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Act IV - Skin In The Game
Chapter 36: Defying A Dark Lord
On one side was Ekrizdis. An ancient archwizard that had shredded off his mortality and ascended to a spiritual existence. Gathering souls for centuries inside an island prison, savouring upon the raw and potent energies of the Anima, preparing for his magnum opus. The magical equivalent of hundreds, no, thousands of witches and wizards, amalgamated inside one single preternatural entity. The gloomy aura around him was only magnified by the presence of dementors and inferi surrounding them on all sides β an eternal chasm of despair.
It told the universe: I have ascended to become God, and this is my domain. I shall expand until everything is Me.
On the other end, was Harry Potter. Boy-Who-Lived. Peverell Vessel. Nexus-Child. Death's Cloak hung over his shoulder, and wand in hand, he faced the nigh unkillable enemy. He held no blade, yet a hungry darkness flared all around him, vanishing every bit of magic that came within reach.
It told the universe: I stand alone, but I wield the power to end the Universe itself. Kneel or perish.
Amelia Bones was human, and she had never felt more human than at that moment. She looked back at the heart of the prison tower she had just escaped from with the rest of her soldiers. The entire place, now sealed from the inside by Harry Potter's glacial spell, was flaring powerfully, like a volcano about to explode.
It told the universe: Oh shit.
"Merlin, we can't handle this," claimed Proudfoot, as yet another explosion shook the entire island. "At this rate we'll be buried under this goddamn prison. There's no saying where these tunnels will even let us to, or what we're going to do once we get there!"
"We get to the boats, incapacitate everything that gets in our way, and if we cannot, the Director is going to impale them with that large, angry, blazing black sword of hers," quipped Rufus, casting a quick anti-velocity charm to prevent several boulders from falling from above.
"Evanesco Duo!" said Kingsley, vanishing the floating rocks. "It would've been so much better if we had Dumbledore here."
"Dumbledore is already busy managing that obscurial from destroying whatever's left of Wizarding Britain," said Rufus. "I'd wager he's trying to send it out of Britain right now to save its life. Pretty sure the Minister wouldn't let it stay alive after this."
"The Minister has bigger things to worry about than the fate of a wizard child that was tortured to a degree to transform into an Obscurial," snapped Bones. She tightened her grip over Gryffindor's majestic blade, now shining with a brilliant darkness as the Lumos charm on her wand paved the way ahead.
"Like what?" demanded Rufus.
"Like the fact that his own Senior Undersecretary ignored Mr. Scamander's sane advice and let that obscurial loose upon Diagon Alley."
"She did what?" demanded Savage. He was the only one that was still able to function and cast magic among the entire lot that Amelia had broken out from those crystals. He,Proudfoot and two more hit-wizards were levitating the rest of the unconscious staff, while Amelia, Kingsley and Rufus were leading the way forward.
That kind of pissed her off; she was panting from the constant magical exertion, while Savage and the others were throwing spells around like they were going out of fashion. Apparently plugging yourself to those crystals attached to a living prison drawing power from the Anima did wonders for your magical reserves.
"Later," said Amelia. "I just want to get everyone out of here safely, when I β"
βSCREECH β
She impaled the blade head-on at the dementor that came rattling at them from them.
"βwhen I go back to get Potter out."
Yes. When, not if. She might have listened to Potter's orders, but she needed to show him who was the adult there. Otherwise he might start thinking he was in charge.
"Oh sure that's going to be easy!" scoffed Rufus. "I really think you should let Potter handle that one, Director."
"I agree," said Proudfoot. "He seemed to know what he was doing, earlier. We've got enough in our hands right now! That dementor-wizard thing⦠he's dangerous!"
"I'm not letting a young man my Susan's age risk his life in doing my job, Auror Proudfoot," snapped Amelia. "And Merlin help anyone that gets in my way because I'm in a very bad mood and β"
She didn't quite get the chance to finish her sentence before a sense of primal terror clenched her throat shut, an unfocussed feeling of being stalked by a predator that seemed to rush up out of nowhere and filled her entire being. The most untrained, blunt-sensed dolt could have felt it; bloodlust beyond belief, backed by a power so far beyond human that she might as well be an insect facing down a lion in comparison. For a moment, she feared that Ekrizdis had already defeated Harry Potter and was coming after them, but then, she reasoned that if that had already come to pass, Ekrizdis wouldn't even bother with coming after them.
