A/N: Here we go, another chapter. Thanks as usual to Lady Starlight for her work on this chapter.
Chapter 36: Shadows in the Daylight
************************Somewhere Above the Artic Circle*******************
March 7, 2016
11:25 pm
"We are ready then?" the nameless one asked as he slowly paged through a thick tome, not looking up at Bellatrix or Xavier as they stood, almost at attention before him. The dark library that they were in was almost a twisted, mirrored version of the expansive Hogwarts one. Where there were huge, leaded glass and stained glass windows, there were only cold, solid stone walls, some with a thin sheen of ice.
A long, twisted black dagger sat next to the crumbling book, its grip composed of serpents twisted together to form a knotted guard with their tails. He did not look back up for an answer as he picked up the dagger and ran the forked tip along the words in the book, which were glowing with an almost ultraviolet light and in a language that had been dead for several thousand years. He set it back down as he reached the bottom of the page and found an illustration of the dagger, that seemed to slowly morph back and forth between a shining, silvery one and the twisted black one before him. He sat back and reached down to slowly stroke the head of dark, brunette curls resting against his knee.
The young witch, perhaps sixteen or seventeen and nude except for a white fur wrapped around her shoulders, shivered in the cold of the dungeons below the lost Drumstrang keep and looked back up at him, almost hopefully. He smiled slightly, and stroked her cheek, before looking back up at his mother and one of his senior, surviving Death Eaters.
"I do not know why you sully yourself with these Mudbloods," Bellatrix snarled, as she fingered her wand, and glared at the small young woman next to her son. She started to draw her wand, only to watch it fly out of her hand and drop neatly on the table next to the dagger.
"I would appreciate it if you do not curse my pets, mother." He looked down, and patted his leg, waiting as the small women crawled up into his lap and curled into a ball. He started to stoke her side like a large cat, "Bethany has done nothing to deserve that, she is a good girl, aren't you?"
She looked up, dark eyes wavering slightly, "Y...yes, sire," she whispered, her voice trembling.
He smiled, his dark eyes flaring red once before he looked back up at his mother, "See, a good pet." He stoked one breast, causing her to shiver slightly from other than the cold, "There is a vital point that you have forgotten, Mother. They may be inferior to us, but they still have their uses. And as long as they know their place, for them to bear a bastard son or daughter or two...we always need more soldiers for the cause." The 'Pet' looked up at him timidly at his words, and he patted her head, "Return to my chambers, and await me."
She nodded and slipped from his lap, dropping to a knee before standing again and rapidly leaving through a small, side door.
He watched her leave, before crooking a black eyebrow, "The place is ready, then?"
"Yes, M'Lord," Xavier replied quickly, "we have forces watching it, I had hoped to use the Vampires, but they are proving rather...intractable." He glanced to the side, and then back, "It will be ready on the anniversary."
"Excellent, while the fools are celebrating, we will bring about their downfall." He stood slowly until he looked down on both of the others. He touched the tome and dagger and they vanished with a soft pop, before he smiled slowly. "After all, mother, don't you think that the Muggles will make excellent house-elves...You forget, there is little purpose to rule if there is no one to rule. Father forgot that at times."
He smiled slightly and started to walk away, "Launch some attacks, I care not where, perhaps against the Auror school, that would perhaps give us more than one...distraction. Use the terror group that you created for your failure to assassinate the Blood-Traitor. I shall be in my chambers...Do not disturb me."
*************************Near Dover*************************************
March 10, 2016.
10:20 am
Hermione watched as ten exhausted men and women ran past her in the company of a stocky, auburn-haired man that looked as if he had barely broken a sweat. His clothes, unlike the sweat-sodden grey utilities that the cadets were sporting, were spotless-a white t-shirt with the subdued emblem of the Ministry's covert operations branch, over black utility pants with a battered wand in a nylon holster on his thigh.
"Salute," he snapped as they jogged past Hermione and as one, the cadets managed a ragged series of salutes, both to one of their ultimate superiors, and one of the few living recipients of the Order of Merlin, First Class for valor.
Hermione returned a wave, more or less approximating their motions, and continued on the concrete path through the grass. The campus of the Alastor Moody School for Special Magical Operations was laid out as if it were a modern Muggle university. If Muggle universities normally had state-of-the-magical-art training facilities in close-quarters combat, forensics, espionage and other germane topics, of course.
They also offered a rather splendid degree in English Literature.
"Wotcher, already down here?" Tonks asked even as she finished materializing next to her with a soft sigh of displaced air. She watched the cadets continue to move past, "I see my timing held; so I don't have to return the salute again."
