Cursed

“Hominum Revelio!”

For a moment, it looked like perhaps the curse-breaking had negated the effects that the spell normally wrought.  For a moment, Jack simply stared at his lover, whose eyes had flown wide, knowing what that spell could do.  For a moment, they all went still, suspended in a state of grace.

It was not a long moment, really.  But long enough to give false hope.

And then that moment ended.

Ianto gasped and threw his head back, his body going rigid in Jack’s arms as a strangled, pained, gagging noise forced its way from his throat. 

“What’s happening?” Augusta said, her eyes wide and frightened as Minerva snatched the wand out of her hand.

“I tried to tell you,” Minerva hissed.  “The Carrows gave him unicorn blood.”

Augusta looked at her, horrified.  “No!” she cried, realizing too late what she had done.

“The dragon’s blood potion receipt is to counteract the effects,” Minerva gritted, moving to the door and shouting for a Healer.  She’d barely got the request out and closed the door again before Ianto started screaming. 

Ianto’s body bowed and he screamed in pain as the spell attempted to undo the changes that had been made to his appearance.  But those changes had been locked in by the unicorn blood he had been forced to assimilate, so the result was an agonizing tug of war between his current physical features and the memory of Neville’s features that had been obliterated, years before.

Everyone knew that Voldemort had fed on unicorn blood in order to stay alive, before he fully returned.  It brought life, but at a terrible cost.  It had also brought a new life for Ianto Jones, even as it meant that Neville Longbottom would never be seen again.  Thankfully, the nastier effects were not called down upon him, as he had not been the one to actually slay the creature.

Ianto tasted the echoes of the blood now, and remembered being forced to drink the thick, silvery substance that felt like mercury and tasted metallic and gamey as it conjured violently vivid images of moonlight and a headlong flight through the darkest forest.

The Carrows had laughed as he choked on the seemingly endless quantities of blood they forced down his throat and into his veins, night after night.  As best as he could determine after, they held him for almost two weeks.  He vaguely remembered the first days of idle torture as they devised the curses they planned to punish him with.  It took them two days to change him, bit by agonizing bit. 

And then at least a sennight of feeding him nothing but the blood of the poor, beautiful creature they had captured.  They kept it alive during that week, bleeding a gallon of blood from it each night and forcing him to consume what was left after transfusing what felt like vast, burning quantities into his veins.  It made him violently ill, of course, but somehow his body adapted.

On the seventh night, once Ianto lay on the floor, half-conscious after vomiting back up a good deal of what they had forced on him, they slaughtered the creature, leaving Ianto covered in its blood and viscera.  They spent the last few days of his captivity weaving the rest of the curses around him.

And now, once again the unicorn blood that still flowed through his veins allowed the spell to attempt to find the features that the Carrows had destroyed.  His body tried to change, but it no longer knew what to change into, so it simply sparked and shifted and morphed aimlessly until the energy of the spell dissipated.

The pain of the fruitless effort was exquisite.  His muscles locked up as though he were having a seizure.  It was almost as bad as the cruciatus curse.  Almost, but not quite.  Nevertheless, his mind whited out and he screamed in agony as it felt like each cell of his body was shredded.

It had happened, before.  He had managed to approach Hermione on a second occasion seven years before, and she had used the spell to try to change him back.  The curses ensured she forgot this, of course, so she did it again when the Aurors had come to the hub. 

Now, as this third use of the spell left him pale, sweaty, and trembling, the only thing that grounded him was Jack.  But his recovery was in such a nascent state that it wasn’t quite enough.  He burrowed into Jack’s chest, grasping at his vest and began to scream again, this time in grief, madness, and despair.

Jack was holding onto him, trying to offer some comfort, but he could feel Ianto coming unraveled.  All of the pain he had suffered, and now he had finally found the limit of what he could endure.  Jack wasn’t certain whether it was the physical pain of the spell, the emotional anguish of having his grandmother call him an imposter, or both, but something had tipped him over the edge.  Ianto was howling like a wounded animal, and Jack could not seem to calm him.

The next thing Jack knew, Bill and Susan were there, along with several other Healers.  Susan snapped out an order for some potion or other, and one of the Healers ran out again to retrieve it.  And then something very strange happened.  The room began to fill with a thick, palpable darkness.

“Oh, no!” Susan exclaimed.

“What’s happening?” Jack asked.

“Ianto’s magic,” Bill answered.  “It’s…”

“It’s trying to protect him,” Susan said.  “It’s manifesting his mental state, to try to keep it from overwhelming him.”

