I am not J.K. Rowling, I don't work for Warner Brothers, Scholastic, or anyone else who has had the good fortune to make a fortune off of Harry Potter. I'm just plain ol' me.
Chapter 12: The Boy in the Tower, Part 2
September 1, 1919
Were it not for his half-moon shaped glasses and crooked nose, Albus Dumbledore would have been completely unrecognizable. His hair was a deep auburn, his beard was short and well groomed and the robes he wore more closely resembled Ron's Yule Ball dress robes than anything Harry had ever seen a respectable adult wear. Even his wand seemed different somehow. Harry, Ron and Hermione watched this much younger version of their old Headmaster as he approached the Oracular Tower, his sprightly gait quickly carrying him to the bottom of the tower's lengthy staircase.
Rather than ascending the stairs, however, Dumbledore chose to walk slowly around the tower as though he were searching for something. After counting off a dozen paces to the right of the steps, he tapped his wand against the brick exterior of the tower four times in a zigzag pattern. As soon as he had done so, brick folded against brick to create an entryway to a large room shrouded in darkness. A soft breeze wafted inside and a cloud of dust flew out, making the Transfiguration professor shield his eyes. Whatever was in there hadn't seen the light of day for a long time.
Dumbledore lit his wand and peered inside. Magical instruments filled the room, some of them softly glowing and humming, others ticking methodically like a metronome. In the corner farthest from the opening a barely luminescent orb displayed the faces of various young witches and wizards, but the images moved too quickly for any one visage to stand out. In the center of the room sat a plush chair that looked as though it could have passed for a throne in days of yore.
If it was a throne, however, the king who sat on it had seemingly been dead for a while. Wrinkly, leprous skin stretched tightly across the skeletal frame resting in the chair, its ribcage prominent through its ragged, moth eaten clothes and its long yellowed fingernails looking more like the talons of a large bird of prey. When its eyes opened, all three teenagers started in surprise, although Dumbledore did not react. "Albus," the corpse-like figure greeted him with a smile that was equal parts scary and gross. "How good to see you again."
"I wish I could say the same, Jean Paul," Dumbledore replied with obvious disgust, a disgust that Harry shared. This was Jean Paul Gerard? "The years have not been kind to you."
"I have endured over six hundred of them," the emaciated form of Jean Paul Gerard retorted with a short, wheezing laugh. "Some have been kinder than others." His eyes rose to meet Dumbledore's, perhaps finally adjusting to the light. "I always knew it would be you who would find me, you know. You were the brightest of my pupils."
"I was never your pupil," Dumbledore retorted gruffly. "Discovering the whereabouts of someone who went missing centuries ago took quite some time. I spent the entire summer in France, mostly at Beauxbatons, searching through your own history and that of your contemporaries. I found it rather suspicious that the wizard who supposedly murdered you had a sister who worked on this tower. He later married your only surviving daughter."
"A match I would have opposed, had I been there to see it," Gerard confessed as he shook his frail head. "They were all wrong for each other, always bickering about issues of complete insignificance…"
"Given your history, I'm sure you would have murdered them both at the wedding reception." Dumbledore gave the room surrounding them a quick once over. "So this is where you've spent the last five hundred odd years. Magically confined inside the very same tower where you left your horcrux to fool generations of English wizards and witches into thinking they were seeing their own future. It is almost a fitting punishment. I would have been content to leave you here to suffer, were it not for your continued inclination to make others suffer along with you." Dumbledore fixed the wizard who was once Lord Montverde with an icy glare. "Tell me, have you happened to take notice of Thaddeus Crouch?"
"The seventh-year Hufflepuff that Professor Slughorn is always going on about? Yes, I watch him sometimes," the ancient French wizard answered, gesturing indifferently toward the glowing orb in the corner. "To be honest with you, no Hogwarts student has really piqued my interest since you graduated. You have set the bar far too high. I simply haven't been able to bring myself to invite anyone else up here."
Dumbledore shook his head slowly. "It ends now, Jean Paul. There will be no more students driven to madness within the confines of this tower."
Gerard gave Dumbledore a wide smile, revealing a mouth full of rotten teeth. "You have come to kill me, then?"
"I have come here to finish something that should have ended a long time ago," Dumbledore declared grimly.
