Harry and Malfoy crouched in the pitch-black loft. The sliding panel had left a tiny crack in the wall, so they were just able to see what was happening in the room beyond.
Harry’s heart thudded painfully in his chest as he listened to the sound of footsteps coming up the staircase grow louder. Snape stood stock-still in the middle of the room, waiting with his wand drawn. All three people in the room waited for the intruders to burst in. Harry half-drew his wand in the tense moments prior to their arrival, but then bit his lip and replaced it in his pocket. There was nothing he could do to help Snape without giving himself away, and he knew doing so would jeopardize everything he and his friends had been doing for the past two months.
Finally, all outside the room was silent. A hushed voice could be heard, then a clicking noise... then three Death Eaters burst into the room, wands drawn and aimed directly at Snape, who regarded the intruders quite calmly. “Hello, my friends,” he hissed quietly. “And what brings you here? Any news from the Dark Lord?”
“Don’t give us that, Snape!” one of the hooded Death Eaters snarled. “He’s been watching this house for weeks! It’s a bit of a surprise to find you here, true, but that’s just an added bonus. No, we’re here for Harry Potter. Our spies have caught four of his dumb little friends, and he was seen entering this house just over an hour ago. He never came out, either. Where’s he gone, Snape? We know you’re hiding him somewhere, and possibly the Malfoy boy, too. Just tell us where they are, and the Dark Lord may be willing to spare your life.”
Harry gasped when the man said that they’d captured his friends. He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes in pain. Ron, Hermione, Luna, and Neville... gone. I killed them all... Oh my God, I’m so, so sorry...
Snape had also gone quite pale about halfway through this speech, but when he spoke, his voice betrayed no emotion and was as smooth and oily as ever. “Really. Well, I can assure you that I have seen neither Potter nor Draco Malfoy. I have been spying about this house, which is the ex-headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, as I’m sure you already know. And I have never once turned my back on the cause of the Dark Lord...”
“Please, Snape,” a nervous voice came from a short, hunched man with a hand that seemed to be encased in a silver glove. Wormtail. “Just do what they say. You don’t know what he’d do ””
“Oh, shut up, Wormtail!” the short, squat Death Eater in the middle cut in impatiently. Harry realized with a start that it was a woman. A woman he recognized immediately, the moment she spoke with her singsong, falsely sweet voice. “Hello, Severus. It’s been a long time.”
“Dolores.” Snape nodded politely to her.
Harry turned cold. So Dolores Umbridge was a Death Eater. He had been right all along. Has she been on their side all this time, or just since our fifth year? No wonder she was so interested in the Ravenclaw Horcrux... She’s betrayed the Ministry... I wonder if Rufus Scrimgeour knows that his right-hand witch is a Death Eater?
Umbridge looked around the room, obviously searching for Harry and Malfoy’s hiding place. Both boys instinctively froze, hardly daring to breathe as her searchlight stare passed over the wall behind which they were hidden.
“The Dark Lord has been extremely worried about you,” Umbridge said softly. “When you disappeared that night and never reported back, he began to house certain suspicions that were not in your favor. When two months passed, with no sign of you or the Malfoy boy, his suspicions were confirmed. You’ve become dangerous, Snape. He isn’t quite sure what to do with you.”
“And what does he think about me?” Snape asked, dangerously quiet.
“You’re a traitor, Snape,” Umbridge said flatly. “Either you’ve been feeding information from this side to the Order of the Phoenix, or you’re using what you’ve learned for your own purposes against the Dark Lord. And both ways are equally hazardous to him. Your double-crossing has gone on long enough. You must come with us to the Dark Lord, where he will exact punishment upon you. If you don’t cooperate, we will have no choice but to eliminate you.”
Snape held up his wand and nonchalantly began to twirl it between his long fingers. “And how exactly will you do that?” he asked quietly, all pretences of still being on their side quickly vanishing. “You know I could slip through your fingers easily if I so chose. I’m stronger than all three of you; and as you know, I’m nearly as strong as the Dark Lord himself. If I decided not to go back, I’d find it all too easy to overcome you.”
