Blood-Soaked Succession Chapter 34 (Patreon)

Chapter 34:

XXX

Harry found Neville kneeling over Ginny in what remained of the hospital corridor.

She was still unconscious, though somebody had stopped the bleeding and bound the worst of her injuries during the retreat. Neville looked considerably better by comparison, which wasn't saying much. Blood covered one side of his face and several holes had been burned through his robes.

Harry grasped him firmly by the shoulder before crouching beside Ginny and taking hold of hers.

"Going."

Neville activated his portkey and St Mungo's vanished.

They reappeared upon a grassy hillside overlooking a broad stretch of wilderness near Dartmoor. The wind caught Harry's robes as he released Neville and looked down towards the valley below.

Years earlier the Quidditch World Cup had filled the valley with hundreds of tents, Ministry infrastructure and enough witches and wizards to temporarily create one of the largest magical settlements in Britain. Now only empty countryside stretched between the hills.

Harry started downhill with Neville carrying Ginny beside him.

A pair of wrought-iron gates shimmered into existence before they reached the bottom and opened to permit them passage.

Harry passed between them and the concealment charms peeled away around him. Empty wilderness became manicured lawns stretching hundreds of metres in every direction. Hedges, gardens and fountains appeared one after another before Malfoy Manor itself emerged in the distance.

Moving the entire estate had been considerably more difficult than relocating Grimmauld Place, but the result had been worth the effort. His satisfaction faded at the faces that welcomed him as he entered and the gates closed behind him.

The courtyard was already crowded.

Hermione stood near the fountain with James, Lily and Peter while several other survivors of the Azkaban force gathered around them. Harry noticed how few possessed bodies remained among the dozens of translucent shades scattered across the grounds.

He slowed.

Hermione looked terrible. Peter's robes were shredded, the Black brothers and Lucius were missing their bodies altogether and Madeye was once again one-legged.

Harry gestured between all of them.

"What happened?"

"Azkaban was destroyed," Hermione answered.

Harry waited.

"We'll debrief you later."

He stared at her for another moment before nodding. He honestly couldn't wait to find out what nonsense the department of time had gotten up to.

The gates opened again behind him.

Draco stumbled through first with Poliakoff behind him. Both looked considerably worse for wear. Draco supported one arm against his chest while blood soaked through the side of Poliakoff's robes, but neither approached Ginny's condition.

Thankfully, Cresspool had already seen her. The mediwizard came sprinting down the front steps of the manor carrying his medical bag and waved Neville towards him.

Harry looked back towards the gates which closed again.

"Where are Cho and Luna?"

Cho had issued the retreat order. They should have arrived already.

Poliakoff wiped blood from his mouth.

"They went to the new permanent spell-damage ward while Draco and I held off their rear. We assumed they'd get here first."

Harry frowned.

Something touched his mind again. Only this time there was nothing subtle about it. The intrusion that had been brushing against his defenses since Nurmengard slammed against them with all the delicacy of somebody pounding both fists against a locked steel door.

Harry's attention snapped inward.

He knew that presence. Or, more accurately, he'd finally eliminated everyone it couldn't be.

He glanced towards Hermione and raised one finger.

"Excuse me for a moment."

Then Harry opened the door.

The presence crashed into his mind.

"WHAT?!" he demanded.

Everyone in the courtyard jumped. Even the shades. Harry didn't care that he'd screamed the word aloud.

-

Me! Why have you been blocking me out? We have a situation here!

Harry blinked.

"Okay... and?!"

Grimmauld Place is gone.

"What do you mean it's gone?!"

Several people around him exchanged confused looks at the one sided conversation they were witnessing. Harry ignored them.

I mean gone! Marietta attacked us. I barely managed to get Jessica out alive before the entire place vanished.

Harry stared blankly across the courtyard.

Edgecombe?

Marietta Edgecombe had betrayed them again?

