The world was on fire, and everyone was running. Smoke filled the air. It strangled violent coughs out of those fleeing. There was only one street and a few houses in this small Muggle town, but the inhabitants felt lost. No matter how hard they ran, they never got away.
Monsters flitted around the shadows at the edge of town. They were shaped like men, but no man could laugh as heartlessly as these things did. They whipped their hands about and released bright flashes. Wherever these lights struck, people fell and voices screamed in pain.
Amidst it all, the youngest son out of a family of eight stumbled around. He was only six, clutching a stuffed animal in his hands. Someone had been holding his hand when they left the house, running out in their nightclothes, but there had been a green flash, and now he was alone.
The smoke choked him up. He was already crying, the fumes only making tears flow faster. His brothers told him that big boys didn't cry, but he could see that was a lie. Adults were bawling their eyes out all around him.
The boy stumbled right in the middle of the street, collapsing onto his knees. The rough ground cut them, making him sob again. He held his bear tighter and didn't rise to his feet. His mother would find him if he just waited, right?
A shadow fell over him. It wasn't his mother.
The boy looked up at the cloaked shape standing above him. It looked like a man, monstrous smile aside.
"You scream well!" said the cloaked man, aiming a length of wood at the boy.
"And what about you?" asked someone else.
The boy looked over. A girl his age had appeared next to him. Instead of a stuffed bear, she was holding a toy dinosaur. The boy didn't recognize her, even though this town only had a handful of children outside his family.
"Another brat from this town?" mused the cloaked man, casually shifting the length of wood in his hand toward her.
"No, not from this town," the girl said. "I'm not surprised that you don't recognize her. You probably barely looked at her face, even as you murdered her. But I saw everything about her. I was too late that time, but tonight, you will not escape. I've been looking for you, Gibbon."
The cloaked man was spooked. He shouted a word the boy didn't recognize, and an ugly purple light shot toward the girl. It went straight through her. Not in a gory way, but as if she was never there.
"A bludgeoning curse. That's not what you used last time."
The girl had reappeared, this time behind the man in the cloak. He whipped around— and as he did, he discovered that the night had become quiet. Those in cloaks like him were gone. The Muggles, other than the little boy watching this, lay on the ground. Some had collapsed in awkward contortions, but others appeared to be sleeping peacefully.
"You!" said Gibbon.
"Me? I thought you didn't know me," said the little girl.
Not the original one, however. An identical copy had appeared to Gibbon's left, tilting her head and asking the question.
"I know this is nothing but an illusion!" Gibbon said. "Be gone!"
He did something that made all the copies disappear. When he did it, more things disappeared, like the flames that had been raging, and many of the scattered bodies around them. Seconds later, copies of the girl appeared all around Gibbon, forming a ring.
"Is it fun?" one asked.
"Preying on Muggles?" said another.
"They can't fight back."
"They've done nothing to you."
"What could possibly make them deserve this?"
"They were weak!" Gibbon said. "Do the strong need an excuse to do as they wish?"
"Perhaps not," said one of the girls. "But you are weak, too. Surely you can have no complaints about what happens now."
The Muggle boy did not understand what he was seeing. Ever since he was dragged out of bed, screams in his ears and smoke up his nose, nothing had made sense. However, he could tell his eyes were witnessing something.
Gibbon acted again, purging the new copies of the girl. He spun in a circle, sending bright lights flying into the night, his eyes wide with fear. Something moved behind him. He spun, sending a bright light flying in that direction. But it was nothing but a cloak like the one he wore, fluttering by on the breeze. Without warning, Gibbon was torn off his feet, flying out of sight behind a nearby house. He was pulled away so fast that he lost his grip on that wood thing he'd been holding. It landed in front of the Muggle boy, and the boy observed that it was a very cool stick. He wanted to touch it, but he knew better. From the direction Gibbon had flown, there was a heavy crack! It sounded like when his Mum twisted the neck of a chicken on their farm, only much louder.
