Incandescence
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Chap. 14: Incandescence
Harry James Potter of 1337 Craftsman Road in the small town of Avondale, in the county of Cork, was no stranger to battle, no stranger to fighting for his life against incredible odds. Some would say merely surviving to Hogwarts had taken no fewer than thirty miracles, not least of which was, as a baby, somehow surviving a curse that had never failed to kill before. Years of abuse by his aunt and uncle and later their son had taken many, many more, even if they were in some ways minor compared to that first big one.
Throughout his years at Hogwarts, things had gotten worse and worse. Each year had brought more open peril than the one before, until the very Ministry itself had risen against him and his most powerful ally, painting him as a dangerous, deranged lunatic in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. He had dueled the Dark Lord, the most feared wizard in the world in the last several decades, in a midnight graveyard surrounded by the wizard's most dangerous followers... and he'd been alone. That had happened at the age of fourteen, and yet Harry had survived. Escaped, with the body of his murdered friend returned to his family for burial.
Harry had, with the aid of school-children who'd come to rescue him, their friend, fought off a dozen and more Death Eaters, and dueled against the most feared Death Eater, the insane Bellatrix LeStrange.
He had even (temporarily, at least) saved Dumbledore's life at the Gaunt shack, then finished the task... again, alone. He was used to fighting, used to desperation, used to doing everything he could simply to stay alive.
This was nothing like that.
The only similarities were the spells Harry was casting.
The differences were vast, and only a few were subtle.
For one, he had gotten far too used to either being in a one-on-one duel, and even in the first few seconds of their attack, Harry had been saved by Sirius and Kingsley both from spells coming from other than his target. Rusty, his instincts screamed at him, watch all of them! Everyone in that house is a potential enemy, even the prisoners!
The Death Eaters likely hadn't even known who he was, they just saw someone running onto the supposedly-protected property, and started throwing potentially lethal spells.
He was also used to running for his life, casting backward all-but blindly over his shoulder. This whole 'facing the enemy head-on' thing seemed perilously stupid... yet it did also make aiming a lot easier. It would be great, if his opponents didn't receive the same benefit.
Harry was more used to dodging and ducking behind cover, using pillars, corners, furniture, whatever he could find to protect himself from the onrushing magical energy, in addition to copious application of the Shield Charm. Less so, the dash through a wide, open lawn lined with only occasional hedges (neatly trimmed, once, but in disrepair now), or the no doubt once-beautiful trees that had been shorn to the base, leaving open fields of fire for the defenders. Just in case, he was sure.
The most significant, severe, and even strange difference, however, was that this time, for the first time really, Harry Potter was on the attack.
He had certainly launched offensive, harmful, and dangerous spells himself, both in practice and in battle itself. But he'd never been on the actual offensive. And he'd most definitely never done so while attacking a fortified (if damaged) position with armed, dangerous defenders.
There was a saying that came to Harry as he cleared the gate Kingsley had blasted open a mere ten seconds after he had started to run, spells somehow already flying. Had they known the attack was coming? Or were they spotted? Or were the defenders just that alert, after what had happened now a few weeks earlier?
War is Hell. Pithy. Short... probably too short for a famous... what had he been, a general? During the American Civil War, maybe? ... Sherman? Tecumseh Sherman... Bill? No, William. Yes, that was the name Harry very distantly remembered from years earlier, a brief footnote in his muggle primary school history books.
Seems accurate though, Harry frowned, as he saw his first actual Death Eater appear in the doorway of Malfoy Manor, with both decorative, dark-stained doors thrown wide. A big man, blonde. Green light the color of his eyes started gushing outward in jets. Wide, many of them, but uncomfortably close to he, Kingsley, and Sirius... and the others he could now see out of the corner of his eyes, all rushing for the house itself. Thorfinn Rowle. Death Eater. Only known survivor from the attack Malfoy was planning, escaped the Mermaids after he killed... what was it, six? Time do die.
The huge man was already a murderer, and so casual about it, given how many Killing Curses he was throwing about, his face twisted not with fear or anger, but glee.
