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I'm sorry I haven't had time to catch up on the comments from last chapter. It's been a busy week. I will get to them as soon as I can this weekend. Thanks so much to everyone for reading!
In the meantime: Hey, hey, hey, all you Blaise fans... ^_~
Title: The Road (17/?)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rurounihime
Rating: hard R when all is said and done…
Pairing: H/D eventually
Summary: In the midst of a disintegrating war, Harry awaits the arrival of the Order’s last hope.
Warning: violence, character death, spoilers for all books
Disclaimer: The HP characters and most of the spellwork do not belong to me.
A/N: Thank you to April for her fabulous and attentive beta-ing, and to Coffee for constantly letting me bounce ideas off of her. Special thanks to Fire for her help with the new spells. The other major pairing in this is Blaise/Seamus, but there are minor het pairings as well.
…
Artwork coming soon! No music for this chapter.
…
**ETA: THIS CHAPTER HAS RECEIVED ITS FINAL EDIT**
Previous chapters
Chapter 17: Blaise
Dripping. Incessant dripping. The floor should have been slick with water, but Blaise’s feet alighted on dry stone. Some magical tremor kept the seeping walls at bay. He could smell the mustiness, and the odor wrapped around him as if he were in a catacomb. It was fitting; decay was rampant beneath the earthier smells, ever threatening.
The walls flickered like rippling water under the light cast by rows of fluttering torches. But they were not meant to banish darkness. It was not necessary for those who moved comfortably in the dark.
Blaise came to a turn and stopped. He pressed against the wet wall and listened. Nothing but the dripping. He peered around the corner. Another empty corridor, eerie in yellowish light. There were no pillars this time, just the sweating walls. He drew a breath and went down the hall at a silent run, feeling the vulnerability of each step as though it were a stutter in his heart.
The next corridor was lined with thick pillars. They cast deep shadows, and Blaise moved more easily through them. He’d seen no one for hours. Hours of creeping, granted, moving far too slowly for his peace of mind. It was the all-too-probable consequences of carelessness that stopped Blaise from picking up the pace and kept the sweat running down his forehead at every turn in these endless hallways. If he didn’t know better, he would have counted this place deserted.
Except the torches still burned.
The underground compound was enormous, a maze worthy of a minotaur. Blaise was glad he’d studied Pansy’s maps so diligently, listened so carefully to Theodore’s descriptions of the things he might come across, signs that indicated a well-worn corridor or patch of latent magical absence.
He reminded himself that the Death Eaters had better things to do these days than wander aimlessly through the passages of their fortress. People to hunt. Saviours to catch. They wouldn’t even be looking for him, or anyone, down here, not unless he gave them a reason. His wand was in his hand, though he had no plans for using it just yet. Still, it felt more comfortable. Even after all these months, he was unused to leaving magic behind.
He turned another corner with all due caution and found yet another corridor. The long ones were the worst, and he took them at a run when he could. He didn’t much fancy the idea of being caught in the middle if someone else ventured down the hallway from either end. There was nothing to hide behind this time, no pillars. He slowed as he approached the next bend, hearing nothing but his own quick breaths. A long hall, then a short one. Short. Long. Short. No pillars.
All at once, a figure turned the corner. Blaise stopped, his heart slamming up into his throat, but it was too late. The person froze, robes swishing around him. Blaise saw the wand in the man’s right hand, the voluminous black of velvet, and features he knew all too well.
“Blaise Zabini,” the man hissed. Blaise gritted his teeth. His adversary made no move to approach, but the low light was enough.
“Goyle.” It came on a breath. The hulking Death Eater’s face twisted into a snarl and he stepped forward. Blaise’s wand was pointed at his chest in a flat instant.
“Don’t come any closer, Greg,” Blaise rasped. “I’ll kill you right here.”
Goyle’s lips curled into a smile. “Likewise.”
The spell was off Goyle’s wand before Blaise heard the words. He dove out of the way, rolling into the hallway he’d just left. A muttered curse sounded around the corner and Blaise pulled himself painfully to his feet. He couldn’t use his wand. It was only a fool’s chance, but if Gregory Goyle was as dim as he remembered him being—and Blaise was beginning to doubt this—then there was the possibility that the rest of the Death Eaters still had no idea there was anything amiss. If he used any magic they didn’t recognise, however, they’d be on him instantaneously.
Blaise took off running, his trainers slapping the stone floor. Footsteps raced behind him, hard and heavy, but not slow enough, not slow enough… He had precious few seconds before Goyle remembered and called the rest of his cohorts, and Blaise had no delusions about what they would do to him if they caught him. Any lack of important strategic information would not be an issue; this late in the game, whatever they did would be done in sport, and it would be agonising at best.
Blaise slid around a corner and was faced with another short hallway leading to… a blank wall. For a long moment his eyes refused to believe what he was seeing. Dead end. Blaise looked around wildly but there were no passages, no alcoves to slip into. The torches flickered lazily, taunting him. His instincts told him there was probably a secret passage in the wall ahead, but there was no time. Blaise stood there, frozen, only to be wrenched out of it again by the sound of running feet. He flattened himself against the wall, ducking into a deep shadow caused by a column and the scantly placed torches, but he knew if Goyle came close enough, he would be seen.
His pursuer wheeled around the corner and halted, wand jerking up warily. Dark eyes darted up and down the hallway. A few steps forward and Goyle would notice an oddly shaped shadow under the second torch on the right… But the Death Eater did not move. His wide face had gone flat. No trace of a smile left. Blaise quelled his heavy breathing and forced himself to concentrate. Goyle had been a fool, but he was obviously no longer the slouch Blaise remembered. This war had turned him into a thinker. A killer. Blaise couldn’t use magic; that left him with few options. If only Goyle would get closer, he could—but then he’d be seen—
“Where are you, Zabini?”
Blaise stared. Goyle’s grating voice was singsong, echoing off the walls. It was startlingly unreal to hear this coming from the boy who used to infuriate Blaise with his sheer inability to move down a school hallway fast enough. The Death Eater stepped carefully down the corridor, peering into the hall’s recesses. “Come out.”
Blaise swallowed. His fingers twitched around his wand. Goyle spun away, pointing his own wand at a sliver of darkness to his left. This man… Blaise did not recognise him, and the possibility of what he might be capable of bit at him sharply.
“You’re caught,” Goyle intoned. “I’ll just call the others and then we can all hunt you down together.”
Step. Step. Every second that ticked by drew his old schoolmate closer to where he hid.
“Just what are you doing here, anyway? Little blood traitor, within our walls…” The frown on Goyle’s face was calculating. Sweat slid down under Blaise’s collar. His legs were beginning to cramp.
The huge former-Slytherin shrugged. “No matter. We have an excellent Legilimens here.”
Blaise shut his eyes. Snape. It had to be. Just the thought of seeing his old head of house again made him dizzy. Goyle moved closer; he was only a yard or two away now, but looking at the other side of the hallway. Any second, he would turn and—
“Do you have any plans we could put to good use?” Goyle murmured. “Or… maybe that lover of yours? Where is he this time of year?”
Time seemed to stop. Blaise could not breathe. If they caught him they would torture him until they found out every detail. They would learn about the plan. About Ginny and Harry, about Draco. They would probe deeper and find the raw binding magic… and then they would use to it to find Seamus.
Seamus.
Irrational anger erupted in Blaise’s chest, and almost immediately, a strange sense calm flooded through him. His options became clear in one sweeping rush.
Goyle’s head turned back. Blaise could see his profile, orange in the firelight. He rose slowly to his feet, wand dropping from his hand. It clattered to the stones and Goyle whipped around, snarling. But Blaise was already on him, fist slamming into his chin. Goyle staggered, raised his wand, but Blaise wrapped an arm around his thick neck and squeezed. Goyle gasped for air. His huge fist belted Blaise in the gut, in the side, in the lower back. Blaise nearly fell as agony bloomed inside from the third punch, but there was no time to reconsider. He jerked Goyle’s head up by the hair and rammed it into the wall, hard. Twice.
Gregory Goyle dropped like a sack of stones.
Blaise stood in the flickering hallway, stunned by the sudden silence. Breathing was a struggle. His lower back and left side were a mass of pain. He tried to bend over, to get his wand, but the fire in his torso doubled. Blaise forced himself into movement, kneeling gingerly over the man he’d just been fighting. His fingers trembled against Goyle’s throat, but he couldn’t feel anything past the beat of his own blood in his ears. He had no idea if Goyle was still alive.
Shivering, Blaise lowered himself against the wall. The stones felt deliciously icy over the sharp heat in his side. He lifted his shirt as high as he could without crying out and pressed as much of the area as possible against the granite. Goyle might have ruptured something, cracked a rib. There was no way to know.
He felt like vomiting.
Salazar. Was this what they had come to? He raised one hand before swimming eyes, trying to ground himself in the familiarity of it. No, you incredible fool, this is where you’ve been for the last three years. All of them, reduced to grappling in the dark, wounding—even killing—with their bare hands. Blaise swallowed against the nausea, and his side ached like dull fire, a reminder that some nightmares were inescapable. He wondered who else might be down in this winding, rotting pit, who else he might recognise today.
He knew he should check to see if Goyle was still alive, but he couldn’t bring himself to find out. If Goyle wasn’t alive, Blaise would know he’d killed him. And if he was… In all good sense, there was no way Blaise could leave Goyle alive if he knew. Every logical instinct inside him was ordering against it. He would have to kill him there in the hallway, without magic. While Goyle was unconscious.
Blaise didn’t check.
