Harry Potter and the Crystalline Darkness

Chapter 36

Harry moaned as he swam up towards consciousness. His head ached and he felt stiff and sore and he was fairly sure he was lying on a stone floor from the cold seeping into his bones. He prised his eyes open and winced when he saw nothing but blackness. He started to activate his Oversight when he realized that it was already working. That was when certain realizations hit him through his confusion. Someone else also seemed to have noticed this because he heard a low chuckle from somewhere in front of him.

"Is there a problem, Harry Potter?"

Harry frowned; that voice was...odd. It sounded like Draco Malfoy but the inflections were entirely Voldemort. That was the final piece of the puzzle that even his still-addled brain could put together.

"Voldemort," he breathed.

"Oh, yes," came the amused response. "How do you like my...present? I made it especially for you."

Harry shifted slightly and suddenly realized that his discomfort wasn't just from lying on a hard stone floor. He was also lying on top of his cane and he felt his spirits rise just a fraction. For some reason, Pettigrew, and it could only have been him, had brought his cane along when he'd kidnapped him.

"The present sucks," Harry snapped, shifting back to his original position to keep the cane hidden.

"Such ingratitude," Voldemort/Draco scoffed. "We can't have that. Crucio!"

Harry was expecting the curse; had expected it from the moment the final insulting word left his lips but it still hit him with a stunning force. He clenched his jaw on his screams and tried not to move too much. Despite the excruciating pain, the curse did have one good effect. It seemed to clear the last of the fog from his mind and when Voldemort finally ended it, Harry felt his mind working more or less as normal.

He didn't let this show however, allowing himself to remain limp and passive in the position in which he'd woken up. As he did he thought frantically. One thing he knew for sure was that the others would be trying to find and rescue him so the first thing he needed to do was stay alive. Which was an easy thing to say but unfortunately his survival largely lay in the hands of the man who'd just cursed him and his own sheer, dumb luck.

"Did you enjoy that, Harry?" Voldemort/Draco asked, his voice laced with malicious amusement.

Harry heard the sound of muted laughter in the background and realized then that this was not just something between himself and Voldemort; that the remaining Death Eaters were in the room as well.

"Oh, it was just delightful," he said rather sarcastically, wondering why he seemed to be channeling his inner-Snape right at this rather inappropriate moment.

"Then perhaps you would like some more," Voldemort/Draco snarled. "Crucio!"

Harry gasped as the pain from the spell ripped through him and made a mental vow not to provoke Voldemort anymore. He needed to stay alive after all, not get killed because he kept opening his big mouth. The curse finally ended and Harry lay there, limp and gasping for breath and ignoring the snickers coming from the Death Eaters.

As he tried to recover he made his first move, he carefully tranced down to the point where he could see the energy colours again. Energy bloomed into life and he studied where he was. He seemed to be in a large room and the area around him was pulsing with a blue-white energy that he suspected was the indication of Toventsky's spell. He looked over his shoulder to see a massive pillar of the same blue-white light and that confirmed it in his opinion. He then looked around the room.

Standing just outside the range of the blue-white energy was Voldemort. Or at least he thought it was Voldemort. The energy colours were a little different from the last time he'd seen the other wizard. It took a moment to realize why. Voldemort was inhabiting Draco's body and Draco wasn't dead, merely shunted to some distant part of his own brain. That explained why Voldemort's colours were...different; the Black and Red-Brown were still there but Draco's Burgundy/Yellow/Blood Red-Brown were entwined with them. More importantly, he also remembered Voldemort's journal and the spell that Draco could use to cast out his...guest.

He glanced around the rest of the room and saw that there were about twenty Death Eaters in the room, including the energy colours that he recognized as Pansy Parkinson and Bellatrix Lestrange.

Pain lanced through him again, throwing him out of the trance, and he suspected that Voldemort had been talking to him. He became unaware of a lot of extraneous things when he tranced and obviously his lack of response had angered Voldemort. He was a bit startled though when the curse ended abruptly and he listened intently to find out why.

"Well, Fred, isn't this a sight to behold!"

Harry's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. That was...George! What was he doing here? He heard gasps from the surrounding Death Eaters. Obviously they were as surprised as he was.

"Indeed it is, George, old boy," came Fred's amiable reply. "Old friends, old foes and hey, look! Harry! There you are. We've been looking everywhere for you. So have the others but they're just copycats."

