Harry Potter and the Magic Within

Harry Potter and the Magic Within

Chapter 27: 'The Deception'

Harry continued to struggle in the chair, but Wormtail held him down firmly.

Voldemort watched Harry's distress with great enjoyment.

Harry sat still and tried to think of some way in which he could change what was happening. Some way that he could at least get Genevieve and Sirius (and Snape) out of this mess.

'Why do you have to kill them?' Harry yelled, as Voldemort walked slowly towards him, holding the small bottle tight in his spidery hand.

'Because it will make it worse for you of course,' said Voldemort casually. He was standing right in front of Harry now, and the sting of Harry's scar was almost unbearable.

Voldemort thrust the bottle at Wormtail who grabbed it and then forced it down Harry's throat as he held his head up to the stony ceiling. Genevieve cried out and Sirius yelled, 'no!'

Harry felt a burning sensation as the hateful liquid went down his throat. He could hear Voldemort laughing. He tried to spit the potion out but it was too late, he had already swallowed it.

He shivered and it seemed to him that he didn't have his glasses on because everything was slightly out of focus. Dimly he was aware of the sounds of faint sobbing; Genevieve was crying in Sirius' arms. When Harry concentrated hard, he could see past them to where Snape was standing. His face wore a strange expression. He didn't seem happy, as Harry would have guessed he might, he looked uncomfortable, even scared and was a pale green colour.

Voldemort seemed to be having second thoughts about his torturing plan. From what he was saying to Wormtail, he appeared to be considering whether it would be more entertaining to watch Harry die first, then torture the others afterwards. He mentioned that since Harry had been given the whole bottle, it wouldn't take as long as usual.

'That would not leave me much time to torture and dispose of your friends,' he said, turning back to Harry, 'so it seems I will have to wait until you are dead before I give them my full attention. These things should not be hurried.'

Voldemort ordered Wormtail to move the rickety chair on which Harry sat, dizzy, to a place in front of his dark throne so he would have a better view, as the potion took effect.

Harry's head wasn't so dizzy that he couldn't make his eyes focus across the room to where Genevieve was crying, now silently, and Sirius looked no better. Harry couldn't see Snape sitting on the cold ground behind them.

Wormtail put the chair down right in front of the few steps up to Voldemort's dark chair. Harry lifted his head slowly to look Voldemort straight in the eye. His scar was still painfully vivid on his head and was no less painful for being this close to Voldemort.

Then Voldemort started gloating.

'You feel drained and dizzy at the moment,' he began. 'But that is only the beginning,' he said, a twisted grin appearing on his skeletal white face.

Harry still felt slightly dizzy but that was slowly wearing off. This didn't sound like what was supposed to be happening. He then, very suddenly, remembered what had happened in that potions class not so long ago. Perhaps his immunity to unfriendly potions was helping him fight this particularly unpleasant concoction.

This was surely the case for, after about a minute's time, Harry felt almost normal. Harry at once saw that he had to pretend that the potion was still working as Voldemort thought. He couldn't risk anything going wrong. It was pure luck that Voldemort was quoting the descriptions of the symptoms in his glee.

'It will be about now that you should feel a drowsiness come over you and your body shall slowly go numb at which time you will not have any control of your limbs at all. Even your head will be too heavy for you to lift.' He laughed loudly, so did Wormtail as he held Harry around the shoulders.

Harry gradually made himself become limp in the chair. He let his head nod a little and then didn't move a muscle. Voldemort was practically crying with mirth.

'Now you are paralysed, Harry Potter!' he laughed. 'You can let go of him, Wormtail, he can't get away now!' he laughed louder.

Harry wished there was some way he could convey his plan to Genevieve and Sirius but Voldemort wasn't going to miss a minute of what he assumed to be Harry's death, so he dare not risk it.

The sounds coming from the silver barred cage were horrible to Harry's ears. A pitiful sobbing was reaching him. He tried to turn his eyes to their cage without moving his head, but couldn't quite make it.

Wormtail was now standing by Voldemort's chair as he laughed merrily at the thought of having rid himself of the troublesome Harry Potter.

'Any moment now,' he was saying to Wormtail, his face alight with malice, 'he will find it harder to breathe and then gradually his heart will stop completely - and then Harry Potter will be no more!' he said, exultantly clapping his pale hands together. Wormtail grinned and Genevieve wept despairingly next to a very pale Sirius.

Harry wished she would remember his talent with potions.

