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Chapter Nineteen—The Reckoning Draco woke to a sensation of burning cold in his back, and his mother’s hand on his shoulder. He blinked, and turned his head. Narcissa immediately pressed him back into the ground, shaking her head hard enough that Draco yielded and lay there, although he didn’t really know why.
“No,” Narcissa breathed. “You don’t want to surface right now.”
Of course, that made Draco only the more determined to “surface.” He managed to turn his eyes without turning his head, made easier by the fact that the cold seemed to be moving up from his back to his head, where it would probably cause a hell of an ache sooner rather than later.
He was in time to see Harry roll aside from what looked like a cluster of silvery shapes, all of them centered on an expanding, roiling sphere filled with sick-making light. Several of the silvery shapes clashed back together, and then grew what looked like transparent swords and spikes and attacked Harry again.
Transparent—ghostly. That was the right word, Draco thought. He was watching the Bloody Baron, who seemed to be made of half a dozen ghosts suddenly, fighting Harry.
He tried to press his hands against the ground and urge himself to his feet. His mother held him down again, her eyes burning desperately at him. Draco shook his head. He couldn’t lie here when someone who had risked his life for Draco’s family was fighting alone.
“What made the Baron break his word and attack Harry?” he asked. His mother would tell him that, at least.
“He destroyed the ghost that was attacking you.” Narcissa moved as if she would shield him from the sight of the battle, but Draco glared, and she hesitated, then stayed still. “The Baron seems to value the dead more than the living.”
Draco shivered, remembering the imagined abyss that had opened at his feet, and what the Baron had said about the gap separating the dead from people like Draco.
“That’s right,” he said, and reached for his wand. His mother glared at him and put one hand on his wrist as if she would pin even his hand to the ground.
“You can’t help him right now,” she snapped at Draco. “You’ll only distract him. And he doesn’t need to be distracted. If someone with the full magic of the Deathly Hallows can’t shield himself, then how are
you going to help?”
Draco ignored her. He knew what he owed, and what he felt. If Harry died trying to defend them, then Draco would have worse than the mere sort of hollow aching he would have felt in the case of
any Auror who did that.
The cold burning had lessened, and he had only the sort of pounding headache he had often faced down when he was working as a torturer under the Dark Lord. This was more important than any of those times. He got his knees beneath him, and then he managed to find his feet the same way.
His mother had fallen back with an expression of faux indifference on her face. Draco met her gaze and gestured with his head towards Harry.
“I know you don’t like thinking about it,” he said. “But think. What are people going to say if Harry Potter, of all people, dies in a battle he was fighting for us?”
His mother’s expression changed. Draco smiled grimly and turned away from her, focusing on the swirling mist of shapes that Harry was dancing through, his hand on his wand and his voice shouting words that Draco could hear but not understand from this distance and the distortion from the ghosts.
Draco tested his arms and legs for one moment. Yes, he wanted to help Harry, but he didn’t want to rush into a battle where he was going to be useless.
When he thought he did understand the limits, he nodded and charged, casting the first spell that came to him, one that the Dark Lord had used casually on a few corners of Malfoy Manor said to be haunted.
“
Abscido phasmatem!”
*
Harry had avoided the first strike because he was lucky, and because all the Bloody Baron’s component ghosts appeared to be operating together. He knew he wouldn’t get that lucky again, and as he backed away from the silvery crowd approaching him, he raised the Elder Wand.
The Baron had paused and grown those weapons from his ghosts. Then he had circled around, off to the side, and was coming towards Harry in such a variety of shapes that Harry doubted he was behind all of them. Some of them were illusions, designed to trick Harry and make him stumble or feint in the wrong direction.
It would simply help if Harry could tell which of them that was.
“
Abscido phasmatem!”
The spell was shouted from behind him, and snagged at Harry’s mind for a moment. He knew that incantation. He had never used it himself, it had been suggested it was a Dark incantation, but he knew, someone in Auror training had told him—
The spiral that opened up past him had its jagged edges, blue and black and gold, but Harry found something beautiful in the sight, too. It pierced through one of the sword-wielding shapes, one of the ones that must have been a distraction, and grabbed something else, more solid. There was a shrill scream that radiated through Harry’s head, that made him grab his ears in pain, and then the air flickered and thinned.
The Bloody Baron roared in wordless rage, and the air around Harry turned as cold as it probably would have on a mountaintop. Harry saw two of the shapes coalesce into a sleek, shark-like one, and they bowled past him.
Towards whoever had cast that spell. Probably Draco, or maybe Narcissa.
Harry sprang in front of it and snapped the Invisibility Cloak like he was a bullfighter. The shape turned to the side, spinning flat, distracted by the Cloak, and Harry brought up the Elder Wand in front of him and gasped out the first spell that came to mind. “
Reducto!”
The spell shouldn’t have worked on a ghost, and probably wouldn’t have if it was cast by any other hand than the Master of Death’s. But here, it did its work just fine, seizing the Baron and propelling him backwards. Again he roared, and this time, Harry saw every misty shape in existence open several dozen eyes and fix on him.
