Disclaimer: Chances are if you missed the disclaimer in the first chapter, you’re skimming this fic and probably missing more of the story than you think.
Chapter Twelve
Impetus
Part B
The world was not a kind place and at nearly fourteen-years-old, Hermione Granger knew it well. It had a tongue as sharp as razors and a fickle disposition to boot. And it certainly didn’t favour the different, the freethinking or the curious. For all that the world claimed to be entering the Information Age, it was surprisingly reticent towards those who didn’t adhere to or better yet, conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.
Funny how that worked out.
Hermione waited patiently in the train’s corridor for Ron and Harry. A few of her year mates passed her and waved, but nobody bothered to stop and talk to her. There had always been a gaping chasm between her and the rest of her peers even in primary school; whether it was from being an outspoken Muggleborn witch or from being the genius of her class, she’d come to accept the gap as a regular part of her life, turning to books instead of friends and perpetuating the vicious cycle of self-imposed isolation. If that made her a bit anti-social or unable to hold meaningful relationships with the people her age, then consequences were consequences and everything else be damned. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t had several acquaintances she talked to on a regular basis, but for a long time, there’d been a severe dearth of the friends like Ron and Harry in her life.
It was something of a relief, breaking the glass wall that had separated herself from everybody else for so long. A sense of liberation, of peeling off the layer of cellophane that hazed her view of the world – of simply being able to breathe – had infused her and for once, Hermione hadn’t worried about saying something that would drive Ron and Harry away. It was refreshing not to be the only oddball out anymore.
What most people didn’t know was that Hermione Granger possessed a surprising ability to shut-up and put-up when things got tough. She also had a streak of rebellion that the Hat had picked up on and promptly placed her Gryffindor much to her wishes otherwise. The two put together made for a clever and wilful mindset, one her friends, even at a young age, had come to appreciate as a part of her better qualities.
At eleven and twelve, boys were not known for being paragons of rational thought, most doing what popped into their heads first and worrying about the consequences later. They weren’t able to hold complex conversations on properties alchemy or the study of genetics in wizarding world or any number of things. They weren’t emotionally mature or even emotionally cognizant, as she had found in Ron’s case.
But they were loyal, courageous and accepting and on that rare occasion – even sweet. Hermione had grown quite fond of her little collection of misfits.
They tromped back to her, nearly a head taller than everyone else around them, people seemingly parting in front of them like the Red Sea; with Harry’s stark black locks and Ron’s blazing red hair, they weren’t hard to spot in a crowd. Taking point, she picked up Crookshanks’ cat carrier and led them out of the crush of people in the middle of the train.
She took a quick assessing glance of her companions. Both of them had grown considerably over the summer, but it was the most surprising in Harry – especially considering how small he was at the end of second year. He wasn’t skinny-lanky like Ron, but more of a lean and lithe lanky, all long limbs and hidden strength. He walked quietly along beside her, shoes scuffing on the floor, shoulders curled inward as if he were trying to hide just how broad they actually were, moving far more carefully than the situation called for. It was like he was embarrassed by his size, not quite comfortable with all the changes his body had gone through.
Hermione looked him over again, then glanced over at Ron jabbering animatedly about Quidditch statistics on Harry’s other side. They had to be within a hairsbreadth of each others’ height.
She smiled. Damn, her boys were going to be tall. Harry misjudged the distance of his next step and stumbled over his large feet, bumping into Hermione’s side.
He grimaced and bit his lip, curling even further into himself as he gazed at her with wide eyes. “Sorry! Are you okay?” he inquired in that new voice of his – a rich baritone that made her think of things like dark chocolate and blue cigarette smoke.
Ah, that explained why he was moving so slow. Harry had never been clumsy; he had to be feeling twice as awkward with his growth spurt. ‘Poor guy.’
“It’s alright, Harry. I’m fine.” She hooked her arm through his. “But you could make it up to me by telling us where you were this summer.”
He grinned at her, sudden and breathtaking. “Oh, I have loads to tell you guys. You wouldn’t believe who showed up in my neighbourhood!” Harry glanced around. “I tell you more when we find a place to sit.”
