Harry Potter and the Dark Mark

Chapter Twenty Nine

"Here!" Hermione panted, dragging the voluminous volume over to their table. She flicked through the pages in a frenzy and then let out a small cry, devouring the text with her eyes. Harry and Ron waited expectantly.

"Pereoperdo - Description.

"This rare plant is an erect herbaceous annual with a fleshy spindle shaped root. When young the stem is pale green, but this darkens and hardens with age, to become brown. It grows to about two foot high on average. The leaves are dark green with a thick waxy cuticle. It is accustomed to a warmer climate although has been found growing in more northerly areas of the country. The flowers are small clusters, egg yolk yellow in colour.

"In Anglo Saxon times this plant was known as 'thung' but so were many other plants, including Aconite. Later on the Latin name was used more frequently, and is still used today. The Latin name can easily be translated as 'destroy and waste away."

Hermione finished reading and looked at the two boys. "This is it, isn't it? Can you remember the plant from Herbology, the one with Horklumps that died the day after we put Streeler Venom on it? Professor Sprout cried all morning."

Yeah - that was the day after the Dark Mark was spotted down in Cumbria," Harry said slowly.

"That's it!" Hermione cried. "Don't you see?" Ron shook his head dumbly. She looked at Harry in desperation. He shrugged his shoulders at her and waited for the brilliant explanation.

"Well... I'll read on."

"Is this what is poisoning Dumbledore?" Ron asked.

"Yes!"

"So if it's such common knowledge and we grow it at school, why hasn't anyone else worked out what poison it is?" Harry cried.

"Because Snape's a Death Eater?" Ron said, warming up on one of his favourite subjects.

"No! I'll take you through it. Wormtail selects the poison he has been instructed to use on Dumbledore. He infests it with Horklumps, knowing that Professor Sprout will treat the infestation with Streelers, and, most likely, choose students to help her. He knows that an overdose of Streeler venom can be toxic to the plant itself, so he plans to use the leftover venom on the herb to kill it off after harvesting some to use on Dumbledore. That way no one will think it could be the herb used because the Hogwarts supply was killed off months before Dumbledore collapsed, and it's so rare elsewhere you couldn't gather a big enough quantity!

"Unfortunately for him, Professor Sprout gives the leftover venom to Ron, meaning he has to come and steal it from your dormitory, and Harry sees him. He escapes, and the rest of the plan is carried out like I said. Then he takes the Pereoperdo herb away and prepares the poison, and it is somehow administered to Dumbledore before the Quidditch match!"

Hermione finished triumphantly, leaning over the book with such intensity that Ron had actually backed away from her.

"That's ingenious!" Harry whispered. He beamed at Hermione. "Wow!"

"Hermione, you're amazing. You're the best. In fact, you're bloody brilliant!" Ron crowed. He leapt up like a mad thing and hugged her.

She blushed. "Oh, it was nothing really..."

"So what's the antidote?" Harry demanded, trying to read the book upside down.

Hermione dropped back into her seat and read furiously, muttering out loud all the while. "Cultivation... parts used... constituents... medicinal actions and uses... here we are! Poison and antidotes!

"The symptoms of poisoning by Pereoperdo are tingling and numbness of tongue and mouth, laboured breathing, pulse irregular and weak, hands cold and clammy, pale features, staggering, blackouts, mental confusion and slow destruction of the body and mind. If applied in small enough doses, the victim may appear to simply be dying from old age. This practice must be controlled carefully however, as a simple overdose of one seed may increase symptoms massively. Another problem with this method is that if the doses are not regular enough the victim can build up a small resistance.

"Pereoperdo will prove fatal after about three months of exposure. It will incapacitate the victim to the point where they will be forced to cease their job and retire to their bed for most of the day. Physical activity will be restricted and there will be a marked loss in appetite.

"The effect of this herb can be countered by very few substances. One herb, known as Rendite, could completely restore a victim poisoned for a month to full health in as little as three weeks. However, this herb became extinct due to deforestation and can no longer be found in mainland Europe. The most common antidote is snake venom. As Aconite has been reported to counter the venom of a scorpion, so cobra venom is an effective antidote to the poison of Pereoperdo. Unfortunately, the potent venom of the Indian Cobra is required for a full recovery and other cobra venoms can only delay the inevitable death of the victim.

"The Indian Cobra is a smooth-scaled snake with black eyes, a wide neck and head, and a medium to large body. Its colourings vary from black and dark brown to a creamy white. It grows to approximately two metres long and can be recognised by a large black band around its neck and the double ring pattern on its hood.

