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Bad Faith	By : angharad1143 Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 7649 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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             The terms pitched and battle had always conveyed an odd informality to Harry, as if a pitched battle
was any less deadly serious than a real one. In his experience, there was little difference between the two:
people screamed, people fought, people fell bloodied and dying in places that always ended up looking like
the eight or ninth circle of hell. Death in a field of daisies in the sunshine was still death.

             Of course, he thought, ducking a curse an instant after he Apparated, this place was not exactly a
field of daisies, and what little sun remained was sinking into a bloody pool on the western horizon. No,
despite chintz armchairs and a preponderance of doilies, this already qualified as some circle of hell.

             Darkness fell swift and sudden through narrow corridors, and were it not for the masks and hoods
Death Eaters insisted on wearing, it would be difficult to tell friend from foe.

             Of course, tonight, that wasn’t his job. His job was to find Voldemort and end it...whatever ending
it would mean.

             It had been the work of the last twenty-three years of his life, whether he knew it or not, the task for
which he’d trained, sweated, bled, and eventually, killed. He’d done it before. He could do it again.

             The thought didn’t stop a slight tremor in his lightly perspiring hands, and Harry wiped them swiftly
on his robes, holding tight to his wand as he almost belly-crawled to the door. Jets of light were flying fast
and furiously over his head, and while he didn’t think anyone had seen him yet...

             A smoking crater near his elbow instantly disproved that theory and Harry cursed as he rolled behind
a couch.

             “Stupefy!” He shouted, the red jet spinning off in the darkness, refracting off another curse and
plowing into a different masked figure. All the same, he thought with a mental shrug, taking cool aim and
firing again. There were, perhaps, more impressive curses to be used, but he was an Auror and Aurors were
taught to take their foes alive, if possible. Though from the tumult resounding through the house, alive might
not be an option for long.

             He was grinding the memory of the losses to both the Order and the Ministry into the very back of
his mind, but it sprung up repeatedly, like mushrooms after the rain. His friends, his schoolmates, Bill
Weasley...Draco Malfoy, he added, with a start. Time had not dimmed the shock of affixing that name to
his personal list.

             He flashed back on Hermione’s ghostly pale face as she told him to go, and gritted his teeth, edging
toward the door, eye on the door to his back. He was fairly certain this room was clear, but Merlin only knew
how many rooms this rotting sore of a house had.

             Dimly, through the thick oak door, he heard shouting.

             Kicking it open, he roared “Lumos!” as he entered, hitting the floor instantly as his flare bounced
blindingly along the ceiling with a deafening bang. Whatever Aurors were in the room would be used to the
tactic, and should recover more quickly. Blinking rapidly to adjust his own eyes to the light, he rolled again
to avoid the green light of some unnamed curse. “Displodo!” he yelled, voice oddly loud in the silence
between object and impact. The far side of the room exploded, flinging Death Eaters willy-nilly, bits of one
unfortunate falling in a grisly rain. Tightening his mouth, Harry clapped a slightly green Susan Bones on the
shoulder in passing, edging around a vast dining table to the swinging door at the far end of the room.
Keeping his eyes, rather desperately, away from the scorched and faintly smoking remains opposite.

             The door burst open before he reached it, a maskless and hoodless body soaring through in an almost
graceful arc, bouncing along the floor as the light of the lumos flare dimmed. Susan moved toward him or
her instantly, and Harry didn’t bother, didn’t want to know just now. Later. Much later. Merlin willing.

             Another room, and another, the Death Eaters adapting swiftly to the lumos flare. Ruthlessly, he
changed it, firing a screamingly bright displodo into their midst, sending it shrieking against a wall...using
all the tricks he’d been taught, honed and adjusted through harsh exigency, finally stumbling on a long
hallway and nearly getting a stupefy from Ron for his trouble.

             “Sorry, mate. Bit down there, I think–”

             Ron swore viciously and whirled as silver bolt whistled past his ears, reducing the chair he’d been
sheltering behind to smouldering ashes.

             “Avada Kedavra!” he shouted, sending the Killing Curse into the darkness of the corridor behind
him, following it up with a flurry of other curses as he moved to the wall, crouching there as a shriek echoed
down the passage. “Go on, then, Harry...stupefy!”

             Sending a few curses over his own shoulders, Harry got on, instinctively hitting the floor as
something galloped heavily behind him, almost taking his head off his shoulders. The armchair bounced
down the hallway and whirled, doilies flapping, charging back for round two.

             “Reducto!” Harry shouted, thoroughly discomfited, and the curse–messily–struck a Death Eater that
loomed out of the darkness. Ducking, Harry grimly finished the man, which was likely a mercy, given the
condition of his face. The chair glanced his shoulder, clawed feet raking at him in passing. “Reducto!” he
yelled again, reducing the enchanted object to matchsticks and hurrying down the hall, wand out and up.
Wondering, briefly, how much of the furniture was going to attack him as he passed it.

             A small figure bowled him over in the darkness, and he caught the flash of bright hair as a brilliant
jet of light shot of them both.

             “Tonks–Moody–pinned down,” Ginny gasped. “Ron?”

             “Busy,” Harry replied grimly, following her down the corridor and dropping the Death Eater who’d
fired at her from fifty paces.

             The hallway widened into a room at the end, and Harry yanked Ginny back from the corner, cursing
her inexperience. She was swift–and creative–with hexes, but she was also just out of Auror training.