"So are we, Gred. So are we."

Harry frowned at the odd emphasis on that last word of Fred's comments then he had to work hard to swallow his grin.

Copycats.

Copies.

Illusions.

"What is this?" Voldemort/Draco demanded incredulously then he snarled. "Kill them!"

In an instant, Harry heard at least six different voices shout "Avada Kedavra" then there were even more gasps. He tranced down as quickly as he could but saw no sign of the illusions of the twins. Obviously the power of the Killing Curses had dispelled them. He quickly broke the trance and tried to look innocent.

"Where did they go?" Voldemort/Draco demanded.

Harry heard the other wizard striding towards him then grunted in pain when Voldemort's boot connected solidly with his ribcage.

"Answer me, Potter!" Voldemort/Draco snarled. "How did they do that?"

"Magic," Harry gasped then instantly regretted his answer when Voldemort turned the strongest Cruciatus on him that he'd ever felt.

"Get away from my godson," came Sirius' snarling voice and the curse abruptly ended again.

Harry lay their gasping and shivering but he retained enough sense to hope like hell that that was an illusion of his godfather speaking and not the real thing. He heard Voldemort stalk away from him and he eased himself over onto his stomach, grimacing as his body protested the movement. He snuck one hand underneath his chest and got a good grip on his cane.

"What is going on?" he heard Voldemort snarl angrily. "How are they getting through? Get rid of it."

"Don't even think about it," came Remus' voice and Harry's eyes widened. He'd never before heard that level of anger and hatred in the werewolf's voice.

"Get rid of them," Voldemort screamed and once again the Killing Curses rang out.

Harry didn't bother to check whether the illusions had been dispelled. He had to assume they had been since the sheer power in those spells had been obvious even without his Oversight or trancing down. He used the distraction however to push himself up into a crouch and to draw his sword and he whispered a quiet word of thanks to Master Nhean for his insistence on getting him used to moving and fighting without his Oversight.

"Harry! Move!"

"We're here!"

"Quick! Surround him!"

The shouts came from his Battle Guard and then Harry heard the voices of Jun'ko, Master Nhean and Tien. He had no idea whether they were the real thing of more illusions but he took the opportunity they had provided and threw himself away from the pillar, trying to get outside the area of influence of Toventsky's spell.

"Keep him close to the obelisk!" Voldemort screamed, over the sound of the Battle Guard and Guild members.

Harry dodged to the side, hearing the expected spell whistle past his head then he dived forward and rolled, determinedly ignoring the complaints from his body. He could worry about how much he hurt later; his rescue party was here so for now all he had to do was survive.

As he rolled his Oversight suddenly bloomed into life indicating he'd past the limits of the spell sphere and he let the roll continue as he got over the sudden shock. He then let the roll end when he was on his feet and he immediately darted to the left, hearing a spell crash into the wall behind where he'd just been. He glanced around the room and saw the perfect images of his Battle Guard, Nhean and the Night Warriors and knew then that they were just illusions. This was emphasized when two Killing Curses hit Hermione and she just faded from view with a surprised look on her face.

His attention as diverted when he saw a Death Eater throw a spell straight at him and he raised his off hand with a shouted, "Protego!"

The spell bounced off the hastily raised shield and Harry knew he'd better start moving. He looked around the room and made a cool decision. Voldemort. That was his target. He just had to hope the illusions could distract the Death Eaters long enough to allow his friends to get here.

He found Voldemort watching him with malignant amusement, something was truly unusual to see on Draco's face then Voldemort calmly raised his wand.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Harry ducked under the Killing Curse and rolled up onto his feet. He raised his off hand, the one holding his scabbard, and yelled, "Stupefy!"

Voldemort/Draco calmly dodged the spell then raised his wand again. Harry didn't allow him to settle into a duel. He ran towards the other wizard, bringing his sword up and around in a fierce swipe. Voldemort/Draco's eyes widened and he staggered away just in time, throwing an Impedimenta jinx at Harry. It caught the side of Harry's foot and he stumbled and nearly fell, allowing Voldemort/Draco to hit him with a cutting hex.

