Chapter Fifty-Two of 'The Art of Self-Fashioning'- King Cobra
Chapter Fifty-One.
Title: The Art of Self-Fashioning (52/?)
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 Fifty-Two-King Cobra
“There’s no way you can-”
Regulus was saying other words, but Harry had to put them out of his mind, because the battle he was facing was more important.
He’d already cast a Stunner at the cobra simply to see what would happen, and watched the spell pass straight through its body, as though it was made of thick smoke. But it made a solid sound on the piles of rubbish when its body slithered, and when it struck at him with poison, the liquid sizzled and hissed as it melted coins behind him.
It’s only solid some of the time, then. It can change its composition or part like shadow when it sees magic coming at it.
That made things harder.
Harry released a flood of animals from his pockets, and watched as the mice and ants ran into the corners. Perhaps they could serve as a distraction. Otherwise, at least they wouldn’t be crushed beneath him as he fell from the poison.
The cobra hissed, and drew his attention back to it. Harry examined it. It didn’t seem to have noticed his animals’ exodus. It was thrashing its way towards him, and more venom gleamed on its fangs.
I hope the ants find me with the basilisk fang soon.
The hope flamed in his mind and passed away. Harry leaped to the side, away from another gout of poison, and thought about leaping onto the cobra’s head, but it would probably make it insubstantial just long enough for him to pass through, then stab him with a fang as he tumbled beneath the hood.
So I have to do something else.
He jumped again, crouching so he got the full benefit from his altered muscles, and the cobra hissed in frustration as it struck just beside him and missed. Harry landed on top of a tilting chair that immediately started to fall. He jumped again, aiming high, just as the cobra turned towards him.
His foot struck something solid for a second before it melted away, and a sharp, tingling chill passed up his foot. Harry whirled, managing to land only partially on his side against a pile of broken picture frames.
All right. So it’s not made of smoke, but of that some corrupted Wild that I felt in the Dark Marks and hovering around Nagini. Well, it makes sense that it can’t just be a void, not if it’s going to create something that can actually defend the Horcrux instead of just exert pressure on people to make them feel awful.
Harry knew there was still no way of killing the Horcrux until the ants brought him the basilisk fang. And even then, he didn’t know if he would have to plunge it into the diadem itself. That meant he would have to get past the cobra.
But thanks to his expertise with the Wild, he might be able to hold the cobra at bay until the ants found him.
The thoughts trickled through his mind, as calm and still as clear water, while he leaped easily among the piles of rubbish, and kicked one of them so that it fell over and trapped the cobra’s tail when it tried to turn. Of course the cobra simply melted into nothingness and then solidified again on the other side, but at least it slowed it down for a moment and let Harry finish his thoughts.
Harry landed, then jumped once again and kicked Regulus in the back just as he was going to do something extremely stupid to the snake. Regulus rolled with the blow, seeming more stunned than anything else. A second later, glittering spittle splattered where he’d been standing.
“Why did you kick me?” Regulus wheezed, coming back to his feet with difficulty.
Harry nodded at the smoking hole the venom had made in the floor of the Room of Requirement, and then turned and faced the cobra. It seemed to have noticed that no matter what it did, he simply got out of the way. It had stopped chasing him for a second and was swaying back and forth above him instead.
That moment of stillness was all Harry needed. He reached out and confidently hooked his will around the cobra’s Wild, then pulled on it as hard as he could. No finesse needed, none wanted. He pulled as if he was trying to rip it apart.
The cobra gave a hissing noise that probably would have meant something to Neville, and spat more venom. Harry was already out of the way. He didn’t need to concentrate for this sort of thing. He yanked, and yanked, and yanked, pulling like a baby bird that had got hold of a worm its parent wouldn’t give up.
The cobra was shrinking in size, but then more greasy smoke came out of the diadem and rejoined what was already there. In seconds, it was rearing up and showing fangs that shone with a sullen light again.
If that won’t work, then I need something that will, Harry thought, even as he let go of his hold on the Wild.
*
Minerva didn’t even think of trying to join in the battle with the cobra. She was small and fast enough that she probably wouldn’t get in Harry’s way, but neither would she be able to help. Instead, she leaped up on a table that rocked under her but didn’t give way, and then soared straight towards the diadem.
