FicWad

Chapter 16 - A Bad Job

Harry fell to the ground screaming, pain pounding through him so intensely that he was lost in it, wholly incoherent of his surroundings. There wasn't any part of him that didn't hurt, that didn't feel as if acid had burned through his veins and corroded his muscles and bones and ate through his internal organs. He could do nothing to hold back his screams, just as he could do nothing but continue to attempt to employ Occlumency to block out the throbbing, unending ache consuming him.

Using one's physical being to channel large amounts of magic passively was always a hazardous affair. There was always the risk of overtaxing one's innate magic, body, or both, which often resulted in unpleasant side effects, such as fatigue, the shakes, a skull splitting headache, and, in the worst cases, permanent mental or internal injury followed up by death. The art of channeling magic in such a manner without doing oneself harm was a learned one. With active magic, the added focus of a wand, staff, or an enchanter's crystal greatly assisted in controlling the magic flowing through one's system, allowing a witch or wizard to dictate how powerful their spells will be and, in general, to avoid overtaxing his or her system - acts of stupidly aside, of course. Passive magic, on the other hand, took a great deal of effort and skill to not only control, but use without outright doing oneself in. If one lost control of the magic or channeling the magic became too much for one to handle, there was rarely a clear way to cut off the flow of magic and there would be no assistance from a outside focuser to help in bring the magic back under control. Once the magic was out of one's control, usually, the only option was to ride the magic out and pray to whatever god or gods that one might worship to be strong enough to survive the rampaging magic.

While Harry hadn't quite lost control of the magic of the wards - not until the very last possible second of physical contact with the wards at the very least - he felt like he had lost control of it for a significant length of time, as the only way that he knew of to escape the wards with his life was to break the wards' hold on him as quickly as he could possible do so. He had had rush the magic of the wards out his body, using what little free magic lingered in the air and earth around him, only to channel the free magic back out of him just as quickly to avoid losing control of the magic that he was work with too soon. It wasn't necessarily that he had channeled too much magic for him to handle. He had simply done it too fast. Not to mention, the sinister nature of the wards combined with their final attempt to pull him into death just as he had broke contact with them, hadn't assist him in the least.

Smack!

Harry's screams cut off and he drew in a jagged gasp, as the physical sensation of a large hand slamming across his cheek rocked through him. Suddenly, with the new throb of pain in cheek upsetting the status quo of the ache consuming him, he was aware of the chill of the night on his skin, the pulsing, deadly magic radiating off of the wards not feet away from him, and the fact he was lying on a very uncomfortable patch of grass that was knotted with roots and with what felt like several sharp stones, which were protruding into his back. Not entirely certain of when he had closed his eyes, he blinked his stinging eyes open, banishing the last vestiges of his isolated world of pain, to find the blurry, starry night overhead and his godfather's hazy, worry filled and stricken face hovering mere inches from his own.

"Harry - damn it! - answer me!" Sirius practically yelled, while giving Harry's shoulders a vigorous shake. "Harry!"

With pain still pounding in his veins with his every heartbeat and now the throbbing where Sirius's hand had made contact with his cheek, the shacking of his shoulders was doing nothing for his state. His reaction to his godfather's assault, Harry felt, was well warranted and hardly to be helped, as it was as much instinctual as it was a conscious reaction.

"Bloody hell! What the fuck was that for?" Sirius cursed, drawing away from Harry with a bloodied nose, which was the result of him having caught Harry's right hook square in the face.

"N-now we're eve-ven," Harry grunted out and reached up to hold his throbbing head, hoping that the world would stop spinning just long enough for him to focus on his Occlumency properly.

"Like hell we are," Sirius growled, and before Harry could as much as protest, he had hauled the teen to his feet.

It took Harry a moment to work through the dizzying sensation of being brought to stand so quickly, the pain afflicting every part of his body, and the lingering sickness threatening his stomach with another round of dry heaves to realize that he and Sirius were moving and that Sirius wasn't helping him walk, but had rather hoisted him around the middle against his hip and was practically carrying.

