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(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 398: Of Finished Hunts
🕑 Added 2024-12-26 14:02:06 +0000 UTCChapter 398: Of Finished Hunts
5 May 1995, Hogwarts
“Goodbye, Longbottom. I have things to do. Oh, and don’t tell anyone about this.” With that said, he conjured an illusion hiding himself as he opened a portal and left the castle, with a dumbstruck teenager yelling his name.
Harry exited the portal somewhere in the countryside. The lack of a moon made it difficult to really see his surroundings, but he didn’t really need to see. The trail of magic was very thick, enough to follow after all. It had been enough to get a rough location of the magical release from Scotland, let alone this.
It was odd, for the lack of a better word. The magical release didn’t feel like a chaotic explosion of energy, but spread around like veins across the entire county, getting thicker as he got closer. Harry warped space in front of him, following the trail of magic to its destination. It was a bit disorienting. The veins of energy tended to tangle with one another as he got closer to the source.
He had to have been walking for half an hour until he stopped, finally finding the magical release’s origin, a very familiar monument, Stonehenge.
Weirdly enough, he hadn’t really read about this place in any of the magical history books he found – and he read a lot of them – and practically only knew of it from the muggle world. It had been a mysterious prehistoric monument whose purpose was still being debated by historians. A magical origin could be explained, but it hadn’t really been something he thought about.
Harry slowly walked closer; his wand raised. He didn’t think that Dumbledore was still there. There were traces of the Light being used, but that was it. His Arcane Hearing would have picked up the former headmaster easily enough. The man practically warped the ambient magic around him with his unnatural connection to his patron.
He froze when he stood in front of the faintly glowing runes. He had never even heard of this language. The oldest magical runic language was either Ancient Sumerian or Ancient Egyptian in origin. It was still debated by scholars, but this had to predate them somehow.
No, when Harry tried to use his Arcane Hearing as a way to interpret them, pick apart each symbol and understand the concept it’s tied with, he realized that it kept shifting. It was raw, expressive, and not exactly detailed. If runes could be compared to written languages, then whatever he was reading was more like a language made of grunts. It was chaotic, could have a lot of random effects, and should never have been stable to achieve any purpose.
It was also beautiful.
Because it wasn’t really created for a purpose, but sheer pure human belief, the monoliths were magical enough, the runes vague enough, that the intent over thousands of years asking for the prosperity of their lands somehow took shape.
It was like the entirety of nature in Britain was overcharged with energy, hence why it was the centre of magic in the world.
And Dumbledore had messed with it. No, it was worse than that. This entire network was crippled, the energy that allowed an entire country to prosper, to grow, had been used to top off the missing energy from his ritual. It was frankly disgusting.
That action alone could easily destabilize Britain’s magical ecosystem which relied on a delicate magical balance, mess with the wards that relied on this feature, and weaken multiple magical plants. All because Dumbledore wanted to power a part of a ritual.
The sheer waste was unbelievable.
Harry shook his head as he looked at the rest of the monoliths, only to freeze as he saw blood dripping from the altar. He immediately recognized who it was, Alastor Moody.
This man was Dumbledore’s greatest supporter, his war hound, the man who did his dirty work. The former Auror had dedicated his life to supporting Dumbledore and the man had sacrificed him for it. How had the man fallen so far?
Harry knew that the former headmaster was a ruthless and cunning man, who would easily kill children for his ‘greater good’. Greece was a good example of that. But to kill an ally, a follower, for a ritual. And it obviously was for the ritual. It’s very old magic, and that kind of thing could only be messed with using something as wild and as dangerous as its nature. Sacrificial magic could be like this. He wasn’t sure, but it all fit.
The man didn’t even have the gall to try to fix what he had damaged after topping off the ritual. He could feel the magic behind the monoliths, a relic of an old age, slowly disappear. It was mourning. Harry could hear it with his Arcane Hearing, the sadness in a symphony of magic, not for its death, but for not being able to help its children.
