The Lewis House 109 страница

"Some of the other riders are picking them up until another raft can get there," Hermione replied, her voice shaking just as hard, and growing fainter with every word until Harry could barely hear her. "The ones who are – outside the dome. Where… where are all of you?"

"Inside it," Ron said quietly. His face was gray. "We’re all inside it, Hermione."

Hermione whimpered.

"We need a head count," Sirius barked. "Quickly. Who’s in here with us?"

"I am," said Bill at once. "It’s Bill." He sounded truly shaken. "It came down right between us – Fleur’s outside – I can’t hear her."

"This is Angelina." She sounded even worse. "George is in here with me, but Fred – I don’t know if he – it looked like the light hit him and he fell..." She drew a ragged breath.

Harry forced himself to look at Ron, and then at Ginny. They were ashen. He could not even imagine George.

"Who else, Hermione?" Sirius demanded, though his voice was very dry. "Check the rest of the lists."

There was a short pause, and in it the only sound was of the rain drumming above them. Harry realized dimly that the rain was hitting the dome like a ceiling, and sliding off. It couldn’t get in. At least they would not have that to contend with.

"Hermione?" Sirius repeated. "Can you hear me?"

For a moment, Harry thought he could hear Hermione trying to speak to them - and then he couldn't hear her at all. His stomach bottomed out.

"All right," Sirius said grimly. "We're isolated. They might be able to hear us, but we can't hear them. Someone will have to fly the perimeter of the island to find out who else is with us -" He stopped short and pointed to the short man in the hood, who still hovered very near them. "You. Are you a guard?"

The man hunkered further into his hood and nodded. But his robes were neither the dark blue of the Department of Magical Law, nor the silvery-black of the Aurors.

Sirius had clearly noted this; he narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Well, get your hood off," he commanded. "Let’s see you."

But the man backed away on his broom, clutching his hood closer.

Sirius raised his wand. "We have no time for games," he spat, and flicked his wand. The man’s hood flew back.

Harry’s jaw dropped.

"A – Adam!" Ron spluttered. "How the hell did you..."

Adam’s face was a mixture of terror and intense satisfaction. He gripped the old Cleansweep he was riding and gave his head a very Malfoy sort of toss. He opened his mouth to say something, but the sound was lost in the pounding of the rain, and Harry realized that Adam didn’t know how to use the Communications Charm. Remus flew to his side at once and helped him.

"Adam?" Bill’s voice was disbelieving. "What are you on about, Ron?"

"I’m – he’s – here," Ron answered, still gaping. He pointed to Adam. "How the hell?" he repeated.

"Knew where to go, didn’t I?" Adam was audible now, and he jerked his head towards Ginny. "I went to that pub where she was kissing Malfoy in the magazine. I flew from there."

"Adam?!" Bill sounded furious. Seconds later, he appeared, rocketing around the side of the island, his ponytail whipping against his neck. He zoomed up beside Adam and, before anyone even had a chance to speak, binding cords shot out of the end of his wand, bringing Adam's broom and his irrevocably together at the tails and nearly crushing Adam's leg.

"OW!" Adam shouted.

Bill didn't seem too compassionate. "Get on," he ordered. "Now."

"I'm not getting on a broom with you -"

"Oh. Yes. You. Are."

Adam didn't have a choice. Looking very angry, he slung his leg over Bill's broom and climbed on behind him. The two brooms came together with a snap! and Bill bound their noses together as well.

"I'm a good flyer," Adam muttered hotly.

"You're an idiot!" Bill fumed. "You don’t even know the Patronus!"

"They said we wouldn’t need it –" Adam protested. "I know the Killing Curse – and you said I needed to choose who to fight for!"

"Be quiet!" Bill twisted around to fix furious eyes on him and Adam quailed. "You know this wasn’t what I meant, and if you don’t then you’re not as smart as I thought. You don’t even have a wand, do you?"

Adam defiantly pulled one from he pocket of his robes. "Found it in a drawer," he shot. But the moment he swished and flicked, the wand changed shape in his hand. Suddenly he was holding a trout, which wriggled from his grip and twitched back and forth as it fell helplessly to the sea.

"Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes," Ginny whispered. She looked ill.

Adam swore.

"Yes, that’ll help," Bill snapped. "Look, just stay back behind me until this is over. You don’t have a choice."

Looking sheepish now, and duly scared without any wand, Adam pressed his mouth shut.

"Harry," Ginny said suddenly, as Bill sped back to the other side of the island with Adam at his back. "Look at Malfoy."

