[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Like Clouded Endless Stars, gen, Like a Malfoy series, 7/7

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the current arc, but it will continue the next time I do a round of seasonal stories, beginning in June.

Part Seven

Sirius was standing in the middle of a huge cavern with a roof that arched overhead and seemed to have no walls. He spun around, staring. There was a rattle by his foot, and he looked down to see the locket lying there.

“Should have known anything my ancestors thought was valuable was bad news,” Sirius whispered, his eyes darting about.

Nothing moved in the darkness around him, but he heard distant voices chanting. The words were in Latin, and Sirius was stunned and fuzzy enough from the Firewhisky that he didn’t think he could understand them. He took a step back and tilted his head up, looking for some clue as to where he was.

A gasp ripped from his throat.

Stars rotated overhead on the cavern ceiling, familiar constellations and unfamiliar ones, glittering lines and dots. Sirius’s eyes locked on his namesake star, followed by Regulus. He looked away, swallowing, and found himself staring at the floor of the cavern, which had glowing silver lines running across it.

Now he thought he understood what was going on. Someone was calling on the magic of all living Blacks in a powerful ritual. His mother had described it a time or two, but Sirius had hated his magical theory lessons and had only paid attention when forced.

Who would be doing this?

But Sirius had a good idea after a minute of thinking. Bella was in Azkaban and wouldn’t be doing anything this complex with Dementors around. Andromeda wouldn’t do it unless she thought she had no choice. The other Blacks were dead.

Except Cissy. Except her bastard of a husband.

What are they doing to Harry?

Sirius grimaced. He could well imagine. Perhaps they were trying to drive the memories of being Harry Potter out of him. Or they were corrupting his soul, making sure that he wouldn’t object to all the Dark magic they wanted to do in the future. Maybe they were even setting up a situation where he would be forced to be loyal to Voldemort. It wasn’t as though Sirius knew for certain or could guess.

“I have to resist them,” he breathed. He didn’t want his magic being used to hurt Harry like that.

But he didn’t know enough details about the ritual to stop it, either. And it seemed that he didn’t have a choice, if this ritual would just keep pulling the power from him. Sirius ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.

Then he glanced back at the locket lying on the floor, and smiled grimly. It had to be an artifact of some power, since it was the only thing that had come with him, and he had first seen the reflection of stars in its surface when the ritual began.

“Come on, then,” Sirius said, reaching down and picking up the locket to drape it around his neck. “You and me.”

The locket seemed to grow warm beneath his fingers. Sirius closed his eyes, trying to seek out Harry with his mind, trying to lend him strength to resist whatever was happening.

*

Harry ducked beneath the Killing Curse and rolled on the grass.

Riddle laughed again. “Where are you going to hide, little Malfoy?” he asked, and started towards Harry with one hand aiming the wand steadily at him. “It’s not as though you even have rocks to hide behind, here.”

Harry stumbled back to his feet, glaring, and held up a hand. He didn’t know entirely why he was doing that, just that it felt right.

There was a long vibration that seemed to rise from the bottom of his soul, and the holly wand smacked into his palm.

Riddle halted, staring at him. Harry panted, staring back. He didn’t think it was his imagination that the stars overhead had grown brighter.

“That’s impossible,” Riddle breathed. He sounded upset about something. “Fucking impossible.”

“Why is it impossible?” Harry held out the wand in front of him and concentrated as hard as he could on a Shield Charm. He could use it pretty well in Uncle Ted’s lessons, but he had never tried to cast it silently.

“Because we are in a place beyond reach of anything or anyone but us.”

That didn’t sound like a reason to Harry, but he didn’t waste his breath on asking more questions. He raised the Shield Charm silently, finding that it was easier when he thought of the stars, and backed up a slow step.

“A Shield Charm can’t stop the Killing Curse,” Riddle chided him, sounding amused. He aimed his wand at Harry again.

And Harry knew he was right, but he also knew this place wasn’t exactly the same as the physical world, where the Killing Curse would just kill him and the lack of things to hide behind meant he couldn’t dodge forever. So things might be possible here that wouldn’t be possible in the physical world.

