Chapter Text
In southern Wales, a forest burned.
Flames rose high in the afternoon sun, licked at wood dried by the summer heat. Fire ran in the tall grass, a bright burn with a quick death that ate through the undergrowth, tore at it with a thousand teeth. Plums of smoke rose above the trees, belching black soot like a factory plant.
Harry flattened himself against the trunk of an old oak, felt the creaks of its ancient limbs. The wood was too-hot to the touch. It wouldn't be long before it caught fire. He pressed a sleeve to his mouth, swallowing down a cough. Tears and sweat streamed down his face. The acrid smell of smoke was overwhelming.
He had to move.
To his right, a whorl of flames began to take shape, a four-legged thing that could be wolf or lion, deformed and snarling. Harry lashed at it, a sharp arc of his wand that came to him without thought. The Fiendfyre burst in a shower of sparks, scattering embers like fallen meteors.
Eyes half-closed, Harry focused on the trembling cord of his tracking spell, a gentle tug at the centre of his chest. He saw the path ahead, footprints on dead leaves that had started to smoke. A burning bush. Very helpful.
Ducking under a low-hanging branch, he ran.
His lungs burned with every mouthful of air. Breathing felt more like choking. He muffled wracking coughs in the crease of his elbow, then gave up on being discreet. It wasn't as though he was going to betray his position with the inferno roaring around him.
In front of him, across the veil of smoke, a shadow moved.
Harry forced a burst of speed. It was as though the fire had caught his legs. The lack of oxygen and sweltering heat gave the world a sharp spin. He blinked past the tears. Aimed. The Stupefy wheezed out, a trail of fire in a forest aflame. The other man heard it coming, threw himself to a side at the last moment.
Harry muttered a curse, but didn't let himself falter. His next spell flew in the wake of the first. It caught the man at the knees. Harry watched him take one more lurching step, then fall unceremoniously, a heap of limbs and dark robes. He couldn't run with his legs caught in a rope, but that did not stop him from crawling. Harry closed the distance between them.
"Stop it, Lestrange," he said, tired, his voice made gravel-rough. "War's over mate."
Crowned in flames, eyes half-mad, Rodolphus Lestrange looked up at him from the forest floor. His years in Azkaban had left their scars on him. His face had a drawn, cadaverous look to it, shallow skin pressed tight to his bones. His hair, matted with grease, was streaked with grey. His wasn't much over fifty, but age showed on him in the web of wrinkles on his face. It made him look older than any wizard his age should be. In the deep set of their orbits, his eyes burned with the fire he had kindled. The edges of his robes started to smoke.
Lestrange's laugh was more of a wheeze. "For you, Potter?" he said. "The war will never end."
He Disapparated.
"Merlin's sagging balls," Harry snapped. He hadn't thought Lestrange had the strength left in him.
The tracking spell gave a sharp pull. Harry could feel its stretch behind his ribs, a quick, ribbon-like unravelling. He took a fraction of heartbeat to consider his next move. He could let Lestrange go, and prolong the manhunt by Merlin knew how many months. It would give Lestrange time to recover, to plan his next act of destruction. Or Harry could follow him, without backup, and walk himself into a trap.
Either way, he was going to be late for his birthday, and Hermione was going to kill him.
Resigned, he turned on his heels.
Apparition snatched him like the oesophagus of some great beast. His limbs stretched, shrank, then stretched again under an awful pressure. It was as though his bones had grown liquid. Iron bars crushed his chest, circled his head. Harry had no ears, no eyes, but he still felt his skull crack, his lungs strain for air that wasn't there. It lasted an age. Longer than any Apparition should.
Magic spat him back on soft grass that wasn't burning. Harry took a step. Fell, and forced himself up again. His stomach roiled uneasily. He swallowed against the mounting nausea. Eyes squinted past the soot fogging his glasses, his tried to orient himself. He was in a forest. Tall pine trees stretched on all sides, their wide, ancient trunk ridged with time, rustling dark-green leaves mottling shadows on wild grasses. Between the branches, the sky rolled with storm clouds heavy with the promise of thunder. The whole of Britain had been domed in sun for the past week. Harry had landed himself outside the UK, which at least explained the Apparition-sickness. Slowly, he turned on the spot, wand held aloft, tensed for suspicious sounds. He stood at the bottom of a soft-sloped hill.
