The Darkness of the Soul

CHAPTER EIGHT - Action and Reaction

Girard seemed livid that Harry had left the Death Eaters on the field, even to save his friend. The fact that he'd taken their wands only mollified him a little.

"I told you to take all measures to stop their attacks, and you left them there on a field! What if they had allies, what would have happened? They could have escaped and tried this again."

Harry weathered his verbal assault without blinking or arguing, and his patience seemed to anger Girard even more. The criminals hadn't escaped, and had been picked up by the local equivalent of Aurors while Harry was gone. Which made Harry wonder enough to ask Girard, finally interrupting his tirade, which was currently on the stupidity of a Jelly-Legs curse against a full grown Death Eater.

"So, Headmaster, where are they? The Death Eaters, I mean."

Girard stopped, and looked at him intently. "Why do you want to know?"

Harry didn't think the truth would work here, given the Headmaster's mood, so he tried something else. "I want to make sure they get what they deserve, of course."

"Ahh, good. So you do have some spirit in you. I was starting to wonder. Do not worry, we are not like the English - we will not just lock them away in a prison guarded by their friends, and wait for them to start raving and calling for their parents. Durmstrang has something much better." Girard was almost drooling as he said this last word, and Harry felt any impression he'd had that Girard was similar to Albus snap. For all Albus' faults, he would never sound so anxious for someone to be punished - in fact, he would be far more likely to lament that it had come to pass.

Girard seemed to have lost track of his tirade, and finally let Harry go, with a final admonition that he not take such chances again. Harry was exhausted, and wasted no time in collapsing on his bed, not even worrying about the dinner that he'd missed. Tomorrow was Halloween, but Harry didn't feel much like celebrating.

Harry had strange dreams that night, which left him tossing and turning. Late in the night he was woken by a sound. The brown owl was next to him in bed, staring at his eyes earnestly.

Harry felt a little ridiculous in his current position. The owl seemed to be trying to tell him something with its eyes. "I don't suppose you ever watch the telly, do you? I remember something about a show named Lassie." The owl bit his arm, not quite drawing blood. Then it cocked its head melodramatically.

Harry listened, really listened, and he heard the shuffling of boots on the floor. He leapt out of bed, looking disheveled, but at least not needing to take the time to dress. There was a glass of pumpkin juice sitting on his table and a ham sandwich, which Harry wolfed down as he got his wand. He filed them away as part of the general mystery of the comings and goings of his room, but didn't spare much thought now.

Opening his door cautiously, he didn't see any movement. Harry walked carefully down the stairs, his footsteps light, trying to find a sign of whoever was walking the halls at night.

Listening for the boot steps, Harry tracked them down towards the Great Hall before they suddenly stopped. He pushed forward, but a terrible scene awaited him. Under the large Dark Mark hanging in the ceiling were perhaps a dozen Death Eaters and half again as many students. The whole of the Great Hall was under a Silence Charm, apparent by the silent screams of students being Cruciated inside. He walked into the area of the Charm, and the sudden sound of screaming almost deafened him.

The Death Eaters hadn't noticed him yet, but one of the students had. There was a pleading in the eyes of Sarcos Nagarian, who was kneeling at the feet of a masked Dark Wizard, obviously wracked with pain.

Harry felt a rage growing inside him, more potent and awful than he had before. These were his students, and they depended on him to save them. He could see an unconscious first year that he recognized as one of those that had doubted his abilities, and something snapped.

"Cruciatus!" He shouted, pointing at the Death Eater who towered over Nagarian, and his anger became real. He could feel it as something real, something almost physical, as it streamed from his wand towards the waiting Death Eater.

The masked wizard screamed, and fell to his knees, and Sarcos managed to stand. Now all the wizards were moving, and Harry saw eleven wands pointing in his direction.

Harry started running, becoming a moving target. He had to drop the Cruciatus to do it, but the wizard he'd pointed at had already fallen unconscious. Either he had doled out far more pain than the Death Eater was capable of, or his victim had a lower pain threshold than an eleven year-old Durmstrang student. Harry wasn't sure which was more disquieting.

Time seemed to slow, as curses flew through the air. Harry pointed his wand almost casually at one of the Death Eaters. "Expelliarmus!" Again, he felt the anger leap through him, and he saw the Death Eater fly backwards into the huge pipe organ with a crash, his wand falling to the ground. It looked like the Death Eater was tangled in a set of woodwinds, but Harry didn't stop to watch his handiwork. He was too busy trying to block more curses.

Harry was athletic, but not a gymnast, and as tempted as he was to act like someone in a Muggle movie, flipping and tumbling behind an obstacle, he settled with just running as fast as he could towards the head table. He didn't quite duck every curse aimed at him, but none of them were fatal, and he managed to deal with their effects before they became an issue.

From behind the head table, Harry saw that the Death Eaters were now heading for him. He concentrated on the Silence Charm that pervaded the room. "Finate Incantatum!" The silence was broken, and he hoped that reinforcements would soon arrive.

