4,526𝕸𝖔𝖓𝖔𝖈𝖍𝖗𝖔𝖒𝖊
Act IV - Skin In The Game
Chapter 33: The Plans of Mice And Men Part 2
The entire place was violently calm.
The leased violence in the air had been palpable. Amelia had felt the pain from all six Confringo curses hitting her, screaming as they pierced into her skin, and struck her in vital places. The entirety of her taskforce was down on the floor, groaning as they attempted to get up despite their agony. Some among them had the determination to at least summon vials of healing potion from their pouches and drink it, but it was to no good. A couple of them, including Amelia herself, attempted healing spells, but even those were to no avail.
No magical signature. No light. No sound. No spellfire at all. Yet the feeling of something tingling in her legs was ever present; the feeling of her spine pierced by a broken shard of her vertebrae, the constant burn from her broken finger, her dislocated pelvis, and the damaged shoulder girdle.
It was impossible to stand up. It was impossible to fight. It had to be an illusion and yet, it stayed unchanged despite countless casting of the general counter-spell. Exercising Occlumency lessened the pain to some degree, but didn't quite vanish it. In just one stupid move, the entire task force was down, unable to fight, unable to do anything, while a schoolboy a third her age was fighting dementors and death eaters and what not above, all by himself.
And winning.
It made her feel useless. Worthless. A failure.
And then she heard it.
"There is one at the door."
A voice. Not human, but more like rusted metal being dragged on basalt. With it came a feeling of icy cold and dreadful decay, as if someone had stepped on her grave. Everything around her felt strangely muted.
"Who is…" Amelia trailed off, finding it hard to breathe in the unnatural cold. "Who… who is there?"
"There is one at the door…
Is it thief, thug or whore?
There is one at the door….
And there is room for one more…"
The more it said, the more it became an amalgam of howls, whines and strangled coughs.
Amelia twisted around on the spot, her wand somehow aimed at the darkness that lay in front of her. The sound of a footstep reverberated in the darkness, followed by another, and then another. It took a moment to realise that it was coming from multiple directions, radially inward towards them. That made no sense, since they were surrounded by crystalized soldiers that were being slowly turned into dementors. Slowly, a figure came into her focus, one that was twisted so far into grotesque territory that calling it human was a long shot. Framed by the rays of her Lumos charm, its lanky, wiry frame slid into her vision. Gaunt-faced and rickety, it stood on decaying bones, and loosely dangling rotten tissue from its joints and entwined around the skeletal frame. Something that could have once been a human brain was twisted into a mix of dementor cloak-fabric and languidly-spasming human tissue. There was no skull, and an eerie, primordial light erupted out of its empty ocular sockets.
"What… what are you?" Amelia levelled her wand, while exercising her Occlumency to the best she could. Something about this thing just clawed at her subconscious, instilling the same kind of fear as an injured prey felt at the sight of a hungry wolf.
"Look, don't come any closer. I'm… warning you."
The thing just kept harping the same line. Only this time, a chorus of voices said something completely different in the background.
There is one at the door…/ Who enters my domain?
Is it thief, thug or whore? / You have no right to come to this place….
The dichotomy between the two different things the thing was saying at the same time made her shiver.
Is it… an inferius? She wondered. If it was, it was different from any other inferi she had seen in her lifetime. Inferi were animated corpses of the dead raised by a necromancer to do their bidding. She had never heard of an inferius capable of speaking by itself like this, much less expressing itself in two contradicting statements at once. For Merlin's sake, it had a single voice-box, and even that was torn in half and infested with maggots.
"Look, we just entered by mistake. We just want to free our people and walk away. That's all."
There is one at the door… / Prey has walked in on two legs…
And there is room for one more…. / All prey must be devoured….
Amelia stiffened. Part of her wanted to see what casting the killing curse on this thing would do. She doubted the illusion around this place would be able to recreate the feeling of being completely and utterly dead in her, but she had never gained the mindset twisted enough to cast the killing curse. Casting physical hexes and curses was out of the window, which left only one option.
Amelia levelled her wand at its face and whispered. "Legilimens."
—And froze.
It was like having the languid, arrhythmic pulsing of a maggot-filled corpse touching every inch of her skin, drenching her with the stench of rotten meat. The stale body odour was mixed with mildew, the sound of nails screeching across a chalkboard, the taste of rotten milk, and the flavour of spoiled fruit. All of those things came to her all at once, in excruciating detail.
That was what she felt, a stomach-churning, nightmare-inducing mass, blazing like a lighthouse beacon upon the darkness of her mind. And while she couldn't get any details through the haze of absolute wrongness that engulfed her from all sides, a face, or at least flashes of one rose before her mind. She had this faint feeling that someone was screaming, and she dimly noted that it was probably her.