             Daring a peek around the corner himself, Harry saw the dark motion of some half-dozen Death Eaters
as Tonks and Moody fought them off, Moody turning almost gracefully on his wooden leg, wand flashing
too rapidly to see.

             “Lumos!” Ginny shouted, beating him to the punch, and Tonks, Harry, and Moody dropped as the
flare imploded in the room, nearly setting the ceiling on fire. Screwing up his eyes, Harry fired, breathed,
fired again, dragging Ginny behind him. Tonks dispatched another Death Eater, and caught Moody as he fell,
struck with Stunning Curses from two sides. His magic eye spun out its socket and rolled. A Death Eater
stepped on it and slipped, falling to the floor with a resounding crash.

             Stifling an almost hysterical laugh, Harry stunned her, leaving Ginny to deal with Tonks and Moody.
Moody would be pleased, he thought, snickering, and lunged back as brightly robed figure shot out of the
darkness as though fired from a cannon, catching both Ginny and Tonks and smashing them to the floor as
a fresh volley of Killing Curses erupted from the opposite side of the room.

             Dean Thomas sat partway up and grinned at Harry, motioning him on as he briefly smacked a kiss
on Ginny’s cheek and fired back at the Death Eaters.

             Much as it galled him to leave them, Harry knew he’d never find Voldemort if he stopped to fight
every Death Eater in this madhouse. Moving down yet another darkened hallway, he eyed the table there
warily and shouted for Voldemort.

             The affect was abrupt and hardly surprising; Death Eaters appeared as if by Summoning Charm, and
Harry swore, Apparating three feet back and to his right, a modified version of the “skipping” Moody had
taught them–one that required only half his concentration, as he was moving to places he could see from the
corners of his eyes. Again, and again, back and forth, firing Curses as he Apparated, whimsically setting the
hall table on them and catching glimpses of it as it barrelled toward them, drawers open and snapping
viciously.

             “Impedimenta!” shouted a hoarse voice, and he was too slow to Apparate, blasting backward, breath
knocked out of him, he summoned his scattered wits to wink out before he hit the floor, reappearing a few
feet back from his previous position. Winded, but standing.

             The table was reduced to splinters, but it had done its work; two Death Eaters were out cold on the
floor, shadowy forms very still, and the third advanced with an arrogant stride that Harry instantly
recognized.

             Hatred that he had seldom before known flashed up in him, hot and suffocating, and his smile was
more a baring of teeth as he bowed sardonically to Bellatrix Lestrange, foremost servant of the Dark Lord
and murderer of Sirius Black.

             Time had done absolutely nothing to dim his abject and passionate hatred of the woman.

             Endlessly pleased with herself, she slipped the hood off her head and the mask off her face–a face
that, though aging, still retained vestiges of beauty, though it was shuttered and cloaked with absolute and
irredeemable madness.

             He would kill her, he thought coldly, lifting his wand. Oh, this was one he would kill.

             “The wittle baby’s all growed up,” she sing-songed. “Crucio!”

             “Protego!” Harry sidestepped nonetheless. It was not the first time he had dueled Bellatrix since
Sirius’s death, but by Merlin, it would be the last. “Confractum!”

             Bellatrix dodged hastily, the wall beside her buckling to the ceiling, long cracks radiating like the
spokes of a spider’s web.

             “Oblisum animus!” She shouted, slashing with her wand, a jet of purple flame pulsing out with a
sickly light–the same curse he had seen once before, Harry recalled, at the Battle of the Department of
Mysteries. Even though Dolohov had been under the Silencing Charm, it had nearly killed Hermione.

             “Contego!” He yelled, consigning the ill-looking flame to oblivion.

             “The crushing of the heart, Potter!” He heard her shout in the darkness. “Is your blood-traitor friend
dead yet?”

              Malfoy.

             He wouldn’t think of it, there wasn’t time–“Displodo!”

             “Contego!” She shouted back, leaping to avoid the wooden shards that burst like shrapnel from the
floor.

             “Avada Kedavra!”

             The jet moved through the darkness, a rushing silence that narrowly missed Bellatrix and stopped
her laughter, which was better than nothing, he supposed. “Confractum!” He bellowed, aiming in the
direction the laughter had been coming from, hearing Bellatrix screech as the silvery bolt hit the wall again,
throwing her forward into a mirror. It shattered, glass falling in long shards on top of the woman. “Petrificus
Totalus!” he added, pressing his advantage, and to his delight, she seized up in the midst of the glass, stiff
and unmoving.

             “Muggles say breaking a mirror is seven year’s bad luck,” he informed her, advancing with the dim
thought of the Killing Curse swirling in his head. “Don’t think you have seven years, Bellatrix.”

             If you can kill this coldly, Harry...came a weary voice, cutting through the curse on his lips.

             Goddammit.

             Not while she was helpless. As much as he wanted her dead, he couldn’t do it when she was
powerless to stop him. Not like this.

             And no fucking time to debate where to send her, how to bind her, how to be certain that she
wouldn’t appear at his back later, twice as deadly for the surprise...how much easier it would be to just kill
her now. Efficient, his mind supplied, and he suppressed another vicious oath and bound her, sending her by
Portkey back to the vague area where Tonks, Ginny, and Dean had been. That would have to suffice. Let
some Ministry executioner kill her, if the Ministry survived this war.

             Moving off into the deepening darkness, Harry shouted again for Voldemort.
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Bad Faith