Malfoy. For a minute, Harry had forgotten him. Everyone turned and squinted up into the source of the green light, and Harry realized in some horror that Malfoy was... inside it. It had surrounded him completely, and he looked as though he’d been petrified in a massive cylinder of green glass that hung suspended above the prison. His fist was still in the air and his head had fallen back. His mouth was open and his eyes were shut.

"Malfoy, can you hear us?" Harry shouted.

Malfoy did not answer or move.

"How are we going to get out of here?" Ron roared. "He didn’t know how to use that bloody ring – look at what happened, the curse isn’t nearly as big as he said it would be. He’s probably never even done this before, he was just bluffing, and now people are hurt and we’re trapped –"

Sirius revved the engine of the motorbike and cut Ron off. "Dementors," he said hoarsely. "Below."

Harry looked down and immediately began to sweat. He tightened his grip on his wand. While they had been organizing themselves, the Dementors had begun to glide out of Azkaban. They were still pouring out, all several hundred of them, covering the circular surface of the sea within the dome and turning up their mass of hooded faces to the sky. Their rattling breathing mingled together and filled the air, whispering horribly in Harry’s ears and making his head spin. He had never seen so many of them at once. They were so densely packed together that he couldn’t even see the surface of the water.

"They’re... starving," Ginny managed. She looked sicker still. "I can... feel it."

"Spread out," Sirius ordered. "Make an even ring around the prison. We’ll each have to be responsible for several dozen of them – we’ll take sections and shoot down at them from above."

Shoot down at them. Shoot the Killing Curse. As his friends flew away from him and spread themselves out in a ring, Harry licked his lips and swallowed hard. He would say it. He had to say it.

"Arthur's at the back of the island," Sirius said, after a moment. "With Viktor - and Mick - I'll stay on this side with Remus - who's around the other side?"

"Charlie," came Bill's voice. "And Cho. And a couple of wizards from the Department of Magical Law -"

"Two other Aurors here, as well," said Remus. "That's everyone. The rest are outside."

Harry hardly had time to think about their odds - perhaps a dozen people against several hundred Dementors - before he heard the first curse resound in the bright green sky.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Sirius had begun. Harry saw a flash of dim, green light flicker from beyond a far wall of Azkaban. He heard a strange, moaning noise, and then a sound like a hundred ghosts whispering together.

"Oh, God..." Sirius’s voice was a rasp. "Look at that – look at it – "

Harry couldn’t see it.

"Avada Kedavra!" shouted Sirius again. And then Harry heard Remus’s voice. Bill’s. He could not hear Charlie, Mr. Weasley, or the rest of them, but several flashes of green light from the far side of the prison made him sure that they were working.

It was time. Harry looked over at Ron, who was now at least twenty feet away. But Ron wasn’t looking at him. He held his wand, and seemed to be trying to work his mouth.

"Avada..." But Ron’s will wasn’t behind it. His voice trailed off, he lowered his wand and he stared, expressionless, down at the Dementors.

As if to help him, Ginny’s voice rang out in Harry’s head. It might have been the worst thing he had ever heard.

"Avada Kedavra!" she shouted, with absolute authority.

Her voice. That curse. Harry didn’t think he could stand it. But his eyes flicked to his left so that he could see what she was doing - so that he could watch whatever happened.

Ugly, green light rocketed out of Ginny's wand, blowing her back several feet towards the edge of the dome. She gave a harsh, involuntary cry and obviously had to work to hold onto her wand and broom. Harry's eyes followed the jet of light down to the Dementor it aimed for - he watched the flood of green connect mercilessly with the hooded face, and he expected to see the Dementor go rigid, to see its hood fall back and see its face go blank. To see it fall, spread-eagled, into the sea. That was the way the Killing Curse worked. It was instantaneous. It stole everything.

Perhaps it was because the Dementors had never been human to begin with; Harry didn't know. But when the light connected with the sightless face the Dementor gave a vicious roar - it flung out its long arms - its slimy, bony hands protruded from its sleeves. Its hood fell back as Harry had expected, but its face…

Harry felt a thrill of horror as the Dementor's mouth began to gape, dark and dry, the lipless mouth stretching in all directions, wide and black like the mouth of a vacuum in space. And while its mouth stretched, the Dementor's chest swelled - its robes became wide and full like a well-built human's and its hands clenched in something like pain. For a second, Harry thought that the Dementor must be breathing in - that it must be sucking up the air around it, and that Malfoy had been wrong - they weren't going to be able to kill them. They were only making them stronger, making them more capable of sucking souls than they had ever been. The Dementor's mouth was opening wider - wider - the lips splitting at the blackened corners and pulling back over the face, rending more withered skin as they went, exposing rotting teeth and peeling away still further - exposing the bone of the nose - the chin - the cheeks… The Dementor's mouth stretched so wide that its jaw cracked open and its teeth came apart, opening over the socket of its neck, tearing its head in two and leaving nothing but a wide, dark hole into the cavity of its body.

