[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Creatures of Truth, These Creatures series, gen, 7/7

[lomonaaeren]

They landed in a graveyard—or rather, Harry did, with “Moody” Apparating in a second later.

Moody directed him to walk towards a gravestone and tie himself to it with the strongest magic he could muster. Harry flung himself against the control, his head so filled with mental screaming that he could hardly tell if it was rage or hatred he felt. It was a special torment to feel Moody control his magic.

But that was what he did. Harry tightened the ropes around himself and then gave his wand to Moody.

Moody tucked it away and turned to face a large cauldron that was waiting near the edge of the graveyard. There was a bundle wrapped in black cloth on the ground beside it, and Harry could guess what it contained.

He heard Moody talking about the ritual, barely. He held out his arm when commanded, and Moody took his blood, as well as bone dust from a grave labeled TOM RIDDLE. Then he unwrapped the bundle, and Harry’s scar flared with pain that was another, added burden to the Soul-Drinker controlling him.

But Harry ignored all that, because what was driving him mad was being controlled. His mind. His body. His magic. His will.

He flung himself against the restraints, and flung himself, and flung himself. He remembered, vaguely, watching a cat that Dudley and Piers had captured doing the same thing. Harry had been contemptuous, thinking the cat should wait and find a way out later.

Now he knew why that hadn’t happened.

Harry couldn’t rest. He screamed and flung himself, and he flung himself, and he flung himself—

Calm down.

The command flooded Harry with artificial drowsiness, and his muscles, which had tightened a little, relaxed until he lolled sideways on the headstone. He hadn’t realized that he’d managed to tense even that much.

His thoughts seemed to swirl in slow circles. He stared at the tall, pale figure rising from the cauldron and watched Moody wrap black robes around it.

His scar burned.

I am going to die.

Harry forced himself past it. He’d been ordered to be calm. Fine. He would be.

He watched as the Dark Lord spoke to Moody, and Moody knelt, laughing, as he melted back into what must be his natural body. Blond hair, unscarred face, both legs naturally his. He looked at the Dark Lord with adoration that told Harry any road out of this by playing on Moody’s fondness for him was closed. And there was no one else here to help, probably because most of the Death Eaters were only superficially loyal and Pettigrew had been sentenced a year ago after Harry caught him.

His mind whispered, Why did he teach me the Soul-Drinker? It makes sense that he would use it to control me, when I can throw off the Imperius. But why teach it to me in the first place? Why give me a chance to resist?

Harry forced his thoughts on, on, between what seemed like heavy blinks as his mind turned slowly in place, a great maelstrom caged.

Because I was the one who brought it to him.

Yes. It had been in the books at Grimmauld Place, although Harry hadn’t spent as much time absorbing it or trying to master it as the other spells. And once he had brought it up to “Moody,” he had paused, but had agreed to teach it to Harry.

He hadn’t revealed all the aspects of it. He had never told Harry it could be used to control the magic and not just the body, for example.

But he hadn’t refused to teach it to Harry. Harry supposed that might have been because the refusal would seem suspicious, or perhaps Moody was still considering Harry for recruitment into the Death Eaters then and hadn’t believed he would ever need to cast it on Harry if he could persuade him.

Perhaps he’d wanted blackmail material.

It didn’t matter. He hadn’t told Harry everything about what it could do, about what he could do. But that didn’t matter. Not when Harry hadn’t told Moody everything, either.

He reached down deep. There was the command to be calm, and there was his motionless body. But they were lids on a swirling maelstrom. The spell’s control of his magic wasn’t perfect. Harry hadn’t conjured the most perfect ropes he could have.

And there was the weakness of the Soul-Drinker. Books had confirmed it.

Harry watched until he saw “Moody” leaning back on his heels and staring up at the Dark Lord like someone drunk, bobbing and bobbing his head.

Then Harry let his magic carry the force of his hatred.

It ripped down the bonds that connected him to the imposter. Harry had never hated anyone as much as he did this man, here and now, and he ripped and ripped and ripped, and the Soul-Drinker’s weakness opened—

A two-way road.