Slowly, as Voldemort watched with bated breath, Harry arranged his face in what he hoped conveyed a silent form of distress, as though breathing was becoming difficult.

At this point, Sirius grabbed at the bars and rattled them desperately. He was thrown back from them a moment later and thought better than to try again. He put an arm around Genevieve as they both watched Harry with unwavering, horrified attention.

Harry felt it was time to finish the act, so he let his right arm fall over the side of his chair, and he let his head hang with his eyes closed.

Voldemort cheered delightedly and was positively screaming with happiness. Wormtail clapped his hands together and followed his master as Voldemort walked over to the silvery bars.

'Dead! Dead! Dead!' he jeered. 'That is all that is left of the precious Harry Potter!' He burst into manic laughter. The only sound louder was Genevieve and Sirius who were obviously sobbing.

Harry heard Voldemort's jeering from behind him and slowly opened his right hand, as he concentrated on summoning his wand to it.

Across the room, the wand floated off the small table on which Wormtail had placed it, and hovered over to the dangling hand.

Harry gripped it tightly.

A new sound from behind him made him jump up. Genevieve was screaming in pain on the floor as Voldemort pointed his wand at her and laughed.

This brought a memory from long ago to his mind. His mother screaming while Voldemort laughed. Anger surged through Harry like wild fire passes through a dry field.

'NO!' he yelled at the top of his lungs and found himself pointing his wand at Voldemort.

Harry felt a surge of power run down his arm and through his wand. An amazingly powerful blast shot from the wand, hitting Voldemort and causing him to be thrown backwards, as well as breaking the silvery cage apart. It made Harry half stumble; the power was so great.

Genevieve and Sirius stood absolutely dumbfounded for a stunned moment. Snape raised his eyebrows behind them, looking amazed.

'Harry!' Genevieve gasped, then fainted. Sirius propped her up against the stony wall. Then he called out to Harry.

'The wand, Harry!' he shouted.

Voldemort's wand, which had been knocked clean out of his hand when Harry's blast hit him, was lying right next to Harry's foot but was slowly moving across the room to where Voldemort was holding a hand out to it, obviously trying to summon it.

Harry stamped his foot down on it. He then pointed his own wand at Voldemort again. A sparkling blue net-like material surrounded the cloaked figure. Harry then raised his wand and the blue net containing Voldemort also rose. Harry only let his arm down when Voldemort was imprisoned in the net, hanging from the ceiling. He didn't have his wand and was therefore, at present, powerless. All he could do was yell with rage. Wormtail started to creep towards the tunnel entrance, but was grabbed by Snape, who easily overpowered him.

Sirius rushed over to Harry, his eyes wide.

'How did - I mean - I thought you were - dead!' he stammered.

Harry shook his head and explained what had happened.

'I thought Genevieve would have remembered,' he ended. Sirius then hugged Harry tightly, before he hurried over to Lupin to try to wake him. Lupin sat up a moment later looking rather worse for wear.

Harry was looking at Voldemort's wand and ignoring the yells of rage from above. He walked to Sirius' side where Lupin was recovering and asked a question which had come to his mind not long before.

'Sirius, can we destroy this wand?'

Sirius turned to him quickly.

'No, no we can't do that,' he said shortly.

'But there must be some way to -' Harry began but Sirius cut in.

'Harry, no! We can't risk it, we just can't!'

'Tell me how, Sirius. Just imagine how hard it will be for him to get his plans back in order if we break the wand!' Harry persisted.

'No, Harry, we can't do that. The only way you could destroy that wand for sure is if you were to use a very old incantation and point your own wand at it. No one but you would have any chance at destroying it, but it would be very dangerous for you to do so.'

'Why?' Harry asked puzzled.

'Never mind that. Go to Genevieve and see if she's waking up yet,' Sirius replied. Harry pocketed his, and Voldemort's wand and knelt by the fainted Genevieve on the other side of the room.

She began to stir and slowly opened her eyes.

'Harry! How did you -' she cried, her hands gripping Harry firmly by the shoulders. Harry explained and she sighed when she realised.

'Oh, I should've remembered,' she muttered. She then followed Sirius' example and hugged Harry for a long moment.

'Genevieve, what is the incantation for destroying a powerful wand?' Harry asked, holding up Voldemort's wand.

'Oh, you can't do that, Harry!' she exclaimed.

'But can't you see how important it is that we do?' Harry said earnestly.

Genevieve looked at his determined face for a moment then sighed again.