"Oh - sick -" Ron made a noise as though he were holding back vomit.

Ginny had both hands pressed over her mouth - she was gagging too, but Harry could hardly look at her. He couldn't tear his eyes from the thing that was happening below them. The Dementor was turning inside out from its mouth downward, and from the blackened pit of it, something white-gold was rising. A slip of something glimmering. Blinding. It seemed to be fighting against the grip of the Dementor's open throat, but as soon as more of the dead flesh peeled down and away, the white-gold thing shimmied out in a long, blinding tendril and burst into the sky towards them. Harry drew back, unsure of what it was and whether it would hurt him. But it only shot past him and up towards the green cylinder of light where Malfoy hung, still frozen. The white-gold thing fluttered into the cylinder of light, whispered past Malfoy and escaped the dome.

Harry stared after it, uncomprehending. And then he realized that there were dozens of slips of light, all rushing towards Malfoy, all coming from different sides of the island. But very few were white-gold like that one had been - some were dull, strange green, some blood red, some were even twisted and seemed to be growing fungus. But they had one thing in common; they all seemed desperate to escape. They clawed towards the exit like angry birds who had been caged too long.

"A soul," Ginny managed, staring towards the center of the dome in a rapture. "An innocent soul, I felt it go past - oh look at it, look at it -"

But it had already slipped away. And the souls that were pouring forth from the disintegrating Dementor now were neither lovely nor pure. Harry backed away from the rush of them and watched them fight each other, long, ugly muscles of changing light, battering their way towards where Malfoy held the ring.

And when they had all fought their way out of the Dementor's shrinking form - when there was nothing left to sustain the body that had been their prison - the Dementor swallowed the rest of itself with a sickening moan and dissipated into smoke.

One down.

Harry squared his shoulders and swallowed hard. If Ginny could do it, then he could too. He dug into the darkest corner of himself and called up his will to do injury. To murder. If he didn't really want it, then the spell wouldn't work - he knew that. But no matter how deep Harry went, he couldn't find a death wish. Where had Ginny got her violence so quickly? What had she been thinking of?

"Avada Kedavra!" George's voice, harsh and unhumorous, echoed in the chambers of Harry's head.

Perhaps she had been thinking of Fred. Of taking her revenge on Malfoy for hurting another one of her brothers. Harry felt a surge of hatred. If another Weasley had been hurt - if another one of his friends had been taken away -

He raised his wand and aimed. The rest of them would not be hurt. No matter what it meant he had to sacrifice.

"Avada Kedavra!" he shouted.

Harry felt the words tear out of his mouth. Felt the blast travel from his lungs to his heart to the muscles of his shoulder, felt it race down his arm and through his fingers. Death. Murder. It exploded out of his wand in a terrible surge of green light, and shot straight down at the Dementor he had chosen to kill. Because he had chosen to kill it. To take its life, to control it that completely. That was all murder was. Absolute control. A total claiming. Enormous and unthinkable.

And driven by something so petty. So unbelievably small. Driven by vengeance. By pride. Harry didn't want to feel it in himself again, but he had to reach down for it - there were hundreds left to kill. Hundreds. He thought back and chose, at random, a memory that made him want to retaliate. The sight of Dumbledore, his last smile on his face, his eyes alight even as he faced his death.

"Avada Kedavra!" Harry shouted hoarsely, and pointed again, while the hatred was still hot. "Avada Kedavra!"

It was the antithesis of everything he had ever believed in. It was the other side of his Patronus - and he was disturbed to note that, when he wanted it to be, it was just as strong. Was this how they had done it, in the war? Was this how the Death Eaters had fueled themselves? With anger, with personal loss, with a desire to bring about justice as they perceived it? But who was wise enough to judge that kind of justice? Whose right was it to even the score that way?

"Avada Kedavra!"

Was it different if the creatures weren't really human to begin with?

"Avada Kedavra!"