"Let go!" Harry demanded furiously and made to elbow his godfather in the side, thoroughly annoyed with his predicament and the uselessness of even attempting active magic at the current moment. A hex or two would have handled the situation quite nicely.

"No," Sirius refused, gritting his teeth against the brunt of Harry's bony elbow to his abdomen.

"Sirius, stop fucking around," Harry said, as he continued to attempt to escape his godfather's ironclad hold, wiggling and straining against the man.

"We're going home," Sirius said resolutely and gave no quarter, as he carrier Harry farther away from the Kill Wards and along the narrow bend of the glen to the north, following a shallow stream.

"No, we aren't!" Harry put all the strength that he had into his struggle against his godfather's hold, while mentally cursing the weakness of his teenage body and his weakened state. He was going have to do something about this body's lack of muscle and stamina. In the other world, even with all that he'd done and suffered, he would have had Sirius out cold by now. Then again, in the other world Sirius was dead and had been for several years, plus no one in their right mind would have attempted to pick up Porteur Demort and haul him around like a rag doll, while dictating their destination and ignoring a direct command to release him, but that was beside the point. "Sirius, you are going to severely regret this, if you do not put me down - NOW!"

"Sorry, kid, godfatherly duties and all," Sirius said unconcernedly, his pace faltering and steps scuffing on a few loose rocks near the edge of the stream, as he adjusted and then tightened his hold against Harry's attempted to gain leverage in pushing away from him by twisting to wedge his elbow between their bodies. "You're going to live to see your fourteenth birthday and many more birthdays after that, if I have anything to say about it. You're not killing yourself tonight. I won't allow it."

"I'm not trying to kill myself. I'm trying to ensure that you and your wife and children live to see the new millennia!" Harry snapped back irritably. "But if you want to perish at Voldemort's hand, please do be my guest and apparate us out of here as soon as you can."

There was a moment's pause and then Sirius had Harry back on his feet and standing in front of him on the loose rock by the quietly trickling stream. The man's grip on Harry's upper arms, as he held Harry in place facing him, was just as firm and unyielding as his grip had been around the teen's middle a moment prior, as he had held off against Harry's attempts to escape him.

Sirius's eyes were grave and shimmered a dull gray in the moonlit, as he gazed down at Harry. The spark of optimism and life that Harry had known the man to possess more often than not was nowhere to be found. "Just how crucial is your success tonight?" he asked, the words strained, yet deadly serious.

"Somewhere along the line of hundreds to thousands of lives verses millions of lives," Harry said, his own face marred with the gravity of the knowledge that he possessed in regard to the possible future that this world would face should he fail in his mission to dismantle the Kill Wards.

"You nearly died back there, Harry," Sirius said, his voice tight with grief and concern. "For moment...I-I thought that you had. You all but stopped breathing - you do realize that, don't you?"

"I know what I'm doing, Sirius. Trust me." Harry forced himself to pull himself together and look as confident as he felt about his capabilities. Sure he was still in a significant amount of pain, felt half-sick, and was shaking with the raw adrenaline pumping through his veins, as his body attempted to combat the onslaught of pain and general unpleasantness assaulting him, but all that had no bearing on what he knew that he was capable of. He just needed a few minutes to get his Occlumency fully in order and he would be good to go another round, so to speak.

Harry had endured and fought actual battles in the other world, when he was in a much worse condition. In fact, with over 250 yards of distance now between him and the edge of the Kill Wards, Harry's mind felt significantly clearer of the wards' influence and, with each passing second, the pain from rapidly detaching himself from the Kill Wards was naturally lessening. He, after all, was well practiced at burning magic through his system without doing himself too much lasting damage, as well as well practiced at confronting various strengths of Kill Wards and these Kill Wards had most definitely been much weaker than what he was used to. Their weakness, however, did not at all disappoint him and suited him more than fine, as he was weaker -physically at least - compared to any other time that he'd went up against a set of Kill Wards in the other world.

"I won't actually be messing around with the wards anymore tonight," Harry said, upon noting that Sirius didn't look very convinced of his previous statement. "I promise, Sirius. I'm more than capable of handling getting past the wards without having to expose myself to them again."