"Are you alright?"
The little girl was back. The six-year-old boy looked at her, his eyes wide. Slowly, he nodded.
The girl smiled, and the boy thought that he would like to be friends with her. She had been awfully calm with that scary man, and she had wonderful taste in stuffed animals. The boy wondered what she had been talking about before, using scary words like murder.
"I brought someone who wants to see you," the girl said.
"Who?" The boy peered at her, his voice hoarse from smoke and all his crying. "Is it my Mum?"
The girl was silent for a few seconds. "No," she said eventually, "but it's still quite nice. Look!"
A snuggly bear jogged into sight, as tall as a man and moving on two legs. It danced up to them, then stopped right there, tilting its head cutely. The boy's breath caught, looking between this bear and his toy. All the details were the same.
After a long night, the boy didn't have to think. He lurched up, burying himself in the bear's furry stomach.
"I'm sorry," said the girl.
For what? thought the boy. She'd been nice to him, and now she'd even brought his favorite stuffed animal to life. He couldn't see the man appear behind him, muttering, "Obliviate."
The girl's inexplicable apology, along with the rest of the night, vanished from the little boy's mind. When he awoke in the morning, he'd remember a terrible fire that claimed most of the village, and nothing more.
Harry lowered his wand. The boy fell back, but Harry slowed his fall with a spell, cushioning the ground before he hit it. The full-sized bear fell back, turning inanimate. It had been difficult, transfiguring it instead of using an illusion, but it would've made his heart ache to see the boy pass straight through its stomach when going in for a hug.
He looked around the village. Harry could count on one hand how many of the inhabitants would recover. It was an improvement on the last raid he tried to stop, where he found nothing but a mass grave. The girl whose appearance he used had been among those bodies. Crouch's underlings were extremely difficult to handle, because they had no schemes or plans that could be deciphered. When they felt like it, they would simply head out into the night, ending lives and bringing pain wherever they went.
"It can't last," Harry muttered.
He was no expert on the state of the Muggle government, but they were acting without any kind of hesitation. How long could the Statue of Secrecy hold when the Ministry sneered at it, and the citizens did whatever they pleased?
He looked down at the unconscious boy in front of him. He and the other survivors couldn't stay here, or they wouldn't live long. Even if Muggle Aurors arrived on the scene, Crouch would come looking for his missing servants, and there was no chance of him sparing any Muggles discovered at the scene.
His own illusion of the little girl seemed to shrug at him, as if saying, You know what you have to do.
Harry quietly collected those still breathing. When they were grouped up, he found the body of Gibon, the Death Eater's head bent backwards on his shoulders. In a vindictive mood, Harry snapped off one of his fingers, charming it to staunch the dripping blood and turning it into a portkey. He returned to the unconscious Muggles, ensuring they were all touching it, and teleported away with them in a disorienting swirl.
O-O-O
Harry knocked on the door, listening to the sound of movement inside. The house went silent. There was nothing— and then, the door swung open slowly. He found himself staring into the bright brown eye of Ginny Weasley, her wand aimed through the crack in the door.
"What are you doing here at this hour?" she said. "Decided to clean up a loose end?"
Her tone said she was only half-joking. At best.
"I need your help," Harry said.
He stepped aside, letting her see the Muggles lying unconscious behind them. Ginny looked at them, then him.
"Did you do this?" she asked.
"I knocked them unconscious. That seemed like a better option than letting them panic while Death Eaters attacked. But… I'm not sure what to do with them now."
Ginny's face was unreadable. After a lengthy pause, she lowered her wand.
"The first step is not to let them see you," she said. "Covered in blood like that, you'll give one of them a heart attack."
Harry took note of his own state and, with a bit of surprise, realized she was right. Blood from the men he killed had soaked into his robes, and some had even smeared on his face. It wasn't his own, so he hadn't taken much note of it at a time.