Ron jerked his thumb at one of the compartments. “Here’s one. Oi, Ginny! Budge up!” he said, sliding the door open.
“Ron, don’t!” But Hermione’s protest went unheeded and the red haired girl was eventually booted from the compartment, despite Ginny’s vehement objection.
The young witch pursed her lips. Harry hadn’t done a thing to stop him; in fact he was still standing outside the compartment with his back to the wall, watching everyone who went past with keen interest.
He turned his head and smiled at her. It was an infectious grin and as irritated as she was, Hermione could hardly stop herself from smiling back. “Hey,” he said, low and affectionate. “Ron done reasserting himself on the Weasley Family Pecking Order?”
She rolled her eyes then let out a huff of laughter despite herself. “What do you think?”
Harry raised his eyebrows. “No?” His lips curled upwards and Hermione hesitated to call it a smile; it held an odd note that she didn’t quite understand and the skin on her spine went cold. “I think he might surprise you someday.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked. The lizard part of her brain, that primal, animal part of her wanted to slink away, slink back into the shadows and far away from that carefully shuttered green gaze.
Then he shrugged and the cool, flat manner slid away like water. Hermione slowly let out her breath and felt somewhat bewildered by her emotional response to her best friend.
‘What was that!?’ She filed the incident away in her mind, a sour dissonance that didn’t fit with her previous perceptions of Harry. He was different than she remembered. A little too different and she could hardly be blamed for her startled reaction. There was a capacity for violence within him where it hadn’t before; it clung to him, to his skin, the smell of thunderstorms and tar.
Not good, not good at all. ‘Harry, what happened to you?’
Harry had continued. “You’re an only child so you’ve always had your parents’ attention. Ron, on the other hand, comes from a large family where attention needs to be distributed between all members. Not to mention he also has to compete with his siblings so that he feels he’s worthy of their attention as well. It’s not a conscious thing, but its there,” he said.
It was stated so matter-of-factly that Hermione had to deliberately remind herself of who she was talking to. “That… actually makes sense. Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
Harry made a face at her. “Just because I’m lazy, doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
There he was; there was her friend: half-hidden behind a tough-guy persona. She found herself laughing for the second time in less than five minutes and it helped dissipate the last of the strange coldness on her flesh. “Now, that I could agree with.”
“Are you two going to stand out there and talk all day?” Ron’s surly tones came from the compartment.
Crookshanks stirred unhappily in the carrier and Hermione wobbled from his shifting weight.
“Here, let me get that.”
She didn’t have time to object before Harry was through the door, Crookshanks’ basket in hand like it weighed no more than his worn-out canvas knapsack. ‘Of course for him,’ Hermione reminded herself, glancing at the breadth his shoulders. ‘It probably doesn’t.’
“You didn’t have to be so mean to your sister,” Hermione said to Ron as she sat down, Crookshanks on one side and Harry on the other.
Ron dug in his pocket for the sandwiches his mother gave him. “It’s not like she doesn’t have other people in her year to sit with.”
“She doesn’t, Ron,” Harry said gently. “Remember all of last year? Being possessed by a shade of Voldemort’s soul doesn’t exactly lend itself to a bunch of close-knit friends.”
A chagrined look crossed the red-haired boy’s face and Hermione marvelled at how easily Harry had gotten the point across. And how tactfully. Not a very thirteen-year-old behaviour. Harry was a much more sensitive person than Ron, But she had her suspicions that it was a product of the abuse he’d received from the Dursleys, which had led to Harry being a very closed-off, moody kind of boy with a sharp temper and a quiet demeanour.
Harry’s calm temperament and emotional control paired with his newfound verbal confidence painted a very interesting picture of his summer.
And a shade of Voldemort’s soul? Not an actual possession? She made a mental note to stop by the Restricted Section of Hogwart’s library. Professor Flitwick would undoubtedly sponsor another charms research project like the one she did when they were making Polyjuice.