"The only way to get past wards is to go through them or to dismantle them to their very core," Sirius said knowingly, his gaze accusatory.

Harry grinned at Sirius with mischief, for it had been mischief enabled by the ample use of a certain Marauder's Map in the other world that had ultimately led him, the Weasley twins, and Bill to coming up with a way to get around the Kill Wards...get around a good majority of wards actually, once they knew where the wards were anchored and plotted out the weakest point for a breach. The wards protecting Hogwarts, for example, currently had seven breaches in their defense, five of which had been purposefully installed by the Founders. "Bypassing wards doesn't always meaning going through them or dismantling them, Sirius, though with a majority of wards, I do admit, it is often quicker or much safer to do so."

Sirius raised an inquiring eyebrow, still looking skeptical that Harry's promise not to mess about with the Kill Wards anymore that night was legitimate, though the strength of his hold on Harry had lessened by a barely noticeable amount of pressure.

"Have you ever wondered why medieval castles were constructed with moats around them?" Harry asked, deciding that reasoning with his godfather with logic and facts would get Sirius's cooperation faster than just blatantly giving his godfather the solution to the wards and hoping that the man would take his word for it and allow him to get on with doing what had to be done. "You know, back in the days when our existence wasn't a secret and kings and lords often had a trusted wizard or two on retainer to defend them and their people from the magicals that roamed the lands."

"They were used as a preventative against their enemies storming their walls," Sirius said with a hint of uncertainty, as if understood that his answer wasn't the answer Harry was looking for, even though it was the correct answer to the question that Harry had posed him.

"That was the moats overall function," Harry agreed. "However, I ask that you take into account the elements: air, water, earth, and fire, and their magical properties. The first two: air and water, conduct magic with relative easy, while earth can only conduct powerful magic and only to a certain extent. Fire, on the other hand, is not very conductive of magic at all and is better for absorbing magic and altering its energy to feed its flame. Am I wrong in assuming that you are aware of this?"

Sirius gave Harry a look that clear said that he was and that he wasn't entertained by the impromptu lecture on magical theory.

"Right then," Harry said and continued as if Sirius wasn't glaring at him. "Ancient wizards capitalized on the moats around their king's or lord's strongholds, using their watery depths to extend their ward schemes past ground level and deeper into the earth. The moats served to not only dissuaded muggles from tunneling under or merely scaling over the medieval king's and lord's castle walls, but to dissuaded wizards from attempting to circumvent the protections placed over the strongholds by merely tunneling under the wards and proceeding to bridge across the moat and blast away the castle walls. 12 feet isn't much digging, but 30 to 50 feet is a whole lot of digging and takes time, even with magical means, which made such activity all the more easily and more likely to be noticed by a king's guard and put to a stop, before the breach actually occurred."

"That's your plan?" Sirius asked, taking from Harry's lecture what Harry had intended for him to take. "You're going to tunnel under the wards?"

"They're anchored to rune stones," Harry said, his tone suggesting what he was suggesting was perfectly reasonable. "While that makes them powerful and long lasting and means that they are nearly unbreakable without physically getting at the rune stones themselves, it still doesn't change the fact that those stones cannot be buried more than 12 ft below ground. It also doesn't change the fact that the greater distance from the stone that one digs, the less depth the magic of the wards is actually able to penetrate the earth."

"Tunneling under wards is a myth, Harry," Sirius very nearly yelled with frustration and disbelief, but manage to keep enough control of his emotions not to. "It doesn't work and has never worked. It is not possible. I never would have taken you to believe something so foolish."

"Do you know where that supposed myth came from?" Harry asked, regarding his godfather with patience.

Sirius frowned and narrowed his eyes at Harry, but gave no verbal answer.

"Us, Sirius," Harry said, indicating between him and Sirius. "We, wizards, started that lie and now, centuries later, we accept it as fact. I can only guess that our ancestors got tired of digging moats and constructing their homes on islands or over lakes and rivers, or by doing so it had become impractical and near impossible to tunnel under wards and that was how the myth got started. If you really don't want to take my word for it, just consider the secret passageways in and out of Hogwarts. How many times did you and Dad use them to sneak down to the Hog's Head without ever getting caught or anyone ever being the wiser that you bypassed the castle wards? - because that is what you were doing. You bypassed the wards every single time that you used one of those tunnels."