“You should not have destroyed a ghost on my land,” said the Bloody Baron, and the ground beneath Harry was swirling, turning cold and dangerous, opening to reveal dark flames shooting up from some lower life. “For a Master of Death, you are dangerously inexperienced.” The voice was in Harry’s ears and also coming from all around him, breathed and hissed and roared from a distance. “You do not know the first thing about the afterlife…”
Harry thought of the white space where he had met Dumbledore and focused on an image of King’s Cross Station as he replied, “I know you aren’t supposed to be able to attack the living, or you would have been banished from Hogwarts long ago. What makes us different?”
“You
killed a ghost.”
“Should I have let Draco die?” Harry took a step forwards and ignored the dark flames from the ground, which flickered around his legs without any heat.
Illusions. More illusions. “You broke your word.”
“I broke nothing that I did not have to break.” The Bloody Baron’s shapes eddied back and forth before him, and Harry thought he could see some of them with insect faces, some with dragon features, some with horse heads, before they all disappeared back into what was essentially curling foam, sparking glints of white and silver. “The Bard of Morning’s Hope was stronger than I thought he was. He contained multitudes.”
“And we should have accepted the advent of a murderous ghost without fighting back,” Harry said mockingly, pacing a step forwards and pausing to regard the Bloody Baron for a moment. The image of King’s Cross still pounded and danced in his head, scarcely less active than the mass of ghosts in front of him. “Because they could have gone on killing us and we couldn’t defend ourselves.”
“
Defend yourselves.” The Baron’s voice rose to a chilling howl. “Not destroy them!”
Harry would have answered, but the group of ghosts in front of him was breaking apart again. He could understand, now, why the Baron had known about lots of smaller spirits piling in to Colin and driving him crazy. It looked as though the Baron contained a lot of separate ghosts as well, though he might have been able to keep them contained under one dominant personality.
Now half those ghosts shot towards Harry, and the other half towards the one behind him who had cast the spell that had cleaved one of the Baron’s people.
Draco, Harry was almost sure. Narcissa wouldn’t have defended him that way.
Which meant he was alive. And Harry had no intention of letting the Baron’s personalities do anything else to him.
All the time, the image of King’s Cross Station had been in his head, pure and white. Harry had held onto it without really knowing why he had, only that something about it was right. Maybe he had known that, as the one place he had seen when he
himself went into death, it was also the fact about the afterlife that he knew best.
And the Master of Death could imprison ghosts instead of destroying them. Harry would have to thank the Baron for giving him the hint.
He spread his hands, and breathed out.
*
Draco was staggering from the effects of his spell as he came up behind Harry. He wished he could move faster, to make sure he was right at Harry’s side before the Baron tried striking at him again, but he couldn’t, and that was all there was to it. What mattered most was that he had almost completed the journey when he saw the ghosts rushing towards him.
Draco grimaced and lifted his wand. He had learned the spell he’d already used to stop
one maddened ghost. He wasn’t sure he could adapt it to confront multiple ones, although he also supposed he would have to try.
“
Stop.”
Draco heard the voice with his ears, and with his body. It rang in his blood and made his spirit quiver suddenly in what seemed like a cage of bones and organs, holding and imprisoning. Draco winced and placed a hand against his side. His spirit was lunging and bucking like a horse to get out, and he went to his knees as he fought the temptation to let it go. What
was the body but a prison? The soul was the enduring part.
But when he lifted his head, he saw he wasn’t the only one on the battlefield who was having trouble resisting the voice, and far from the worst-affected.
Harry was holding his wand in the air, turning it back and forth, sketching out what looked like a transparent prison wall in front of him. The ghosts were flowing towards it. For a second, squinting at it, Draco caught a glimpse of a dazzling flash of white. He supposed he could be seeing the inside of the prison Harry had prepared for the ghosts, and he turned away defensively, hunching his face into his shoulder.
The air around him seemed to shriek and tremble, and there was a sucking sensation that Draco gripped the grass to avoid following. When Draco could lift his head and look around again, the world seemed much quieter.
And there were no ghosts in sight except a shadowy, enraged outline hovering in front of Harry, saying something that was too faint to be heard.
Draco slowly fought his way back to his feet and limped up behind Harry. Harry put a hand on his shoulder without looking around. Draco would have liked more acknowledgment than that, but he could appreciate that Harry was dealing with a situation here. He leaned on Harry’s back instead, and watched.
“You do not know what you have done!” the ghost wailed, sounding like the distant whistle of the Hogwarts Express. “I am essential to containing Peeves and other, more dangerous ghosts here! Let me go at once!”
“So that’s why you were so sure you could bind Colin.” Harry’s voice and face were both distant. “You’d done it before. You do it all the time.” He closed his eyes, and his muscles trembled once, like something was swimming through them. “I have to have your word that you won’t attack me or anyone else living.”
“I will make no such promise.”
“Then I’ll hold you exiled in King’s Cross Station for good.”
Draco blinked.
King’s Cross Station? What good would that do, if the Bloody Baron could attack any kid who started to come to Hogwarts? But he said nothing, because he thought distracting Harry at this point would be a bad thing.