Harry surged along that road and possessed “Moody.”

He felt the horror, the surprise, the implacable will that rose against him.

Harry didn’t care. He had found his hatred, and he had found his vengeance. He had “Moody” take his wand from its holster, and he cast one of the spells Harry had been taught that he knew “Moody” knew.

It was a simple Severing Charm, for the most part, but with a twist to the wand that made it a curse, not a charm. And it flew straight for the Dark Lord, who was still musing aloud about calling the Death Eaters back to his side, and it severed his limbs from his body.

The Dark Lord howled in shock and fury as he fell. Harry didn’t bother to pay much attention to what he did next. He had only needed to make sure that one of the most powerful Dark wizards in the world didn’t get in the way of what he was doing, or figure out that his servant was possessed and try to free him.

Without a hand to hold a wand, he would find that considerably more difficult.

“Moody”—Barty, his name was Barty—was furiously fighting Harry. Harry turned inwards.

He could have commanded the man to be calm, the way that Barty had with him. But he didn’t need to. His hatred had fallen on Barty from above, like a collapsing mountain’s rubble, and it held his will prone easily enough.

Besides.

Harry wanted Barty to feel every inch of what was going to happen next.

He lifted his borrowed wand, with his borrowed arm. A huge snake was coming forth from behind one of the gravestones, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter at all. Barty’s magic and body were used to casting spells that Harry hadn’t mastered yet.

And one of them was an incantation from the Black library that he hadn’t dared to try.

But could now. His hatred made him as free as a bird. He could do everything now.

“Pestis incendium!”

There was a long moment when Harry thought it might not work after all, that he was going to have to struggle through with some other method of escape, but then he felt it. The spell leaped out of Barty’s wand and spread its wings across the graveyard.

Wings of flame. A great head yawned atop the leaping column of fire, and it became a rearing basilisk, neck lifted and fangs bared. The flame roared upright until it towered above some of the buildings Harry could dimly see in the distance.

Fiendfyre.

The snake lunged as if it thought it could get around the edge of the fire fast enough. Harry turned the flames towards it, as easy as breathing. There was a flicker and a snap of the basilisk’s jaws, and it swallowed the smaller snake whole.

A huge, blaring ripple of pain and horror and fury snapped around the graveyard, more than should have come from the death of a mere animal. Harry had no idea what it was. Had the snake been Voldemort’s familiar, and he was grieving its loss?

It didn’t matter. Harry turned his attention back to Barty, who was struggling harder against him than ever, and expressing his own horror over the death of the snake and the mutilation of his master’s body.

And you called others weak, Harry whispered to him.

He let Barty stand, as he’d been trying to do. But he didn’t let him regain any other control. Even with the Soul-Drinker being a two-way path, it didn’t matter. Barty couldn’t escape. Harry’s hatred was there, and this time, he didn’t want the threat to just vanish and leave him alone. He wanted to do some damage.

Harry—Harry, you can’t—

I hate you. I hate you more than I have ever hated anyone.

He couldn’t see the Dark Lord. Neither of them could. Maybe he was still writhing on the ground, alive, because not even the backlash of a Killing Curse could destroy him, but it didn’t matter.

Harry had Barty toss Harry’s wand back to his own body. He made his own hand move and clasp it.

Barty tried to break free again. Harry turned his attention to the man, and his hatred rose like a dragon and settled on Barty’s will, crushing his small struggles.

Harry—no—

Ah. So he could feel the intentions that danced and sparked through Harry’s mind, violent as summer lightning.

It didn’t matter. Harry took pleasure in speaking the words anyway, letting them leak into Barty’s mind along with everything else. Walk into the fire.

Barty screamed and screamed, but it didn’t matter. Harry forced him to stand and walk towards the Fiendfyre, which hadn’t spread very far from the point where it had begun. Harry had the impression that it was waiting on his will, since it had destroyed the snake, to see if he had more exciting things for it to do.

And now he did. Curls and tendrils of flame began to move ahead of the Fiendfyre, slinking towards Barty.