Hermione glanced over and snorted, "Bullocks, I remember you morphing into your dress uniform once, just because."
"It's just that I look rather smashing in midnight blue, that's all."
Hermione just crooked an eyebrow, "Why am I down here?" she asked as the pair of them continued past Bones Hall, the home of the Potions department, and named for the former head of the MLE, felled during the last war.
A large, dark bronze statue in the center of a marble fountain rose up from the grass before them, in the center of the large, grassy quad, with the path curving around it. The head of the statue of Grendle the Just followed them as they moved past, and Hermione tossed a Knut into the water in passing.
"The twins delivered the first of the Shadow Suits for training some of the covert side," Tonks replied, "but that's not why of course. And you do know that the kids got the second shipment, after what's hidden in our personal stashes?"
"Yeah," Hermione shrugged, "I figured. Honestly, what did you think they'd do...Fred was fit to be tied after what happened to Gina and Kris...though he agreed with my solution. But those two are the ones that went head on against Umbridge."
"I seem to remember you and Harry having something to do with that as well."
"Not as much as we should have, in retrospect anyway. There are days when I wish I had let Harry go to war with her, much more than we did."
Tonks smiled slightly, "So you are admitting that Harry listened to you even then?"
"He was always the trainable one," Hermione smiled slightly, looking down and flushing faintly as she brushed one curl behind her ear. She shrugged off Tonks' inquisitive look, and started out at a brisker pace, "You never said why you wanted me down here, Nymphadora." Tonks stuck her tongue out at her, and Hermione sniffed without looking back, "Mature."
"Says the girl who holds the record for getting walked in on at the office...Did you get my memo on Marcus Dillon?"
Hermione stopped as a flight of four wizards on brooms landed in the quad, and headed towards a large broomshed. She shrugged as the last of them stepped inside, "Skimmed it, why? Mid-level recruit, educated over in Iceland at their new school, the one that took a lot of what would have gone to Durmstrang, before it vanished."
"Yeah, seems he's a bit of a late bloomer, class two metamorph, if you'd believe it?"
Hermione stopped and looked back at her, "And the school testing never caught it? That's supposed to bring it out....Hell, they knew about Harry and I a long time before we ever did."
"I guess the school never had the tests set up properly," Tonks replied with a shrug, "I wanted you to come down and meet him, see what you thought of him. I'd like to transfer him over to the covert track, but that's as much an attitude as any special talents that you might have in the area."
Hermione nodded, "Alright, I didn't want to be stuck in the Ministry today anyway...It's rather morose these days."
"Yeah-"
Tonks' hand flashed to her thigh, and spun into a crouch as she covered the rear, knowing Hermione already had the front arc covered as the energy discharges of dozens of Portkeys bloomed just outside the wards.
Sudden raucous alarms filled the air, as Hermione rose from her crouch and her head tracked like a turret to the northeast, where she felt the intrusion of dozens of... "Bloody hell," she sighed, "I wasn't sure there was that many left."
"What?" Tonks asked as instructors and cadets appeared running, their wands in hand.
"Trolls," Hermione growled and sprinted towards the northeast, slowing just enough to let Tonks keep pace. "Damnit..." she snapped as she slid feet first behind a large planter set at the edge of the grounds. She took a breath and glanced back as Tonks half-tumbled into place next to her, "I can't reach Harry, he must be in the secure parts of the Ministry. Damn psychic wards," she spat angrily. She swallowed and looked back to Tonks, "We're being jammed on the mirrors, too, aren't we?"
She nodded mutely and stuck her head over the top of the planter, and ducked back down just as fast. "There are at least a hundred of them, Hermione, about a klick off."
"Not really worried about the trolls," Hermione said absently. She closed her eyes and grunted loudly as emerald light slipped from under her closed lids. "Harry will be here soon, remind me to have the ward repair put in this years budget, again."
"You broke them...from here?"
Hermione shrugged, "Harry and I really don't like to be out of contact." She looked to the south, towards the sound of the ocean and the sudden chill she felt creeping into her bones. "I'm more worried about...them."
"Bloody wotcher fuck," Tonks hissed, and looked back towards the school, "We have like four people here that can cast a reliable Patronus...including us."
Hermione watched the tide of blackness approaching over the Channel, and she started to breathe heavily, as almost visible streamers of magic seemed to come to her call, rushing into her. The tip of her ivy-wood wand started to glow, rapidly becoming a tiny star that outshone the sun above. She shivered as faint memories of looking down at Harry through a red haze of her own blood as he seemed to lay dead below her. She shook off the image and focused on another, much more pleasant memory.