Harry yelled in pain as the hex sliced deep into his left arm and he dropped his scabbard. He retained enough presence of mind to kick it away to the side of the room then he swallowed hard and went back in for the attack. After several minutes, he found that while he was quicker than Voldemort/Draco due to the other wizard's bad leg, he was restricted in his spell casting now. The wound in his left arm was deeper than he'd first thought and his sleeve was soaked with blood and he was struggling to raise it enough to cast spells. He now also had to be more aware of the other Death Eaters since more spells were coming from that direction and a quick glance showed him that the illusions were nearly all gone; only the ones of Nhean, Jun'ko and Tien remained and as he watched Jun'ko faded from view after being hit with three Killing Curses.

Voldemort/Draco took advantage of his momentary distraction and launched a series of spells that he easily blocked but which forced him back into the magically dead area around the obelisk. The moment he realized where he was Harry threw himself to one side and then scrabbled backwards until found the pillar of crystal. He darted around the opposite side to where he'd been and made a break for the edge.

"Impedimenta!"

The hex caught him square in the back and sent him flying. While that left him lying outside the dead zone, it also left him flat on the floor, gasping for breath. His only saving grace was that he'd managed to hold onto his sword. Unfortunately he'd also ended up right near the largest concentration of Death Eaters and several of them turned from their fight with the illusions and trained their wands on him. Harry glanced over at the illusions and saw both Nhean and Tien suddenly fade from view and then Voldemort/Draco strode into his line of sight. He looked around desperately for some way of escaping but the Death Eaters had him surrounded and his heart sank.

"Very invigorating, Harry," Voldemort/Draco sneered. "But your fake friends are gone and now I am going to do what I should have done so many years ago. Any last words?"

Harry opened his mouth, not sure what he was going to say, but his reply was drowned out by the sound of a massive explosion. The Death Eaters swore almost as one and Voldemort/Draco looked around in confusion, his wand dropping to point towards the floor.

"Where did the light go?" came the voice of a nervous Death Eater and Harry's eyes widened.

"I don't know. I can't see anything," came an equally nervous reply.

"Welcome to our world."

Harry recognized that voice instantly. Nyugen Dinh Tien. And through his Oversight, he could still see. And he could see that more than just Tien had crept into the room in the cover of darkness. There were nearly twenty people with Tien and Harry knew that the Guild had arrived.

He quickly rolled onto his hands and knees and as silently as he could, he crawled out of the circle of Death Eaters. A fairly easy task as they'd started to spread out in confusion in the darkness. Once he was clear he got to his feet and started circling towards Voldemort, his sword raised in one hand, the other arm hanging near useless at his side.

"Ready, Harry?" came Tien's faintly amused, faintly superior question.

The Death Eaters stirred at that and some started groping around the floor where he had been.

Harry forced himself to chuckle at this, knowing the effect it would have on the confused Death Eaters.

"Whenever you are, Tien," he replied lightly. "But Voldemort's mine."

"But of course," Tien replied. "Ready, Warriors?"

There were muted words of assent from the Night Warriors.

"Be careful of the spell sphere," Tien warned. "Attack."

It was beautiful to watch in Oversight. The Night Warriors leapt forward in their varying combat styles, their blades flashing and spells firing. Nearly half of the Death Eaters fell in that first sally; some of them having been targeted by more than one Night Warrior. Of those that were left standing, most broke and ran, putting up powerful shields as they groped their way along the walls until they found the doors and flooded out. Light swept in when the doors opened and Harry could see not only Tonks, Sirius, Fred and George and his Battle Guard waiting outside but also a fair number of the Night Warriors following those escaping. The doors slammed shut behind the last of the following Night Warriors and Harry watched for a moment as those that remained began to methodically deal with the Death Eaters who had stayed.

It was Bellatrix who first thought of the survival tactic, running around in the dark until she found the obelisk in the middle of the room. She planted her back against it and started firing spells in random directions as she screamed with insane laughter. The other Death Eaters quickly followed her but the Night Warriors had found a tactic to use against that. They staged darting runs into the dead zone. Running straight forward and lashing out with sword and magic then running straight back on the path they had taken until they could use their Oversight again. Harry could see that the tactic was slower than normal combat but it would work. Once he was sure of that he turned back to Voldemort.

The Dark Lord was standing to one side of the room, his wand raised. He was staring vainly in the dark and clearly listening intently. At every slightest sound, he darted around, trying to find and identify it. Harry grinned mercilessly to himself. That was a futile tactic in a room where a fight was going on; all you did was exhaust yourself trying to listen for everything and anything. You had to be selective in your hearing, learn to discriminate between what was important and you should pay attention to and what was irrelevant and you could ignore.