The corridors wound like snakes, switching back and forth, opening into vast rooms and then closing again into the stagnant quiet of close walls. Blaise heard nothing as he limped through the shadows. Goyle had been the fool of his youth, in the end. He’d alerted no one. Blaise could see the layout of the underground fortress in his mind like lines of cool starlight: on the other side of that wall, a room. Down that corridor, a switchback leading to another dead end. Twice he slid behind a pillar and watched robed figures stride past and on out of sight. There was no hustle, none of the frenzy described by Pansy during her days within these walls. Blaise dared to hope—silently because anything else courted disaster—that Voldemort was absent.
When he recognised the older, darker stone of the inner sanctum, Blaise at last called to mind the two sentences he’d learned over and over, and began to hiss. The sound sliced the stillness like a sibilant blade. Blaise allowed himself one final stretch of silence, cool and comforting, before hissing again.
Nothing.
But now that the real waiting had begun, his former discomfort could not compare. Until now, there had always been that last barrier. Now there was nothing in front of him but the conclusion, however it might play out. He had to stop, to close his eyes and fight dizziness.
When he opened them again, he hissed a third time, and it was easier.
And what if this snake wasn’t here at all? Nagini. Potter had told Blaise her name. The snake often went where Voldemort went, or so the Order’s information said. Pansy had confirmed more than once that the serpent remained in the compound often enough when her master had departed, but it was hit or miss. The whim of any given day. And if Voldemort himself were here, then Blaise had already called something much larger and darker down upon his own head.
But they were out of options. He’d already come this far, further than most.
He picked up his pace, hissing softly as he went and listening as the sound echoed down the empty corridors. Several times he fooled himself into thinking that the hisses that came back to him were those of a more tangible serpent. Each twist and turn led to another, to shadows and hallways just like the rest, and Blaise began to panic. Just slivers of it, brimming over to drip through him, but there just the same.
Had he lost his way somehow? He paused in the middle of a nondescript hallway, unable to go forward, wondering if he should go back and look again. If she came across him in a corridor, there was little he could do to protect himself. There was a room here somewhere, with solid walls and one entrance. One exit. Sealable, but the timing had to be perfect.
No. He couldn’t afford to second-guess himself. Blaise inhaled deeply. It was here; he’d studied these corridors for far too long to be wrong. The Death Eaters couldn’t magically reorient a structure as old as this one.
Blaise moved forward with strides that were more certain than he’d expected. He had to be… circling it. Right outside the chamber. A right… another right. And there, in the wall just up the corridor, a large wooden door sat into the stone wall, a huge iron ring hanging where a knob would have been.
Blaise confirmed the still-empty hallway over his shoulder and hunkered down next to the closed door. No visible signs of spellwork. He pulled out his wand and gripped it. If the hissing hadn’t called her, then this would. With all the inherent magic in this section, the Death Eaters might not feel such a tiny spell, but a snake would sense the change in pressure, no matter how slight.
He whispered the charm and waved his wand quickly at the door. Nothing; no spells. And why should there be? There was nothing important kept in the room, according to the Order’s intelligence. Still, he needn’t get this far only to be blasted apart by a hex that a fifth year could have put down.
The door was clean. Blaise’s breath clotted in his lungs as he raised his hand and laid his palm against the uneven wooden surface. Petrified with age and endless moisture, the door was dark and solid. No embedded curse shot through Blaise’s body. It was just a door.
The ring was freezing to the touch. Blaise wrapped his fingers around it and pulled. The door gave a hard scrape over the floor, then creaked toward him. Beyond was a dark void. His mouth tasted chalky. Suddenly both the spaces in front and behind felt too ominous, too full of eyes. He jerked around, peering down the short hall. Only torchlight, in a regular interval of guttering. There was no one there.
There was nothing else to wait for. At any minute, the snake could—Blaise inched inside the black room, hugging the wall. The chamber felt huge in the darkness, an impossible abyss gaping at his feet. Blaise clenched his teeth, shut his eyes—it made no difference—and forced himself to keep moving. Slow steps, one and then another, a strange sideways shuffle toward… He had no idea what. The wall’s plane changed against his back as he went, an obtuse angle to another identical stretch of wall. The room was circular, then, or at least meant to appear so. The faint light streaming through the open doorway only made the rest of the room darker. Moving away from that pale shaft felt ludicrous. His palms began to sweat as the light got further and further from him.
No, he… Gods. His breath came faster. Harder. He was so stupid, he was in danger, there was something in this room. Blaise stumbled over his own feet and let out a sound. Clutched at the wall. Moved faster, more frenziedly, in the wrong direction. He should go back, it was just there in the darkness waiting for him to take that last step away from the light, and then it would—
Something smacked into his forehead and Blaise jerked back, throwing up a hand. His fingers hit metal, just at the level of his ear. He grabbed it, barely stilling his own flight. Cold bands of metal wrapped round and round each other to form a cup of some kind. Just like the wall sconces in the halls. Blaise gave up on the wall itself and scrabbled at the sconce, feeling his way over rusted metal with shaking hands. Long, smooth… the handle of a torch. Blaise yanked at it but it held fast. He pulled again, breath hissing between his teeth, and finally the torch broke free with a loud crack. He spun around and ran with all his might for the door, unable to stop himself. Fell out into the still-empty hallway.
Huddled there on the floor catching his breath, the broken torch in hand.
Stupid, this was so stupid, he should get out of there while he still could, get back to the surface and run and run and… and… Blaise pressed a hand over his eyes. Run to what? To the war? The war that wouldn’t be won if the snake was still alive somewhere, according to Potter. Almighty gods, what did a snake have to do with anything? “Just a fucking Familiar,” Blaise whispered. His own voice sounded tiny and lost in the dank hallway. He swallowed, trying to wet his dry throat.
He was behaving like a child. He was the only one left who could have got in here besides Draco himself, now that Theodore was dead, and they would have caught Draco anyway, Blaise knew it as well as he knew anything. The Death Eaters knew Draco’s magic. They weren’t as familiar with Blaise’s.
“Probably the only reason you’re still alive,” he said to himself. The words broke into a strangled laugh.
Alright then. He had the torch already. He needn’t act like such a bloody baby. It was only a room, and he wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore, and… and he had something to return to when he got out of this. Not if, when. He’d stopped associating Seamus with any sort of ‘if’ long ago.
Blaise pulled himself to his feet, cursing his own foolishness. Lying there in the hallway where any Death Eater worth his or her salt could find him… He pushed off the wall on wobbly legs and made for the nearest of the lit sconces. His torch was damp with disuse and took a few tries to light, but finally it flared. Blaise licked his lips and hissed again. A woefully soft sound. A frightened sound.
He was frightened.
Keeping his eyes on the hallway before him, Blaise backed into the room.
The torch threw the walls into sharp, golden relief. Blaise turned in place, forgetting his fear while he summed up the new space. Circular, definitely. A many-sided polygon, with a wide floor that descended toward the centre by way of shallow steps. Like an amphitheatre. The ceiling was relatively low compared to the hallways. If he reached up, he might touch it. There were other unlit torches along the walls, and he set off around the room, lighting them as he went.
Yes, this was the chamber he’d been seeking. Relief washed over him, settling his nerves. It would be the ideal place to call the snake. Once he had the serpent inside with him, he could close the door, throw a warding spell up, and then it wouldn’t matter if the Death Eaters felt it; they would never get in before he was done, as long as he was efficient.
He was counting on them feeling the spell. If they knew where he was, they might just dismantle the anti-Apparition wards around the entire base in an attempt to get into the room with him.
It was a big might. But Blaise had worked with less just by sneaking into the damn place.
He made his way quickly back to the doorway and peered out, adjusting the aperture so that the door was only open about a foot. He would have to close it with a spell; it wouldn’t do to get too close to the snake. Blaise stuck his head out and hissed again, the sounds made bolder by his growing control over the situation. Control… Not nearly. But he could pretend. He left the doorway and circled the room again, running his hand over the wall. It would take precision; he’d only get one shot at this once the snake arrived.
“Occludoveloxis,” he muttered to himself. “Then Munio Foris on the door. Impervius. Fractus Anappareo, so they can’t Apparate in. Occludoveloxis. Munio Foris. Impervius. Fractus Anappareo. Occludoveloxis. Munio Foris...”
On his way past the door, he hissed again. Kept walking. Once he lost count of how many times he’d circled, Blaise sat down against the wall out of the door’s direct line of sight, and waited. Except for his occasional hissing, the room was as silent as a tomb. There was a strange echo from the hallway outside, as though the vastness of the chambers themselves were whispering. Blaise rested his head against the wall, uncertain of how long he’d been sitting. Hissing.
Until a new sound edged into his awareness. The dry, slow rasp of something sliding over the floor.
Blaise got to his feet with some difficulty, gripping his wand. He shook out his legs one at a time, and the pain of standing again lanced up his muscles in little tingles. Standing with one hand flat against the wall, he held his breath and listened with all his might.
It echoed down the hallway, filtering into the large room. It sounded very close. Blaise knew it was a trick of his ears and of the echoes. Far away still, perhaps several turns down the dim corridors. It was nothing like the fall of footsteps.
Blaise licked his lips. He felt quite outside of himself, watching as another person who looked just like him waited for what was approaching. It wasn’t his tongue that slid around the slithery words one more time and spoke them aloud into the room.
The sound outside grew closer.
Had to be his quarry. Blaise worked at breathing, at readying himself. He moved along the wall, as close to the door as he dared. No more waiting—there was nothing left to wait for.
She was approaching slowly, moving across the ground in smooth sweeps. Must have been closer than he’d thought. He doubted he would have heard her otherwise. She sounded large, and though Potter had described her in detail, Blaise wasn’t sure what he would see when she entered the room. He wiped his palms against his pullover and tucked his wand hand out of sight behind his leg.