"The venom of the Indian Cobra is highly difficult to obtain. It must be milked from a live cobra and administered fresh. The Indian Cobra is found in India and Pakistan and is highly aggressive. It feeds on rodents, lizards and frogs. As well as biting, this cobra can defend itself from a distance of two metres by 'spitting' venom at its adversary. This venom causes severe pain and damage if it enters the eyes.

"It is for these reasons that many people die from Pereoperdo poisoning; not because there is no antidote, but because the antidotes are both rare and difficult to acquire."

Hermione finished reading and bit her lip. She looked solemnly at Harry and Ron in turn. No one spoke for nearly a full minute. Harry was deep in thought, staring at the picture of the Indian Cobra on the page.

"We could send a Phoenix with a message to Hogwarts," Hermione said, choosing her words carefully. "Phoenixes can disappear and reappear at will, so it'd be faster than an owl."

"Yeah, but if Snape and McGonagall don't want Dumbledore to recover..." Ron suggested. He stopped and frowned.

"Well, if we send a Phoenix to Snape, McGonagall and another teacher, would that do?" Hermione asked.

"What if they stop the other teacher from helping?" Ron worried.

"We'd have to tell them to help by themselves and keep it secret," Hermione decided.

"We can't anyway. We're meant to be in bed," Harry said, stifling a yawn.

"Oh!" Clearly, Hermione had forgotten what time it was. She checked her watch hastily and began rethinking her plans. "When are we going back to Hogwarts?"

"When the Death Eaters have gone," Ron shrugged.

Harry was angry immediately. Did they not understand? "They're not going to just GO! They're coming here to reduce this place to a pile of rubble and anyone here to a mouldering corpse!"

Hermione flinched and Ron winced.

"Did you have to be so... precise?" Ron asked.

"Yes I did! You're talking like this is some sort of Famous Five book!" At Ron's blank look he cast about for another example. "A Marvin Miggs the Mad Muggle adventure! It isn't like that! This is real and this is serious. There's no way we're going to be up against just Death Eaters. Voldemort will come here himself to destroy this place because then he'll know for sure that he's the only one in the world with the knowledge you could gain here!"

"Harry!" Hermione cried softly, aghast.

"Sorry!" he said instantly. "I forgot--"

"No! Listen!"

Harry exhaled the deep breath he had taken and listened to the silence. All he could hear was the breath of himself and Ron. Hermione was holding hers. Just as she frowned as if she thought whatever she had heard was a false alarm, there was a muffled boom which came from beyond the solid rock walls of the Library. The bookshelves trembled almost imperceptibly.

"What the?" Ron started. He stepped backwards and found Hermione's hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

Harry listened to the thunder of feet as they ran into the entrance hall, and then he could hear shielding and warding charms being muttered at the door. Gold and red light flickered underneath the Library door and a Phoenix was singing softly. Then the door was flung open.

"This is it!" Sirius announced. His eyes were darting about everywhere and he was standing in a half crouched manner, ready for action. "Do you want to come and fight?"

Harry stared open mouthed. Did he want to come and fight? "Wha...?" he mumbled. Usually everyone ushered him out of the way and tried to protect him, and yet here was his Godfather offering to let him join in a battle against Voldemort. He expected Hermione to try to hold him back as he walked forward and removed his wand from his pocket but to his surprise, she didn't. Looking over his shoulder he found her and Ron walking behind him with matching expressions of determination etched on their faces. He smiled gratefully at them.

Hermione was the only one to speak. When they reached the door, she pulled all four of them into an embrace. "We do this together," she ordered. Harry knew what she meant. Nothing more needed to be said, really.

Grimly they trailed out into the hall and took their place with the other men and women assembled there. Once standing still, one of the members of the Order dimmed the lights, presumably to disorientate the Death Eaters once the attack began. The door knob was glowing green in the gloom.

With a crack like a backbone breaking, the lock snapped and the door swung open. Harry heard Hermione gasp and saw the Order tense for action. There, illuminated in the doorway by a sickly green aura, tall and skeletally thin, was Voldemort himself. Three mottled black snakes were coiled round his neck and arms. He was caressing them with one spidery hand and clutching his wand in the other. The Death Eaters were crowded into the tunnel behind him.

For a moment there was no noise and no movement. Harry felt as if he were swimming in treacle. Then the timelessness was broken by a sibilant hiss from Voldemort.

"Destroy this place!"

Chapter Thirty

The Death Eaters flowed into the entrance hall like a swarm of black ants. Harry wavered. He did not want to be the first one to fire a curse, and he was quite sure Hermione and Ron had similar sentiments. Most especially he wanted to avoid the dark feelings that had pulsed through him earlier that night.

