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World in Pieces	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 16431 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Six--I Await a Protector

            Harry sighed and rolled his eyes up at the canopy of the other Harry's bed, then rolled over and punched the pillow. He hated sleeping here, and in the morning he was going to tell Malfoy that and move somewhere else. But so far, no one else had seemed to think that where he slept was important, and both Snape and Evelina had taught him several spells that he could wrap around his bed to prevent anyone else from bothering him.

            And Malfoy had looked so bloody relieved when he realized that Harry wasn't going to leave him alone here...

            Harry punched the pillow again.

            Malfoy was a problem, and the chance that Snape might be lying was a problem, and Voldemort was a problem, and the very high chance that he might never be able to go home again, no matter how much research the Order did, was a problem. And so was the lack of sleep, and Harry really wanted to get some so that he could be sure he would be alert enough for the training sessions tomorrow, never mind the moment when they sent the Patronuses to Voldemort's camp to hunt him down.

            Harry closed his eyes and tried counting backwards from one hundred. Then he tried counting forwards. Both times, he lost count somewhere in the sixties, and ended up more tense and unhappy than before, because surely he ought to be able to keep track of fucking numbers.

            He rolled over again, and decided that he would try sleeping on his left side. He hadn't tried that since, oh, two hours ago. He flopped over and stuck both hands beneath the pillow this time, for the sake of something new and exciting to do.

            His left hand hit something, fingers and knuckles colliding hard enough that Harry winced and sat up. He pulled back the pillow and realized that it was one of the decorations on the headboard, a solid knob of ugly gold. Harry shook his head. Everyone liked to talk about how the other Harry had traits of the other Houses and was so important and smart and talented, but one deficiency they so far hadn't mentioned was his utter lack of taste.

            The knob seemed to quiver as he pushed against it, which Harry had to admit was strange. He paused and pressed his hand more firmly inwards, watching with no great surprise as the knob clicked and retreated. Well, so there was a secret compartment in the other Harry's bed. Probably expected by everyone, since he'd been a Slytherin.

            Harry thought he'd find private things in there, the sort of personal artifacts that he would have hidden if the Gryffindor beds had containers like this. Photographs. Private presents from Sirius, or other people who mattered to him. Maybe even love letters from Malfoy, though admittedly they wouldn't have much to write to each other about, since they slept right beside each other.

            He didn't expect to find a diary.

            Harry pulled out the slim book and stared at it, glad that he'd cast the charms Snape had told him about on the bed so that the Lumos charm he raised wouldn't disturb Malfoy. The book had a black leather cover with a silver symbol embossed on it. If Harry squinted, the symbol looked like two snakes entwined.

            About to open the diary, he hesitated. How sure was he that this wasn't this world's version of Tom Riddle's diary, rescued from the Chamber of Secrets instead of destroyed? He knew that it wasn't very likely, especially since most people seemed sure of what had happened there, but he still cast a bunch of spells to test for Dark magic before he flipped it open to the first page.

            The writing there was instantly recognizable, because it was his own, if a little neater. This Harry had probably learned to write with a quill at a younger age. But he couldn't read it. It seemed to be some kind of code, random letters interspersed with numbers here and there. Harry let out a long, frustrated hiss.

            Who knew this was here? It was sad that that was his first thought, instead of what the diary contained, but the Order was keeping too many secrets, and they were too ruthless. If the other Harry had hidden this from everyone, even his mentor and his godfather and his boyfriend, Harry wouldn't be a bit surprised.

            He squinted at the code and began flipping through the pages, hoping for a bit that was written in legible English, or perhaps one that contained a key to deciphering the code. But nothing appeared. Harry traced one word, l1avg4frq5, and sighed. Of course, the other Harry seemed pretty comfortable with this code, and he hadn't intended anyone else to see this. Why would he want to write down a key?

            Harry decided that he would keep the diary a secret for now, and the compartment as well. This might be something Snape could help him translate, but on the other hand...

            On the other hand, he hadn't mentioned it so far, and it might be something the other Harry hadn't wanted him to see. Harry knew all about keeping the secrets of the dead, and respecting their privacy.