Her questions were answered by an explosion.
There was a flash of light, and a crack of thunder, as a wave of incredible magical force manifested right before them, and knocked everyone off their feet, leaving a large crater nearly fifty feet across. Shrieks and icy coldness spread around them, as no less than fifty dementors surrounded them from all sides, with about half a dozen Death-Eaters taking positions among them. Flames erupted on all sides, entrapping them inside, and in the centre of the crater, amidst those sinister flickers, the taskforce could see the most feared man in recent history standing alone, his midnight robes extending all the way down to the ground, a silhouette of flames behind him matching the insidious glow of his crimson eyes.
"You β you cannot be real!" said Proudfoot, taking a step forward, his wand hand raising up, despite how badly he was shaking in terror. "You β"
The rest of his words died in his stomach as he suddenly froze. Without so much as a flick of his wand, Lord Voldemort just looked at him and β
Proudfoot exploded, raining blood and gore everywhere, washing over the others, coating them with his innards.
"You really should've listened to him, Director Bones," said Lord Voldemort coldly, smirking at the stupefied face of the DMLE Director. "Very dangerous people around."
The entire scene was deathly quiet, as if a quieting charm had been cast over the entire area, as if to silence every single witch and wizard save Voldemort himself.
And then Amelia Bones shattered it.
"For that," she said, flicking her wand and vanishing Proudfoot's gory remains. "I am going to kill you myself."
The small smile on Voldemort's face looked positively demonic in the bloody light.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
The streak of malevolent green was slashed apart by the black blade, as fast as it had transversed the distance between them.
"That blade is impressive," said the Dark Lord, "but holding it does not a Gryffindor make. Do you even know how to wield that blade?"
"Let's find out."
Meanwhile, Rufus Scrimgeour marvelled at what he had just observed. He had memories of being a rookie Auror during the time of the First War, and had first-hand experience of seeing the Dark Lord kill someone. But even so, it had never been so fast as now. While deceptively simple in incantation with a single point-and-shoot wand movement, the killing curse required a considerable degree of personal power compared to most spells, and that was ignoring the other requirement whose necessity pushed the curse into the Unforgivable category. That Lord Voldemort could cast the curse at such speed and frequency only made him appear more inhuman.
That Amelia Bones had seen through it and slashed the spell in half spoke volumes of the woman's skill.
She raised the blade of Godric Gryffindor, it's dark radiance flooding the arena, pushing away the crimson glow. And in that light, Lord Voldemort looked more crude, more monstrous and yet at the same time, more killable.
"You are an accomplished witch, Madam Bones," said Lord Voldemort. "And from the oldest and purest of bloodlines to boot. As recognition, I will make your suffering short."
The DMLE Director just smiled, her confident pose telling everyone exactly why she had been the dictator that had ruled the DMLE for the better part of two decades. She stood in defiance of the Dark Lord, her wand ready and pulsing with a malevolent purple, awaiting only the command to fire, and her response was simple, but effective.
"I won't."
Ekrizdis flicked his finger, and a pool of silvery liquid began to slowly coalesce and contort, taking weird shapes. Almost instantly, the crystals surrounding them from all sides began to glow intensely, with motes of energy arising out of them and converging into the pool of silvery liquid.
"Starshard silver," said Ekrizdis, noting Harry's gaze. "An alloy of silver and mercury, alchemically purified. Once prepared, not only will they serve as magical conduits magnitudes superior to the human body, they are fascinatingly good at binding souls to themselves."
"It⦠certainly is a unique piece of work," said Harry dryly. "I recall Voldemort doing something similar to Pettigrew."
Ekrizdis scoffed. "Do not compare enchanted silver with this, Harry Potter. Your Dark Lord is many things, but an alchemist he is not. This⦠this is derived from Flamel's own technique."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" asked Harry dryly. If Nicholas Flamel had reached out to him to gain the secrets of his work, it was a no-brainer that he hadn't done so in the past already. Hell, he himself had stated quite openly that every Warden put tabs on the others, and Nicholas had been walking the Earth for quite some time.
He noted the way the metal was slowly taking a humanoid form. In less than half a minute, it had morphed from a pool of metal into something that was actually breathing.
"Is it⦠I don't know, going to be alive or something? A homunculus?"