The next thing she knew, she had fallen to the ground, screaming in an impatient symphony, and judging from the dampness on her cheeks, she must have been crying, and unless she was under another illusion that was coating her vision red, her eyes were oozing blood.
Merlin's bones! What on earth was that thing? What had she just seen?
Even brushing against the subject in her thoughts was enough to bring the memory of the thing back to her in all its hideous terror. And that face! That face! She flinched and squeezed her eyes shut, her body shaking. She couldn't say how long it took to fight her way clear of the memory — and when she did, everything was the same, only she had bitten her tongue, and her throat felt raw. She shook even harder.
It couldn't be! It couldn't be! This was a — this had to be a trick for there was no way this thing in front of her could be —
"...Gideon?"
Gideon Prewitt. Molly Weasley's elder brother. Her fiance, back during the First War. They had just been engaged for two days before the sudden death of Warden Thompson made Gideon to leave his post as an Auror and take up the mantle of Warden of Azkaban.
It was just a week later that the dementors had rebelled to join the Dark Lord's ranks. Everyone that was inside the island prison was Kissed, Gideon included. Yet… he was… how?
"You killed my people!" The shambling thing retched loudly, both grimacing and snarling at the same time. Even worse was that half of its face, if it could be called a face at all, was doing all the snarling, while the other grinned malevolently at the same time, humming an eerie little tune.
The worst part? It sounded exactly like Gideon!
"You forced us into this! You have no right! You murder us at your whim!"
"I… I didn't do anything, Gideon, I…." Amelia trailed off, unable to breathe, unable to speak, tears coming out of her eyes as she took in the abomination that her fiance had become. "What… what happened to you?"
"LIES!" The inferi snarled. "I WAS THERE! I SAW IT! YOU…. YOU FORCED US IN! YOU FORCED US IN! I KNOW EVERYTHING!"
"What… what did you see?"
The inferi laughed for an instant. "Dementors! I saw them! We fought them! We fought them for one week! Made them suffer for our suffering! Their wickedness, their coldness, their deathrattle wasting the flesh off our bodies…"
It raised both arms, revealing the putrid bulges that should have been muscle, instead were filled with maggots.
"We fought it all! They pushed us back, here in this sanctum, but they could not enter. Could not enter! COULD NOT ENTER! HAHAAH! As if! As if they needed to! AHAHAHAH!"
Slowly, painfully, Amelia rose. Had she been in a better frame of mind, she'd have realised that none of her compatriots were speaking, or even groaning for that matter. "What are you talking about? Who did this to you?"
"It…." whispered Gi— the inferi. "It was our last choice! This sanctum! It's sanctum! The dementors can't enter it, you see."
That made a weird amount of sense. Come to think of it, she hadn't so much as felt the dementorish cold the moment she had entered the heart of the tower, into this tunnel. Official Ministry records stated this as the breeding ground of the dementors, which was why none of the prisoners were ever brought here. Even the highest-security wing was placed near the damn top of the central tower, never this close.
Come to think of it, there were no mentions of the dementors swarming in this area. Not even from the Azkaban patrol staff. And yet, despite those crystals clearly transforming the prisoners into dementors, there was no trace of a real dementor around.
"Who did this to you?"
"It was our last choice!" whispered the inferi. "We held them for as long as we could, living in this area where the dementors could not tread. We locked them out, and we locked ourselves in. We killed ourselves. We killed us all! And now, we kill! We hunt!" It showed her its jagged, deformed teeth. "All that comes at our door. For there is always room for one more."
It's not really seeing me, Amelia thought, a pang of disappointment and sorrow flooding through her. This was an inferius, stuck with echoes of its thoughts and emotions, that it was continually repeating over and over, as if stuck in a temporal loop.
Except for those eerie rhyming lines at the end.
"I will not let you kill us," said Amelia slowly, pushing herself up. Between the revelation, the backlash from the legilimency and her own Occlumency, the illusory agony of those curses from earlier had diminished to a great degree.
And then the inferi apparated, and smashed right into the hastily raised Protego Amelia had raised a fraction of a second ago.
"YOU KILLED US! I WILL NOT LET YOU KILL US AGAIN! FOR THERE IS —"
SMASH!
The inferius smashed against her shield yet again, and hammered against it hard with both arms, not even attempting to get past it and attack her from the sides. The impact of the unstoppable force and the unmovable object was deafening as the resulting shockwave shattered through some of the crystals around her.
