Chapter Text
“Shut up, Malfoy.”
Draco's lips pressed in a thin line, his wand shifting toward Ron’s head. Ron raised his own wand, glaring as he kept the strange pulsing gem tucked behind his back.
“Put that down, mudblood. You have no idea what you're touching.”
Ron stepped back, nearly tripping over a pile of books in the room of lost things.
“I know you shouldn’t have it.”
Draco sneered, stepping toward him. “Idiots shouldn’t touch what they don’t understand.”
Ron tensed. He didn’t know why Malfoy wanted the gem so badly, but he knew couldn’t give it up.
“One more step, Malfoy.”
“Or what?” Draco took another step.
“Bomb-” Ron started, already seeing the counter spell on Draco’s lips, but he didn’t cast, lunging instead and tackling the other boy. They went down in a tangle of limbs, an elbow to the side, a leg to the hip.
Ron realized Draco had never fought before. He bit Malfoy's arm, a rusty taste on his tongue. Draco screamed.
Ron didn’t wait, pushing off the other boy below him as he ran. Blood got on the gem, but he didn’t think about that. It started to grow hot in his hands. He sprinted through stacks of overhanging suitcases filled with magical junk. Taking a left and then a right, footsteps behind him.
He felt something hit him. He went down, cracking his skull against the cold stone. He tried to move but his limbs won’t obey his commands.
Malfoy was on him just as feeling returned to his arms. The other boy's hands clawing at the gem in Ron's grip. Ron kicked up his leg connecting with something soft. Draco hissed and dug in, his nails scratching down Ron’s face. White-hot pain lanced through him, almost disguising the growing heat of the gem.
“Let go!”
Ron growled and threw his head up. Their skulls collided with a thunk. White flashed behind Ron’s eyes, but he ignored it. Using Draco’s shock to roll over, taking the other boy with him. His momentum carried them both until they toppled into a pile of crates, Ron on top.
He pressed his wand into Draco's side.
The blond prat went still.
“Give up.” He hissed.
“Never dung-”
Ron felt his palm burn; the gem tumbled between them. Dracos’ eyes went wide, and Ron tried to throw himself away.
There was a flash, like the sun exploding.
There was the sound of tearing around them.
The world went black.
“Wake up.”
Ron felt something cold and wet on his face. He raised a hand in front of his eyes, squinting up at the light. It dappled over his face, and he realized it wasn’t just his face that was wet; it was all of him. He was in some kind of mud that clung to his skin and sank into his clothes.
“Wake up, you idiot.” He heard a sniffle and finally opened his eyes fully. Draco was above him, crying.
Ron stared, blinking a few times at the sight. He rubbed his eyes to check if it was real. Draco’s face twisted, and he swatted at Ron’s shoulder.
“Shut up.” He snapped, standing, turning away from Ron, rubbing his face. Ron pushed himself to his feet, slowly taking in their surroundings.
They were up to their ankles in dark, mossy water pooling around thin, dead stalks of what he thought might be wheat. Yellow mist pooled in the air like some kind of sickness, shapes shifting in the distance. He could hear the distant sound of fighting and the whistling of wind that brought the sweet smell of rotting pus. It was some kind of marsh, filthy black, almost unnatural.
The tallest thing in sight was what looked like a burning Muggle tank, he could just make out the flames in the distance. Something glowed faintly at his feet, and he looked down. It was the red stone, a perfect circle, empty of the dark swamp water around it. Little green ferns were poking up in the dead exposed soil, he almost felt bad picking it up and sliding it into his pocket.
Draco didn’t seem to notice, only turning back to him when his face was clear. Sneering in a way that made Ron want to punch him but his eyes were red and puffy.
“Are you going to fight me?” Ron’s wand twitched in his hand. He spotted Draco’s own, but it was down at his side. Draco seemed to consider the idea, looking around them, his sneer slipping. After a moment of thin silence he tucked his wand into the holster on his wrist. Ron didn’t put his own away until he watched the other boy pull down his sleeve.
“Were you crying?”
“Shut up.” Draco snapped. Ron glanced at the other boy but no comeback came, merlin, he thought this was really bad then.
He stepped forward, the ground sinking with a wet gurgle. He ignored it, not stopping until he was in front of Draco. The blond prat was glaring at him. For a breath, he thought about what he was going to do. He could still feel the sting of the scratches on his face, and this was Draco; he had just called him a mudblood minutes ago.