It began twitching when she landed on top of the bust. That didn’t matter. Minerva didn’t intend to touch it. She batted up a robe hanging on what looked like part of a bedpost nearby and tugged at it until the thin material tore. With the cloth covering her paw, she scooped up the diadem.
The corrupt, buzzing force reached towards her at once, what Harry would probably feel as the Wild, but it didn’t matter. Minerva had the cloth for protection, and also, she was a cat at the moment. Human brain, maybe, but the Wild wasn’t expecting to touch only that, and drew back with a feeling like her head emerging from cold water.
Minerva turned and flung the diadem with a twist of her paw as far as it would go. It slammed into the far wall, and the cobra confronting Harry and Regulus dissolved, just as it was starting to lunge down to try and impale them on a fang. When it reformed, it was over near where the diadem had fallen.
Minerva leaped down from the bust and changed back on the way down, as she did when she leaped off her desk on the first day of Transfiguration classes. She had read one last book on Horcruxes before they left to begin this hunt, and she thought something else besides basilisk fangs would probably work.
“Regulus, get Harry to the door,” she said, not taking her eyes from the cobra and the diadem. Right now, the shadow-snake was only watching her, as if it didn’t understand where the cat had gone or how a human could be in its place. “I want to try something.”
“What?”
“Professor McGonagall-”
Minerva rolled her eyes and began to chant the incantation for Fiendfyre. At least she knew Regulus would recognize it.
And he did. With a startled oath, he tugged Harry out the door of the room. Minerva heard it slam open but not shut, and had to smile a little.
That would probably be Harry, leaning in so that he could make sure of how the spell was done, and that she was safe, at the same time. With him, it was always twin motives.
Minerva focused her attention on the flames beginning to blossom out of her wand. Of course she thought it was hard to cast Fiendfyre. She wasn’t someone so full of hate and the impulse to destroy that it would come naturally. But the book on Horcruxes had suggested something else she hadn’t known about the spell, any more than she had known it could destroy Horcruxes.
Fiendfyre was alive. The will to live, to live so badly that something else would have to die, could fuel the spell, too.
Brilliant white flame soared around Minerva, creating arcs like double rainbows. The cobra had drawn back almost to the point that it vanished inside the diadem. Minerva smiled over at it, and stoked the fire inside.
She wanted to live. She wanted to walk in the Forbidden Forest again, as human and cat, and feel the dirt under her boots and her paws. She wanted Harry to live, to see his goshawk eyes calm and contented. She wanted Regulus to make it out of here and perhaps find another way to let his Dark knowledge and power out. She wanted-
The will was enough. The first Fiendfyre beast came into being, what might have looked like a tiger if not for the electric blue stripes it was covered with and the bat wings that opened from its back. It stalked towards the diadem, jaws open.
Other tigers leaped up the walls, and snakes, and dragons, and chimeras, and some of them began to turn their heads towards her.
Minerva leaped and ran.
In the end, either the Fiendfyre howling and crackling at her heels had less interest in her than the diadem, who couldn’t run, or perhaps part of the magic felt a vague loyalty towards her for casting it in the first place. She leaped out the door, right beside Regulus, and slammed it shut, trusting the magic of the Room of Requirement to keep the fire contained.
“But how can we tell for sure the Horcrux is dead?” Harry asked right away.
Minerva would have answered, but a long, low, horribly melancholy scream gave them the answer. Minerva shut up and blinked. “Like that, I suppose,” she said, when she could swallow again.
“Oh.”
*
“That sounded like something dying in pain,” Regulus said, softly.
“It sounded like something dying that’s never been alive,” Harry corrected them, because they ought to know that. He cocked his head, wondering if they could rely on the Fiendfyre the way they could have on the basilisk fang. Then again, the only description he had of a Horcrux dying was the way Neville had described the diary bleeding out ink when he stabbed it with the basilisk fang down in the Chamber. The diadem wouldn’t have had ink, so would they even have known?
Then Harry rolled his eyes at himself, and concentrated on the sound of birdsong above, on the roof of Hogwarts.
It had diminished. It went silent even as Harry listened. Harry nodded. There was no longer a Horcrux in Hogwarts.
“So now we know,” Professor McGonagall said, her voice coming more slowly, “that Fiendfyre can destroy them as well as basilisk venom.”