“So what happened this summer?” Ron said around a mouthful of sandwich, referring to Harry’s earlier statement. “You didn’t answer any of our letters.”
Harry’s green eyes glittered with anticipation and the chill, stormy feeling was back in the air, only now it had also taken up residence in Hermione’s stomach. “Three guesses at who showed up at Privet Drive and the first two don’t count.”
Hermione was fairly sure her jaw rested somewhere near the proximity of the floor.
Ron looked no better. “Sirius Black? Escaped to come after you? But why?”
“And why now?” Hermione blurted out. “Why after all these years, he picks now to come after you? What does he think he’s going to get out of it?”
Harry shrugged. “I’ve been wondering that myself. Is it the phase of the moon in conjunction to Mars? Is it his mind suddenly coming back after twelve years in Hell’s version of La-La land? Is it just somebody’s mistake that he capitalized off of? Who knows? I couldn’t get a straight answer out of anybody I talked to. He seems to be one of those dirty laundry subjects.”
Hermione wrinkled her nose as she pondered this. “Did you even get the man’s name who rescued you?”
“Nope. Never would answer me on that. Just told me to pack up and then he would Apparate us to the next safe-house. I mean, the times that he let me out, he gave me a name to call him while we were doing whatever it was we had to do at the time, sometimes it was getting food and other times it was business; he usually dumped me in a different location while he did that, like a park or something. It got pretty confusing there for a bit, which I think that was the point of the whole thing and I’m beginning to get the feeling that none of those were his real names. Better security, I guess.”
Ron frowned at that. “Sounds like you didn’t have much fun.”
Harry gave a wry grin to Ron. “Well, it was definitely intriguing, but I’d never call that fun. Half the time I didn’t even know what was going on. When I wasn’t learning a dozen or so languages, I was being drilled on my spell-work. It was… tense; I don’t think I’ve had a chance to relax until now.”
“At least you didn’t get stuck at the Dursleys again,” Ron quipped. “I always knew you’d grow if you got proper feeding.”
“Ron!” Hermione admonished indignantly and Harry laughed.
“I have to admit, I didn’t starve this summer.”
Hermione hugged him and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re okay, Harry.”
“Yeah, I am too.”
Somewhere along the way, he’d acquired a different accent, pleasant to listen to in the way it rose and fell, but curious in the way he cut off certain vowels and emphasized others. It was a traveller’s brogue, a subtle inflection that made it hard to pin down where the speaker was from.
It was a strange thing, a small thing, but it lent a bit of credibility his story of being taken by the ministry agent.
Hermione wondered if Harry knew just how deep he had gotten himself.
Then she remembered that earlier moment of strangeness in the train’s corridor and wondered if she knew how deep he had gotten himself.
The answer was quite obviously no.
It was hard not to feel guilty about lying to his friends – which was almost worse than lying to Mr. Weasley because these were the people that he had fought and died for, the ones who had made it worth the agony and exhaustion. But it was a stupid thing to feel bad about mostly because there was no way Harry could or would tell them the truth. The truth was Hell and it was so fucking insane, it was hard for even himself to believe it at times.
They didn’t deserve to have to carry that kind of burden. Not while he could do something about it. Harry was beginning to understand Dumbledore better every day and it was not a position he appreciated being forced into.
So he’d sent Hermione on a wild goose-chase, plied her with a veritable labyrinth of intriguing information that held only dead ends to offer her curiosity. But she’d already picked up on him being not right; Hermione had recoiled in the corridor as if struck and Harry still wasn’t sure what had set her off.
And to make matters worse, Wormtail was suspiciously absent. He peered at Crookshanks. The cat glared back at Harry as if he were the reason why the half-kneazle was stuffed in a cage.
‘Did you eat Pettigrew?’ he wondered.
Nah. The cat lacked the smug, self-satisfied expression he held after a good mouse-hunt.
Ron snorted in his sleep, drool beginning to trickle down his chin, face mashed against the window.
Harry grinned and fished a long, fluffy quill from his bag.
“What are you doing?” Hermione hissed.
He raised a finger to his lips and winked.
