Chapter 8
8
All things considering, they found the entrance to Hades quite easily after that, although by then, Harry was the one who carrying both backpacks and pushing Draco along. Great grand uncle apparently, was only interested in manifesting in the flesh when it involved fighting as opposed to the distribution of supplies.
He was the one who located the gateway for them, however, so Harry decided to keep his grudges for other, less profitable days. They’d discovered, quite by accident, that Draco could actually order his bodyguard spectral around. Sometimes. Usually not.
‘My lord, what a circus,’ Draco observed, boggle-eyed as they watched the miles-long que of departed souls wind all over the riverbanks. ‘We’ll be here for weeks.’
‘Do you really intend to join that line? What sort of Slytherin are you, anyways?’
Draco grinned. ‘Lets go cut queue.’
A lot of the dead had confused, clueless looks on their faces as they shuffled along, but here and there a few belligerent scuffles broke out, and were quickly arrested and carted away – straight through the gates of Hades, Harry noted. Cutting through weeks of queuing.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘Better to create a commotion and get thrown into jail,’ Harry nodded, ‘We just need to figure out a way.’
‘I’ll take care off it.’ Draco drew himself up. ‘Its time I did my part for our quest.’
‘How?’ Harry frowned.
‘Like this,’ Draco said pleasantly, and punched him in the face.
*
It turned into a much bigger brawl than both of them anticipated.
Harry had retaliated as soon as he recovered from the utter shock that the unmitigated blond bastard had broken his nose again, but the fountain of blood that spouted out had gotten into his eyes, severely impairing his vision. He ended up socking one of the guards, who crashed into the line of dead spirits. Once that happened, it set off a chain reaction that nobody could have projected, although they both blamed each other for its aftermath whenever the conversation cropped up.
The sluggish, trudging lines of the dead seemed to glimmer, their sleepy expressions vanished; their eyes opened wide, and their mouths opened to scream in fear, rage and denial. A wave of sudden mass hysteria bubbled up amongst them like a mindless, undulating worm as they looked around in shock and started to scream and babble in a cacophony of different dialects and languages.
Pandemonium ruled to such an extent that Harry found himself carried away by a time of bodies, shouting Draco’s name and trying not to get trampled underfoot. Nobody noticed the horn-crossed gates of Hades give way with a groan. But the moment a chariot of nightmarish design clattered forward, its mechanical horses breathing fire and smoke, and an entourage of stern-faced guards flanked out behind it, Harry could feel a sudden electric change in the air, a ghastly awe rippling through the crowd.
For the chariot’s rider, although of human countenance, radiated the undeniable aura of godhood, pulsating, relentless and rendering. Harry caught Draco’s eyes- wide with terror, and suddenly understood that none other than Dread Pluto stood before them, and his brain was almost undone by the knowledge.
‘Hypnos,’ the god summoned in a terrible voice. ‘Thy talent is called for to soothe this unseemly fracas.’
A small boy came forth from the retinue, and where his naked foot threads the air, a large poppy flower bloomed, red and virulent as if his feet spurned the very air. His head was crowned with poppies, and his hair and skin was as alabaster. His great beauty was tempered only by the chilling absence of pupils in his eyes.
He blew gently upon an upturned palm, sending a whirl of black speckles to dance in the wind, falling into everyone’s eyes, sparing only the mortal pair. The ghosts dropped like flies, not one escaping the frightening efficiency of the child-god’s poppy seeds.
Then he turned to the guards of the gate.
‘Thy duties were poorly discharged.’ He spoke in a choirboy’s contralto voice, a soft and deadly hymn that Harry would have turned around and ran from, had he not been almost sick with dread.
The boy waved one pale hand in a complex gesture, and from the sky a gentle patter of scarlet petals fell. The guards cried out in fear as they watched this, but strangely did not run, as if they knew the hopeless folly of escape.
But their graceful descent hid the awful intent behind them, and Harry saw the tiny scarlet petals slice into the eyes of each soldier, and when the guards cried out, cut out their tongues.
All this the child Hypnos observed with his expressionless face, and Harry too shocked to intercede, too stricken to do anything but watch the horror around him.
Then the Dread God turned his eyes on him then, and Harry had never been so afraid in his life, not when Voldermort- pathetic mortal- had tried to kill him, not when he saw Ron take the killing curse.
‘Thou two,’ Pluto said darkly. ‘hath wroth much trouble in my kingdom.’
His mere presence was like a gong in his head, and the sound of his voice had Harry desperately fighting the urge to cower before it. Harry couldn’t speak, staring at the ground of blood and petals; beside him Draco was already crouched like a toad on the floor, shaking and whimpering.
And there was nothing in this world, or any world, that Harry hated more than absolute rule.
‘Thout are gravely lacking in respect, for one so young. This is the inevitable erosion of time on humanity in the lands above, but down here, fledging childe, the old ways reign.’
His fear and awe belied logic, rooted him in every myth, every nightmare, every fantasy and dream ever conceived by his subconscious – they seemed to come alive before him, writhling on his retinas.
‘Kneel, childe,’ snarled the guttural voice of the King of Hades.
‘Kneel, childe’ the child-deity Hypnos said in his soft, expressionless voice.
‘Kneel, childe,’ the voice of the Queen of the Underworld poured upon him like a river, gentle but immovable.
Thus overwhelmed, his legs lost their fight, and Harry collapsed on his knees on the dirt, and bowed his head to the company of Gods before him.
*