            He put the diary back in the compartment and pressed on the knot of gold, sliding it closed again. This time, he watched closely and noted the faint shimmer around the metal when he touched it. He smiled thinly. That would be the reason that no one else had found it, although they had to have searched the other Harry's room after his death. Harry strongly suspected that no one but Harry Potter could open this particular compartment, and whatever base he had used for the spell--blood or magical signature or something else--it happened to have translated from world to world.

            Harry curled up on the bed and closed his eyes. I'll find out what you were talking about and decide how best to use it, I promise.

*

            "Now. You're ready, Harry, my boy?"

            Severus tightened his shoulders to keep from responding. He wondered why Harry couldn't see how patronizing Albus was, how the twinkle in his eye still hadn't recovered from the surprise of yesterday when the boy talked about defeating the necromantic falcon. But Harry only nodded as though the twinkle wasn't dimmed or didn't matter to him, and then lifted his wand and began to quietly intone the spell that Albus had told them to use.

            The air shivered around them. Granger and Weasley were calling forth their Patronuses as well, the otter and the terrier, but Severus had seen them many times when they were sending messages to other Order members or fighting in a desperate battle. He watched intently as the silvery mist flowed out of Harry's wand instead.

            It coalesced into the shining stag, not such a surprise now that Severus knew what to expect. The stag tossed its antlers and turned its head from side to side as though evaluating the people its master stood among. Severus started as its eyes passed over him; he had thought, for a moment, that it flipped its ears at him and bobbed its antlers slightly.

            Stupid. Impossible. But it seemed that way, anyway, and Severus had to shake his head to convince himself it was not so.

            At last the Patronuses were fully formed, and there was an extra heft and solidity to Granger's and Weasley's that they didn't usually have. Harry's looked the same as before. Albus looked at them all gravely and lifted his wand, drawing a circle in the air that flared with white light. Through it, Severus could make out a tumbledown house of the sort that the Dark Lord often favored as his lairs.

            "This is as close as I can come to his wards," Albus said quietly. "Your Patronuses can travel in ways that would kill any human who tried to cross through them. Go, now. Send them."

            Severus narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. It was true that he had seen Albus cast the spell that created a circle of white fire before, although he had used it then to send flying daggers, not Patronuses. Until the point where Severus saw it used to injure Harry, however, he would hold his peace and hope that Albus knew what he was doing as much as he sometimes seemed to.

            The terrier and the otter went through first, running along familiarly in each other's company. The stag stepped after them, moving so delicately that Severus wasn't sure its hooves touched the ground. Albus nodded and closed the circle, then reached out. Because they were once again meeting in the Sunshine Room, a version of the Room of Requirement, the room provided what he needed, and there was suddenly a large clay jug of water there that hadn't been present before. Albus enlarged it with a few taps of his wand and then called them forwards.

            "We can watch the confrontation between the Death Eaters and the Patronuses in this," he said. "And you can direct them, Ron, Hermione..." There was the slightest pause before he said, "Harry."

            If Harry was wise, he would notice it, Severus thought. And the adoring way that Draco's eyes fixed on him, and the way Lucius smiled, and the uneasy glances that Black sometimes gave him.

            But perhaps Harry had enough to worry about with simply directing his Patronus right now, because he didn't turn away from the jug of water to notice any of those things. He was watching, instead, as the three animals leaped into the midst of the Death Eater headquarters. Severus caught a glimpse of dark walls flashing past, lit only by the faint radiance that the Patronuses carried with them.

            He did see, with absent pride, that Harry's stag was brighter than all the rest.

            And then the water flared with much brighter light, and the battle began.

*

            Harry had never done anything like this. He could see his Patronus racing through the dark corridors in Dumbledore's scrying jug, but at the same time, he could feel it, a distant connection that sang through him. Now and then he shook his head, trying to dissipate the ringing in his ears, but then the first Death Eaters showed up, and he realized that he wanted to pay attention to them, rather than the side-effects of the spell.