The sound stopped right outside the door. Cautious, if such a snake cared about caution. Blaise was certain this one did. The new silence beat into his ears. For the first time he wondered how long he would have before the Death Eaters came screaming down around the sealed room. Of course, that meant he had to seal it first.
He saw a tongue, thin and flickering like pink fairy-light. It whipped in and back out to the safety of the hallway. Surely she could smell him. Blaise let one word of Parseltongue slip from his lips, barely audible, but the snake’s tongue flicked out again and lingered. Her nose edged into view, emerald green with black markings. She tasted the air, and Blaise felt the first ripples of fear. She had to come into the room. Had to be most of the way in. The idea of slamming the door shut upon her body as she entered came to him, but he wasn’t sure if he could seal it with her half in, half out, and then her head was sliding into view, much larger than any snake’s he’d ever seen, eyes too bright, too keen for a simple reptile. There was acute consciousness in their depths, thought, the weight of options. It was utterly cold, that consciousness, bleak and icy as snow, and far more calculating than that of half the humans Blaise had come up against. Snakes thought, of course, but this snake… planned. Understood. Assessed. It would take her mere seconds to figure out that he wasn’t supposed to be here, if her sense of smell had not told her so already.
She slid halfway into the room, her body large and glossy, black and deep green and pebbled. Her eyes were yellow, and they found him at once. The rest of her tail whipped into the room to coil behind her, and Blaise saw that he had lucked out simply by virtue of nature; she couldn’t spring to her own defence with half of herself still out in the hallway. So she’d gathered her entire body together.
In the split second that her eyes caught him, glittering into awareness, Blaise snapped his wand up. “Occludoveloxis!”
The door slammed shut with a resounding bang, and the snake jerked. But the next words were already off Blaise’s tongue. “Munio Foris! Impervius!”
The hiss that erupted from her mouth was one of anger. Her eyes narrowed into slits. Blaise lifted his wand a final time, sweeping the entire room with its point. He spoke clearly, never taking his eyes off of the massive serpent. “Fractus Anappareo.”
His own magic, so long unused, fogged the room in a murky flood. Blaise blinked, feeling the comforting shift and sway of energy against his body. The Death Eaters would have to be absolute idiots not to have sensed that. But it was done: the room was sealed with the snake inside.
She made no move, only stared at him from across the sunken floor. Blaise backed away from her slowly, his wand trained upon her tapered head. He had a few minutes at most. Anti-Apparition wards of such a large scope took time to dismantle, and until they managed it, the Death Eaters would have to use their feet instead. And then however long it took them to break through his spells. If he hadn’t dealt with her by then…
She was so long. She could easily have stretched halfway to him, nose to tail. Her middle was thick and powerful, clenching muscles, squeezing muscles. Blaise swallowed and tightened his grip on his wand.
“Petrificus Totalus!”
The spell hit her with a nasty shiver and a burst of white light. Her eyes flared dull red. Her head swayed back and forth on her neck, and her hisses grew lengthier and more deadly.
The fear shot fully through Blaise’s limbs. Magic resistant. Gods. One of Voldemort’s precautions, perhaps, or maybe she wasn’t just a snake. What on earth was he going to do? He’d counted on magic. Shielding against the Death Eaters, and spells to finish her off. Now Blaise’s head felt hot. There was a ringing in his ears.
The serpent hissed at him again, a guttural sound. She began to slide across the floor, staying near the wall, and Blaise matched her, keeping the middle of the room between them.
He’d have to get close to her. Another stronger spell might have a better effect. He picked one at random and spun it out toward her, a wordless incantation meant to sting across the flesh, to freeze muscle and skin and bone. The spell cocooned her head, then slipped around her body like a… well, a snake. She spat, tucking herself close in. An instant later, the magic sprang free of her scales as if sloughed, and she darted forward in a horrifying flash, mouth open to bare glistening fangs, eyes snapping furiously.
Blaise lunged out of reach.
The snake reared her head up and let forth a stream of hissing as caustic as acid. Blaise was struck by the idea that she was cursing at him in Parseltongue. It was so ludicrous that he nearly laughed.
He couldn’t rely on his wand. A spell wouldn’t stop her for nearly long enough. The best he could hope for was to continually startle her, and he hadn’t time for that. There was no way to know what would happen if he tried the Killing Curse. It might hit home. It might just as easily rebound and hit him instead.
Her eyes glowed a fierce crimson. She slithered toward him in calculating strokes, growing ever nearer. Blaise’s throat closed. At that very moment, the room’s air danced before his eyes, and he felt a vibrant tremor deep in his chest.
The Death Eaters had found the source of the magical disturbance at last.
Blaise’s heart hammered in his temples. One word screamed into his head: closer. He was running out of time. If he could just get within range—
Blaise shot the petrifying spell again and rushed forward. The snake snapped her head out like lightning and Blaise hit the ground, rolling out of the way. His shoulder crunched hard against the stone floor and he forced himself to his feet, hearing her coming. He spun, not thinking about it, just knowing instinctively. Her head was right there, glossy and grotesque. He hit it merely by chance, snapping her head away, and seized at the thick abdomen with both hands.
Not high enough, his brain said dully, and then orange fire erupted in his arm, acidic and burning through him, eating up his muscles. Blaise cried out and let go, reaching for the hurt instead, the horror. He found his shirt ripped, his arm bleeding, and her head rearing for another strike. Blaise threw himself back with all his strength and just barely avoided the flashing teeth. She closed in, fangs bared. Blaise jabbed out with his wand and the snake actually screeched, a high-pitched sound that caromed through his ears. She flailed with her whole body, tail lashing madly over the floor, catching him across the legs. She jerked herself free of the wand point embedded into her eye.
An ominous thudding sizzled through the room. Blaise got to his feet and staggered against the wall, gasping at the fire climbing its way up his arm. Poison. She’d bitten him. He’d known, of course, but… Salazar…
The snake lunged.
Blaise fell to the side, kicking out and making contact with something. He heard her hiss; something clamped around his ankle with incredible force, and then, more fire. Blaise’s mind toppled. He snapped his other leg around, catching her square in the jaw. There was a terrible popping noise, as of small bones. The serpent rolled along the floor, her body jerking uncontrollably.
Now, do it now! His entire body was aflame, his leg and arm an utter inferno, his shoulder numb with the pain. Somewhere in there, he’d struck his ribs. The snake thrashed, smacking against him in sinuous thumps that went straight into his bones. Blaise rolled over and found a writhing, wrenching mass beneath him. He wrapped both arms around it, hugging it close. Her tail swept around his waist faster than he could blink and tightened the air from his lungs.
But he had her head, hands quaking just beneath her jaw.
Poison dripped down her fangs and over his fingers, needling into his flesh. Blaise howled and slammed her head down with a force born of desperation. She hissed at him, coiling more tightly. Blaise saw black spots. He struck at her, digging fingers into her good eye, but still she tightened her death grip upon him. Her mutilated eye socket streamed blackish blood, and it puddled on the floor.
Blaise’s mind was a haze. But the eye… He let go with one hand without thinking and reached, scrabbled across the ground, through warm blood. Couldn’t breathe. His fingers were losing feeling, poison coursing through them, and finally, the solid length of his wand surfaced beneath them. He snatched it up, forced his hand to close around it, and stabbed downward.
The snake let out a chilling, helpless scream. Her hold wrenched so tight Blaise nearly vomited. He pressed her head to the floor and jabbed the wand into her throat over and over and over. Her body began to shake madly, hissing in jolts and bursts. He stabbed until he lost his grip on the wand and it fell from his hand, clattering to the stones.
As though a breath of fresh air had washed into the room, the snake’s body loosened and fell away.
The sudden stillness was nauseating. Blaise remained there, half crouched, muscles frozen. Steel pins, holding his body in this position, away from the aches, the blinding pain lurking just over the horizon. Gore dripped from his fingertips and fell in tiny splats to the stones. The snake’s body still twitched minutely, muscles remembering their earlier movement.
His fingers burned. Blaise looked down, jerking his head in the tiniest of increments. He could barely see his skin through the dark blood. He blinked, drew a breath, and the agony he’d been waiting for erupted all along his backbone, through his left side, up his arm, down one leg. His neck was a mass of the hottest fire he had ever felt. Blaise’s eyes blurred. He fell heavily, clutching at his clothing, wiping his hands sluggishly against his torn shirt.
He thought, vaguely, that he must be twitching like the snake.
The clang of a door somewhere, horribly sharp to his ears, brought him half off the floor before he could think about the consequences of the movement. His left shoulder felt seared, the arm below it was quickly going numb. He fumbled for his wand with shaking fingers. The power of a still-active spell zinged into his fingertips and for a long, empty moment, Blaise couldn’t remember what he’d done.
The door clanged again and it hit him like a slap to the face. Warding spell. Blaise struggled to his feet, clutching his numb arm to his chest in an effort to prove it was actually there. The ward was still up, but fading; he didn’t need to feel the magic to tell him that. And it wasn’t keeping them from moving on foot, only Apparating.
Their own Apparition shields must have come down by now.
Blaise forced himself into motion and staggered for the door. There was blood in his mouth, much more than a mere cut lip would leave. The flavour was different, richer. He spat over his shoulder and looked away before it hit the floor. And right in front of him—a flash of blue light—the door slammed open, letting a tall robed figure into the room.
Blaise dragged to a halt.
The Death Eater paused in the entranceway, scanning the chamber with sweeps of her head. Her mouth was open; it was all he could see beneath her dark cowl. But her gaze alighted on him and her wand shot up, steady and accusing. She stepped forward… and stopped.