That didn't make any sense. She'd already suffered the consequences of betraying Dumbledore's Army once and had considerably more reason to fear what Harry would do about a second offense. More importantly, how could she make Grimmauld Place disappear?

You should probably just come here.

Harry couldn't argue with that.

He turned towards the gates and prepared to Apparate, only for the wrought iron to open back up before he could leave.

Cho stumbled through alone.

Harry's stomach sank before she'd even opened her mouth.

Luna wasn't with her. Neither were Frank and Alice.

"They took Luna!" Cho called as she limped towards them.

Neville turned. Cho looked towards him and shook her head.

"I couldn't get your parents out."

Harry closed his eyes and counted to ten.

One.

Two.

Three.

He was finally beginning to understand Voldemort's emotional and occasionally violent outbursts.

Four.

Five.

Six.

No. Calm down. Count the successes.

Seven.

Nurmengard?

Taken. That's a positive.

Eight.

Perenelle had handed over an enormous amount of intelligence about the Unspeakables. Also a positive.

Nine.

Azkaban?

Harry opened one eye and glanced towards Hermione.

Gone. He still had no idea what the hell that meant, so he mentally placed Azkaban somewhere between victory and defeat as a neutral outcome and moved on.

Ten.

St Mungo's?

Luna captured. Frank and Alice left behind. Ginny unconscious and everyone badly injured. Catastrophic failure.

Grimmauld Place? Apparently fucking missing. Situation still developing.

Harry exhaled slowly through his respirator. The good and bad were still approximately even. He could work with even.

Then the Galleon against his chest suddenly became hot.

"Oh, what now?"

He pulled it free and looked down.

The message appearing across its surface was mercifully short.

DURMSTRANG IS OURS.

He let his shoulders relax.

Okay. Today had still been mostly victories. Probably.

"I'll be back in a minute," he told everyone.

Before anybody could ask where he was going, Harry walked out through the gates and Apparated away.

He landed in the overgrown lot behind his family home and looked towards the place where Number Twelve Grimmauld Place should have been.

Nothing. The utilities they'd connected months earlier still terminated at the edge of an empty patch of ground. Pipes protruded uselessly from the earth spewing water and sewage while severed magical connections sparked faintly where the house's wards had once joined those surrounding the property.

Harry stared at the empty space. It really was gone.

"See?"

He turned.

Jessica sat against a tree several metres away near the back of the Potter house, looking considerably worse than Harry remembered her. Her clothes were torn, blood streaked one side of her face and she was pressing a torn piece of her clothing to her throat. Her expression also carried a familiarity that didn't belong there. There was green in her eyes.

"You possessed her?"

His other self looked down at Jessica's hands.

"It was the only thing I could think of."

Harry approached while Jessica-Harry flexed one hand experimentally, still apparently getting accustomed to having fingers again.

"Marietta attacked Jessica first. I tried to stop her, but there wasn't much I could do without a body. By the time everything started going wrong... I wasn't ending tonight without saving at least one person."

Harry couldn't fault him for that. The two of them turned together and stared at the empty space where Grimmauld Place had stood.

For several seconds neither spoke.

Harry glanced sideways.

His other self continued staring ahead through Jessica's eyes.

Something occurred to him.

"You don't know how to stop possessing her, do you?"

Jessica's shoulders sagged.

"Nope."

XXX

The Head Unspeakable of Mind stepped out of the fireplace into the atrium of St Mungo's and brushed a scattering of soot from his grey robes. His assistants emerged from the neighboring fireplaces moments later, similarly dressed and equally anonymous beneath their hoods. Six in all. More than he usually required for a simple patient transfer, but after hearing what had happened here today, he'd decided caution was warranted.

He glanced around the damaged atrium.

Aurors occupied nearly every available patch of floor. Some interviewed Healers and witnesses while others photographed shattered walls, collected fragments of curses from impact sites or levitated bodies towards the morgue. An entire reception desk had been reduced to splinters.