            The Death Eaters skidded to a stop and stared at the three animals. Harry wondered if they didn't recognize them as Patronuses, or just didn't know how to deal with them. Given what Dumbledore had said in the meeting where he explained this tactic, Harry thought it was the latter.

            Then one of the Death Eaters tried to raise a ward, but the stag had already leaped past them, and Hermione's and Ron's animals were quick to follow. Harry exchanged a glance with his friends--

            Not your friends, remember that they're part of this world and the part of this Order that you don't dare trust--

            And found them smiling at him, exhilarated. He'd never hunted with them like this before, but it already seemed familiar, the movements coming back to him as if he'd practiced them all his life.

            Dumbledore had said that the spell he'd cast would imbue the Patronuses with some measure of protection and the ability to use a wizard's own magic. Harry smiled more widely as he remembered some of the spells that Evelina had taught him, and closed his eyes.

            Could he reach out through his Patronus across this distance and recognize some of the things like the falcon that Voldemort might have serving him?

            Maybe. It was worth a try, at least.

            "Mortem sentio," he whispered, and the magic crackled through him and leaped into the scrying jug, leaving him breathless. He felt Ron grab one arm and Hermione the other, and a swift, slight pressure on the small of his back was Malfoy's hand. Harry staggered upright, gasping, and ignoring questions as he peered into the water again.

            The stag had begun to glow as though a comet was blazing through its body. It turned its head from side to side, and Harry felt the connection between them flicker and shine, and grow stronger. He was seeing through its eyes now, more than he was looking at the Patronus in the scrying jug. He whooped with excitement, though he was so tired it came out nearly breathless, and watched the stag leap down a side corridor.

            The otter and the terrier followed, and Hermione asked beside him, just as breathless, "What are you doing? Where are we going?"

            Harry didn't answer, partially because he thought he needed to save his strength for more magic and partially because the answer to Hermione's question appeared in front of them just then. It was a rotting body that Harry thought might have been a horse at one point, or possibly a thestral. The grey tendons creaked as the body turned to face them, and although the connection between him and his Patronus wasn't strong enough to allow him to smell anything, Harry could imagine the stink that came from the rags of flesh clinging to the bones.

            The horse screamed, stamped, and charged. Harry watched the dark flickers of power washing over it and knew it could probably hurt his Patronus even if the stag wasn't entirely there.

            "Elanguesco!" he called, hardly planned, his mind working down the list of Evelina's spells, and the stag reared up on its hind legs and bowed its antlers at the same time, shooting the dark silver bolt of power at the horse.

            The skeletal jaws parted, and the horse swallowed the power. For a moment, Harry feared nothing would happen. Ron and Hermione's Patronuses had scampered up the walls, and his stag had to jump as the horse continued to whirl forwards, broken hooves scraping out, marking the floor and tracing shallow grooves there.

            Then the horse came to a stop, shuddering. Harry watched the tendons relax and elongate, the glittering magical connections between the bones grow looser, and the hold of the necromantic power on its body slowly give up. That was what was supposed to happen with this spell, but he hadn't been entirely sure it would.

            The horse turned its head and stared at him, or rather, at his stag. Harry saw the glitter of its grey eyes, and reckoned that it was wearing a betrayed expression. It was supposed to be fighting something insubstantial in his Patronus, those eyes said, not something that could destroy it.

            Then the bones collapsed in a long wave that started with the spine, and the horse wasn't barring their way anymore. Harry sent the stag forwards with a single gesture, and once again the otter and the terrier followed.

            "I didn't know you could do that," Ron whispered, in what sounded like a pause between steps.

            Harry said nothing. He needed his concentration, at the moment, more for the battles that he could sense coming up. But he noted silently that Ron also seemed to be forgetting he wasn't actually the Harry who had been born native to this world.

            That could cause all sorts of problems, later.

            The three Patronuses blasted through several more rooms, stunning Death Eaters and ruining some crates of food and Potions ingredients. The spell Dumbledore had cast meant they were solid enough for that. Ron's terrier dragged the food out, shaking his head so that it flew in all directions. Hermione's otter dived into the floor and then came up chewing delicate leaves. Harry's stag stamped and shattered with his hooves, and then caught up the remains on his antlers and threw it against the wall. They were always off again, running, when they heard Death Eaters coming.

