Chapter 6
Harry, the voice called to him.
Harry, the way it was whispered, his name; made him feel as if he was about to break into pieces. The way he was being called with so much longing; Harry-
‘Oi! Wake up, Potter!’
‘Kick me again,’ Harry mumbled as he opened one bleary eye, ‘and I’ll remove your ankle bone with the blunt edge of my wand.’
‘At this point, I’d rather you just kill me and be done with!’
There was a edge of hysteria in his companions voice that made Harry decide reluctantly that is really was time to rise. He sighed. It had been such a beautiful dream.
‘What is it now?’
Draco was standing over him, holding his wand out. ‘It doesn’t work.’
‘What?’
‘Our wands,’ Draco said flatly. ‘Apparently, our most esteemed Potions Master neglected to mention that our kind of magic doesn’t operate in the Underworld.’
‘And you’re yelling because?’
‘Because it means we’ve turned into SQUIBS!’ Draco shouted, then turned tailed and trampled down a path, liberally kicking up an avalanche of pebbles.
Harry listened to the colourful fragments of Draco’s wishing all sorts of venereal diseases on his father – adding quite a few choice epithets that he thought the blond omitted. Then he pointed his wand at a pebble – there seemed to be nothing around except rocks – and whispered ‘wingardium leviosa.’
Nothing. The wand felt like a pencil in his hands, utterly unresponsive. Wondering why he wasn’t in the least surprised at this latest development, Harry got up with a long suffering sigh and examined their surroundings.
They were in a subterranean network: surprise surprise. The vista was cave-like, but with roofs soaring so high above Harry that he experienced no sense of claustrophobia. The air was clean and cool, although as dry as sand, and irritated his throat. Harry realized that he was dying of thirst. Without magic however, he had no idea how they would now locate water.
Or anything else, for that matter.
He picked up his knapsack and followed the small path down to where Draco was leafing with increasing anxiety through one of the numerous books he had brought along.
‘Did you find anything?’
The frustrated blond hurled the tome away. ‘Nothing. No references, no warnings- arrrrgh these pompous academic arseholes-‘
‘Let’s go then.’
‘Go where? We have no magic, we’re doomed!’
‘Suit yourself,’ Harry shrugged, and strolled past him.
After a couple of minutes, the blond caught up with him. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We walk until we come to water.’ Harry said simply. ‘I’m thirsty.’
Draco looked homicidal. ‘That’s it?! That’s the extent of your plan?’
‘Also, Styx is a river. If we find Styx, we’ll find the ferryman. Who’ll take us into Hades. Do you still have those doughnut shaped coins?’
The blond nodded, and looked much happier. ‘Sounds like a plan.’
Five minutes later he looked at Harry and said: ‘I’m hungry.’
Ten minutes later: ‘I’ve never missed breakfast in my life.’
They trudged on.
Two hour later: ‘We could eat the rocks,’ Draco said miserably. ‘And just pretend they’re badly transfigured peas.’
‘I did remember telling you we should have bought supplies,’ Harry reminded him.
‘Shut it,’ Draco spat. ‘Its all Snape’s fault.’
Harry didn’t bother to reply.
*
It started as a sense of unease that quickly grew into a tense foreboding, a sense of being watched.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Harry said quietly.
Draco’s laugh was a dry rasp. ‘You mean besides the lack of food and the fact we’re both about to fall down dead from thirst?’
The dark-haired man fingered the sword on his hip restlessly. ‘Why don’t you let me go first?’
The blond shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. I don’t hear a thing.’
‘Except for your stomach.’
Draco’s face took on a heated expression, but before he could reply, the sound of gravel crunching alerted them to an encroaching presence.
‘Maybe they’ll have food with them.’
‘It’s not human,’ Harry said tensely. ‘Too close to the ground.’
‘Then maybe it can be eaten,’ Draco said hopefully.
Then they heard a low, blood-curling growl from the rocks.
‘Or not,’ Harry said. ‘Get behind me and get ready to run.’ The blond nodded and sprinted away as Harry drew the sword of Gryffindor, its blade rang with a joyous sort of hymm as he freed it from its scabbard.
The song of the sword inflamed the creature, which finally jumped into view with a terrible growl of rage. It was a three-headed hound, ghastly of countenance, with eyes that possessed little sanity. It’s massive girth could have rivaled a small dragon, and the fangs on each head was curved like tusk. Harry immediately discerned that the monster’s shaggy hide would be difficult to hack through.
Rather than fear, an exultant feeling overcame him as he advanced against the drooling monster.
‘Fluffy,’ Draco whimpered behind him, ‘N-nice Fluffy.’
