Chapter Forty-One of 'The Art of Self-Fashioning'- The Darkest Night
Chapter Forty.
Title: The Art of Self-Fashioning (41/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings/Content notes: Angst, canonical child abuse, animal harm in the first chapter, AU, violence, gore, torture, gen (no pairings)
Rating: R (for violence)
Subject: In a world where Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry still grows up with the Dursleys, but he learns to be more private about what matters to him. When McGonagall comes to give him his letter, she also unwittingly gives Harry both a new quest and a new passion: Transfiguration. But while Harry deliberately hides his growing skills, Minerva worries more and more about the mysterious, brilliant student writing to her who may be venturing into dangerous magical territory. Ravenclaw!Harry, Mentor!Minerva.
Author’s Notes: This is going to be a fairly long story that will update every Thursday. The first few chapters will take place in Harry’s childhood and first year; then it will skip ahead to his fifth year. It’s heavy on the angst and gore, but heavier on the magical theory.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Forty-One-The Darkest Night
Lucius stood motionless in the shadow that his spell had cast for him on the Muggle street. There was a disconcerting lack of magic about the Black house where Potter was hiding, at least from the outside. Lucius had expected to feel the buzz in his teeth from here. He had thought he might have to order someone else on reconnaissance, to make sure there were no hidden traps.
But no, apparently the famous Black wards had diminished down the years. Perhaps Regulus Black had never felt threatened enough to renew them.
Lucius half-closed his eyes and reminded himself to bridle his contempt. Black, and Potter, had been responsible for the disappearances of five Death Eaters. That must mean they were more formidable than the outside of the house made them look.
But it also meant they might have become careless. Lucius would not discount the possibility.
A soft sound of scales crossing stone made him look down. The Dark Lord’s snake lifted her head next to him, tongue flicking out. Lucius nodded in respect and faced the house again. There was sure to be a way inside it, through the protections that were there. And he would find it.
“Yaxley,” he said, without turning his head, and heard the other man pad to his side. “I want you to talk half our force and go in through the back.”
“Yes, Lucius.” Yaxley’s eyes were gleaming. “I used a few spells to look at the gardens. No stronger defenses there.”
Lucius considered whether to praise Yaxley for initiative or damn him for not telling Lucius he was doing that, and finally decided that they didn’t need the disunity a scolding would cause now. As long as Yaxley doesn’t get too bold. “Then you’re the best choice to lead the force,” he said, and dismissed a ridiculously beaming Yaxley to do as he was bidden.
The Dark Lord’s snake remained beside Lucius, of course. Lucius was still not entirely sure why the Dark Lord had commanded her presence-most of the time he seemed reluctant to let her out of his sight-and decided that he would let her choose her own battle position. It wasn’t as if he knew Parseltongue to communicate with her, anyway.
When Lucius lifted the shadows around his own cloak, so as not to alert the Muggles sharing the neighborhood, and Silencing Spells around the outside of his band, Nagini slithered to the side and straight for the front door.
Lucius hoped she knew what she was doing, but he wouldn’t question her any more than he would the Dark Lord. He turned and motioned to the staring faces behind white masks that crowded the cobblestones behind him.
“Forwards.”
*
“I think you’re paranoid. And I’m not entirely sure I trust these new guardians of yours.”
Harry ignored Black. He wasn’t the one who would have to enter a vulnerable trance to force Bellatrix’s wandless magic out of her body. That meant he wasn’t the one who would need to feel protected. Harry had done some more reading in the past few days, and not only in forcing out what Black called the deep magic.
“Just in case something happens,” Harry said, and looked over at the light weight on his shoulder. He touched a delicate wing, and said, “Fly the outside of the house. If anyone breaks in, then you know what to do.”
In a second, his new guardian had lifted and darted out of the room. Black made a disgusted face after her. “Why do you think someone is going to attack just because you’re doing this now?” he demanded. “There’s no indication that the Dark Lord knows what you’ve been doing with his Death Eaters, or he would have attacked before now.”