The Death Eaters didn't seem to be interested in stopping, though. Two of them started to levitate the table out of the way, while another three sprayed flames at him. He couldn't just sit here and wait for the cavalry, especially as they might not be lucky enough to have an owl alert them to the noise.

The Wizards who were attacking Harry were no longer Cruciating the students, and some of the students had started to recover. One of the witches from Martello rolled out of the circle, escaping the notice of the wizards. She rushed to the pipe organ, where one of the Death Eaters still struggled for safety, and she played a few notes, which Harry recognized as part of the call to assembly.

Her actions might have called for reinforcements, but they also brought her to the notice of the Death Eaters. Shouted words and a flash of green, and the young witch tumbled to the ground.

Time started to slow again. Harry had just lost a student, and if it weren't him behind the wand that had done it, that didn't matter. He roared, and jumped under the table, which was still rising, dodging the flames from the wizards that were trying to broil him.

He was in constant motion now, speaking out charms and curses in a steady stream. His wand swished and flicked, and one of the wizards was off the ground, ten feet up in the air, and then crashing down on a pair of his fellows before they could react.

Sarcos had his wand out as well, and he was following Harry's lead. He was lurching, more than running, but still moving, trying not to present too much of a target. He tried levitating one of the Death Eaters, but couldn't quite get him off the ground. It was enough to change the direction of the stream of fire though, which touched the robes of one of the other attackers, setting him on fire.

The strain of casting the spell almost exhausted the young boy, who was already worn from his torture and the unaccustomed hour, but he kept trying to move, firing nuisance spells towards the Death Eaters at every opportunity.

Shortly, he wasn't alone. A few other students had managed to stand, or at least sit up, and had their wands pointed at the Death Eaters. They couldn't stop them, but the distraction that they caused proved deadly.

Harry was grateful for the actions of the youths, but determined to draw the fire of the Death Eaters. He'd been marked for death since before his birth, and could think of no better way to meet his end than protecting his students.

His wand spat fire and light, and wizards tumbled into each other. Some crumpled to the ground in pain as he Cruciated them, but he rarely took the time for the powerful spell, instead using the enemy as Bludgers and knocking them into each other. They seemed to have trouble reacting, as their cowls and masks cut down their vision to the point where anything attacking from the side was unseen.

By the time Haakon came roaring into the room with a group of seventh years, a huge axe wielded in one hand and wand in the other, the remaining Death Eaters were huddled behind tables, fighting purely defensively. Haakon cleaved straight through one of the tables and into the man behind it, who screamed and held his arm. The others dropped their wands, the brutality of pure melee combat more horrific than the relatively clean magical fighting that they'd been participating in so far. Harry felt it hard to stop fighting, difficult to resist just slaying the men as they stood out from behind their cover, but the cries of hurt students brought his senses back to something more important than causing pain.

Harry asked Haakon to take care of the Death Eaters - he wasn't sure what Girard would do with them, and although he was curious, he suspected he didn't really want to know. He grabbed a number of the seventh years, and had them help him charm the students that couldn't walk and float them up to the Hospital Ward.

He grasped the hand of Sarcos, then turned to the room, and identified each of the students that had managed to fight by name, including the one that lay dead by the organ. "Three points for each of you, for your courage and creative use of Magic." Then he helped those who could walk trudge behind the floating members of their class up to the Hospital Ward.

.~.~.

Harry slept in on Halloween morning. He had managed to avoid Girard last night, and wasn't looking forward to seeing him in the Great Hall in the morning. The Headmaster hadn't seemed pleased with Harry's combats during the day, and he didn't think he would be any more pleased with the evening's activities. When he finally did wake up, there was a plate of food waiting for him on the table.

Harry was starting to wonder if Dobby had followed him here. Someone was certainly taking care of him. He supposed it might have been Kirsten, since she'd already shown an aptitude for entering without knocking, but they'd both made it pretty clear that they were only showing each other attention to tweak Viktor.

Sitting down at the table, Harry was surprised to see a Daily Prophet rolled up on the table next to his food. He hadn't read a whole paper in months, and he wondered what was so important that someone would sneak it in.

He found it at the bottom of the first page. They had gone ahead and conducted a farce of a trial for Harry, without him being present, and had convicted him on every count. It looked like a few new counts had been added along the way, and as near as he could tell, half a dozen Dementors would have to kiss him to make his sentence complete.

While not totally unexpected, seeing it in black and white made it all the worse. He felt anger warring with despair, but anger seemed determined to win out. It was helped along by a companion piece, stating that the Ministry had decided to try Ginny. The trial date was still far away -- they wouldn't start until after the new year -- but she'd be held in a Ministry cell until then.

The plate and cup suddenly shattered, pelting the room with ceramics, pumpkin juice, and eggs. Hedwig looked at him fiercely, as if he was a particularly annoying mouse that was living on borrowed time, but the other owl just hid her head.