"Voldemort," he whispered before moving on silent feet to the other side of man.

As he did Voldemort/Draco whipped around in the direction he had been, his wand up and ready.

"Playing games, Harry," he taunted.

Harry was silent as he considered what he needed to do. From what he remembered from the journal he and Snape had read, he couldn't kill Voldemort while he still inhabited Draco's body. Doing so would only return Voldemort's soul to the crystal he had used to contain it after the battle last year. While this would keep Voldemort safely confined and out of trouble, it was also insanely risky. All they would need was for someone else to touch the crystal and the whole thing would start again. And the last thing Harry wanted was for this to keep going on and on. The prophecy was pretty clear on that; neither can live while the other survives. So he needed Draco's help. Only Draco could cast Voldemort out his body. His only problem was he didn't really know what to do once that happened. If he could get it to happen.

"Well, Harry, what are you waiting for?" Voldemort/Draco sneered, obviously taking Harry's silence for fear or doubt.

"Draco," Harry said suddenly, taking a risk and hoping that his blind, dumb luck would let it be the right one. "I know you're in there and I know you can hear me. You can get rid of Voldemort. You can cast him out and get your body back. You need to cast a spell and do it wordlessly and wandlessly. Use the spell Respuoanimus, Draco. Do it!"

"NO!" Voldemort/Draco screamed. "Do not listen to him! He lies!"

The Dark Lord suddenly froze and his scream became louder and more desperate. Magic shimmered around him and a low wailing began to emanate from the immobile body. The wailing intensified and the magic began to become a dark greasy smoke-like cloud that oozed out of Draco's body. It swirled faster and faster around Draco and then suddenly pulled upwards and started circling towards the ceiling, the wailing continuing unrelentingly.

Harry looked at Draco as he collapsed unconscious to the floor and saw that the boy's energy colours were back to normal. He then looked up at the swirling, pulsing greasy smoke cloud that was coalescing near the ceiling. On an impulse he didn't quite understand, Harry dropped to his knees, sword still in his hand, and tranced down quickly. He saw the energy colours in the smoke and saw that they were reaching out to the magic in the room, in particular that of the obelisk in order to...feed, to provide energy to maintain the soul's current form.

Harry reached out and grabbed one of those feeding strands, gripping it tightly. He followed it back to the main mass and was able to see that it was part of the whole and anything he did to the strand would feed back and affect everything. He thought back to what he'd done with Pansy's trap and he examined the strand. It was very similar, certainly similar enough for him to do what he'd done then.

He grabbed the strand more firmly and instigated the shielding Master Nhean had taught him that would ward off the worst of the odd side-effects that had battered him last time. Once that was done, he worked at the strand until he'd formed a rupture in it. He grabbed at the leaking magic and began feeding it into the stone of the house. Although barely any magic flowed through this house, the stone itself was strong enough to absorb the magic Harry was feeding it. He quickly realised that this magic was different from last time. It was...thicker, more substantial and harder to manage. It took more concentration. He wondered if it was because this magic was the essence of a person rather than that used to create a spell. He quickly dismissed that thought; partly because it was disturbing and if he thought about it too much he might falter but mostly because he needed all the concentration he could muster.

As he worked the greasy smoke seemed to realise the danger it was in and it swirled around him, looking for a way to attack him. But his shields held against it. It then began to try and insinuate other threads through the shields. This was more successful since the shields had been constructed to allow the thread he was holding to pass through. He flinched as the first thread groped at him, wincing at the icy, slick feel of it but he did not stop. The smoke that was Voldemort's soul produced more and more threads, pushing them through the shield and wrapping them around whatever part of him they could reach.

When the first one wrapped itself around his injured arm, Harry grunted. He closed his eyes and steadfastly ignored the renewed rush of pain and the trickle of blood he could feel running down his arm. He had to finish this. He kept feeding the thick magic into the walls of the house, trying to work faster. But when the first thread wrapped itself around his throat, he knew he had to throw caution to the wind. He looked around frantically for some inspiration as the single thread tightened fractionally and started to be joined by others.

The obelisk.