WHAT? But when she had cast spells at them they hadn't —
SMASH!
A second inferius arose out from her left and smashed into her shield. Amelia quickly encased herself and her associates in a dome of protective Protego energy, grunting as the dead hammered against her shield relentlessly like a raging insane lumberjack. She felt the shield resonate with her body, drawing more and more on her magic, but to no avail.
For they kept coming.
"There is one at the door!"
From all sides.
SMASH!
And there was only so much she could do to hold them back.
"Is it thief, thug or whore?"
Rufus wasn't moving. Williamson wasn't moving. Kingsley wasn't moving. The hired hands weren't moving. She was all alone. Looking down at her feet, she spotted something shallow and green slowly trickling their way past her ankles. CRYSTAL! She looked at her unmoving compatriots! They were slowly being encased in crystal, just like she was! This — this was a trap! They would be entrapped in this place and be transformed into dementors, their bodies turned to such inferi and be forced to play in this endless charade for the sick amusement of whatever dark power lurked within.
SMASH!
Her shield broke. Instantly, she conjured yet another, but by this time, the inferi already had their hands on four of her people, Williamson and Savage included. The protego sprang out in a radius, but it hurled both Aurors out of the barrier, alongwith the inferi that began pulling them into the darkness. They would be made into crystal, their souls harvested and twisted to become part of the dementor hive. She — she had just doomed everyone! She had doomed them all! Just like Gideon!
Gideon —
Forgive —
"There is one at the door!"
The shield shattered. Yet again. Amelia cast severing curses, cutting off the inferius hands.
It didn't matter. Even bodiless hands were dragging her people with them.
She cast the shield again.
Meanwhile the crystal was already up to her knees, slowly crawling up her upper thighs.
Forgive me!
The shield shattered.
"And there is room for —"
BOOOOM!
Right that moment, the canopy above the tunnel detonated violently as a titanic blade studded with rubies, and easily the size of a giant pillar smashed through the ceiling and impaled through the floor. A gale of frightening intensity erupted from the base of the blade and blasted out in every direction, shattering every single piece of crystal that fell in its path.
Within a single second, every single one of her taskforce was free, and the ones that were studded to the wall were full of cracks tearing along their periphery.
"One more," said Harry Potter, standing atop the hilt of the massive blade, before jumping down to the floor, the blade instantly reducing to its original size. Potter lifted the blade off the floor and threw it at Amelia, who instantly pierced the inferius right next to her, disintegrating it to shreds instantly.
"Merlin's bones, Director," said Harry Potter in a chirpy voice that only made him sound more surreal. "You look awful. And you really shouldn't attempt to fight these people while sitting down like that. Unless… are you wounded? I see. You're lucky I'm here, these things would absolutely kill you otherwise."
And just like that, the spell was broken.
"Wait… how did you—" Amelia began.
"You heard me," said Potter. "There's no way you'd be fighting them sitting like that if you weren't wounded in the first place. Seriously, Director Bones, you're as bad as Sirius. What else could've gotten you to enter this place unguarded? Even I would think twice before getting in here."
"We, uh, came here to rescue our people," said Amelia, still surprised. "And then we found, uh —"
She gestured at Gi — the inferi.
"Ah, this thing," said Potter. "It isn't going to attack me. Actually, there's nothing in it. Just some leftover emotions and insanity stuck in a dead body. I was expecting something… I don't know, nightmarish?"
Amelia wanted to argue that it was nightmarish enough that facing it again in her lifetime would be too soon. But right then, the sword yanked itself out of her hand and stabbed Gideon-inferius in the heart, and it disintegrated to dust.
"There, taken care of."
"I don't think so," came a voice from her left. Both of them turned to face the inferius that was standing there, staring at them… no, at Harry Potter with an intense hatred. There were no signs of damage upon its dead form. More importantly, neither of them had seen it move.
Harry Potter smiled. There was no humour in his eyes. The next moment, his eyes morphed into a putrid yellow. The last time she had seen those eyes, he had just finished de-handing Dawlish.
"Ah, so it's like that," he said, and once again, the sword of Godric Gryffindor shot at Amelia who caught it deftly. "Director Bones, kindly free everyone and leave. All of you will absolutely die if you are in this cavern when the actual fight begins. I will not be able to protect you."
"I can help —"
"Don't be foolish," he spat, and there was a metallic edge to his voice that sounded absolutely inhuman. "All of you would've been dead had I not intervened."
"You — you don't understand," said Amelia, half-yelling, half-pleading. "That — that's Gideon Prewitt. He's —"
The rest of her words died in her throat as his yellow-eyed gaze fell upon her. "That is not Gideon Prewitt, Amelia Bones. That thing, seeing through that inferi's eyes is a twisted abomination that's playing with your mind. It's not real."
