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 Four
The Glass Hammer
The floor fell from beneath his feet.
He licked his lips, a nervous gesture left-over from childhood. His thoughts whirled past, rushing from him, leaving him filled with nothing but white noise and confusion. And when he spoke, the raw edges of his words buzzed in his head with leftover static.
“What could someone like you, possibly want with someone like me?” he said softly into the vast space that had opened in the cold air between them.
She tilted her head and regarded him with a quite intensity. “You do not remember, then?” she inquired, a note of humanity slipping back into her voice.
“I have no memory of you. And believe me, you leave quite an impression on people.”
“Pity,” she said, her lips quirking into an enigmatic smile. “I did so enjoy your cheek.”
“I apologize for my earlier display of temper. It was uncalled for.”
She waved away his comment. “You said much worse the first time we met.”
Harry grimaced, wondering when he’d get to experience his spine flying through the top of his head.
Mab smiled, her slit-pupiled eyes glittering with amusement. “Don’t put on airs on my account, Harry. There’s no respect in that.”
“Why?” he replied bewilderedly as the world began to swirl around him in tandem with the teeth-grinding noise in his head. “Why me?”
“Why not you?” Her smile deepened. She held out a hand and Harry found himself moving forward, kneeling without prompt, the bones of Mab’s face shining with a sudden, terrible beauty.
And the world slowed, as still and cool as a grey winter morning, everything narrowed down to the thundering of his heart and her.
He was not Harry Potter; he had no name.
He wasn’t a soldier; he had no-one to kill.
He had no need to eat, no need to sleep; his body was not his. He was nothing and the only thing that was, was her – she who was at the beginning and who had seen the end.
Mab stood before him; a penumbra of dark crystalline power surrounding her. Ice formed on the floor, the windows, the counters; thick, white sheets of it that cracked and groaned as they breathed. The Muggle appliances whirred to a stop. The indigo hum of Winter’s power writhed and seethed through the air, quivering under his skin, something cold and dark and liquid inside of him answering her call. He wanted to rub himself against her legs like a cat, enfold himself in the frozen oblivion of her will.
Her word was absolute and her power undisputed. She had toppled kingdoms with a breath and raised empires with a gesture. A veritable Goddess stood before him and only his total acquiescence would please her. But he didn’t mind. How could he? He was hers. He wanted to submit. It was all he had left to give.
She raised a hand to his face and he found himself leaning into the caress. The live-wire spark of his magic ignited at the touch and his vision went blue, then purple, then black.
The rain is cold and razor-sharp on Harry’s skin.
Ruins of a once great castle are littered underfoot; jagged remains of walls, battlements and towers thrust upward into the sky. There is a gaping crater where the Great Hall has collapsed into the dungeons below. Looking past the broken edge of the floor, Harry peers down into the dark, icy water that lay so far below him. Sharp rocks rise out of the water like a ring of broken teeth from an oily black mouth. He shudders and steps back.
A familiar voice floats towards Harry over the wailing of the wind. He knows this voice. He knows this voice very well.
“Professor Dumbledore?” Harry calls out in disbelief.
The ageing wizard wanders distractedly around the remains of the Great Hall, humming a nursery ditty to himself. Dressed as he is in cheerfully coloured robes, Harry almost misses the gaping wound in Dumbledore’s upper body.
The headmaster turns to look at him and smiles. “Harry my dear boy! How are you doing on this fine day?”
Harry glances around him incredulously, “Fine day? You call this a fucking fine day?!”
Dumbledore has the grace to look abashed, “Ah, well, perhaps I was being a bit too optimistic.”
“You’re loonier in death than you were in life.”
“Sanity is fleeting, Harry,” Dumbledore says looking over the rims of his glasses at Harry. “You of all people should know this.”
He wants to scream at Dumbledore, to rage at the old man for abandoning him to suffer the war. He wants to cry out to the weeping sky to take him as well. Harry buries his face in his hands and laughs over the absurdity of it all. In the end, this is all on him and if life has taught him nothing else, he knows right where to place the blame.
“Why am I here?” He says finally, looking up at Dumbledore. “Why did I bring myself here? So that I could feel even more miserable than I already do? It’s not enough to just feel guilty; no I have to actually hurt. What is so fucked up with my subconscious that I keep dreaming about this goddamn castle?” Harry snarls, voice derisive and angry.
Understanding settles on the old mage’s face. “You did bring yourself here, yes; but not to dwell on the departed. In order to understand the meaning of this place, you must first ask yourself how you got here.”
“And just how did I get here?” Harry replies with a sour, mocking note.
“I’m dead, Harry, not a crystal ball,” Dumbledore says dryly. “That is something you must ask yourself. I am only here for guidance.”
“Great,” Harry sing-songs, drawing out the long ā sound of the word. “Some people get crickets. I get a crazed old spook for a conscience. If you can’t tell me why I’m here and I can’t answer how I got here, then maybe you can tell me what I am doing here.”