"Those tunnels were designed -" Sirius began in protest.

"Yeah, we thought so too," Harry interrupt, "until desperate times called for desperate measures, and we were willing to try anything to escape a premature grave. There is nothing but mounds of earth that prevent the wards protecting Hogwarts from penetrating every single one of those secret passageways. Done right, tunneling under wards becomes a very simple matter."

Sirius glanced back over his shoulder to where the invisible Kill Wards radiated their deadly magic out into the night. There was conflict visible on his face, as if he wanted to finish dragging Harry home, yet a part of him - the part that wasn't Harry's godfather or James's best friend - understood and accepted the situation without the bias of fear, concern, and responsibility that came with his position as the adult in this situation.

"Look," Harry said with a sigh, "in about 300 more yards magic shouldn't be a problem and we'll be far enough away from the wards that we won't really feel them. I'll take a breather and regroup, before setting about breaching the wards. Is that a good enough compromise? I'd rather not argue about this anymore than we already have." Or escalate this to a physical fight, went unsaid, but the determined look that he gave his godfather said as much.

"James is going to kill me," Sirius muttered and reluctantly released his hold on Harry, before motioning for Harry to lead the way.

Harry grinned. "Who says Dad ever has to know?"

They stumbled up the bank of the stream, until they reached a relatively flat grassy area that was dotted with a few trees that Harry felt was far enough away from the wards. As Sirius looked the area over, Harry cast a tempus spell. 03:11, the glowing magic read suspended in the air. He glowered at the spot that the magic had been, as it faded away. Restlessness with a dose of anxiety for the lateness of the hour stirred within him. He had lost over an hour locating the rune stones.

With the knowledge of how late it was getting, Harry set his mind on remaining idle just long enough to mentally prepare himself for bypassing the wards and venturing beyond them to perform the energy sourcing ritual.

Sirius, however, seemed to have other plans. The man cleared and built a pit in the grass and set a fire alight within it using the fallen tree limbs and random sticks lying about. He urged Harry to sit down on a boulder near the fire and submitted himself to a medical scan to ensure his health. The fact that Harry's heart beat steadily in his chest and that, outside of the minor side effects of lingering pain, a bit of a headache, and a vague dizziness, he appeared to be in good condition perplexed Sirius, who had been certain that he had practically witnessed Harry's death.

"Are you aware of just how the powerful human mind is?" Harry demanded with indignation, while fending off his godfather's continued attempts to check his heart rate for a fourth time - a procedure that the man had no doubt learned from his wife. "It's is the gateway to body, magic, and soul -the physical, the metaphysical - it is the source of our every subconscious action and thought and allow us to enact our own will over ourselves and all that is around us. If I bloody well want my heart to beat just so, I can make my heart beat just so. You aren't going to find anything wrong with me, Sirius, so back the off - yeah?"

"It's unnatural," Sirius said in return, his eyes flickering with irritation in the firelight, yet his underlying curiosity showed plain as well. "A person doesn't just almost die - become chalk white, practically stop breathing, and radiate the feeling of ice cold death - only to fall to ground screaming his head off, flushed with warmth and life in less than a second. Of all the magics that I've ever read up on or heard of, I've never..."

"You really don't want to know what magics are at work in those wards, Sirius," Harry said, pinning his godfather with a severe look.

Sirius regarded Harry pensively. "You're really all right?"

"For the most part," Harry said honestly and held his hands out to warm them over the fire. He was cold. "I might need a day or two to recover, but I won't suffer any lasting damage."

With a resigned huff, Sirius settled himself down by the fire - his eyes never leaving Harry - and allowed silence to lapse between them.

With the light rustling of the southern wind brushing over the grass and rattling the tree leaves, the faint crackling of the fire, the low murmur of the stream, and his and Sirius's breaths the only sounds filling the silence, Harry shut his eyes and focused his awareness inward. A few minutes would be all that he'd need and were, in fact, all that he could afford, as the sun would rise in less than two hours.