She looked from the quill to Ron and back again, a smile rising on face against her best efforts to look stern. “Harry don’t. Come on, that’s mean. Harry.”
Harry reached out and brushed the tip of the quill against Ron’s nose. The red-haired boy mumbled something about frogs and bludgers, running the back of his hand over his face.
Hermione snickered and slapped a hand over her mouth guiltily, glaring at Harry accusingly. Harry had the fleeting thought of how much Crookshanks and his owner looked alike right then and there.
He flicked the quill at the end of Ron’s nose again. Ron wrinkled his nose and rubbed his face against the window, his skin squeaking in the condensation. Hermione held her breath, shaking silently with laughter.
Ron settled and began to snore.
Harry flicked the quill at Ron’s nose.
Smack! A large freckled hand came up and thoroughly bashed Ron in the face, knocking his head back against the window and the redhead woke with a yell. Hermione’s giggles overflowed and she burst into laughter.
“Nice to have you back with us, mate,” Harry said dryly.
Ron glowered at Hermione, who was still clutching her stomach and giggling. “Bloody Hell, Harry. What was that for? You’re worse than Fred and George.”
“I couldn’t resist,” he replied without remorse. “And besides, you were starting to drool.”
“Was not!” Ron said, wiping furtively at his face.
The bushy-haired witch rolled her eyes and snagged the edge of Ron’s robe. “Yes you did, it’s all down your chin,” she retorted, gesturing emphatically with the robe.
Ron said something else to her in kind, but something cold and dead had brushed over Harry’s senses. Their voices faded out as he extended a tendril of magic out of the window and into the deepening twilight.
Dementors.
Oh shit.
They had been following the train for sometime now, judging by how many there were. But the constant fall of rain had dulled their presence to Harry’s senses. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said out loud to the compartment as he climbed to his feet.
Hermione frowned. “Where are you going?”
“Loo.”
She blushed.
Harry grinned wryly. He’d forgotten how young she was. “Don’t be embarrassed. If I disappear it’s a helpful thing to know where I last was.”
“You know, you could try not going missing in the first place,” Ron snarked. “That’d really confuse them.”
He raised an eyebrow at Ron in lieu of a response. Opening the door he glanced down the corridor both ways. “And ruin my perfect record?” he replied over his shoulder, easing out into the train’s narrow walkway. Harry closed the door before Ron could reply, the dementors’ looming presence urging him on.
The corridor was clearer than it had been four hours ago, most of the students having found compartments or joined-up with friends. That was good; the fewer children in the line of fire the better. And the closer he got to the end of the train, the stronger the dementors’ icy, deadening power became.
Fucking Hell! How many dementors were there? There couldn’t have been this many present the last time around. At least sixty had surrounded the train and more waited in the background. This could turn into a massacre, a wholesale slaughter of the Hogwarts students.
‘Have I made it worse?’ Harry thought. ‘Is my being here making it worse? This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.’
And maybe… maybe it was. Maybe the dementors had been attracted to him the last time around too, only this time he had more juice – and more shitty memories – which turned an alluring whisper of food to these creatures into a clarion call of feasting. And the children didn’t have the mental discipline to control their emotional responses to the soul-sucking fuckers. They were being fed off of without even knowing it.
The compartment door beside him opened and out tumbled a pair of wrestling fifth years, gleefully heckling each other as they crashed into Harry.
Harry had a split second decision to make: dodge or stumble and establish himself as a clumsy, harmless teenager.
‘God, I feel like a lumbering fool.’
He yelped as he twisted, hooking a foot under one of the other boys’ shins. Harry landed on his backside and right forearm with a graceless thud, his head cracking against the door opposite of the one the two boys came out of. Then the compartment door behind him slid open and Harry’s head hit the carpet with a very unfeigned groan.
“Walk much Harry?” Oliver Wood looked much like third-year Harry remembered: stocky, muscular and suntanned – the perfect picture of the dedicated athlete.
Definitely not how he last remembered him.
Harry felt like he’d swallowed razor-wire.