Dumbledore looks pleased. “Very good, my boy. What you are here for is a bit of knowledge. If it makes you feel better, you may think of me as a combination of an old mentor and the lesser used recesses of your subconscious.”
“That’s just wonderful. Still doesn’t tell me anything useful. I’m not exactly in the mood to play twenty questions with the empty parts of my brain, old man. Unlike you, I don’t have eternity.” he drawls, shoving his hands into his pockets. Harry scuffs the bottom of his boots against the ground, restless, nervous energy running through him.
Dumbledore gestures to wreckage around him. “Look around you. What do you see?”
Harry blinks then shrugs his shoulders. “Hogwarts. Or well, what used to be Hogwarts.” He has never gotten used to that even though he remembers the castle destroyed more years than he remembers it whole.
“Yes and no. You are looking at things in a linear fashion and rarely does the mind work that way. You must ask yourself what the significance of this place is, what your role here is and why it is important. Know this is not necessarily a world of absolute reality here. This place is a world of perceptions. Now think, Harry,” Dumbledore says, focusing an intent gaze upon his own. “Think really hard. What do you see?”
He looks away, too raw, too open to meet Dumbledore’s stare any longer. He swallows, mouth uncomfortably dry. “This is my failure. This is how the world will be if I don’t change it. If I can’t change it.”
Dumbledore sighs and his visage grows sad and worn, losing the bright spark in his eyes. “Yes and no. Events are not as fixed here as they are outside.”
Harry makes a face. “What?” he says, feeling redundant and childish in his confusion.
The headmaster raises a bushy grey eyebrow. “Harry, this is your mind.” A book falls from his hands, landing upright on the ends of its pages.
Claws tear at Harry’s spine and he hits the ground convulsing, vision blurring with the white-hot fire screaming through his nerves. His head slams back into the cracked stones, body arching upward so hard he thinks his spine will snap. Harry’s throat closes up and his sight begins to blacken at the lack of oxygen.
Someone giggles behind him and Harry catches a flash of eerily familiar green eyes as a young, dark-haired child whispers in his ear.
“Something wicked this way comes.”
Harry surged upward from his place on the floor, twisting the figure’s arms behind their back as he pinned them to the floor, the Berretta nine jabbed into the soft underside of their chin.
The static faded from his ears and he belatedly recognized Petunia’s shrill whimper. A thunderous vibration echoed through the house and Vernon Dursley appeared in kitchen doorway, moustache twitching on his purple face.
“PETUNIA! My Pet, are you all right? What’s the boy done now…” Vernon had caught sight of the same thing Aunt Petunia was now whimpering at and nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to back away.
It took Harry a moment to realize what was wrong.
He rolled off of his aunt and stood, keeping the Beretta trained on the bulky figure in the doorway. Ice flaked off his skin as he moved, small droplets melting from his hair and eyelashes. The rest of the kitchen was untouched, no ice, no magic, no sign the Winter Queen had stood in this incongruously Muggle kitchen and brought him willingly to his knees before her. His magic murmured sleepily in his veins before subsiding.
Petunia’s shaky, half-whispered question nearly went unnoticed. “W-what do you want?”
Harry pulled a chair out from the table and collapsed limply into it; his nerves were still twitching with the phantom sensations of seizure. It made him feel uncomfortably weak. “What happened?”
Petunia flinched. “I… I found you on the floor.”
“And?”
She shook her head, blonde wisps flying free, her eyes wide with fright and shock. “Your lips were blue and you were all covered in frost. I thought you were dead.”
Anger blossomed low in his gut and he rose from the chair. “Obviously not,” he bit out, not bothering to modulate his tone. His uncle’s eyes were fastened to the weapon in Harry’s hands, a giant, cumbersome statue occupying the doorway. Harry growled at him and the man scrambled backwards.
“Wait!” his aunt called from her spot on the floor. “There was a letter…”
Flipping the safety on, Harry tucked the Berretta nine into the back of his jeans. He grabbed the crisp white envelope from her hands and slit it open with the edge of his ragged thumbnail. The scent of orchids, wild and heavy, lifted into the air, as he pulled out a pale blue sheet of paper so fine it was almost translucent.
Harry, it read, the handwriting a sharp, slanting script that reminded him of snow-covered mountains rising into the sky.
The mark on your arm is a symbol of my protection and will give you safe passage through my wards. I have determined Privet Drive to be a compromised location and for the matters we must discuss I need the assurance of no listening ears. My envoy will be waiting for you tomorrow morning at 9:30, Gerrard St. in Soho. You will know who it is.
It was unsigned, but Harry already knew whom it was from. The mark she talked of was so light that it was barely noticeable against his skin. He held his left wrist up to the sunlight from the window and watched as a series of tiny runes glimmered in blue-white bands of opalescence before fading away. It didn’t look like a ‘mark’ it looked like brand, one half of a pair of chains to ensure his loyalty.
He carefully folded the letter away and tucked it into his waistband next to the Beretta, anger burning low in his belly.
“Thank you,” he said as he breezed past their stunned faces.