"You will fail," Gerard replied, his bony right arm now brandishing a shriveled dusty stick that might have at one time resembled a wand. "You forget, Albus, that I was the most powerful wizard of my generation. I was never beaten in combat, not even by entire armies of Englishmen such as yourself. You will soon be bowing low to me…"
"Expelliarmus," Dumbledore interrupted him casually. Gerard's wand flew across the room and his body fell from the chair, perhaps as much from shock as from the force of the disarming spell. "Your days of power and glory are long over, Gerard. Now you are nothing more than a relic of a forgotten era. You are a dead man clinging to life only by the piece of your soul that you tore from yourself and placed in this tower." Jean Paul Gerard now looked up at Albus Dumbledore with fear in his eyes. "Well, I know where it is. Very soon, there will be nothing at all keeping you alive."
"You are lying," Gerard squeaked feebly. "If you knew the location of the horcrux, why confront me first? Why not merely destroy it?"
"I suppose," Dumbledore explained with a mildly amused half-grin, "I wanted you to experience what it was really like to know your own future." As Gerard's gaunt frame trembled, Dumbledore withdrew a long broadsword from a scabbard hidden inside the folds of his robes. "Are you familiar with Guillaume Prospero Critz?"
"Bien sur," Gerard answered, fear making him slip back into his native French. "Il était le magicien français du dix-septième siècle qui a défait le grand necromancer écossais Postumus FitzHugh."
Dumbledore's eyes never left the blade in his hand. "Legend has it that Critz made two swords that were magically connected to each other. After the larger of the two spilled the blood of a dark wizard, the smaller could slice through any magical object that wizard had made like a hot knife through butter." With his wand hand, he pulled the golden handle of the smaller sword from its own scabbard just enough to show Gerard that it was in his possession. "I imagine it would do a splendid job of destroying a horcrux and, quite luckily for me, I was able to purchase both weapons while in France this summer."
Anger briefly replaced fear on Gerard's sunken face and he sprang into a crouch, pointing an accusing finger at Dumbledore. "Impossible. You have stolen them. Why would any self-respecting French wizard give such a valuable national treasure to an English pig?"
"You may not be aware of this, Jean Paul," Dumbledore answered him with a chill in his voice, "but a war just ended in Europe. France and Great Britain were allies."
"We may find common cause from time to time to war against Turks or Huns," Gerard spat, "but inside the heart of every Frenchman is the burning desire to see England laid waste."
"Times have changed," Dumbledore told him calmly, cleaning the large sword in his hand with a rag as he spoke. "The wizarding world no longer involves itself in the affairs of muggle nations and, as such, witches and wizards from different countries no longer see each other as enemies. Given the great cost of this last conflict, I think even the muggle world may have finally seen the folly of war."
Without warning, Dumbledore plunged his sword into Jean Paul Gerard's chest, running the blade through him and then forcing the sword's tip into the wall, pinning the centuries-old French dark wizard in place. Gerard looked down at the gaping hole in his chest and then back up at Dumbledore, first in utter disbelief and then with defiant fury. "You may kill me, Albus, but you cannot change the nature of the human heart. There will always be war in it, just as there is love and sorrow and every other thing born of passion." The expression on the ancient wizard's face was both grotesque and hostile. "I may not be able to see the future, but I predict that there will be another war and that when it comes England will invade France once again. It is all they know to do."
Dumbledore's face was completely impassive. "I strongly suspect that I will live to see you proven wrong and that you will not." He now held his wand in one hand and the smaller of the two Critz swords in the other. "Goodbye, Jean Paul."
"No, wait," Gerard began, his voice pleading. "You don't understand. I help these children…these young witches and wizards…see what's in their hearts. I let them see the paths their lives could take. Many have gone on to undisputed greatness…" As Dumbledore prepared to exit the secret entrance he had found and close it back again with his wand, the French wizard tried one last, desperate gamble. "I could have warned you about Grindelwald."
Dumbledore froze. He pivoted and glared down at Gerard, his usually jovial eyes now stormy. "What did you just say?"
"I could have warned you about Gellert Grindelwald, had I known…" he rasped by way of explanation. "Had you known him when you lived in the tower, I could have told you he was up to no good…"
"How could you possibly know about Gellert Grindelwald?" Dumbledore asked him, his voice quaking slightly.
"Not from you, of course," Gerard told him confidently. "You are a brilliant occlumens. But people in the castle…they talk…"
One of Dumbledore's red eyebrows rose slightly. "Do they? What do they say?"