Death by burning is—is the most painful—

Yes, Harry said pleasantly, all his world consumed by and blazing with hatred. He had never felt like this. He had never known he could feel like this. Isn’t it?

I would have given you a painless death!

You would have killed me.

Barty walked closer and closer, and his will bucked and fought like a horse, trying again and again to seize control of Harry’s body and mind the way he had when he’d been brought here. Harry didn’t bother to calm him down. He wanted Barty to burn to death, and he wanted him to suffer for every second.

It seemed that the Fiendfyre wanted the same thing, maybe because Harry had ultimately been the one to will it into being. It snapped playfully at Barty’s boots as he entered it, and descended on him with gentleness that was nothing like the fury with which it had swallowed the Dark Lord’s snake.

Barty screamed.

There was nothing but pain in him, no will to fight. Harry still didn’t let him go. He held him there, and he felt him burning.

His hatred was hotter than the fire.

He only let Barty go when he felt the last of his consciousness disintegrate, flaring down to embers, and he reached out and made himself stand. He staggered over to the Cup, which Barty’s mind had told him was a Portkey that would take him back to Hogwarts. It had been meant to make it easy to leave Harry’s body in everyone’s sight.

“Potter.”

Harry turned his head, his neck painfully clicking, and stared at the Dark Lord. He was a burned torso and head, all his limbs piles of ash around him, his eyes deep-set and mad in little more than a skull, but he was still alive.

“I will remember.”

Harry didn’t think he could kill the Dark Lord if he had survived the Fiendfyre and all his limbs being cut off. He just stepped back and didn’t take his eyes off his enemy as he grasped the Portkey.

Inside him, his hatred whispered into silence.

*

“It was a Death Eater.”

Harry gasped and whimpered his way through the story, which said that it was a Death Eater in a disguise like the ones at the World Cup had worn. He never used the word “mask,” not when Dumbledore sat by listening with eyes like flint.

But he didn’t need to. “Disguise” was enough to slip past any Legilimency Dumbledore might try to use and leave Fudge babbling.

“But how did you escape, dear boy?” Fudge demanded, leaning forwards from the chair he had sat in beside Harry in the Headmaster’s office, listening enthralled to the tale. Harry shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. “And who was this Death Eater?”

“He didn’t want to tell me his name,” Harry whispered. “And he was wearing Moody’s body via Polyjuice disguise.”

“You don’t have wards up against this kind of thing, Albus?” Fudge demanded, spinning around to look at Dumbledore.

“I think Harry’s story is more important than blaming each other right now, Cornelius.”

Harry kept his head down and stared at his hands. They were bone-pale where they clutched each other. So much of this wasn’t even a lie. He didn’t have to pretend to the horror and fear beating off him.

He hadn’t felt those things in the moment of killing Barty, but he had felt enough of them in the moments leading up to that.

Why didn’t I feel them right then?

But Harry put the matter aside to worry about later.

“I am most interested in how you escaped, my dear boy.”

Harry could just imagine Dumbledore was, although maybe not for the reasons that Fudge was. He braced himself and lifted his head, shivering as he stared over Dumbledore’s shoulder at the wall, never meeting the man’s eyes directly.

“The cup was a two-way Portkey,” Harry whispered. “It was how they got me to the graveyard. The Death Eater Apparated in, though. He was—spouting a lot of nonsense about how I was going to help resurrect the Dark Lord. I don’t know exactly what he did, what ritual he used. I was terrified out of my mind.”

“Of course!” Fudge patted clumsily at Harry’s shoulder. “Madman!”

“But I do know that—that there was fire.” Harry shivered and closed his eyes. He heard his voice emerging calm and flat, as though someone else were controlling his body with the Soul-Drinker again. “I don’t think the Death Eater could control it. I know there was a snake, too, and the fire killed it. I was tied to the gravestone, but I managed to get my wand back and severed the ropes. And then I ran for the cup.”

“You knew it was a Portkey?”