Harry reached out and towards the sound of the chanting voices, of the eyes that watched him from the stars burning bright overhead.

Help me!

*

Draco staggered and nearly fell. He knew that it would be terrible to lose his place in the chant, that it might mean they couldn’t help Henry, and that Mother and Aunt Andromeda and Tonks were counting on him. But he still did nearly lose it, at the feel of the dragging drain on his soul.

It was Henry. Draco knew it was. He didn’t know how it could be, since Henry had fallen unconscious from the pain several minutes ago, but he knew it was.

And he remembered what he had said to Henry a few days ago, when they were lying next to each other in Henry’s bedroom.

Twins share magic. Twins share a soul.

Draco kept up the chant, but he also reached out to the pull, as if he was clasping the hand of someone he couldn’t see, but someone he knew was Henry. And he fed magic into that pull, pushing and pushing, and ignoring the way that his knees weakened beneath him. He sank to kneel at the edge of the circle. There was nothing that said he couldn’t do that, that he had to be standing to lend his voice to the chant.

At least, nothing that Mother or Father or Aunt Andromeda had bothered to explain about the ritual.

Take it, Henry, he thought, but couldn’t say, while his mouth kept moving in the words that powered the ritual. Everything I have is yours, too.

*

Bellatrix heard the voice calling, a voice she had never heard, but young. A child of the House of Black, someone new and vulnerable and not able to fight his own battles yet.

Help me!

Bella still crouched at the edge of the field of stars. Bella was still the young girl whose mother had conjured the Astronomy Room and the field of stars for her. Bella was still the girl who had been Cissy and Andromeda’s sister.

And she knew, without knowing how she knew, that this child was connected to her through one of her sisters. Her niece or nephew. She had been barely aware of the young son Narcissa had had before she went to prison, but perhaps it was him. Draco.

Named for the stars. A proper name for a son of her House.

Bellatrix gasped a little as something occurred to her. Narcissa had had another son who was stolen. Perhaps they were using this ritual to call on the magic of the stars and find him? It seemed possible.

She reached up and scratched her wrists with her nails, spilling her blood on the floor of the cell. The floor was still there, but her awareness of it receded and passed into her awareness of the stars.

“Take it,” she whispered, voice nearly a croon. “Take it, child. What I bleed is yours.”

*

Help me!

There should have been no one to listen or hear. But there was someone, although he wasn’t hearing with ears. He reached out and found some strength, and flung it out like a rope, aiming at someone who wasn’t a brother or a son or a father, but was someone of the House of Black.

*

Narcissa felt as though her soul was being ripped open by Henry’s silent shout. She didn’t know if he even knew what he was doing. But he was in trouble, not simply unconscious, and he required their aid.

Still chanting, she knelt and reached out to grasp Henry’s hand. She noticed for the first time that Draco was kneeling, too, and that the delicate silver chains encircling Henry’s wrists had broken. She breathed out. She didn’t know the implications of that, given that it was supposed to be impossible.

So was her son calling for help.

But Henry often did the impossible. He had survived confronting a man possessed by the shade of the Dark Lord. He had survived hosting a Horcrux. He had survived years with the Muggles.

He had come back to them.

Narcissa caught Henry’s hand and fed strength into him without stopping the chant, without looking away from her younger son’s pale still form. She could feel Lucius’s strength at her back, cold and anchoring, but not able to join hers in this instance, not when it was Black family magic.

But that did not matter. He would provide a place for them to come back, a place to stand.

Narcissa flung herself into the stars.

*

Andromeda nearly faltered when she saw what the Horcrux had become. The shattered pieces had gathered together in one corner of Henry’s mind, or soulscape, and were launching a concerted attack on Henry’s soul. It was like watching an image of a disease in a Pensieve with snippets of memories at different times, so fast were they eating him.

Andromeda shook her head and rejected the notion of their eating him a moment after she thought it. She would not allow it to happen.

She slashed her wand down and gave of her strength the only way she could, as a Healer, pouring her magic into the spells and gathering and plucking out the combined pieces of the Horcrux, one by one by one.