“I wonder if that’s the case for all Horcruxes, or only the ones the Dark Lord created,” said Regulus, and looked sideways in a strange way at Professor McGonagall. “What made you try Fiendfyre in the first place?”
“I read a book about Horcruxes last night,” Professor McGonagall said, and then clucked her tongue when he stared at her. “Not by name. I know you found all the ones in the Black library that talked about them by name already. I only searched for more general information on destroying Dark artifacts, and the book talked about them in an oblique way, but trust me to recognize a reference to Horcruxes by now.”
“You will show me that book when we return home.”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
The soft rustling of many legs distracted Harry from the conversation, and he turned around to see the ants running towards him, all of them supporting the basilisk fang. He nodded and knelt down to retrieve it, being careful to wrap it immediately in a piece of thick leather he’d brought along. The ants disappeared back into his pockets and bag.
“Let’s go home, then,” he said, unable to think of anything else they needed here.
“Are you so sure that you will be returning home?”
It was Dumbledore’s voice. The only comfort for Harry, as he turned around slowly, was the certainty that Dumbledore was wandless.
*
It took Albus far longer than it should have to realize the truth about the boy’s Dementors.
He had become curious, long ago, why Dementors reacted to a Patronus with fear instead of swarming forwards to try and feed on the collected happy memories. His research had resulted in a conviction that it had to do with intensity. Dementors were creatures of balance, as odd as that seemed. It was the reason the Ministry could interact with them-within limits-and not simply get eaten the second they approached. It was the reason the Dementors stayed around Azkaban. They needed a certain amount of food, no more. They could tolerate happy memories before they ate them, but not of that kind of intensity. And their natural fear-causing effect ensured that, most of the time, no one around them had that intense a feeling of joy.
Albus raised his head and turned to stare at the Dementors that had remained silent in a circle around him, not shifting.
If they were immune to Patronuses…
Then there was a great chance they did not eat souls, either. Their weakness was counterbalanced by their strength-in natural Dementors. Without one, they could not have the other.
Albus stood and slowly moved towards the edge of the ring. The hidden cloaked faces turned to look at him. Albus waited for the moment when one would move in, at least threatening to lower its hood and try to place its mouth over his.
Nothing happened.
Albus closed his eyes and shook his head. He had not, for a long time, succumbed to the kind of panic that used to overcome him when he thought his plans were not going the way he wished them to. Perhaps the last time it had hit him so strongly was during his duel with Gellert, when he realized there would be no turning back no matter what happened, and the Gellert he had known was gone forever.
It had happened this time because it had seemed so simple to stop Harry Potter, and yet it hadn’t happened. The boy had cost him two members of his Order of the Phoenix, including his spy on Tom, and now the Boy-Who-Lived and the Invisibility Cloak and the Elder Wand and everything else.
I cannot lose my sense of balance around him again. I must continue to pay attention and reason it out, instead of think with my heart.
Albus opened his eyes and reached into his pocket. He was never without some advantages, but this one would have taken too long to use against Black or Minerva in the duel. And he had to admit, he didn’t carry as many as he should have when he was in Hogwarts.
That will change. Even after he captured and neutralized Potter, Albus would never be taken so off-guard by an enemy again.
The “Dementors” did nothing as Albus poured the potion on the floor. More likely than not, they couldn’t recognize it as a threat. It smelled strongly of oil, but they didn’t have normal noses even in their natural form.
Albus stepped back from the line of liquid the potion had created and waited patiently. It took time, luckily, not magic, to ignite. As he watched, he became aware of his breath picking up speed.
If this worked…
He didn’t think the boy and Minerva had left the school yet. He could catch them and make them understand what had gone wrong with their plans. Of course he wouldn’t place that priority above neutralizing them-he was beginning to grasp how much his own love of drama and offering his enemies second chances had played into his temporary defeat-but he would like them to know.
The potion ignited.
The “Dementors” moved back without pause. The boy probably hadn’t thought to tell them to hold their line against any threat, Albus decided, amused. He hadn’t thought Albus could manage such a threat.
The flames towered until they almost reached the ceiling, a solid wall until Albus took a step. Then they formed a tunnel, as they would do only for the one who had cast the potion on the floor.
And then not for long. Potions with effects this complicated were notoriously unstable and prone to do something undesirable in a short time.