Her body had gone rigid, the slightest quiver to her shoulders. Blaise inhaled. The woman looked up, light spilling across a white face, and Blaise felt his stomach roll with recognition.
Millicent Bulstrode’s eyes went wide. Her wand dropped an inch. “Blaise?” she whispered.
Blaise blinked at her through the pain, breathing hard. “Millie.”
Millicent’s eyes moved past him and fixed on the dead serpent. She whipped her gaze back to him. Disbelief cluttered her eyes. “What have you done?”
He didn’t answer. She stepped nearer. His body reacted automatically and hitched him backward, keeping the distance between them. His leg throbbed, making his head pound.
“Blaise, wait. I—” She stuttered into silence, then raised her hands, placating. Blaise took as deep a breath as his broken ribs would allow and shook his head at her.
“Millicent.” Breathe. “What are you doing?”
She looked back at him, chin quivering, and her wand inched up again. It dropped just as quickly. “You put the wards up?”
He didn’t bother answering. His chest was seizing. He could feel the snake’s poison working through his blood, clutching at each muscle, devouring nerves. He didn’t know the end result, but he could guess. The anti-Apparition ward was going to drop at any instant and… he refused to look past that moment.
“Millie. Just… do it,” he whispered at last.
“Blaise—”
“Millicent, you’re not on my side—” A fit of coughing shook him and he nearly fell. A hand caught and steadied him, and when he looked up, he found himself staring into chocolate brown eyes, wide with fear.
“Blaise, get out of here.”
He shook his head, dumbfounded. She glanced at her wand, and then turned to him, eyes hard, jaw set. “I can’t let you get away with this. But I won’t be the one to—Blaise—” She took a shuddering breath and stepped away from him. Raised her wand.
“I can give you five minutes,” she whispered.
Blaise stared at her. Her body was red-rimmed to his agonised eyes. He pressed a hand to his right side, felt his wand slip through fingers newly slicked. His blood this time? Most likely. It didn’t matter from where, he could very well be bleeding out at that moment. Millicent’s eyes glimmered. She flicked her wand hand, biting her lip and looking again like the child he had first seen eight years ago in Hogwarts’ Great Hall. “Go.”
Blaise allowed himself a last, pain-dulled look, and then turned, drawing on every reserve he had. Just drop the ward, and then Apparition was not out of the question… if he could only think…
The remains of the door blasted apart in a rain of wood and iron. Millicent spun around. Already her face was masking itself, fingers tightening around her wand. But her fear was apparent. A dark figure shoved through the splintered doorway into the room. Blaise had an impression of glittering eyes fixating on him before Millicent stepped forward.
“You,” rasped an icy voice from the depths of the hood over the newcomer’s face. Millicent’s shoulders stiffened.
“I should have known, you stupid girl,” the voice hissed. “Get out of the way.”
“No, wait.” Millicent stepped between them. “We can use him, we don’t have to kill him! Just—”
There was a flash of green light and Blaise watched dully as Millicent toppled over backward. Her head hit the floor with a sharp crack. Blaise’s brain tried to shut down on him, but the recognition of the new Death Eater standing before him jolted him into action that his body couldn’t handle. Bellatrix Lestrange’s face was pale as a banshee’s, her lips nearly black in the light as they formed the words to a spell. Blaise dove and rolled, nearly blacking out at the horrendous slash that carved his innards. He couldn’t tell if her spell had been successful or if the pain was from a previous injury. Her second spell connected, however, hitting him full in the chest and sending searing heat through his lungs. An instant later it didn’t matter: what could only be Cruciatus turned his mind to jelly. Only the sinister blending of the spell’s magic kept him from passing out. He jerked, screaming inside, outside, everywhere, oh gods, he hadn’t thought it possible to feel this much pain, scorching ripping tearing Seamus Seamus SeamusSEAMUS!!!
He barely knew it had stopped until he saw Lestrange’s face looming out of the gloom. She spat on him.
“Blood traitor.”
Blaise stared up at her, unable to breathe, unable to think. Going to kill him she was going to kill him she was going to—
“S…”
The woman’s stringy black hair drifted around her face as she leaned in. “What was that?” she said in the same soft voice. It was almost motherly, and it was grotesque.
“Snake.”
Her face clouded in confusion. Then her eyes widened and she looked up, focusing behind him. Her mouth dropped open. “Nagini?” she whispered.
How Blaise did it, he would never know. He wrapped a hand around her ankle and yanked as hard as he could. She toppled over with a shout of surprise. Blaise pushed himself to his feet and promptly fell down again. Something in his stomach was all wrong, he could feel it. He could hear Bellatrix scrabbling behind him, screeching. Blaise spun on his knees and used his wand.
“Vastare!” he rasped.
Bellatrix’s screaming reached a new pitch as the spell hit her, but the last ward he had erected had fallen at last, he could feel the emptiness, and he could only think about the ticking seconds.
Get out. They’re coming.
Cracks sounded around him, and shouts. Blaise concentrated with all his might on one thought, one coherent image. A tree.
There was a vicious hiss as a spell hummed past him.
Waving grass.
Lestrange was shrieking.
Broken oak door.
Something hot and sizzling slammed into his side.
Cathedral.
Blaise Apparated.
...
Chapter 18
In the meantime: Hey, hey, hey, all you Blaise fans... ^_~
Title: The Road (17/?)
Author:
rurounihimeRating: hard R when all is said and done…
Pairing: H/D eventually
Summary: In the midst of a disintegrating war, Harry awaits the arrival of the Order’s last hope.
Warning: violence, character death, spoilers for all books
Disclaimer: The HP characters and most of the spellwork do not belong to me.
A/N: Thank you to April for her fabulous and attentive beta-ing, and to Coffee for constantly letting me bounce ideas off of her. Special thanks to Fire for her help with the new spells. The other major pairing in this is Blaise/Seamus, but there are minor het pairings as well.
…
Artwork coming soon! No music for this chapter.
…
**ETA: THIS CHAPTER HAS RECEIVED ITS FINAL EDIT**
Previous chapters
Chapter 17: Blaise
Dripping. Incessant dripping. The floor should have been slick with water, but Blaise’s feet alighted on dry stone. Some magical tremor kept the seeping walls at bay. He could smell the mustiness, and the odor wrapped around him as if he were in a catacomb. It was fitting; decay was rampant beneath the earthier smells, ever threatening.
The walls flickered like rippling water under the light cast by rows of fluttering torches. But they were not meant to banish darkness. It was not necessary for those who moved comfortably in the dark.
Blaise came to a turn and stopped. He pressed against the wet wall and listened. Nothing but the dripping. He peered around the corner. Another empty corridor, eerie in yellowish light. There were no pillars this time, just the sweating walls. He drew a breath and went down the hall at a silent run, feeling the vulnerability of each step as though it were a stutter in his heart.
The next corridor was lined with thick pillars. They cast deep shadows, and Blaise moved more easily through them. He’d seen no one for hours. Hours of creeping, granted, moving far too slowly for his peace of mind. It was the all-too-probable consequences of carelessness that stopped Blaise from picking up the pace and kept the sweat running down his forehead at every turn in these endless hallways. If he didn’t know better, he would have counted this place deserted.
Except the torches still burned.
The underground compound was enormous, a maze worthy of a minotaur. Blaise was glad he’d studied Pansy’s maps so diligently, listened so carefully to Theodore’s descriptions of the things he might come across, signs that indicated a well-worn corridor or patch of latent magical absence.
He reminded himself that the Death Eaters had better things to do these days than wander aimlessly through the passages of their fortress. People to hunt. Saviours to catch. They wouldn’t even be looking for him, or anyone, down here, not unless he gave them a reason. His wand was in his hand, though he had no plans for using it just yet. Still, it felt more comfortable. Even after all these months, he was unused to leaving magic behind.
He turned another corner with all due caution and found yet another corridor. The long ones were the worst, and he took them at a run when he could. He didn’t much fancy the idea of being caught in the middle if someone else ventured down the hallway from either end. There was nothing to hide behind this time, no pillars. He slowed as he approached the next bend, hearing nothing but his own quick breaths. A long hall, then a short one. Short. Long. Short. No pillars.
All at once, a figure turned the corner. Blaise stopped, his heart slamming up into his throat, but it was too late. The person froze, robes swishing around him. Blaise saw the wand in the man’s right hand, the voluminous black of velvet, and features he knew all too well.
“Blaise Zabini,” the man hissed. Blaise gritted his teeth. His adversary made no move to approach, but the low light was enough.
“Goyle.” It came on a breath. The hulking Death Eater’s face twisted into a snarl and he stepped forward. Blaise’s wand was pointed at his chest in a flat instant.
“Don’t come any closer, Greg,” Blaise rasped. “I’ll kill you right here.”
Goyle’s lips curled into a smile. “Likewise.”
The spell was off Goyle’s wand before Blaise heard the words. He dove out of the way, rolling into the hallway he’d just left. A muttered curse sounded around the corner and Blaise pulled himself painfully to his feet. He couldn’t use his wand. It was only a fool’s chance, but if Gregory Goyle was as dim as he remembered him being—and Blaise was beginning to doubt this—then there was the possibility that the rest of the Death Eaters still had no idea there was anything amiss. If he used any magic they didn’t recognise, however, they’d be on him instantaneously.
Blaise took off running, his trainers slapping the stone floor. Footsteps raced behind him, hard and heavy, but not slow enough, not slow enough… He had precious few seconds before Goyle remembered and called the rest of his cohorts, and Blaise had no delusions about what they would do to him if they caught him. Any lack of important strategic information would not be an issue; this late in the game, whatever they did would be done in sport, and it would be agonising at best.
