Searching for Snakes

The blaring alarm was still going off, and Harry remembered Mrs. Cole saying that should as air raid occur, the alarm wouldn't shut off until it ended.

But, Harry thought, what if he couldn't find Tom? It had been a year since he'd first come to the orphanage and the Dursley's were but a distant memory. In all that time, Harry has never been able to find Tom when he disappeared like that. He had tried and tried and had eventually given up-- what was to say he would find him now? Maybe he was already at the shelter! And Harry would just die by himself, and he would never see Tom again, never be able to make friends with him!

Rain pelted down harder, making the road slippery and dangerous. Harry yelped with pain as he fell yet again and forced himself back on his feet. Tears started to mingle with the water dripping down his face, and he grabbed the stupid glasses clouding his vision and threw them to the ground.

Strangely, his vision was crystal clear and better than it had ever been.

He once again recalled that air raid instruction class the orphanage had had nearly three months ago. 15 minutes. 15 minutes after the alarm was the general time frame given for evacuation before the bombs actually hit.

By the time he banged open the front gate and ran up the stairs to the orphanage, Harry estimated that he had about 5 minutes to find Tom, and another 5 minutes to run back-- although he doubted he'd be able to run at full speed again. If worst came to worst, he'd tell Tom to get to shelter without him.

Nodding in affirmation, Harry caught his breath before throwing the front door open and yelling at the top of his lungs. "TOM!" His voice, with how desperate his lungs were for air, came out shrill and in one giant breath. But, Harry knew that it was the loudest he had ever screamed in his life.

"Harry?" Harry looked to his left and found a bewildered Tom sitting cross legged on the floor, perfectly fine and surrounded entirely by snakes. Snakes slithered up and down Tom's tunic--snakes of every size and shape and color. They wrapped around the hands in his lap, rested at his feet, and circled around his thighs.

Harry couldn't stop staring, a mixture of awe and pure malice drowning his rationality. Tom! Right there! Right as rain and looking awfully comfortable with that giant python wrapped around his neck! Tom stared right back at him, sitting wide-eyed on the stone floor while Harry gasped for breath dripping equal parts blood and water onto the floor. Harry, who never got angry, very nearly had an aneurysm right then and there in the foyer.

"The snakes, that's where they went," was all he managed to whisper over the angry roar of blood in his head and the continuous wail of the siren. His voice, even to him, sounded monotonous and empty, as if a shard of his soul had been sucked right out and replaced with a torch.

"Just what," Tom growled, standing up and shaking the snakes off of his arms. "Are you doing here,"

And then the torch was lit and his head exploded.

"What am I doing here? What am I doing here! You tell me you good-for-nothing, two-faced, lying, selfish, sheep-skinned absolute...Claude Frollo!" Harry finished, getting more and more worked up with every insult. Tom's eyes widened minutely, his anger ebbing to astonishment. He definitely understood the reference, as The Hunchback of Notre Dame had cycled through the orphanage's library just last week.

Harry paused for a moment to breathe, using the door frame as a crutch for his wheezing body. "I came back for you thinking you didn't know about the alarm or were trapped or...or something and you're just sitting here perfectly fine! And you stole the snakes!" Harry was already out of breath when he started, and now he was even more so. He collapsed to his knees with exhaustion and bent over, his head almost touching the ground.

"Didn't know about the alarm? It's so loud it sounds like the end of the fucking world you moron!" It was more words than Tom had ever spoken to him, but they weren't filled with malice. It seemed Tom's anger, much like Harry's, had succumbed to a triage of other emotions. "You came back for me?" Tom added, voice weird with unfamiliar sentiment.

"Why are you even here?" Harry breathed, reduced to using the sensation of the cool stone as a way to calm himself. His blood pressure must be off the charts by now.

"I...can't tell you,"

"Does it even matter? I ran back here for you and now we're both gonna die." Tom didn't answer, and Harry took that as a yes, it mattered. Harry sighed for the millionth time and sat back up. "Well, can you at least tell me why you took all the snakes? You owe me,"

Tom settled back down on the ground, avoiding the puddles of blood water and unsure about how to feel about Harry, Harry who had flown through the door, eyes unthinkably green and black hair plastered to his delicate features.

