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(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 401: Hungry for More
🕑 Added 2024-12-31 14:00:19 +0000 UTCChapter 401: Hungry for More
10 May 1995, Azkaban
“In the tomb of its last wielder. Solomon’s grimoire is hidden in Azkaban.” Well, that complicated things, especially since Azkaban was barely more than rubble after Grindelwald blew it up. Then again, he’d been through worse.
A portal opened on a hill, and he stepped through it alongside Voldemort. It was still weird to think of the man as an ally, even if he didn’t trust him one bit. Considering the psychological profile Harry had built of the man, Lord Voldemort was an arrogant coward with delusions of grandeur, who also happens to be a compulsive liar who would betray anyone if it suited his goals. He was relatively easy to predict – despite his instability due to splitting his soul – it only required whatever action aligned with his goals and expected a betrayal at every turn.
Unfortunately for Harry, he had no idea what Voldemort’s goal would be. Well, it was going to be survival, but how he planned on doing that was very different. There was hiding away in the Land of Shadows until the end of the European school tournament, there was killing Neville Longbottom before the task, fulfilling the prophecy before Dumbledore could meddle with it, there was trying to find another way to become immortal… The possibilities were endless for someone as brilliant as Voldemort.
Still, the red-eyed man was calmer than Harry expected. He expected some yelling and destruction at the knowledge of his recent mortality. Despite it all, the so-called Dark Lord remained calm and followed his mentor’s advice of joining Harry to find Solomon’s grimoire in Azkaban.
Which brought them to this salty hill in the middle of nowhere, staring at the sea. With a flick of his wand, Harry conjured a large boat, which he enchanted to row itself. They both entered it without speaking a word before the vessel started to move slowly.
The horizon stretched out where the sky met the sea, painted in shades of deep blue and grey. Waves crashed against the rocky shore, sending salty mist into the air, while the water shimmered under the fading light. Dark clouds hovered above, occasionally lit up by flashes of lightning.
Finally, Voldemort spoke up, “You couldn’t have made the portal inside the fortress.”
Harry shook his head, “I tried, and it kept collapsing on itself. There’s something weird happening there. It seems like this won’t be as easy as we expected.”
“Is it possible that there is some remnant from the magical negation of the prison?”
“I don’t think so. This place used to be a magical void because the ley lines were blocked from going anywhere near the island. Grindelwald blew it up by unblocking it and letting magic flow through it. I still don’t know why he did that. It could be something to do with his elaborate ritual, a way to fuck with Dumbledore and to make him lose his position in Britain and join his insane crusade. It could also be a way to weaken Britain by ending a lot of family lines that were imprisoned in Azkaban. Your followers, for example, could have been a sizable threat if you freed them and gave them time to recover. Then again, the guy is a Seer and might have seen something that pushed him to do this.”
Voldemort rolled his eyes, “That’s a very fancy way to say that you don’t know.”
“At least I’m trying to come up with theories,” Harry bit out, “But that doesn’t change the fact that this place feels very weird.”
He wasn’t lying. The more they came closer to the island, the weirder things got. Things got quieter. There were no signs of life anywhere, and the winds picked up, like a storm localized to just Azkaban. Even when he used his Arcane Hearing, Harry had no idea what he was hearing. The familiar music of Ambient magic was slowly getting fainter, and, regular pulses, akin to a heartbeat, kept getting louder as they approached the island.
No one had bothered going to Azkaban since its destruction. There was no reason to. It was just a barren land with no real benefits. The dementors had moved on to Tartarus and the prisoners were relocated. There was no reason for anyone to come to this cursed land, so, no one knew of whatever was brewing there.
The last Potter’s thoughts were interrupted by a large roar as a gigantic black whale, almost as large as a castle, tried to swallow their boat whole. Both Harry and Voldemort repelled it with banishing charms.
As it came once more, Harry slowed down its time, and Voldemort hit it with a killing curse, which the whale shrugged off. The heir of Slytherin stared at his wand, as if not believing what he was seeing, before Harry cast his modified Patronus chains, which bound the creature, and conjured a gigantic white sword that impaled it.
The creature struggled for a few seconds before finally dying. Voldemort muttered, “It didn’t die. What manner of creature is this?”
Harry shook his head, “It didn’t have any magic. It reminded me of dementors. We need to be careful. Obviously, this place isn’t as deserted as we assumed it would be.”
The most disturbing thing was how this thing managed to sneak through his Arcane Hearing. He had assumed it was merging with the environment’s energy somehow, but there was still no trace of magic after he killed it. As if mocking him even further, the gigantic creature started to fade away into black mist.
He had cast his variations of the Patronus charm on his own. He had created it because of his general dislike of the charm. It was highly based on an emotional component, specifically happiness, hope, and joy, which makes it a very unreliable spell unless the person mastered his emotions or hypnotized himself to feel it at will. The effect of the spells and their general strength was very hard to estimate because of the emotional component, and these sorts of spells were ones that arithmancers and researchers really disliked.
