Winter Sunlight

Prologue

    "Why?"

    "Why am I doing this? Why you? Why him? Why what?"

    "Perhaps all of the above."

    "Oh, I'm not sure I can explain."

    "Please, do try."

    "He's a monster, you know."

    "No, I don't."

    "Well, he himself isn't. But what he can become? The walls are crumbling."

    "How do you know all this?"

    "It's not important."

    "You've used...."

    "Please, let us not say his name. I might even feel guilty about it."

    "He isn't a monster."    

    "Really? Then I'll show you, easily enough."

    "How?"

    "Wait and see. You'll be surprised at how easy it is for the other to rise to the surface."

    "What do you gain from this?"

    "Me? Oh, a lot of things. Not the least, every last drop of his magic."

    "I see."

    "Do you? You're much smarter than I gave you credit for."

    "And I knew you weren't the type to save the world, for all your talk of monsters."

    "I'm not. I'm helping myself. Not really interested if the world gets saved along the way."

    "I rather think it will be doomed."

    "Oh shush. Listen! I think he's here. Now you can see for yourself."

    *Who wants to die today?*

    "See? What did I tell you?"

    *    *    *

    Winter Sunlight

    Chapter 6 : Become Monsters, Part II

    "Those who hunt monsters beware, lest they become monsters themselves.

    If you stare long into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you."

                        Nietzsche

    She was sitting on the settee, so very alluring in her simple white long dress, pale blond hair free from her usual tight braid. She looked up to the doorway as she entered, and her brief look of relief was quickly replaced by a pallor deeper than her usual.

    "Narcissa," he called to her. His voice sounded strange to himself, through the churning miasma of emotions wrecking his heart. She shrank back away from him, raising her wand. He almost laughed at her puny resistance.

    "Don't come any closer," she said.

    Harry took a step closer, and she backed away even further. But before he could pour his rage out at her, before he could condemn her and punish her betrayal, there was something in her eyes that made him hesitate. He remembered her looking at him like that, the grieving look of trust betrayed, so many days ago in her flat, when it had been he who had betrayed her trust.

    But why did she look at him so, now?

    He stared at her, frowning, as if she were one of the many traps that would play out on the checkered chessboard. Something was different...something essential had changed. While a part of him screamed and raged and died a thousand times over at her treachery, another part held him in check. A part of his mind that grew clearer with each step he took in her direction, and the growing look of horrow and grief on her pale face. A part of his mind that held his better self in its keeping.

    Realization of the truth was like the sharp shock of cold water passing through his body.

    He stopped whistling.

    He hadn't realized he'd been whistling.

    His left hand, suddenly numb, dropped the wand to the floor.

    The dark wand, stained with blood.

    Perfect twin to his own, held in his right hand.

    Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple.

    Only two had ever been made, and one was his.

    And who had the other belonged to?

    And her face, instead of the raging fury, held the sharp edge of hate and fear mingled with sorrow.

    "Voldemort," she whispered.

    He looked down at his open hand, and saw the familiar palm and fingers. His own hand. Stained, though it could not be seen, with blood. He looked up, and he could see himself reflected in her grey eyes, a pale figure clothed in black, shrouded with death. He put a hand to his head, and found to his surprise that it was pounding. Were all the thoughts that had just gone through his mind his own thoughts? Or did they belong to the Voice, cackling with glee as it hid in a comfortable niche in the back of his mind?

    He staggered a step forward, and she shrank back away from him even further, right up to the wall. He could feel his heart pounding, and the hollow feeling in his gut that spoke of sharp, uncontrollable fear.

    "Narcissa...."

    She stared at him, and he could see her hands shaking with the effort of keeping the wand pointed at him. He spread his hands out helplessly, letting his own wand fall from his hand as well. Gods above, how many had he killed tonight? How many deaths weighed his hands? How many more times must he damn himself to hell?

    "Help me."

    "Just don't," she choked, "come any closer."

    Suddenly there was a thunderclap behind him, and something smashed into his back. His eyes widened in shock, even as he was flung forward, arms flailing, with the force of impact.

    He slammed to the carpeted floor, and he could feel hot blood oozing against his back. The severed nerves screamed in pain, but he felt strangely distanced from the signals his body was sending. He tried to support himself up, but found that his arms were suddenly too weak to support his weight. He feebly raked at the carpet with rapidly weakening fingers.