Harry saw the hand holding Umbridge’s wand slowly move upward. At that point, he decided it high time to do something about the whole situation. He was wondering what he could do from the loft when he suddenly remembered something Ron had once said: “She shows signs of life if you do this.” Harry grinned and, crawling right up to the crack, put his tongue against the roof of his mouth and clicked.
He kept doing the same thing, over and over, louder and louder, until a distinct clip-clopping noise”like the sound of horse hooves”began to emerge throughout the room. He tried to channel as much centaur-ness as he could into the sound, and was quickly rewarded for his efforts.
Wormtail and the as of yet unidentified Death Eater looked slightly perturbed by the sound, which seemed to be coming out of nowhere, but Umbridge looked positively terrified. “What was that?” she said, casting quick, darting glances around the room. “Who’s making that noise? Is it you?” she accused Snape, peering at his thin mouth to detect any signs of movement. Finding none, she spun around and drew her wand fearfully as the noise continued.
Harry, delighted at her overreaction, went at it with a renewed enthusiasm. Now his tormenting her was partly to get her out of the way, and partly for revenge for the faint scars etched into the back of his hand, and the capture of his friends.
“Clip-clop-clip-clop-clip-clop...”
“Stop it!” Umbridge shouted. She shot a wild look at her colleagues. “Do you hear it? Who’s doing it?”
Wormtail and the other man looked at each other. Then they too began inspecting the room. Harry immediately stopped his clicking tongue and held his breath. Please don’t let them find us... Please don’t let them find us... Beside him, Malfoy lay petrified in a sort of fascinated fear.
After going around the room, Wormtail bent down right by the loft’s hidden entrance and gazed at something on the floor. Then he straightened up, stretched back, and looked directly into Harry’s eyes.
Both Harry and Wormtail gasped at exactly the same time. Harry now noticed that Wormtail was the perfect height to see through the crack in the wall. What would he do, now that he’d seen them?
The two stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. And suddenly Harry saw a seldom-used expression dart across Wormtail’s pointy face: guilt. He seemed to be fighting an inner battle with himself, and Harry could only pray that the infinitesimal shred of decency in his soul won. Please... he begged silently.
“Have you found something, Wormtail?” The hooded Death Eater asked, speaking up for the first time after having been interrupted by Wormtail and Umbridge. Wormtail flinched, half-turned away from Harry, then met his eyes one last time.
Please don’t.
Wormtail turned his back on Harry and Malfoy. “No,” he said quietly. “No, it was just a spider, startled me.”
Snape’s face didn’t betray even the slightest flicker of the confusion and relief he must have been feeling. The tall Death Eater snorted. “Everything scares you, Wormtail. It’s a wonder the Dark Lord hasn’t scared you to death yet.”
“But where did that noise come from?” Umbridge demanded. “It sounded just like a cen ”” She grew pale, then red-faced with growing fury. She spun around to Snape. “You do have Potter in here somewhere, you liar!” she hissed. “Only he and his friends know about how that sound affects me! Where is he, Snape? Where?!”
“Search me,” Snape said coolly. “As I told you before, I have seen neither Potter nor his friends since I so hastily left the Astronomy Tower. How on earth could such a little noise affect one of the Dark Lord’s most prominent Death Eaters?”
Whether he meant to or not, he sent a message to Harry through his words. So not only is she a Death Eater, but she’s pretty high at the top of the food chain, too, Harry thought. This gave him an even greater incentive to frighten her. He lay motionless in the loft, waiting for the opportune moment to continue his harassment of the toadlike woman.
“That is none of your concern,” Umbridge answered, just as coolly as Snape. “Enough stalling, Snape.” She held up her wand and pointed it threateningly at the former Potions professor. “We’ve been given our orders. Come quietly and I may be able to put a good word in with the master.”
