Lightning and War

Pulled Through Space

Tom leaned back, his eyes half-lidded as he watched Burke carefully negotiate with the flustered man who claimed to have information on Dumbledore. As far as Tom could work out, most of it was information they already possessed and had flushed out into the world, but there might be a few kernels of new facts there.

Perhaps not worth paying for, Tom thought, and looked around in distaste. They had met their supposed witness in front of a small house deep in the Welsh hills. The landscape was pretty enough, Tom supposed, but what he mainly saw was the dirty state of the house’s roof and front door, and how steep the ground around it was. You would have a hard time maneuvering an army here.

“And then he said that he wanted to eradicate all knowledge of Dark Arts from the world…”

Tom’s head snapped around, but not because of the mumbled words. One of the monitoring charms he had cast on Harry was shrieking at him. He stood at once, eyes narrowed, and felt out the careful tangle of invisible threads that tied him to the spell.

“My lord?” someone asked. Tom didn’t care to identify the voice right now. He fell into the half-world that the spell created instead.

Harry was moving, but not as if he was walking. Harry was injured.

Harry was unconscious.

Tom opened his eyes, and Burke, who had been the one to reach out and touch him, stumbled back, his face going as pale as their witness’s white hair. Tom said, “I am required back at Malfoy Manor,” and twisted on the spot. Two other Knights were coming with him, from what he saw before he Disapparated.

They could do that. They were not necessary, however.

Tom appeared right in front of the Manor’s grounds, and at once saw the hole blasted in the front walls. He took off towards it at a run. Behind him came pounding footsteps and panting breaths and shouts of his name. Tom ignored it all. What mattered was that he could see someone still faintly moving in the rubble of the wall, and it wasn’t someone he recognized.

The panicked movements of the man intensified as Tom reached him; he was trying to get to his feet and drag free his robe, caught under a chunk of marble. Tom paralyzed him with a spell that severed his spine. The man gasped and then began to sob, his hands now frantically working at his legs instead of his robe.

“There was a man here,” Tom said. “Green-eyed, black-haired, he would have been shielding. I want to know where you took him.” The man had the mark of the phoenix on his cheek, which made him more likely to know than otherwise.

“I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tom shrugged and leaped into the man’s mind, not taking care to make his invasion painless. He saw the memory in the blazing colors of a recent one. The Order had thrown a magical weapon that ricocheted off Harry’s shield and tore open the wall. Then they had poured in, collected Harry, and Apparated him back to—

The crackling static propelled him out of his prisoner’s mind. Under the Fidelius, Tom realized, and spent a moment standing still, his limbs shuddering with the need for violence.

But there was a way past that, although not a way that he usually used, given that it would leave his victim without a mind. Right now, that was at the bottom of his list of worries.

Tom Levitated the stone pinning the man away from his robe. He immediately tried to get up and let out a whimpering howl when he realized that he couldn’t move his legs.

Tom ignored that. “Shara,” he said, and watched out of the corner of his eye as she snapped to attention. Blood from a scrape covered her chin, but he knew that would only make her more attentive to what he wanted. She had her own need for violence, and the fact that she had lost Harry when she was supposed to be watching over him, leashed in her trembling hands. “Guard me and make sure that no one can disturb me for the next minute.”