A crime to outlive him

A crime to outlive him, part 7
By F.P.Barbieri

Part 7 - The great oak

The hills that carve ancient Brittany are not high, but wild and lonely, joined together in dramatic ridges covered by a dense forest, and split by ravines and treacherous sands. Communities only a few dozen miles from each other have been cut off by them since time out of mind, so that Breton can be as alien to Breton as Frenchman to Dutchman or German to Italian. Of old, people did not cross these hills, nor even enter the forest, save for the odd adventurous hunter or charcoal-maker, or for hermits in search of solitude. And those who went did not always emerge unchanged. For the woods have many names, and one of them was Broceliande of dreadful enchantments, famous in song and story.

Indeed, there are even now some deep dingles and cracks where no man has set foot in centuries: too steep and ruinous for the hiker, and hidden from sight by dense greenery. One might not even see them, unless one's foot gave way on some treacherous path and what looked like a solid wall of branches crashed under the weight of a human body. And then you would fall helplessly, borne down by your own weight, bones breaking as they crashed against stones and branches, till you came to your final rest twenty metres below. Even if you had companions on your journey, your lot would be dire then; should you have happened to be alone, there would be no hope for you.

Rabastan Lestrange kicked the white, bleached skull with cheerful contempt. "Another Muggle who tried," he said to his brother, grinning.

"Well, not everyone can Apparate where they wish," answered Rodolphus equitably. "And I don't suppose he actually wanted to be here, little brother."

"Whereas we do. But this man is important, Rudi. He and a few others like him are the reason why I took us here."

"Yes, and do tell us about that reason some time, Rabastan," growled the grizzled, vicious-looking Antonin Dolohov, crashing through the undergrowth to reach the brothers. "So far, this place looks neither very friendly nor rich in resources to me. Where is that oak of yours?"

"Less than a mile in that direction, Tony," answered Rabastan in an unconcerned tone. "However, I think we will make better time if we get on our brooms. No danger of any Muggle seeing us here."

"As you say. And shoot a few Summoners, otherwise the others might miss us."

Rabastan Lestrange jumped cheerfully on his broom and rose in flight. As he did so, he raised his wand and fired off some sparks. Immediately, various sides of the dell seemed to boil and break as, one by one, the wizards and witches who had followed Rabastan's indications and materialized in the dell broke through the dense boughs that hid them and rose in flight.

First came Allecto and Amycus Carrows, brother and sister, flying like maniacs and throwing themselves at each other acrobatically. Rabastan winced inwardly. He had never been comfortable with their flaunted relationship, and it did not improve matters that Adrian Avery so complacently lent himself to being a third in their bed. There were times when Rabastan even suspected that Adrian's father Artorius, Voldemort's oldest follower, had a part in their crazed household, for all his silver hair and aristocratic looks. If I do not suppress my instinctive distaste for incest, Rabastan thought, living in close proximity is going to become difficult.

Whether or not Artorius Avery took any part in the perverted shenanigans of the Carrows, it was certain that he still liked sex. He flaunted it: in the past he had kept something very like a harem - of young boys as well as girls - and even now, in flight and in hiding, he managed to keep the company of the two tartiest female members of Voldemort's former court, Kestreline Yaxley-Black and the American Blaze Silverton. They flew ostentatiously close, the two young women keeping pace with the grandfatherly figure between them.

From another direction, without bravado displays, came Algernon Augustus Rookwood and Theobald Nott, older men and less disposed to put themselves out; Nott's thin and weedy son Theodore flying respectfully a couple of yards behind his father. Few of those present were deceived by this modest demeanour; Theodore, who, unlike Draco Malfoy, had declined the opportunity to sit for his NEWTs, was widely regarded as the most dangerous Slytherin in his year, and a likely prospect for a future leader. Neither Theobald nor Theodore had forgotten that the wife of one and mother of the other had been killed in combat by Aurors. The father had never remarried, and the son repelled any attempts at intimacy. There were whispers that, even while at Hogwarts, he had set up a death-trap for one of his mother's killers. Last came Walden Macnair, swaggering and arrogant, and mousy Torvald Yaxley, a serial killer with the face of a kindly accountant.

Rodolphus was looking around.

"Where are Crabbe and Goyle?"

"They are not coming," said Allecto Carrow. "Their sons want to be with Draco Malfoy at Hogwarts, and they have made up their mind to stay in the open, so they can help their sons."

"Christ, they are stupid," spat out Dolohov, using a name he disbelieved and despised to strengthen the sound of his contempt. "What do they think they can do in the open, in the sight of the Ministry, now? The only reason why they aren't in Azkaban right now is that they are too unimportant for the Ministry to bother."

"Whatever. The thing is, the Crabbes and Goyles will do what the Malfoys do. So the issue becomes, what do we do with the Malfoys?"