            Harry knew the run had to end sometime. Either the Patronuses would fade because their strength was fading, or they would run up against something powerful enough to destroy them.

            But he didn't anticipate the man they would see waiting for them when they rounded a corner and came to a dead end before a locked door.

            He was thin, tall, with dark hair streaked with grey and a long, thin nose that would probably disappear when he turned sideways. Around him coiled a shimmering, silvery miniature dragon, his own Patronus. At his feet rose a spitting, swaying nest of cobras. Harry still might not have recognized him if not for the red eyes. This man looked very different from the Voldemort of his world.

            Voldemort smiled at the stag and inclined his head as if they were acquaintances meeting at a party. "Harry Potter," he said. "Again. Excuse me for greeting you so violently; I find it bad policy to do otherwise."

            He held up his hand and snapped his fingers. The air above him swirled with what looked like heavy, glittering smoke, and a cloud formed there with three separate lightning bolts. The lightning slammed into the dragon Patronus, which lifted its swelling neck.

            Harry's stag jumped in front of the other two Patronuses, instinctively trying to protect them. But Harry could already feel the heavy, electric discharge of magic in the air, and knew it would be useless. Their run had come to an end.

            "Release your hold on the Patronuses!" Dumbledore shouted. "He'll try to destroy you through them!"

            The lightning bolts were already flying from the dragon's mouth, though. Harry heard Ron and Hermione shriek as they slammed into the otter and terrier. He thought he would feel the same thing when the third bolt struck the neck of his stag.

            He didn't.

            Instead, there was a terrifying moment of darkness and disorientation, a sensation that he was in a cage that had turned upside-down...

            And then there was rough stone beneath his feet, and he was standing in front of Voldemort in the place of his stag, forcibly Apparated to him.

*

            Severus surged to his feet with an oath that he bit back as he watched Harry disappear. Both Weasley and Granger were sprawled on the floor, their breathing shallow and their faces pale. Minerva bent over them, chanting grim words. Her strain and effort was visible in the way she swept her wand continually over their chests.

            Severus was not interested. He thought it likely that the two Gryffindors would survive. They had enough magical strength to send their Patronuses a long distance; the backlash from the destruction of the Patronuses would put them in the hospital wing, but not destroy them. He moved swiftly towards Albus, who was standing still and staring into the water. Severus had never seen his face look the way it did now.

            "How do we retrieve him?" Severus kept his voice down with an effort. Shrieking would be demeaning, and would not help to get Harry back.

            "I don't know," Albus said. His words trailed off and drifted, tattered and lost. "I...did not expect this. I never thought Tom capable..." He bent over the water and spoke a single, clear word in a language Severus didn't recognize, which made his head ring like a bell.

            The water writhed, and a brief light glowed within it, which took on the form of a human figure for a moment. Severus held his breath, hoping that the boy would rise from the water as abruptly as he had dropped within it.

            But then the light faded, and when it went, the water was ordinary water again. They had lost sight of both Harry and the Dark Lord. Albus tapped his wand against the jug and said something else in the same language. It remained stubbornly dark.

            Severus took a step back and held out a hand. They still stood within the Room of Requirement, after all, never mind that Albus had created a particular version of it for their meeting. "I require a way to see Harry Potter," he said harshly, and the Room shimmered and made a hand mirror appear next to him on the nearest chair.

            Severus stared into it, and then frowned. It showed nothing but a flat piece of wood, and darkness other than that.

            Understanding was not long in coming, and when it came, he cast the mirror from him and watched in a cold rage as it shattered to pieces on the floor. Albus took a step towards him, and Minerva briefly glanced up from her soothing of the Wonder Twins. Draco looked as if he wanted to edge closer, but his father put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.

            "What are you doing, Snape?" Black, as was typical for him, looked like he wanted to leap at Severus's throat because he understood nothing. "That could have been our best link to Harry, and you--"

            "It showed the inside of Harry's coffin," Severus said, and watched Black flinch with more satisfaction than usual. "The coffin of the boy who was born and died in our world. I do not think the Room can connect our wishes with the one who has come to us later. It is notoriously unable to reach between universes."