“I don’t think this is a special time for Lord Dudders,” Harry answered, and turned to face Bellatrix. She was still unconscious because of the special potion Snape had brewed for them, but Harry could wake her up in an instant. The books had seemed to indicate no one could sleep through having their deep magic roused, anyway. “I think it’s a special time for me. I won’t be aware of my surroundings.”
“We can guard you.” Black made a gesture that indicated him and Terry and Professor McGonagall, who stood ready with their wands pointed at Bellatrix.
“Only from the inside.” Harry sat down in front of Bellatrix, and closed his eyes. But he didn’t begin the trance yet. Instead, he reached out and touched the other guardians he’d created for the outside of his house with his mind. Now that he knew he was manipulating the Wild and not simply creating natural animals, it was far easier to make ones that would respond to his thoughts.
“Those beasts aren’t the only ones you made, are they?”
“Of course not.” Harry smiled at Black and activated the last little group. For all he knew, no Death Eaters or Dumbledore’s minions would attack tonight, and he would be fine. But he would rather be paranoid than dead.
“You can trust us.”
“I know. But what happens if Bellatrix starts rebelling against my control just as an attack comes from outside? You can’t be in two places at once. I know that, too.”
Black was still fumbling around for an answer when Harry focused that same depth of concentration that had made his animals on Bellatrix. There was that small piece of her that was his, surrounded by the void of Lord Dudders’s magic and Bellatrix’s will. Harry touched the piece of hers that was his.
Bellatrix’s eyes flew open, and she screamed.
Harry flung himself into the magical, mental battle.
*
Lucius heard a soft buzzing sound as he unwove the first of Black’s inadequate wards, but he didn’t understand what it meant in time to cast a spell that would protect him.
A second later, he was screaming as the wasp queen fastened herself to his face and began to sting.
And there were other wasps, whirling all around him. He heard the buzzing, he heard the screams as the other Death Eaters with him were stung, and Lucius knew they had lost all advantage of surprise. The protective spell he had been trying to take down was suddenly blazing against him, flaring so bright against the darkness that the Muggles could probably see it.
He had time to think that much, and then a sharp hot flower opened in his eye. Lucius jerked back and touched his wand to the queen, forcing himself to think through the incantation he needed. “Ignis multesimus!”
The tip of his wand caught fire, and the flames crisped the queen, making her fall away from his face. Lucius would have been more reassured if he could see out of his left eye, and if there hadn’t been more wasps immediately taking her place, all of them humming with deadly intent.
“Fire!” he shouted to the other Death Eaters, and swept his wand in a wide arc, using an Incendio that destroyed the wasps in front of him. He could hardly make out the shapes of the others against the darkness, but he did notice when the ground in front of him suddenly seemed to start moving.
Nagini gave a startled hiss from beside him-where Lucius hadn’t realized she was-and writhed her body sideways. Lucius stomped, because it seemed like the thing to do, and found that he had crushed several of the small shapes scuttling at his feet. But others of them grabbed his legs and started to crawl up them.
Small black spiders, with a red hourglass in the middle of their backs.
Lucius shouted and cast a spell that would drive anything not human from his body. But although a rain of black widow spiders fell off him, that didn’t stop some of his fellow Death Eaters from screaming as they were bitten. And others were launching themselves from the eaves of the house, which meant that Lucius had them in his hair and on the back of his neck, and had to keep casting spells to drive them off.
Then one got through, and bit him.
Lucius gasped as all the muscles in his back seized up at once. He thought hazily that the venom shouldn’t work so fast, and then more pain echoed through him, and he understood. He was being bitten by more than one, even if he had only felt one spider at first.
“Fall back!” he opened his mouth to call, but he didn’t get the chance. First, he saw some Death Eaters twitching on the ground, and he knew that the Dark Lord wouldn’t forgive him if some more of his faithful followers were lost. Second, he saw Nagini slide through the spiders and towards an unprotected door, and losing the Dark Lord’s snake would be even worse.
And third, he couldn’t get the words through his chattering teeth.