The problem was, and unthinkably so, that they weren't going to die. This meant that anything he told the boy would be for life. But then again, Harry had raced back for him without a thought towards his own safety. Maybe a repayment of debt was in order.

"I can speak to them," Tom said. And then time, for Harry at least, stopped. His mouth gasped open and he stared at Tom in astonishment.

"You what," Harry forced out through the limp flesh that was his tongue. Here, Tom was the one who sighed. This was the exact reaction he had envisioned if he told anyone about one of his powers. Amazement, followed by disbeli- "I can too!"

"I'm sorry?" Tom wondered if maybe the boy was crazy. It was certainly insanity to go search for a boy you barely knew during an air raid. 

Harry's eyes practically glistened with excitement as he leaned forward, coming closer to a very uncomfortable(TM) Tom.

"I've been wanting to try it again but there were," Harry emphasized the next three words sharply, "No. Actual. Snakes." The anger was welling up again but Harry pushed it back down.

"I-" Tom began, but Harry didn't stick around to listen, eager to prove his power-- both to himself and to Tom.

"Hello," He greeted the nearest snake, a black little guy, and there it was! That familiar slippery language that came so naturally to his tongue.

"Greetings speaker!" The young snake piped up, happy to be recognized. Harry smirked and settled back down, giving Tom a pointed look.

A thousand questions ran through Tom's mind, but he, unlike a certain someone, knew how to discern time and place. There was an actual air raid heading in, and the likelihood of getting bombed but not high, but it was also far from low. It was in that split second thought that he decided to tell Harry what he was doing. He knew that once he began, he would rather it not be interrupted.

"I'm concentrating on my magic to create a forcefield around myself and these snakes," The foreign words ran through Harry's mind without making any sense, ricocheting off the pillar of sensory overload that was growing in his head.

"Out of the kindness of your soul?" Harry said, at the same time that Tom elaborated,

"To test my power."

Harry scoffed, "I should have known,"

"I have magic. I'm using it to protect me and the snakes from the bombs. And now you, I suppose," Tom ignored him, something he had lots of practice in doing, Harry noted bitterly. Tom closed his eyes to begin concentrating again, but if he had believed that that answer would be sufficient to Harry, he was sorely wrong.

"Magic," Harry repeated.

"Magic," Tom affirmed.

"And you called me the idiot," Harry spoke up, kicking Tom's shin several times with his shoe.

Tom didn't open his eyes. "The correct terminology was moron, and the point still stands."

Harry glared, "And if your magic isn't enough to stop the blow?"

"Then it will be apparent that I was weak and deserved to die. This is my first real challenge,"

Harry scowled and shook his head, "Everyone deserves to live, even if they're weak,"

"No one will care if I am gone. That is why I must become someone respected, someone feared," Tom said this matter of factly, without a hint of sadness of regret. Somehow, this only fueled Harry's emotion, as if his heart wanted to compensate for the other boy's sheer lack of one.

"You fucking moron, you incompetent selfish- I CARE!" Harry shouted, and then he jerked his head away from Tom's wide eyes as he realized what he had said. "But, whatever. We can work on your human skills later. Start meditating or whatever it is you were doing,"

"I am not meditating," Tom finally said, and when Harry next looked, his eyes were once again shuttered and his breathing rhythmic.

The first bomb hit. It was farther away, but definitely nearby, and louder than even the alarm-- 15 minutes must have passed. Harry jumped and unconsciously inched closer to Tom before noticing and scooting back away scowling. He would not cower.

"Harry, come closer. I can't protect you if you're that far away," Tom called, eyes still shut and brow furrowed. Harry agreed and came back, keeping a safe three inches distance between them.

It was then that the protective field was made visible-- it glistened silver and airy, becoming more and more compact. Harry positively gaped, his eyes refusing to blink as he witnessed the impossible. Tentatively, he reached out to touch it, and the shield felt firm but malleable under his fingers.