But his eyes were still red, and Ron could see the fear he felt in his chest on the other boy’s face. For a breath he thought about when he was a little boy hiding from the boggart upstairs. Bill had found him curled in a corner with a blanket tucked around him like armour. Ron had been so scared that he would be laughed at, but Bill didn’t laugh. His face got all serious and intense, and he brought out his wand. He had asked what was wrong, but Ron hadn’t wanted to answer.
The boggart had taken that moment to stomp on the floorboards above them, like the troll foot it was. Bill hadn’t laughed, instead he had knelt in front of Ron, put a hand on his shoulder, and promised to protect him. He hadn't left until Ron had fallen asleep; he still remembered the warmth of Bill’s arms.
He let his hand fall on the other boy’s shoulder and squeezed. “We're going to get out of here.”
Draco froze. He glanced at the hand and then at Ron, and for a second, Ron thought he was about to be jinxed. Then something unraveled in Draco’s face and he relaxed into the hold.
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Draco glared, but there was no heat behind it. For a long moment, they just stood there together. Draco eventually straightened, and Ron let his hand slip to his side.
“If you hadn't bungled things enough to land us here—” Draco gestured broadly. “—I’d put you in your place.”
Ron blinked, feeling like he should feel angry, but it was hard when he could still see Draco’s blush.
“Then we work together.”
Draco scoffed but didn’t move away.
“I… I suppose we don’t have a choice.”
Ron's lips twitched.
Draco shot him a look. “It is deeply unpleasant, of course.”
“Of course. So,” Ron glanced around again. “Any idea where we are?”
Draco shrugged. “Some type of muggle battle.”
Ron knelt. “Lumos.”
The soft white light glowed faintly, illuminating churning swamp water and little specks that looked like human flesh. “Does that look muggle to you?”
“Merlin.” Draco stepped forward, leaning closer. “Where have you brought us?”
“Right, because it's my fault.”
“Of course it is.”
“Well, if you weren’t being such a-”
Something crashed much closer. Both boys fell silent.
“I think we should get going.” Ron stood.
“And where exactly would we go? I don’t see anything that could help us get less lost.”
Ron brought out his wand. “Point me.” It spun a few times before settling tilted to the left of him. “We go north, at least then we’re moving, who knows what might find us if we don’t?”
Draco chewed on his lip, then brought out his own wand. Waving it in a spiral pattern, Ron felt himself tense as some kind of effect washed over him. He glanced down only to see that his feet had become the same color as the dead grass.
“The disillusionment charm?”
Draco started walking, “Better that than nothing.”
Ron studied himself a moment longer and then followed the other boy.
The strange stone weighed heavily in his pocket.
“Shut up.” Draco hissed.
“I didn’t say anything,” Ron whispered back. Both boys were crouched now, the fog so thick it seemed to swallow everything, they couldn’t even see three feet in front of them. All around them though echoing strangely as if through layers of cloth was the sound of a massive muggle battle.
Ron tried not to think about that, or that he didn’t think he could stop a bullet.
Draco grabbed his arm and pulled him down, Ron followed his own mind suddenly shouting at him to get down. They took shelter in a burned out muggle car just as two shapes appeared where they had been standing.
There was a flash of blue, then green as two giants collided in some kind of battle that seemed more for gods than men. The blue one slammed to the ground, a sword buzzing with flies in his shoulder. Despite the wound the blue one rolled, a motion too elegant for something so massive and brought up a spinning blade edged with teeth. Their swords connected, screeching against each other as they fought almost faster than Ron could perceive.
The blue one’s armor was painted blue with white heraldry. While, the green one looked cursed, pussing, popping blisters on its skin, where they could see skin, maggots eating at flesh.
Ron glanced next to him and had to choke down a scream. There was a skeleton beside him, its flesh rotted away yet he could still feel the car’s warmth.
They stayed there huddled together, their bodies refusing to move. Over time, they saw what looked like Muggle tanks in the distance. Their barrels setting the mist aflame for heartbeat before the ground shook and both of them knew, in some distant place, there had been fire.
Suddenly stillness came with the unnatural calm of a held breath. As if the world itself was bracing.
Ron breathed in, a putrid wind picking up around them.
A sound broke the quiet.
It was the tolling of a bell.
It held such melancholy that Ron knew it had to be charmed.
The mist convulsed, that was the only word he had for it, faces appearing, laughing, screaming and weeping. But the sweet scent of rot began to lift. He looked out of the broken front window to a light flickering in the distance.
Fire, he realized, he could see a sword of fire. It cut through the yellow air like something divine, and Ron knew with every last shred of magic he held that he should never meet its wielder.
The mist truly lifted as the fire rose and Ron stopped breathing.