"I'll use a cleaning charm—"
"Not enough," Ginny said. "The shower is on the second floor. I expect every last drop of blood to be gone by the time you get back. And if I find a single red footprint on my stairs, our deal is off and I'll kill you myself."
"Noted," Harry said.
He climbed the stairs, passing bedroom after bedroom. He'd seen that the Burrow was large from the outside, but walking its hallways now, it felt cavernous. Every door was open, the bedrooms having been left with personal effects still on the shelves— as if everything inside had been hit with a stasis charm. Ginny was living alone in this place, clinging to echoes of the past.
Harry found the bathroom. There were enough toothbrushes spread around the sink for an entire family. He stripped out of his clothes, stepping into the shower.
Something about the warm jet of water made him want to relax to a dangerous degree. He'd been raised to never drop his guard, not even for a second. Before the age of fifteen, even in the bathroom, Voldemort would appear when he least expected, aiming a curse at Harry's back. If Harry was prepared, he would dodge, and if he wasn't, he would suffer. Yet the Burrow's shower made him want to shut his eyes. It called out to him to do all kinds of things he'd been trained never to want.
With effort, Harry turned the water off when he was done, scrubbed clean and free of caked blood. He used magic to dry himself and clean his robes, then returned downstairs. When he walked past the bedroom doors that had been open, most were now closed. The last one, closest to the first floor, still had its door open. Harry stopped outside, watching Ginny tuck the little boy he saved underneath the covers. She was smiling as she patted his forehead, but when she turned and saw Harry, her face became serious.
"Come," she said softly, walking past him once she'd shut the door. They climbed down the stairs, Ginny waiting impatiently at the bottom for Harry to catch up.
After that, she led him to the kitchen table where they had their first meeting. A shimmer on the wall caught Harry's attention. It might have fooled others, but Harry was an expert at illusions. There was something strange about Ginny's newest decoration, a mounted buck head with towering antlers.
Harry's magic dispelled the glamor covering it, and he watched the deer trophy disappear, replaced by Selwyn's decapitated head.
"Neville told me I was being stupid." Ginny had stopped to admire the trophy alongside Harry. "He's worried that someone will see it, and it will get me killed. I think it's worth the risk if I can stare at that every morning when I have my tea."
"You have good taste," Harry said.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "You don't think I'm being reckless?"
"I don't believe I have a leg to stand on. Fenrir Greyback is in my living room."
Ginny gave him a savage little smile— the first that he'd earned from her in the time they knew each other.
She crossed the kitchen, lifting a tea kettle that she must have put on while Harry was in the shower. She poured two cups, bringing them to the table.
"Sit," she said. "I'm not getting back to sleep tonight. You're drinking at least one cup with me for waking me up."
"...Thank you," Harry said.
"The things I do when I'm bored," Ginny grumbled.
They both took a seat, Ginny at the head of the table and Harry a few spaces over. The tea was good. It was bitter. Just how Harry liked it.
"What do you want to do with those people?"
Harry looked at Ginny, setting his cup down. "I don't know."
"Youdon't know?"
"If I left them, they were going to die," Harry said. "Their families and neighbors already did. They have no place to go back to. I assume there are resources for Muggles in this kind of situation. They have those orphanage things, do they not? But I had no idea what to do. That's why I brought them here."
Ginny's lips, set in a line, twitched slightly.
"My dad was obsessed with Muggles," she said, looking down. "I'm not sure how much he actually understood, but he was always talking about them. I can probably find a place for these people. It may take a bit of time, though."
"Do as you must." Harry tilted his head up, looking at the ceiling. "Will they be discovered?"
"Are you asking if Crouch visits? No, never," Ginny said. "He's got us blood traitors under his thumb. Until we openly disobey him, there's no chance he'll drop in unannounced. He has bigger things that need his attention, like torturing helpless captives." She leaned forward. "How soon will it be?"