"It is not important," Jean Paul Gerard said with a dismissive, strangled laugh. "What is important is that I can teach your best students how to avoid such people…how to stay away from bad influences…"
"Like you yourself, for instance?" Dumbledore asked rhetorically. "You are truly the most wretched creature I have ever laid eyes on. You are a living corpse skewered on a sword and yet you beg pathetically for your life to be spared." Dumbledore returned the smaller of the two swords to its sheath. "Very well. If you truly wish to live like this, I will allow you to do so. But if I see one more student's name on the cornerstone of this tower…"
"You will not," Gerard assured him. "Oh, merci, Dumbledore, merci. You are a great man." Hogwarts' Transfiguration professor said nothing else as he left the room. "Wait. You are not going to leave me here like this, are you?" the French wizard called after him, his eyes darting down to the sword through his chest. "Not like this…"
***
Twenty-five years later
September 1, 1944
The Albus Dumbledore that now approached the tower housing both the sexcentenarian French dark wizard Jean Paul Gerard and the horcrux that kept him alive was a markedly different figure than the not-yet-forty-year-old wizard they had seen in the previous memory. His hair was a blend of gray and white and his face was drawn and grim. Cold rain soaked his long beard until he tapped it once with his wand and muttered a simple incantation, making it instantly dry. As he reached the tower, Dumbledore heaved a long sigh. Whatever he was now seeking to accomplish, it did not appear to be a pleasant task.
With little difficulty, Dumbledore once again found the place along the base of the tower where the secret entryway was located and tapped his wand against the bricks in the same manner as before. Although his face bore a twinge of regret, he stepped into the newly revealed room without hesitation. His eyes darted immediately to Jean Paul Gerard, who was still pinned to the wall by the sword that had been thrust through his chest a quarter century earlier. "I was right," Gerard's dry, cracking voice informed him.
"About what?" Dumbledore replied simply.
'Lord Montverde' attempted a smile, but it came across more as a wince. "There was another war. English soldiers have invaded France. Even now they are there, marching across my beloved country and taking pieces of it by force."
"A distorted version of the truth," Dumbledore assessed with a small smile of his own, "but it is truth nonetheless. Very well, you were right about that."
"Why are you here?" Gerard asked suspiciously. "Yours is the last name on the cornerstone. I have asked no other students to stay with me in this tower…"
"I am here to change that," Dumbledore said boldly, although his eyes betrayed a deep sadness. "There is a student that I would like for you to invite to live here in the Oracular Tower this year."
"Tom Marvolo Riddle." The younger British wizard gave his much, much older French counterpart an odd, questioning look. "Some of these devices," he explained, gesturing to the various magical objects about the room, "still respond to the sound of my voice. I am not without eyes and ears inside the castle. I am familiar with Riddle and with the incident last year involving the death of the muggleborn Ravenclaw girl. He received an award for special services to the school from Headmaster Dippet for exposing the perpetrator."
"Yes," Dumbledore confirmed, seemingly distracted by his own thoughts. "The Headmaster has made him Head Boy this year, despite my objections."
"You suspect that Riddle is responsible for the girl's death," Gerard speculated, "and that he framed the third year Gryffindor boy…but you have no proof."
"It is not proof of his guilt that concerns me now," Dumbledore admitted, tugging gently on his beard in thought. "Whatever his role in the incident last year, I believe Tom Riddle to be a troubled wizard on a very dark and dangerous path. He must be shown the consequences that await him if he continues to follow it."
"You fear him," Gerard stated, a wry grin making his thin blue lips more prominent.
Dumbledore shook his head. "I fear for him." The Hogwarts professor's eyes narrowed as he turned to face the Medieval French wizard he had very nearly killed twenty-five years before. "Will you do it, Jean Paul?"
"Why should I?" Lord Montverde demanded imperiously. "It is because of you that I have lived in such terrible pain these last few years, completely deprived of proper company… What could possibly motivate me to help you?"
"I still have the companion sword to the one that's currently jutting from your chest," Dumbledore pointed out nonchalantly. "I could finish you off quite easily."
Jean Paul Gerard clucked his tongue in disdain. "No, no, no, Albus, you are going about this the wrong way. You must first offer me an enticement to do as you ask and then threaten me with something terrible. I believe you English call it the 'carrot and stick' approach, no?"
"Killing you now was the carrot," Dumbledore informed him, his face expressionless. "I only assumed you would be ready for death after a quarter century of misery and isolation. Yet you still cling to what little is left of your life."