'Well, all right. But Sirius won't like it one bit,' she said, standing up, 'it is not a difficult incantation but you must concentrate as hard as you can while you say it. I just hope it doesn't have any bad consequences. You have to say 'Potens obliteratum est.'

Harry followed her over to the middle of the cold dingy chamber. Sirius was helping Lupin up and, presently, they both came to join them.

Snape was keeping Wormtail under control by the large tunnel to the end of the chamber.

'We should go,' Sirius said, looking up at the writhing dark figure held up in the shiny netting.

'Ermm, well, yes, of course,' Genevieve said, rubbing her painful side. She winked at Harry, informing him that as they left he should perform the incantation.

She, Sirius and Lupin all walked towards the chamber exit where Snape waited with Wormtail. Harry took out his wand and placed Voldemort's on the floor in front of him.

'Potens obliteratum est!' he cried, and pointed his wand directly at the one on the floor. Voldemort, hanging above, yelled out in anger and despair as the wand shone bright red for a moment before it was snapped in two with a crack so loud it echoed ominously for some moments afterwards.

Harry, seeing that nothing awful had happened, sighed with relief and walked to the tunnel opening where the other wizards stood, faintly smiling, all except Snape, who never smiled, and Wormtail, who had no reason to smile.

Harry then stopped before he got anywhere near to the opening as he thought he heard a faint noise as though from far off. He was sure now. He could hear the sound of dozens of wailing people. He turned to see the broken wand emitting a small swirl of green smoke. As it grew, the screams became louder and clearer.

The yells grew as the green mist rose up to at least the height of Hagrid and then took a sort of indistinct shape. It was rather like a troll in stature, except its face (if it could be described as a face) was nowhere near as stupid and dense looking as a trolls. All Harry could make out very clearly of it was that it had dark red eyes not unlike Voldemort's.

The smoky creature raised its long wispy arms and roared. The echoes could have driven one mad. Harry was then aware of tormented faces appearing and dissolving inside the bulk of the smoky figure.

The roar seemed to have been a little too much for the cave. It sounded as though it was about to cave in. Some rocks started to fall from the ceiling, but the weakest point was above the exit tunnel. The rocks crumbled above the entrance and Harry held his arms up as dust and small stones flew by while the entrance was completely blocked, his companions on the other side.

Harry was alone. No wait, he wasn't alone, he had the giant scary smoke monster to keep him company. But somehow it wasn't a reassuring thought.

Voldemort, still caught on the ceiling inside the silvery net, seemed to think this might be a great advantage to himself. Harry watched, with growing dread, as Voldemort pointed at Harry and commanded the creature to kill him.

Harry Potter and the Magic Within.

Chapter 28: 'Misty Mayhem'

To Harry's surprise, and Voldemort's great displeasure, the misty monster didn't go after Harry at all. Instead, it turned its attention to the shadowy figure entrapped in the net and poked it with a large smoky hand, roaring and howling. Harry watched as the being pulled the net from the ceiling and tossed it about as though it were a ball. Voldemort was getting rather battered inside the net when, at last, the creature got bored and dropped it. When it landed, Voldemort made no move inside it.

It was obvious that Voldemort could not control the evil entity even though it did originate from his wand.

Harry frantically looked around for a nearby exit. He couldn't see one. He would have to cross the smoky thing's path in order to get to the tunnel entering the side of the chamber. He was standing in the shadows but he knew it couldn't be long before the entity turned its attention on him.

The grating howl of the horrific thing was louder than ever as it started looking around for something new to do. It spotted Harry in the shadows. The swirling mist that was its body still had faces appearing in it as Harry could see when the monster bent down to get a closer look at him.

Harry had no idea what to do. He stood motionless, hoping that the thing would find him boring and not worth playing with. It drew itself up and roared in delight. Then it raised its hand and brought it down again sharply. As it did so, there was a bang and a hole had been knocked in to the wall to the left of Harry.

Harry just had time to dash to the right before another large hole was punched in to the wall, just where he had been standing.

Harry dodged the entity's powers for what seemed like ages to him.

It roared and gurgled with mirth at what it saw as a fun game.

Harry wasn't finding it fun at all and was just dodging a most powerful looking green stream of light, when his wand twitched in his pocket. He hadn't seen the point of holding it while he was running around dodging the blows, but he took it out now and held it up while the monster was looking for him on the other side of the chamber.

The wand was glowing slightly. A pale-gold colour. Harry looked over to the misty beast and saw that the same glow was appearing in its very center.

It turned around, spotted Harry and raised its foggy hand to strike again. Harry didn't wait to think. He raised his wand, pointed it at the glowing center of the mist, closed his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could.

