A Dark Time For The Light

98

The big day had arrived.

All were restless and jumpy. The House where minor spats broke out over breakfast. Dean and Belinda had their first proper row. Caroline appeared at work on automatic pilot to be gently guided into a taxi after hugs and good wishes from her colleagues, extended to all of the others. In a daze, she gave the Bunker’s address. Remus looked longingly at his customary bottle of Potion and resisted. Alice checked her home computer for the previous night’s feed from Voldemort’s house. Hermione was also on line viewing. Alice sparked up Messenger. “He’s planning a big meet for later on today. A xx”, and sent it. In seconds there was a reply, “The first distraction will be at twelve. Keep an eye on him. H xx”. Alice acknowledged the message. The minutes and the hours ticked by.

Alice was at the Bunkers the earliest. She heard a small thin engine noise and knew that Harry and Draco had just turned up. She heard the engine die then them press her intercom. “I’m up here”, her head appeared over the lip of the roof of the building. Draco looked up and pointed, nudging Harry. She directed them to the ladder that led to her roof and they climbed up. She laughed, “You can get up on your own roof, the ladder’s in the same place on all of these units”.

It was then that the boys noticed what she was wearing, a leotard and footless tights. She excused herself, “Nearly finished the workout”, and went back to the yoga she had been doing before she heard their bike. She turned her portable sound system back on and soft music permeated the early morning air. Alice sank down into herself and bagan to move between sets of deep breaths. The boys looked on at her imperturbable calm and got it. This is how she had stayed limber and fit. They watched as she did a perfect headstand, then lifted effortlessly onto her hands, stretching her arms until they locked. She bent her back double until one leg extended fully over a shoulder and her head came up, the other leg at 180 degrees to it stretched into space. This was no yoga move, this was pure dance and Draco chuckled as he recognised the move. She reversed it so the other leg stretched over her shoulder, held it and relaxed, settling into a side splits and relaxing her whole body bonelessly onto the floor, her arms stretched out in front of her as she laid her cheek on the asphalt roof.

Draco muttered, “Merlin!. I hope I can still move like that when I’m Alice’s age”. Harry shot him a look, “You mean you can do that now?”. Draco shrugged, “So hex me. I did ballet for six years before I came to Hogwarts”. Harry’s eyes were round, “So those sexy stretches on the Quidditch pitch...?”. Draco got to his feet in a fluid move, “Come on, lazybones, stand up”. Mesmerised, Harry stood and Draco took him through some basic stretches and warm-up moves, then entered a little world of his own where Harry could not follow, being content to sit and watch his tall beautiful fiance as he executed deep stretches, pulling one leg then the other over head height. Alice sauntered over, grinning, “Always did have you pegged as a dancer, Draco”, she started to echo and mirror his movements. She started to murmur in a voice that Harry couldn’t catch but Draco could. He watched, fascinated, as Alice led his lover through an advanced class, seeing what he could do, pushing him, using a barre she had set up to one side of the roof, correcting his posture, using a delicate touch to elevate a leg, deepen a plie. She put him through his paces until he flopped on the asphalt pleading mercy, “Fuck, I’m out of practice”, he huffed as Alice passed him a bottle of water and he gulped thirstily.

She nodded appreciatively, “Not bad, but you need to practice. You should never let a skill like that idle. It’s why I’m so fit, despite the fact I’m a smoker and a general degenerate. Oh and I swim three miles a week”. In truth, Harry felt a little ashamed. He and Draco had been so fit at school and they had let it lapse, it was so easy to rely on muscle tone already there. Today was a salutary lesson. He watched Draco stand and give Alice a short bow in thanks for the class. She grinned, then sank down with them and sipped water.

“So! Tonight, guys!”, her eyes gleamed. Draco and Harry looked at her. Harry was sober, “What happens afterwards?. After we’ve killed or body-bound them, subdued them?. The Ministry is entirely filled with his sycophants, now. Even if we kill him, will we have won?”

Alice’s voice was soft, “After we get him, then everything will just follow on from there. Well, I hope so, anyway”. Harry shook his head, “The battle may be over, but the War has just begun. After tonight, I just want to fucking vanish with Draco”, he glanced at Draco who grinned at him. “No more prophecy, no more shite. We can just get on with the rest of our lives. I want to have a kid with him”, he nudged Draco’s shoulder with his head. “Aawww, that’s sweet. What will you do?, adopt?”. The boys had a secret smile and Harry looked straight at her and shook his head. “Another secret of the Wizarding World. With a particularly Dark ritual, two men or two women can have a child. That’s how Ron and Blaise had Freya. The Gravidas working, it’s called”. This floored Alice, “Fuck. I’ve heard everything, now. Men getting pregnant. Wow”, she cast them a cheeky look. “You’re takin’ the piss. Havin’ me on?”. Harry gave one of his clear-eyed looks and she rifled into his mind and saw the Sight. Her eyes were saucers, “Sorry for that”, she whispered, her hands held before her, palms out. As she processed this, voices were heard. She peeked over the parapet of the roof, a large number of folk were converging on Bunker 7.