*

Tonks could feel the ritual tugging, taking more from her than she was prepared to give.

Or, well, more than she had originally been prepared to give.

But that was her little cousin Henry over there. A kid when he’d been stolen from his family, a kid when he’d been marked by a Dark Lord, a kid when he’d been raised by abusive Muggles and had to face down an insane professor and kill the man who’d been partially responsible for him being raised by abusive Muggles.

There were times that Tonks had thought she would never have any cousins, with Mum exiled from her family. And suddenly she had two, and they were kind of prats sometimes, but they were her cousins.

She clenched her fists and closed her eyes and poured her strength into the ritual.

*

The Shield Charm and the light from the stars collided.

Riddle screamed as the darkness around them grew brighter. Harry found that he wasn’t blinded, though, no matter how radiant the light grew. He stood taller and stronger, and suddenly the effort to muster a silent Shield Charm was no effort at all.

When the light cleared, he could see that he was standing in the middle of a field of silver grass, by a lake of dark water. There seemed to be an island in the middle of the water, containing a raised silver platform, but Harry couldn’t pay that much attention, because Riddle immediately tried to kill him again.

Harry swayed aside from the Killing Curse. It seemed easy to dodge now. And when he turned around, there were plenty of silver rocks and trees forming around him, some of them streaked with red runnels that might have come from dried blood. Harry smiled and ducked behind a tree as Riddle flung the green spell at him again.

“Aren’t you getting tired of that?” Harry called, crouching to make sure that as little of his body showed as possible. “It doesn’t seem to be working that well for you, does it?”

Riddle screamed aloud, and rushed straight at him.

Harry scrambled backwards, stumbling for a second, but retaining his balance better than Riddle, who had come barreling around the tree and tripped over a stone. Harry was almost sure the stone hadn’t been there a moment ago. He was more than sure that the trees and rocks were trying to help him.

Riddle rolled on the ground and sprang back to his feet, as quick as a cat. This time, when he aimed his wand at Harry, he looked deranged, his lips peeled back from his teeth and spittle flecking them.

“Crucio!”

“No!”

A figure with flying black hair, clad in tattered robes and with something gold glittering around his neck, collided with Riddle. They went down in a rolling heap, and then the figure turned into an enormous black dog and grabbed and shook Riddle like a rat.

Harry gaped at them, not doing anything to defend himself for a second because he was so stunned. He did know that dog. What in the world was Sirius Black doing here, and how had he got here in the first place?

But then he remembered those chanting voices, the voices of members of the Black family, and the stars overhead. He supposed the ritual might call on the strength of all members of the Black family, and not take into account little things like whether they were sane or had once kidnapped Harry from his family.

The dog dodged away from Riddle, who was back on his feet. Sirius got in between Harry and Riddle and snarled, what seemed to be every bit of his fur standing on end.

Harry said nothing about it. He really could use all the help he could get fighting against this mad Horcrux, and if that meant that Sirius was acting like a real godfather, well, fine. It was about time.

Besides, for the moment, Riddle seemed to have lost all interest in Harry.

“Where did you get that?” he whispered, his eyes locked on Sirius. No, on the golden thing around his neck. Harry leaned to the side and saw what looked like the chain of a locket, twined tightly into Sirius’s fur.

The locket glinted and pulsed with the light of the stars. Mockingly? Harry had the distinct impression that it was mockingly.

“I want to know where you got it!” Riddle’s voice rose, and Harry had the idea he was trying to make it thunder, but it only fell rather flat. Harry grinned. Even the air in this space was unfriendly to someone attacking a son of the House of Black.

Sirius only snarled again, and nudged Harry with his left hind paw. He wanted him to move towards the lake, Harry saw. Well, Harry thought he might be able to hide beneath the water from the Horcrux, so he willingly moved.

Riddle twisted his head to the side, his neck moving oddly like a snake’s. Harry shuddered when his next words came out in Parseltongue, but that wasn’t really a surprise.

“What has he offered you? What can he possibly offer you that is as good as what I can?”

“You weren’t offering me anything, you were trying to kill me!” Harry snapped.