Harry had no compulsion, no fear, no worry in him as he raised his own wand to deflect a curse headed his own direction with all he could find: a sickly, bedraggled, and very terrified white peacock. Poor thing, he thought, a little remorseful that a relatively innocent creature had just died to protect him.
Rowle clearly had not expected the volume of return fire he got, however, for the man wasn't taking cover, just standing there unleashing random death.
Sirius' spell caught him in the shoulder, one Harry couldn't identify. The result was obvious, though, the searing white light lanced through him as if it were, in fact, a lance, powerful enough to sear and blast away several inches of the joint, leaving his left arm hanging limp and useless by a few threads of tendon as blood oozed out, too cauterized to gush or spray.
Kingsley's, a moment later, hit the door frame next to Rowle, but the shards of wood and stone peppered the huge man's face with shrapnel, as Harry dimly noted several windows being thrown open on the more intact side of the house, and spell fire coming from those, too.
Harry's, the last to fly, was a Bludgeoning Hex, with as much force and power behind it as he could muster while dodging what he suspected was a Cutting Curse from one of the windows on the right, and maintaining his forward run. It hit Rowle directly in the center of his chest somehow, and Harry watched, aghast, as his robes were pushed through his entire torso to flap out the back side, torn along with a spray of ribs and viscera to splatter against a witch behind him. Rowle, stunned, looked down at himself, his eyes wide, and then up. Bright, clear eyes met Harry's.
His head swam. Empathic abilities he hadn't even possessed a year ago swarmed, and...
Pain. Fear. Surprise! What terrible surprise. Potter? How had a boy killed him? No, he couldn't be dead! He was among the Dark Lord's strongest! His most dangerous! He was... why was breathing hard? Oh. His lungs were half-gone, and falling out. There was one now. Why was the world twisting, tiltingfallingdarknessthump-dark-sideways... gone.
Harry shook himself, and allowed only three running steps to look at the first corpse he'd created today. He's a Death Eater. You know he's killed, he just tried to kill you. He was human, but he had to die to protect you and those you care about, Potter. Shake it off. Grieve later if you must, but not right now.
The woman behind Rowle, still wiping blood from her face, went down next as they hit the mid-way point of the wide, dried-grass yard. This time, the senior Auror's spell hit true, right in the face, a splash of golden light that sent her reeling and stumbling back, her body spasming for a few seconds before it went still. Behind her, Harry could just make out the shapes of three more people, before the unburned side of the manor erupted in brilliant, red-orange flame, and he heard a roar that sounded far too much like a dragon's.
Voldemort hissed, "Potter, you say? Here? Strange that I do not feel his presence... No matter. You know what to do, Severus. Do not make the mistake of thinking I replaced your arm simply out of my own loyalty to my faithful Death Eaters. Do not fail. I will depart for now... I am not ready to end this game just yet. Potter will not have come without his ally. Let my Toy deal with the other Succubus for now, when she makes herself known. You will deal with Potter. Do not kill him. Capture, hurt, torture... but his life belongs to me and me alone. The others, do with as you will."
Snape sneered gleefully, and nodded, "Thank you, My Lord. You are generous."
"When my servants perform well, yes," Voldemort agreed, before he turned to the violet-haired, silver-skinned creature next to him. "Toy, I trust you have learned over the last day the difference between how I treat those who succeed and who do not."
"Oh, yes, Master, I have," she giggled demurely, sending a powerful surge of lust to his groin. He mastered it, this time, though. He didn't have time for dalliances.
"Good. Do not fail. Meet this supposed upstart in battle, test her ability. I wish to know who is truly stronger. If it is you, clearly, then send her home. Kill her. Do as you will. If you are nearly evenly matched, or she is stronger, then withdraw and report. You will be able to find me?"
"Over any distance, Master," Toy nodded firmly, "My Shadowstep is nearly unlimited on this plane of existence. I could reach other planetary bodies with little effort."
"Excellent. You will be useful. And you will have no issue tracking me?"