After Oliver left Hogwarts and went into professional Quidditch, Harry had lost track of him other than the occasional mention in the papers as England’s star Keeper. Then the war worsened and Oliver disappeared. Four months later on Harry’s eighteenth birthday he received a series of packages, each one containing a carefully preserved body part. He could still remember the fucking wrapping paper – childish and cheesy – brightly coloured clowns on broomsticks. How bad his hands had shook – bad enough that he’d dropped the box – Wood’s messy entrails spilling pinkish-grey and ropy over his bare feet. An eye, a hand, a lung, the left half of his rib cage and an organ or two; it took two weeks to fully reassemble all of Oliver Wood’s jigsawed remains. By then the media had gotten hold of the story; pictures of Harry’s own shocked face staring stupidly down at Wood’s insides on his front doorstep splashed across every conceivable magazine written in English and even some that didn’t.
Harry himself was blamed for the incident, which marked the beginning of his serious black op work for the DoM. Better to be out of the spotlight than a liability, they figured. They didn’t spend time honing him into a razor-edged weapon just to discard him at the first sign of trouble – didn’t exert that effort to reprogram him into a man capable of killing without emotion or remorse. Oh he’d been good at it before, but Special Forces had given him that extra shine.
So if a small part of himself blamed Wood for what happened, it was to be expected, accepted and then discarded. It was only human nature.
‘What would I do without all these wonderful trips down memory lane? Jesus, this is miserable. Why did I think this was a good idea again?’
He carefully tucked all of the trailing pieces of himself back inside where they belonged and mock-scowled at up Wood. “Laugh it up, shorty.”
The other occupants in the compartment laughed, good-naturedly ribbing the Quidditch captain. “Listen to the little guy, Ollie.” “Can’t exactly call him little anymore.” More laughter.
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” Oliver replied teasingly. “Well I may be short, but at least I can put one foot in front of the other without falling on my face.”
Harry grinned, momentarily forgetting himself. “I didn’t fall on my face, I fell on my ass. And besides, I might be a clumsy idiot, but I have my redeeming qualities.”
Wood scoffed. “Oh really.”
His grin turned devious. “You know what they say about men with big feet.”
The compartment howled with laughter. Oliver shook his head grinning and offered Harry a hand up.
Harry grabbed it, levering himself up; he hid a smirk when Oliver’s eyes widened. “Good God, Harry! The Weasley duo said you got bigger, but they didn’t say how big. I thought you had put on a bit of weight around the middle, but – damn! I think you’re still growing!”
“Why’s everybody making such a big deal about it?” Harry said as he hunched his frame back down under Wood’s eye level.
The seventh-year Gryffindor to his left tossed her head back laughing, her long golden curls catching the lamplight of the compartment and Harry felt a flare of heat and hunger stir under his skin.
She grinned up at him, summer-blue eyes shining with mirth.
Lorraine.
One of his more serious relationships, all of which he could fit on one hand and he’d still have fingers left over. She’d done a few jobs for the DoM as a Curse-Breaker and more for the Order of the Phoenix as a Ward-Warden. They had dated for about three years before she was killed in a Death Eater raid on one of the evacuation routes for the refugees. He had been twenty-four.
The dementors’ creeping influence scraping across his senses snapped him back from his drift from reality.
“Potter, you were the runt of the litter,” Lorraine said. “The smallest one we’ve seen in four years. Well, five maybe, considering some of the firsties I’ve seen this trip.”
Harry dredged up a half-smile from the pit his thoughts had fallen into. “Not exactly something I want to be remembered for,” he replied.
“Long as you’re still a damn fine Seeker, I don’t care what size you are. Though I think McGonagall might since she funds the Quidditch robes and supplies for Gryffindor out of her own pocket,” Oliver mused to himself.
“I never knew she did that,” Harry said distractedly, noting that the two boisterous fifth years had disappeared without so much as an apology. Mangy little assholes. “Hey Ollie, you have a knife I could borrow?”
Oliver peered suspiciously at him. “That depends on what you’re going to use it for.”
‘Killing dementors.’ “I have to get something out of my trunk and the damn packaging isn’t easy to open.”