It took a while to analyse how the spell manifested itself, and Harry was able to craft a lesser imitation of the spell to help against dementors. To be completely fair, Harry had stopped working on the project over a year prior, mostly because he got bored.
Still, it paid off. He had a bit of a hunch that whatever energy the gigantic whale was made of had to be similar to dementors. It worked well enough, but this raised a lot more questions than it answered.
Voldemort seemed almost as lost in thought as he stared at the ruins that used to be Europe’s cruellest prison. The once formidable stone walls were now cracked and overgrown with creeping ivy, giving the place a hauntingly abandoned look. Broken towers stood silhouetted against the twilight sky. But what caught both of their interest were the gigantic black birds, similar to the mutated whale they fought, flying around the ruins. The heir of Slytherin muttered, “What happened? I have never seen anything like this before.”
Harry was as bewildered as the Dark Lord, “I think that there’s a very good reason why the ley lines were blocked from reaching Azkaban. And it was obviously not meant to stop mages from using magic. Did Vlad tell you anything more about what Ekrizdis was up to when he made this place?”
“No. I didn’t think to ask. I thought that this would be an easy enough task. Although I do remember reading somewhere that Ekrizdis died trying to cast the Patronus Charm of all things.”
That didn’t make any sense. The arithmancy behind the Patronus Charm was relatively well-known. It was a spell powered by happiness with a smidge of soul magic being manifested. There was no reason why anyone, even with a broken soul, would die casting it. The spell would just fail, but nothing more than that.
Something wasn’t adding up.
Finally, they reached the island, and Harry conjured a platform to take them there. Immediately, everything in their vicinity started to attack them at once. Harry was able to conjure weaponry to kill the facsimile of black rodents and animals trying to kill them on sight.
Voldemort was particularly useless on that front. He probably couldn’t cast a Patronus Charm, and the creatures seemed to be very resistant to magic. The only way he helped was by transfiguring their surroundings to physically stop the creatures to give Harry some breathing room. The Parselmouth was obviously shaken by the uselessness of his presence. Harry couldn’t exactly disagree with that.
With the last creature dead, the so-called Dark Lord spoke up, “Something isn’t right. What’s happening here?”
Harry finally had a small answer, “These creatures aren’t alive, not really. Nothing can live here, not anymore. They’re imitations of life, probably due to the concentration of whatever weird energy is being propagated on the island. The world remembers and the energy is using that to shape itself.”
The moment he stepped onto the island he had felt it. It didn’t feel corrosive, not really, just strangely chaotic. It was really hard to pinpoint with his Arcane Hearing. It felt more like hundreds of completely different sounds at once, but he could track it down.
“How did you kill them?” the Dark Lord asked.
“A variation of the Patronus Charm. I just took a chance, to be honest, and they seemed to be vulnerable to it for some reason. Like I said, these creatures aren’t alive. Something is giving them substance, a source of the energy they’re made of.”
He walked forward towards the source of whatever was going on only to freeze. He could feel space and time being warped unpredictably as he got closer. Voldemort was behind him and asked, “Why did you stop?”
However, Harry didn’t answer. This explained a lot about why he couldn’t open a portal there. Everything was in a constant state of flux. He slowly walked forward, stepping on the ruins as he approached the centre of the island.
As they got closer, the rubble was smaller, and there were pulses in space and time. Before long, Voldemort grabbed him by the shoulder and asked, “What are you doing, Potter?”
“There’s something there, something that’s definitely not supposed to be here. It’s like a parasite. It kills everything around it and corrupts everything with this weird energy to protect it. It’s infecting the ley lines trying to spread around like a disease.”
Before he could finish speaking, a gigantic bear appeared out of nowhere, trying to kill them. Harry conjured a Patronus spear, skewering it, making it dissipate into black mist. A pack of gigantic lions and wolves appeared from the shadows trying to attack them as well. Harry conjured hundreds of chains, binding them, before conjuring small spears killing them one by one.
Voldemort cast a weird black spell at a couple of bears that probably thought that they could sneak it, which also killed them immediately, “What was that?”
“You’re not the only one who experimented with variations of the Patronus Charm. Did you seriously think I’d have made myself vulnerable to Dementors?”
Well, there was a reason why Voldemort was known as a magical genius. Harry was tempted to ask the man more about the spell but curbed his curiosity. They would have time to do that later. At least the man wouldn’t be useless in their fight.
With a nod, they walked forward. Harry felt space being warped in front of him, trying to trap him by stretching space in front of him, making him walk infinitely forward. Unfortunately for it, Harry had learned this trick years prior and negated the space manipulation.
As if entranced, Harry kept killing one attacker after another, each stronger and bigger than the previous one, with Voldemort taking care of whatever stragglers they faced. That spell of his must have been pretty draining since he used it strategically.