    A hand grabbed his shoulder and roughly turned him over, and he cried out with pain. He coughed as a knee pushed against his chest and the someone brought their weight to bear on him. Hot blood surged up his throat, and he choked. Turning his head to the side, he coughed harshly, feeling the coppery tang on hot blood on his tongue. His attacker was pressing something pointed against the hollow of his neck, and he slowly righted his head to look.

    His eyes traveled up the plain surface of the wand, to a pair of gleaming eyes peering at him behind them. They were intensely familiar, as was the crooked smile beneath he had found so enchanting, before everything. Her hair brushed against her cheek.

    "Hello, Harry," she greeted him. "Sorry it had to come to this."

    *    *    *

    "Well? Where are they?!"

    Neville knew that his incessant questions and striding around the Office of Apparation was hardly beneficial to his men or their searches, but he simply couldn't sit still at this point. He'd be going through the papers himself, but for the fact that there were only so many folders to go around and look through.

    "Relax, sir. We'll find him. And besides, Mr. Potter knows how to get out of trouble."

    The captain's words hardly soothed him, but at least they made him shut his trap and sit down on a desk with his hands clasped together. Neville stared at his own white knuckles. They were bruised and flattened from years of encountering hard objects in their paths. Almost everyone around him had rough hands. As did Harry. Harry could take care of himself. He always could. Probably always will. Except....

    "Sir, we've got it!" came the triumphant cry from the other end of the room. Neville jumped to his feet, and felt more than saw the captain do the same. They hurried to where a junior team member held a thick logbook open. "He went straight to this place."

    "Then what are you waiting for?! MOVE!"

    *    *    *

    "Hello, Cho," Harry gasped through the pain and shock threatening to overwhelm him. He shoved the screaming pain to the back of his mind, desperately trying to clear his mind for sanity. "I'm sorry it came to this, too."

    She laughed at that, the same silvery laughter he had heard before, all those years ago, when they were young and life was simple. Back when winning the Triwizard Tournament and impressing her had been the biggest thing on his horizon. Back before the war, or the complications of life, or Narcissa. Back before Cedric Diggory. He coughed again, trying not to gag on the rising blood, and she shifted her weight on him, but still pinned him down quite effectively.

    "Whoops. Can't have you dying on me just yet, Harry. Just until I suck your magic dry. And don't move!" The last was sharply commanded at Narcissa. He couldn't see her, but he could see the corners of Cho's lips lift in a grin. "I'll kill him before you say so much as...expelliarmus!" There was a clatter of a wand hitting the far wall, and he could hear a small gasp of pain. With another flick of her wand, Cho held Narcissa's wand in her free hand, which she then pocketed under her sleeve.

    She turned her attention back to him. "Although I guess it's almost time, Harry, while you're all powered up from wiping out my minions." He must have expressed something on his face, because she nodded and answered an unasked question. "Yep. My hired goons, but they're all dead now. So will you. Hence I'll say my goodbyes now. Any last words?"

    "I'm...sorry about...Cedric."

    "You think this is about Cedric?" she asked incredulously. He shook his head weakly, feeling the life drain away from him with each painful breath. The pain in his back had faded to a dull throb.

    "I've...always wanted...to say...it," he gasped out, through rapidly quickening breaths. A cool clinical part of his brain analyzed that he had punctured a lung. "Just never...quite...had the...oppor...tunity."

    She shook her head slowly. "Well, thanks, but I was thinking more along the lines of Narcissa and the child."

    "Child?" he echoed dumbly. "What...child?"

    Cho looked surprised, then threw her head back and screamed with laughter. It was the laughter, sharp and ringing and so full of cruel amusement and dark humor, that truly convinced him that this really was Cho Chang, and she really had gone over the edge.

    "You didn't know!" she wheezed, wiping the tears away with one hand. But the other hand never wavered, and the wand was still deadly steady against his neck. "He doesn't know!" she called out to Narcissa, standing uncertainly against the far wall.

    He wrenched his head around to gaze at her, and met her stormy grey eyes with his own. She hesitated, her expression caught clear on her white face. It was perhaps the most honest thing he'd ever seen on her face, he thought.

    Then he mentally wiped that thought away. She'd always been honest. It had be he, with all the doubts and lies hidden in his mind, who had been the dishonest one. He was just seeing her what she was, finally. Without his own deceit clouding his vision.