“You sure you’re not going after Marks and Gordon?”
Harry turned and blinked at Wood. “Who?”
Oliver snorted and pulled from a side-sheath a blade that had to be as long as Harry’s forearm.
His back hit the door-jamb and Harry raised his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Jesus, Ollie! Overcompensating for something?” he said, inserting a panicked lilt into his voice.
With a practiced twist of the wrist, Oliver casually flipped the knife end over end, handing Harry the hilt.
“Oh how very suave of you, Ollie. No really, if I was a chick, my knickers would be half-way across the room by now. Take me, you manly man you,” Harry said without thinking.
Lorraine wasn’t the only one laughing, but she was the one Harry noticed the most.
“Just don’t go running around with it,” Oliver said as Harry took the oversized blade from him.
“Don’t worry, Sugar-tits. If there be any severed limbs, I promise to fully deny you and your sword’s involvement,” Harry replied with a lisp, patting him on the arm.
Oliver flushed red. “Get out of here you little punk!” he said laughing, unceremoniously shoving Harry out of the compartment.
Harry grinned and pretended to stumble, bouncing a little off the side of the corridor, Lorraine’s voice berating Wood for being so mean to the poor third year ringing out from the compartment. He tried not to think too much about her as he tucked the knife into his sleeve, Ollie’s small sword being large enough to scare people. His alarm in the compartment hadn’t been entirely feigned.
Dementors were a psychic race, most operating off of a central “brain” of sorts and using telepathy to communicate with each other. Rogue dementors, however, were a pain in the ass – wild fiends that roamed without purpose and driven by hunger alone. The bright side was that rogue dementors were much less intelligent than their communal counterparts.
These were not rogue dementors.
Another thing most people didn’t know was that dementors bred like rabbits. A disturbing thought to even contemplate; dementors had numbered in the tens of thousands in terms of population when Harry had died. Apparently Azkaban not only kept track of them, but it had also kept their ranks down to a reasonable size. In addition to being breeding machines, they had two hearts – one in the hollow of where the collarbone and neck conjoined and another in the centre of their sternum.
The lights flickered out and the train slowed to a stop.
Harry hit the door to the baggage car running. There was a scream from the compartment beside him, a high thin cry that was silenced almost as soon as it started.
Black fingers of hoarfrost trailed down the corridor from the baggage car, coating everything in a slick layer of ice. Frost crackled under Harry’s trainers and the doorknob was so cold it felt like it was searing the skin of his fingertips. The dementors would enter via the baggage car; ice flaked off the door as he eased the frozen wood open. The car itself was stacked high with luggage, the gleam of metal hinges dulled by the layer of frost. Several of the student’s pets lay dead in their carriers; owls lying stiff and unmoving at the bottom of their wire cages, feet curled to their breast, cats with their mouths frozen open in a permanent yowl, frost-blackened tongues hanging out, furry bodies stiff with cold and death. This wasn’t like Mab’s power – the ancient aether of Winter. The dementors were hungry and malignant and willing to destroy everything in their path just to feed.
Flashbacks tugged at Harry’s mind, triggered by the sense-memory images of the dead animals and he ruthlessly slammed his Occlumency shields in place. The dementors’ influence cut off with an abrupt pop of his eardrums.
He melted into the flat black shadows of a stack of trunks, crouching on top of a sturdy, brass-bound trunk made of cedar, knife held at the ready. A deep blue gloom permeated the air, settling over his skin and mind, blood flowing sluggish like cold maple syrup in his veins, breath slow as sleep.
The outside door unlocked with a sharp click and swung open. A grey, skeletal hand curled over the top of the doorjamb; long-fingered and oddly jointed, the decaying flesh looked like it could curl around in the opposite direction just as easily. The dementor pulled itself downward from the top of the doorway, its tatterdemalion robes trailing behind it like smoky octopus arms.
It sank to the floor, rising to glide noiselessly over the clutter and baggage. Another appeared behind it and another after that, wispy wraiths filling the air.