"The Twins' new security system was installed, right, Tonks?" Hermione asked lightly, even as she slowly stood and lifted her wand. I love you, Harry...EXPECTO PATRONUM-
A wave of happiness and light burst from the tip of her wand, streaming into a gigantic glowing silver otter, approximately the size of a Hungarian Horntail. "Go," she whispered and the otter swam away in the air, as if it were water. It started to race back and forth along the edge of the white cliffs on which the school was located, overlooking the English Channel.
Distantly, the hissing roar of the Twins' new spellguns carried to her ears, nearly drowning out the cries of trolls as they crumbled as the constant stream of cyan, that the pair of perimeter turrets were spitting out, crashed into them. Parts and pieces of the front line of almost fifty trolls flew into the air along with dark green ichor.
Hermione never really noticed as her Patronus alone-the only one who really could possibly stand off the nearly one hundred Dementors bearing down on the school from the sea, the real spear to the assault-held the rear. She watched as the silver otter slashed through two, three, five of the hellspawn, but still more bore down. Eyes bloomed fully emerald as she flicked her wand straight up in the air, and her otter shot up like a rocket only to flip back a few hundred meters up and race back downward.
The horde scattered like so many tenpins, breaking the solid clump and Hermione smiled grimly, as she pulled a fresh reserve from somewhere inside, EXPECTO PATRONEUM DELATRIUM...
A silver wave of light cracked the sky like lighting dancing on the edge of a summer storm. Loud unearthly screams carried back as empty smoking cloaks slowly fluttered to the ocean far below, or more often, terrible ripping sounds followed by quick flashes of ultraviolet as Dementors...died.
Five, ten, twenty died, before the remainder, perhaps half of the original horde, turned and fled. Hermione spun back to Tonks, leaving her almost-sentient guardian to harry the Dementors from her.
The pair of guns sputtered and died suddenly, the spell accumulators going dry. The remaining trolls, those marginally smart enough to find shelter slowly started to peek out from their hiding places. They rose from behind rocks and shattered trees and out of low spots in the land and charged, huge clubs and primitive swords raised high.
"Go, Tonks," Hermione snapped as she rolled over the top of the planter, and slashing her wand sideways, sending a purple wave crashing out at knee-height to several trolls, cutting them off in a spray of greenish blood.
Hermione sprinted forward and slid into a small ditch, firing a continuous stream of reductors into the advancing trolls. As she caught sight of one a third again taller than the rest, its crude iron and leather festooned with human, elven and centaur skulls, she muttered a rather unladylike oath. A nine-foot troll seemed to melt as she dissolved its bones with a brownish beam.
"Tonks, that leader..." Hermione snapped as fuchsia-haired witch sent a greenish-yellow bolt over her head, sending a troll crashing to the ground and causing a localized earthquake. "I'm going to take him, once I do they should run."
"What if they-" Tonks' jaw crashed shut as Hermione vanished without a sound, "Bugger," she looked back towards the academy grounds where cadets were spilling out of the halls, though much thinner than they should have been as so many were spread out throughout Britain and its possessions with full fledged agents on assignment. "Get your fucking arses in the fight, you wankers," she roared, and rolled out from behind cover, sending purple crescent-shaped waves to either side of her sprinting sister.
A pair of trolls fell to either side as Hermione reached behind her and twin blades filled her hands, extending and growing to two feet or better each as she brought them down to either side like glittering steel wings. They started to glow faintly; flickering bluebell flames sparkling off the alloy in the daylight as she rolled to the side as an iron sword as long as she was tall crashed to the ground just as she reached a ring of trolls surrounding their leader.
Spellfire crashed around her from the school as she flipped over the crash of a wooden club and jammed the point of one blade into it, riding the backswing up. She pulled it and slashed sideways, and then leapt from the shoulder of the troll at the twelve-foot tall leader as her brief launching platform fell sideways to the ground.
Hermione landed on the top of his breastplate, sticking for just the single heartbeat that it took her to scissor her blades inward. She flipped backwards and slashed to each side and four more trolls fell to her power as their chests exploded.
"HERMIONE, DOWN!" Tonks yelled and Hermione dropped instantly as a pair of yellow curses passed though the space her head had just occupied.
Twelve patches of air shimmered and solidified as the trolls' true masters decided to reveal themselves.