"For the time being," said young Theodore Nott, speaking for the first time, "they are no danger. They are both in Azkaban, for one thing. But they may want to start taking an independent line, strike out for a little kingdom of their own, and we can't have that."

"No, indeed," answered Dolohov, pleased by the clarity of young Nott's mind. "So, for the time present... we do nothing, just watch and wait."

"Yes. But if they won't join after Narcissa and Lucius have been released, and, above all, if they try to take back the Malfoy fortune - then we kill them all: Malfoys, Crabbes, Goyles and anyone else who looks like they might be a supporter. We cannot afford any rivals at this stage." This was Artorius Avery. He had held both Lucius and Draco on his knees as children, but he was not joking when he dispassionately discussed their murder. To him, it was the merest matter of business; and he had killed people even closer to him before.

"I think we are all agreed," said Rabastan. "Now come along, I want to show you the oak."

Ever since Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange had successfully carried out their dangerous journey through Britain in search of treasure, and their deception of the Goblins, they had been in a strange mood; a mood which had been growing stronger as they had reached this remote, unknown ravine, so far from the path of men; a mood which, bit by bit, had caught the others. It could be felt in the mad flying games of the Carrows, in the increasingly outrageous compliments thrown by Artorius to his companions, in the careless and slightly aimless flying of Dolohov. It might be called an out-of-school mood. Voldemort was dead; Rodolphus' wife Bellatrix, his strongest bond with the former Dark Lord, had committed suicide; her bossy sister Narcissa and Narcissa's overbearing husband Lucius were in Azkaban. Leadership of their band of outlaws had devolved to the brothers more or less by chance; there was now nobody to tell them what to do or to scare them, they were alive, free, alone, and in possession of powerful magic and immense amounts of treasure. The Lestrange brothers felt they could do and say anything without anyone being able to respond.

"Well," said Rabastan happily, "there is the oak... right in front of you."

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It was at the same time that Harry Potter woke from a long night of dreamless sleep. For a second, before his consciousness gathered itself, he felt worried and unhappy, as though a dire threat hung over him. But as his eyes opened to take in the grey of the early morning, he remembered: Voldemort was dead. There was nothing more to fear from him. He had felt his own power going out of himself in the great and dreadful curse, and his enemy's corpse fall clattering over Albus Dumbledore's usurped instruments. They were free now. Everyone was free. Harry rose from his bed and started to wash and dress for the new day.

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The former Death Eaters could not believe their eyes. They few close to the tree, to satisfy themselves that it was really what it seemed; then zipped away again, to be able to take in the whole stupendous spectacle.

To begin with, it was enormous. From a distance, it looked like a hill. Many of its long branches, each thick enough to support ten standing men, reached to the ground, increasing the illusion. Coming closer, one realized that it was something like a circle of thick boles around a hollow centre. Centuries - millennia? - ago - how long does something so monstrous take to reach its size? - centuries or millennia ago, the centre of the tree had died. It had become hollow, but the outer walls had gone on growing and thickening on their, drawing on an enormous common knot of roots that drank nutrients from miles around. The whole complex was thicker than a redwood; the gnarl of roots alone rose almost three metres from the ground, a shape like something out of a nightmare, built of solid wood, black, twisted, pitted. Near the oak, the ground was barren; nothing else could compete with the giant tree for water and food. The tree was a wonder, but it was not... could not be... natural.

"Ladies and gentlemen," rang out the voice of Rudolphus Lestrange, slightly magnified, "may I introduce you to Alain Judicael Iscoaddou de Trézaun."

A man stepped out from the shadow of the Oak, a man so bent and twisted and bony that all his joints could be fancied to creak. His skin was white, with a slightly bluish

tinge and visible blue veins. His mouth was drawn back in an expression of permanent glee, and his eyes, buried under a bony, crushing brow, sparkled. "Alain, my boy," he said to Rudolphus, "Just call me Alain."

"Whatever. Well, lads and lasses, Alain here is a cousin of the House of Lestrange, and the hereditary Keeper of the Oak. And when I say hereditary, I mean that it goes well back. Well back. Doesn't it, Alain?"

The skinny creature cackled. "Heh.. heh... there is no magic like that in the world, kids, not in all the world. It grows strong on one thing... can you guess what it is?"

"The food of the gods," said Theodore Nott as if he were quoting.

"Heh... heh... so right, my boy, so right. And we have fed and tended its magic since before the sages of the east... those whom you call Druids. And when the kings and the sages came to Broceliande, we spoke with them, and found it easy to convince them. They learned to offer to the gods what pleases the gods most... the body and blood of Man. They learned it from us, my children! Heh... heh... heh..."

"Then a while later... you might say a long time after... there came men from the south. Short men, with brown eyes and black hair, dressed in iron, moving in step like a great iron-clad lizard. And while they did not scruple to shed blood, they made laws that forbade everyone else to. Now I ask you, children, was that right? Heh... heh... heh...