“I wasn’t talking to you!”

Harry blinked, and then tilted backwards with a gasp and a cry as they reached the shore of the lake. He surfaced immediately, spluttering, and then Sirius leaped into the water beside him. He turned his head towards Harry, panting, and Harry felt a distant flutter of memory across his mind.

He did that once when I was a baby. At least once. He played with me when I was in the Potters’ house and he was in dog form.

Sirius began to swim across the lake. Harry grabbed the fur at the nape of his neck and let himself be hauled along, although he couldn’t help but glance nervously over his shoulder. They would be sitting ducks like this for Riddle’s Killing Curse.

But when Riddle did aim that particular spell at them, a silver wave reared up from the lake and blocked it. Harry gasped in gratitude. Of course. His instinct that everything here was unfriendly to Riddle to was right.

“Come back!”

Harry buried his face against Sirius’s fur and closed his eyes. He didn’t think Riddle was talking to him, but he wasn’t going to look. He was going to reach out for the strength he could still feel pouring through him, and he was going to scramble up on the island’s shore when they reached it, and—

Yes, they were there. Harry climbed, with the grit of pebbles and sand beneath his hands and knees all the way, until he could stand and lean against the silver thing in the center of the island. It looked like a box made of glittering metal, with open slats and slender bones in the middle of it, protruding beyond the sides.

Harry had no idea why it looked like that, and now wasn’t the time to ask. He turned his head, and saw Sirius shaking himself free of wetness before he transformed into a man. He smiled at Harry, looking more sane than he had every other time Harry had met him.

Even if his eyes were kind of reddish.

“We have to end his ability to affect your mind. Reach into the box, touch the bones, and call on the family.”

Harry took a deep breath and let his hand rest on those bones, and then he shouted as loudly as he could, Help me!

*

He was crying out for help one more time, the baby boy.

Bella/Bellatrix smiled. She was proud to help him. He was on the verge of defeating his enemy. She knew he was. And he sort of felt like her Lord, which was unexpected, but nice. Perhaps her Lord had been reincarnated in the body of a Black.

She reached up and flicked her nails open. It was the work of a moment to slice open her throat.

“Take it,” she whispered as she slumped to the floor of her cell. “Everything I have is yours.”

*

The call tugged and pulled.

He gave his strength, but it continued tugging and pulling.

It was annoying.

*

Draco poured in the magic, poured in the soul, told himself that he would probably grow too weak to continue the chant in a minute but his twin needed him—

And opened his eyes to a misty world of silver and black and the image of Henry standing beside a silver box filled with bones.

Of all people, Sirius Black was the one who loomed beside him.

Draco did his best to put himself in between the kidnapper and Henry, but from the way his transparent feet skimmed over the ground, he decided he was probably only there in a wraith state. It didn’t matter. He still did it, and Henry glanced towards him with his eyes going wide.

“Draco?”

“Twins can do things other people can’t,” Draco said. He ignored the way that Sirius was staring at him in shock, and the golden shine around his neck. Those things weren’t important right now. “Take my hand.”

“Can i?”

But Henry’s hand felt real and strong when it came to rest within Draco’s, and the silver box felt like metal when he rested his hand on it. The bones stirred and rattled, and Draco felt a swell of magic far below them. He supposed that they were feeling their ancestors, being summoned to the battle with Voldemort from the past.

When Draco glanced towards the shore of the lake, he blinked. “That bloke looks a little too young to be Voldemort,” he muttered.

“I think it’s his teenage form,” Henry said. “Although I don’t know why. He was an adult when he did—what he did to me.” A swift sideways glance revealed that he didn’t want to speak of it in front of Sirius.

Draco just nodded, and smiled at his brother. “Ready to destroy him once and for all?”

“You can’t talk like you’re the one who can do that!” Sirius cried, apparently finding his voice.

“This version of him,” Henry said, ignoring Sirius, which was immensely satisfying for Draco. Henry was smiling, eyes bright in a way that Draco hadn’t seen them since Father brought him back from the graveyard. “Come on.”

Draco closed his eyes and concentrated on his bond with Henry.