Harry was panting. He heard the others who were communicating with him; their curses rang in his head, dizzying him. He heard Ginny shouting herself hoarse on his left. She seemed tireless, and though Harry hated to hear her forced to use such magic, he was glad she was beside him. It bolstered him to know that she was there. He gave her a fleeting look and flinched - the light all around her was green and glowing, making her seem underwater. Making her seem encased in death as she continued to dole it out.

Ron had still said nothing.

Below them, Dementors were splitting open, turning inside out, swallowing themselves and releasing their hosts of imprisoned souls. There were still hundreds of them, but several dozen were now dead. It was underway. The dome seemed to pulse, bright green and tight around them, and Harry wondered what those who were still outside were seeing. Were they still outside? Were they watching - could they hear this? Or was it opaque - a bright green igloo - and was everyone confused and frightened as to what was happening within? Harry turned and tried to squint through the emerald wall of the dome, but he was temporarily blinded by the twisted souls that flew in hordes from the pits of the Dementors. They rushed past his body and his face, blocking his sight, tunneling upward to make their escapes.

When his view was clearer, Harry flew closer to the edge of the dome. It was dark green, but translucent. And through it, though the shapes were distorted and strange, he could make out people - dozens of people - all pressing close and shouting. He could see something else, too - something that wasn't human at all. It was all different shapes - different wisps flying towards the shell of the dome and bursting fruitlessly against its side. Harry couldn't make out what sort of spell they were shooting out there, but whatever it was, it wasn't working. It couldn't get through.

His heart gave a sudden, cold lurch and he gripped his broom. His head hurt. Harry shook his head from side to side and tried to clear his brain of the sudden dizziness that had seized it, but he couldn't shake it - it was sinking deeper every second. And not just in his mind, but in his heart… his skin… he felt clammy and frozen and he was sinking deeper… deeper into the strange, greenish-black darkness…

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Ron's voice shattered the haze in Harry's head and he realized he had been about to fall from his broom. He gripped the Firebolt and wheeled around - and shouted so loudly that it hurt his throat.

A Dementor. Not two feet from him. But it was not alive; Ron had killed it, and it was already unpeeling itself, its mouth gaping and widening, its body splitting and uncurling to release the souls it had been harboring for innumerable years. Harry stared at it in horror - how had it got so close? How was it…

He looked down to be sure that he was as high up off the water as he thought. When he saw that he was, Harry's heart began to knock against his ribs. Could the Dementors… fly? Was that what Malfoy had been trying to warn them about?

"HARRY!" Ron shouted, zooming around the Dementor towards him, looking white and frightened. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Harry managed, shaking. "Yeah, I'm - but - how did -"

"They're flying," Ron burst out in terror, confirming Harry's worst fear. "This is really bad - if we don't have the advantage of height then we've got nothing - if they decide to come up at us in groups, then what the hell are we going to -"

Harry didn't have a second to answer him. As if the Dementors had heard Ron, a small group of them was rising from the water towards Ginny's back. She didn't see them; her back was turned as she shot another curse down at the water.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" Ron and Harry shouted at once.

It was terrifying. The threads of green light shot, not downward and away from all possible human contact, but straight towards Ginny. Both jets of green collided with Dementors, but Harry couldn't breathe. He'd just shot that curse towards Ginny. Towards Ginny.

"GINNY!" Ron yelled hoarsely. "Turn around, hurry!"

Ginny turned. Her eyes widened in fear - she faced the last Dementor in the group and raised her wand. "Avada Kedavra!" she cried, and the Dementor began to disintegrate. "What's going on?" she shouted frantically. "What's it doing up here?"

"They can fly," Harry shouted back. "Can't you hear us in your head?"

"Not really," Ginny managed, her face ghostly pale. "There's too much other noise - the rain and the souls and the - Harry, if they can fly…"

There wasn't a moment to consider it. All around them, the Dementors were rising. Slowly at first, in small, controllable groups, and then more quickly. And there were more of them. They lifted off the water's surface like long, breaths of terrible smoke, and drifted upwards in hungry hordes towards those who were trapped with them. It didn't seem that they could control their flight, or even that they had chosen to fly. It was more like their hunger had become so overwhelming, and the magic around them had fed them such power, that they were capable of doing anything in order to feed.

Harry dodged a group of them and flew towards Ginny. "We can't possibly kill them fast enough!" he shouted, shooting another curse at a group that threatened to attack the two of them. It caught one of the Dementors, but the rest continued to rise, their maws gaping, their stench unbearable. Mildew and grave-rotted death. Their breathing rattled as they came nearer, and Harry and Ginny backed up against the outside of the dome.

"Bill, are they flying over there?" Ginny called out. "George?"