Three hills from them was an army of giants. Cutting through the sky was the largest of them. Towering things with massive muggle canons for arms, their heads, metal masks that seemed to leer out of their frames. The only word he knew for them was titans. As if the gods of the Greek myths had come down and transformed into machines of war.
There were dozens of them.
Beyond even that were rows and rows of Muggle tanks. Massive beasts of steel, their turrets as large as his head. Thousands, no more than even that, stretching into the horizon.
He could feel Draco shaking next to him, and he didn’t blame him. Because, despite the army of metal gods, it was the figure in the center of it all that was most terrifying, a man, no, a demi-god. Smaller physically than all his machines but he felt larger.
He held a flaming sword and wore blue warplate that should have looked comical, over proportioned and bulky but instead made him look like a conquering warlord. His face was strange, both handsome and inhuman, his hair blond and his eyes blue. A halo of spikes hung over his head, a golden crown that seemed to declare the man's ownership of all before him. The image, not helped by the five golden giants around the man, red clocks fluttering in the wind. And small blue armored giants behind him.
Warhorns were playing behind them, sounds of music, both doleful and playful drowned out the tolling of the bell. Something cold slithered down Ron's spine.
“What is he?” Draco murmured.
Ron opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, the mist moved. Draco clung closer, and both of them huddled as deep as they could get in the car. The stone grew hotter in his pocket as if in warning. Something screamed at him to hold it. He slipped it from his pocket and grabbed Draco’s hand so they cradled the gem between them. But it didn’t burn their palms.
He heard the sound of feet first, like dugbog’s stampeding.
He looked over the lip of the window and saw them, a horde of creatures that looked like green goblins. A carpet of them that rushed forward, their mouths watering for fresh meat.
The car roof bent as they covered it. The horde ignored them at first, cutting around them to reach the army on the horizon, but some paused, seeming to smell them. One of the ones nearest turned, and Ron felt his heart in his throat. There was nothing he could do as their eyes locked.
It wasn’t a green goblin, he realized. Nothing he had ever met had held such malice for the living.
But they were trapped. There were too many, they would be consumed if they ran. The thing jumped at them, the stone pulsed. The thing screamed as it lit on fire.
A phoenix flame.
Ron’s breath caught.
The others didn’t even seem to notice cackling as they tread over the burning demon. That was the only word he had for them: demons and they had burned one with a phoenix's heart.
He wanted to ask Draco so many things then, how had he known one existed? Why had he been searching for it? What could it mean? Instead he curled tighter into the other boy, praying with all his magic they would survive this.
A shadow fell over them. Ron looked up and saw a greater demon. Huge, horned, lazy, beasts that stumbled forward. Grinning merely like toddlers waving to their new friends. One of their feet almost crushed them, but they didn’t dare move. Next came giant swarms of bugs that descended like a plague. Clogging the air with the stench of a thousand diseases.
He heard it before he saw it, a tank firing. Draco shoved something in his hands. He glanced down at a potion of Felix Felicis.
“Drink it.” Draco’s lips moved, but Ron couldn’t hear him. He didn’t know where the other boy got the golden liquid. Didn’t care, it burned on the way down. He noticed a second empty bottle by Draco’s feet.
He closed his eyes already knowing what was to come.
The army of giants opened fire.
“There’s a girl.”
“What?”
They were still huddled under the front of the car, leaving them in the dark. It was better than looking outside. Somehow, by some miracle, they hadn’t died in the opening volley or the next eight.
Some miracle of liquid luck was Ron’s guess.
He saw her over the lip of the car’s back window, her figure surrendered by five women in battle armour. She was being carried, and for just a second, Ron thought he saw her eyes glint gold.
“Look.” He turned Draco and pointed. Draco's pale face darkened.
“It's not our concern.”
Ron felt something stir in his chest. Draco was right, she wasn’t their problem, they had enough of those already. The horde had avoided their hideout for hours at this point. The battle had moved on closer to the line of titans. But even with liquid luck, it was suicide to go out there.
Yet, she was so small, almost as small as Genny in that cursed chamber so many years ago. Her little face, pale and sickly, like she was dying.
“I'm going out.”
Draco grabbed him. “Don’t be mad.”
Ron shoved him off and crawled out the window.
“We can’t just leave them.”
“Yes, we certainly can!” Draco snapped as he followed after him.
Ron ignored him.
The girl had become golden, a kind of protective bubble around them. Four of the five battle-women were dead now despite that. One had been picked up by one of the greater demons, its hand sizzling through her armour and killing her in seconds. They hadn’t even been able to respond in time. It had frowned shaking the body as if sad it’s new toy wasn’t moving anymore.
The other three sisters had died to take it down. And even still the girl kept walking.