Blaise slid around a corner and was faced with another short hallway leading to… a blank wall. For a long moment his eyes refused to believe what he was seeing. Dead end. Blaise looked around wildly but there were no passages, no alcoves to slip into. The torches flickered lazily, taunting him. His instincts told him there was probably a secret passage in the wall ahead, but there was no time. Blaise stood there, frozen, only to be wrenched out of it again by the sound of running feet. He flattened himself against the wall, ducking into a deep shadow caused by a column and the scantly placed torches, but he knew if Goyle came close enough, he would be seen.
His pursuer wheeled around the corner and halted, wand jerking up warily. Dark eyes darted up and down the hallway. A few steps forward and Goyle would notice an oddly shaped shadow under the second torch on the right… But the Death Eater did not move. His wide face had gone flat. No trace of a smile left. Blaise quelled his heavy breathing and forced himself to concentrate. Goyle had been a fool, but he was obviously no longer the slouch Blaise remembered. This war had turned him into a thinker. A killer. Blaise couldn’t use magic; that left him with few options. If only Goyle would get closer, he could—but then he’d be seen—
“Where are you, Zabini?”
Blaise stared. Goyle’s grating voice was singsong, echoing off the walls. It was startlingly unreal to hear this coming from the boy who used to infuriate Blaise with his sheer inability to move down a school hallway fast enough. The Death Eater stepped carefully down the corridor, peering into the hall’s recesses. “Come out.”
Blaise swallowed. His fingers twitched around his wand. Goyle spun away, pointing his own wand at a sliver of darkness to his left. This man… Blaise did not recognise him, and the possibility of what he might be capable of bit at him sharply.
“You’re caught,” Goyle intoned. “I’ll just call the others and then we can all hunt you down together.”
Step. Step. Every second that ticked by drew his old schoolmate closer to where he hid.
“Just what are you doing here, anyway? Little blood traitor, within our walls…” The frown on Goyle’s face was calculating. Sweat slid down under Blaise’s collar. His legs were beginning to cramp.
The huge former-Slytherin shrugged. “No matter. We have an excellent Legilimens here.”
Blaise shut his eyes. Snape. It had to be. Just the thought of seeing his old head of house again made him dizzy. Goyle moved closer; he was only a yard or two away now, but looking at the other side of the hallway. Any second, he would turn and—
“Do you have any plans we could put to good use?” Goyle murmured. “Or… maybe that lover of yours? Where is he this time of year?”
Time seemed to stop. Blaise could not breathe. If they caught him they would torture him until they found out every detail. They would learn about the plan. About Ginny and Harry, about Draco. They would probe deeper and find the raw binding magic… and then they would use to it to find Seamus.
Seamus.
Irrational anger erupted in Blaise’s chest, and almost immediately, a strange sense calm flooded through him. His options became clear in one sweeping rush.
Goyle’s head turned back. Blaise could see his profile, orange in the firelight. He rose slowly to his feet, wand dropping from his hand. It clattered to the stones and Goyle whipped around, snarling. But Blaise was already on him, fist slamming into his chin. Goyle staggered, raised his wand, but Blaise wrapped an arm around his thick neck and squeezed. Goyle gasped for air. His huge fist belted Blaise in the gut, in the side, in the lower back. Blaise nearly fell as agony bloomed inside from the third punch, but there was no time to reconsider. He jerked Goyle’s head up by the hair and rammed it into the wall, hard. Twice.
Gregory Goyle dropped like a sack of stones.
Blaise stood in the flickering hallway, stunned by the sudden silence. Breathing was a struggle. His lower back and left side were a mass of pain. He tried to bend over, to get his wand, but the fire in his torso doubled. Blaise forced himself into movement, kneeling gingerly over the man he’d just been fighting. His fingers trembled against Goyle’s throat, but he couldn’t feel anything past the beat of his own blood in his ears. He had no idea if Goyle was still alive.
Shivering, Blaise lowered himself against the wall. The stones felt deliciously icy over the sharp heat in his side. He lifted his shirt as high as he could without crying out and pressed as much of the area as possible against the granite. Goyle might have ruptured something, cracked a rib. There was no way to know.
He felt like vomiting.
Salazar. Was this what they had come to? He raised one hand before swimming eyes, trying to ground himself in the familiarity of it. No, you incredible fool, this is where you’ve been for the last three years. All of them, reduced to grappling in the dark, wounding—even killing—with their bare hands. Blaise swallowed against the nausea, and his side ached like dull fire, a reminder that some nightmares were inescapable. He wondered who else might be down in this winding, rotting pit, who else he might recognise today.
He knew he should check to see if Goyle was still alive, but he couldn’t bring himself to find out. If Goyle wasn’t alive, Blaise would know he’d killed him. And if he was… In all good sense, there was no way Blaise could leave Goyle alive if he knew. Every logical instinct inside him was ordering against it. He would have to kill him there in the hallway, without magic. While Goyle was unconscious.
Blaise didn’t check.
The corridors wound like snakes, switching back and forth, opening into vast rooms and then closing again into the stagnant quiet of close walls. Blaise heard nothing as he limped through the shadows. Goyle had been the fool of his youth, in the end. He’d alerted no one. Blaise could see the layout of the underground fortress in his mind like lines of cool starlight: on the other side of that wall, a room. Down that corridor, a switchback leading to another dead end. Twice he slid behind a pillar and watched robed figures stride past and on out of sight. There was no hustle, none of the frenzy described by Pansy during her days within these walls. Blaise dared to hope—silently because anything else courted disaster—that Voldemort was absent.
When he recognised the older, darker stone of the inner sanctum, Blaise at last called to mind the two sentences he’d learned over and over, and began to hiss. The sound sliced the stillness like a sibilant blade. Blaise allowed himself one final stretch of silence, cool and comforting, before hissing again.
Nothing.
But now that the real waiting had begun, his former discomfort could not compare. Until now, there had always been that last barrier. Now there was nothing in front of him but the conclusion, however it might play out. He had to stop, to close his eyes and fight dizziness.
When he opened them again, he hissed a third time, and it was easier.
And what if this snake wasn’t here at all? Nagini. Potter had told Blaise her name. The snake often went where Voldemort went, or so the Order’s information said. Pansy had confirmed more than once that the serpent remained in the compound often enough when her master had departed, but it was hit or miss. The whim of any given day. And if Voldemort himself were here, then Blaise had already called something much larger and darker down upon his own head.
But they were out of options. He’d already come this far, further than most.
He picked up his pace, hissing softly as he went and listening as the sound echoed down the empty corridors. Several times he fooled himself into thinking that the hisses that came back to him were those of a more tangible serpent. Each twist and turn led to another, to shadows and hallways just like the rest, and Blaise began to panic. Just slivers of it, brimming over to drip through him, but there just the same.
Had he lost his way somehow? He paused in the middle of a nondescript hallway, unable to go forward, wondering if he should go back and look again. If she came across him in a corridor, there was little he could do to protect himself. There was a room here somewhere, with solid walls and one entrance. One exit. Sealable, but the timing had to be perfect.
No. He couldn’t afford to second-guess himself. Blaise inhaled deeply. It was here; he’d studied these corridors for far too long to be wrong. The Death Eaters couldn’t magically reorient a structure as old as this one.
Blaise moved forward with strides that were more certain than he’d expected. He had to be… circling it. Right outside the chamber. A right… another right. And there, in the wall just up the corridor, a large wooden door sat into the stone wall, a huge iron ring hanging where a knob would have been.
Blaise confirmed the still-empty hallway over his shoulder and hunkered down next to the closed door. No visible signs of spellwork. He pulled out his wand and gripped it. If the hissing hadn’t called her, then this would. With all the inherent magic in this section, the Death Eaters might not feel such a tiny spell, but a snake would sense the change in pressure, no matter how slight.
He whispered the charm and waved his wand quickly at the door. Nothing; no spells. And why should there be? There was nothing important kept in the room, according to the Order’s intelligence. Still, he needn’t get this far only to be blasted apart by a hex that a fifth year could have put down.
The door was clean. Blaise’s breath clotted in his lungs as he raised his hand and laid his palm against the uneven wooden surface. Petrified with age and endless moisture, the door was dark and solid. No embedded curse shot through Blaise’s body. It was just a door.
The ring was freezing to the touch. Blaise wrapped his fingers around it and pulled. The door gave a hard scrape over the floor, then creaked toward him. Beyond was a dark void. His mouth tasted chalky. Suddenly both the spaces in front and behind felt too ominous, too full of eyes. He jerked around, peering down the short hall. Only torchlight, in a regular interval of guttering. There was no one there.
There was nothing else to wait for. At any minute, the snake could—Blaise inched inside the black room, hugging the wall. The chamber felt huge in the darkness, an impossible abyss gaping at his feet. Blaise clenched his teeth, shut his eyes—it made no difference—and forced himself to keep moving. Slow steps, one and then another, a strange sideways shuffle toward… He had no idea what. The wall’s plane changed against his back as he went, an obtuse angle to another identical stretch of wall. The room was circular, then, or at least meant to appear so. The faint light streaming through the open doorway only made the rest of the room darker. Moving away from that pale shaft felt ludicrous. His palms began to sweat as the light got further and further from him.