Harry ignored the heavy meaning in Dumbledore’s voice. He swallowed and opened his eyes, still staring at the wall. “I didn’t know—for sure. I just thought that maybe there was a chance it could help me get away.”

“Naturally, naturally! You demonstrated a cool head in battle, young man, and we are grateful to you! Imagine what would have happened if the Death Eater had succeeded in that insane ritual.” Fudge shook his head. “Of course it wouldn’t have resurrected You-Know-Who, he’s gone, but we never would have known what happened to wreck the Tournament.”

“Yes,” Harry said faintly.

Dumbledore started to say something, and then the wall behind Harry, the one that held the door that led to the moving staircase, blew apart. Harry dived and rolled beneath the desk, reaching for his wand.

“ALBUS!”

Madam Marchbanks.

Harry had known she would be there to watch the Third Task, but Dumbledore and Fudge had brought him so hastily to the Headmaster’s office that he hadn’t had the chance to wait for her. And it seemed that she’d had to blow up Dumbledore’s wards to get in.

“Griselda.”

Dumbledore’s voice was low and what Harry would describe as menacing. It didn’t matter. He stood up and walked around the desk into Madam Marchbanks’s arms, leaning against her and shuddering.

It was partially pretense, but partially not. He’d had to go from confronting Barty and the Dark Lord in the graveyard, fighting the Soul-Drinker, and casting Fiendfyre to dancing around the truth in Dumbledore’s presence.

“YOU TOOK HIM AWAY FROM ME!”

“We needed to question him about what had happened—”

“YOU TOOK HIM AND YOU LOCKED ME OUT!”

Madam Marchbanks was shaking. Harry wondered if some of it was fear and not anger, but he didn’t really have to care, he thought. He curled up and clung to her, and her hand came down and stroked his hair.

He was safe now.

“We needed to know—”

“WITHOUT MY PERMISSION! WITHOUT MY PRESENCE!”

Harry hid a smile—easy to do with his face pressed into his guardian’s robes—and curled closer still. Dumbledore would regret how eager he’d been to talk to Harry in the end, and that was all Harry wanted at the moment.

She would fight for him.

She always would.

*

“And what exactly happened in the graveyard?”

Harry sighed and leaned back at the table in the dungeon classroom his friends had dragged him to, looking around. Hermione hovered behind him, and Theo and Michael were sitting on either side of him. Zacharias and Parvati leaned forwards intently from the other side.

Harry had to decide what to tell them, now.

At least he didn’t think any of them had Legilimency training, and he didn’t have to be so careful with the words he spoke. He gave them a brief, true outline of how Barty had confronted him in Moody’s guise, and how he’d got to the graveyard and been controlled into tying himself up and giving his wand to Barty.

“But—”

“Yeah?”

“I thought you could resist the Imperius.” Parvati peered at him sternly.

Harry knew he didn’t imagine the way Theo’s gaze sharpened. He shrugged a little, limply, and said, “It wasn’t the Imperius.”

“Oh.”

Harry discussed fighting back against the mind control spell, and what little bits of the ritual he remembered. Everyone looked pale as he spoke of the Dark Lord coming back because of the potion. Hermione put her hands over her face.

Then Harry paused and said, “I was so horrified by the thought of getting killed that I was able to break free of the mental control the impostor had me under. He—he didn’t expect that. I—used some magic that would probably get me arrested.”

“What is it?” Theo’s voice was very soft and very sharp.

“I cut the Dark Lord’s arms and legs off—”

People either choked or tried to shout at the same time.

Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at them. They realized less than a moment later what was going on, and broke off. Then they exchanged glances that made Harry feel as if he sat on the outside, and they were a group of friends making their own decisions, exchanging their own silent ideas.

That was all right. Uncomfortable, but all right. Harry already knew that he would carry the full truth of what happened with him, into silence.

They seemed to have elected Theo spokesman. He clasped his hands in front of him on the table, and said, “No one here will judge you.”

Harry doubted that very much, but he ducked his head and nodded. “The other spell I used was Fiendfyre.”

Parvati looked as if she would faint. Zacharias pushed his chair back so that there was suddenly twice as much distance between him and Harry.