"Was that right, I say? The stunted men of Rome claimed the body and blood of men! From the gods! They claimed it for themselves; as though they and they alone had the mastery of men. But the mastery of men belongs to the gods! They were impious, children, impious. They acted as though the gods were at their service. They forbade the sacrifices."

"All the sacrifices?"

"Come, cousin, come. As if the gods could be placated with a goat or a pig! As if a bull or a horse were like them! No, the gods love what is most like them; and that is man, and man must be given to them. Was that right, I say? The gods are thirsty, they have been thirst for centuries, because of the sin of the Romans.

"The sacrifices were hidden, and still they hunted us down like wolves. We, the true druids, the druids before the druids - and the druids who had learned from us accepted the law of the Romans, in order to keep their temples and priesthoods. Pigs! Goats! They carved the heads of men on the face of their temples, but did not dare kill one baby, for fear of the Romans. And they became Romans...

"They hunted us down like wolves. Was that right, I say? The sacred forest downhill from the oak was burned; and they would have done the same to the Oak, but no fire could bite on it. The Oak swallowed fire as a lake swallows water.

"One man hid in the branches of the Oak, and so the line of the Guardians was continued. And we tried to continue the sacrifices; but as time went on, even the peasants and the bandits started to shun us, or to forget us as anything but a ghastly legend. And now the Oak would have died. But you don't kill a god that fast. Heh... heh... heh...

"Can you guess what it is that has kept the Oak alive? Do you think we went and hunted men down, just to feed our god? No.. no... we did not have to. The place, the lay of the land, did it for us.

"This is a place where Muggles die, children. Every now and then, a year, a decade, a century... some mad Muggle sets out on the hidden paths, and crashes down from the footpath. And his blood is shed on the stones, and filters down to the great roots; and the power of the Oak is renewed."

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The morning was foggy and cold, but Harry felt an urgent need to go out. He put on a heavy cloak and a pair of stout walking boots. He walked out of Hogwarts castle by one of the side terraces, and almost immediately felt sun on his face. A minute or two later, it had faded. The fog came in blobs, like little clouds drifting at ground level, and you could never tell when you would be feeling too warm for your cloak, or suddenly chilly and damp.

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The body of Alain de Trezaun seemed to suddenly tear itself apart along several lines at once, releasing waves of blood barely credible in such a meagre figure. The Death Eaters, who had been quietly moving away from him, narrowly missed being drenched; but almost all the red fluid fell to the ground, to feed the Oak's colossal black roots.

"Yukk!" said Blaze Silverton expressively. "Did you have to do that?"

"Yes," answered Antonin Dolohov thoughtfully, "yes, I'm pretty sure I did. Rabastan?"

"Oh, yes, he would have tried to sacrifice us. He was already working out plans. He was so clear, one hardly needed Legilimency."

"My judgment," said old Theobald Nott in his formal style, "is that he was mad beyond healing. What I read in his mind was nothing but brokenness and obsession. I do not think that there would have been any way to reach and heal his mind. He was probably insane from a child."

Blaze and Kestreline looked at the older men dubiously, then shook their heads and walked on. Only Walden Macnair and Torvald Yaxley hung back a while, looking at the body.

"I wonder," asked Yaxley in his dull manner "how old Snape's Sectumsempra managed not to get on the list of Unforgivables?"

"Bureaucracy, mostly," answered Macnair indifferently. "It takes an enormous amount of effort to get all the Ministries to agree on an international treaty, even if they agree on the basics. And Sectumsempra is only known to a few people still. Practically everyone has heard of Imperio and the AK, but there are still many wizards outside Britain who never heard of Sectumsempra."

"That might turn out to be useful," said Yaxley, half to himself.

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What worried some of the sorcerers present, was that the Ministries might take their mailshot seriously. Most of the band, however, agreed with Rudolphus and Rabastan that it would pass for nothing more than a piece of defiance, a sort of Dark Wizard version of a schoolboy prank. They had no real reason to believe this, but they had all begun to be infected by the Lestrange brothers' reckless mood; and many of them were laughing as they pictured the purple faces and offended tones of various employees in the Ministry and of their least liked Hogwarts teachers, as they received the letters. "The dubious state of the current educational provision," indeed! Amycus Carrow felt that Minerva McGonagall just might keel over with a heart attack when she saw that; and he found the thought hilarious.

The letters were only a disguise. The enormous expenditure of magic that would produce them served to cover up for a number of other powerful spells, drawing on the immense heaped power of the Oak - if not a god, as the insane Alain had thought, then at least a mute and mindless storehouse of magic from times beyond any magical memory.

