Chapter 9
9
Harry blinked and tried to swat the flies away. The pesky things kept trying to land on his face-
‘Ow!’
His hand came away black and sticky with congealed blood, and Harry sat up as the pain jolted him wide awake.
‘Fucking-‘
‘Sorry about your nose,’ Draco said sheepishly from the opposite corner of their cell. ‘I hadn’t intend to break it.’
‘Fuck. You.’
‘Ok maybe I did. But only for the greater good.’
‘When we get back to the surface, the first thing I’m going to do is dispatch you back here. Alone. ’ Harry promised.
‘I think if we ever get back to the surface,’ Draco said softly, ‘I’m going to go to church.’
‘To revive Pluto’s church?’
The blond shook his head. ‘My father’s.’
Harry shifted, wondering if he was surprised or not. ‘Why?’
The blond gazed out onto things only he could see, his pale hands curled around one of the prison bars.
‘He took me to church once, Father. Do you know a place called Southwark, at the muggle south bank?’
‘The cathedral.’ Harry nodded. ‘I know it.’
‘He called it an expedition.’ Draco laughed. ‘I was a fool.’
‘He was a master actor. You couldn’t have known.’
‘I can’t say why, but for some reason I feel that Father’s church, for all their faults…’ he trailed off, fighting with the emotions that his upbringing refused to acknowledge.
‘-has more compassion,’ Harry answered for him, although he couldn’t imagine somebody like Lucius ever wanting to bequeath or receive any form of kindness. But then, he’d always thought he knew something about the multifaceted nature of men. Perhaps… perhaps he knew less than he thought.
Draco didn’t reply, lost in his world of private regrets.
They passed the night in silence
*
They were kept cooling their heels in the tiny cell for two days. To pass the time, Harry had forced them both to recite litanies and recall their Hogwarts syllabus. As far has he could tell however, their memories remained in perfect condition.
They were also asked to fill in forms – piles of them. The underworld apparently, was as bureaucratic as it was medieval.
‘Hard for you? Its a fucking administrative nightmare for us,’ their Guard sneered when Draco complained. ‘Do you know how many people die every day?
‘What happens when you run out of space?’ Harry asked.
‘I’m not at liberty to reveal trade secrets,’ the guard had told them cryptically as he stalked off, muttering to himself.
‘The underworld must be filled to the rafters with sleepwalkers.’
‘At least now we know why they removed the trouble makers so fast,’ Draco pointed out in a reasonable voice.
‘Wonderful. Harry grunted. ‘I’m going back to sleep.’
*
‘Get up!’ the Chief Warden barked over the clanging of locks. ‘Time to go!’
Harry found himself ushered with no small urgency through a network of narrowed, low-ceiling chambers, lit by the glowing hues of Draco’s grand uncle . ‘This isn’t the way we came.’
‘Silence! ’
Harry looked around, nothing the medieval reliefs and plaques inscripted with the words ‘horned hades’.
‘Horned Hades- is that some sort of allusion to the Christian one? Satan?’
Draco rolled his eyes. ‘Noooo, it’s just the helmet Pluto wears. Didn’t you read any of the classical books?’
‘No toffee-nosed private tutors ever descended up Little Whinging, if that’s what you mean. Besides, I didn’t see any helmet.’
‘His Godship probably uses it in battle. Or to sneak around. Legend has it that it makes him invisible.’
‘That’s all?’ Harry asked aghast as they ducked the low ceilings. ‘That’s all it does?’
Draco pursed his lips. ‘And you tell me I’m the one who’s spoilt. It didn’t occur to you all these years that an invisibility cloak is something around the magnitude of oh, national treasure?’
‘I really didn’t know,’ Harry said, embarrassed. ‘I would have taken better care of it otherwise.’
Draco snorted. ‘Likely, that.’
‘I wonder if the hole can be patched.’
‘YOU-‘
‘That cloak is old,’ Harry said defensively. ‘-and I frequently stepped on it when I was a kid.’
Draco clamped his lips shut and refused to reply.
They were led into a corridor of wooden floors and bare paneled walls, dimly lit and slightly musty. Several staircases later, Harry found himself shoved through one of the many identical iron doors they had passed. His eyes took in the few large tables and assortment of leather backed chairs- some mismatched, strewed around the room. Whatever this room was, it was no throne room- i fact it looked very much like something one could find in the Upper Wor- back home.
A very familiar figure stepped forward to great them.
‘Welcome, mortals.’
‘You!’ Draco gasped at the slender youth, who gracefully inclined his dark head. His butterly wings were wrapped about him like an inky cloak, and his feet was bare.
‘We meet again. I am Thánatos.’
‘Oh puh-lease don’t tell us you’re a god as well,’ groaned Draco.
Harry didn’t take his eyes off Pluto. The dreadful god and his queen were ensconced at the far end of the table, glowering at them. But where was that all-encompassing aura? The palpitations that overcame him when he last beheld Pluto’s dark countenance?
Harry couldn’t figure it out.
The butterfly-winged Thánatos observed this with a placid smile. ‘You have questions.‘
‘Which my spider senses tell me the lot of you won’t bother to give proper answers to.’
‘Thoust mind is rendered by bracken, childe,’ the Queen told him. ‘Allow us to heft the boughs that doth block thy sight from truth.’
‘Who‘re you?’
You may call me Persephone.’
He thought that name sounded vaguely familiar. ‘You will answer my questions?’
‘Thoust may ask,’ was all she said.
‘Why do we feel so… different, in your presence?’
‘Tis a different time.’ the Queen smiled. Harry decided she was rather condescending.
‘What do you mean to say?’ Harry pressed. ‘Was it all an illusion?’