    Looking into his eyes, she nodded, a slight tilt of the head, and he looked at her in wonder. Suddenly she smiled, like she had never smiled before, though tears seeped from her eyes down her white cheeks. And he though his heart would break from her exquisite beauty.

    He smiled back. He felt strangely calm.

    "Good bye, Narcissa," he said.

    "Good bye, Harry," she replied.

    The wand pressed sharply against his neck. "Good bye, Harry," Cho mockingly echoed. "This will definitely hurt a bit."

    Then she started chanting an ancient, but familiar spell, and he felt her wand prod sharply against the hollow of his neck. He screamed in agony as his magic was ripped away from his body.

    Suddenly her body bounded off his chest, and the pain was abruptly cut off. He snapped his eyes open, to see Cho whirling around to the doorway with seeker-quickness, crouching low and wand pointed out, prepared to kill.

    Maybe he only imagined the tip of her wand dip in her surprise.

    *    *    *

    Neville stared dumbly at the woman crouched on top of his friend. She somehow noticed him watching her, like she always did, and whirled around in a flash of magic and twirling robe. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and he fancied that her hand was a little slower to point the wand at him, her mouth a little slower to sound out the words of a spell.

    His body felt no such hesitation.

    He felt the magic course through his body to explode out of the tip of his wand, pointed unerringly at her chest. The spell should have simply disarmed her, but instead she was flung back the length of the room to slam against the wall.

    He felt the rush of his fellow aurors around him as they surged to Harry and Narcissa, but he ignored their shouting and all other buzz of noise as he strode firmly over to her. She was slumped against the wall, breathing heavily, a hand clutching her wand and the other holding down the side of her belly. He knelt beside her, tore her wand from her hand and threw it across the room.

    "Let me see," he said, and pocketing his own wand. She looked away as he gently peeled her hand away from the wound, then the bloodstained clothes around it. She hissed in pain as his fingers probed at the long, deep cut to her side. It was a close miracle that it hadn't passed any of her vital organs, and she was bleeding less than he had feared.

    "How bad is it?" she asked, gasping with pain as his hand pressed against her wound, halting the flow of blood..

    "You'll live," he replied curtly. 'She'll live! She'll live!' The cold fear that had been seizing his heart since the spell left his wand relaxed, opening up room for another flood of fear and anger. She said nothing as he took his handkerchief and carefully bound the wound, then gently replaced her clothes over the makeshift bandage. Finally he couldn't stand her silence any longer.

    "What the bloody hell is going on, Cho?!" he demanded, though he pressed against the bandage gently with his hand. Proper treatment could wait until the mediwizards were done with Harry, who seemed to be in a far worse shape. And it had been her who had done that. And what else, besides?

    She grinned at him, though her face was white and her teeth were clenched with pain. "If you still haven't figured it out by now, you're a worse auror than I thought."

    He grimaced, fearing to ask. So he asked something other than the question that threatened to burst from his lips..

    "What book was it?"

    "Well, the old fool had it under 'Vampiric Spells,' but it's really the Magus Noctus."

    He realized that her admission was as good as a proof of her guilt, and shut up. He knew the end of whatever they had was near, but he didn't want to be the one to give it the final blow. Or be the one to send her to the headsman. Fifteen men and women, both the innocent and the not so innocent, were dead by her orders or at her own hands. Nott junior was six feet under. Another score or two of her men lay in various states of injury and death throughout the manor, as well. And then there was Harry Potter himself bleeding to his death on the dark carpets. There was not enough magic nor clout nor authority in the entire world for him to save her now.

    "Narcissa?"

    "Well, I'd like to say she's in the game, but I'm afraid she was just a spectator. And a useful lure, I might add."

    She gasped with pain as his hand tightened on her wound. "Just ask, you fool," she breathed.

    "How much of it was a lie?"

    "Well, I didn't move in next door by chance, I'll say that much."

    "How much of it was a lie?!"

    Forgetting her injuries, he grabbed the front of her robe and jerked her face close to his. She gasped with pain, but managed to grin weakly.

    "Ask, rather, how much of it was the truth."

    His instinct told him something was wrong, deeply wrong, but he couldn't figure it out, with her grinning in his face. She had always managed to throw his thoughts into a loop. He tried to shake his mind clear, but the dim apprehension that had faded in Narcissa's flat was only strengthening. 'Focus,' he commanded himself.