Hermione's blades vanished into nothing as her wand refilled her hand, and, as fast as that, there were only ten dark wizards, the first two who had sent the Cruciatuses at her, lost their heads. Her eyes flickered to the side towards an approaching large clump of trolls, as she dodged the attack of a pair of trolls that had snuck closer as she engaged the sudden, more important threat. She killed one almost negligently with a laser-like red beam through one eye even as she seemed to deflect the strike of an iron sword from the other with her bare hand.
Harry faded in where she had glanced, already bringing the Sword of Gryffindor up and around, slicing neatly through a club the size of a fencepost, and back down, sending the wielding arm following it to the churned earth. Another four trolls spun on the interloper in their midst, and he jumped straight upward, his legs boosted with his magic to land neatly on the head of the tallest of the trolls.
He flipped backwards as the nearest troll crushed the skull of his footstool with a clumsy swipe. Harry slashed downwards as he flashed over the head of another, sending its head to fall to the ground. He landed in a backwards roll, dodging the strike of an iron sword, came to a knee and swiped sideways, sending yet another crashing to the earth. Harry glanced over at the killer of the first troll as he charged Harry. Harry swept his free hand through the air, sending a ball of blue fire racing across to bore a neat, six-inch hole through the troll's armor, and the chest beneath.
Standing, he looked towards Hermione, knowing where she was as always. A flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye drew his gaze.... "HERMIONE," he screamed as a patch of air shimmered and solidified, only yards behind her and a green jet raced across the sky.
She spun as Harry desperately reached out, ripping a concrete bench from its moorings and flinging it into the path of the beam. Time seemed to stop as the death curse shattered the bench, sending fist sized chunks into the air like bits of a pumpkin hit with a sledge.
Hermione gasped and sank slowly to the grass as her eyes flickered and went dark and rolled up in her head.
Her attacker burst into a red mist, even as Harry vanished and reappeared next to her, diving to his knees and bringing her head to rest on his lap. Trembling fingers desperately slipped across her throat, settling slightly as a slow pulse answered his prayers.
Harry looked up and his eyes glowed brighter as he grabbed Tonks from fifty feet away with invisible hands and pulled her to him, out from the midst of four, human attackers. She looked up at him, with wide, dark eyes, "Protect her," he growled and stood, looking slowly around at the perhaps fifty remaining trolls and seven or eight Death Eaters, which were obviously controlling the still attacking Trolls. He batted away a curse contemptuously and retaliated with a Reductor that left only a headless corpse in its wake.
Another two Death Eaters fell almost as one as the faculty and cadets-finally-rallied and the others turned to leave, leaving their dark charges to fend for themselves.
They failed.
As the cracks of the rest of the responding Aurors, now suitably armed and armored to deal with the attacking Trolls, filled the air, Harry gestured with his wand, and five flaming tendrils, shot out, tightening around them.
Three of them started to convulse almost instantly as they bit down heavily on one side of their jaws and purple foam slipped from suddenly slack lips. The other survivors collapsed as one of the instructors stunned them both, even as ten trolls fell from overcharged Reductors sent their way by the Aurors. A few of the trolls had the sense to raise huge, warted hands, while the rest of their brethren, now bereft of leadership ran for the hills.
Harry waved the Aurors after them, and a flight of ten jumped onto brooms and rose to give chase, sending Reductors and Piercing Charms down to harass the remainder into tight clumps as their grounded colleagues picked them off, one by one, from the rear.
He turned his back on the sudden rout, and returned to Hermione, kneeling next to her, and gently sweeping her into his arms. Pressing his lips to her forehead, which was smeared with red, he stood, cradling her against his chest as if she were still the eleven-year-old he had first met so many years ago.
They vanished between breaths before Tonks could say a word. She took a breath, looked around the impromptu battlefield, finding it now under control of the light and vanished, winging away towards the place where she knew Harry had taken her.
There were some instincts too deeply ingrained to question.
11:35 am
"MUM," Emilia yelled as she slid to a halt on the polished tile floors of the infirmary, her uniform shoes proving almost no traction on the waxed surface. She panted heavily as she looked down at her father sitting in a chair next to the bed, holding Hermione's hand, his thumb slowly stroking over the back in slow, unconscious patterns.
Harry looked up slowly as Sirius followed his sister into the room, having come from the complete other side of the castle. He swallowed away a dry throat.
"She's ok," Harry said quietly, "she's just sleeping." He looked at his children as they both stood silently near the foot of the bed, the only true outward sign of their terror was Emilia's lower lip being worried between her teeth. "Do you want to stay here until she wakes up?"