"No, of course not, Master," she cooed, running a finger down his chest, "I am to obey your commands. That is the Contract's magic. I obey your commands, and that is all. Simple, easy, effective. Too many try to over-complicate Contracts, but simple ones work quite well on their own. The magic of it would make me, if I did not choose to. You told me to find you, and thus I will, through any ward or barrier or distance."
"Very well. Snape, I will leave the remainder of the plan to your capable hands. Bella... let us be off. Don't forget my other toys."
Bellatrix LeStrange smiled as she lifted the conjured rope, which currently twisted lightly around the necks of Meera Yaxley and a half-dozen other women he had enjoyed of late. It was really a shame that Narcissa had been horribly scarred by the fire... even after being a plaything for nearly every Death Eater over the last year, she was still attractive, and skilled at her business. But needs must. She would be bait, now, the last true owner of the house. Her death, during the battle, would be the clincher that sealed Dumbledore's ridiculous followers' fate.
Snape, much as he had once been friends with Narcissa, seemed to hold nothing but contempt for her now. He would not fail, not in that sacrifice. Yes... all would go according to plan. And if it did not, he, at least, would be safe in his newly-finished sanctum, far from here, in a place Potter did not even know existed, with a literal army at his beck and call.
More than one, soon, if he had any say in the matter, which he did, because the world, the universe, was his to command.
A few moments later, Voldemort was gone, the Portkey to his sanctum activated by his touch.
He had just sacrificed over twenty more Death Eaters... but barring Snape, the important ones were already gone, evacuated the minute they had seen people hiding, encircling the manor. Fools... but he, Voldemort, would reign supreme. Let Potter and his foolish allies have this small victory, let them think they had won. Yes, they had weakened him... Him!
But he would win the war. He was invincible, unkillable. It was unthinkable that even Potter could bring him low. Without Dumbledore's help, and an accident of fate, he would not have lost even that one Horcrux. But the old man was gone now, and Potter's greatest protector gone in that loss. The Succubus had already been countered. His friends, even if the witch was of reasonable intellect, would serve him or die. Yes... he could use that girl. Manger? Granadier? Something. She would serve him... oh, yes. Willingly, too, eventually. They all did.
Maybe, one day, she would even replace dear Bella as his most devout follower aged out of the last bits of her beauty. Maybe.
Of course, he had no plans to tell Bella that. He did want the girl to live to serve him, after all.
Hermione knew she'd screwed up the moment the flames surged into existence. Magic lurched out of her to feed the spell, far more than she had intended. "Shite," she swore violently. She had intended to cause a distraction, to pull some of the spells flying around Harry toward their side of the house. She hadn't intended to annihilate the entire remaining structure! Even now, while she fought desperately to contain the growing inferno, more magic pulled out of her, down her arm, into her wand, and toward the Fiendfyre.
It was taking shape more quickly than she had expected. The information she'd read about the dangerous spell had been pretty specific in that regard: The spell would pull magic, it would definitely try to take everything it could. The stronger the witch or wizard, the more magic it would try to pull, even up to the caster's death... one of the reasons the spell was so dangerous. It often killed its caster, before the real limits were understood.
Hermione had thought she knew those limits, knew her own. Thought she had known how powerful she was, and was not.
The books had described the spell taking as much as a minute for most casts to start forming actual shapes of animals and demons out of the fire, using the magical energy they consumed to fuel itself as much as the physical objects. The most powerful, it was said, took about half that. Herpo the Foul, one of the most well-known historical users, was reported to have done it in twenty or so seconds, and many considered him a peer of the likes of Dumbledore, Voldemort, and Grindelwald.
Hermione saw the first dog- or wolf-faced shape in six seconds flat, just after her seconds stumbling, weak-kneed step forward, Ron on her heels and Remus all-but next to her. By ten, there was a definite lupine shape forming, a snake twisting around against the vine-covered trellis, a reptilian head that exploded into being as the first window popped out due to the heat, which washed against her even from two hundred feet away.