            He turned back to Albus, ignoring both the slow grinding of despair in the back of his mind and his desire to torture Black further. He would find a solution. He would do it because, though he was more capable and battle-ready than Severus had assumed, Harry was not yet ready to face the Dark Lord on his own. They would steal him back somehow and continue educating him.

            Although not until Severus asked him what he had meant, leaping unprepared into a situation like this without finding a way out.

            "Well, Albus?" he asked, and kept his tone milder than he might have, which only made Albus narrow his eyes. They had no twinkle now. He knew the nuances of Severus's voice, knew that his very restraint was cutting. "How do we retrieve the only hope of ridding our world of the Dark Lord's presence?"

            "I would certainly hope the boy is more than that to all of us, Severus," Albus murmured, in the delicately chiding tone he sometimes used to lecture Severus in front of the Order. Severus was unmoved. No one else would care about the power play between him and the Headmaster at the moment, not when they had the fear of dying to focus on. "Particularly to you."

            Severus returned him a stare of flat incredulity. Power plays be damned, but he would do what he must to keep Harry safe by throwing Albus off the track as far as their alliance went. "He is not the boy I knew," he said. "But he is someone I want to retrieve. What is your plan?"

            "Yes, we must have one," Albus murmured, and turned away as if he would think. Severus watched his back and waited. There were spells he could use, but they would necessitate leaving the Order's presence. Save Lucius and perhaps Draco, they would all object at his using Dark magic to find Harry.

            Severus braced himself for the next thought. If it is not already too late. If he has not died.

            If that was the case...

            He could do nothing for Harry, but he could do something for the next version of him summoned. He knew the preparations that the Order needed to make for such a delicate spell as pulling someone between universes. He would interrupt them at the proper moment to disrupt the spell, and the backlash would leave the Order useless for months.

            If we cannot save ourselves, perhaps we deserve to be destroyed.

*

            "Dumbledore said that you couldn't make a Patronus," Harry said, because he had to say something, and thinking about the silvery dragon resting on Voldemort's shoulders was better than thinking about how utterly fucked he was.

            The stone floor under his feet burned cold against them. The jagged walls made him wonder what would happen if he tried to run. Voldemort would catch him, of course, but running might be better than standing still and waiting for death. And what did he care if Voldemort thought he was a coward?

            Voldemort said nothing, but stood there, a genuine smile on his lips. The dragon hissed at Harry, and the snakes coiled at his feet watched him. Harry reckoned they expressed the bastard's real emotions and kept an eye on them so that he would know when he had to move.

            "I like to keep surprises in reserve for my enemies," Voldemort said finally, after a pause long and leisurely enough to examine Harry from top to toes. "And that most definitely includes the only man to still call me by my Muggle name."

            "I can do that for you if you want," Harry said. "Tom's certainly shorter."

            Voldemort only looked at him more keenly instead of flying into a rage. "You're more focused on survival than the rest of them were," he said at last. "Less confident. They had been told they could defeat me. You don't believe that, do you? You only believe that you must, so you can achieve whatever existence would be most preferable for you afterwards."

            That was so accurate that Harry's mouth dried out. But giving in was still out of the question, so he aimed his wand at Voldemort and barked, "Expelliarmus!"

            Voldemort moved his hand slightly, and the spell simply vanished as it left Harry's vicinity. Harry stared at the air until his eyes watered, but made out no sign of a Shield Charm. If Voldemort had used normal magic to defend himself against the Disarming spell, then it had no sound, sight, or taste.

            "Yes, I thought you might try that one," Voldemort said softly. He shook his head. "Extraordinary, that so many of you should be so like each other! Then again, if Albus had hunted in different universes, he wouldn't have found so many of you dedicated to fighting me. You would have been someone different, a boy I did not care about or someone who fought on my side." He smiled again, more widely, and this time Harry saw the first sign that he wasn't human, the two long, slender fangs that had replaced his front teeth. They didn't look like vampire canines, but like the fangs of a viper. "Would you have liked that, Harry?"