"It's not, not yet at least," said Ekrizdis genially. "Think of it as a wand, of sorts. Or a wand transformed into a body. Semantics, really. Once my magnum opus is complete, once I have become Animus Eternum, I will be able to channel the entire power of my Wishcraft through this form."
Wishcraft, Harry noted. Not magic, but wishcraft. Much like Death, Summer, or another Family Magic.
"All I see is a really big battery that's mass producing a lot of magical energy and a synthetic body that allows you to use all that power without burning yourself to shreds."
Ekrizdis smiled. "You're only human. Unlike yourself, I see things from a higher perspective, Harry Potter. Family Magic is Purpose made manifest, providence of the gods themselves. Whether it be Summer, Binding, or Deathβ¦"
Harry's eyes went wide.
Ekrizdis laughed. "What? Did you think your power of Death is somehow, beyond magic? Yes, it is annoyingly good at dispersing standard forms of witchcraft and wizardry, it still behaves too much like Magic, doesn't it?"
For once, Harry had no answer. Everyone at the Workshop at Hogwarts had come to the same conclusion before. It was why they had agreed to call Death a thaumaturgical discipline like Magic itself. At the same time, Death, using the face of his ancestor, had taken advantage of his status as a Nexus Child and seeped into him, manipulating him at multiple levels.
"What my power of Wishcraft does is something far, far more than Harry Potter. Unlike Family Magics, wishcraft has no purpose save for what I deem it to be. I will say no incantation, shall wave no wand, yet anything and everything I want shall come to pass."
"Avrah Kedavra," Harry murmured.
"Precisely."
"Forgive me if I don't sound too pleased by it," said Harry. "I'm not a fan of being used as a tool."
The archwizard laughed. "When have you ever been anything else?"
Harry narrowed his eyes.
"Make no mistake, Harry Potter," said Ekrizdis. "You may have expected a fight, but I am no Dark Lord to be vanquished. In fact, the last thing I want is to hurt you, but I'm afraid I am going to need your help to complete this project. I'm hoping you will allow me the chance to convince you it's for the best, but if I can't, I will need to force you into it. My apologies."
For an ancient archwizard gone loopy, mused Harry. He is exceedingly polite.
Despite the differences in their magical constitutions, he knew that he and Ekrizdis were evenly matched. He was Death's Vessel, capable of undoing all magic in the Universe. Ekrizdis was a massive soul cluster, capable of utilising wishcraft. He was limited by his human form when it came to unleashing Death, while Ekrizdis needed a physical shell to fully interact with the physical world outside Azkaban. But this ancient being that was smiling at him and convincing him that everything would be okay⦠he wasn't exactly a being of logic. He was a manifestation of Wishcraft, a primal, twisted agent of chaos that would rift the universe apart if he let him.
Power, Sirius said, has a purpose.
That thing pretending to be smiling and behaving like a sane individual, was all the power without the purpose.
"You will try," he said slowly. "But you will not succeed."
Ekrizdis smiled. "You are fighting divine will, Harry Potter. And do not think I do not see your stalling tactic. You are simply awaiting to grant those Aurors the time to escape the prison before you unleash Death upon me. Is that not right?"
"You're playing the creepy vibe too hard for me to trust you," said Harry dryly. He wasn't naive enough to believe that the mad archwizard sent his acolytes, dementors, inferi and what not to attack Amelia Bones and the others on their way out. It was exactly why he had handed over his blade in the first place after all.
"Sad," said the archwizard. "But it won't work as you expect. No matter what you do, you will learn the hard way that you cannot brute force your way to stop Destiny."
His words took Harry back to thinking about the Prophecy.
"Maybe," he muttered. "Maybe we can't fight destiny. But so what? It's the process of trying that makes us human."
Ekrizdis's smile widened. "I'm so glad you said that. In fact, changing Destiny is what I want you to help me do."
"But you justβ¦."
"I said you can't brute force your way to change Destiny, Harry Potter," corrected Ekrizdis. "Call it Fate, Magic, the Powers That Be, or the Laws that govern the Universe, it matters not. They all follow specific rules. Even the omnipotent Anima has to bow down before the rules that govern how much it can grow, how much it can mutate without the soul itself shattering and twisting into something else. But we, you and I, we are different. I, the Animus Eternum, and you, the Nexus Child, we can do anything."
Harry glanced at the cavern all around them. "By doing what? Annihilating all life, collecting the souls and harvesting them to wish for yourself a world just as twisted as you?"