Behind her, were Ron and Draco keeping close enough that the golden light felt warm on their faces. They walked as if through a field of chafe only alive because of the girl.
All around them were demon things, greater yet than what they had seen before. Ron had realized half way through they had been on the very outskirts of the battle, the true fighting so much more vicious than he could even imagine. Bodies both human and giant lay strown on the ground like colorful flags in a game. Even more of the dead plague beasts were sinking into the soil polluting it further.
A single battle-priestess acted as the girl's herald, her pupils so wide Ron couldn’t see her irises. If they had noticed the two boys neither gave indication of it.
They crested the last hill to find the beating heart of the war.
Four creatures, the greatest among what was left; were fighting the golden giants. One lay dead, his body like a desecrated temple. The other four were blurs of gold as the generals for they must be that of the demons, fought them.
“Blimy.” Ron muttered, Draco said nothing, paler than Ron had ever seen him.
They were in a church yard, marble columns broken and corrupted rose from the ground as if the last sigh of faith. More blue giants fought waves of them pulsing against the demon filth, other colored giants further back so it looked like an ocean of armour. Yet the sounds of battle never reached them, the girl's golden light making it seem as if the world was silent.
The gem pulsed with heat. Little flames sparking off it, that only added to the array of light around them.
Ron looked up and saw him.
He was a monster.
A giant, even larger than the golden-haired demi-god he fought. Moth wings outstretched in a parody of flight. He had no skin, just a skull, with slime overflowing from it only covered by a dark cowl. He was clad in thick warplate, colored pondwater green but pockmarked with red weeping sores. Chains hung from him, declaring some unknown allegiance, but they made Ron’s eyes sting when he looked at them. He held a warscythe in one hand, frills of rotted metal sprouting from it. A pistol in his other hand that did not look human in design.
Ron realized he was wrong; it was not the blue giant that was a god, it was this, and he hated him. He did not know why, but he hated him more than he hated anyone in his life.
The girl stopped, and Ron stopped behind her. She was dying, he could see that now, her hair coming out in white clumps. Her lips chapped, the skin flaking off. She was dying, and he didn’t know how to make it stop.
Some long-buried instinct told him not to interfere. But that didn’t mean he didn’t feel something red hot in his chest start to bubble.
She looked so much like Ginny.
The golden giant and the greater demon paused as she came into view. As if both were enchanted by her.
He heard the demon whisper.
An-ath-e-ma
He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it was important.
The world paused. Ron didn’t perceive it, so much as feel it in his magic. Draco, next to him, whimpered. The gangly demon rocked upon its ruined lower quarters, but the golden warrior moved faster. It died with a whine. Its body melting in a flutter of flies.
The girl stepped into the air above the melee, and a dome of light sprang up from the ground. Expanding out like a flower blooming, demons screamed, men and giants staggered, the diseased god's blade was caught the moment it descended on the blue demi-god. Wind fresh as summer began to waft past him, the mist clearing as if from a dream.
He felt the sun on his face; it was hot.
Then the demons began to die. The smallest of them simply evaporated, the larger ones burned in their own skins, their eyes melting, their heads popping.
The deceased god was flung back, his wings outstretched. The blue demigod surged forward, raising his flaming blade.
“Mortarion, enough! Now you will face me, and collect the wages of treachery,” the demigod shouted, his voice like thunder.
But Ron wasn’t paying attention to them; he was watching the girl, he was watching her die. Her skin was burning; whatever power she had was killing her.
The heat in his chest boiled, the gem pulsed in his palm.
He would not let her die.
Mortarion swung his scythe through reality, opening a hole, but Ron knew that the girl would die if he left. The last of her soul used up. The gem grew so hot it warmed his blood. Draco was looking at him, seeming to know he was about to do something catastrophically dumb.
He held the stone with him anyways. Some kind of strange understanding formed between them. As if for a moment they were not two men on different sides of a war, just two boys who didn’t want to watch a little girl die.
Ron didn’t think of the spell , not truly; he thought of his father, he thought of his father playing with him in the bath. He had gotten himself a little Muggle toy, a rubber duck.
Reality seemed to slow.
He would save this girl.
He thought of a rubber duck, and the Phoenix's heart roared. Liquid luck pulsing in his veins.
For a heartbeat, he could see its immortal flame. It encompassed the world, the last of the demons withered but held, fighting back against it, guttering it.
The girl fell. Whatever golden power had sustained her burning itself out.
There was a crack.
The gem shattered.
His hand burned.
The world held still. Inside him something had changed, something that would never be the same again.
And where Mortarion had stood was a little rubber duck.