            Harry didn't see the point in responding. If Voldemort engaged him in banter, either he would kill Harry while he was distracted or it would give him time to summon the Death Eaters. He pointed his wand at the dragon Patronus this time and snapped, "Finite!"

            There was a searing blowback of hot air against his face, and Voldemort staggered back a step. For the first time, he lost his smile. The smoke billowed up from his shoulders where the dragon had been coiled, leaving nothing behind. Voldemort let his eyes track the smoke for a moment, and then turned back to Harry, shaking his head slightly.

            "That," he said quietly, "will cost you in terms you cannot imagine, Harry Potter."

            Harry didn't see the snakes move. Suddenly the corridor was full of surging cobras, and some of them were spitting venom at his eyes. Others only lunged at his ankles, but given how potent their venom probably was, there was no "only" about any of it.

            Harry wrapped his arm around his eyes, leaped the first strikes of the fangs at his legs, and shouted one of the spells that Evelina had made him memorize. "Aegis ignis!"

            The corridor once again filled with smoke and steam as the Fire Shield Charm took effect, and Harry heard the thin, faint screams in his ears as the cobras caught fire and died. He hopped further back just in case the rotating, shimmering wheel of flames in front of him had missed some of the cobras and started to speak another spell, this time one that would hopefully blast Voldemort back down the corridor.

            Voldemort's voice overrode him, speaking in the same cold, calm tones that Harry imagined he would use to command the Death Eaters. "Perversus."

            A distant ringing invaded Harry's ears. He staggered. Had one of the snakes bitten him? There was no other reason he could think of for why he should he be so unsteady on his feet...

            He didn't know why he was holding his wand. He dropped it and blinked at his own hand. Then he looked up.

            Voldemort smiled at him again. Harry remembered who he was and what he'd done. His memories hadn't changed, but his emotions had. Was it that he didn't care? No. But he could see why someone would strike to protect himself from the only person who might have a chance to defeat him. It didn't matter that the person was a child at the time. After all, better to get rid of him when he was small than when he grew up to become a potentially dangerous nuisance.

            Better?

            More practical.

            Harry nodded slowly. Yes, that was a new perspective, but one that made a lot of sense when one thought about it. It was the same thing that Voldemort had said to him in his own world, the time during first year when Harry had rescued the Stone. Harry hadn't been inclined to listen to it because, well, it was Voldemort, but it was possible for Voldemort to have a good idea once in a while, too.

            There was only power. Harry could see, standing between them as he was right now, on the fulcrum point where he should have been all along, that good and evil were choices, not compelling moral restrictions as he'd always considered them, and not opposites, except that the paths one could take after those choices ran in different directions. And even the people who said that there was always one right thing to do and you would always know what it was were confused. Was killing someone in self-defense justifiable or not? Was taking revenge on someone who hurt you wrong or not? Was controlling someone's mind all right if you did it so that they wouldn't commit suicide? Was ripping someone away from his own universe all right, as long as you did it to protect your own life?

            "You see," Voldemort said. Harry looked up at him, and saw that the lips had pulled back from those long viper fangs again. The cobras had retreated until they were coiled up by his feet again, and they were hissing softly, but they didn't try to attack. They wouldn't, Harry thought, not unless they were sure he was their enemy. Snakes lived by the practical rules that Voldemort was trying to introduce most of all. It was silly to say that they didn't. They hunted when they were hungry, they slept when they were tired, they shifted position depending on whether they were hot or cold. Humans should have a life that simple and pure. "You see what life can be like."

            Harry nodded absently. He was thinking of Dumbledore. The problem was, if he wanted to live that way, then he couldn't react with anger to the other people who did. Dumbledore hadn't cared about the lives he was disrupting when he ripped the other Harry Potters, and Harry, out of their universes because he wanted to protect his own time and people so badly. That just made sense. That was just practical.

            If I don't care about what I do to other people, then I can't complain that he doesn't care.