No, he… Gods. His breath came faster. Harder. He was so stupid, he was in danger, there was something in this room. Blaise stumbled over his own feet and let out a sound. Clutched at the wall. Moved faster, more frenziedly, in the wrong direction. He should go back, it was just there in the darkness waiting for him to take that last step away from the light, and then it would—
Something smacked into his forehead and Blaise jerked back, throwing up a hand. His fingers hit metal, just at the level of his ear. He grabbed it, barely stilling his own flight. Cold bands of metal wrapped round and round each other to form a cup of some kind. Just like the wall sconces in the halls. Blaise gave up on the wall itself and scrabbled at the sconce, feeling his way over rusted metal with shaking hands. Long, smooth… the handle of a torch. Blaise yanked at it but it held fast. He pulled again, breath hissing between his teeth, and finally the torch broke free with a loud crack. He spun around and ran with all his might for the door, unable to stop himself. Fell out into the still-empty hallway.
Huddled there on the floor catching his breath, the broken torch in hand.
Stupid, this was so stupid, he should get out of there while he still could, get back to the surface and run and run and… and… Blaise pressed a hand over his eyes. Run to what? To the war? The war that wouldn’t be won if the snake was still alive somewhere, according to Potter. Almighty gods, what did a snake have to do with anything? “Just a fucking Familiar,” Blaise whispered. His own voice sounded tiny and lost in the dank hallway. He swallowed, trying to wet his dry throat.
He was behaving like a child. He was the only one left who could have got in here besides Draco himself, now that Theodore was dead, and they would have caught Draco anyway, Blaise knew it as well as he knew anything. The Death Eaters knew Draco’s magic. They weren’t as familiar with Blaise’s.
“Probably the only reason you’re still alive,” he said to himself. The words broke into a strangled laugh.
Alright then. He had the torch already. He needn’t act like such a bloody baby. It was only a room, and he wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore, and… and he had something to return to when he got out of this. Not if, when. He’d stopped associating Seamus with any sort of ‘if’ long ago.
Blaise pulled himself to his feet, cursing his own foolishness. Lying there in the hallway where any Death Eater worth his or her salt could find him… He pushed off the wall on wobbly legs and made for the nearest of the lit sconces. His torch was damp with disuse and took a few tries to light, but finally it flared. Blaise licked his lips and hissed again. A woefully soft sound. A frightened sound.
He was frightened.
Keeping his eyes on the hallway before him, Blaise backed into the room.
The torch threw the walls into sharp, golden relief. Blaise turned in place, forgetting his fear while he summed up the new space. Circular, definitely. A many-sided polygon, with a wide floor that descended toward the centre by way of shallow steps. Like an amphitheatre. The ceiling was relatively low compared to the hallways. If he reached up, he might touch it. There were other unlit torches along the walls, and he set off around the room, lighting them as he went.
Yes, this was the chamber he’d been seeking. Relief washed over him, settling his nerves. It would be the ideal place to call the snake. Once he had the serpent inside with him, he could close the door, throw a warding spell up, and then it wouldn’t matter if the Death Eaters felt it; they would never get in before he was done, as long as he was efficient.
He was counting on them feeling the spell. If they knew where he was, they might just dismantle the anti-Apparition wards around the entire base in an attempt to get into the room with him.
It was a big might. But Blaise had worked with less just by sneaking into the damn place.
He made his way quickly back to the doorway and peered out, adjusting the aperture so that the door was only open about a foot. He would have to close it with a spell; it wouldn’t do to get too close to the snake. Blaise stuck his head out and hissed again, the sounds made bolder by his growing control over the situation. Control… Not nearly. But he could pretend. He left the doorway and circled the room again, running his hand over the wall. It would take precision; he’d only get one shot at this once the snake arrived.
“Occludoveloxis,” he muttered to himself. “Then Munio Foris on the door. Impervius. Fractus Anappareo, so they can’t Apparate in. Occludoveloxis. Munio Foris. Impervius. Fractus Anappareo. Occludoveloxis. Munio Foris...”
On his way past the door, he hissed again. Kept walking. Once he lost count of how many times he’d circled, Blaise sat down against the wall out of the door’s direct line of sight, and waited. Except for his occasional hissing, the room was as silent as a tomb. There was a strange echo from the hallway outside, as though the vastness of the chambers themselves were whispering. Blaise rested his head against the wall, uncertain of how long he’d been sitting. Hissing.
Until a new sound edged into his awareness. The dry, slow rasp of something sliding over the floor.
Blaise got to his feet with some difficulty, gripping his wand. He shook out his legs one at a time, and the pain of standing again lanced up his muscles in little tingles. Standing with one hand flat against the wall, he held his breath and listened with all his might.
It echoed down the hallway, filtering into the large room. It sounded very close. Blaise knew it was a trick of his ears and of the echoes. Far away still, perhaps several turns down the dim corridors. It was nothing like the fall of footsteps.
Blaise licked his lips. He felt quite outside of himself, watching as another person who looked just like him waited for what was approaching. It wasn’t his tongue that slid around the slithery words one more time and spoke them aloud into the room.
The sound outside grew closer.
Had to be his quarry. Blaise worked at breathing, at readying himself. He moved along the wall, as close to the door as he dared. No more waiting—there was nothing left to wait for.
She was approaching slowly, moving across the ground in smooth sweeps. Must have been closer than he’d thought. He doubted he would have heard her otherwise. She sounded large, and though Potter had described her in detail, Blaise wasn’t sure what he would see when she entered the room. He wiped his palms against his pullover and tucked his wand hand out of sight behind his leg.
The sound stopped right outside the door. Cautious, if such a snake cared about caution. Blaise was certain this one did. The new silence beat into his ears. For the first time he wondered how long he would have before the Death Eaters came screaming down around the sealed room. Of course, that meant he had to seal it first.
He saw a tongue, thin and flickering like pink fairy-light. It whipped in and back out to the safety of the hallway. Surely she could smell him. Blaise let one word of Parseltongue slip from his lips, barely audible, but the snake’s tongue flicked out again and lingered. Her nose edged into view, emerald green with black markings. She tasted the air, and Blaise felt the first ripples of fear. She had to come into the room. Had to be most of the way in. The idea of slamming the door shut upon her body as she entered came to him, but he wasn’t sure if he could seal it with her half in, half out, and then her head was sliding into view, much larger than any snake’s he’d ever seen, eyes too bright, too keen for a simple reptile. There was acute consciousness in their depths, thought, the weight of options. It was utterly cold, that consciousness, bleak and icy as snow, and far more calculating than that of half the humans Blaise had come up against. Snakes thought, of course, but this snake… planned. Understood. Assessed. It would take her mere seconds to figure out that he wasn’t supposed to be here, if her sense of smell had not told her so already.
She slid halfway into the room, her body large and glossy, black and deep green and pebbled. Her eyes were yellow, and they found him at once. The rest of her tail whipped into the room to coil behind her, and Blaise saw that he had lucked out simply by virtue of nature; she couldn’t spring to her own defence with half of herself still out in the hallway. So she’d gathered her entire body together.
In the split second that her eyes caught him, glittering into awareness, Blaise snapped his wand up. “Occludoveloxis!”
The door slammed shut with a resounding bang, and the snake jerked. But the next words were already off Blaise’s tongue. “Munio Foris! Impervius!”
The hiss that erupted from her mouth was one of anger. Her eyes narrowed into slits. Blaise lifted his wand a final time, sweeping the entire room with its point. He spoke clearly, never taking his eyes off of the massive serpent. “Fractus Anappareo.”
His own magic, so long unused, fogged the room in a murky flood. Blaise blinked, feeling the comforting shift and sway of energy against his body. The Death Eaters would have to be absolute idiots not to have sensed that. But it was done: the room was sealed with the snake inside.
She made no move, only stared at him from across the sunken floor. Blaise backed away from her slowly, his wand trained upon her tapered head. He had a few minutes at most. Anti-Apparition wards of such a large scope took time to dismantle, and until they managed it, the Death Eaters would have to use their feet instead. And then however long it took them to break through his spells. If he hadn’t dealt with her by then…
She was so long. She could easily have stretched halfway to him, nose to tail. Her middle was thick and powerful, clenching muscles, squeezing muscles. Blaise swallowed and tightened his grip on his wand.
“Petrificus Totalus!”
The spell hit her with a nasty shiver and a burst of white light. Her eyes flared dull red. Her head swayed back and forth on her neck, and her hisses grew lengthier and more deadly.
The fear shot fully through Blaise’s limbs. Magic resistant. Gods. One of Voldemort’s precautions, perhaps, or maybe she wasn’t just a snake. What on earth was he going to do? He’d counted on magic. Shielding against the Death Eaters, and spells to finish her off. Now Blaise’s head felt hot. There was a ringing in his ears.
The serpent hissed at him again, a guttural sound. She began to slide across the floor, staying near the wall, and Blaise matched her, keeping the middle of the room between them.
He’d have to get close to her. Another stronger spell might have a better effect. He picked one at random and spun it out toward her, a wordless incantation meant to sting across the flesh, to freeze muscle and skin and bone. The spell cocooned her head, then slipped around her body like a… well, a snake. She spat, tucking herself close in. An instant later, the magic sprang free of her scales as if sloughed, and she darted forward in a horrifying flash, mouth open to bare glistening fangs, eyes snapping furiously.
Blaise lunged out of reach.
The snake reared her head up and let forth a stream of hissing as caustic as acid. Blaise was struck by the idea that she was cursing at him in Parseltongue. It was so ludicrous that he nearly laughed.
He couldn’t rely on his wand. A spell wouldn’t stop her for nearly long enough. The best he could hope for was to continually startle her, and he hadn’t time for that. There was no way to know what would happen if he tried the Killing Curse. It might hit home. It might just as easily rebound and hit him instead.
