The Killing Curse
Chapter One - The Taking of Flight 233
Hermione Jane Granger had forgotten, in the three years that passed since September 11, 2001 - nearly her 21st birthday -- just how heavily secured American airports had become.
Walking through the airport, Hermione was instantly reminded of that horrible day. Then, Hermione, a graduate witch from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (with Highest Honors and as Head Girl), was working in New York as the First Assistant to the Chairwitch of the of Elf, Sprite, and Faeirie Welfare Department at the United States Federal Bureau of Wizarding, or FBW, for short.
Hermione hated business travel. However, on that fateful day, her travels may have very well saved her life. Hermione was safely in California, responding with all due haste to a report of an appalling instance of faerie abuse.
It was unthinkable to Hermione that anyone could allow a poor, innocent, faerie to be mercilessly trapped in a lantern for three days whilst filming a wizarding version of Peter Pan. Luckily for Hermione, the travel ban following September 11 did not apply to magical methods such as portkeys, disapperation, or floo powder, as these were not likely susceptible to terrorist attack on a massive scale.
Pulling herself back into the present, Hermione was quite satisfied with her precautionary measure of using an invisibility cloak to conceal two wizard's wands she carried within her backpack. With these wands concealed, and no questions to possibly be asked about them by security personnel, she and her new husband, Harry James Potter - also a Hogwarts graduate and a fully-trained wizard -- slid effortlessly through the security checkpoints at the Chicago O'Hare International Airport.
After reaching the gate, and after about an hour's conversation, snuggling, reminiscing, and yes, a little kissing, the newlywed couple queued up with the rest of the passengers, and boarded their plane bound for London -- home after a three-week honeymoon touring the Midwest of America.
Where otherwise Harry and Hermione may have traveled by magical means to their honeymoon destination, this particular trip was a wedding gift from Hermione's parents. Mr. and Mrs. Granger, unlike their daughter and new son-in-law, were non-wizarding folk - Muggles -- and knew no other way to travel across continents. Therefore, the gift not only included first-class lodging, meals, and a new summer wardrobe for both, but first-class plane tickets as well. Harry and Hermione could not bring themselves to hurt the Grangers' feelings by not using them. Plus, first-class was certainly much more posh -- not to mention much cleaner -- than floo powder.
Upon entering the plane, Harry gaped in awe, immediately noticing how incredibly large and expansive it was despite its compact exterior.
"Kind of like Mr. Weasley's old Ford Anglia - or what's left of it now," the tall, black-haired, young wizard mused to himself, and gave a small chortle of laughter. Harry's best friend's father had once bewitched a Ford Anglia, not only to fly, but to be able to carry an immense amount of luggage, and about twenty people inside of it. When Harry and his friend, Ron Weasley, "borrowed" the car, just before their second year at Hogwarts, the end result was disastrous.
Hermione, on the other hand, became thoroughly consumed by the paperwork of tickets, juggling passports, and readying boarding passes. As this was only the second time Harry had flown in the Muggle way -- by airplane -- in the entirety of his 25 years, he left the details, worry, and organization to his experienced flyer of a wife.
The plane sat three on either side of two aisles, and three on the inside aisle. As Harry and Hermione secured seats in First Class, they did not get to see the remainder of the plane's coach section yet. Harry and Hermione took their seats, and buckled in. A stewardess offered them both some real English tea, before takeoff, which they both polished off with relish.
After emptying his cup, Harry, out of habit, stared at the leaves stuck to the bottom of the cup. He could have sworn that he saw the small, indistinct outline of the head of a barking, vicious dog.
"The Grim," muttered Harry.
Hermione looked at him questioningly, "What?"
"Blast, if only I had paid more attention in Divination! I think that's the Grim at the bottom of my cup." Harry struggled to remember, laughing to himself. "If memory serrrrves me wellllll," Harry moaned dramatically in his best Professor Trelawney imitation, "I dooooo believe, young Harry, that that means," he paused dramatically, "Oooohhhh! Deathhhhhhhh." Grinning, he raised his eyes up and to the left, searching for the memory, and gave a small "Huh."
"Ah, it's a load of rubbish, anyways, Harry." Hermione waved a hand in a brush-off gesture. "You know that. That batty old Trelawney was never right about anything. How many times did she predict your death, and here you still are!"
Harry smiled. "If only you knew," he thought.