The decision was made for him. One Death Eater loomed towards Craw and whispered in a vicious voice, "Lacero!" Craw flinched in the manner of an actor pretending to be shot by a bullet. Harry's eyes widened as he saw what the curse had done. Craw had three large cuts across his face, the blood dripping onto his cream cricket sweater.

"Stupendo!" Harry cried, flinging the curse at the masked attacker. Behind him he could hear Hermione gasping out her curses.

"Evincio!" Another Death Eater was wrapped in magical chains by Hermione.

A member of the Order of the Phoenix clutched his face as a Death Eater shot two curses at her in quick succession. Lacrimo made her eyes sting and weep, and Caecum appeared to blind her completely.

Meryl - Harry realised he didn't even know her surname or her title - was busy maintaining a shield and firing curses through it. "Provecto!" she snapped in a withering tone. The Death Eater attempting to hit her with the killing curse suddenly slowed down. At first Harry thought it was a more advanced form of Impedimenta, which slowed people down, but the Death Eater tore his mask off and put his wrinkled hands to his face. He bowed down low and began to wail in a cracked and ancient voice.

"The Aging Curse," Hermione informed him as she deftly disarmed another Death Eater with Expelliarmus.

"Aranea!" Ron roared from beside Harry. A Death Eater who had tried to hit Ron with another curse Harry didn't know found himself being bound into a cocoon by hundreds of tiny spiders. Once he was completely entombed in the web and lay still the spiders vanished without a sound. Ron shuddered visibly and turned to face his next attack.

Thinking quickly, Harry turned to another Death Eater and tried out the curse Ron had nearly had to endure. "Claudeo!" he spat. Already the tide of discontent and malice swept through him. It ate away at his marrow and rumbled in his belly. In front of him, next to the Death Eater he had just crippled, stood Uncle Vernon, shouting and raging until the spittle dripped from his lips. A glob of spit flew from his mouth and landed on Harry's chest. Wrath exploded within Harry as he railed against the life he had been forced to lead.

"Punctum Plures!" the crippled Death Eater groaned. Harry had no chance to put up a shield. He was still engulfed by the feelings that followed the use of a dark curse. Pin prickles of pain blossomed all over his body, even in his insides. He felt on fire, plunged into ice and stuck with thistles all at once. Someone near him was screaming hoarsely.

"Confundo!" Sirius yelled. The Death Eater holding the curse over Harry instantly dropped his wand and looked very confused.

"HARRY!" someone was shouting. Harry opened his eyes and tried to listen, but the screaming had lulled to a whine and he couldn't quite make out what Sirius was saying. It took him a few seconds to trace the source of the noise to himself. With an almighty push of willpower he forced himself to be quiet.

"Thank God!" Sirius said, before quickly performing some sort of counter curse. "Are you alright?" he demanded.

Harry moved gingerly and winced as the pins and needles in his legs dissipated slightly and then vanished. "I'm fine," he lied.

Sirius didn't ask again. He hauled Harry to his feet, straightened his glasses and thrust his wand into his sweaty palm. Then he whipped round and bound another Death Eater with the Adstringo charm. Harry wobbled towards Ron and leant against him for a moment.

Chaos prevailed. All through the Entrance Hall were the flashes of curses and charms, none of them pleasant. Harry could hear men and women screaming in agony and the enraged shrieks of Phoenixes as they protected their friends. Voldemort himself towered imposingly at the back of the room stroking the smooth scales of his snakes and hissing to them lovingly.

The Dark Lord appeared completely unmoved as he watched his servants die around him. No one seemed to dare curse Voldemort. There was a wide arc of space around him, almost as if an invisible barrier prevented anyone approaching. Harry knew that the only barrier there was fear.

Voldemort was watching Harry now. His mouth was pursed in a cold, thin sneer and as he stared the snakes uncoiled from him and undulated down to the stone floor, the flashes and sparks flickering on their slippery scales.

Anger flickered in the back of Harry's brain. Voldemort had no right to be standing there. He had killed, tortured and terrified countless numbers of people and yet had paid nothing at all. Brushing the rational warning voice from his mind, Harry let his magic surge within him, rippling and pulsing until he felt he could contain it no longer. Then with a violent burst, he concentrated it down his wand and channelled it towards Voldemort.

"Avad--" he began. He was cut off by a muffled yelp from Hermione.

"No, not the books!" she squealed. Harry had to endure Voldemort's mocking smirk as he turned to see what Hermione was fussing about.