As the day advanced, more and more small groups of people turned up. Alice slid down her ladder to greet everyone, but Draco and Harry stayed on her roof, eating, drinking, cuddling and enjoying the sun, hidden from all those below in the yard and those in the Bunker cooling off. When the House crew arrived with Severus and Remus, Harry and Draco slid down from the roof to join the rest of the restless warriors.

There were greetings and gang handclasps as Harry moved through the group greeting everyone in a low voice, personally, thanking each individual for coming, giving each a chance to get out now with no loss of face, but all stayed. Draco watched his lover work the crowd and was so proud. This was a skill he didn’t have and he was envious at Harry’s ease with everybody. Then Alice moved through the crowd in her own way, garnering grins and hugs as she went, high fives and knuckle touches, people leaning in and saying things in low voices that made her serious or burst out laughing. Draco watched her. She had the same skills, that she had over a mirror, over her scales, in life. He sighed. He would never be a people person like these two.

Then they had the news from Kilmarnock. They had cast and left Magical signatures. Mild ones, but enough to alert the Ministry. A party of minor Death-Eaters had been despatched to investigate. The cadre had been ordered to get away as per the Plan, but they had acted, hexes and curses flying until the group had all twenty two subdued and bound Magically.

“Shit!”, the London cadre as a group intoned, “They’ll draw more attention. Better start Manchester’s action”. Alice muttered, and the order was given for the stronger Magic to be used. They were all on tenterhooks as the Mancunians headed east in the van. The Scots howled in surprise as a posse of more experienced Death-Eaters appeared to see what had befallen their lesser brethren, but there were only twelve of them and Kilmarnock took them down, to cheers all over the country.

Hermione was updating as soon as news came in. She had to prepare for the night ahead. She handed the reins to Ibrahim, “Put everything up there, transcribe the phone stuff as well as you can. Tonight you code history, dude”. The young lad swallowed hard and on a fit of impulse, hugged her hard, “Don’t you dare die”, he murmured as they pulled apart, “I’m sorry I’m too young to be counted amongst the warriors”. Hermione shook her head, “All armies need their comms teams, the backroom boys. An army is only as good as the information it’s being fed and it’s feeding back, and you’re the only one I want for this job. I trust you. Keep us and Tony informed. You know the battle terms?”. Ibrahim nodded and held up the list of terms Tony had given her that related to the house schematics. This was no coward’s job, he reasoned with himself, they had the best people for each job, and he was picked as the best for this. He slid down in front of the computer. Hermione bent, taking his face in her hands and kissing him on each cheek, “It’s been a pleasure to know you, Ibrahim. If I never see you again, have a good life, Insh’Allah”. The boy went beetroot under his dusky skin.

They were constantly in touch with the Manchester cadre as they drove over the Pennines, then drove up to the beauty spot known as Brimham Rocks, a tourist attraction well known for the fanciful rock formations, a pale but more interesting English interpretation of the Painted Desert in Arizona. Quaint rock formations called the daftest names after famous Victorians. Pansy skipped amongst the rocks, talking to Harry, “We’re coming straight to you after this. This is such a buzz”, she rang off as the first person left an Apparition signature, then more joined in, making the infraction against the Magic Embargo too big to ignore. They were all having such fun on the rocks when the party of Death-Eaters apparated in. The cadre just forgot to go and captured all forty seven of the minor Death-Eaters in body binds and other spells including a wicked Stupefy that Pansy had cast. They were on the phone to London in an instant.

“Harry, we got ‘em all, now what do we do with ‘em all?”. Pansy was jubilant. Harry just yelled into his phone, “Just keep ‘em immobilised. We’ll figure it out, later”.

The vans were arriving and folk all hugged each other and split up into their allotted vehicles. All had false plates. All of the drivers wore baseball caps, overalls and dark glasses. You couldn’t see enough of their faces to see who they were. Harry could have been driven by Cellan but he would not have known it. In a way, it did allow him to concentrate on the job at hand. Resting in the small of his back, he had a Glock 9 tucked into his waistband, two extra clips in his pocket, as did Alice, Hermione and Severus.

Harry couldn’t help thinking, “But he will have powers the Dark Lord knows not”, as he patted the machine at his back, then listened as the meeting began to convene in the Dark Lord’s house, watched or listened to by them all. At risk of being left out, each van had a Blackberry and all could watch the meeting build up before them, the gathering of the Death-Eaters, the anxious awaiting of news from the two parties despatched on the same day, the long silence. The watching out of windows.

Alice queried this, “They’re waiting for Owls from the others”, Ron snorted. Alice laughed. “We so have their arses”. Harry sighed, “I fucking hope so”. The skies were empty. The Voldemort House was full. Over a hundred Death-Eaters gathered. The other Apparation spots in the garden plotted to be taken out. They waited and watched and listened. Then as a whole they heard Voldemort welcome the last attendee to the meeting, “You’re late, Baddock, but now we are all here”, was the last bit of dialogue they heard before a definite order in their headsets.

“Take your positions!!”