Thirty minutes after take-off, as Hermione began to doze off on Harry's shoulder; Harry's eyes caught a strange, quite unexpected sight. Men. Muggles. Three of them, walking up and down the business and first class aisles. While, normally, Harry would not find the sight of muggles on an airplane as odd, these men were carrying, what seemed to Harry, as guns.
These, to Harry's untrained eye, seemed to be very, very powerful weapons -- the likes of which his cousin, Dudley Dursley, had toys of when Harry was a child. Harry, an orphan at the age of one, was raised by his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon Dursley - Muggles who despised Harry's parents, and everything about the wizarding world. Dudley, their portly son, would always, with a great deal of glee, refuse Harry the pleasure of playing along with his guns. These men, Harry quickly realized, were not playing, and these guns were not plastic toys.
Harry's next thoughts went to the security back in the airport. He wondered how it was possible for these three men to carry guns on board a plane so heavily guarded and secured - without, possibly, the use of magic. Harry made a mental note.
Harry elbowed Hermione so hard that she woke with an, "Ouch, Harry!" and Harry immediately shushed her, whispering only, "Wands."
With that, Harry felt himself being wrenched upwards by the right arm and he was forced to turn about-face. One of the men was moving Harry roughly toward the back of the plane. Harry turned and saw that another man had Hermione closely in tow. Her long mass of tousled brown hair was flying wildly behind her as she struggled slightly against the grip on her arm.
Harry silently prayed that Hermione had time to follow his one-word instruction. With every step toward the rear, Harry could hear a murmur from the rest of the passengers, growing louder, and increasing with the sounds of sheer, utter, and unmistakable panic.
The two men forced Harry and Hermione to sit in the front of a group of tightly situated, very frightened passengers and flight attendants. These men, almost in unison, began barking out orders to the crowd, bellowing in a guttural, almost gravelly, tongue. Despite the now obvious language barrier, Harry didn't need a translator to catch the gist of what they were saying -- "Shut up, and don't move."
As the flight was not full, the group took up only about ten to twelve rows in the rear of the plane. Harry, sitting on the aisle, craned his neck around to see the group, to take stock in the numbers, calculate the odds. Harry began to lean over to view the other side of the plane, only to have the side of his face rudely, and purposefully, whacked with the butt end of a small pistol.
Hermione, hearing the dull "thud" of metal against flesh, gave a small, stifled scream of shock.
Harry did not make a sound. He simply, and deliberately took a moment to shake off the initial sting, stifle the ringing in his ear, and to focus out the stars in his eyes. Calmly adjusting his glasses, Harry muttered a silent, "Bastard," with an exhaled breath. He then turned his head slowly back toward the man who had clocked him, eyeing him as if to say "Is that all you've got? I've taken far worse than you possibly can imagine - so, sod off you silly, stupid prat."
In typical Hermione fashion, she gingerly laid a hand on Harry's clenched fist, and whispered to him in a sing-song, yet shaken voice. "Ignoooore him, Harry. Ignoooore him. Ignoooore him," she intoned, hoping to stop Harry from doing anything he might regret.
It took everything Harry had not to stand up and full on clobber this, this - person - in the nose. Better yet, Harry fantasized, to pull out his wand and fix him up right with a rather large, dirty, and smelly set of donkey's ears.
The man was now defiantly gawping at Harry, as if, Harry thought, to say, "Try anything, English dog, and you will be lucky to escape with just a cut." This did not faze Harry one bit. He was more than used to unwelcome stares. Specifically, other wizards often stared at the lighting-bolt shaped scar that adorned Harry's forehead. This was the result of a fatal curse -- gone horribly wrong.
At the tender age of one, Harry unknowingly and unwittingly earned great fame in the wizarding world as the only person to survive what was known as the "Killing Curse," or "Avada Kedavra." This curse backfired upon Lord Voldemort, the wizard who cast it against Harry. As the result, Voldemort, the most powerful and horrible wizard of his time, lost all of his power, and, for all intents and purposes, died - but not completely, and not permanently. After that, Harry became known simply as "the boy who lived."