“No,” Snape said softly. His expression told all inside the room that he knew he’d just sealed his fate at last. Harry felt a twinge in his heart. It wasn’t sadness, exactly, and it wasn’t pity either. Snape had known what would eventually come, ever since casting his lot in with Dumbledore.
The feeling was, Harry realized, a morbid kind of apprehension. He did not want to see this. As Umbridge scowled and said something back to Snape, Harry turned his head away and squeezed his eyes shut.
The next second they flew open again as he heard a familiar sound.
“Clip-clop-clip-clop-clip-clop...”
Malfoy had finally been spurred into action, and had apparently caught on to Harry’s scheme. He was now doing a better centaur imitation than even Harry had been able to do. His eyes had a cold fear in them, but the rhythm never wavered while he struggled to save the life of his favorite Hogwarts professor.
After a moment, Harry grinned slightly and joined in. They were now performing a centaur duet, and Harry could tell that this time Umbridge was about ready to jump out of her skin.
“Who is that?!” she screeched furiously. She began randomly shooting spells at the ceiling and walls, while the two boys hidden in the loft clip-clopped for all they were worth. Harry could only hope that she didn’t accidentally hit them, or else it would all be over.
Umbridge looked like she was going to explode with both rage and fright. She seemed to be revisiting that day in the Forbidden Forest, when the centaurs had carried her off and done who knew what to her.
And still the dreaded sound of centaurs’ hooves rang through the room.
“Clip-clop-clip-clop-clip-clop...”
“Filthy half-breeds!” she screamed in a fury, obviously forgetting that the name had been the final straw that made the centaurs carry her away. But still the noise persisted.
And so it was, that Harry, Malfoy, Snape, Wormtail, and the other Death Eater were the only witnesses as, for the first time in her life, Umbridge panicked, shot an explosively powerful spell at Snape, turned tail and fled from the room in a fright.
The action had been so unexpected that Snape had no time to deflect the curse. There was a hot, sizzling sound, and Harry and Malfoy were suddenly flung backwards.
In the second they weren’t looking out through the hole in the wall, there came a cry of shock from the room beyond. Then... there was nothing. No sound except for Malfoy’s ragged breathing as he crept back to his place behind the wall. After a moment, Harry followed suit, and together they peered outside.
A strangled gasp came out of Malfoy. Harry lay there, motionless with shock, and he realized with a heavy finality that his premonition had been correct.
Severus Snape stood frozen in the middle of the room. He seemed to have been Petrified, and Harry would have assumed that had he not seen the dullness of his eyes, and the unnatural dark film that surrounded his body, carrying the eerie menace of Dark magic. Somehow, using a spell Harry had never seen before, Umbridge had managed to kill Snape on the spot.
Wormtail and the other man seemed a little hesitant around him. After a few minutes of silent inspection, Wormtail muttered, “She used the Fourth Curse, hex her. We were supposed to try and take him back to headquarters alive...”
“The Fourth Curse?” the hooded Death Eater said slowly. “That’s the one that the Dark Lord created, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Wormtail, looking Snape up and down, but taking care not to touch the menacing aura surrounding him. “You notice the aura around him? But for that, any innocent passersby would assume he was just standing stiffly. It’s hard enough to detect by a far-off wizard; the black aura is nearly invisible to muggles. Never thought it to be Dolores’s style,” he added distastefully.
“Should we keep looking for Potter and the Malfoy boy?”
Wormtail hesitated, glancing back at the wall that concealed Harry and Malfoy. “No,” he answered finally. “There’s no denying that Potter and Draco were here before, but they’re gone now.”
“Who was making that noise? The one that apparently drove her mad? It wasn’t Snape, so somebody else must be in here.”
“No,” said Wormtail firmly. He wasn’t quite such a sniveling coward with a Death Eater of his own rank. He actually seemed very collected. “No, there’s no one in here now. Let’s go.”