Both of them nodded silently and slipped closer. Emilia dropped a heavy bookbag next to the bed, and slipped onto her father's lap. She slowly brought her legs up, and hugged her arms around them as she let her head flop back onto Harry's shoulder. Sirius perched on the bed next to Hermione, both of the teens going utterly quiet as they watched her slowly breathe in and out.
After a moment's silence, Emilia reached forward and brushed Hermione's bangs away from her forehead, exposing a white bandage. Emilia swallowed, "What happened, Daddy?"
Harry shrugged and looked away for a beat, watching as a flight of owls wheeled past the windows, "She was down at the Academy on the coast, when someone thought it great fun to send in a flight of Dementors, and a horde of trolls-"
"That's a horde of Dementors, and a clutch of Trolls," Hermione said quietly as she yawned and stretched slowly, groaning as she reached the end, and opened her eyes, looking to each side. "Aren't you two supposed to be in class?"
Sirius shared a look with his sister as she uncoiled from Harry's lap, to drop down and hug Hermione. "It's lunchtime, Mum," he explained quietly, shrugging.
"Then you should eat, I'm fine." She sat up slowly, returning her daughter's hug as she held Harry's eyes over Em's shoulder. He nodded to some unheard comment and she let go of Em, "How about the four of us head to the Great Hall for lunch...your dad and I will meet you there in a moment."
Both of them nodded, and slowly slipped out, each pausing to hug Hermione again, even Sirius, for once, not complaining in the slightest. Emilia grabbed her bag and shouldered it, took a staggering step and turned, waving to her mother before she stepped out of the door. Soft voices carried to the Potters from the hallway, Harriet and Xander's, causing a small smile to light Hermione's lips.
"I really am okay, Harry," she said quietly, reaching over to interweave her fingers with his once more.
I...It's...
I'm proud of you, Harry, Hermione whispered, I know what you could have done-
I would have, you still are-
I know, my love, I know, for me as well. She looked around on the floor, Do you have any idea why Poppy took my pants? she muttered exasperatedly as she pulled back the light blanket she had been covered with, and swung bare legs to the floor.
Umm...actually, I did.
Really. She rolled her tongue around the inside of her cheek, and fought a sudden laugh, and looked back over her shoulder towards Poppy's closed office door, I'm game if you are, it's been seventeen years since the last time here.
Tempting, Harry replied, and flicked his wand through the air, conjuring a pair of worn jeans for her from nothing, but we should probably show some...decorum.
Spoilsport, she replied as she leaned forward and kissed him, sighing into him as he let his mouth fall open and his tongue dance with hers. He slipped to the floor and she rolled her eyes as he pulled her jeans on for her, Honestly, you are almost as good at getting them on as getting them off.
He stood and kissed the top of her head, before she stood and concentrated slightly, conjuring battered trainers. They had blood and troll...stuff covering your legs. And I'm pants at housekeeping spells, so Dobby took them.
Figured, she replied as she tucked into his side, letting her head fall to his shoulder for a minute before she took a small step away and took his hand. Let's go see if Dumbledore will feed us. Since we're here, I might as well stay for a while to visit with Luna.
***********************Ministry of Magic**********************************
Arthur slowly thumbed through hundreds of sheets of parchment littering the top of his desk. He scrawled a signature at the bottom of a requisition for five new armored SUVs, replacing the ones that Tonks had managed to lose before Christmas. He flipped over another, a request for an interview with the head of the Department of Mysteries. Starting to scrawl a denial, he let out a sudden, loud growl and swept the stacks of paper to the ground, sending empty coffee mugs, pictures and several data crystals crashing down.
He stood painfully and paced to his magical windows, even as his secretary poked her head into the room and back out just as fast, going unnoticed by the Minister of Magic. Arthur sighed as he watched the antics of his family as they moved around the image of the Burrow...all nine of them.
He looked over towards the pictures that had tumbled from the top of his desk in his sudden burst of anger, and swallowed as his vision got blurry. Arthur flicked his wand towards his desk and dropped it as a framed photo flew to his hands. He slowly ran his fingers over the cracked glass covering an image of a thin, eighteen-year-old woman with fiery red hair, that flowed down over the shoulders of shimmering white robes.
She frowned as she looked up at him, wrapping her arms around herself as Arthur started to sob silently. The tiny version of Molly-who, all in all, looked much more like her daughter than anyone would have ever imagined-reached for his fingers, trying to touch them through the glass.
"I...I miss you, Mollywobbles," Arthur whispered harshly, "I'm soo sorry, love....it was all my fault."
There you go, next chapter, R&R at Wandpoint.