The entity's usual howls were now not to be heard. In its place was a sort of grating scream, which made Harry's hair stand up. He opened his eyes to see what he had done.

His wand was shooting blinding yellow and green sparks at the being, which was screaming and flailing about in what seemed to be real agony.

Harry's mouth was wide open as the entity became a bright shining white, as he watched in amazement the faint, agonized faces within it that he had noticed before became clearer and seemed to have lost their tortured expressions, in fact they were smiling. Within moments they burst out of the entity like a great shower of sparks from a huge firework display, and glittered like a canopy of stars against the ceiling before vanishing a second later, leaving only a sound like distant, tinkling laughter. The entity collapsed in upon itself, then disappeared, its screams still echoing off the walls.

The echoes weren't the only sound though. A low rumbling could now be heard as stones and chunks of rock started to wobble and fall from the vaulted ceiling above.

Harry bolted for the only other way out of the chamber, the same tunnel from which Argent, Sirius and Snape had entered the chamber before.

Voldemort stirred on the stony ground as Harry dashed past.

'NO!' he yelled, reaching a hand out, as though he still had his wand. Harry didn't slow down, the stones were falling very fast and Harry just got to the tunnel as large boulder sized rocks fell from the high ceiling all around Voldemort.

It will take him a while to get out of that without a wand, Harry thought as he hurried up the dark, gloomy tunnel.

His only thought was getting out of that place and back to Sirius and Genevieve. He could still hear uncomfortable rumblings. He stepped carefully and had to run past a few small rock falls.

He knew that this tunnel must also end at the old tree, as it was most likely the only entrance to the underground caves.

He stumbled on for what seemed like hours. He wanted to get back to Hogwarts and put this behind him. His head was getting foggy again and he wasn't sure if it was the effect of the gloom, the after effects of the awful potion or perhaps something else to do with his strange powers.

He eventually saw a small ray of light around a corner. He had found the bottom of the staircase winding up inside the hollow tree.

He climbed them quickly and came out into the faint light of dawn. It was almost the next day, though to Harry it could have easily been a whole awful week.

Where were Sirius and the others? he thought, as he walked around the small clearing.

Then he heard voices from a space between the trees to his left. He crept closer.

'We don't know what's down there,' Snape's cold voice was saying, 'what if we can't kill that thing that came from the broken wand? Potter may be dead already. If that thing didn't kill him, the cave-ins may have.'

'We have to go back and find him,' Genevieve was saying shakily.

'We can't just leave him,' Sirius agreed hastily. 'We can go, Genevieve,' he continued, 'Severus, keep an eye on Wormtail there,' Snape nodded slowly and Harry caught sight of the chained figure of Wormtail. 'And you rest there, Remus,' Sirius added. Harry then noticed Lupin sitting against a tree a little distance away; Snape had never got along with Lupin, Sirius or James Potter.

Sirius and Genevieve got up and started towards the old tree again. Harry stepped out.

'Don't go back in there!' he said, he said softly, his head spinning, 'I'm here.'

Sirius and Genevieve both jumped in surprise, then both ran forward and hugged Harry exactly like Harry had seen Mr and Mrs Weasley do with some of their children on occasions.

'Oh, Harry!' Genevieve half sobbed in to his shoulder. 'How did you get out?'

'I blasted the misty thing with my wand,' Harry replied, now feeling almost too tired to speak.

'Oh, well done! You destroyed it completely?' Sirius said, looking amazed. Harry nodded, feeling dizzier every moment.

Genevieve seemed to notice, she half pulled, half carried Harry over to rest by a tree with Sirius' help.

Harry lay back against the tree in a half dream, but was then jerked back to the present when Snape's voice spoke low and urgent.

'The Dark Mark,' he whispered tensely, 'it is vivid on my forearm. Voldemort has called for the Death Eaters. We have got to get out of here!'

Sirius and Genevieve got up and then pulled Harry up as well. Snape and Sirius picked up their brooms, which had been standing by a tree nearby, and started to get Wormtail's secure traveling arrangements organised. Genevieve found her broom and asked Harry where his was.

Harry summoned his broom with a useful summoning charm he had learned the year before, and along came Hedwig flying beside it. When Wormtail was secured between Sirius and Snape's brooms, Hedwig took flight in the lead followed by Harry on his Firebolt, Genevieve on her broom, Lupin on his and then Sirius and Snape carrying the bound up bulk that was Wormtail.