At first his vision was obscured by a Death Eater performing a curse on a small man. It appeared that Prefoco suffocated the victim it was cast upon. Harry steeled himself to the man's difficulty and looked past him to Hermione. Only when he was sure she was alright did he hex the Death Eater in the back at the same moment Ron did.

"Cruento!"

"Vomere!" Ron grinned at Harry weakly. "Fred and George taught me that one," he admitted, nodding his head to the retching Death Eater. Harry could see blood trickling from his nose and ears too. Presumably that was what Cruento did. He looked away in disgust and made sure someone had freed the man from his suffocation.

"Where's Hermione?" Sirius bawled as he flew past the two boys in pursuit of a Death Eater.

"What?" Harry gasped. He whirled round to look at the spot where Hermione had been seconds earlier. She was gone.

"Hermione!" Ron said fearfully. Both boys looked about wildly in the cross-curse-fire.

"Deflecto! Protego! Crucio! Diffindo! Stupefy! Ennervate! Torqueo! Excorio!" the curses went, each punctuated by flashes of light and cries of pain.

"The Library! She mentioned the books!" Harry yelled. Ron did not need any further instruction. He dove through the crowds and dashed for the Library, Harry hot on his heels.

The huge door to the Library was slightly ajar. Smoke was curling from the edges and inching across the floor. Harry could see the flicker of flames and smell the pungent aroma of burning books laced with the bitter scent of magic.

"Hermione!" Ron bellowed. He flung open the door and leapt in waving his wand around. Both he and Harry were forced to choke as the thick black smoke engulfed them.

"Here Ron!" Hermione shrilled. "He's burning the books!"

"Well obviously," Harry muttered darkly. With a sigh he plunged forwards in the direction of Hermione's voice. Ron's hand found his shoulder and together they staggered through the smoke like blind men.

When they came out near the fire, the first thing Harry noticed was the intense heat being generated by the bonfire of books. It seemed that magical volumes burnt more fiercely than normal books. The second thing he noticed was Wormtail.

"You!" he snarled in fury. With a whipping noise his wand was in the air and poised to strike.

"No Harry!" Hermione breathed.

For a few seconds Harry realised what terrible power he possessed. Inside him it was bubbling away, seething and writhing like spiralling snakes. He was not the only one to own this power. Every pupil at Hogwarts had it, the same way each wand had its own unique magical core. But still, the real magic was inside him. The wand was only a tool to enhance his magic and channel it out. Harry stared at his wand in surprise. Wormtail and Hermione regarded it with fear.

Harry had a sudden vivid flash of memory. He could see himself now, standing in Ollivander's Wand shop, regarding this selfsame wand. He could hear Mr Ollivander's voice...

The wand chooses the wizard, remember... I think we must expect great things from you, Mr Potter...

Was this the great thing he was expected to do with this wand that had chosen him? Become no better than Voldemort himself, a murderer and a user of dark magic? Harry smiled coldly. No. He could choose. Just as the wand had chosen him and its brother had chosen Tom Riddle, he could choose not to go down the same dark path.

At Harry's smile, Wormtail dropped his wand and fell to his knees, whimpering. "Please Harry, please... don't kill me... I'm one of the ones who knew your parents best... Lily and James, please..."

Harry snapped back to the present. "Don't you dare say their names!" he hissed poisonously.

"No, no... of course not..." Wormtail cowered.

"Harry!" Hermione uttered softly.

"It's alright, Hermione," Harry reassured her without taking his eyes from Wormtail. "I just worked something out. I--"

"Ah, Harry!" a icily genial voice purred.

Harry froze as his scar exploded. Wormtail looked up sharply and then squirmed even lower on the floor.

"Master!"

"Wormtail. Continue," Voldemort instructed. Wormtail scurried away and began to add more tomes to the blazing fire.

"And Hermione and Ronald! What are you all doing here? Shouldn't you be tucked away safe in bed at that feeble school of yours?"

No one spoke. Voldemort glided round to stand in front of the trio. Harry could hear nothing but the crackle of flames and the thumps of Wormtail heaving books off the shelves.

"Perhaps this is what you think this is? A nightmare?"

Still no one spoke. Harry was conscious that his right arm was still in the air and that his wand was ready to fire any hex he instructed it to. Slowly and delicately, he lowered his arm. The Dark Lord smiled triumphantly and brought forth his own wand with his tapered thumb and forefinger.

"Well I assure you, you won't be waking up."

Then he flicked his wand deftly and spoke two words in a snakelike hiss.