Harry’s muscles bunched then released and he launched himself off the trunk with all the careless grace of a house cat jumping onto a kitchen countertop. He hit the dementor knife first, blade angled downward. Blood, rubbery and black like ink, spurted under his hands and across his face. Harry wrenched the blade from the side of the creature’s neck and drove it into the dementor’s second heart, located dead centre of its’ pigeon-chested frame. Brittle, birdlike bone crunched and popped – screaming, there was screaming – and Harry was moving, white-hot instinct coursing through his veins. He hit the second dementor, driving the knife hard enough through its chest that two inches of steel showed on the other side. Shrill, psychic squealing pulsed inside his head and the creature’s clammy hands batted feebly at Harry’s face. It was silenced with a sick squish of the blade through its throat.
The third was nearly through the doorway. Harry jumped, knocking it down and drove the knife through its skull. The dementor’s high, psychic cry reached supersonic levels and he twisted the knife from the creature’s skull with a pained yell of his own. Warm blood trickled from his ears and nose, a film of red closing in on his vision. He felt the soft, cool slipperiness of its brains under his fingers and drove his other hand into the crack in the back of the dementor’s mutilated skull. He pulled.
The screaming stopped.
He wiped his sleeve under his nose and the faded cotton came away red. Harry grimaced and dragged the dementor’s corpse into the empty compartment beside him, leaving a sticky, brackish smear on the carpet. The chill malignant energy of the dementors throbbed angrily at the back of the train, but thankfully, Harry didn’t sense them trying to board the Express again. He pushed his sleeves up and began weaving a dark magic spell with his fingers, hands stained to the elbows in thick inky blood. A glowing pentagram made of indigo fire hovered in mid air over the dead dementor.
Well, this would either work or not…
Harry flicked the brackish blood at the pentagram and it hissed and flared, the hungry cold of the dementors licking at his skin. Good. Part one completed.
Raising his right hand to his lips, Harry sucked the blood from his fingers as he thrust the other into the middle of the pentagram. He gagged, the taste of grave-rot and decay numbing his tongue and creeping down his throat. Harry writhed on the carpet, eyes rolled back into his head, nausea and pain warring for dominance as the dementors’ psychic sledgehammer slammed into his mind. It felt like being hit with lightning.
YOU!
‘Me,’ he gasped back.
YOU KILLED OUR BRETHEREN!
Harry felt his face transform into a mad leer, silent laughter shaking through him. Human minds weren’t meant to touch this shit; he was gambling his sanity just attempting this. ‘Yes, I did.’
The dementors shrieked as one and felt his hands clawing into his scalp as he tried to escape. WE WILL SHRED YOU! FLAY YOUR MIND AND FEAST ON YOUR SOUL!
A thousand tiny bugs writhed under his skin, burrowing their way to his soul. He felt fingers in his throat, clawing at the soft skin of his mouth and realized they were his own. DIE! It felt like icy needles being driven through his brain. Harry jacknifed on the floor, convulsing violently and tasted his own blood mixed with the flavour of grave-rot.
‘No!’ Harry struggled to his hands and knees, swallowing back the mindless terror and pressed his face into the carpet. The dementors’ psychic fingers delved into his mind; bringing forth memories so strong he swore he could smell the cordite in the air. He closed his eyes gasping into the carpet as his magic sparked uselessly under his fingers. Harry reached deep into the dark wellspring of his power and scrabbled helplessly at the bottom. None of this would help him – he couldn’t even form a Patronus anymore – the powerful light magic being too far out of reach with as much dark magic as he had immersed himself in. He whimpered as he felt the dementors board the train and pass by him.
Useless – he was so fucking useless.
A dementor floated into the compartment. It pulled its hood off and began manipulating Harry’s body into place, almost gentle as it lowered its mouth to his, a mockery of a lover. It inhaled and he felt himself begin to fade. His frantic search for power weakened and his magic faded to faint ember in his core.