The Head of Mind continued towards the stairwell.

He had been looking forward to receiving patients from St Mungo's for months. Hogwarts was an exceptional location for studying the developing mind, particularly now that his Department possessed unrestricted access to hundreds of children at every stage of magical development.

Unfortunately, there were ethical restrictions. Sooooo many ethical restrictions. To the point it was mostly observational.

Most of the experiments he'd actually wanted to perform required subjects with existing neurological or magical damage, and St Mungo's permanent residents provided precisely that without requiring him to inflict the initial injuries himself.

On the way up he saw even more damage. One ward seemed to have suffered a potions accident involving way too many salamander scales and dragon bile, and somebody appeared to have driven a human-shaped object through three consecutive walls.

Interesting.

He entered the Permanent Spell Damage Ward and found Death waiting for him.

The other Unspeakable stood beside the nurses' station with his arms folded, his robes so badly damaged that sections of brass framework remained visible beneath them. One arm possessed a bend halfway between wrist and elbow that hadn't been there the last time they'd spoken.

Mind looked him over.

"Potter?"

"Potter."

Mind nodded sympathetically. They'd all suffered a year of overtime repairing the damage that little demon and his peons had done to the Department of Mysteries. Only to then be forced into service under Voldemort. He foresaw it being a very short rule. Prophecy didn't, but he was a Death Eater so he would lie about that.

"I want the patients transferred immediately."

"Of course."

Death gestured towards the ward.

"They're yours."

Frank Longbottom came first. Several diagnostic charms passed over the unconscious man's skull and unfolded into overlapping diagrams above his bed. Magical pathways appeared alongside representations of memory, cognition and emotional response.

Mind studied them briefly.

"Cruciatus damage. Extensive. Unchanged from last recording."

His assistants recorded the results while he moved to Alice Longbottom. The pattern was almost identical. Permanent shock and despondency.

"Same."

Then Gilderoy Lockhart.

Mind stopped.

"Oh."

Several of his assistants crowded closer.

Lockhart's mind wasn't damaged in anything resembling a natural pattern. Great sections of memory had simply been emptied while others remained almost perfectly intact, but the damage had portioned off areas of his mind as if it were repeatedly placed in a bread slicer at different angles. The new connections between the sections were an odd web indeed.

"Obliviation," one assistant suggested.

"Obviously."

Mind leaned closer to the hovering diagnostic image. The patient seemed delighted at the attention but he tuned out his inane chatter.

"But look at the boundaries."

He spent another minute examining them before reluctantly moving on. There would be plenty of time for Lockhart later.

He checked the remaining patients, then the Healers. After what had happened today, there was no reason to assume everyone still walking around the hospital had escaped magical damage merely because they appeared functional.

The Aurors received the same treatment.

Most complained.

He was nearly finished when he reached the prisoner.

A young woman lay stunned upon one of the beds with her wrists and ankles bound. She looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn't immediately place her. Probably somebody he'd passed at Hogwarts.

He motioned to the blonde girl.

"Who is this?"

"One of Potter's," an Auror answered. "Captured during the retreat."

That explained it.

Mind cast the diagnostic charm. When his wand touched the woman's forehead he stopped breathing.

His assistants noticed his sudden silence and gathered around him.

"What in the world was done to you?"

The woman's mind was surrounded by magic.

Not one charm. Not even dozens. Hundreds of individual structures overlapped one another in a web of nested shells, partitions and conditional barriers extending throughout nearly every major portion of her mind.

Mind stepped closer.

Some shells remained intact. Others had already opened, yet their magical frameworks persisted like empty eggs surrounding whatever had once been contained inside them. Memory barriers intersected with restrictions upon cognition and behavior. Entire mental functions had apparently been isolated from one another before being permitted to reconnect only after predetermined conditions had been satisfied.

He changed the diagnostic charm and more appeared.

"Oh, my."