"What else can I do?" Gerard asked rhetorically. "Death is final. It is the end of everything. I cannot welcome it." The Frenchman's gruesome face looked thoughtful for a moment. "Although I would not mind this sword being removed…"
"Very well," Dumbledore said with a heavy sigh. "If you convince Tom that his future will be an unpleasant one if he remains on his current path, I might be persuaded to make your stay here somewhat more comfortable." Before Gerard could reply to that, Dumbledore continued, "However, if I do not see Riddle's name on the cornerstone within a week, I will end your truly pathetic excuse for a life without a moment's thought. Is that understood?"
"It is a lousy bargain," Gerard seethed, his yellow greenish teeth gritted together to make his face a macabre mask of unbridled hatred, "but it seems I have little choice in the matter. I accept."
Dumbledore gave Gerard the barest of nods and turned to leave the tower. Before he did, he added, "Oh and Jean Paul? Tom Riddle is the last student's name I want to see on this tower."
"For how long?" Lord Montverde asked scathingly. "Power is an intoxicant and there are few powers greater than the ability to shape the life of a promising child. It may take a generation or two, but you will come begging to me again to bring another student up here."
A melancholy expression filled Dumbledore's face. "I wish I could say that you were wrong." Without another word, the entrance closed behind him.
***
Harry, Ron and Hermione each withdrew their heads from the pensieve in turn, looking a little dazed as they did so. Hermione seemed to come out of what they had all come to know as 'pensieve stupor' first and gave Harry a look that was both morally supportive and intellectually curious. "Are you sure this is everything Dumbledore left for you in the Chamber of Secrets?"
"Yeah," Harry confirmed with a slow nod of his head. "Two pensieves, one horcrux-destroying sword and a bit of parchment that disintegrated as soon as I read it."
"What did it say?" Ron asked with an inquiring frown.
"'Be what I could not. Do what I would not. End it.'" Harry withdrew the smaller of the two Critz swords from its sheath and gave Ron and Hermione a look of steely determination. At that moment, both Harry's girlfriend and his best mate looked as though they'd rather go skinny dipping with Snape than trade places with Jean Paul Gerard. "And that's exactly what I'm going to do."
Harry Potter strode purposefully out of the Room of Requirement, the sword in one hand and his wand in the other. Hermione and Ron followed closely behind as everyone else walking through the castle made way for them. Once they neared the main exit, Hermione grabbed Harry's arm and he turned around to face her. "Are you sure you don't want us to go with you?"
"Considering the shape he's in, I think I can take Gerard on my own," Harry reassured her with a confident smile. "The hard part's going to be getting him to tell me what he made into a horcrux."
"Too bad Dumbledore didn't actually say what the horcrux was in the memories he left us," Ron grumbled.
"Maybe he never really knew," Harry speculated. "He could have just been bluffing Gerard."
"I guess," Ron conceded with a shrug. "It's just as well that you're not bringing us along, though. It was hard enough looking at that shriveled up old French bloke in the pensieve. I don't really want to imagine what he smells like. I'd probably vomit."
While Harry's face turned a bit green, Hermione looked thoughtful. "There is a spell I could teach you that would keep you from smelling him. Of course, it would physically remove your nose…"
Harry shot Hermione a grateful grin. "I don't think so, but thank you anyway." He gave her a short, soft kiss on her nose and then held her close to him for a moment. "You're always finding ways to help me, aren't you?"
"I don't think I could stop if I wanted to," Hermione replied earnestly. "I couldn't stand to lose you, Harry. You mean so much to me. You always have."
Harry felt duly inspired to share a truly passionate kiss with Hermione at that moment, despite Ron's protests. "Great," the redhead said with a weary sigh. "Just when I thought I wasn't going to have to see something that would make me throw up..."
The happy couple blissfully ignored Ron and only separated after several minutes of high quality snogging. "Be careful, Harry," Hermione said afterward, her brow furrowed with worry.
Harry shrugged off her concern. "He's a seven-hundred-year-old wizard who looks his age, doesn't have a wand and has a sword sticking through his chest. How hard could it be to finish him off?"