"No, I mean yes, just not in that way," said Ekrizdis, dismissing his concern. "You are mistaking me for Voldemort, Harry Potter. He would end the world if it means he got to rule over the ashes. But the Eternum⦠it's more than that. More than you, and more than I. From the beginning of Time, the gods of the Anima, the Family Magics have ruled over the world, dominating everything around you. The seasons, the world, growth, destruction, progression, regression, time and the tides. Everything is because they willed it to be. Everything follows a protocol, a set of rules that bind us, the immortal soul, into becoming the tools for their cosmic entertainment."
"And what part am I to play in this madness?"
"Why, the most crucial role of all," said Ekrizdis, grinning. "Your current powers are proof that you can conduct any Family Magic through you. You will be the door through which they shall enter this world, one by one, and I shall β"
"Do nothing," Harry snapped. "Because you can do nothing! Don't you get it, Ekrizdis? The Family Magics aren't just Purpose! You said it yourself! They bind the universe together, and are invariably linked to everything in this Reality. The moment even one of them is set loose, it will cause a calamity unlike anything we've ever seen."
He couldn't believe this man. Salazar Slytherin had painstakingly crafted the Miraculum Operarius to open a door into the Anima through which an Initiate could pass through, and drag a small piece of the knowledge and the power through that door safely.
Unlessβ¦.
Unlessβ¦
"You⦠don't want my help in opening a door to the Anima to become god," said a horrified Harry Potter. "You⦠you want to invert the process and bring the Anima in here itself!"
"See?" said a grinning Ekrizdis. "You're starting to see my way of thinking already."
Absolute war.
That was the only way Rufus Scrimgeour would even barely begin to describe the event he was taking part in, if only as a witness.
And no, the tiny skirmishes that he was involved in, that is commanding his patronus to attack dementors while casting offensive and defensive spellfire at the Death-Eaters simply did not count before the other spectacle happening in front of him.
The 'war' between Amelia Bones and Lord Voldemort.
There was no mercy in the spells that were being fired from both ends, nor any victory resulting from when the spells collided or were intercepted through shields, countercurses, or even just stronger spells. The process repeated itself dozens of times, varying between complex transfiguration, esoteric dark arts, elemental transfiguration and crude kinetic blasts, causing the entire arena shaking, the remnants of the already dilapidated edifice shaking and being used as projectiles or ingredients for transformation into weapons.
And then there was that blade.
Godric Gryffindor's blade.
It was no sword. A sword, however wonderfully forged, was beaten metal. Enchantment or otherwise, it was a conduit through which power could be transferred, akin to the way a witch or wizard cast spells through their wands. Rufus had first seen it when Harry Potter had hacked off Dawlish's arm and tongue with it in a single slice. He had thought he had seen it in action when Potter was impaling dementors left, right and centre, though it was exuding purple irradiation back then, with the occasional golden flames.
But what the Director held now was liquid darkness, a massive bludgeon of pure, brutal blackness that extended out of the hilt until it was easily five feet in length, like she was holding a piece of the night ripped out of the black sky. And yet, it might as well have weighed nothing, given how easily she was wielding it. It didn't even have to touch the Dark Lord's spells to cut them off, just being in its proximity was enough to dislodge the arithmancy and structure of those spells into non-being.
"I'm not certain how you are channelling Potter's powers," said Lord Voldemort. "But that blade won't help you."
He flicked his wand in a complex movement, and the entire zone exploded from all directions, a fearfully deafening sound, with huge sections of the walls disintegrating all at once, turning into an endless wall of dust. Another flick, and the dust coalesced to form jagged shards of glass, and came raining at the Aurors and hit-wizards from all sides.
"SHIELDS!" snapped Rufus, and Protegos erupted everywhere. It was far more strenuous than it seemed. Not counting the DMLE Director, there were twelve of them capable of holding up defences. Even with the temporary boost, it was nowhere near enough to protect themselves from the projectiles while also facing off the dementors and the Death-Eaters attempting to breach their shields.
"We can't hold this for much longer, Director. We have toβ" he paused, staring at what was happening before him, and trying his best to actually grasp the situation he was seeing with his own eyes.
The ground itself was unsteady from the constant explosions as the projectiles smashed everywhere. The Dark Lord had even infused his dark power into the shards to make them tiny, makeshift missiles that explode upon contact. Between that, the flames, and the shrapnel all around, it was difficult just to keep his footing while saving his arse.