    "Fine then. How much of it was the truth?"

    She laughed as if he'd said something funny, and casually wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled him close, though she winced and gasped in pain. Her hot breath tickled his ear, and her scent was, as always, of roses and mint, but the bitter stench of her blood overwhelmed it all.

    "If you don't know yet," she whispered in his ear. "Then...." And she kissed him gently on his cheek.

    There was a sudden crack of thunder.

    She jerked sharply in his arms, and Neville felt something warm drench the front of his robes. He pulled away in shock, and saw that his chest was covered with dripping blood. He could feel drops of it splattered on his face and taste the metallic tang on his lips. He looked down at her with wide eyes, and she stared right back into the windows of his soul, and grinned.

    "...I'll never tell you," she husked, "so you'll always regret."

    Her eyes widened, going out of focus, and glazed over, unseeing. She slumped back against the wall, head rolling. Her arms slipped to her side, and he could see the small dark metallic object in her hand that his numb brain identified as a gun fall with a heavy thud to the floor.

    He stared with uncomprehending eyes at the gaping hole in her chest. He could see the broken ends of torn skin and tissue and muscle and bone, all pouring out blood in a great flood, into the hollow where her heart used to be. Where he'd also kept his own. A cold, bottomless pit opened at the pit of his belly, and he could feel his heart fall through its gaping maws.

    And then he knew, with certainty, that the world could never be right again.

    "Sir! Sir! Are you all -"

    "Medic!"

    "Somebody call a medi -"

    "They're all looking at -"

    Hands and voices appeared from behind and dragged him away. He hung limply, never taking his eyes off her bloodied and broken body as they pulled him away from her. Away from the shattered remnants of his life.

    "Shit! He's going into -"

    "Hurry the -"

    "Sir! Sir! Stay with -"

    *    *    *

    Harry felt the gentle hands and the warm glow of magic surrounding him. The pain had almost completely disappeared, though his eyes were strangely dim.

    "Narcissa?" he called out. He was reassured to feel cool hands on his forehead, and he raised his own to touch her.

    Or at least, he tried to. For some reason, his body wasn't cooperating. He tried to lift his hands again, and failed.

    "Narcissa, I...."

    "You'll be all right, Harry. You'll be all right. You have to be all right."

    Were those tears in her eyes? Harry blinked his eyes and tried to focus, but it seemed that the room grew even darker with each passing moment.

    "Ma'am, we're going to have to -"

    "If you'll just -"

    "Sir, if you can hold -"

    "He'll -"

    "I -"

    The world slipped away from his grasp.

    *    *    *

    His coat and shirt was roughly torn open, and hands prodded and searched him. Neville felt a sudden burst of anger. He lashed out, flailing his arms. He felt the satisfactory crush of his fist landing on something, and he pushed the remaining hands away brusquely and surged to his feet. Hands reached out - to support him or pull him back, he didn't know, but he roughly shook them all away.

    There was a small circle of aurors gathered at the far wall, who hesitantly moved aside as he approached. He stared down at the floor. In the short time - or had it been a long while? - while he had been taken away, somebody had thoughtfully pulled one of the curtains down and covered her to her shoulders, hiding the ghastly wound from view.

    He thought that particular shade of violet looked very becoming on her.

    He slowly slumped down beside her, leaning against the wall, and gently cradled her head in his lap. She felt feather-light, just like she had always been. Or maybe it was because the loss of her rapidly cooling blood, staining his clothes. Her dark hair was in disarray, covering her face, and he gently brushed them into a semblance of neatness with his fingers.

    Somebody tried to say something to him, but he ignored them all, until he felt their presense move away. Though a few eyes remained on him still. He was beyond caring, so long as they left him with the illusion of solitude.

    Someone had closed her eyes, though her face was pale and unmoving, so that she only looked as if she was sleeping. He took her hand, now cold and stiff, as death settled for permanent residence in her body. Choking back a lump in his throat, he reached into his coat pocket with fumbling fingers and drew out the small, plain golden band.

    It would fit perfectly on her finger. He knew it would.

    Tucking her hand back beneath her shroud and holding the ring in his clenched fist, he leaned back and closed his eyes. And allowed the tears to come.

End Chapter 6