“We really need to get him a wand,” Bill gritted.

“What do we do?” one of the Healers asked.

“Quickly, everyone - join hands!” Susan called out.  “Form a chain.  The wards will keep the darkness confined to this room, and as long as there’s a chain, with someone in the light outside of the room, we won’t get lost.”

“Lost?” Jack asked, feeling Susan’s hand grasping the back of his neck.

“He’s been pushed too far,” Bill said as the air thickened and the room grew black, not even allowing the light from the doorway to reach the bed.  “His madness is manifesting.  Anyone not somehow linked to the light might lose themselves in this darkness.”

“Shouldn’t you leave, then?” Jack asked.  He had to shout to be heard above Ianto’s screams, though they did seem to be losing some of their volume.  Jack wasn’t certain whether this was comforting or terrifying.

“The potions I called for will calm him and ease the despair,” Susan assured him.  “I was concerned that this might happen, so the potions were at the ready.  The despair that led to him taking that poison doesn’t just go away.  He has to process it, but there’s been too much going on.  I was hoping that once his physical recovery was underway, he could talk through everything and allow it to settle.”

“He would have been able to do just that, had I not run into Augusta,” Professor McGonagall sounded distressed.  She was standing between Bill and Augusta, holding each of their hands and trying not to let Ianto’s screams make her weep.  His pain was wrenching, but she realized that part of that was down to the darkness that now enveloped them. 

The thick, silken blackness had become a physical presence in the room.  It was not merely an absence of light.  It was a separate entity – a physical manifestation that moved around and between them, and it was impossible not to feel the pain and anguish as it brushed against their skin.

“Here!” the Healer that Susan had sent away shouted from the doorway.  She was a young witch named Freesia Turnbull.  “I have it!”

She then put the potion bottles in one of the pockets of her robes and very boldly moved hand-over-hand from one person to the next, using the human chain of witches and wizards to get to Susan.  Freesia put the bottles in Susan’s pocket, and then they managed to exchange places.  Bill took one of Freesia’s hands, and Susan placed her other hand on Jack’s shoulder.

Susan wrested one of Jack’s hands from Ianto and wrapped it around her own elbow, freeing her hands to find Ianto’s mouth and pour the potions into it.  She sat on the bed in relief as Ianto’s screams died away.  Everyone held their positions, waiting for something to shift.

Into the now silent blackness, Professor McGonagall began reciting a very old incantation.  As soon as the others realized what it was, they joined in.  They repeated the spell, over and over, and suddenly the darkness of the room began to lighten.  Not in color at first, but in the thickness of the air.  The witches and wizards continued to recite the incantation, and the blackness eased to a very dark grey. 

It took a quarter of an hour, but the air took on a sparkling quality that seemed to be lightening the room and brightening the atmosphere.  The spell was somehow transmuting the darkness, allowing it to ease and dissipate.  Everyone began to breathe a bit easier.

As soon as Ianto had stopped screaming, Jack had begun kissing him, trying to help bolster him.  As the air cleared and Ianto calmed, he gave an exhausted sigh, whispering, “Jack,” as he fainted.

Jack had recognized the darkness, even if he had never seen a physical manifestation of it, before.  He had even seen that darkness and despair in Ianto, though he was deeply saddened to realize that it was so vast and ran so deep. 

Susan looked around and took a deep breath.  “Oh, well done, Professor,” she smiled.  “I’ve not run across that incantation, before.  The ones we use just help the patient to reabsorb the magic and energy.”

“You were just going to shove all of that back into him?” Jack asked incredulously.

“In this case, it wouldn’t have been my first choice, no,” Susan replied, smiling at Jack’s protectiveness.

“Understand, that was not a normal reaction,” Bill explained.  “But given what he’s been through, I don’t suppose it’s a surprise.”  At Jack’s questioning look, he went on, “It shows that he’s been through an extraordinary amount of trauma.  Normally, these reactions form small clouds.”  He spread his arms to describe the size of a normal cloud.  “Ianto’s cloud was quite large, and the wards kept it from continuing to expand, so it got quite dense in here.”

“And normally, a witch or wizard has their wand, to help them channel it and allow it to settle,” Susan added.

“But what was it?” Jack asked.

“Ianto’s magic… ejected the darkness that was suffocating him,” Susan answered.

“And you wanted to just… put it back in him?” Jack asked again, still incredulous.

“That’s what we would do, for a normal cloud, so the person could then process it and move on.  But this was too much.  I was trying to figure out our next step when Professor McGonagall saved the day,” she smiled at the professor.

***