***
Trying his best to remember exactly what Dumbledore had done to reach the secret entrance, Harry Potter trudged around the Oracular Tower rather aimlessly, unsure of exactly how far his old Headmaster had walked from the steps. 'Was it seventeen paces or eighteen? And just how much shorter are my legs than Dumbledore's?' Eventually, after tapping his wand against five or six different stretches of the brick exterior, an entryway appeared. After only a moment's pause, Harry took a deep breath and stepped into the hidden room. "Lumos."
The light of Harry's wand barely penetrated what was now an oppressive darkness that made the room seem far different and much more ominous than what he had seen in the pensieves. Jean Paul Gerard's discoloured, skeletal form was only barely visible in the near corner, the light from Harry's wand softly gleaming off of the sword that had held him in place now for three quarters of a century. "Ah, Young Monsieur Potter. I see you have found the final memories Albus left for you at last."
Harry's already foul mood darkened. "How do you know I didn't figure it out on my own?"
Gerard chuckled weakly. "Call it a lucky guess." As Harry attempted to move closer to the ancient French wizard, an extremely repugnant odor filled his nostrils. Idly, he wondered how difficult Hermione's spell to remove his nose would have been to pull off. For now, he would just have to keep his distance. "Have you given any further thought to my offer?"
"I'm not here to make a deal with you, Gerard," Harry stated flatly. "I'm here to finish things, once and for all."
"I have heard that sentiment expressed before, and by a much more powerful wizard than you," Gerard taunted him in a bored tone of voice. "So you're saying there is no possibility that you will allow me to teach you about the core links?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying," Harry replied through clenched teeth. There was a dangerous edge to his voice now, as he was growing very tired of not being taken seriously. "Now are you going to tell me what you've made into a horcrux or am I going to have to…"
"Headmistress McGonagall is truly inadequate to teach you anything on the subject, you know," Lord Montverde interrupted him casually. "She has never even witnessed the power of one core link, let alone the half dozen or so you've managed to form. I, on the other hand, have fought and killed many happy couples who managed over the years to…"
His anger now overruling his olfactory sense, Harry closed the distance between Gerard and himself and pointed the sword none too subtly in the direction of the dark wizard's throat. "Now you listen to me, you sick, twisted bugger. Maybe you're used to pulling the strings up there," Harry indicated the top of the tower above them with his wand,
"making people believe you're showing them their future, but down here you're just a dried up old man with a sword through his chest who stinks to high heaven!" Harry moved his lit wand closer to Gerard's face to see if the message was getting through to him. "Up there you told me I didn't have the power to kill you. Well now I do. So you had better start treating me like the wizard who…controls…"
As the light revealed Jean Paul Gerard's form in full, Harry became aware of a strangely familiar hat that was sitting on his head. "Your anger is misplaced, Monsieur Potter. I have done nothing to you to make you hate me so. It is Dumbledore with whom you have a quarrel, but he is dead." Harry backed away from Gerard slowly, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Haven't you been wondering if Dumbledore forced me to invite you here, just as he did Riddle? Don't you want to know whether he's still 'pulling your strings', as you say, even after death?"
Harry ignored him. "The hat…I know I've seen it before…"
"Or maybe you prefer to have someone else tell you where to go and what to do," Gerard mused coyly. "Perhaps you are angry with Dumbledore because he left you all alone in the world. You long for guidance but you cannot bear to accept it from one such as I…"
"That's the Conjuring Hat!" Harry exclaimed in recognition as he saw the hat adjust itself slightly on the French wizard's head. "How did you…?"
Lord Montverde grinned wickedly. "The chapeau and I are old friends from Beauxbatons. I suppose it was rather rude of me not to thank you for letting it out. Albus had it closed up in that book for over a hundred years!" As Harry remembered exactly what the hat was capable of, he began slowly backing away from Gerard. "We have had so much catching up to do… But I must apologize for interrupting you, Monsieur Potter. All these years of solitude have made me forget my manners. You were saying something before about determining which one of us has more power. Perhaps I could settle the matter with a little demonstration."
"Incendio," Harry called out suddenly, flicking his wand in the direction of the hat. Before the spell could set the Conjuring Hat aflame, however, a magical shield appeared and deflected it.
"A marvelous thing to behold, is it not?" Gerard asked giddily. "It can generate a shielding charm without my saying a word. I only have to think it to make it so." Harry began to quickly and quietly back out of the room, unwilling to turn and run only because he wanted to keep an eye on both the wizard and the hat as he made his escape. "You may run from me, Monsieur Potter, but you cannot run from what the hat can conjure. Now…what shall I send after you?" Outside the tower, Harry desperately racked his brain trying to remember what Dumbledore had done to close the entrance. "How about dementors? As I recall, you never much cared for them…" At the Frenchman's words, a swarm of dementors flew out of the tower and began swooping about around the grounds without reason or rhyme, as though they were completely disoriented.