This is why I won’t tell you the full truth, Harry thought.

“What’s Fiendfyre?” Michael and Hermione asked at almost the same time.

Harry let Theo explain. He kept his eyes moving slowly and steadily between each of his friends’ faces. Parvati looked a little ashamed of her reaction, but Zacharias kept his chair pushed back, his gaze averted.

That is all right.

“That’s some of the most powerful Dark Arts you can cast,” Zacharias finally whispered, after Theo’s explanation had died into silence. “You can’t—you can’t cast that kind of spell unless you mean it.”

“Yes.”

“You’re Darker than I thought.”

“If you’re going to leave, then there are certain things I’ll have to remove from you with a Memory Charm, Zacharias.”

Zacharias started wildly. Harry kept his gaze on the boy who had been his friend, and his hand on his wand. He knew more than enough magic to trip Zacharias up and bind him if he tried to flee.

And if he had to cast the Memory Charm on the others?

He would do that. Hermione might be a problem, but Harry was sure that he would find the motivation. If he could vanish a dragon, he could make a ghost stop existing, if he couldn’t Obliviate her.

The winter wind of his hatred howled in him. It would be nothing to swing it to chill the next person who betrayed him.

Zacharias stared at him. So did the others. Well, Theo looked back and forth between Harry and Zacharias with a curious expression, as if wondering which one of them would strike first.

“I didn’t say,” Zacharias whispered between lips that sounded numb, “that I was going to leave.”

“You said I was Darker than you thought. You disapprove of the magic that I used to save my life.” Harry tilted his head. He felt calm, confident, strong, full of loathing. He would strike, and he would win, and if Zacharias insisted on challenging him, he would lose.

“I didn’t say that I was going to leave.” Zacharias cleared his throat and stared at the table. When he spoke again, his voice sounded different, small and nervous. “You look like you’re going to kill me.”

“I would prefer to just use the Memory Charm.”

“I’m not going to leave!”

“Then don’t scold me. I’m not going to tolerate scolding.”

Zacharias said nothing for long enough that Harry wondered if he was having trouble making up his mind. Harry ignored the temptation to look at his other friends. He didn’t want to see the disapproval, the scolding, on their faces, either. With as fragile as he felt right now, he would simply attack them if they wanted to wail about morality.

Fragile? No, I’m strong.

But he didn’t feel as strong as he’d thought, sitting there. He waited, and waited, and Zacharias finally leaned back in his chair and coughed.

“I’m glad that you survived,” he said. “And I just want to know—would you use Fiendfyre again? If that was the only spell that could save you?”

“Without hesitation,” Harry whispered.

“Would—you use it just to use it? To burn someone’s house to punish them, for example?”

“What would be the point of that?”

Zacharias’s hands flexed, and he muttered something under his breath that Harry couldn’t quite hear. Then he sighed and met Harry’s eyes again. “You would choose a different spell if you wanted to burn someone’s house to punish them.”

“Yes.”

Zacharias closed his eyes and gave a short, unhappy laugh that Harry didn’t really understand. But he shook his head and sat upright in his chair, too. “I can’t even imagine what you went through,” he said. “Being controlled like that. But I caught a glimpse of the power you can command when you vanished the dragon, and I didn’t turn away from you then. I won’t turn away now. Just—Harry, sheathe your claws, won’t you?”

Harry blinked and then leaned slowly back, nodding. He supposed that he shouldn’t try to make his friends afraid. They would truly leave not because they wanted to betray him, but because they would fear him.

And Harry—

Didn’t want to be alone because of his own fears. Only if it was necessary.

“We can accept what happened,” Theo said, looking steadily around the table, meeting the others’ eyes one by one. “We can say that you told us the true story and we’re satisfied with it.”

The others nodded. Parvati even looked up with a faint smile. “Maybe you can teach us all how to resist the Imperius.”

Hermione floated down and hugged Harry, even though it felt like nothing more than a brief brush of cold, wet mist along his robes. “I was so scared,” she whispered. “But for you. Not of you.”