That's unusual and odd, she found herself thinking, her mind quickly compartmentalizing as it often did when presented with multiple problems at once, most of her fighting still to control the spell, to weaken its pull, to save some of her strength for later, while a small bit remained on logic alone. How is it so strong? Surely all the records aren't wrong. A few, possibly, but not all of them. Or is my perception of time so warped by anxiety and fear? No... I've been in this situation before. I am experiencing stress, but I'm not in shock yet.
I can handle this.
Hermione was a person of considerable intellect. Much of that, she knew, had been due to her upbringing, but it was also a matter of natural talent at the art of focusing her attention. Yes, she was quite good at compartmentalizing, and had been for years, as a matter of necessity when trying to keep the men she loved alive.
But where she truly shined had always been her focus.
The battle fell away. Remus, even Ron fell away. Thoughts of her own death, of watching those she loved hurt, maimed, or killed, vanished into smoke that withered and faded into the aether of her innermost mind. Thoughts of sex, of love, or of all fear were gone.
She even forgot, at least momentarily, about Harry himself.
Such was the power of a mind shaped and bent to one purpose: Taming the beast she had set loose.
Hermione was not even truly aware of the spell fire that focused on her, of the red, white, gold, black, purple, green, and blue streaks, or the air-warping concussive spells. Spells that were pulled toward her as if by orbital bodies in the gravity well of some gargantuan stellar mass, or pushed away as if being flung out on a catapulting orbit, seemingly at random.
Those spells registered only as two things: Useful, or not.
Useful was pulled toward her, and useless was pushed away, usually upward or downward, to fly harmlessly into the sky, or impact the ground. In either case, she hoped to protect her friends, her allies, her teachers.
How was that possible, when her focus was on containing and controlling, with a goal of truly directing, the most powerful and dangerous spell she had ever cast?
Really, it was quite simple: Fiendfyre ate more than just the fuel for the flames. It consumed, fed on, magical energy itself. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Particularly dark spells, strangely, it did not like. Neutral or 'light' spells, it was just fine with gorging itself on, as if it were alive and had actual tastes and preferences. She knew that was ridiculous, of course. The shapes that formed were an act of subconscious declaration, and came from the mind of the caster, though that the spell performed that act was deliberate on the part of its creator, to inspire fear in one's enemies.
So she used the spells that she could to feed the flames. Again, how, well... that was a little more esoteric. In a word... arcane.
But she could see without even really looking which spells would help, thanks to Magium Sybbilis, and which would not. How she manipulated the energy without conscious thought toward or aware from her could, on one hand, fill volumes. On the other, it could be summed up with a simple word: Hunger.
The hunger of the magical flames themselves were not without, Hermione found, a sort of will. It became easier for her, in that moment, to discern why people called the fire 'fiendish', when mostly what it conjured where animal shapes. It truly was a desperate, clawing, cloying hunger that seemed as if it wanted to rip her very essence from her body to feed itself.
But, like anything, like any magic, it could be seen, measured, counted... and controlled.
With enough will, at any rate.
Hermione had never taken an IQ test. She had no idea, no one did, how smart she really was. Likely, she was somewhere on the autism spectrum, but so high-functioning that the term 'idiot savant' would never apply to her, only 'savant'. All she knew was that she had very few peers in that department. And all of her considerable faculties were oriented to one goal and one goal only.
Magic fed the fire. Magic came toward her friends, seeking to harm them.
Everything she could reach was pulled in, to feed the flames, or pushed away, to keep them from hurting her friends. Her own protection was, in fact, secondary, but with the fire directly in front of her, very little came close despite a volume of spells heading her way.
That included the enchantments on the still-standing portion of Malfoy Manor.
Anti-Apparition Jinxes, Fire-protection wards, Anti-Portkey shells that even the Order had put up were all consumed, along with a hundred, a thousand, other minor enchantments and spells that had helped, until recently, to keep the house beautiful and pristine for nigh a century. Enchanted lockets and jewelry from Mrs. Malfoy's family, handed down for many centuries of Blacks, were eaten away, along with less-enchanted but still magical ones from the Malfoys, who had originated in France and may be older still, only not British and thus not one of what Daphne's book had called the Sacred Twenty-Eight.