The Bloody Baron rippled back and forth in front of Draco. Draco hoped that was a good thing, that the Bloody Baron was reconsidering his suicidal attempt to attack Harry, but he didn’t know if it was. He leaned nearer and nearer to Harry, though, letting more and more of his weight rest on him.
Harry shifted nearer, as well, and Draco felt a smile light his face. It was good to know that he could offer some support to Harry, when so far he had mainly been a liability outside of casting one spell.
“I bound the Bard for you,” the Baron’s whispery voice said at last. “You owe me more gratitude than this.”
“You would have let someone die, on your watch. Someone you promised to protect.” Harry’s voice descended to a buzz that sounded as if he was a hive full of bees. “I don’t owe you anything when you broke your sworn word.”
The Baron flashed a single, dazzling light that made Draco want to hide his eyes, but he knew the Baron might be watching, and so he held still. At long last, the Baron’s voice whispered, “He was too strong. I could not bind him.”
“Then why should I let
any of you out of King’s Cross?” Harry’s voice was strained, but he hadn’t lowered the Cloak or the wand yet, and Draco doubted he would. His arm muscles were bulging, and he looked as if he was having less trouble controlling the magic than he had a short while ago. “I should keep Colin there to make sure that he’s bound and not tormented. He’s drifting in whiteness, along with every one of your selves except the one talking to me now. Less torture than keeping him here and forbidding him vengeance.”
Another flash of light; Draco had expected it this time, and didn’t blink. After a moment long enough to hurt, the Baron’s voice growled, “Let me go, and I will bind them again, and not let them attack you.”
“What about you attacking Narcissa and Draco?” Harry asked instantly. “No, sorry. I don’t believe it.”
The Baron’s central point, or speaking voice, or whatever one should call it, drifted back and forth. Harry watched it without moving. Draco leaned on him and sighed. He felt as if Harry was a wall he could shelter behind, a friend that would never betray him, a stout shoulder for any time of need. That was a little silly to feel about anyone, because people would let him down through no fault of their own. But he felt it anyway. If the situation had been less dangerous, he thought he could have gone to sleep.
“Then I will prevent them from attacking you, and not attack them either, if you let the other ghosts go,” the Baron said at last.
“And not follow through with Colin’s murderous impulses if relatives of Death Eaters come to school here?” Harry countered instantly. “Or come to visit, or enter the school for any reason.”
The Baron paused. “I do not let other ghosts I have imprisoned escape my sway like that.”
“You let one attack Draco.”
Draco raised his eyebrows, but after he thought about it for a moment, he could see what Harry meant. The Baron had apparently had no trouble containing all the other ghosts that made up Creevey, even though there must be dozens of them if all the victims on the battlefield had truly blended with him. But then one had slipped through, and had made for Draco, the person Creevey had most wanted to kill in the last little while?
No. Draco didn’t believe the excuse either, when he thought about it. He settled back against Harry with a satisfied grunt.
“Very well,” said the Baron, and his voice was low and full of hatred. “I will bind the ghosts again, the ones that make up me and the ones that make up the Bard, and keep them from attacking you or Malfoy or anyone else related to Death Eaters. But in return, Master of Death, you will make sure that you do not kill another ghost.”
“Done.” Harry’s voice already sounded lighter, easier. It was probably something he would have promised anyway, Draco thought, lifting his head and opening his eyes to watch as Harry lowered the Elder Wand.
Shapes began to fade back into sight, silvery shapes with variously-defined heads and eyes and hands and arms. They flew back into the Baron the minute they formed, though, and he was already fading himself. The flashes of light and the light that almost made Draco sick to look at had gone.
“You should not be the Master of Death,” the Baron’s voice said abruptly. “You do not respect it enough.” For one moment, his head and shimmering blood and eyes were the same as usual, staring at Harry with such dislike that Draco shivered and grabbed him around the waist. “No true Master of Death would have destroyed a ghost.”
“No ghost who proposes to care for Slytherins would have let another ghost attack one.”
The Baron didn’t bother responding, but simply faded from sight. Draco sighed, shivered, and asked Harry in a murmur, “Is it over now?”
Harry turned to him, draped his arms over Draco’s shoulders as if Draco was the one holding him up instead of the other way around, and said, “It’s over for
right now. I don’t know what’s going to happen with having to confirm that the Bard was a ghost and we essentially let him go.” He turned his head to the side and met Narcissa’s eyes. Draco wasn’t sure what expression his mother’s face held, but he thought he could guess. “For now, though? Over.”
And he began to sag and tremble, his skin as cold as Draco’s had felt after the stabbing he’d received. Draco cuddled him close, and felt his mother come in to support Harry on the other side, and slowly, at a limp, they began moving towards the school.
*
SP777: He’s not that happy about helping the living, even with the reasons he has to do so.
pittwitch: Thanks! And sorry about the cliffhanger.
Setsuna24: Thank you!
Kain: True. And as the Baron said, Harry isn’t very experienced at this Master of Death thing. If he had practiced more, he would have known about imprisoning ghosts.
None of the other ghosts are as malevolent as the Baron. Nick and the Fat Friar seem pretty benevolent, and the Grey Lady seems to be mostly distant and aloof. So they probably wouldn’t approve of what the Baron wants to do.