One of his assistants actually laughed in disbelief. Mind couldn't blame him.

Whoever had constructed the system understood the human mind extraordinarily well. He and his entire Department could probably reproduce something comparable if they worked together and had sufficient time.

Probably.

More importantly, they could dismantle it.

Mind lowered his wand.

He turned towards the nearest Auror, a young woman with violently pink hair who looked as though she'd spent the afternoon being repeatedly thrown down a staircase.

"I'm taking the girl."

Her eyebrows rose.

Mind flicked his wand and the unconscious prisoner floated from the bed.

"Hang on." The Auror turned towards the older man standing beside her. "Can he do that?"

The senior Auror watched Mind's assistants begin levitating the other patients towards the exit.

"Yes."

Tonks stared at him.

"He can just take a prisoner?"

"He's an Unspeakable."

And that ought to be answer enough.

Mind turned back towards his newest acquisition.

The mystery woman floated peacefully beside him, completely unaware of the immense academic interest she'd just attracted. He hadn't been this excited about a subject in years.

"Bring her with the others."

His assistants followed him towards the fireplaces.

Mind had come to St Mungo's expecting several familiar puzzles.

Instead, somebody had given him a new one.

XXX

Marietta stepped over the dying form of Mrs Bulstrode without looking down.

The older woman lay curled against the corridor wall, frost spreading steadily beneath her skin as the blood-freezing curse worked its way towards her heart. Her daughter had died much the same way.

Marietta continued through the doorway where a portrait had once concealed the staircase and descended into the rooms beneath Grimmauld Place. She carried a folded cloak beneath one arm while her wand rested loosely in the other hand.

Walburga's laboratory remained almost exactly as she'd expected.

Almost. Someone had been busy.

A makeshift study occupied one side of the chamber, complete with stacks of copied notes, translation guides and several chalkboards covered in increasingly desperate attempts to decipher Walburga's research. Wormtail's handwriting appeared across most of them alongside the sharper script of that masked woman who'd been assisting him.

Marietta scoffed.

Amateurs.

Her attention moved towards the glass cylinders lining the laboratory walls. Four bodies, not counting Walburga herself. And she recognized them. That Potter's people couldn't put that together really spoke to how out of their depth they were.

To think Walburga had actually gone through with all of it.

"Ambitious woman," Marietta murmured.

Then she found Walburga herself.

The containment charms surrounding her cylinder were almost insulting. Layers of wards had been wrapped around the glass and anchored into the floor, presumably intended to prevent anyone from opening it accidentally or otherwise. But they were all pointed inwards, with no thought given to somebody dismantling them from the outside.

This made dismantling them from the outside child's play.

When the final charm faded she reached for the lever beside the cylinder and pulled it down.

Liquid drained through the grating beneath with a deep mechanical gurgle. The cloudy glass gradually cleared until the naked woman suspended inside became fully visible. A moment later the seals released with a hiss and the front of the cylinder swung outward.

Walburga Black collapsed onto her hands and knees.

She coughed violently, expelling fluid onto the laboratory floor while Marietta patiently unfolded the cloak she'd brought downstairs.

When Walburga finally looked up, Marietta offered it to her.

"Here."

Walburga accepted it with trembling fingers.

"Thank you, young lady."

Marietta tried not to snort at the greeting.

She watched the woman wrap the cloak around herself before climbing to her feet. She could relate to getting used to a new body, though Walburga had the benefit of that body being a clone of her own. Within moments she stood almost straight, studying her rescuer with considerably more suspicion than gratitude.

Her eyes travelled from Marietta's shoes to her face. Then stopped.

Walburga stared at the top of her head.

"What an odd tiara you have."

Marietta smiled. It wasn't her smile. There was too much delight in it, too much recognition and far too much thrill at watching understanding begin to dawn upon Walburga's face.

"Actually, my dear Walburga..."

The smile widened.

"I believe it's called a Diadem."