‘This is the afterworld,’ the Queen said gently, ‘yet, is it not a false fantasy to one who does not believe?’
Harry glowered. ‘This kind of shit is too, er-’
‘Existentialist,’ Draco supplied helpfully.
‘Whatever,’ Harry glowered back. ‘Speak plainly.’
‘Ask plainly,’ laughed Thanathos.
‘Enough of this,’ Pluto said with sudden finality. ‘These mortals have small hour-glass. We should not waste their time.’ He looked at Harry ‘We are not always off a mind to rule with terror. Once we walked the lands above, and clasped some of you to our breast as brothers.’
That, Harry thought faintly to himself, was as probable as Snape giving him a hug. There was something in the God’s mannerisms of the dour, dismissive mien which reminded Harry of his greasy potions master.
‘We came here to return one of your… fellow citizens.,‘ Harry gestured at the blue spectral standing stiffly behind them. ‘As a gesture of goodwill, will you free his bonded servitude to mortal companion?’
‘I cannot,’ Hades said shortly. ‘He may only be freed by the maker of the bond.’ Dark eyes pierced Draco. ‘You think this is your father.’
Draco nodded shakily.
‘You think you will be able to find him.’
‘Ye-yes, my lord,’ Draco quavered, and Harry tried not to roll his eyes.
‘When you find your father, you shall bring him to justice,’ snarled Pluto. ‘He has broken the law. The enslavement of another soul in this realm is the prerogative of the Gods alone.’
‘But what will you do to my father?’ Draco cleared his throat. ‘Surely you can’t kill him anymore-‘
‘Oh, nothing of that sort’ Thanathos shrugged. ‘Merely warnings, perhaps a fine of sorts. Nothing more sinister than a slap on the wrist.’
‘I’m sorry your majesties, but seeing my father had converted to Christianity, shouldn’t he be excluded from your juristdiction?’
It wasn’t the right thing to say, apparently, because Pluto’s already dour countenance darkened even more.
‘That Christian God!’ he thundered. ‘The new kid on the block! Green as grass, by Zeus, but never a more disgraceful, disrespectful and delusional upsta-‘
‘Hush dear,’ his queen chided. ‘Let us keep our Godly affairs away from mortal ears, for they are much unsuited to it.’
‘HE might be making wide swaths through the muggles. HE might be building his churches all over the worlds above. But I’ve never lost a single wizard to Chris-tianity, by Zeus, and I’m not about to start.’
‘We’ve been outside the gates,’ Harry pointed out. ‘You hardly seem to be running short .’
Pluto merely glared at him, looking more like a vile toad than ever, so the butterfly-winged child god answered for him instead.
‘It’s a rather tedious story, and not a very interesting one at that. Currently the Underworld take in all the magical folk by default, but other… factions have started to cast their covetous eyes our way. They say we exploit a… loophole, because the magical world often sits astride two faiths. Your father’s case, for example, is one that was hotly disputed for some time.’
‘So you won in the end?’
‘I fear we cannot say for sure,’ Thananos sighed. ‘You know how paperwork is; no fledging, five thousand year old religion can hold no candle to fifty thousand years of bureaucracy here in Hades.’
Draco’s eyebrows had shot through his fringe. ‘Paperwork?’
‘Paperwork,’ Thanathos said slyly. ‘Deary stuff, and they always have a way of getting-‘
‘Lost! ‘ Pluto roared. ‘HE’LL never find it,’ don’t know the first thing about the fine art of beraucracy, those fluffy persion cats of HIS- angels, HE calls them, hah! Grown men running around in diapers-‘
His fair queen placed a graceful hand upon her consort’s arm. ‘Perhaps the mortals would best be getting along,’ she suggested placidly.
‘Yes yes, release them. You have one week to find Lucius and deliver him to me for sentence. No lolly lagging, and think not to deliver him out of Hades, for his mortal coil has been severed, and you will only serve to far greater his suffering.’ Pluto trained his grim eyes on Harry. ‘See that you do not overstep the boundaries of my kingdom again whilst you remain here. I will not be as merciful the next time.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Harry scoffed, ‘well you can take your godly mercy and-‘
‘I’ll take care of him, your majesties, ‘Draco hurriedly cut in just as Pluto’s gaze began to narrow.
‘You are most noble, fair one.’ Queen Persephone approved.
‘T-thank you, your majesty.’
Harry watched in disgust as Draco flushed from the roots of his hair to his feet.
*
Tanathos begin to give them all sorts of warnings as he lead them out. ‘Stir up no trouble in your wanderings. Pluto’s agents are ruthless.’
‘Are you not one such agent?’ Harry challenged.
The youthful god smiled at him, his expression bemused. ‘Thoust art pert, but thy suffering is all hubris and self-imposed, young Harry Potter.’
‘YOUNG Harry Potter?!’ he almost fainted. ‘YOUNG Harry Potter!!!’
‘Thoust art a better man than the sum of thy curdling beliefs. Break free of them, and the scent of thy freedom will be sweet. Farewell, hero and crusader.’
Draco looked disgusted. ‘Hero? Crusader? Has your fan base expanded to include deities now, you insufferable git?’
‘They probably call everybody that.’ Harry defended. ‘Some sort of classical reference to ancient explorers.’
‘I didn’t hear any of them calling me a crusader,’ Draco grouched.
‘Probably mistook you for the pack mule,’ Harry grinned, as he slung a companionable arm around the smaller blond.
‘Queen Persephone’s really pretty,’ Draco said with a dreamy gaze.
‘Queen Persephone.’ Harry pursed his lips. ‘Draco, are you sure you’re queer?’
The blond swatted his arm.
*