Harry felt a small tear slowly fall on his cheeks, which he wiped away after hearing the cracks of the apparition. He was about to leave, only to stop when he recognized one of their magics.
Masked people with robes pointed their wands at him and yelled, “Don’t move.”
One of them even tried to cast a stunner at him, only for the spell to freeze in mid-air. The others tried as well, and the same happened. But Harry didn’t even look at them. He was staring at one of the men at the helm, looking at where his eyes would have been, were it not for the mask.
The man raised his hand and yelled, “Stand down! Secure the perimeter.”
The Unspeakables followed the man’s command and Harry let the spells dissipate into nothingness. The man walked forward towards Harry to the protest of his fellow Unspeakables, and took off his mask, “Harry Potter. What are you doing here?”
The last Potter rolled his eyes, “I knew that my mother had taken over the Department of Mysteries, but did she really make you impersonate Saul Croaker of all people? I never thought I’d ever see you again, Severus Snape.”
The potion master in disguise obviously stiffened before releasing a resigned sigh, “I suppose you’d figure it out in less than ten seconds, while the entire department of Mysteries still has no idea after almost a year.”
“You’ve been in charge for that long?” Harry asked flabbergasted. It wasn’t that he didn’t think that Lily would pull it off, but that the so-called smartest mages in Britain didn’t figure it out after so long. Seriously, did none of them know Saul Croaker or something?
“Nevertheless, I’d appreciate it if you kept that fact to yourself. But let’s focus on why we’re here. We tracked down the magical release as soon as we detected it,” the potion master stated. He then looked at the body on the altar and hummed, “Alastor Moody. I can’t say I was a fan or that I would mourn his death. He did like to promise that he’d kill me the moment I didn’t have Dumbledore’s protection anymore. Quite ironic, to be honest. I’m assuming that this was your handiwork.”
“No, it wasn’t. I tracked down the release just like you did. Dumbledore did this.”
That made Snape stiffen in surprise, “Dumbledore? Moody was probably one of his last true allies, his last follower. Why would he kill him?”
“The sacrifice of a follower, the betrayal of trust, is a very powerful thing,” the young wizard stated, “He came here and used it to suck this place dry of its magic to make up for the fiasco in Greece. It’s absolutely disgusting. This place is probably one of the oldest pieces of magic in the history of mankind. It’s the heart of the British Isles. And he butchered it, leaving it to die. You can almost hear the pain, the sadness… Thousands of years of magic and sacrifices, dying because of the greed of a single man. To think people thought of him as their saviour once. How the mighty has fallen.”
“I thought this place was supposed to be the centre of a druidic ritual. At least, that’s what’s in the archives.”
Harry snorted in amusement, “Druidic ritual. These stones here predate most cultures. It is a ritual, in a way, which druidism was born from. In a way, every witch or wizard born on these isles has a blessing. Did you never think it odd that British mages are far more powerful than foreign ones, at least on average? Sure, there have been outliers, splendid mages born abroad, but Britain had always been oddly a place where mages were abnormally talented. Even Champions of the Light and Dark are born more powerful here. Merlin and Morgana, Dumbledore and Grindelwald, tend to be more powerful when they are born here, and it’s because of this place. This is the heart of Britain, and Dumbledore just ripped it out.”
Panic started to grow on Snape’s face as the realization settled in. Britain’s only hope in surviving the constant meddling of the ICW was the fact that it, for some reason, produced very powerful mages. People were always hesitant since every generation had its own Tom Riddle, its own Dumbledore, and if he wasn’t being falsely humble, a Harry Potter of their own. And it was very accumulative. The presence of family crests made sure that every generation could surpass the previous one. Magical Britain was titan, shackled because of Dumbledore’s meddling and useless political movements trying to discriminate against one class or another.
“How do you know?” Snape asked.
“Every magic has a mark, a song, so to speak, and every song tells a story. A magic this old, this thick, is it no wonder that it gained a will of its own.”