He remembered all the stories that his parents had told him down the years of his twin who had gone missing, his own daydreams about what it would be like to have a brother, his private grief the first time he really understood what it meant for his twin to have been kidnapped and how he might never know him.

He remembered the shock of hearing Henry speak Parseltongue and his immediate certainty that Harry Potter was Aldebaran Malfoy.

He remembered struggling with his own jealousy as he watched his parents coddle Henry and give him anything he wanted, and Henry act as if he didn’t want that, as if he wanted to go back to being the lonely and Gryffindor and orphaned Harry Potter.

He remembered how he had come to feel protective, and how much he enjoyed lording it over Henry that he was the big brother.

He remembered frustration, and anger, and debates, and laughter, and incredible hope.

He loved his brother, and he flung all of that at Voldemort as hard as he could, his own power joined with Henry’s and that of other members of their family.

For vengeance, and love.

*

Narcissa could see that Draco had crumpled completely to the floor out of the corner of her eye, but she could also see that his lips were still moving in the chant. She leaned over and put more pressure into the hold she had on Henry’s wrist, and the strength flowed out of her, and she found she still had more to give.

*

Andromeda clenched her teeth. Something had begun to destroy the glittering black bits of the shattered Horcrux, but that only meant that what was there pressed more closely together and was harder to retrieve. She drove herself on, with slash after slash of her wand, cut after cut.

*

Tonks could feel her nosebleed increasing. She clenched her teeth and decided she would prank Henry for a year for all this trouble. It was the least he could do to make it up to her.

*

Harry felt the moment when his and Draco’s combined magic hit Riddle.

The Horcrux screamed aloud. The scream rang over the silver field, the lake, the box of bones, the endless stars. Harry could feel things shattering and twisting around him, and he clung to Draco. Sirius was bowed down with his hands over his ears and the locket blazing around his neck as if it was trying to protect him.

There was a great thrum far below them, a heave so great that Harry felt as if the magic were pulling something out of deep water.

And then—

Then everything broke and scattered.

*

Harry opened his eyes, slowly.

He was once again lying on the floor in the ritual room underneath Malfoy Manor, and he was lying there without his shackles, but with Draco’s hand clamped on his right arm and his mother’s locked around his left wrist.

Harry coughed and turned his head to the side. Mother was staring at him. “Mum?” he whispered.

She swept him up, him and Draco both, and held them crushingly close. Harry clung back, and barely heard the spell that Aunt Andromeda whispered with a hoarse voice.

“The Horcrux is gone,” she said, in the same voice.

Harry wasn’t sure who started crying first. He wasn’t sure when Father came across the room and the now inert circle to join them. He wasn’t sure whether he felt all that different than he had when he lay down at the start of the ritual.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

He was alive.

He was free.

*

Sirius opened his eyes and found himself lying on the couch in front of the fireplace in Grimmauld Place. He might have thought it was a dream, except that his fingernails were crusted with dirt, the way they got when he’d been running around on all fours in earth, and the locket was wrapped around his throat.

Sirius shuddered and buried his head in his hands.

On the one hand, he had helped Harry fight Voldemort, somehow. He didn’t know exactly how, but he knew the manifestation of the teenager who had tried to kill them was no Malfoy.

On the other hand, he had entrenched Harry further in the Malfoy family, and kept him from escaping.

The locket around his neck seemed to vibrate consolingly. Sirius stroked it and thought that it was different from the majority of the artifacts his ancestors had stored here. He didn’t know exactly how, but it was comforting.

He thought he’d keep it.

*

The blackness that had kept him prisoner for so many years tore.

Suddenly he was screaming, and suddenly he had a body, and suddenly he had a use for his strength.

For long moments, he could do nothing but sprawl on the shore and sob. Pain echoed through a body that had utterly forgotten it. He actually thought his mind might shatter before the force of it, and part of him would have welcomed that.

But in the end, the pain settled, and he became aware that he was cold and wet and tired in a way that probably had to do with being slammed back into reality and life.

Regulus Black rolled over, stared down at his thin hands, and wondered what in the world he should do next.

The End.