It fairly reeked with magic and Harry reached out to it. In an act of desperation he placed the ruptured section of thread he held in his magical 'hands' against the magic within the obelisk and watched in awe as the obelisk flared once then began to drain the energy from the thread at a rapid rate. The wailing increased in volume and intensity, sounding desperate and wild, and the threads tightened their grip on Harry, making him struggle for breath.

But this was one battle the obelisk would win. Within seconds the last of the magic drained out of the threads and the mass of smoke, the wailing petering off into nothing as it did so. But there was still something lingering there and Harry knew he needed to complete the task. He took the strand back from the obelisk and began to unpick the fabric of it. As it was the last time he'd done this, once the process was begun it did not need any further help, it continued like a chain reaction.

With his attention so firmly on monitoring the final destruction of Voldemort's soul, Harry did not see two things.

The first was the ominous pulsing of the obelisk. The crystal that formed it could only take so much energy and it had been filled to capacity by Voldemort and his Death Eaters. The additional energy Harry had just fed into it had overloaded it and it was rapidly becoming dangerously unstable. The very structure of the crystal was starting to unravel and once it reached a critical mass the entire structure of the obelisk would collapse and explode.

The second thing Harry did not see was Draco Malfoy regaining consciousness and pulling himself to his knees. The blond wizard quickly looked around in the darkness, trying to assess what was going on. Although he had been able to dimly see and hear what was going on while Voldemort owned his body, he'd still missed a great deal of the details. But he'd heard Potter. He'd heard him say that he could have his freedom and he'd heard the crucial incantation.

And he knew Potter was somewhere nearby and where his former master had failed, he, Draco Malfoy, was going to succeed. And in defeating the Boy-Who-Lived he would be able to raise himself as the new Dark Lord. But first he needed to get rid of this debilitating darkness. He couldn't see his hand in front of his face and he needed to find Potter.

He found his wand after a moment of groping and snapped, "Lumos."

Nothing happened and he snarled angrily. He groped through his mind to find another spell and he smiled unpleasantly.

Draco held his wand with the tip pointing up and said firmly, "Solis!"

A light as bright as the sun burst out of the tip of his wand and shot towards the ceiling. It lit up the entire room and Draco could see that the remaining Death Eaters were faring very poorly against the Night Warriors. In fact there were only two left standing; the others were dead or unconscious. Draco smiled evilly to see that the two remaining were Bellatrix Lestrange and Pansy Parkinson. He then looked around for his own target and found him kneeling less than a metre away. Potter looked like he was in a trance of some kind.

Draco was forced to let the light fade at this point as he felt the spell pulling on energy he didn't want to waste. He didn't care though, he knew where his target was and that was all that was important. He pulled a slim, sharp knife out of his robes and crawled forward until his hand bumped against Potter's side. Much to his surprise, Potter did not move or even acknowledge his presence. He chuckled nastily then he drew back the knife and drove it into Harry's side through his ribs.

Harry gasped and lost track of the decaying thread as a sharp burning pain bloomed in his side and knocked him out of the trance. Now that he was out of the trance he realised there was someone kneeling right beside him and chuckling in a manner that made him shiver. As he tried to orientate himself the figure beside him withdrew whatever it was that was causing the pain then stabbed him with it again. Harry yelled as the knife cut into his side and he fell away from the figure that he was sure was Draco. As he did so, he brought the sword he was still holding up in a sideways sweep that made the pain increase. As he swung he felt something tear in his side and blood welled in the back of his throat. He ignored it all in favour of completing the stroke; at the last minute turning his head enough to see the figure in Oversight and raising the angle of the blow. This caused the tearing in his side to increase but it meant that his sword cut smoothly through Draco's neck.

Harry collapsed to the floor, feeling blood flowing from the wounds in his side. He could see Draco's head rolling away then the decapitated body collapsed near his feet.

"DRACO!" came a desolate scream from the middle of the room.

Harry blinked dully. That was Pansy's voice but how did she know? Had the lights come back on? He didn't care, he felt tired and cold and just a little bit cheated. It was supposed to be neither can live while the other survives, he thought muzzily to himself, not even noticing Pansy come running over to fall to her knees next Draco's headless body.

He did not see Bellatrix size up the situation in an instant, her insane mind making decisions others might not have. He did not see her throw a multitude of spells at the Night Warriors or come running over and grab Pansy by the arm. And darkness had claimed Harry before he saw the two women apparate out.