Here Be Dragons

Author's note: Please be warned: this chapter is quite dark.

Chapter 6
October 1994

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The thing Wormtail had been carrying had the shape of a crouched human child, except that Harry had never seen anything less like a child. - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 32

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Charlie and Sasha trudged through the thick Albanian forest without speaking, following a path that was little more than a game trail. The cold, damp air had a chilling effect, and Charlie shivered despite his vigorous physical activity level. The rain had held off so far, though the low clouds threatened to open at any moment.

He'd discussed the troubling developments in England - the riot at the World Cup, a resurgence of Death Eaters - with Sasha the moment he'd arrived back at keeper hut number eight rather than worry him with such alarming reports via owl. He'd also explained the history of the Order, his family's participation in it, its resurrection, and his own whirlwind induction.

"And you trust this Dumbledore?" Sasha had grumbled, brows knit with suspicion.

Charlie had nodded without hesitation. "He's a manipulative old bastard, make no mistake. But he's bloody brilliant. And You-Know-Who feared him more than anyone else."

"Giants fear dragons, yet this does not make either any less dangerous to you or I," Sasha had argued. "I would not trust one to protect me from the other."

Charlie had chuckled at his partner's cynicism, more than a little heartened by how concerned Sasha seemed for his welfare. He'd missed him horribly during the fortnight he'd spent in England, his misery further reinforcing his own conclusions of a year ago in Egypt: he had fallen in love with the burly Russian.

But, somewhat disturbingly, he had not found opportunity to tell him of his Egyptian epiphany during the subsequent year's time. Charlie knew it was wrong of him - shameful and cowardly, even - but such open sentimentalism was not their style. They could talk about almost anything else - in fact, Charlie had learned more about himself and confessed volumes of such to Sasha in the time they'd spent together than at any other period of his history. No one else in the world knew him better. For this reason, he rationalized that Sasha ought to have guessed the depth of his feelings for him by now.

His pack was heavy (dragon keepers reserved weight-eliminating charms for serious jobs like loading full barrels of dung onto carpet transports or moving an incapacitated beast, not a silly backpack), and he shifted the shoulder straps slightly, adjusting its balance. They'd planned to camp overnight in the forest rather than Apparate to an inn, just in case they needed to stake out the mysterious cave they were headed for. Charlie hoped, if nothing else, they might uncover some evidence of the magical bear, new tales of which had continued to surface over the last year. He couldn't quite put his finger on how or why, but he maintained a strong suspicion that this bear had something to do with You-Know-Who.

The most recent tale these particular Muggle villagers had to share was a disturbing one. At some point during the summer just past, a dark change had come over a previously benign area of the forest near a cave. A few people - "sensitive" types - reported hearing sustained screaming, as well as feeling other unnerving sensations, like pockets of bone-deep cold or inexplicable gusts of wind. Over the six weeks since Dumbledore had set him the task, Charlie'd been able to suss out sweet FA about Bertha Jorkins' whereabouts, and this little local legend was the closest thing to a lead he'd managed to come across. The timing and location fit with her disappearance, but the rest of the details sounded more like a banshee issue than anything else.

From what they'd been able to learn from the locals, the "haunted" cave was a long day's hike into the forest from the village. Which meant they ought to be getting close. Sasha cast a quick Point Me charm, and they continued on their course.

A palpable change passed over them as they drew within sight of the cave's mouth. As if the color had been drained from the surroundings, the greys and beiges began to fade and bleed into one another, casting everything in a monochromatic hue of despair. The brisk air became malignantly colder, snaking tendrils of icy fear into his body.

Something Dark lay ahead.

"Feel that?" Charlie whispered, falling out of Romanian and back into English in his anxiety.

"Da," Sasha murmured. His dark eyes scanned the area, never resting in one place for more than an instant, his body tensed and ready for battle.

Charlie was reminded of old Mad-Eye's mantra: Constant vigilance! He granted such a notion was perfectly apropos of the moment and did his own visual reconnaissance. Nothing moved, no sound could be heard. The still silence only heightened the eeriness, though.

The men eased off their packs, stashing them under a nearby bramble. Wands out, they cautiously approached the cave. Charlie cast every revealing spell he knew, but detected no wards, no magical concealments. Whoever had cursed this place didn't seem to care who found it, making him doubt whether anything of value awaited them within.

They breached the mouth of the cave - again, without sensing any magical repellants - and crept inside. Immediately, the temperature plummeted further, fogging each breath. The clammy, dank air was stagnant within, and as they eased deeper into the darkness of the tunnel, Charlie felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding, of present evil.