Ginny wanted to know when she and the others could break away from Crouch. That was the last card Harry had to play in Wizengamot: three votes no one counted on him having.
"It will take some time," he admitted. "The stage has to be set. I need to control a majority of Wizengamot before we move. There's two ways to do that."
"Let me guess. Gaining votes yourself, and removing the votes of others."
It was Harry's turn to smile savagely, like Ginny had when he complimented her severed head. "Precisely. The raid tonight was led by a man named Gibbon. Do you recall him?"
"One of Crouch's main supporters. He was on Wizengamot with us."
"Gibbon held an elected seat," Harry confirmed. "His sudden loss will be difficult to replace. They'll need an election to do it. As Crouch is growing less interested in politics, it's possible he won't even nominate a replacement. If he does, they'll simply disappear. Just like Gibbon before them."
"And you'll have nothing to do with it, of course."
"Of course," Harry said.
"That all makes sense," Ginny said.
Harry thought she sounded a bit grudging. He could understand that. She'd waited this long, she could wait longer for the right opportunity. But it couldn't have been pleasant to feel like Crouch's lackey. Especially for the last member of a family famed for their tempers, just as fiery as their hair.
A thought wormed its way into Harry's head, refusing to be ignored. Perhaps it was the warm tea in his belly, or that relaxing shower that kept making him drop his guard, but he suddenly found his tongue to be looser than he liked it.
"Did you know Hermione Granger?"
The abrupt change took Ginny by surprise. She squinted at him, trying to decipher his angle.
"She was in my house at Hogwarts," Ginny said. "A year older than me. Not too many friends, but she had plenty of acquaintances. She might have considered me one. I liked her."
"Were you aware she was in the Order of the Phoenix?"
"I'm not sure you're aware, but I was never invited to that group," Ginny said bitterly. "Mum thought I was too young. I probably was, mind, but that sure didn't save me when everything fell to shit."
"Was Hermione happy in school?"
"Oh, she loved school. Not sure she'd say the same about her classmates."
Harry pictured the girl he'd known seated behind a desk, raising her hand and answering questions. It was difficult. By the time she got to him, she had changed a lot. They'd both been so young.
"Are you sure you don't know what kind of mission Dumbledore would have given her?" Harry asked. "Even a guess is enough."
"Why do you care so much?" Ginny asked.
Harry expected the question, but it came with so little warning that it caught him flat-footed, leaving him feeling suddenly winded. "I… was there during her last moments."
Ginny leaned so far forward over the table that she nearly knocked over her tea. "I can see it. You loved her."
Harry's toes curled inside his boots.
"I killed her," he said nastily.
Instead of recoiling, Ginny let out a bark of laughter. "Maybe you did, but you don't fool me. You care too much about this. You're begging for anything you can get about her."
Harry got quiet. He wished he hadn't already finished his tea. His throat felt dry.
"Please," he said. "Do you have any idea what she was doing?"
Ginny wasn't laughing anymore.
"I don't know," she said, not unkindly. "I really have no idea."
Harry nodded. He should've known better than to dig up old wounds with no good reason. He stood up, adjusting the collar of his robes. "I should go. Fleur will be worried."
"She changed you, didn't she?"
Ginny's voice stopped him halfway to the door. When Harry looked back, she was still talking.
"You're not what I expected at all," Ginny said. "For all the stories I heard about the Dark Lord's deadly apprentice, I expected you to be evil. I thought you would be sadistic. Cruel, at the very least. There's no way the Dark Lord would have taught you the empathy you showed those Muggles tonight. It had to come from someone else. Hermione gave that to you, didn't she?"
"She didn't change me," Harry said mechanically. "I already knew what was right and what was wrong. I just needed someone to remind me."
Ginny couldn't help snorting. "Well, isn't that just wonderfully pretentious."
Harry shrugged.
"They're her words," he said, "Not mine."