Harry swallowed, took a deep breath, and nodded. And then he went on to tell them something that made them laugh, the confrontation in Dumbledore’s office with the Headmaster and Fudge.

Through it all, he could feel Theo’s eyes on him, but Harry did his best to ignore that.

*

“That’s not all that happened.”

Harry turned around to face Theo. They were near the place where they would have to part so they could return to their respective common rooms. The others had already gone, accepting without saying anything that Theo wanted to talk to Harry in private.

“No, it’s not,” Harry said softly.

“Why are you keeping it from me?”

“Because murder is one thing. And torture is another.”

Theo watched him, his face pale but his eyes a shining, light grey in the shifting shadows of the torches. Finally, he said, “I would never blame you for anything that you did to defend your own life.”

Harry blew out a short breath. Then he said, “I grabbed control of the Death Eater’s mind and made him walk into the Fiendfyre. I held him there while he died.”

Theo’s eyes widened. Then he smiled, a small, cold, cruel expression.

“He deserved it.”

And that was all that needed to be said between them.

*

Madam Marchbanks listened carefully as Harry told her the truth. Then she settled back in her chair and watched him bleakly.

Harry waited. He knew where to run to, how to get past the wards, if she turned on him. If she tried to have him arrested or detained.

But Madam Marchbanks only sighed and said, “You need a Mind-Healer.”

“Because I’m a torturer, a killer, I know—”

“No. For the trauma.”

Harry paused. Then he said, “Killing him didn’t traumatize me.”

“It made you jagged. The memory is lurking just beneath the surface. And there’s the fact that someone you trusted to teach you kidnapped you. The betrayal would be profound.” Madam Marchbanks spoke in a soft tone, without kindness, only sense, as if she were inside his head and could hear how Harry always spoke to himself. “The memory can be a source of strength to you, but only if we bind it so you remember what you did but your emotions aren’t part of it.”

“Mind-Healing can do that?”

“Yes, it can.” Madam Marchbanks thumped her cane once on the floor. “And without this, there’s a chance that you’ll break, clear through. You’re already making plans for what happens if I betray you, aren’t you?”

Harry swallowed. He wanted to deny it, but he knew that Madam Marchbanks would only give him an unimpressed stare. So he whispered, “Yes.”

Madam Marchbanks drew her wand. Harry tensed, the winter wind inside him rising, but Madam Marchbanks only pointed her wand at herself and said, “Let the Vow I take now kill me, suffering slowly, over the days of a month if I ever break it.” She tapped her wand, which glowed the bright green of the Killing Curse, against her knee and said, “I will not betray you.”

Harry shuddered, relaxing in a great rush. For the first time since the graveyard, he realized. Really for the first time since then.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Madam Marchbanks stood and made her way over to him, moving obviously. She held out her arms, and Harry rushed into them and clung to her, for the first time since then.

“We’ll find a Mind-Healer tomorrow,” Madam Marchbanks whispered. “They’ll swear the same Vow at wandpoint if I have to make them do that. And then we’ll start subtracting the less useful emotions from your experience.”

“I never want to be helpless again,” Harry breathed, something he would only confess to her.

“And you won’t be.” Madam Marchbanks stepped back, meeting his eyes. “Voldemort is back, obviously, whether he still has a physical form after the Fiendfyre or not. We will find him. We will defeat him. And we’ll start seeking out news. Not the kind of gossip that rag reports on,” she said, sneering at the Prophet on the table. They hadn’t stopped reporting on Krum’s victory since it happened. “Ways to discover him, fight him, turn his allies from him.”

“Because he’ll come after me?”

“For what he’ll do in the future. For what he’s already done. No one touches my ward and gets away with it.”

Harry pressed closer to her, and felt her hand on his shoulder, heavy, protective. For a moment, he closed his eyes and let the tears rise in them the way they wanted to.

And then he pushed them away. Because tears wouldn’t help hm survive at the moment.

Hatred would.

And trust. And friendship.

Harry didn’t know if he was capable of love, but no one was demanding that he be.

He would survive.

The End.