Amelia Bones made it look easy.
Rufus didn't know how, but the woman went through the fray β the chaos, the incoming death spells, the debris, the flames β and none of it so much as touched her. When her feet hit the cloggy parts of the ground, she was so little that she had no trouble getting out again. On the slippery bits, her feet and balance shifted, legs taking the motion as naturally as a ballerina twisting her body around, and he recognized someone operating on an amplified awareness, though he doubted she was aware of it.
The DMLE Director had decided where she needed to go, and mere spellfire or debris or simply common sense would not be enough to gainsay her.
A unit of Death-Eaters, their faces hidden by skull-masks got in her way, and Bones hit them like a tornado β absolute, deadly and bizarrely selective. The black radiance emanating out of the blade rose to an exultant crescendo, striking everything around her like a whirlwind, while her wand hurled out kinetic blasts in every direction, deflecting the incoming barrage.
"I really was trying to make it painless for you," said the Dark Lord soothingly. "But I'll try harder."
"FIENDFYRE!"
An unearthly scream pierced through the air. It didn't even register as sound, the way an explosion would. There was this single, terrible power in the air, a sudden blow of disorienting pressure, as if it was a physical thing rather than pure energy. Rufus barely managed to remain on his legs, as the terrain cracked beneath his feet.
The silence that followed lasted a brief second, before the world went red and howling, making him feel like he was standing in the heart of a sun. Everything around him disappeared, swept in a sea of crimson, leaving them surrounded in it. The silence that followed lasted a brief second, before the world went red and howling, making him feel like he was standing in the heart of a sun. Everything around him disappeared, swept in a sea of crimson, leaving them surrounded in it.
A beam of pure light exploded out of the heavens, so far high that even his gaze couldn't reach. Then as if the sky itself had been cut, a tear trailed after the beam, as if it had punched through the very fabric of reality and sundered it, allowing him to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond. He could see lightning and green and blue mist, with iridescent ripples fading in and out of existence, as the boundaries of the world pulled itself back together.
Then came the attack.
This was it. This was the end.
They were going to die.
And Rufus, like everyone else, accepted it.
Everyone else, except Amelia.
With half-closed eyes, he stared in fascination and disbelief as a cold, black silhouette formed around the Director's form that deflected the incoming wrath, like an obdurate stone holding back an angry tide. And in that black radiance, Amelia stood, a being of pure defiance, unbreakable and unmovable, against the tide.
And then it was over.
His brain finished rebooting, and he just realised what his contemporary, the DMLE Director had just done.
She had stopped it.
Stopped the Dark Lord's most powerful attack.
She turned around, and for a moment, Rufus feared that she would falter, that withstanding that had taken every bit of the woman's power. Instead, she shrieked in pure, contemptuous fury, and with an almost sensual delight, sliced off a dementor coming from the left, decapitating its head from the rest of the body, and let out a chill, hungry laughter.
Merlin.
He had heard that kind of laughter come from other lips.
For every dementor that came across her way, two fell to pieces before that terrifying black light. And when she struck, it was with gruesome, precisely egalitarian effect, cleaving through armour, wraith-skin and flesh with equal precision and disdain. More than the devastating effect, it was the psychological trauma that she was inflicting on the foe's morale that made it even more shocking.
And to think that this wasn't her power, but Potter's.
He'd never admit this out loud, but if that kid ever went bad, it would spell the end of everything. Forget the British Ministry, there might not even be a wizarding world left in his wake.
The real question was β where was this power coming from?
He'd have understood if it was Potter wielding that blade, but her generating all that power made absolutely no sense.
Then again, nothing about the boy made any sense whatsoever.
Focus! He told himself. In any other circumstance, he'd have charged full steam ahead to protect and assist her. But Director Bones didn't need his help.
She was the anvil.
As long as she held the front, the Dark Lord was going to be focussed to finish her off. As long as she stood, she would be cutting the dementors down without mercy. While she was there, the Death-Eater legion was going to stay exposed, disorganised and vulnerable because their ability to frighten their foes was quite frankly, snatched away. Chaos and disorganisation among their troops strongly favoured the taskforce.
Charging off to the Director's rescue would defeat the entire purpose of what she was doing.
She had chosen to be the anvil. It was up to them to be the hammer.
"Hit-wizards! Take positions! Hammerhead formation! Aurors, take the rear. Tonight, we kill a Dark Lord!"
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