Atop the hill was a castle.
It was an old, battered thing that looked like it had been left to rot a hundred years. It stretched to the treeline in arches of grey stone. The roof had caved in places. One of its towers had collapsed in on itself. Still, it maintained an air of dignity in the sturdiness of its foundations, in the lines of its large windows. It looked large enough to host an army, which made surprising the fact it had been left untouched by human hands long enough to crumble to ruins. The tracking spell pulled at Harry, pointing up.
He set for the castle at a light jog. He cast layers of warding over his clothes, breathing through the wash of protective magic. There were fresh footprints on the muddy path. The tracks vanished in the shadows of the castle's massive wooden doors. The wood was cankered, rotted on its hinges. The doors had been left ajar.
Harry was absolutely walking himself into a trap. If Lestrange didn't murder him in there, Hermione was sure to pick up the slack on account of his sheer idiocy.
He slid past the doors, keeping his steps lights, his breaths silent. Nothing jumped at him from the swathes of darkness. His eyes adapted to the obscurity, let him see a sparse interior, coated in dust. Pieces of furniture laid scattered across the entry hall, spilled from a network of corridors. Harry spied an ancient table, shattered to pieces.
He picked his way further inside. Adrenaline heightened his senses. He was too aware of the thunder of his own heart, of the loud rush of his blood. A heavy silence reigned on the castle. It was the silence of mausoleums left undisturbed. The silence of something that slept.
Footsteps.
Harry ran.
The echoing sound carried him up a flight of coiled stairs. A few steps had crumbled on the way up. Harry barely cleared the gap, a sheer drop yawning beneath his feet. He scraped his hands on the landing but kept climbing, taking the steps two at a time. The stairs opened to a wide floor, tower-round. The ground was a layer of grime and mice bones. Cobwebs hung heavy from the rafters.
The sizzle of magic caught Harry's ears, loud as a whip-lash. Instinct had him roll with the sound. The Cruciatus impacted the wall by his head, showering stone-dust. Harry gathered himself in a tight coil, magic a low thrum beneath the thin stretch of him skin. There was no exit that he could see. Short of jumping out the window, Lestrange was trapped. Harry could hear the short rasps of his breaths, somewhere to his left.
"Come out Lestrange," Harry said softly, because it never hurt to try. "What're you aiming for here? Your master is dead. Lay down your wand so I don't do something we'll both regret."
Lestrange gave a laugh, a quiet, joyless thing, full of bitterness. "You should know this better than most, Mr Potter," he said, voice hoarse from years of disuse. "Death is a matter of great impermanence for the likes of you."
He came at Harry with a succession of spells. Harry deflected the first, caught the next on an open palm. He dodged the one that came after. It spat violet sparks in its wake, glazed floor in a sheet of ice. The edge of a cutting spell caught Harry's shoulder. He moved through the bright burst of pain, a deep tear that made him see stars.
The Lestranges had been some of Voldemort's best, a long bloodline of powerful wizards. Harry understood why they'd caused such fear during the war. He wouldn't be able to hold his blows for much longer if Lestrange kept up his pace.
The ice had Harry skid deeper into the room. Warmth spread along his left arm, easy enough to ignore with a fight's awareness to dull to pain. Blood drip drip dripped down his fingers, mixed with the thick layer of dust on the floor.
Lestrange stumbled, caught himself. He shook with exertion, dark eyes feverish in the half-gloom.
"Had enough?" Harry asked, but the man only bared teeth.
"You took," he said, panting hard, "everything from us. It's time you paid."
When Harry saw the glint of the knife, it was too late. The blade gleamed dull silver as it arced up. Harry took a half-step back, hard training making him fall in a duelling stance, but Lestrange did not turn the knife on him.
With a guttural cry, he plunged it in his own gut.
Harry watched, frozen, the blood that came sluicing between Lestrange's fingers, a dark, awful red. The man gave a smile, wild and elated, completely unhinged. There was blood on his teeth. Shock rang high-pitched in Harry's ears, spread ice along his limbs. His own thoughts came to him as though from a great distance. Lestrange fell to his knees, gurgling, and Harry stood there. He. He couldn't. He could not, why –
Senseless, he lurched a step forward, a hand held out.
"Stay there," Lestrange snarled, and his Blasting curse caught Harry full on the chest.