Her eyes glowed a fierce crimson. She slithered toward him in calculating strokes, growing ever nearer. Blaise’s throat closed. At that very moment, the room’s air danced before his eyes, and he felt a vibrant tremor deep in his chest.
The Death Eaters had found the source of the magical disturbance at last.
Blaise’s heart hammered in his temples. One word screamed into his head: closer. He was running out of time. If he could just get within range—
Blaise shot the petrifying spell again and rushed forward. The snake snapped her head out like lightning and Blaise hit the ground, rolling out of the way. His shoulder crunched hard against the stone floor and he forced himself to his feet, hearing her coming. He spun, not thinking about it, just knowing instinctively. Her head was right there, glossy and grotesque. He hit it merely by chance, snapping her head away, and seized at the thick abdomen with both hands.
Not high enough, his brain said dully, and then orange fire erupted in his arm, acidic and burning through him, eating up his muscles. Blaise cried out and let go, reaching for the hurt instead, the horror. He found his shirt ripped, his arm bleeding, and her head rearing for another strike. Blaise threw himself back with all his strength and just barely avoided the flashing teeth. She closed in, fangs bared. Blaise jabbed out with his wand and the snake actually screeched, a high-pitched sound that caromed through his ears. She flailed with her whole body, tail lashing madly over the floor, catching him across the legs. She jerked herself free of the wand point embedded into her eye.
An ominous thudding sizzled through the room. Blaise got to his feet and staggered against the wall, gasping at the fire climbing its way up his arm. Poison. She’d bitten him. He’d known, of course, but… Salazar…
The snake lunged.
Blaise fell to the side, kicking out and making contact with something. He heard her hiss; something clamped around his ankle with incredible force, and then, more fire. Blaise’s mind toppled. He snapped his other leg around, catching her square in the jaw. There was a terrible popping noise, as of small bones. The serpent rolled along the floor, her body jerking uncontrollably.
Now, do it now! His entire body was aflame, his leg and arm an utter inferno, his shoulder numb with the pain. Somewhere in there, he’d struck his ribs. The snake thrashed, smacking against him in sinuous thumps that went straight into his bones. Blaise rolled over and found a writhing, wrenching mass beneath him. He wrapped both arms around it, hugging it close. Her tail swept around his waist faster than he could blink and tightened the air from his lungs.
But he had her head, hands quaking just beneath her jaw.
Poison dripped down her fangs and over his fingers, needling into his flesh. Blaise howled and slammed her head down with a force born of desperation. She hissed at him, coiling more tightly. Blaise saw black spots. He struck at her, digging fingers into her good eye, but still she tightened her death grip upon him. Her mutilated eye socket streamed blackish blood, and it puddled on the floor.
Blaise’s mind was a haze. But the eye… He let go with one hand without thinking and reached, scrabbled across the ground, through warm blood. Couldn’t breathe. His fingers were losing feeling, poison coursing through them, and finally, the solid length of his wand surfaced beneath them. He snatched it up, forced his hand to close around it, and stabbed downward.
The snake let out a chilling, helpless scream. Her hold wrenched so tight Blaise nearly vomited. He pressed her head to the floor and jabbed the wand into her throat over and over and over. Her body began to shake madly, hissing in jolts and bursts. He stabbed until he lost his grip on the wand and it fell from his hand, clattering to the stones.
As though a breath of fresh air had washed into the room, the snake’s body loosened and fell away.
The sudden stillness was nauseating. Blaise remained there, half crouched, muscles frozen. Steel pins, holding his body in this position, away from the aches, the blinding pain lurking just over the horizon. Gore dripped from his fingertips and fell in tiny splats to the stones. The snake’s body still twitched minutely, muscles remembering their earlier movement.
His fingers burned. Blaise looked down, jerking his head in the tiniest of increments. He could barely see his skin through the dark blood. He blinked, drew a breath, and the agony he’d been waiting for erupted all along his backbone, through his left side, up his arm, down one leg. His neck was a mass of the hottest fire he had ever felt. Blaise’s eyes blurred. He fell heavily, clutching at his clothing, wiping his hands sluggishly against his torn shirt.
He thought, vaguely, that he must be twitching like the snake.
The clang of a door somewhere, horribly sharp to his ears, brought him half off the floor before he could think about the consequences of the movement. His left shoulder felt seared, the arm below it was quickly going numb. He fumbled for his wand with shaking fingers. The power of a still-active spell zinged into his fingertips and for a long, empty moment, Blaise couldn’t remember what he’d done.
The door clanged again and it hit him like a slap to the face. Warding spell. Blaise struggled to his feet, clutching his numb arm to his chest in an effort to prove it was actually there. The ward was still up, but fading; he didn’t need to feel the magic to tell him that. And it wasn’t keeping them from moving on foot, only Apparating.
Their own Apparition shields must have come down by now.
Blaise forced himself into motion and staggered for the door. There was blood in his mouth, much more than a mere cut lip would leave. The flavour was different, richer. He spat over his shoulder and looked away before it hit the floor. And right in front of him—a flash of blue light—the door slammed open, letting a tall robed figure into the room.
Blaise dragged to a halt.
The Death Eater paused in the entranceway, scanning the chamber with sweeps of her head. Her mouth was open; it was all he could see beneath her dark cowl. But her gaze alighted on him and her wand shot up, steady and accusing. She stepped forward… and stopped.
Her body had gone rigid, the slightest quiver to her shoulders. Blaise inhaled. The woman looked up, light spilling across a white face, and Blaise felt his stomach roll with recognition.
Millicent Bulstrode’s eyes went wide. Her wand dropped an inch. “Blaise?” she whispered.
Blaise blinked at her through the pain, breathing hard. “Millie.”
Millicent’s eyes moved past him and fixed on the dead serpent. She whipped her gaze back to him. Disbelief cluttered her eyes. “What have you done?”
He didn’t answer. She stepped nearer. His body reacted automatically and hitched him backward, keeping the distance between them. His leg throbbed, making his head pound.
“Blaise, wait. I—” She stuttered into silence, then raised her hands, placating. Blaise took as deep a breath as his broken ribs would allow and shook his head at her.
“Millicent.” Breathe. “What are you doing?”
She looked back at him, chin quivering, and her wand inched up again. It dropped just as quickly. “You put the wards up?”
He didn’t bother answering. His chest was seizing. He could feel the snake’s poison working through his blood, clutching at each muscle, devouring nerves. He didn’t know the end result, but he could guess. The anti-Apparition ward was going to drop at any instant and… he refused to look past that moment.
“Millie. Just… do it,” he whispered at last.
“Blaise—”
“Millicent, you’re not on my side—” A fit of coughing shook him and he nearly fell. A hand caught and steadied him, and when he looked up, he found himself staring into chocolate brown eyes, wide with fear.
“Blaise, get out of here.”
He shook his head, dumbfounded. She glanced at her wand, and then turned to him, eyes hard, jaw set. “I can’t let you get away with this. But I won’t be the one to—Blaise—” She took a shuddering breath and stepped away from him. Raised her wand.
“I can give you five minutes,” she whispered.
Blaise stared at her. Her body was red-rimmed to his agonised eyes. He pressed a hand to his right side, felt his wand slip through fingers newly slicked. His blood this time? Most likely. It didn’t matter from where, he could very well be bleeding out at that moment. Millicent’s eyes glimmered. She flicked her wand hand, biting her lip and looking again like the child he had first seen eight years ago in Hogwarts’ Great Hall. “Go.”
Blaise allowed himself a last, pain-dulled look, and then turned, drawing on every reserve he had. Just drop the ward, and then Apparition was not out of the question… if he could only think…
The remains of the door blasted apart in a rain of wood and iron. Millicent spun around. Already her face was masking itself, fingers tightening around her wand. But her fear was apparent. A dark figure shoved through the splintered doorway into the room. Blaise had an impression of glittering eyes fixating on him before Millicent stepped forward.
“You,” rasped an icy voice from the depths of the hood over the newcomer’s face. Millicent’s shoulders stiffened.
“I should have known, you stupid girl,” the voice hissed. “Get out of the way.”
“No, wait.” Millicent stepped between them. “We can use him, we don’t have to kill him! Just—”
There was a flash of green light and Blaise watched dully as Millicent toppled over backward. Her head hit the floor with a sharp crack. Blaise’s brain tried to shut down on him, but the recognition of the new Death Eater standing before him jolted him into action that his body couldn’t handle. Bellatrix Lestrange’s face was pale as a banshee’s, her lips nearly black in the light as they formed the words to a spell. Blaise dove and rolled, nearly blacking out at the horrendous slash that carved his innards. He couldn’t tell if her spell had been successful or if the pain was from a previous injury. Her second spell connected, however, hitting him full in the chest and sending searing heat through his lungs. An instant later it didn’t matter: what could only be Cruciatus turned his mind to jelly. Only the sinister blending of the spell’s magic kept him from passing out. He jerked, screaming inside, outside, everywhere, oh gods, he hadn’t thought it possible to feel this much pain, scorching ripping tearing Seamus Seamus SeamusSEAMUS!!!
He barely knew it had stopped until he saw Lestrange’s face looming out of the gloom. She spat on him.
“Blood traitor.”
Blaise stared up at her, unable to breathe, unable to think. Going to kill him she was going to kill him she was going to—
“S…”
The woman’s stringy black hair drifted around her face as she leaned in. “What was that?” she said in the same soft voice. It was almost motherly, and it was grotesque.
“Snake.”
Her face clouded in confusion. Then her eyes widened and she looked up, focusing behind him. Her mouth dropped open. “Nagini?” she whispered.