He wasn’t even lying. Now that he could hear the song properly, he couldn’t unhear it. The pain, the sadness, it was all there, in these very old stones. It was hard to put into words, the complexity of what was being felt by mere monoliths. Without even meaning to, Harry started to hum the melody slightly, and felt the runes on the monolith pulse, as if recognizing that Harry would understand it.
Snape gave Harry an awed look as the stones glowed slightly. Harry couldn’t help but smile gently. Music really was a universal language. Seeing the effect his song had on the monolith, he decided to give it comfort, to mourn with it. He kept humming and he could hear the pleading in the monolith’s song, like a child saying that they were scared.
It feared Death. No, it feared leaving its children undefended.
Harry slowly walked towards one of the stones and pressed his palm on them, “I’m sorry. I can’t give you back what you have lost.”
He could feel the thrum of grief and acceptance at that. Wait a minute, Harry was right. He couldn’t give it back the energy Dumbledore wiped for it. He couldn’t undo the effects that the brutish ritual took into place – he didn’t have the energy to do that – but he could seal with wound. He could allow it to eventually get back what he had lost. It wouldn’t be immediate, but it was better than letting it die.
Resolute in his decision, Harry controlled whatever power was left and started to sing. He hadn’t done that since his fight with Grindelwald, and no matter what he could do, he had a very hard time replicating what he had done, but the effect seemed almost eager at the moment.
A small dome of golden light grew from around Harry, slowly fixing the wounds, turning them into scars, and stopping the magic from leaking out. There was still enough left over though to do something very special. He gathered it all back near the monolith, the golden light shrinking until it became nothing more than marble, which Harry slowly pushed towards the monolith, whose white light became golden.
Harry walked out and Snape stopped it, “What was that?”
“It would be a shame that something this precious died because of the greed of a single man. It has changed, perhaps permanently. I don’t know the extent of it yet, but we’ll all be too dead to care anyway by the time it does anything.”
“And the golden ball thing?”
The last Potter gave the man a smug grin, “A seed.”
“To what?”
“Something beautiful. Goodbye, Severus Snape. We’ll meet again soon.”
Ignoring whatever the man’s response was going to be, Harry took out the black gem that held the Horcrux he had just taken out of Longbottom’s scar. It was such a disgusting thing, like a scream in the middle of the night. He wanted to destroy it out of pure revulsion but stayed his hand.
It would be gone soon after it had fulfilled its purpose.
Harry channelled the resurrection stone, letting the soul shard pulse also affecting its counterpart. His eyes widened when he realized that Voldemort was hiding in a subspace, a pocket of space and time, folded to appear as if nothing happened. It wasn’t exactly in another dimension, more akin to a hidden room than anything else.
The fact that Voldemort had access to something like this was troubling, but it still didn’t change much. Deciding against wasting time and energy, Harry crushed the black gem holding the Horcrux, making it screech into the night as it died, and he followed the feedback of the connection, creating a portal to where Voldemort was hiding.
He walked forward, meeting the red eyes of the man who had almost killed him when he was younger, the now mortal lord Voldemort – not that the monster knew – and spoke up, “I’ve been looking for you for some time, Voldemort. We need to talk.”
AN: I’m not sure about this chapter, to be honest. My car broke down and I had to take it to the shop, and I had my laptop with me, so I wrote it in a hurry while I was there. It was probably a bad idea, but it kept my mind off what happened. Anyway, I know that the thing with Stonehenge seems a bit like a filler, but it’s kinda important later, so I couldn’t exactly leave it off and Snape being there is also kinda important. It shouldn’t have been an entire chapter on its own, around half at most, but it got away from me without me noticing, and I didn’t have time to rewrite it properly. Hopefully, I’ll be free tomorrow, so please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions. I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas.
Comments
Afterdark230
I think this was beautifully written!!! You seem to do that kind of thing when you are in a rush or pressed for time. I like the emotion you pushed into it. Hell I could feel the hurt. Keep it up.
Vortex
Hope so that sounds awesome
Callum Runchman
So harry planted a seed to become a bexus of magic like how mount olympus was only it would develop over centuries on its own rather than be shaped and accelerated by others?