            And that was wrong. Harry wanted to complain, wanted to hold Dumbledore to account, wanted to see his eyes dim and fall. He would understand what he had done wrong, before the end.

            Which meant there had to be a wrong for him to appreciate and Harry to point out.

            Which meant that he couldn't simply assume the world worked the way Voldemort and the snakes said it did.

            With a wrench, Harry felt the spell break. He was standing in the middle of the corridor, still, facing Voldemort and the cobras, but he might as well had been a world away. He shook his head at Voldemort, who had narrowed his eyes. "Sorry, but I can't buy what you're selling."

            Voldemort didn't bother waiting before he answered. The spell that lashed out wasn't an incantation, just a solid wall of force that bowed Harry's neck, clamping down on it like a yoke. He felt himself slam into the floor before he knew he was falling. He tried to raise his head, but felt his cheek crumple instead, as the gravity--it had to be gravity, there was nothing else that could do this--pressed his face insistently into the stones.

            He was on the eye-level of the snakes, who hissed softly and began to slither forwards. Voldemort's voice was a distant wind blowing behind them; Harry couldn't hear him well with one ear pressed into the floor and the other bending with the incredible push of Voldemort's magic. "I cannot take chances. That is too bad, Harry Potter. If you had been more like the others I killed, then we might have come to terms. But perhaps Albus has finally reached too far, and found a world that produced one of you too like me."

            Harry never knew how, but he managed to reach for his wand in front of him and try to recite a spell in his head. One of the approaching snake coiled forwards in a looping motion and seized the wand; two others piled on top of it and exerted pressure in exactly the right direction. The wand broke.

            Harry felt the flare of pain, the shout of light, in his own soul, and he screamed. Or he tried. He didn't know if he could make any sound, not when his lungs were smashed as flat as everything else.

            "So sad," Voldemort was continuing, his voice a drone. "I did think there would be more opposition than this, especially after the way you tore my falcon apart."

            There was something Harry had to remember. It was important that he remember it. It was like a voice shouting in the back of his head, a voice shouting in a darkened room for him to turn on the light.

            He could feel bones starting to shudder under the pressure of Voldemort's spell. Somehow, though, he was still sure that it would hurt more when one of the cobras spat venom into his eyes. One kind of pain didn't cancel out another, as he had learned when he was living with the Dursleys.

            He had to remember.

            The wand, broken...

            His fingers twitched, and one of them managed to move enough to touch his robe pocket. He had carried it with him because he didn't trust any of the Order enough to leave it in their custody, or even reveal that he had it. And then it was beneath his fingers, and throbbed there like a heartbeat, and he found himself staggering to his feet, gasping as the magic holding him down broke like a soap bubble.

            He raised the Elder Wand, and saw Voldemort's eyes widen.

            Harry didn't waste time trying to kill him. This Voldemort was tougher than he had expected, more powerful than he had expected, and impossible to deal with until he had some time and training behind him. Instead, he turned the Elder Wand on the wards around the manor, especially the ones that would prevent him from Apparating out of here, and said fiercely, "Frango!"

            They snapped, they broke, rupturing around him with hisses and shouts like the shout of the broken wand in his mind. Harry could feel the wand's joy, shaking up his arm like a laugh. It loved destroying things, and that made it happy enough to consent when Harry used it to Apparate out of the manor, even though it was purely defensive magic.

            Because he happened to be looking in the right direction when he vanished, Harry saw Voldemort's eyes.

            There was hatred in those eyes, and death.

            But not right now, Harry thought, and closed his eyes as he was whirled away to land, with a bump, on the edge of the lake at Hogwarts.

*

            helewisetran: I'm afraid that I have too many stories going to update this one on a regular schedule, but I do promise to keep going until it's finished.

            unneeded: The problem is that someone would presumably notice either that someone had ordered or gone to buy Polyjuice ingredients, or that some were missing. Not to mention that it takes a month to brew...

            Kyandoru: He is. Harry wants to help Draco to get over this obsession as much as he wants anything else.

            Thank you!

            Zip: No, my original work isn't published, I'm afraid. I am glad that you're enjoying this story, though.
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World in Pieces