The next bursts were in sets if threes, and Harry no longer had any time to ponder his cowardice as he feared for his life. He put his head between his knees and waited, trying to drown out the noise.

"They're coming!" Tom yelled in warning, and tremors ran up and down the orphanage as the planes swooped down low and growled across the sky.

The windowpanes erupted first. And then the corner of the stone walls of the orphanage blew completely off. Harry nearly went deaf from the noise and pressed himself to the floor. Tom remained where he was seated, concentrating on keeping the shield intact as it repelled shard after shard of glass and stone debris.

Now, sitting in the foyer without a roof, Harry could see the ruins that London had become. The charming store fronts and outdoor vendors where in ashes, the remaining portions being eaten by rows upon rows of fire. Debris choked the streets, ash and dust rising into the air, thick and sulfurous.

Like some sort of estranged symphony, the whistles as the bombs fell and the explosions once they landed, coupled with the rain and the siren and the roar of the planes fueled enough material to last every nightmare for the rest of Harry's life. It also made it visibly harder for Tom to concentrate on the shield, as Harry watched the boy bite his lip raw until it bled.

This went on for a solid hour, and though the bombs only landed near them once more after that, Tom held the shield up for the duration. Ears ringing, Harry could do nothing but watch the boy sit frozen and struggle, eyes squeezed shut and breathing no longer the steady pace that it had started at. When the second bomb landed in the garden, barbed ends of wire from the surrounding fence came hurtling at them at top speeds, straight through the walls that no longer existed. One managed to slip through a weaker part of the shield and pierced Tom's shoulder, and it was then that an involuntary gasp began a torrent of tears. Harry positively sobbed, completely useless in this unfamiliar ground and entirely too afraid to think about it.

Tom hadn't moved or even screamed, the only indication of the wound the way his face went a ghostly pale white, as if all the blood had been drained out of every orifice. Tom collapsed then, the shield flickering out of existence along with his consciousness.

Harry instinctively cried out with fear, the crisis jolting him into action as he crawled over to the boy and tried to staunch the bleeding of Tom's arm, finally mustering up the courage to remove the imbedded shrapnel. He ripped off a portion of his shirt, realized that the wet material would do nothing to keep the blood in Tom's arms--where blood was supposed to be--and then ripped Tom's dry shirt and wrapped the cloth around as a bandage.

The parts of the wall that had broken off around them had conveniently left a small shadowed alcove under which to remain unseen, and so Harry half-dragged, half-carried Tom to the area, collapsing onto the floor afterwards.

The siren chose that opportune moment to stop, and the relief Harry felt was so strong that he leaned over the crumbling remains of the wall and emptied his stomach.

Wiping wetness off of his face, Harry sat under the pattering of the rain and tried to rid himself of the acid taste in his mouth. He couldn't look at Tom, Tom who liked to read and ignore him but was the only companion Harry had in the world, Tom who currently lay on his side embedded with shrapnel, Tom who wasn't moving. 

It was while he sat there, gnawing on his lip and on the verge of a new wave of tears as he tried to figure out what to do, that he saw another plane.

It was probably the last one, as the sky that was previously clear was dotted with one harbinger of doom, silent and black as it sank lower and lower. Harry's breath caught in his throat as it swooped by overhead and the bombs dropped.

He watched them fall directly above them, like oversized metal raindrops, with an odd sort of tranquility. Everything had slowed down and the world was muted, a sort of demure peace overcoming him--feelings that he had never once felt, thoughts he had never once thought.

Harry very nearly succumbed to the temptation of an eternal peace, an eternal silence. But, as he went to lay back and watch death come, he came in contact with Tom's cold hand, and then as he followed that hand to the body--ripped up shirt and all--and to a familiar face, Harry came to.

The world started moving again, and the bombs fell closer and closer. What was he doing! Accept death? Was he to become a martyr? Harry screamed then, a terrible, wailing thing that escaped from him on instinct, and fell upon Tom, covering the taller boy with his own body as much as he could.

They couldn't die! They couldn't!

And the world exploded with light.