Harry's scar, therefore, was quite the conversation piece, and was the thing about Harry's face most stared at by every wizard he met. Even moreso, the scar was a constant reminder for Harry of Voldemort's presence and power. The scar burned with intense heat and excruciating, skull-splitting pain every time the Dark Lord was near, or if Voldemort felt particularly murderous since his return to power during Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts. In his fifth year, Voldemort had, for a fleeting moment, possessed Harry, causing the pain to be deathly intense.
Despite the growing pain and insult to Harry's face, Harry mentally measured the man up. Harry, despite Hermione's protestations, bored his eyes intently, angrily - even threateningly, up into the man's eyes.
To Harry's surprise, the "man" was actually a boy, no older than 19, and little older than Harry was when he graduated from Hogwarts. The boy was a skinny thing, Harry thought, with the same kind of unkempt, jet-black hair Harry wore on his head. Unlike Harry, however, this boy's eyes were not sparkling, shining green. They were a dull, lifeless, muddy-colored brown.
The boy, now shrinking somewhat under Harry's malevolent glare, momentarily gained enough smarts to leave. His eyes darting with new fear, the boy cursed harshly at Harry in that gravelly language, turned on his heels and strutted toward the front of the plane. Harry let go of his apparent fury for a moment and sighed heavily.
It wasn't until then that Harry noticed the blood dripping from the side of his face. He felt the wet stickyness begin to pool up around the collar of his polo shirt. He instinctively put a hand to his face, and finally allowed Hermione to dab at it with a stray tea napkin. Judging from the tingling sensation growing under his wound, he surmised that Hermione had daubed the napkin in the vial of phoenix tears - a valuable substance with strong healing powers -- she carried in her purse before wetting Harry's cheek. The bleeding stopped rapidly and summarily, as did the throbbing pain in his jawline. Harry smiled weakly and lay back against the headrest, happy to let Hermione do her stuff.
While Hermione worked on Harry's cheek, she touched her wand, now hidden within the napkin, to Harry's right ear.
"Translenguoto," she whispered.
Harry felt a mild heat and a slight buzzing sensation in his ear. Then Harry's ears rang painfully. He clasped his hands to his ears and glared at Hermione, who only shrugged. When the pain finally subsided, Harry, to his surprise, was able to understand everything the men-with-guns were discussing, hearing their heretofore foreign words now in clear Queen's English.
As Harry listened for the next two to three minutes, while the spell lasted, he overheard words such as, "September 11," "crash this plane," "finish the job," "Capitol Building," "British embassy," "Washington, D.C.," "American dogs," and "English bastards."
Fear, hatred, and anger, intense as he had not felt in a long time, began to well up and rise simultaneously within Harry's core. His heart started to pummel the back of his chest wall, and he could feel his respirations quicken with every understood phrase.
Hermione could see these emotions reflected in her husband's face. Harry's otherwise placid and friendly countenance sloughed off with growing emotion. Hermione saw, in its place, a dark, brooding, hateful, and, Hermione thought, terribly frightening version of Harry - a look that Hermione had not seen since Harry's beloved and newly-found godfather, Sirius Black, was brutally murdered years ago.
Newly frightened, Hermione continued in vain to tend to Harry's now healed wound. As her hands became shakier and shakier, she simply needed something to do to quell her own rising fears.
Harry realized his reactions had distressed Hermione something fierce. He gently took her hand, pulled it down away from his face, and kissed it. "I'm sorry, Hermione, I didn't mean to get upset there. Look, I didn't mean to - to upset you, Hermione," Harry's cracking voice, try as he might, could not hide his rage and panic. "It's just that -- that it's not good."
He tried desperately to convey to Hermione what he heard without panicking the other passengers. "I mean, not to panic, right? I mean, really." He sighed. Hermione just stared at him, blankly. "Hermione, this will all just be a -- damn." Harry hung his head momentarily, then turned in his seat to face Hermione full on. "Hermione, I love you. I would never, ever let anything happen to you. I'd die first, and you know that! OK -- I heard them say -- heard them say - Oh, blast!"
Instead of explaining further, Harry looked Hermione earnestly, pleadingly, in the eyes, signaling the need for Hermione to do the same.
"Pensandaroto," Harry breathed, intoning the charm without the benefit of a wand.
As Hermione concentrated hard on the emerald brightness of Harry's eyes, she heard, within the confines of her own head, small, quiet stutters of Harry's voice.
"Need to stop them… Plan to crash into Capitol Building in D.C. … Wands… When attackers among passengers… Count of three… Turn… Stunning charm… All of them… Understand?" Hermione, her heart tangled up in her throat, understood what Harry was plotting.