"Lumos," he murmured, and Sasha did the same.

Deeper they ventured, tens of meters into the earth until the opening behind them resembled a dimly shining Knut. At this point, the ever-narrowing walls of the cave opened up into an unnaturally smooth-walled chamber. No bigger than an average living room, Charlie and Sasha stood in the sole entry and exit: they had reached a dead end.

"This is bad," Sasha said, directing his wand light at something painted on the wall.

Charlie cautiously stepped over a small mound of moldering rubbish to investigate. Throughout the little cavern, sinister-looking symbols had been splashed on the walls and ceiling. The paint was brownish under the wand light, and the artist had been hasty and heavy-handed in his or her application: drops had bled down the wall in ragged lines before the paint had dried.

"Watch your step," Sasha warned.

Charlie looked down just in time to prevent himself from stumbling into a pile of rocks. Upon more careful inspection, though, he determined the rocks were not in a pile at all, but rather laid out in a complicated mandala-like design.

"You recognize any of this?" Charlie asked.

Sasha bit his upper lip and nodded slightly. As a former Durmstrang student, he had far more familiarity with Dark magic than Charlie, not that he ever put any of this knowledge into practice.

"A sacrifice was made here. These symbols have to do with metempsychosis."

Charlie swallowed hard. The transfer of souls from one body into another, be they animal or human, made his skin crawl with revulsion. Judging by the remnant Dark pall on the place, the sacrifice was unlikely a voluntary one. But he knew what he had to do now.

"I'm gonna try something," he said.

Sasha pierced him with an anxious gaze, understanding immediately what he'd meant. "Charlie... don't," he warned.

"I have to try," Charlie argued.

"This is not the sort of thing to play at," Sasha scolded him. "I don't want you to risk it."

Charlie heard the concern bordering on bald panic in his lover's voice. He smiled with a confidence he did not have, attempting to reassure them both. "I have to try," he repeated.

Every school-age child in the wizarding world knew that not every dead soul passed through The Veil. But fewer understood that not every soul who stayed behind became a ghost. Only a minority actually managed to attain the semi-corporeal existence enjoyed by the Hogwarts' ethereal House mascots. And Charlie reasoned that if a sacrifice had happened here - a human one - for the purposes of one soul taking up a new home, then that could mean the recently evicted entity might be lingering behind... possibly with a story to tell.

Back in his school days, Charlie had enrolled in Divination purely because he'd heard it was an easy class to bullshit your way through. Master a few dramatic phrases, riff on some vague predictions of doom or great success that lay ahead in an uncertain timeframe, and you'd get your A - no harm, no foul. He'd never in a million years have guessed that he had any aptitude for mediumship before that strange afternoon in Trelawney's incense-choked tower room when he'd accidentally slipped into a trance (Damnable poufy chairs!) and started channeling some ruddy deceased git who'd regaled the classroom about his Viking conquests. Trelawney had harassed him throughout the rest of his time at Hogwarts, the bug-eyed bint trying to force her "special tutelage" upon him in order to cultivate his "rare gift."

Only Charlie never really saw it as a gift. More like a creepy pain in his arse that he'd very much prefer to forget about. He thanked Merlin his parents had understood and not made him submit to Trelawney's extra lessons. On his own, in secret, he'd read a bit about how to make it happen on purpose - just so he'd never inadvertently do it again.

"I don't like this plan," Sasha growled as Charlie began readying himself.

Charlie shushed him, then turned within. He calmed his heart and breathing, then, visualizing the pricking spot on his forehead becoming translucent, opened himself.

"Are you here?" he whispered, calling into the void beyond. "Speak, and I will listen."

A rush of frigid wind blasted upward from the floor, clawing at his clothes, his very skin. Something had arrived... or finally noticed his presence.

"Tell me what happened here," he invited in as soothing a tone as he could manage.

Sadness. Anger. Then the screaming began.

Charlie grunted, clamping his hands over his ears to no avail. Like a thousand throats wailing every note at once, the cacophony was painful. A pressure built inside his head, threatening to explode.

"I can't understand this," he pleaded, trying in vain to be heard over the cataclysm of sound.

A single voice shredded through his consciousness. WHO ARE YOU?

"No one to fear," Charlie tried to assure the entity, unnerved to hear English answer him. On a hunch, he asked, "Are you... are you Bertha Jorkins?" reckoning if the answer was no, he could quickly cut the connection and get the hell out of there.

His question was met with another round of agonized wailing which resolved a few moments later into the single voice shouting, I WAS BERTHA JORKINS.

Bowel-churning dread filled him. Reluctantly, he asked again, "What happened to you, Bertha?"