Bill was suddenly panting in their heads. "They're - out of - control -" he managed, and then - "No time - Avada Kedavra - Avada Kedavra!"

George made no answer except a continuous, unrelenting string of curses.

"Hermione!"

Harry heard Ron's shout.

"Hermione, if you can hear us, you have to do something now! A spell - anything - something to keep the Dementors back!"

"Avada Kedavra!" Harry cried, as the Dementors drew nearer. He heard Ginny shouting it beside him. "Avada Kedavra…" The curse was weakening. It hit a Dementor but didn't seem to hurt it too much. "Avada…" But Harry's mind was reeling. It hurt to concentrate. They were coming closer and opening their mouths for him, and everything seemed to throb - the air - the cacophony of terrified voices in his head - the memories that were beginning to flood him with all their power to unnerve him completely - yes, there was his mother's voice… It would have been so lovely to stop fighting…

"Harry, NO!" Ginny shouted beside him. He felt her draw closer, felt energy surge into him on that side. He kept his eyes open, just barely, and pointed his wand again. "Avada…"

He heard Ron repeatedly shouting the curse. He heard Bill and George and Angelina. Heard Remus… did not hear Sirius. Perhaps Sirius could no longer fight. Harry felt a stab of protective fear, but was too weak to act on it. The Dementors were so near… filling the space around him, sucking away every joy in his mind and leaving him with nothing but anguish…

"NO!" Ginny bolted in front of him on her broom and shielded him from another cluster of gray-robed creatures that had risen to sate their hunger. Harry dimly saw her thrust out her wand as she cried out what should have been a curse.

"Expecto Patronum! Expecto PATRONUM!"

She was using her Patronus. Still fighting to keep his balance, Harry narrowed his eyes and tried to shake off the fog in his brain. He wanted to see what her Patronus was. He couldn't remember if he had ever…

From the end of Ginny's wand blossomed something bright-silver with wide, wonderful wings that seemed to be on fire with silver flame. It soared forward and gave a long, perfect trill.

"A phoenix," Harry whispered, and something deep within him stirred. Was Dumbledore with them, even here?

"Get up, Harry," Ginny shouted. "Snap out of it, you have to help me, I can't do this on my own - Expecto Patronum!"

Harry was suddenly awake. It was as if a space had been cleared around them both - he looked quickly to the right and saw that Ron was trying the same technique. So were the rest of them; all over the dome, within the thick, green light, a host of Patronuses galloped and soared - driving the Dementors back towards the prison.

"It's the only way," Ginny shouted. "We can't kill them fast enough in groups like that - we can only drive them back -"

"But they have to die," Ron shouted back. "We have to finish this, or what's the point?"

Harry wasn't sure what the point was anyway, if they were never going to get out of this cursed circle. He looked up at Malfoy, who was still a statue in a flood of light, and he wondered how on earth all this would end. "Expecto Patronum!" he shouted, pointing his wand at a throng of Dementors who were rising even faster than before. Prongs galloped forth and knocked them back towards the shore - but not very far this time. Harry tried again.

"Expecto Patronum!"

He was amazed that he could swing from the Killing Curse to the Patronus Charm without blinking an eye. He almost didn't want to see Prongs ride in this place - it was horrible to see the beautiful, silver stag canter uselessly to shore to break against the rocks - horrible to watch as the lingering wisps of silver smoke were swallowed at once by a haze of putrid green.

It was worse to see the Dementors rise up again in greater, faster numbers, and advance again into the sky, pushing their hoods back. Opening their mouths.

"Expecto Patronum!" Harry shouted again, but the spell had even less of an effect this time. The Dementors only barely retreated, and then continued on their way with increased determination. "Expecto Patronum!"

Perhaps it would have worked if there had been anywhere for Prongs to drive them. But the Dementors only paused this time, under the pressure of the stag, before continuing into the air again even faster - sickeningly faster -

Harry found himself backing against the dome once more. There was nothing to be done. He felt the familiar dizziness cascading over him as dozens of them filled the air around him. He tried to fight. Tried to wrench his eyes open and look at Ginny - she would give him strength. She'd find a way through to him. He looked at her and his heart nearly stopped.

Ginny's face was slick with perspiration. Her expression had gone slack - her hands were nearly limp on her broom - she looked as though her last efforts had spent her entirely. She was staring forward at the Dementors without even raising her wand. "I can't," she murmured, and Harry heard the words fall like bombs in his head. "You were right, Harry it's… it's this magic. I shouldn't be near it like this… I can feel… Riddle…"

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04