The task of cleaning up the room managed to absorb his anger, until all that was left was the despair. He repaired the dishes, and put them back on the dumbwaiter to return to the kitchen. It occurred to him that the dumbwaiter was actually fairly large, and he wondered whether or not it was the way that Kirsten had entered his room. He realized, though, that it was far more likely that she had somehow levitated to the window, since he couldn't see her going to the trouble to sneak into the kitchens and squeeze herself into a ball just to sneak up to his room.

Kirsten was back on his mind, and he remembered that he'd agreed to escort her to the ball this afternoon. He checked outside his door, and sure enough, there were a set of fine dress robes there. She'd said that she had family outside the castle that could get him a set; he could scarcely apparate to Madame Malkin's to pick them up himself.

It was still hours until then, though, and they'd agreed to appear on the late side, to make sure that Viktor saw them enter. Harry didn't have much else to do, so he decided to just stay in his room until it was time to pick up Kirsten.

Harry could think of a number of people he'd much rather be going with, and better reasons. Tweaking Viktor was fine, but he would rather have had someone on his arm that cared about him, not just someone who seemed prepared to tolerate him.

He missed Ginny. He wished he'd been more politic with regards to the ball. Even if it was improper, he could have promised to save her at least one dance. She was going to suffer for her friendship and for words unsaid, and might pay a hefty price. He wasn't in love with Ginny, but he liked her, and couldn't help but wish he could see her smiling face again. He knew that the way he hadn't made his feelings clear had hurt her.

He missed Hermione even more. She had been his best friend, and that friendship hadn't gone away. She hadn't been able to write him or talk to him in over a year, but he still felt like she was out there somewhere, and he was sure that she still cared about him, if only as a friend. There might have been something more than friendship though, if he'd only said something sooner. Who had she been able to turn to in the last year? If she'd called out to Viktor, whom could he blame but himself?

Unsaid words. It struck Harry that this was the same painful topic that he'd castigated Dumbledore for. While Harry could argue that his words had been about his feelings, not facts, they'd still led to pain, both his own and others.

Was he any better than Albus? He had chosen to avoid risking his own pain, to keep the uneasy peace of what he knew. It was so difficult to say at the time, but all the pain of the last year came down to his inability to act, to just say what needed to be said and let the chips fall where they may.

He remembered Dumbledore's statement in his first year, or at least the sense of it. The Headmaster had said that truth was a beautiful thing, but something to be treated with caution. Harry thought that Albus had used rather too much caution, and not enough appreciation of the beauty.

Harry pulled out a scroll and a quill, and wrote:

Dear Hermione,

I'm sorry I haven't written before. As I understand it, I won't be able to get Hedwig back after I send this letter, so please take good care of her. There's another owl that's sort of adopted me, so I'm not totally alone.

I wanted to let you know how much the time we spent last summer meant to me. I know why you had to leave, and I wish you'd been able to tell me about it instead of running off. That's not your fault, though, I've been much worse at telling you anything important.

I've realized something pretty profound, and if you were here, you'd probably just smack me upside the head and say it was about time. I blamed Albus for not telling me everything, but he's no worse than me. There were plenty of times I thought I could handle everything on my own, and I blamed him for not telling me enough that I could, while I kept my thoughts to myself.

There's a ball here, and I thought about Hogwarts again. There's so much I wish I could have told you. I hear that you're probably with someone else now, and I hope you're happy. You're a great witch, Hermione, and I wish I'd told you just how much I appreciate you to your face.

Before I get all maudlin, there's something else I wanted to ask. Ginny was a great friend last year, and I think she's going to get in trouble for it. She didn't do anything that they're saying, but I don't think the Ministry would take my word for it. Take care of her for me, if you can? I don't think she'd like me saying it, but she's like a little sister to me.

With Love, Harry

Harry wished he could say more, but he couldn't think of what to say. He wasn't sure enough of his feelings to just say "I Love You," but he'd said almost as much in his letter as it was. He wrapped up the scroll, and tied it to Hedwig. "I don't think you'll be able to get back to me after you deliver this, girl, so don't try. Just take it to Hermione, and stay with her. Take good care of her for me, will you?"

Hedwig nipped his fingers and started to take flight, before returning to her stand.

"C'mon girl, I need you to deliver this for me."

Hedwig just stared at him.

He sighed, and started to reach for her leg. He'd just have to see if Viktor would send it with his next letter, although he would be surprised if Viktor would even speak to him.

She nipped his hand, hard enough to draw blood, and jumped back.

Harry was confused, but decided that he could take a hint. Maybe she just needed some more rest before heading back to England.

He grabbed a towel and held it on his hand. Despite his plans to stay in the room, he decided that perhaps he could take the time to stop by the Hospital Ward and check on the students, and while he was there, he could see if either of the Healers could tend to his owl bite.