He jerked backward as another rush of wind buffeted him, and suddenly, he lost sight of the cavern. Instead, he was meandering through the woods again - the same woods he and Sasha had just hiked through. In his mind's vision, however, it was a warm and sunny day, and he was meandering without any sense of purpose, enjoying the beauty of the forest. For a few moments, a sense of innocent delight permeated him.

He heard a male voice behind him, calling out. He spun around, tried to find the source. A flash of red, then pain. Nothing but pain. Nerve endings in revolt, body writhing. He collapsed onto the ground.

STOLE MY WAND, Bertha's disembodied voice shrieked. DRAGGED ME HERE.

The view changed: Charlie was lying on the floor of the cave now, could feel the hard floor at his back through the cold filter of death. His eyes flickered open - the tiniest movement brought a fresh wave of pain - and he caught a blurry glimpse of a man, short and squat, wearing tatty clothes and a thoroughly haggard demeanor. He was talking to a hulking bear, bowing obsequiously, as if seeking direction from it.

A WIZARD AND HIS FAMILIAR, Bertha snarled.

Charlie got the sense Bertha recognized the wizard, but only superficially. He also doubted her assumption that the bear in any way belonged to the wizard. If anything, it seemed the other way round: the bear commanded the wizard, who groveled to do its bidding. Charlie's pulse quickened to think Bertha had been in the presence of the legendary magical bear he'd been hearing about for so long!

The pallid man seemed to realize Charlie/Bertha was awake and returned to crouch over him. Charlie saw a harried madness lurking behind the fellow's eyes, felt Bertha's rush of fear at the sight of him. Suddenly, he could no longer see or move.

The deafening screaming resumed.

BLINDED! IMMOBILIZED! THEY TORTURED ME. ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TOURNAMENT, she howled.

Rapid-fire jolts of pain wracked Charlie as Bertha recalled her agonies. In a part of his mind reserved for his own conscious thought, he tried to make sense of the tale. Who was this wizard? A gambler keen to cash in on insider information about the upcoming competition? Why would You-Know-Who care about such a trivial thing? This information suddenly cast serious doubt on Charlie's theory that this bear had anything to do with You-Know-Who at all. Maybe Bertha was right, and it was nothing but a familiar.

He was distracted from his thoughts by another vision that was not visual, but sensory. Still blinded and immobilized on the floor, he felt the hot animal breath of the bear on his face and neck, stinking of sour meat.

THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO EAT ME, Bertha sobbed. WISH IT HAD.

"Are you certain she is an adequate vessel, my lord?" he heard the voice of the wizard ask.

Charlie flinched when nasty bear saliva dripped onto his cheek, followed by a great growl. Then the monster bit him, sank his teeth into his shoulder. Pain and blood gushed from his new wound.

TIME PASSED. DON'T KNOW HOW LONG. HE MADE A POTION, Bertha bawled.

Charlie gagged as his throat filled with something thick and bitter, sputtered and choked in an attempt to clear it. Then a new churning in his gut, low and near the base of his pelvis. His lower back ached, and he felt nauseous.

A RIPENING POTION, Bertha keened.

Charlie's mind began to spin, working out the ramifications. Assuming she'd correctly identified the potion... why had the mystery wizard magically forced Bertha into ovulation?

He had barely a second to think before a new and terrible violation ripped through him. Still blind and paralyzed, fiery pain stabbed into a place between his legs, endured repeatedly over what felt like several days. In the midst of Bertha's fury and terror, he felt her sanity begin to slip away.

MY BABY, Bertha hissed.

Charlie shuddered at the horrible chanting in his ears, followed by magic Dark and wicked coursing through his body. Bertha's memory stuttered over miserable days indistinguishable from one another. She'd been repeatedly cursed, tormented with foul potions, barely kept alive. There was a mind-splitting pain in his abdomen as it swelled, then an internal squirming sensation confirmed his most horrific suspicion: Bertha had conceived something monstrous. She'd known it, too - he felt her fear, her anti-maternal revulsion at the thought of what grew within her, her suffocating despair, her desperate craving for death.

NOOO! Bertha's caterwaul of protest reverberated in Charlie's skull, blaring through dimensions of reality and non-existence that had no business commingling.

Another potion seared his throat, and his body heaved with yet another unique permutation of agony. As he labored to give birth to unknown hideousness, unholy chanting resumed. The fire between his legs intensified, as did Bertha's screaming. The bear roared its last, and spurting blood scalded Charlie's skin. Then he felt, in the next instant, an obscene corruption infiltrate the thing struggling to get out of him.