How Blaise did it, he would never know. He wrapped a hand around her ankle and yanked as hard as he could. She toppled over with a shout of surprise. Blaise pushed himself to his feet and promptly fell down again. Something in his stomach was all wrong, he could feel it. He could hear Bellatrix scrabbling behind him, screeching. Blaise spun on his knees and used his wand.
“Vastare!” he rasped.
Bellatrix’s screaming reached a new pitch as the spell hit her, but the last ward he had erected had fallen at last, he could feel the emptiness, and he could only think about the ticking seconds.
Get out. They’re coming.
Cracks sounded around him, and shouts. Blaise concentrated with all his might on one thought, one coherent image. A tree.
There was a vicious hiss as a spell hummed past him.
Waving grass.
Lestrange was shrieking.
Broken oak door.
Something hot and sizzling slammed into his side.
Cathedral.
Blaise Apparated.
...
Chapter 18
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Date: 2007-06-29 01:26 am (UTC)From:Also, I noted in your profile that you're a LotF freak like me. OTP? I'm partial to Jack/Ralph and Ralph/Simon myself. xD I even wrote a Jack/Ralph fic called "Healing." I'm a huge dork. <3
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Date: 2007-06-29 01:50 am (UTC)From:My goodness, you have no idea how cosmic your timing is concerning Lord of the Flies! Hahaha, I was JUST thinking about that book (a personal favorite), and the 1990 movie, which was one of my favorites when I was younger. I never wrote or read fic on the subject (I still think the boys might be a touch too young for me to be comfortable with slashing them together), but I was also just pondering the fandom of that book as well! So this is really timely. I should totally check out the fic, though. When my RL calms down a bit this weekend, I'll run over to your lj and take a look.
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Date: 2007-06-29 02:01 am (UTC)From:no subject
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Date: 2007-06-29 01:26 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 05:37 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-06-29 04:53 pm (UTC)From:It was intense and suspenseful without dragging. Goyle! Oh god, I love how Blaise doesn't know how to gauge him. The fear and the fight with Nagini was spot on, just...well done. I was on the edge of my seat. (I can't seem to speak without it sounding like movie promos. "Gripping!" LOL).
And Millicent, that was just heartwrenchingly beautiful, god, I was in tears. I love how Blaise just barely made it out, but we don't know if he'll live...all that poison.
An amazing chapter. :D
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Date: 2007-07-06 05:38 pm (UTC)From:Wahahaha, gripping! *cracks up* Thank you!
Thanks so much for this lovely comment, darlin'. I love your comments.
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Date: 2007-06-30 03:00 am (UTC)From:Anyway... Gotta love Blaise. Poor thing dealing with that beast all alone. I absolutely adore when he thinks of Seamus - and the other way around.
Well, can't imagine what you'll give us next chapter. It's always a surprise. A very good one.
See ya!
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Date: 2007-07-06 05:39 pm (UTC)From:Thank you so much for reading, and for this lovely review. ♥
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Date: 2007-06-30 04:46 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 05:40 pm (UTC)From:Thank you for reading!
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Date: 2007-06-30 10:38 am (UTC)From:Love it as always!
I felt as if I was down there and waiting for the snake! Loved Millicent.
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Date: 2007-07-06 05:40 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-06-30 10:52 am (UTC)From:this was a lovely action-filled chapter. i was bitting my nails throughout with anxiety, afraid that blaise might actually die. that bit mith millicent was heart-breaking.
hmmm... you are trying to remind us that the purpose of bonds is that they make it harder for the participants to die right? so blaise will live. and possibly wherever he ends up seamus will be able to find him.
can't wait for the next chapter. have to be certain that blaise survives.
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Date: 2007-07-06 05:42 pm (UTC)From:And I'm afraid the next chapter won't have answers on that front. *HIDES* SORRY!!! O.o *avoids thrown objects*
^___^
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Date: 2007-07-01 01:35 am (UTC)From:I hope that Blaise will survive.
Great chapter!
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Date: 2007-07-06 05:42 pm (UTC)From:Thank you so much for reading!
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Date: 2007-07-02 04:39 pm (UTC)From:I was a little I admit disappointed in not seeing any D/H but I can understand I think.
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Date: 2007-07-06 05:46 pm (UTC)From:Don't worry: next chapter has H/D. ^_~
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Date: 2007-07-04 10:48 pm (UTC)From:no subject
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Date: 2007-07-09 07:56 am (UTC)From:And thank you for the birthday wishes! ♥
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Date: 2007-07-09 06:08 pm (UTC)From:I'm leaving you a comment to express my abundant gratitude for first keeping me awake until 2 AM last night, and then glueing me to my laptop from the minute I woke up again. I discovered The Road yesterday, and although my slightly overstressed eyes beg to differ, it's been worth my while. :)
I have to say I have very little sympathy for Ginny in this story, but my heart bleeds for Draco! Poor baby. How could Harry think he's a replacement for Theodore, when it was the other way around all along? I think you've really excelled in the way you've described the nature of love and the different characters' take on it. Ginny more or less seems to think love is first and foremost something that has to be deserved; Draco knows he doesn't deserve it, but can't help but love; and Harry, of course, has trouble understanding the difference between love and responsibility. I'm guessing and hoping that when Harry and Draco finally bond, all of the silliness will cease... In your face, Ginny. ;)
I've hunted down the songs you've referred to and I agree; they are perfect for this story. I've had the Loreena McKinnett ones on loop for most of the time, and I really like her. I'd like to recommend a song called Faraway to you, if you haven't heard it yet. You are clearly a fan of strong melodies, and there's something in The Road that reminded me of this song. Here's a link (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2uNHV7EFTI) to the original version on YouTube (never mind the photo show). There is a Vol. 2 (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Y7nys00dk) with lyrics, and even though opinion is divided on whether the lyrics ruin the whole thing or not, I think they apply remarkably well to Harry and Draco in this story. Especially the chorus. :>
Anyway, thanks for the red eyes, and of course the wonderful reading experience! ;) Do keep it going, we're desperate here.
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Date: 2007-07-21 08:20 pm (UTC)From:Second, WOW! Hahaha, I love this review. Thank you so much for staying up latelatelate to read my fic! *laughs* I love to do that when I read fics.
I have to say I have very little sympathy for Ginny in this story
I've been getting a wide array of responses to Ginny, Draco, and their interaction in this fic. I personally feel that Ginny and Draco exhibit a lot of the same characteristics in canon, and I wanted to play around with that a little bit here. And Harry, of course, is the perfect goal to place in between them because they are both alike in their obsesssion for him as well. *sigh* How I wish canon expand upon that... (I haven't read DH yet; just picked up my copy today and I am eyeing it with nefarious intent. ^_~)
Ginny more or less seems to think love is first and foremost something that has to be deserved; Draco knows he doesn't deserve it, but can't help but love; and Harry, of course, has trouble understanding the difference between love and responsibility.
I think that may be the best summation yet for the three of them and their little triangle. I also adore this comment because all three takes on "love" have merit. I agree with Ginny's thoughts that love has to be earned, because I definitely think it does. I agree with Draco because you just can't HELP your feelings sometimes, and there's no rhyme or reason to any of it often enough. And I agree with Harry because sometimes sacrifice is necessary, though I think the boy is being too hard on himself and not letting himself live. The three of them need to realize that their interpretations do not stand alone: they blend, the mix, and all together, they make up love. And that's why I love using these characters as foils for each other. They work exceptionally well.
Thank you so much for listening to the music! I'm so relieved you like it. Loreena McKennitt is one of my favorite artists. Her voice is so full and rich and stunning... *swoons* She's definitely my Luna-voice. Thank you also for the links to the song Faraway. I'm afraid I am on a computer that is very slow to download, so I will have to wait until I can get back to my compy at home. But I look forward to listening to it! What I got to hear in the beginning sounds lovely.
Thank you so much for this review. It made my week. ^__^
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Date: 2007-07-09 07:19 pm (UTC)From:But poor Blaise, what happens after he apparates? He's nearly dead as it is.
Great job!
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Date: 2007-07-09 07:23 pm (UTC)From:(no subject)
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Date: 2007-07-12 08:30 pm (UTC)From:This chapter was intense, there is no other word for it. The interaction between Blaise and Goyle was telling. Goyle with a brain is a scary thing.
Killing with your bare hands... it shows the lengths that everyone is taking to survive. If anyone is left when the war is over, I doubt they'll be able to sleep soundly for a long time, perhaps ever.
I was scared that Blaise wouldn't make it out, or that fear would take hold of him and he'd give up... But no, he made it out, and he might be ok. Athur survived Nagini, right? The only problem I can see with this is that Athur had St. Mungos taking care of him, and that's obviously out of the question here. Worse, medical supplies are scarce, death eaters can detect magic...
GAH! See! I'm really worried about Blaise! I don't want him to die, but if he does, he better see Seamus beforehand!
Snakes scare me, by the way. I don't think I'm quite at Indiana Jones-like levels of terror over them, but they definitely squick me out on some level. So this chapter played with this little fear quite spectacularly!
In other words, I loved it, haha.
Abi
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Date: 2007-07-21 08:18 pm (UTC)From:And I appreciate what you've said about being able to sleep at night after the war. I agree with you: I don't think any of them will be able to rest easily for a long, long time.
I can't give much away about Blaise. But I will say that Seamus is headed out after him, and he will be able to follow the bond to where he is. I hope that helps a little.
Thank you so, so, so much for another wonderful review! *glomps*
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!
Date: 2008-01-12 09:08 am (UTC)From:(Is dying of suspence...)
Dear god you are AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Re: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!
Date: 2008-04-01 05:24 am (UTC)From:Second, thank you so so so much! Aw, you are way too nice.
Re: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!
From: