Chapter Text
Ron was made for war. He circled the scale model of the stadium that had consumed the conference table. His eyes flicked from entry point to entry point, and he scratched at a week’s worth of stubble that was nearly a beard. He looked like a lion prowling the ridge of a valley.
Harry leaned his chair back on two legs and sipped shitty coffee out of a paper cup and wondered what Draco was doing right now. Maybe he was doing the exact same thing. Maybe he was watching someone diagram the stadium in an attempt to predict Ron’s moves.
Opposing kings on a chessboard. Maybe that made Harry and Draco pawns.
“What do you think?” Ron accepted a file folder from an Auror in the doorway with a nod. “Think it’ll work?”
Harry scanned the little red figurines positioned throughout the stadium replica, but all he could think about was climbing into the oval structure in front of him and hiding. Hiding from Ron. Hiding from this battle. Hiding from everyone.
“You’re hiding something,” Ron said. He sounded like his mother.
Harry shook his head.
“I know you, Harry.”
The words were an echo of Draco’s, and he wanted to shout at Ron, No, you don’t know me. You think you do, but you don’t, and maybe you never did.
“You saw him again.” Ron tapped the file on the edge of the table next to Harry’s elbow. “Malfoy.”
He couldn’t lie, nor could he bring himself to confess, so he sat motionless with an empty paper cup in his hands.
“You let him get in your head again.” Ron sighed and flipped through the folder. “You need to tell me what he knows, Harry. He has all day to set a trap for us.”
Harry closed his eyes. The only trap he wanted to set was in his bed, locked away from everyone. He should have tried to keep Draco by force. He could have punched his lights out, called a cab, and taken him somewhere.
Harry shook his head. “Sorry. What?”
Ron glowered down at him. “What did you tell Malfoy? And did you drill anything useful out of the man?”
“He saw the texts you sent this morning. I didn’t tell him anything.”
Ron slid his mobile out of his trouser pocket and scrolled through his messages. “That wasn’t much, then.” He scratched his beard. “Just that we found those crates of Peruvian Instant Darkness powder in the lower concourse. They probably won’t have time to replace them.”
Harry grunted a non-reply.
Ron held his mobile up to show Harry a picture. Hermione sat on a tufted red velvet train seat with Rose in her lap. Hugo was on his grandfather’s lap next to them.
“I told her they should stay on the move to stay safe.” He turned the mobile back and a smile crept across his face. “She booked them a two-week train tour of Australia.” Ron sighed and looked like he might kiss the screen.
Harry didn’t have anything to say, so he didn’t.
“Did you get any info from Malfoy?” Ron put his mobile away and closed the file folder while he waited for a response. “Harry. Please tell me you didn’t fuck him all night and not find anything out.”
He’s going to die, Harry thought. Or he thinks he is. He doesn’t want to be buried next to his parents. He can eat toast in bed without getting crumbs in the sheets.
“He considers it a suicide mission.” Harry swallowed and blinked away tears before they could form.
Ron scratched his damned beard again. “That only makes him more dangerous. Nothing left to lose. Anything else?”
Draco was going to die, but not kill anyone. He was planning on sacrificing himself somehow, but Harry still wasn’t certain for what cause.
Harry shook his head. “No, nothing else.”
“Hm.” Ron stared at the wall for a short eternity, as if weighing the truth of Harry’s words. When he finally spoke, his tone was hushed. “Repeat after me.”
Confused, Harry looked up at him.
Ron cleared his throat. “I swear, by my wand and the wands of my brothers…”
“Ron, I’m not…” Harry sighed. “Fine. By my wand and the wand of my brothers, I’ll cause the peace to be kept, preserved, prevent all offenses, et cetera et cetera.”
Ron tucked the file folder under his arm and looked Harry up and down. “Can you discharge your duties, Head Auror?”
The title rankled Harry more than the lack of faith. “Yes.”
Ron considered him for another long moment, then his posture softened. “Alright. Standard bag and tag raid operations. The guys are all familiar with them. The wards will go up once the civilians are cleared.” He pulled up a chair next to Harry’s and sat down. “The teams will wait like this,” he gestured to the stadium, “for your signal.”
Harry nodded. “Combat or civilian signals?”
“Standard civilian flares, since there’ll be civilians present. White to evacuate, red to attack, yellow for casualties.”
Harry mustered up some fake enthusiasm. “As if we’ve ever used white. Our robes are red for a reason.”
“Truth. Red and gold for the dead and the bold.” Ron leaned forward to rise. “Alright, I’ll bring down the Auror roll, and we can work on assignments. We’ve got three hours until the show. Get some lunch.”
-
Harry sat at his charred desk with a paper-wrapped sandwich in his hand. Under the prevailing smell of scorched office furniture lingered the stench of rotting flesh.
Someone had thrown today’s copy of The Prophet on his desk.
But far more concerning was the tiny, round wooden pedestal like an egg cup, upon which sat an actual Prophecy. A glass orb no bigger than his eye, filled with swirling grey smoke. Streaks of green leapt out and hit the glass every time his fingers approached it, as though it were aware of his presence.
It shouldn’t have been on his desk. If the Unspeakable who maintained the Hall of Prophecies wanted him to view a Prophecy, they should have asked him to come down for it. Unspeakables were unquestionable, though.
Still, he was going to avoid touching it for as long as he could.
He opened the newspaper, unwrapped his sandwich, and set half of it on the newsprint. Down in the corner, a bit of nonsense from the Quibbler drew his eye.
Quibbler Quips and Quandaries,
final publication.A look-alike,
another reich,
the best deathblow, preemptive strike.Weavers and reavers,
what top-notch deceivers.
Both relish the cut, but only one meters.A needle-mouthed tailor,
an exhausted jailor,
both covet rough seas which batter the sailor.A Veil and a cloak,
uplift in downstroke,
both hand-sewn, bella époque
prior survival deigns one bespoke.So cloaks can be gifted,
the Veil only grifted,
if… like sand… battle lines shifted?ALL OWLS WILL BE RETURNED TO SENDER, POSTAGE DUE.
Harry’s sandwich waited in front of his mouth, but he couldn’t bring himself to take a bite. An exhausted jailor. Preemptive strike. The Veil could be grifted? Did that mean the Veil itself could be stolen? Or the Veil could be tricked?
He took a bite of cold turkey and Swiss and chewed it until it was mush. The line about cutting and measuring. That had to be related to the letters the Moirai sent to intended victims.
And the bit about the cloak he assumed was about his Invisibility Cloak. He always brought it on important missions, so at least that made sense. It was almost an unfair advantage that he’d be able to conceal his presence from Draco, but Draco couldn’t hide from him in a crowd anymore.
He swallowed, set the sandwich down, and dug the Blood Pact out of his robe pocket. Were there fewer grains of the glass-like sand? Was the flow through the center of the hourglass an illusion?
He set it on the open newspaper, near the Prophecy. The orb flared a sparkling lime green and began to swirl. Grey clouds sucked the glowing green streaks down into a miniature tornado. It twisted, broke, and reflected itself, pinched in the middle and round and swirling at the top and bottom. An hourglass in a Prophecy, meting out time in particles of smoke.
“Fuck it,” he whispered to himself.
He wiped crumbs from his fingers and wrapped his hand around the orb.
His desk was gone. His cubicle disappeared. The background noise of the DMLE was snuffed out. There was grass under his bare feet. Dew had collected on it. The sun rose behind the fog ahead of him. Something cast a round shadow on the ground.
A grave marker. A simple granite slab. A second one sat next to it like a pair of incisors.
Both were etched with today’s date. The blood drained from his face.
DRACO L. MALFOY
Harry shut his eyes, willing the Prophecy away, but it continued. His mind’s eye turned toward the other grave marker, and he knew before he read it.
HARRY J. POTTER
The glass ball shattered in his hand. His eyes fluttered open as the thick chunks of glass fell onto the newspaper. The door plate sitting on his desk was a mockery or a warning.
HEED, AUROR.
-
“Stop fidgeting.”
Harry could barely hear Ron over the roar of the crowd.
“I’m not fidgeting.”
He was, though. He tapped the blunt end of his wand against the cement pillar between them and ran his free hand over his pockets. He wanted to take the tiny silver hourglass out of his trouser pockets and check the sand level, but not in front of Ron. The Head Auror name plate was in his robe pocket along with some standard defensive charms. His Invisibility Cloak was an extra layer between his shirt and his robes.
He ran the corner of the name plate under his thumbnail and wondered if the stadium would soon be awash in lookalike Head Aurors.
Below him, fifty-thousand people waited, some in their seats, others pressed against the balcony railings. They waved red and black pennants, harsh in the suffused blue-white light. On the other side of the colossal field, the flags were red and white.
At every section entryway, on every concourse, at all thirty-six breaks in endless rows of seating, stood a pair of Aurors. Red robes blended in amongst the red, white, and black banners, but Harry could pick out their still, somber forms at each pillar.
Seventy-two Aurors. Their entire force. Every Auror, from every shift. Every traffic cop. Every liaison officer. Two Aurors had cut their maternity leave short for this mission. And still. Only seventy-two Aurors.
Harry rubbed his shoulder against the pillar and looked up into the night sky. The stadium lights so thoroughly drowned out the stars that they dampened the moon itself. It was little more than a watery globe above them, and he wondered if a Seeker could fly high enough to find the stars.
Would the Moirai fly in on brooms? Would they pour out of the gangway onto the pitch like cockroaches? Were they already in the stands, waving banners and sneaking glances at the Aurors stationed nearby?
A hush fell over the crowd. Brooms in hand, a team in red and black walked single file onto the field. The crowd around Harry erupted like a volcano. The tide of people leaping from their seats rolled through sections. The dozens of rows in the lower bowl, then the middle. Finally, the fans in the cheap seats below him hopped to their feet.
They chanted, some in Spanish, and some in another, similar language. Harry realized he didn’t know which teams had made it to the European Cup.
“Who’s playing?” he shouted to Ron.
Ron shot him a quizzical look, as if Harry were playing dumb. “Graphorns and Kites!”