The other man obediently turned and headed toward the door after one last suspicious look in the direction of the hidden loft. Wormtail made as if to follow him; then, a moment later, he did a half turn and stared straight into Harry’s eyes. He put his silver right hand to his chest and nodded in a sort of salute. And then they were both gone.
Harry closed his eyes again. The meaning of Wormtail’s final message was clear: At last, he had fulfilled his debt to Harry. He was now free from the bonds that had tied him to Harry ever since his third year at Hogwarts, when he had kept Sirius and Lupin from killing the traitor. It was over. The payment of a life-debt was finally complete.
Harry took a deep, shuddering breath. If not for Wormtail’s sudden spat of conscience, or whatever it had been, he and Malfoy would be caught, and possibly captured, right now. That was way too close. And speaking of capture...
Ron and Hermione, Luna and Neville... Could they still be alive? Is it even a possibility? The Death Eaters might have kept them alive, to question them about me... I have to go look for them.
After a few more minutes of lying up in the loft, making sure the Death Eaters were really gone, Harry sat up and uncertainly prodded the wall before him with his wand. He jumped back as with a clatter the section of wall flew upward, revealing the loft. The rope ladder automatically fell back down.
Harry looked over at Malfoy. He seemed just as frozen as Snape, but his crouched body was quivering in shock. His wide, wide eyes, set in an overly pale face, stared blindly out into the room.
What do I do with him? Harry wondered. He’d never seen Malfoy like this before, not ever. He seemed a shadow of his normally sneering, demeaning self.
“Malfoy,” Harry said. Malfoy didn’t even look at him, but blinked and apparently became more aware of his surroundings. “Malfoy, we need to get going. Once they’ve told Voldemort they couldn’t find us, he’s going to be turning this place inside out looking for us.”
Not unexpectedly, Malfoy flinched at the use of the Dark Lord’s name. But he finally looked alive again. He sat up and shot Harry a disdainful sneer that was almost welcome, it was so normal. “Where exactly do you propose we go, Potter?” he spat. “The Death Eaters have surrounded this place already; the Dark Lord himself is stationed nearby. There’s no possible way we can escape undetected.” He climbed down the ladder and walked over to the door, refusing to look at Snape’s petrified body. Harry quickly descended the ladder and stopped at the bottom. Malfoy continued, “And I would appreciate it, Potter, if you didn’t do that.”
“Do what?”
Malfoy rolled his eyes like he was talking to a stupid person. “Talk to me in that familiar way, like you’re talking with Weasley or Granger. I’m not your friend, whether I’m on your side or not, so please stop acting like it. I’ll work with you, fine, but just until I can get somewhere safe. Alright?”
Harry’s jaw dropped in disbelief. The indignant voice in his head immediately shouted, What! I practically saved both our lives! Fine, I understand you don’t want to be friends, six years of being flat-out enemies are hard to undo, but you shouldn’t be so, so... You don’t need to act like I’m stupid, I’ve never looked for your friendship anyway, great big git...
But instead of exploding, he simply nodded his head and said, more than a little spitefully, “Fine, Malfoy. Whatever you want, let’s just get out of here. I need to find my friends.”
With a curt nod, Malfoy quickly turned and left the room. Harry followed, but as he passed by Snape, he paused. He looked into the former Potions master’s eyes, normally so dark and glittering, and, biting his lip, whispered, “Goodbye.”
Then he left, closing the door softly behind him. Goodbye.
The lifeless statue of Severus Snape was left alone in the cold, dark room.
Harry and Malfoy crept cautiously downstairs. There was no sign of any Death Eaters anywhere, but they kept to the shadows just in case. As Harry thought about what had happened upstairs, the familiar rooms seemed colder and more distant than ever before.
“What was that spell that Umbridge used on Snape?” Harry whispered. “I’d never seen anything like it before.” This particular question had been weighing on his mind ever since he had witnessed Umbridge’s flight. That was one of the most powerful and lethal spells I’ve ever seen. If Voldemort could use something like that against the Order, and never get caught... They need to be warned.
