Chapters 221-230

Small Mercies

‘The long way?’ Harry asked, frowning. ‘What does that mean?’

‘That we have to go through the River,’ Severus replied. He tried to will strength into his weak, shaking knees. If he was already exhausted now, he’d never make it through all nine Gates with Harry in tow.

Death gazed at them, a long, quiet look. Severus shivered. A deep ache in his bones told him that with his connection to Life broken, his strength was waning even quicker than last time. He inhaled, a shallow, choked gasp. ‘What about the Greater Dead?’ he asked.

Death snorted. ‘Is the big bad Necromancer afraid of a few demons?’

Behind him, Severus felt Harry quaver. The young man had trouble staying on his feet.

Severus just raised his eyebrows and shrugged. ‘Fear’ was not the problem in this case, and he figured that Death knew that even better than he did.

‘Very well,’ Death conceded graciously. ‘I shall see to it that none of the Lesser Dead will torment you. Beyond the Ninth Gate I hold no power over the Greater Dead. And you really should count yourself lucky that the one that gave you so much trouble while he was alive has not quite achieved that level of power yet.’

‘Voldemort,’ Harry gasped behind him. And it took all of Severus’ strength not to fall down on his knees at hearing this name spoken here. Ice seemed to burn through the skin of his left fore-arm, right into his bone. Severus hissed with pain.

‘Damn,’ Harry cursed soundly. Heart-felt anger brightened his voice and seemed to give him new strength. ‘I knew we should have done something about the baby. Why is it that every time Dumbledore is wrong, something like a cosmic calamity occurs?’

‘What are you talking about?’ It was probably not a good sign that he didn’t have the energy to curse anymore.

‘When I was dead, during the final battle…I—I kind of went to vision of King’s Cross Station and Dumbledore was there, and a baby…it looked as if it had been skinned alive. I kind of felt bad about it, leaving it there, all alone. But Dumbledore insisted that there was nothing to be done.’

Severus raised a shaking hand to his head and pinched the bridge of his nose with icy fingers. ‘If he’s one step away from becoming one of the Greater Dead, then there’s definitely nothing left that we can do about…him…now.’

But if Voldemort—or whatever was left of him—was trying to rise up to the ranks of the Greater Dead…Then come what may, he had to get back and warn the living. Nausea twisted his stomach. If they’d thought Voldemort bad alive, this would be nothing compared to the horror of Voldemort as one of the Greater Dead.

‘Fuck him,’ Harry ground out, his demeanour obstinate. ‘So how do we get into that River?’

Death smiled. Severus’ eyes prickled with frost. Tears he hadn’t even realised he was crying froze and cracked when he blinked.

‘I shall take you there,’ Death promised.

Severus was not surprised when everything went black.

oooOooo

The soup was hot and hearty—potatoes, vegetables and stuff. Her granny would have said, ‘There’s everything in it but your kitchen sink.’

Alina could smell the aroma of the herbs. But she couldn’t taste anything. Her thoughts, her feelings were too far away for her to notice if she were eating papier-mâché. But she kept her end of the bargain. She ate a whole bowl of soup, and even though she didn’t taste a thing, she felt the better for it. At last she shoved the bowl away from her and looked up at Professor Weasley expectantly.

‘So what do you know?’ she asked. Alina knew that she didn’t sound particularly polite, but she was all out of nice for the night.

Luckily Professor Weasley didn’t seem to mind. Instead he scratched his thick red hair much like Ron did when he was unsure of what to say.

‘You know that I accompanied Professor Snape and Harry to the Ministry, right?’

Alina nodded. The warm soup suddenly felt like lead in her belly.

‘Well, they disappeared through the Veil. We set up a guard, with healers, for when they’d return. Then we went to the headquarters of the Aurors. At the request of the Minister I had installed a special monitoring spell there, so we could see if and how any magic affected the leeching curse on those tattoos.’ He halted and frowned. Then her teacher cast a quick glance at her. And for a second Alina had the strange feeling as if she were put to a test, and she didn’t even know what kind of test it was. But when Professor Weasley nodded ever so slightly, she figured that she’d passed.

‘If something went wrong,’ he explained, ‘we wanted to be able to move as quickly as possible—to get people to St. Mungo’s.’

‘Oh.’ Alina’s heart fluttered. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of that? They’d have planned for the worst case scenario. She swallowed dryly. And she wasn’t entirely sure that the worst case hadn’t actually happened.

‘The spell registered the moment when the connection between the wands of Hermione and Professor Snape were established.’ Professor Weasley paused, a strange expression on his face. Then he visibly shook himself. ‘About oh, a three-quarters of an hour, barely an hour later, we detected that the leeching spell was broken—’

Alina gasped.

A brief smile flickered across the Professor’s face. He rubbed his hands over his face. ‘And then…’

‘All hell broke loose,’ Alina supplied calmly, though she felt anything but calm.

‘Yes,’ Professor Weasley agreed. ‘The connection was broken, the body guard dead, and then we got the alert from Hogwarts that you had appeared at the front gates.’

‘And Hermione?’ asked Alina. ‘And Professor Snape?’

But Professor Weasley only shook his head.