Lucius cast the spell that repelled the spiders again, and pelted towards Nagini while he could still move. He would have to Apparate with her to safety, and then come back for his comrades.
He might have managed, if something hadn’t hit him from behind with such force that he went sprawling on the ground before he’d recovered from the shock of being struck. And there was such pain in his wand hand, as if it had been crushed…
Lucius did manage to lift his head, coughing from the pain, in time to see the eagle slam into the Dark Lord’s snake.
*
Somewhere far away, Yar and his conjured insect defenders were battling. Harry frowned and forced himself deeper. He shouldn’t be able to tell even that much from inside his trance, at least if the trance was working the way it was supposed to. That it hadn’t suggested to him that he was still too shallow.
Then he was at the bottom of a vast darkness, and in front of him and around him and above him was nothing but emptiness. Except for a small pool of whirling black in front of him, which Harry could only see because it was a slightly paler color than the rest.
He stepped forwards and reached out to it.
There was a wild shriek of laughter, and the essence of Bellatrix was all around him. Harry suddenly knew her better than he’d ever known anyone except Amicus and Yar. He saw her life in flashes, the way she’d learned to kill and some of the people she’d tortured and the long years screaming in Azkaban. It was disorienting, and he clasped his knees, or the conjured mockery of them here, to get his balance back.
Bellatrix hit him with another skitter of wildness. She could speak to him, too, which wasn’t something Harry had foreseen.
Little Baby Potter! Did you think you could take control of me? Did you? When I’ve belonged to my Lord forever and ever?
Not forever, Harry answered, his voice steady because he’d dealt with blows like this in the past, such as when Vernon had killed the first kitten and Amicus had died and it turned out Terry wanted to be his friend. Only since your sixteenth birthday.
That knocked Bellatrix off-guard, in return, and Harry swirled forwards and reached into the true Wild, her life force and magic, not the madness that had grown up around her mind like a forest of thorns.
Bellatrix screamed. And Harry felt what she did, felt the wrenching violation that this was. She had taken Lord Dudders’s Mark of her own free will. This was something like rape, something like torture.
But she had done the same thing to his parents. Harry found himself savagely glad that he could give back some of the same. He pulled and yanked, and retreated a step from the center of her mind, pulling her and her magic back to the waking world.
Bellatrix was unraveling around him, or at least it felt like that now. She flung herself at him, but Harry had hold of part of that self. All he had to say was Stop, and a wall seemed to spring up between him and her, thrusting her away.
Bellatrix was still screaming in his mind when Harry rose fully back into his body and held out a stiff hand, his fingers spread, his magic rising to the call and Bellatrix’s magic coming with it.
Bellatrix sat up on her pallet, and her hand rose, too. Her eyes were far away. Harry couldn’t say whether she was seeing what was in front of her.
“Reducto,” said Harry. He knew instinctively that destructive curses would suit her nature better than trying to make her perform household cleaning charms or Light magic.
Bellatrix mouthed the word along with him, but didn’t speak it aloud. A black spark leaped between her fingers, and Harry tensed. He’d never seen something like that with the Blasting Curse.
It turned out he needn’t have worried. The black spark gathered others to itself, like a swarm of his guardian wasps, and then they all flew together and coiled around the small Transfigured box of wood Harry had made. The box convulsed and hopped, and blew into small chunks.
Harry smiled. He hadn’t counted on that particular side-effect of the Blasting Curse, but it was a nice one. He would have lots and lots of little pieces to study now, and each one would bear an imprint of Belllatrix’s powers.
He turned to her and beckoned. Bellatrix stood up. Her eyes showed some hatred now, but her expression was confused. And the Dark Mark on her arm looked duller than ever, as if its power had gone into her magic.
“I want you to destroy this dummy,” Harry said, and conjured one; it was faster than Transfiguring it, and he didn’t have any suitable objects to Transfigure right now anyway. Things buzzed and stirred in the back of his mind, and he smiled. He had never realized how much fun it could be to command something that resisted him. His animals never did, and people he either ignored or didn’t want to command. “On the count of three, and with another spell that’s not the Blasting Curse. All right?”
“Harry, didn’t give her any choice.”
That was Black’s voice, low like thunder. Harry cocked his head as if to consider the advice-he owed Black at least that much-and then shook it. “I have to. I have to see how far she can buck the limits of my control.”
Black said something that he would probably regret later, when he went through another phase of thinking Harry was an innocent child. Harry only laughed, and pushed with his will. Bellatrix pivoted towards the dummy, her features twisting more and more as she woke up. Her eyes were wild with loathing now.
“On the count of three,” Harry said, in what was the most patronizing tone he could muster. He thought he should probably call it his “talking to Death Eaters” tone.
Bellatrix waved her arm back and forth for a minute as if she was sending a child off on the Hogwarts Express. Then her face smoothed out and she called forth the Blasting Curse-
At the same moment as she turned and sent it straight at him.
*
Lucius had never seen anything like it, and he forgot the pain in his eyes and hand as he watched Nagini writhe under the eagle’s talons.
It seemed like it ought not to have been an equal contest, at all. Nagini was much bigger than the bird, and had poisonous fangs besides. But somehow she never caught the eagle’s powerfully beating wings, nothing more than a mouthful of feathers. She was hissing in what was probably horrified Parseltongue, and the eagle simply dug in and hung on with her talons. Then she dipped her beak and tore a chunk out of the scales and flesh that covered the snake’s spine.
Nagini screamed.
Lucius flinched from the noise-well, partially from the noise and partially from the image of what the Dark Lord would do to Lucius for letting his snake get hurt like that. Nagini began snapping her head back and forth, trying to scoop the eagle off her back, but the bloody bird simply turned a little and reached out a crushing talon. It fastened on Nagini’s neck.
Lucius forced himself to his knees. He didn’t think he was going to die of the wounds he had taken so far, but he would die if he came back without the Dark Lord’s snake. He crawled forwards on wavering hands and knees, trying to remember anything he knew about eagles.
They bind to their prey. Don’t they? They don’t let it go easily? This one isn’t going to leap back into the air and suddenly circle around for another run at us. It ought to be easy enough to keep it in place until I can get my wand ready.
So far, that seemed to be the truth. The eagle never looked at Lucius. It concentrated on trying to crush Nagini’s spine, which at least wasn’t working so far. Unfortunately, neither was the snake trying to bite the bloody thing’s head off.
Lucius got his wand in his hand. His entire body was shuddering now from the poison. He didn’t hear any shouts from behind him, which he feared meant the other Death Eaters were no more. But he kept his eyes focused on the eagle, and he let the fear and frustration well up in him, compensating for his diminished ability to handle his wand with his left hand.
The emotions fountained up in him until he knew he had to cast magic or combust. He aimed his wand at the eagle and murmured, “Avada Kedavra,” as gently as he had once asked Narcissa to marry him.
*
Harry heard shouts from Professor McGonagall and Black. He didn’t mind them. He wheeled easily aside from the Blasting Curse, and laughed as he exerted some control and watched Bellatrix’s hand fall limply to her side.
“I changed my mind,” he said.
“About letting my mad cousin use her magic?” Black’s voice was shaky. He cleared his throat and shook his head as if he disliked the tone to his words as much as Harry did. “You should have. When I think what would have happened if that curse had hit you-”
“You would have been right to despise me, because then I would have taken on too much without realizing it.” Harry only shook his head impatiently when Black gaped at him. “But I didn’t underestimate her, and you don’t have to despise me.” He turned back to Bellatrix.
“I would never despise you…”
“What went wrong, Mr. Potter?”
Professor McGonagall was the one asking the more sensible question, and in a tone that made it seem as if they were back at school, so Harry didn’t mind answering. “I let a little control loose because I wanted her to suffer,” he said, watching the glaze in Bellatrix’s eyes. “I wanted her to know she was casting magic at my instigation. I don’t think she would have been able to snatch back that much if she was sane. But-”
And then his head whipped to the side, as he felt small lives flickering out all around him. “What is going on?” he whispered. “Why did no one tell me the house was still under attack?”
“You were under trance, and I’m not stupid enough to break you free from that,” Black snapped. “Besides, they haven’t done any damage to the house yet. They think they took down the protections. In reality, those protections have closed behind them, and they’ve been trapped inside. And any second now, the inner spells are going to catch fire.”
“Literal fire?” Harry asked. “Then I’ll have to move my animals back from there.” He closed his eyes and concentrated on his animals before Black could say anything. They had done more than enough against the Death Eaters by now, if they had been fighting them alone so far.
*
Lucius’s aim was perfect. He should have been able to kill the eagle, he knew, as the Killing Curse flew from his wand. But then the eagle spread its wings and flew away and up, soaring behind the house.
Lucius’s Killing Curse struck Nagini.
Lucius stared in silence as the snake collapsed. He didn’t know what to say, what he could say that encompassed the scope of this disaster. He shook his head as he saw a rush of the black widow spiders and wasps back past him, towards the house. Perhaps Yaxley’s forces had caused enough damage to make it worth continuing that part of the assault.
But Lucius opened his mouth to call the retreat.
Before he could, there was a spitting sound, and curls of fire wound across the air behind them. The flames were dancing, blue and glinting, atop two motionless bodies that must have got a higher dose of either wasp stings or spider venom than Lucius had himself. Lucius reached out a helpless hand, and stopped.
The Black wards had not been taken down after all, and he had not stopped Black. Or Potter.
Lucius began to shudder, and was not able to stop, and it was not only the effects of the spider poison.
Not even thinking he heard Nagini stirring was enough to content him. He might be mistaken. Lucius laid his head on the ground, and tried to ignore the strange tingling in his Dark Mark. He would probably die in Black’s protective spells, and his Lord would never know what had happened, not for certain.
Lucius’s last conscious thought for a time was that he hoped the Dark Lord did not take out his wrath on Narcissa and Draco.
*
“There are still some Death Eaters alive,” Black murmured, his eyes shut as he communed with the house’s wards. Harry thought he must have looked much the same way when he was in trance. “The majority, really. Your spiders and wasps killed some, and the fire some more, but a lot of them were too close to the house to be burned.”
Harry nodded. “That’s fine.” He glanced at Bellatrix. “I have a thought, if you’ll let me experiment.”
“What haven’t I let you do, even if I shouldn’t?”
Harry ignored the exasperated tone to Black’s reply, and cocked his head a little. “Bellatrix, I want you to present your arm to me.”
She dropped to her knees and held up her arm, her every movement puppet-like now. Harry ignored the way Terry was tensing, and the unhappy look on Professor McGonagall’s face. He would have to deal with that later.
“That’s how the Dark Lord calls his Death Eaters,” said Black, calmly, as Harry laid his hand on her Dark Mark.
“Oh, I know,” Harry said. “You told me it hurts, right? He sends out some kind of pain or summons that connects with their Marks.”
Black nodded, his eyes locked on Bellatrix. “I don’t know what you’re going to do, but-”
“Send out a blast of Wild magic,” Harry said, grinning. “Through the part of her Mark that’s mine. And see what happens.”
*
There was something in his mind, calling him, something soft and obscene.
Lucius barely realized that he was stumbling to his feet. He barely realized that he was marching forwards with his head bowed. His feet plowed past insect bodies and up steps, and he didn’t know where he was going. He just knew that he had to march.
And then there were more stairs, and someone behind him poking a wand into his back, and a door opening in front of him, and the same person saying behind him in a voice that was vaguely familiar, “He did it. He actually did it.”
Lucius fell down. Someone cast a Cushioning Charm on the floor so he didn’t break his nose. And someone took his wand, and put a bowl of water next to him, and cast a few charms that might have been healing ones, since his shivering from the black widows’ poison eased.
Lucius was aware, in a dream, of the door being locked behind him. But for now, he simply wanted to forget all about calls and Lords and failures, and go to sleep.
So he did.
Chapter Forty-Two.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/881463.html. Comment wherever you like.