"Come on," Harry said to himself as he began tapping the wall around the entrance with his wand. "One tap here, one tap there…something has to make it close…"
"I think a small army of inferi would be a nice accoutrement," Gerard added offhandedly. Slowly, a great number of the walking dead began filing dazedly from the room. Much to Harry's relief, they were ignoring him for now, just as the dementors were.
"And, of course, the piece de resistance…the Hungarian Horntail!" Within seconds, the most fearsome looking dragon Harry had ever seen appeared just outside the tower. It began beating its wings to keep itself aloft, but it too seem confused as to what it was doing here. Near total panic, Harry kept frantically tapping his wand against the entrance and, after several agonizingly long moments, watched as it finally closed in front of him, fortunately keeping Gerard and the Conjuring Hat trapped inside.
Unfortunately, there was still the matter of the dementors, the inferi and the rather angry-looking dragon to be dealt with, as the creatures were obviously no longer ignoring him. The walking dead were ambling toward Harry rather slowly and the dementors suddenly seemed to realize that he was the only soul around for quite some distance. Puffs of flame exited the Horntail's snout as it exhaled sharply, its razor-sharp teeth displayed frighteningly as it roared. The beast then began to descend rather rapidly in Harry's direction. 'Alright, Harry. You can do this. Just take on one obstacle at a time.'
With only a small amount of difficulty, he closed his eyes and thought of the kiss he and Hermione had shared only a few moments earlier. "Expecto patronum!" Harry's stag patronus promptly emerged from the end of his wand and charged off in the direction of the dragon, leaping to meet it head on just as it flew near the ground. Its misty form passed through the dragon's eyes, causing it to heave a monstrous bellow of anger and confusion and once again take to the air. The patronus, meanwhile, had already moved on to the dementors, which it soon dispersed one by one. Harry then sent it to accomplish one final task and turned his attention to the inferi that were beginning to encircle him.
Perhaps already somewhat accustomed to the smell and appearance of decaying flesh from his confrontation with Gerard, Harry was not as repulsed by the mob of reanimated corpses currently coming at him as he might have been under ordinary circumstances. 'Of course, under ordinary circumstances I probably wouldn't have a bunch of inferi out to kill me. Or a dragon, for that matter.' Truthfully, Harry was more worried about the Hungarian Horntail than the army of the undead, who he could probably drive off with a few good fire charms.
Suddenly, a simple but potentially effective plan began to take shape in Harry's mind. The inferi did not appear to be in a great hurry to murder him and the now furious-looking dragon had seemingly regrouped. The Horntail flew once around the Oracular Tower and then dove straight toward Harry. If this was going to work, his timing would have to be perfect.
'Wait,' Harry told himself as sweat beaded on his forehead. A few of the living dead were now less than two meters from him and the entire swarm of rotting bodies were bunched together around him, preparing to strike en masse. 'Wait just a few more seconds.' As the dragon abruptly stopped its dive, it pulled up several dozen meters above the ground, likely so that Harry could not attempt any more wizardly mischief. A stream of flame shot from its mouth as it passed overhead, rushing like a river of fire in Harry's direction. Just as he began to feel the heat of the flame on his face and as the putrescent arm of an inferi reached out to grab his own, he pointed his wand in the direction of the dragon's fire. "Protego!"
The shielding charm worked just in time, as the magical barrier kept the stream of flame from touching even the outer folds of his Hogwarts robes, even as all around him inferi were engulfed in the fire. It went exactly as he had planned, although he had not anticipated how much worse the smell would be. Roasted inferi, dragon's breath and the smell of burnt grass combined for an unforgettably horrible odor. 'I really wish I had taken Hermione up on her offer to teach me that nose-removal spell. Although I suppose I'd have to figure out another way to keep my glasses on my face. Maybe a good sticking charm…'
The frustrated roar of the Horntail above him brought him back to earth again quickly. He had hoped to hide in the cloud of smoke rising from the scorched ground and burning bodies for a few more minutes, but it seemed as though the cold autumn wind had other ideas. Harry, on the other hand, had precious few. He was now all out of clever ploys and it was just him and the dragon. Frankly, he liked the dragon's chances.