Without looking away from Harry, Hermione simply, slightly, nodded her head in agreement, and slipped Harry his wand.
Chapter Two - The Stunning Charm
It seemed an eternity until at least three of the men with guns were standing among the passengers. Harry and Hermione were waiting to get a clear shot to throw stunning charms at the terrorists, to put them into a magical sleep along with the rest of the passengers and flight attendants. At least, with three of them down, there could not have been many more. The odds, Harry thought, would significantly turn in their favor.
Harry knew that what he and Hermione ultimately had to do should not, if it could be helped, be witnessed by this group of one-hundred or more Muggles. Such a mass witnessing of their wizarding abilities, if they all survived, would require long hours on the part of the Memory Modification Squads, and who knows what other problems within both the American FBW and the English Ministry of Magic.
Harry, seeing the chance, and hoping furtively that his plan would work, counted under his breath to Hermione. Hermione, adrenaline rushing, readied herself and her wand.
"One. Two. Three." Then he shouted, "GO!!"
Both Harry and Hermione stood and turned. Harry immediately noticed the shocked and confused looks on the passengers' faces. To his chagrin, Harry also saw the attackers begin to protest, aiming their weapons at him, readying to fire. Acting quickly, Harry aimed his wand at the right of the plane, and Hermione to the left. In unison, they called out, "STUPEFY!"
Red streaks of light shot out of the ends of their wands, covering the entirety of the plane's rear quarters. One by one the passengers, crew, and the three hijackers either slumped in their chairs, or fell to the ground in a heap.
Satisfied, and rather amazed that the mass-stunning actually worked, Harry re-aimed his wand. "Accio guns!"
All three of the long, strange-looking rifles flew toward Harry, and he caught each of them in his arms. After Harry dumped the weapons behind a row of seats, Harry and Hermione began walking purposefully toward the front of the plane.
Harry, in his heroic rush, did not notice that the young boy, the one who hit him with the butt of his rifle, was not among the stunned attackers.
"Keep your wand at the ready," Harry ordered Hermione, as if she were one of his underlings. Harry was an Auror - a sort of elite wizarding policeman -- in his job at the Ministry of Magic. Harry was running on pure adrenaline now, a feeling he was quite used to, and a situation under which he always performed his best. "You take the right side, and I the left. Your first task, if we don't encounter anymore thugs, will be to ensure that the pilot and co-pilot are okay, and that they can land this plane straight away, ok?" Harry smiled weakly, momentarily dropping his take-charge demeanor. "I love you, you know."
Hermione smiled back, speechless. She nodded again, too fearful and too bloody green in these situations to say a single word. Surely, she didn't want Harry to see how truly and incredibly petrified she was. Turning her back to Harry, Hermione scooted herself quickly and purposefully across a row of the middle coach seats, and, then, in close tandem with Harry, started walking up the aisle.
As they simultaneously parted the curtains between coach and business class, Harry noticed immediately that this cabin, and that of the first class ahead of them, were dead silent and empty. "Impossible," Harry mused, his instincts tingling. "There has to be more of them."
Harry, again began to bark out orders in an audible whisper. "Hermione, go to the cockpit and check on the pilot, I'll check the lavatories and the service stat…" But Harry's words were cut off by the rush of a man, a fourth man, making a mad dash past him, back to the rear of the cabin.
"What the…..Blast!" Harry cursed, and then, wheeling around to his wife, "Go, go, go, Hermione, I'll take care of him!" Harry turned to run, then back to Hermione. "If you see another one -- stunning charm -- quick, and then yell for me, ok!"
It was all Hermione could do but to nod her agreement yet again.
Harry parted the curtain again, and saw the most appalling, sickening, sight he could ever have imagined. In all his years as an Auror, in facing the death of his parents, the death of Sirius Black, and yes, Voldemort himself -- he never ever saw anything that wrenched at his insides as this did.
The man - no, to Harry's astonishment - that young boy was holding a small child by the hair, and, with his other hand, was holding a large, obviously sharp, knife to her neck. This poor young girl could not have been more than four years old, Harry surmised. The girl was sound asleep under the effects of Hermione's stunning spell.
"Bloody blast-ended skrewts!" Harry hissed. "I should have known."