The monster roared its mad challenge and came forward, his toenails scratching the rocks. Harry raised his sword and swung it in an experimental arc – he probably had one good hit on one of the dog heads before another one ripped into him.
Behind him, Draco suddenly screamed, and Harry panicked for a moment, thinking that another of these hideous hell-hounds had creeped up behind them. Then a blur of blue and black brushed past him like a silken wind, and Harry almost dropped his sword as he saw a young butterfly-winged boy imposing his small body between Harry and the three-headed hell hound. His indigo eyes matched the markings on his powdered black wings, and the boy’s face was beautiful of countenance, all ivory limbs and dark curls.
‘Be thou’st gone, Cerebus,’ the little boy thrilled fearlessly at the dog, gesturing almost imperiously with the bunch of poppies he carried in his hands. Cerebus however, howled his wrath and paddled ever closer, albeit with new wariness.
‘Run, boy!’ Harry shouted, but the child merely laughed at him, and unfurling his inky wings, flew above and beyond Cerebus’ three snapping jaws. He shook his bunch of poppies over each of the three heads, and one by one they dropped into deep asleep.
‘Are you all right?’ Harry asked the fey child when he landed beside them.
‘Thou’st meant to protect me,’ said the boy, all bemused. ‘Nobody hast tried to save me before.’
Harry wondered how to reply that. There was an ethereal sort of intelligence in his doe-like eyes, but he could be speaking to a ghost, a projection, or a monster in disguise- to find a young child wondering the wild caverns of Hades, well beyond the jurisdiction of Pluto’s realm, smacked of suspicion, not to mention that the boy was obviously not as harmless as he looked.
‘Very handy flowers you have there,’ Draco observed faintly as he watched the poppies stir and wave like sleepy snakes. Harry found something vaguely ominous about the way the drowsy heads resembled tiny pools of blood.
A fond look stole over the boy’s face. ‘My brother is most gifted, and such blooms are beloved to him.’
‘What are you doing so far away from your-‘ Harry had almost said parents; ‘-er, home?’
‘The same may be asked of thee, strange mortals.’
‘We seek the gates into Pluto’s realm. Can you tell us how to get there?’
‘What business seek you?’
‘None of your business, that’s for sure,’ Harry told him curtly.
‘Follow you the earthly song onto beckoning streams of silver Styx.’ A faraway look suddenly came over the boy’s countenance. ‘I must away, for my brother stirs from slumber. Farewell.’ The child propelled his beating wings past the massive stalactites and disappeared, leaving his audience gaping after him.
‘What the blaze was he talking about?’ Draco scowled.
‘Let’s go,’ Harry said curtly. ‘We have a river to find.’
They continued walking. The small pebbles gradually gave way to much larger boulders that the two men had to navigate gingerly in zigzagging paths.
Harry glanced irritably at his blond companion, which seemed to have discovered a second wind and was moving rapidly and gracefully across the treacherous stones; spry as a bloody mountain goat, whilst Harry himself stumbled and stubbed every toe on both foot.
‘It’s the dammed sword that’s keeping me off balanced,’ he snapped at one of Draco’s more infuriating smirks.
‘Whatever you say, hero.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Lucky that wee slip of a child came by and saved us before you tripped over your sword.’
‘Oh yeah? Well, don’t expect salvation to flutter by on butterfly wings every time we run into a new monster. And we will run into new monsters.’
‘If that’s just a taste of what’s about to come,’ Draco sniffed, ‘I suggest we turn tails and go home.’
Harry turned on him, eyes blazing, and the blond begun to inch away.
‘Now Harry, do remember that you’re still waving that huge sword about.’
‘Not so circumspect about your little pet now, are you, now that’s its TOO BLOODY LATE TO TURN BACK!!’
‘I’ll go scout on ahead first, shall I?’ Draco stammered, and fled.
Cursing, Harry sheathed his sword and sat on a rock to shake out the loose pebbles in his shoes. Draco was nowhere in sight by the time he looked up.
‘Draco? Don’t wander too far off Draco! Confound it, where is that blasted blond?’
‘Here,’ a muffled voice drifted towards him, accompanied by the unmistable round of running water. Harry’s heart gave a leap as he hurried over – at last an end, perhaps, to their mindless, rather painful walk.
‘Don’t run off again, you prat.’
Draco didn’t seem to hear him. ‘Behold vile Styx, the river of hate,’ he said softly as Harry finally caught up; the melancholy in his voice an echo of the mournful sound of roiling waters below. ‘We’ve found it: the Mouth of Hades.’
*