The pain stopped with an alarming suddenness, and a silence that was as deafening as the screaming descended upon him. Bertha's soul had left her mutilated body then - mutilation he could now observe in detail from her floating perspective. The dead bear lay on the floor beside her, blood gushing from the slit in its throat, pooling beneath her body. The bear's minion - that disgusting, balding, buck-toothed rodent of a man - held his wand in one hand, a malignant, bloody knife in the other. The husk that remained of Bertha Jorkins lay unmoving on the ground.

The knife glinted, then slashed Bertha's belly open. The wizard reached within her and began pulling out something black...

"NO!" Charlie bellowed, yanking himself back into the world of the living and slamming shut the door of his hyper-consciousness. He knew in the depth of his soul, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no one who ever laid eyes on that thing Bertha had incubated - that embodiment of evil incarnate - would ever live to escape the cursed sight. Fearing for his own peace of mind, his very sanity, he fled.

"Charlie!" Sasha called after him.

"Run!" Charlie begged him without skipping a step. His eyes glued to the tiny circle of light ahead of him, he ran toward his only hope of salvation. The linings of his nose, throat, and lungs burned with the effort to haul in sufficient oxygen to fuel his escape.

He erupted out of the cursed cavern that now served as Bertha's tomb. Staggering a few meters into the clearing, he collapsed, shaking from both the physical effort and metaphysical trauma.

"Charlie!" Sasha cried as he knelt beside him. He grabbed him by the head and searched his eyes. "Tell me you are all right."

Charlie hooked his hands on Sasha's thick forearms, willing his body to absorb any strength or calm he had to spare. He stared into loving brown eyes, desperate to lose himself there, but the aftershocks of Bertha's pain, the abuse she'd suffered, flashes of the vile visions she'd shared wouldn't leave him.

"Please," he begged in a voice so terrified and hoarse he couldn't recognize it as his own. "Help me." He had to get this poisonous filth out of his head or he would go mad.

Sasha held him tightly with one arm and summoned his pack with the other. A delicate vial levitated out of it on command, hovering for a moment in midair. Charlie shuddered to think such a clean, innocent thing was about to be defiled with the most heinous desecration he'd ever imagined. He doubted the fragile-looking object could securely contain such evil.

Charlie gripped his wand, tried to hold it still against his temple, but was yet shaking too violently to maintain a decent connection, much less cast the spell. With a strong hand wrapped around Charlie's, Sasha gently but firmly steadied his wand. Together, they murmured the incantation that would completely remove the experience from his memory, rather than just duplicate it for the purpose of harvesting, and Charlie was incrementally soothed by Sasha's strong, low voice in his ear - a welcome melody considering what he'd been subjected to moments ago.

He was slightly surprised as they slowly drew his wand tip away from his head, spinning the memory thread out like a magical spindle, that it glowed a beautiful silvery-blue, just like all the others he'd ever seen. He'd expected the horror to manifest itself in some visual way...

Charlie startled, as if jolting awake from a daydream. Sasha was holding his hand, which was holding his wand, helping guide a shining memory - such a lovely, wafting thing! - into a waiting vial, then capped it. In the moment's disorientation, he breathed in relief, even though he didn't understand why Sasha was supporting him so tightly. A haunting sense of generic unpleasantness was associated with the cave behind him - he remembered their mission up to the point of approaching the entrance to it.

Logic led him to conclude, "It was bad, wasn't it?"

Sasha nodded gravely. "You very foolishly and bravely completed your duty. Now we are done."

Charlie tried to rise to his feet, embarrassed he needed Sasha's help to do so. Sasha guided Charlie's arm around his shoulders, slid his around his waist, then charmed their packs to follow as they slowly walked away from the cave.

"Why aren't you affected?" Charlie asked, curious as to why he felt so bloody weak and shaky.

"I only watched you work," Sasha replied gruffly, struggling to control what looked like anger and frustration. "I did not share your experience."

Although Sasha had chosen his words carefully, Charlie began to puzzle together what must have happened. Without knowing precisely why, he felt sure that they had found Bertha, and she was dead. Charlie spared one final glance at the cave behind him and offered a little prayer that, wherever she was now, the poor woman had found some peace.

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Author's note: according to a reported JKR interview, Bertha Jorkins' death was used by Voldemort to transform Nagini from mere familiar into a Horcrux. In my opinion, a gigantic (tropical?) snake really doesn't belong in the clammy, cool forests of remote Albania. Instead, for the purposes of my story, Voldemort employed Frank Bryce's murder for the final Horcrux creation. Perhaps Nagini found herself a nice, warm English sewer to reside in during the interim while her master was in exile.