After working out their spells together for much of the morning, the wizards and witches rose and started working in concert. As some chanted and others performed defensive and concealing spells, the more powerful - Dolohov, the Lestranges, the Notts, and the Averys - busied themselves with a sequence of transfigurations and permanent spells and enchantment. It was hard and frightening work; but as the afternoon progressed, they knew in their bones, by the feeling in their wands, that their ultimate goals would be achieved. The Lestrange brothers, in particular, had to perform Calming Charms on each other several times: their excitement at the approach of what they had only dared dream of, placed them in serious danger of losing their concentration.

All the while, streams of leaves flew off the various branches of the Oak, transfiguring themselves into letters as they went - targeting one part of Europe, then another, then another. This generated a tremendous amount of magical "static"; the spells that produced the transfiguration and flew the letters to their targets, were individually tiny, but collectively of earthquake magnitude. Merlin himself could not have seen through the fog of tiny charms that spread over Europe for hours, to perceive what else was being done, and where.

Finally, it was done. It happened in stages. First, the power of the Oak itself received a fundamental transformation, to make it flexible and obedient to the will of men. This was by far the most dangerous part: the magic, wild of itself and piled up over centuries to interact with itself in the most random ways, was full of danger and destruction, and more than once the sorcerers found themselves staring death in the face. But those very moments of terror also proved to them that there were powers there more than worth having - powers which, once properly harnessed and directed, could lay the world at their feet.

Then they began to direct the power to form a protective shield around the Oak. For miles around, spells upon spells, mutually supporting and mutually concealing, subtly affected the mind and eyes of wizards to see and feel nothing unusual; and withdrew the presence of magic so that, even if they had flown through the very branches of the Oak, they would have noticed nothing unusual.

Night had fallen before the assembled sorcerers were ready to direct the magic on themselves - as individuals and as a group. Under the shining crescent moon that was from then on to be the symbol of their band, they took an oath that bound them to each other, that any new member of their band was from then on to take; an oath that guaranteed the power of the Oak to them as long as they kept it and stayed with their fellow members. Each of them poured some of his or her own blood on the roots of the Oak to make the Oath alive and binding; and then they were ready.

As night slowly died away and dawn grew, the power was slowly directed in their bodies; to affect and govern them in ways that no sorcerer in centuries had known how to do, and that was now part of legend rather than recorded history. And as the sun rose, suddenly the relationship of their bodies with reality had changed - and they could see it.

They had grown so tiny that, until streams of Summoner lights started rising from various parts of the Oak's roots, none could see where the others were.

Retaining all their powers and strength, they had shrunk to little more than the size of wasps; and the tree, already enormous to the sight of humans, now stretched before them like the landscape of a continent, open to building hidden palaces, establishing lordships, seeking adventure and mysteries.

They knew that this was the final end of all their spells, of the nearly continuous twenty-four hours' work they had put in, risking death so often; they knew it - but to know it was one thing, to experience it, quite another. None of them had had the slightest idea of what it would have been like. The roots rose like black hills; the boles of the Oak stretched almost beyond sight, for what seemed like miles in the distance. One by one, they rose on their broomsticks in the cool morning air; and astonishment slowly turned to fizzing, champagne-like delight as they realized that everything except their size was intact. There was nothing to fear, and everything to experience; the world was made new. Whizzing about it on their broomsticks, even the elders, veterans of many crimes and evil spells, could not but feel the childlike delight of explorers.

That was not the only advantage they had made for themselves. The power of the Oak, properly directed, could reach anywhere in the world. They could preserve their tiny forms whenever and as long as they wanted, so long as the Oak existed; or grow suddenly to their native size, or lose it again, purely as they willed. No Auror, no Hit Wizard, no Dark Wizard Catcher of any kind, could lay a hand on any of them who enjoyed the blessings of the Oak. And the Oak itself made them invisible, as it was invisible itself, to scrying eyes and questing hands. The outlaw band had built its own kingdom; safe from all attack, they thought, unless one of them betrayed the others.

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It was not until two days later, when owls started crowding the Oak, anxious to deliver messages yet unable to find their addressees, that the outlaws realized that their bit of fun at the expense of magical Europe had gone awry. Not only did the Ministries seem to have taken the idea of a new Wizarding School very seriously indeed; so did all the hundreds, even thousands of wizarding families who had sympathized with the dead Voldemort and found not only Hogwarts and Beauxbatons, but even Durmstrang much too Muggle-loving for their tastes. Whether they wanted or not, the outlaws would have to set up their Voldemort Academy; three or four thousand wizarding parents were not likely to enjoy being told that it had all been a joke.

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And as the Dark Wizards awoke to their unexpected responsibility, and began to worry and then to discuss possible plans - it was just then that Harry Potter saw his mother through one of the patches of fog, wrapped like himself in a black cloak against the cold, her red hair vivid and unmistakeable even against the grey. He felt cold and scared, and forced himself to walk up to her. At some point, he knew - it was true what Ginny said - he would have to talk with her.