Albus fixed his gaze ahead, where he could just see the edges of the “Dementors’” long robes, and walked through the flames. The Dementors didn’t try to surround him when he was beyond their ring. They obeyed simple, literal commands. Nothing else.
From there, it was only a matter of remembering hints and clues the three had dropped, and then following them, remaining prudently outside the door until they had confronted the Horcrux inside the Room of Requirement, and announcing his presence only when he had to.
*
Minerva could feel herself freeze as if ice had coated her insides. Albus might not have a wand, but he was dangerous beyond dangerous, and while inside Hogwarts, portraits would answer to him.
And who knows what else?
Minerva immediately stepped in front of Harry. The lack of fear in his eyes only made it more imperative for her to protect Harry against Albus’s likely attempt to control him. Harry didn’t really understand, any more than a cat trying to protect her kittens would understand why this particular opponent might be too much for her.
“Albus,” she said quietly.
For a moment, he smiled at her, and that only made the ice surging through her hurt more than ever. He shook his head. “I know that you violated your loyalties and turned your back on me, Minerva. I’m only surprised that you would try to convince me you could come back now.”
“I’m not trying to convince you of that,” said Minerva carefully. She had to be honest, and at the same time, she had to phrase things so that Albus was more interested in tampering with her than in tampering with Harry. “I’m offering to let you do-what you will with me if you let Harry and Black go.”
“No, Professor McGonagall.”
“Minerva….”
She ignored the protests from Harry and Black, keeping her gaze on Albus. There was the chance he was more interested in punishing a “traitor” to the Light than people he would consider to have always been Dark.
Albus sighed, the twinkle in his eyes fading until the only light in them was the kind shining off his glasses. “I know what you’re trying to do, Minerva. And the answer is that it can’t happen. The only thing that can happen now is a quiet surrender, or I’ll alert the Ministry and the lot of you will be arrested anyway.”
“We can leave before then,” said Regulus.
Minerva only twitched her head a little, silently telling him to shut up. Albus could and would close the school against him. She could see that in the steely determination in his face. He might wish that things could be different, but when it came to reality, he would do what he thought was for the best.
That was why her sacrifice was the only way she could mend matters. If Albus accepted her in lieu of Regulus and Harry, she knew he would let them go. He had changed, but not in such a way that he would break his pledged word.
“There seems to be no way but my way,” said Albus. “I am sorry for it. I think Mr. Potter will dissolve into magic soon, and I wish I could save his life-what should have been his life-for his parents’ sake. Mr. Black, I think you will get away with no more than a slap on the wrist as long as you remove this curse you have put on me.”
“As if I would.”
Minerva’s eyes narrowed. “What does the curse do?”
“It rots him from the inside out, over a period of weeks,” said Regulus, exactly as if this was a normal curse to cast on someone.
“Why did you-why would you?” Minerva knew her voice was faint, and that wasn’t really the impression she wanted to give, not what Albus did so delight in pouncing on weakness, but she couldn’t understand.
“To ensure that if something like this happened, he still wouldn’t win,” Regulus said, as if it was obvious.
Minerva could only lift one trembling hand and touch her hair. “Let Harry go at least, Headmaster. If you believe that he’ll dissolve in magic soon anyway, then he can’t trouble you one way or the other. He’s only a child.”
“He could easily be my deadliest enemy. And he has cost me too much. You and Severus and peace of mind and perhaps the war.” Albus sighed. “As I said, I would give a great deal for something else to happen, but nothing else can.”
“Y-you’re wrong.”
The trembling voice came from behind them. Minerva turned before she could stop herself, despite her own internal feeling that it was never the best idea to take one’s eyes off Albus. Albus himself spun, though, and reached for the wand that wasn’t there.
Neville stood shaking in the middle of the corridor, with the other three children behind him. Ron and Hermione looked as though someone was tearing them apart down the middle. Terry Boot simply looked weary and resigned.
“If I s-surrender and p-promise that I’ll be the Boy-Who-Lived,” Neville said, his voice lower and steadier now, “then will you let them go?”
They were all staring at Neville, transfixed. Minerva could envision a time when the attention would have made him run away or at least cower, but he didn’t move, except to flick his eyes back and forth between Albus’s face and hers.
“Ahhh,” said Albus, long enough to sound like it was wind coming out of the mouth of a cave. “Now, we might have a deal.”
Chapter Fifty-Three.
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