"But it can be," said the inferius through its cracked lips, its empty gaze suddenly focussed on Amelia. "This place is cursed! We should not have come here! Help me, Amelia! Help me! Let me out of this place! Help me —"
Harry Potter hissed, and a bolt of grey shot out of his hand, and the inferius disintegrated.
"POTTER—" Amelia yelled.
"It keeps us alive for company! As tools!" whispered another inferius in Gideon's voice.
"It hurts!" said another.
"Save me!"
And another.
"Help me, Amelia!"
"It won't let me die!"
The inferi rose from every direction, walking towards her. The eerie coldness was returning, and the crystals were growing, crawling across the floor, barely inches from her feet. Amelia tried to grasp her wand firmly, but it dropped to the floor.
"I…" she said, her voice trembling. "I…."
The darkness was increasing, something that felt impossible. A cold, sleepy feeling was beginning to overwhelm her, and with it, came emotions — memories of her and Gideon, the times spent together, the sorrow upon losing him, to know that she could have stopped him had she just wanted to, the realisation that she had just let him walk off to his death, that there was a chance that she could help him, and if she couldn't, the least she could do was to join him in his plight and —
—And Harry Potter laughed.
The amusement ringing in his voice distracted her. Shaking her head, she saw the young man laugh like he had gone crazy. Like he had finally gotten the punchline of the greatest joke in the world. Blinking, she recognized that her wand had fallen off her hand and was lying at her feet. Quickly, she picked it up.
"I'm both impressed, and appalled," said Harry Potter. "Entrapping a consciousness like that is one thing, but manipulating them like this? You really don't like wasting things don't you? The souls twisted to form dementors, the bodies turned into inferi, and their consciousness… you are actually using their individual consciousness to serve as puppet threads to control the inferi. Really, everytime I think I've seen the worst of Magic, something comes and proves me wrong."
Truth be told, even with his Death-vision, Harry wouldn't have been able to tell the difference that quickly, if not for his recent altercation with Schulz. That necromancer… no, that ectomancer had performed something similar, albeit on a smaller scale.
Schulz had repeatedly switched his consciousness among the werewolf bodies inside the hospital zone.
This thing that was operating behind the inferi's eyes was doing the same, only with foreign cognizances, exerting them in the same way a spider extended its threads outward to form its vast web.
And why did that image send a shudder down his spine again?
The nearest inferius split its face almost literally, a rictus grin pulling back to reveal sharp jagged teeth filled with worms, and something black and awful shone behind its eyes.
"Ah," it said. "So insightful! So clever!" It tilted its head, which broke off and dropped to the floor. That didn't stop the mouth from speaking. "Why doesn't it work for you?"
"Sorry," said Harry. "Toying with me doesn't turn me on. It makes me want to kill you. Seriously, a permanent Gate opens into the heart of the Anima, and you are what it's got after all this time? Seriously? That's just plain disappointing."
"Harry!" Amelia hissed. "Don't chat with it. Kill it. It — if it is still using Gideon —"
"Gideon Prewitt is still within me, Amelia," said the inferius head, as its body crouched down to lift it back up. "He's calling for you. Screaming your name, begging you to give him release, save him from his fate… he's so lonely, Amelia. Why don't you join him and be together again?"
"Not happening," said Harry. "For one, she's about to wed my godfather when he returns." Amelia's head snapped in his direction, and Harry continued. "Yes. When, not if. And even without that, she's got better things to do than waste her life for a madman that's supposed to have died after being flung through the Veil. I mean, you know how that is, right, Ekrizdis?"
For the second time, Amelia snapped her neck towards Harry so fast that she feared she might have snapped it.
"...what did you say?"
"Ekrizdis," said Harry Potter, never once leaving the inferi's gaze. "I mean, constructing your sanctum as an exact replica of the Sunken Vault's tunnel of horrors? Twisting souls of captured sailors into wraiths, and using them as orifices to drain other souls and feed them directly into your hive mind? Legions of inferi passively controlled by the same hive-mind, while also maintaining the enchantments without a singular wardstone, kind of like Ananta-Shesha does for the Lair? It's like you were not even trying to hide it."
"Well, well, well…." said the voice, and this time there was something deep and dark about it. Amelia flinched, as a pair of skeletal hands grasped the inferi's head, and tore it apart. The being that came out of the shadows was….
A dementor.
"You know what they say…" it said, the words coming out as a mix of human and the dementorish deathrattle. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world it didn't exist!"
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