When Harry returned to the edge of the Kill Wards, Sirius did not return with him. Harry had told the man that he had no need of his assistance, as well as had given the man his promise that he would return no worse for wear before sunup. Sirius had not been happy about it, but he had agreed to remain by the fire, as he had outright refused to return home without Harry. In truth, Harry couldn't guarantee his future condition to his godfather, as there was a very real chance that he'd blow himself up with the energy sourcing ritual. He merely wanted to keep his godfather as far away from the blast zone as possible.

It was easy to follow his and Sirius's path back to the wards through the matted down grass. When he arrived at the place where he had fallen, he took fifteen measured steps to the left along the wards, before taking five measured steps back. In the other world, the distance between the rune stones had been so great in some cases that there had been long stretches along the ward boundaries where the magic of the wards barely penetrated the earth at all. It wouldn't be so with the set of wards that he now faced. The overall configuration was weak - if he were out to dismantle them, that is (which he had no clue about doing, as they drew a good bit of their power from trapped souls, instead of free magic, and were defined by rune stones). However, the rune stones were much closer together, meaning that the wards penetrated the earth several feet, even at the mid-points between the outlying rune stones. From what he had felt, when he had been connected to the wards, he need to clear nine feet plus several additional feet for a crawl space.

Harry bent down and withdrew a pocket knife from his jacket pocket. He had plans to obtain a proper dagger soon. For now, though, the old pocket knife would have to do. As he began to cut an arced line into the earth, he mused at just what sort of education war could provide a person. He hadn't even finished his sixth year at Hogwarts or taken a single course of Ancient Runes in the other world, yet he had learned temporary and semi-permanent warding, construction arrays, and multiple rituals and healing spells involving runes. His knowledge and abilities in the Mind Arts were uncontested by all but a handful of men. He had advance far beyond NEWT level in nearly all his Hogwarts course, especially Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms, and Transfigurations. He had also picked up other, more questionable fields of magic along the way, along with general survival skills, life skills, and multiple languages. He could say with complete honesty that he had learned more over the course of the war than he had at Hogwarts, or would have in such a short time had the war never happened.

With the construction array finished, Harry cleaned the knife on his jeans, before proceeding to cut open his left palm. He pressed his bleed hand to the center of the array, his life energy helping to cement his connection to the magic being preformed, as his will and a whispered word activated the array. Since he was using passive magic, the power that he could force into the array was only as limited as his own ability to control the magic; unlike active magic, which also factored in the limits of the focuser being use. Yet the end result, he knew, would be far less elegant and would take far longer than if he were using a wand. Passive magic was active magic's crude predecessor, and its predecessor for a reason.

Harry could feel the earth shift beneath his hand, could feel the free magic that he was pulling from his surroundings moving through him, changing, and flowing into the earth where the array further define it. This time, he took things slower, much slower than he had when he had separated himself from the Kill Wards. He wasn't just moving magic through his body; he was altering, using it - a very different and difficult task, when compared to the former.

Upon the earth falling away from beneath Harry's palm, a well was exposed. It wasn't a true well. There was no water and it wasn't all that deep, 15 feet or roughly so. Its mouth was three feet in diameter and its walls were smooth clay hardened into stone. He pressed his bleeding palm to the edge of well nearest him and focused again on the current of magic still flowing through him, changing, and moving out of him and into his construction. With the sound of stone grinding on stone, ladder rungs protruded from the wall.

Harry climbed down the ladder without a second thought. He couldn't count how many similar constructs he had climbed down throughout his life. His feet hit the base of the well with the distinct snick of boots landing on stone. He focused his eyes, allowing his night vision to take fully now that he was swathed in shadows at the base of the well without the light of the moon to see by. He turned to face the curved wall of the well opposite the ladder. His pocket knife wouldn't have much effect on stone, but his blood would work all the same for drawing the rune array that would assist him in constructing a passage that would allow him to bypass the Kill Wards wholly unharmed.

The time it took for Harry to finish his tunnel system amounted to nearly an hour. A fact that he was not pleased with, but knew that rushing the process would have pushed his limits and put him at risk of losing control of the magic.