Apparently so did the dragon. The Hungarian Horntail landed on its feet very near where Harry stood, seemingly prepared to finish him off. Harry quickly applied a disillusionment charm to himself in an attempt to sneak away. 'Maybe it's not the most heroic thing to do,' Harry thought to himself. 'But this isn't the Triwizard Tournament. I don't want anything the dragon's guarding. I just want to survive.'
Once again, sense of smell got in the way. Even through the smoke and ashes (or perhaps especially through them, considering how used to their scent the dragon would have to be) the Horntail was able to sniff him out. 'Well, so much for cowardice,' Harry thought resignedly. 'It's not really my style anyhow.' The moment Harry became visible again he fired a stunner right at the dragon's snout, making it recoil slightly and allowing him the opportunity to put his superior agility to good use, as he darted around the dragon in an attempt to put the sword in his hand to equally good use. Once he was at the dragon's side, he began hacking away at its scales with the blade, although it wasn't having much effect.
That is unless you count the fact that it made the dragon even angrier than before. Its massive, horned tail swished and knocked Harry into the air. Before he knew exactly what had happened, he found himself holding onto the dragon's tail for dear life as it began flying at a very high speed above and around Hogwarts. The sword that had been in his hand was now a distant memory, and although he had managed to hold onto his wand, he really needed both hands where they were right now.
The Hungarian Horntail made repeated hairpin turns in the air and was moving its tail around quite a lot, leading Harry to believe that it didn't much like having him along for the ride. The feeling was mutual, actually, but the only alternative available right now, letting go and falling to his death, wasn't very appealing. As his now bloody fingers began to lose their grip on the dragon's very sharp horns, however, it seemed as though it was an extraordinarily likely alternative. 'I can't…hold on…' His hands, now numb and slippery with blood, slowly fell away. Harry Potter tumbled from the dragon, a dismayed scream of protest leaving his throat as he began to fall to earth.
He didn't fall for long, however. With a colossal thud and squawk, Harry landed on something else flying below him, although it took him a moment to recognize what exactly had spared his life. Once he came to his senses, it was obvious who had saved him. "Buckbeak," Harry exclaimed aloud. "Or I guess it's Witherwings now. Which one do you prefer?" The hippogriff shot him a disapproving glare. "Right. I don't suppose it matters that much right now. Take us down. Let's find Hagrid." If the hippogriff was here, that meant his patronus had reached Hagrid's hut. With any luck at all, the Care of Magical Creatures professor would have something on hand that would incapacitate the Horntail.
Buckbeak brought Harry back to the exact same spot he had left, a place easily identifiable by the patch of scorched earth the dragon had left in its wake. Rubeus Hagrid stood there waiting for him, looking both bewildered and relieved. There was no time for pleasantries or explanations, however, as the Hungarian Horntail was in hot pursuit. Once the dragon drew near, Hagrid pulled out a small burlap sack and began tossing handfuls of a sparkling dust in the creature's direction. "You've tired yerself out, haven't ya? Time for a little nap, i'n'it?" As the dragon inhaled the substance, his eyes began to droop. "Go ta sleep now. There's a nice dragon." In an instant the Hungarian Horntail crashed to earth, fast asleep.
"How long will he be out?" Harry asked through ragged breaths.
Hagrid scratched his scruffy beard thoughtfully. "A few hours, at least." The half-giant offered him some bandages and ointment and then gave Harry a questioning look. "So Harry…are ya goin' to tell me how a Hungarian Horntail ended up on school grounds?"
"A dark wizard conjured one," Harry answered him honestly as he began wrapping his bleeding hands with gauze strips. "What he's doing here is a very long story, but I'm the one who has to defeat him."
"A wizard tha' can conjure a dragon's nobody to be taken lightly," Hagrid cautioned him as he fed the hippogriff a dead rodent. "Are ya sure you can handle this on yer own, Harry?"
"No, I'm not," Harry admitted. Spotting where he had dropped the sword Guillaume Prospero Critz had made centuries ago, he picked it up and held it in his newly bandaged right hand. "I think I'm going to need reinforcements."
The reinforcements, the core links, the defeat of Jean Paul Gerard and the road ahead for our hero, all in the
next (and last) chapter of Going On in two weeks. Here's hoping you enjoy!
InsaneTrollLogic