Harry's head snapped back from the pressure, teeth clacking together. Black spots danced before his eyes, made his vision go grey for long moments. Lestrange was too weak to manage a killing blow, was growing weaker with the red stain that dripped between his knees, but still. Harry heard the weak crack of bones breaking. Pain bloomed in his chest, splintering, and his next breath tore on a gasp.
He blinked, and found himself laying on his side, ears ringing, left sleeve soaked with blood. Everything smelled of copper and he could not breathe and –
Something was happening. Blood spread from Lestrange like ink, flowed away from him as though pushed through the brush of a skilled painter. It twisted itself in sharp arches and studied patterns. Faint light rose with it, a soft glow filtered blood-red. The room seem to contract and expend in turns, like the slow rhythm of a lung, trembling with tension. It felt full to bursting, alive, electric, an exposed nerve. Harry smelled ichor, tasted ozone, the promise of power on his tongue. It grew and grew and grew with each beat of his heart, an ancient thing stretching its neck for the first time in a long while and it was too much.
There were grooves in the shape of runes under Harry's fingers and a hundred layers of dust.
Ritual, he thought, and tried to push himself to his knees, but a terrible, creeping cold sapped all his strength. His skin was raw with awareness. He thought he was about to jump out of his own bones. He knew the stretch of his own body, every fragile seam that held it together, knew them to be about to rupture. He felt about to die; his sight darkened at the edges, tunnelled down.
Dimly, he felt, the press of an Apparition, the sharp crack that went with displaced air. A hooded man whirled into existence before Harry. He stood, insensate to the primordial thing loosing a roar around him. He spared a glance at Lestrange, who laid at his feet, exsanguine and empty-eyed, then looked down at Harry. He did not move for long moments. With his heart about to beat out of his throat and a feeling like bones were shifting beneath his skin, Harry groped for his wand.
The man batted his hand away, swift and effortless. He pressed an open palm to Harry's chest. Strangely, the weight slowed the frenzy of Harry's heart, eased the rattling beneath his ribs. The man bent over him, and Harry glimpsed dark hair streaked with grey, the sweep of sharp cheekbones. The world blurred together like watered paint. He held onto consciousness with slack fingers.
He felt a yank on his left sleeve, felt fingers move over the skin of his arm and –
The light grew blinding. A deep boom rent the room, locked Harry's breath in the back of his mouth. He tasted storm and sweetness, then knew nothing at all.
…
He woke on cold stone, his mouth coated with rust.
Harry became aware of himself in increments. The stretch of his lungs came first, shivery with life and the aftertaste of smoke. He laid on his side, an arm trapped against his chest, long since gone numb. A faint ache pulsed from his left shoulder, like the heartbeat of a fresh bruise. He was a collection of small pains; his whole self gave the throbbing of an overtaxed muscle.
Slowly, carefully, he heaved himself on his elbows, conscious of his ribs, of the way he'd felt them give. Nothing. He pressed a hand over the juts of bones, but his chest held only the pain of weeks-old hurts. Someone had healed him. Harry thought about the old man who'd stood through ritual-storm with the ease of someone strolling his garden, and suppressed a shiver.
A few feet away, inside the first circle of runes, Lestrange's corpse laid motionless.
Harry approached him with weary steps. Lestrange's skin had turned grey in death. His eyes stared out at nothing. A pool of congealing gore spread from his gut. He'd given more blood than his blotched ritual had demanded. He'd torn the knife from his belly at some point, leaving the wound a red, open mouth. Harry looked away. Nausea rolled in his stomach. The smell was atrocious, split flesh and too much blood, a body starting to rot.
Swallowing hard, Harry bent down. He brushed two fingers over Lestrange's eyelids. Even with his eyes closed, he looked anything by peaceful in death. Anything but asleep.
"You poor fool," Harry said, quietly. Tiredly.
Resigned, he stood again, brushing dust from his knees. His job here was done. After one last look at the derelict room, at the arrays of runes that were going to be someone else's problem, he focused. Turned on his heels. Disappeared with a faint crack.
After long moments clocked by a stretch of silence, a hooded man detached himself from a bed of shadows. He observed the room, the echoes of destruction it bore, the lingering taste of lightning, just perceptible over the red-rust smell of blood. Then he got to work.