And the fire grew.
Grew from a wall ten feet high and twenty wide, into a conflagration of holocaustic proportions, in Hermione's magical sight, towering six stories high, the entire width of the narrow side of the house and then some. It towered into an inferno like a nuclear blast over her head, ripped around the side of the building, tore into it, and even into the ground itself.
There were screams of dying Death Eaters.
Hermione paid them no mind: They were fodder for her magic, victims of their own choice. They did not have to become Death Eaters. They did not have to choose to die.
Below, she could see the rippling shell of the magics hiding and protecting the hidden basement areas shudder, then begin to crumble as the fire ripped through the floor of the manor's east side, seeking food.
Hermione's will wrenched against it, directing the flames not down, but around, and away from her, across the manor to the burned shell. She would not reach it, she would not let it. Harry was no more than twenty rooms away down that side, heading for the entrance. She'd stop before she got there. Perhaps leave him nothing to do over the surface, but she would not harm Harry, or the innocents they had come to rescue.
No. Not that. She would no doubt kill to protect her friends, those she loved. Had, in fact, already done so most likely, and without a second thought. She had not used Fiendfyre lightly, after all.
But she would not harm the innocent with it. That was beyond her. At least, so long as she kept hold of the spell that burned her from the inside out while it remained active.
Ronald Bilius Weasley stared in shock as his best friend, his lover, and once a girl he had truly been in love with, cast a spell so dark, so foul, he would never have imagined it passing from her lips. A spell even Fred and George would not have dared cast against Voldemort himself, for fear of incurring not just their mother's, but their father's wrath.
Ron had only ever seen his father wrathful once, and he never wanted to see it again. His mother was quite enough, thank you.
But this... Hermione was incandescent.
Literally.
She had seemed overwhelmed in the first few moments, her extended wand had seemed to pull her, stumbling, toward the same spell she had cast.
Then she had stopped, set her feet, set her shoulders, and huffed. He saw the steel in her spine, in those same shoulders, in her buttocks (yummy!) clenched tightly.
"Not Harry," he heard her whisper, somehow, though the roar of flames was even louder. No... not just flames.
One of the shapes taking form out of the fire was the head of a dragon. That had roared.
But Hermione...
Her hair moved, swayed, danced about, sparks ran through it like one of those muggle Tessel-former things, with the lightning moving up the wires to the ball, and then out into an arc that snapped and vanished. Light came from within, sparking, burning, her body.
It shone from her eyes, from her mouth, even her ears and nostrils, from every pore.
Spells moved strangely around her, toward and away, as reality itself seemed to bend to her will. Then, her wand still aimed directly at the Fiendfyre she'd conjured, Hermione lifted in the air to hover nine or ten inches off the ground, her toes effectively at rest, dangling, even if she didn't seem to notice. Her clothes, too, rustled and flapped in the wind created by the storm of his friend's magic, and of the heat forcing the air to rise above the manor.
She was so beautiful, and it filled his heart with longing for a fate that now would never be. She loved him, of course, and he knew it, just as Ron loved her. But they were not meant to be. She was better for Harry, and Harry was better for Hermione. Ron was not just man enough to admit it, he wanted that, for both of them. She was still beautiful. A terrifying beauty, ephemeral, almost fey as she was lit from the inside out, but beautiful all the same.
Then he realized, as the second roar sounded, that it was not a dragon's head in the flames, conjured up by magic.
It was the literal head of a dragon, neck, bones, horns, and all, bellowing at the creature that had set it free.
"They have a fucking dragon!" Ron shouted, "Take cover!"
But the dragon, a Welsh Green, if he wasn't mistaken, had not truly captured Ron's attention.
It was the man who'd set it free, and was now pointing directly at him, and at Hermione.
Quieter, he heard Remus Lupin on Hermione's other side growl, "Severus..."