Someone blasted an airhorn near him, and Harry almost tumbled down the concrete stairs in front of him. He looked at the hundreds of steps between his feet and the grass of the pitch until his head swam. He gulped and wrapped an arm around the pillar while the vertigo passed.
He couldn’t make out the names on the backs of the Galician team’s jerseys, but several banners in the stands below him spelled out “Maldonado.” The real Armando Maldonado was down on the pitch talking to the ICW Quidditch officials. The Armando who didn’t smell like toast, who hadn’t thrown a duvet over Harry and called him a pig in a blanket.
But somewhere in the stadium, that man waited. Draco was here. He could feel it as a dead spot in his magic. A numb patch of skin. A burn on his tongue that he couldn’t stop scraping against his teeth.
The crowd on the other end of the stands rose from their seats in near-unison, as though the stadium had taken a breath. The captain of the Kites led his team onto the pitch.
And a floodlight went out.
Just one massive array out of dozens. The dark spot interrupted the ring of illumination, and Harry stared at it. Ron glanced at it, but then turned his attention back to the field.
Harry was about to decide it was a coincidence when the second floodlight winked out.
Then, a third.
A fourth.
Silence fell in stages. Hands that had been waving banners dropped to their sides. Cheering turned into whispers. Faces that had been open and joyful became pinched with worry.
Ron straightened like a hound on point. He watched the remaining floodlights.
A fifth array extinguished above them, utterly silent. No pop of burned out bulbs. No sizzle of overheated wires.
Ron stepped forward, turned and examined the extinct light above them. “They got more Instant Darkness powder.”
The hush over the crowd melted away, replaced by a rising swell of anxious murmurs.
Far below, the pitch sat like a green felt pool table. Officials and team captains met in the center and gestured to the dead lights.
“Call it,” Ron said sharply. “We know it’s them.”
Harry’s hands and face went clammy.
“Harry, throw the fucking flare.”
Harry ran his thumbnail over the blunt end of his wand. It would be pandemonium.
“Harry!”
The tension in the crowd was a living thing that slithered over Harry’s skin.
“Harry!”
Harry took a sharp breath. “Right.”
He lifted his wand, straight up, put a foot back, and braced himself like a mortar launcher. The spell was second nature. Flee, he thought, and shoved magic behind the intention. He forced it out of his wand and closed his eyes.
A lightning-white cannonball shot from his wand, and his shoes slid backward from the force of it. Ron’s flare echoed his. It set of a volley of seventy-two phosphorous-white flares, each of them arcing across the stadium. They left streaks that criss-crossed over the pitch like jet vapor trails at an airshow.
Harry blinked as his eyes adjusted to the receding brightness. The murmurs in the crowd became purposeful as people gathered their things.
Pops and cracks of Apparition echoed through the stadium like microwave popcorn, first scattered, then a roiling wave of noise as witches and wizards clutched their families and fled.
In the lingering cacophony, a woman screamed, shrill and piercing. Harry’s eyes darted back and forth over the crowd. It had come from close to the empty pitch.
A head of white-blond hair appeared below the lowest railing, followed by shoulders in a white shirt that concealed a grey t-shirt stolen from Harry’s dresser.
“They’re not leaving,” Ron said next to him.
Harry scanned the stadium. At least a third of the spectators were still in their seats. All of them sat quietly. Tens of thousands of people, sitting in fold-down stadium seats, watching Draco Malfoy walk across a Quidditch pitch. They had to know who he was. Did they think a mass evacuation was part of the opening ceremony?
Harry shook his head, confused. “We can’t put the wards up until civilians are clear.”
Ron threw up a hand in bewilderment. “I don’t get it.”
Draco made his way to the middle of the pitch in the silent stadium. Harry’s palms itched, and his muscles burned to run or fight, but it wasn’t time.
“You really don’t know what he’s planning, Harry?”
Ron’s distrust hit Harry right in the gut. “No.”
All he knew was that Draco didn’t want him here. That Draco had warned him off. For his sake and the sake of his Aurors. And that Harry hadn’t listened. And Draco had known he wouldn’t.
“I’m going lower,” Harry said, taking off down the steps. “I can’t just stand here.”
Ron followed at his shoulder, wand at the ready.
Harry passed row after row of empty seats before reaching a couple seated near the aisle. A diamond tennis bracelet glittered on the woman’s wrist. Her red-lipsticked mouth smirked up at him, then turned to whisper to the man next to her. The man looked away grinning.
Harry turned around and assessed the remaining spectators. Too much money. Too much indifference.
Déjà vu gripped Harry by the throat. Dancing couples in black silk and chiffon. Gilt-edged plates and an obscene number of silver forks. A little girl in pigtails alone at a table.
“Oh, God,” he whispered.
Ron’s gaze followed his, then swept out over the thousands of witches and wizards remaining, all watching Draco Malfoy with eager attention.
“Put the wards up,” Harry said, voice cracking.
“What?” Ron whispered.
“Put the wards up. Do it now.”
“Harry, we have to get these people-”
“We walked right into it.”
“What are you-“
“They’re Moirai.” Harry’s heart thundered against his ribs. “They’re all Moirai.”
—