His view of the world shrank to a heavy-lidded, black-tinged cavern that seemed to swallow him whole. Powerless, helpless, useless – fuck, he couldn’t even feel his body anymore – a curious not-numbness because he could certainly feel the rough carpet under him, the cold skin of the dementor and the slowing of his heart, but there was nothing else. He’d been close to death before and it wasn’t anything like this. This was something else, something like non-existence, a mind permanently wiped clean. No soul, no life, no death. Nothing. A part of himself welcomed it.
A part of him didn’t.
Blackness opened around him and he felt like he’d been dropped into an endless night. It was something darker than his magic, purer, older, stronger and thousand times deeper. It rose with a roar in his core, an ocean of magic in hues too dark to name, surging outwards through his blood. This was why Mab had brought him back. He understood that now.
Harry’s hands clamped onto the sides of the dementor’s skull and he inhaled. Life rushed back into him and awareness, too. He reached for the chill resonance of the dementors.
He attacked. ‘BEGONE! CEASE AND LEAVE!’
WHY? WE WERE SENT HERE.
His anger flared and pain echoed across the dementors’ psychic connection. Harry stared at the eyeless sockets of the dementor whose skull he was slowly crushing. The words came out slow and hard, red burning in his mind. “Because if you don’t, I will hunt you down and exterminate your race.”
MERCY! they cried. HAVE MERCY O SCION OF DARKNESS!
‘LEAVE!’ he thundered.
They did, their chill hunger slowly dissipating from his senses.
He came back to himself with the realization that he was soaked head to toe in dementor blood. Harry gagged and pushed the corpse to the side, coming to his feet with a groan. The shrivelled husks of the two dementors lay at his feet, one curled in on itself, the other with the pieces of its head strewn all the way out into the corridor. They were a sobering reminder of how close he had pushed his luck this time. He was very grateful he hadn’t tried that spell before he had come back in time; the spell was only supposed to be used as a communication device, not as a weapon. If things had turned out differently…
Harry picked up Oliver’s discarded knife and wiped it off on his jeans. “I am one lucky son of a bitch,” he said out loud to no-one in particular. The window’s reflection showed a tall pale young man with dark hair and even darker blood speckled like a heathen tattoo across his face, glinting dark and wet against the pallor of his skin.
Footsteps pounded down the corridor and Draco Malfoy’s white-blonde hair appeared in the window’s reflection, his features pinched and frightened. He skidded in the slick, brackish blood coating the wooden walkway of the corridor. Harry could hear the door rattle as Draco grabbed the doorframe to steady himself.
Harry leaned forward and exhaled on the window, fogging Malfoy’s reflection. He could sense the faint stink of dark magic on the boy. ‘Daddy’s starting early this time.’
“You killed them,” Draco Malfoy stated in a wavering voice. “You killed them.” His voice cracked and ended on a high note, fear coming off of him in waves.
Harry drew a smiley face in the fogged up portion of the window, cocked his head, and then gave it fangs. Behind him, Draco was starting to hyperventilate. Harry frowned and glanced over his shoulder. The younger Malfoy bore almost no resemblance to the Draco Malfoy he remembered. Wide grey eyes stared up at him, frightened and painfully young, no sign of the confident, competent man Harry knew within them. This Draco hadn’t had to watch his mother die at the hands of his aunt. This Draco hadn’t overcome his father’s ideals. This Draco hadn’t overcome himself.
‘Draco Malfoy, my snobbish asshole of a friend, you have a long way to go.’
“I did, didn’t I?” Harry said lightly turning back to the window, the condensation gone and reflection clear again. “Was anybody hurt?”
Draco blinked. “I… no, I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you go find out?” Harry replied.
The boy bobbed his head and walked shakily away. Maybe Harry had already started the wheels of change and maybe, he had a better chance of reaching him as Hadrian Sharr instead of Harry Potter.
Harry sighed and dropped the knife by the curled up corpse of the dementor. Time to slide back into character. He sank to the floor curling his knees to his chest and huddled into the corner, pasting a shocked expression on his face. He began rocking minutely back and forth and by the time Oliver dashed into the compartment, Harry was the perfect example of a frightened young victim of a dementor attack.
‘I deserve an Emmy for this shit.’