Malfoy scowled at Harry, but answered anyway in a tight, low voice. “It’s a spell the Dark Lord made up himself. It’s quick, and usually done nonverbally, but in effect it freezes the blood of the person it’s done on and instantly kills him. Wormtail was right, it leaves such a faint trace, to muggles it would look like nothing had happened. It’s brilliant, really...” A hint of bitterness crept into his voice. “I just wish it hadn’t been done on Snape. He wasn’t really on their side, you know. He fooled the Dark Lord, he fooled them all... He even fooled me.”
Harry glanced quickly at Malfoy, whose face was frozen in a blank mask. “What did Wormtail call it?” Harry asked. “The ‘Fourth Curse’?”
“Yes,” Malfoy said shortly. They passed through the kitchen, and Harry waited patiently for more. He wondered just what Malfoy had been through during the past few months; he knew that Snape had been dragging him everywhere to try and escape the Death Eaters, but what exactly had happened to make Malfoy so gaunt and quiet?
Malfoy sighed, then muttered, “The name is a bit of a joke on the Ministry, actually. The Dark Lord knows that if they knew about this new, lethal spell, they would ban it and make it into an Unforgivable Curse. So he just started calling it the Fourth Curse. It doesn’t even have a proper name.”
They headed in the direction of the front hall in silence. Then Harry suddenly had a thought, and he stopped. “What if they’re waiting for us?” he said softly.
Malfoy stopped, too, as though the thought had never before occurred to him. He looked unsure for a moment, then quickly drew his wand and snarled, “Let them come, then. Let them come in here, the bloody murderers, and I’ll show them that not everybody here’s ready to roll over and go quietly...”
Harry took a slight step back, surprised by Malfoy’s vehemence. He decided not to point out that until Dumbledore’s death, Malfoy had been just as willing to kill as “the bloody murderers.” Snape’s death’s changed him, he thought, startled. He used to be the one who stood up for the Death Eaters and what they’re doing... He glanced down at Malfoy’s left forearm, hidden by the long sleeve of his robes. He was sure the Dark Mark was tattooed there, but somehow Snape had managed to turn the young man around. And now, his mentor’s death had also affected him greatly.
“Let’s go,” Malfoy muttered. His brief show of courage had temporarily disappeared, but he still held his wand in his hand. Harry nodded, not trusting himself to say anything.
They reached the door without awakening the portrait of Sirius’s mother in the hall. Harry wondered why she was so quiet, then decided that either she was asleep, or the presence of a Malfoy, of a loyal pure-blooded family, was enough to keep her from screaming at them. Good thing, too, he thought. That would have let every Death Eater for miles around know where we are.
Harry opened the door a crack and peered outside. Malfoy swore softly behind him as they both looked and saw at least a dozen Death Eaters stationed at various places around the Grimmauld Place homes. Several of them were talking to each other in low voices, but all the rest were gazing intently at the windows and doors of Number Twelve.
Treading as quietly as he could, Harry backed up, silently closed the door, and turned to Malfoy. “They’re waiting,” he whispered. “We’ll have to make a run for it.”
Malfoy looked at him with a steely determination in his eye. And then, despite his speech about still being sworn enemies, he nodded soberly at Harry, who nodded back. They weren’t friends, no, and Harry didn’t think they could ever be friends. Six years of fermenting a deep hatred toward one another was practically irreversible. But they were no longer complete enemies. Their experiences, losses, and trials had changed them both into different people.
“On three,” Harry whispered. The door creaked slightly as he reopened it, ready to throw it open when the time came for them to run. “One... two... three!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Late Author's Note: An e-cookie to Moony 62442 for being the first and only reader to realize that I'd written Number Four instead of Number Twelve! Thanks a bunch, Moony! :P
Harry Potter and the Seventh Soul by PadfootBaby
Chapter Notes: This chapter actually has two titles... The second is called "Bane of Dolores."