protests and stared at Vernon from head to toe. The man had been vile to him, but it was so very long ago in his mind, from his eyes over thirty years ago or more, he simply couldn’t see that he deserved to go that way. A drunk driver was what he deserved to die from, not this.
The Unspeakables around him chose to ignore his presence as other officials pressed closer. They were talking excitedly about which demon had been summoned or what ritual was consistent with the alignment of the stars the night before. Harry made eye contact with the Magical Reversal Squad wizard who was the last of his team; the man was holding a white sheet looking awkward and mildly repulsed by the DICS. Wordlessly Harry took the sheet from him and covered Vernon, again heedless of the protests.
“Look here, we have to investigate the event. We can’t have children playing around!”
“Have some dignity,” Harry said not looking at the pompous fool, it didn’t matter they all even looked the same. Silence met his words. “At least wait till I am gone before you play with your bloody science project.”
“See here!” another voice began angrily but was cut short by one of the Healers present clearing his throat in a very aggressive manner. Harry glanced at the broad bearded Healer and was satisfied to see a look promising extreme pain to anyone who interrupted Harry.
“I want to bury them. When you’re done, leave me that, please,” he said this to the one man they seemed to be deferring to. The thin and short wizard who looked like he had seen too much nodded deeply.
“Of course. We will be very respectful.”
Satisfied Harry moved away leaving a disquieted crowd behind. He passed the group who were strictly discussing him while stupidly unaware he could hear them and went to where they had found Vernon. He caught the attention of the wizards and witches working there.
“My aunt should be close. They were in the same room. She will look worse than him.”
Pale faces silently nodded to him beginning to search more fervently as if wanting to get the horror over with. They found her; they tried to pull him away before the witch who found her brought her out. The workers passionately pleaded with the Healers and Aurors, anyone, to take him away before they brought her out. Harry wouldn’t budge. Why? He asked himself, but did not know the answer so he stayed.
Nymphadora stood by his side taking his hand, Harry allowed her to use him for support. She hugged him harder with every second Petunia’s body was revealed until she gasped and kneeled by him, her hand over her mouth and eyes wide at the sheer depravity of what had happened to Petunia.
The smell of sick grew and still Harry watched and vowed that Mortfidèle would suffer before his death.
“It is not right for a child to view so much, he will be traumatized!”
“He is already traumatized, he needs to see that it was real,” another voice argued tiredly.
“He is not one of your veteran Aurors, Rivers. He is a child!”
Harry tuned out the argument realizing maybe that was exactly what he was doing there. He needed to realize it was real, he needed it to sink in. He needed to let himself feel so he found out what it is that he would feel.
An owl squawked above drawing every magical person’s attention as the letter bearing avian spiraled down to Harry. An official stepped forward to take the letter, while Harry absently stroked the bird, waiting for them to find Dudley.
Taking pity on the M.R. Squad’s survivor he walked up to him where he was searching the rubble. The wizard had already been ill over his friends and Petunia.
“Mister, please take a break. My cousin is the last…and he…you shouldn’t see him.”
“Why?” he asked in a voice hollow from emotional exhaustion.
Harry realized that he was answering the question for a lot more ears than the wizard he wanted to save from the nightmares. They had all quieted to listen to him. “Because he is the worst of them all. If you find bones or meat, it will probably be him, he doesn’t look human.”
“Okay, okay,” the wizard nodded walking off and away from the scene, knowing he was beyond his limit.
The Ministry official who had taken the letter intended for him walked over to him with Nymphadora in tow.
“Mr. Potter, this is a terrible time to say, but, well, that is…you have been invited to attend the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Welcome to the magical world,” he said handing Harry the green inked letter.
“Thank you,” Harry said, then looked the young man straight in the face. “I am sorry, sir, this is a bad time to tell you. But you’re standing in my cousin’s face.”
The man yelped falling on his back and pulling his feet messed with gore of Dudley’s porous face, a cheek and eye stayed stuck to his polished shoe as he yelled terrorized crawling back and shaking his foot to get it off.