Still, whatever was doing this was obviously sentient enough to send the beasts to protect it. He stopped as he reached his destination, a pool of black tar, that kept pulsing. It was completely surrounded by the chaotic energy that the creatures were made of.
He couldn’t help but whisper to himself, “What are you?”
Voldemort, behind him, looked just as concerned, “Has this always been here?”
“I think so. I think that Azkaban was built to stop this thing from spreading.”
“We can deal with that later. For now, we need to find the Grimoire. That’s what we’re here for.”
As if it were listening to them, the pool of black tar released a gigantic pulse of energy, far more than it had ever done before. Harry could feel space being warped, allowing thousands of black creatures to surround them.
So, it could understand them too. Things got a lot more interesting. Voldemort raised his wand, but Harry stopped him. Instead of attacking, he closed his eyes and thought of Daphne, specifically his reunion after he had been stranded in another universe. This was, without a doubt, his happiest memory. He pictured it in his mind, the way she looked, the way she smelled, kissing her, and murmured, “Expecto Patronum.”
A glowing dove appeared out of his wand and created a gigantic pulse of white energy which vaporized every single creature surrounding him. It was overwhelming and he now understood why what he was doing before could barely be called a Patronus Charm. This was the first time he had ever cast the spell properly and the sheer difference was mind-blowing.
The dove flew around him protectively and Harry couldn’t help but smile. For some reason, it reminded him of Daphne. He looked around, making sure that they were safe before turning towards the pool of black tar.
He froze when he realized that the black tar had disappeared and revealed what was beneath the whole time. It was definitely a breach in spacetime, but it was what Harry could hear with his Arcane Hearing that made him freeze. Hunger, pure hunger. That was what was on the other side, and it had set its eyes on Harry. It was familiar. For some reason, Harry felt like he could recognize it, before realized where he had felt it before.
The dementors. They were essentially animated portals, and this was very similar to what was on the other side. He remembered the hunger, the void that wanted to swallow everything. After all, he had closed one of the portals before.
He felt the pool expand, try to absorb him, and felt space warp to push him in, but he released a pulse of space of his own, pushing himself to the other side, and did his best to close the breach. However, it was far larger and far more stable than the Dementors. He just couldn’t do it.
Seeing that he had no other choice, he ran out, grabbing a surprised Voldemort with him. They needed to get the hell out of this island. Harry was a capable wizard – an understatement to say the least – but he had no clue how to fight a fucking Eldritch being without proper research or preparation.
He ran forward, trying to do his best to negate the warps in space and time. They reached the sea, only to realize that the entire place was filled with the familiar black tar that had protected the spacetime breach. Yeah, he wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole.
So, flying was his best bet, then. He was tempted to transform into a raven and fly away, but it was too risky. He couldn’t use magic in his Animagus form, and he couldn’t exactly risk being attacked by the army of giant black birds and falling into the pool. That sounded like a very bad idea all around. Also, he wouldn’t be able to protect Voldemort. Maybe he could kill him and run away. It was better than risking him being corrupted by whatever this was and would mess with Dumbledore’s plans. He wasn’t particularly attacked by the monster after all.
Oddly enough, while trying to figure out what he had at his disposal, Harry found the answer to his question. There was a weird cavern at the edge of the island where he could feel genuine structure magic being used instead of the corrupted mess. Something was protecting it, some type of ward probably geared to protect against what was happening.
Even if this was temporary, Harry could study the ward scheme easily enough and replicate it, so that they could escape. Yeah, that was the best plan he could come up with. Harry turned towards the terrified heir of Slytherin and yelled, “Follow me.”
They ran towards the specific cave and entered the cave. Harry felt the pool of black tar, turn into a wave and tried to reach them, only to be stopped by a golden shield. Harry slumped slightly while murmuring, “Well, at least this can buy us some time.”
“Some time?” Voldemort spoke up with an incredulous yet terrified tone, “I need an explanation on what’s happening, Potter.”
“Hey, I don’t know a lot more than you about what’s going on. Believe me, I’d rather not be here either.”
Harry turned to explore the cave a bit and saw a familiar name written in Middle English, “Ekrizdis.”
He turned towards his companion with a slight smirk, “Well, we did end up finding his tomb. Huh.”
AN: This chapter has been on my mind for a while. It’s kinda important and I rewrote it a couple of times. I’m still not really happy with the end result, but I’ve got to meet my family for New Year’s Eve, so I’m just uploading it. As usual, I don’t mind rewriting it depending on your feedback, so, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions. Happy New Year, everyone!
Comments
Afterdark230
Well Harry needs to expand his knowledge somehow. Figure he will have to learn fast, I mean the school of hard knocks is one way to learn. The whole sink or swim mentality is got to be taxing.
DoodleBopCheese
Happy New Year
Tamen Dutta
Great chapter. Happy new year
Monzter E
Well the buddy system works, apparently... needs more shenanigans, more weirdness, or the opposite. Anyways its just my opinion, still good chapter! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