Harry emerged from the well that he had constructed mere feet inside the boundary of wards with caution. He had thought that the night was silent before, but the silence that he'd previously experience was nothing to the utter soundlessness filling his ears. As he let out the breath that he hadn't known that he'd been holding, it sounds harsh despite its soft whisper from his lungs.

"Right then," Harry said, his eyes gazing into the forested area before him. It was downright eerie how still the trees were, how ridge ever blade of grass was, and how cold the air was on his skin in comparison to the summer night outside the wards. Frost was already forming on the underbrush in preparation for dawn.

Harry took a few more steadying breaths and stepped forward. With that step, the earth crunched beneath his weight deafeningly. Yet, nothing stirred around him. He was the only living creature within the wards, he was sure. To remain so, there were but a few simple rules that he had to follow: do not attempt apparation, do not activate a portkey, and do not touch the edge of the wards (unknowingly or unprepared). These rules, of course, would not apply to any and all marked Death Eaters or to the Dark Lord, himself. The Death Eaters' Dark Marks provided them a free, all access pass so to speak, while the wards were attuned to Voldemort's innate magic.

Harry shook his head of the memories attempting to come forward, not wanting to think about all the lives lost with the initial activation of the Kill Wards over Britain and the many lives lost afterwards, as they made various attempts to circumvent the wards. The shatter remains of the Order of the Phoenix and the few stragglers that they had picked up had been like sitting duck with clipped wings for the first five months, before desperation called forth a plan that had been regarded as utter madness, until it had been proven viable. After the freedom of the last week and the freedom that he remembered always having as his teenage self, Harry felt distinctly uneasy now within the confines of the Kill Wards that he had grown so accustom to in the other world.

With his sense on high alert, Harry forced himself forward. His steps, his every breath, even the steady rhythm of his heartbeat - every noise that he made was unbearably loud, as he moved through the underbrush. Upon reaching the pebbled shore of the oblong lake, after several minutes of hiking, he was faced with 300 yards and thousands of gallons of still water between him and his objective. Yet, even at this distance, he could tell that something wasn't quite right. He had noticed that the island wasn't flat and appeared to be a rock formation back outside the wards on his and Sirius's initial approach. Closer now, he saw that rock formation wasn't quite the correct term to apply to the island. Ritual site was the more accurate term to be applied.

For a moment, Harry stared across the lake at the jutting rock construct with its marble white, yet visibly blood stained sacrificial slab distinguishable at its center. He had never been on site, when any of the other keystones had been destroyed. Usually, he had moved on to ridding another nation of the reign of the Dark Regime, by the time his ward experts took on the task of deconstructing the Kill Wards over the nations that they had already reclaimed. With Britain's Kill Wards, though, the Dark Regime was still active, when his warders had moved in. The warders had been working on the wards for over a month, by the time that he had died. And despite having known about this particular site from nearly the beginning of their work (it was, if fact, the only site that they had ever reported to him), they had made zero progress in deconstructing the wards - or had not reported making any progress to him, at the very least. Not to mention, they never mentioned a ritual site married to a keystone site before. He got the feeling that he now knew what had been causing the delay.

Trepidation settled within his gut, as Harry remained unmoving at the water's edge. He had two options. One was to continue on with his mission and make his way onto the island and see just what exactly was what. The other was to concede and give up the night as a bad job. He could secure Bill's help at the Quidditch World Cup and return with the man, who was much more educated about wards than himself, seeing as the man had practically taught him all that he knows about temporary and semi-permanent wards.

Harry sighed, knowing that there was really only one option. He knew next to nothing about permanent wards, other than that most were defined by runes stones and depended very little on their caster for their strength and that he could tunnel under them, if he was determined enough and had the time to do so. To put it outright: he needed Bill. He needed to get the red head on board, before he attempted anything more with the wards. There was no getting around it.

"Fuck!" Harry cursed, his voice echoing across the lake with volume that he was sure that he hadn't actually used. With resignation, he turned away from the water's edge. It looked like he'd be keeping his promise to Sirius.