nightseer

Chapter Six:



Ron knew he wasn’t the brightest glowflower bulb in the greenhouse when it came to relationships. He often put his foot in his mouth or blew his top over the littlest of things, but he liked to think he knew when his friends were unhappy, how to make them laugh, what they wanted for their birthdays, and who to hex when they were hurting.

A muggle picture of Harry and a girl with shoulder length brown hair forced Ron to accept there might be a couple of things about Harry he had missed.

Reading Harry wanted to stay in a mostly muggle world had been a shock; seeing a picture of Harry smiling and laughing with some strange woman while in that muggle world was an even bigger shock. A part of Ron hadn’t wanted to admit Harry could be happy away from them. He had wanted to be able to tell his sister Harry would get sick of his latest adventure one day and come home.

That wasn’t possible now.

Keeping a tight grip on his temper, Ron turned the page, still looking for the person from Harry’s letter. The woman was close, but she and Harry didn’t have the couple thing Harry and Ginny had had, what Ron had with Hermione. Ron gave every picture with Harry and a girl the same close scrutiny and came up blank. He flipped back to the front of the album and tried again, this time looking for any girl who might appeal to Harry. It was difficult, since Harry had only dated Cho and Ginny and occasionally noticed Luna was female, but Ron figured he had a decent idea of what kind of girl his best mate liked.

He came up empty again. There were plenty of girls that fell into possible Harry-dates by their looks alone, but they were either in the background of the photo or there was no chemistry between Harry and the girl in question. Ron went through the photo album a third time, slowly this time, unwilling to accept what his gut was telling him. When he spotted absolutely no one, he pushed the album away and closed his eyes as if to ward off a headache.

Homosexuality in the wizarding world was just not done. Well, that wasn’t quite true. There were exceptions—if you came from a large family, if you already had an heir, if you were getting a little on the side in the muggle world. With Harry, dating a man was not an option because he was famous, powerful and the last Potter. With such a small community of witches and wizards, it was his duty to carry on his family name, to pass on his magical genes to the next generation. If Harry dated another man here, Scrimgeour would at least give the Daily Prophet carte blanche when it came to Harry to pressure him into a normal relationship and, if pushed too far, he probably would try to have Harry arrested. Scariest thing to Ron was the realization he would put just as much pressure on his friend to fit the norm, all the while saying it didn’t matter as long as Harry was happy.

The sticking point, the thing giving Ron a migraine, was simple yet confusing. Harry wasn’t here; he was there, in another reality where things like having an heir or being the last of an old family didn’t matter. Harry was in a place where things Ron had learned at his father’s knee were no longer important. Harry now had a freedom he couldn’t have here. Harry hadn’t said anything in his letter, only hinting he and Squall had started dating after Harry had given up any hope of coming home, but Ron wondered if Harry had quit looking before or after he discovered his attraction for the same sex.

With a renewed interest, Ron sat forward and snatched the album off the table. He opened it to the first picture and immediately started looking for signs of something. He was wary of looking for the same signs of what he would see between a man and a woman, but that was all he knew and he figured, despite hearing his mother’s disapproving voice in his mind, things couldn’t be that different between what he and Hermione had and what two men would have together.

Except for sex, but he wouldn’t think about that. Not now, not ever.

A group shot caught Ron’s attention. It was of seven people, one of them Harry, and a dog posing in the middle of the dessert. Ron could make out three tall, thin buildings in the distance behind the group. None of that was what had caught his attention.

Tilting the album just so, Ron tried to recreate the small shadows he thought he had seen when he first flipped the page. After a few seconds of Ron twisting the book around in his hands and flapping the page from side to side, the photo shifted slightly and the top part started to slide out of its clear sleeve. Ron quickly pulled it completely free and flipped it over, revealing a short note in written in dark purple ink on the back.

‘Returning to the scene of the Prison Breakout. From left to right. Top row: Quistis, Irvine, Squall. Middle row: Zell, Rinoa, Harry. Bottom: Angelo and Selphie. Yeah, I know I’m sitting with Rinoa’s dog; I was upset with Irvine. Just seeing a pretty girl does not give him a right to flirt with her!’

Ron flipped the picture over, getting his first good look at the man he now knew was Squall. His inner big brother was screaming for him to beat Harry into a bloody pulp for leaving his little sister for a guy, while the part that had developed from spending seven years following Harry on every adventure, making sure Harry went to Madam Pomfrey at the first sign of trouble, and keeping the younger boy safe was demanding to know one thing.

Why in Merlin’s name had Harry needed to break out of prison?

“Hermione!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry wasn’t scared.

He was really and truly terrified.

He couldn’t pinpoint what was causing him to feel that way, though. He knew he was unconscious—he had pushed himself too far by working against the anti-magic field to cast an invisibility spell on the bag. He could hear the sounds of fighting near him, though he could only see black, and could easily distinguish which sound belonged to what, he simply couldn’t get his body to react. It was like he was back in his cupboard and listening to the television, not at all something to be afraid of and would have been somewhat comforting if Harry didn’t feel like a mouse under a starving cat’s paw.

Rinoa shouted at someone named Quistis, the other girl yelled back, and Harry felt his face get gently slapped several times. This was immediately followed by the sound of bullets impacting metal close by and the feel of a girl, Rinoa probably, falling on him and rolling them both away from the sound and, judging by their abrupt stop and the feel of rough fabric against his cheek, behind something.

He tried to wake up and found he couldn’t. No matter how much magic and effort he poured into his attempts, he couldn’t force his eyes to open.

Harry now had a possible reason for his fear. He was trapped in his own mind. Aware, yet asleep.

He felt Rinoa crawl off him and heard the shickslicewhish of her slingshot firing and her mutter of “Please don’t get shot”. When the sensations created a brief flash of fear and worry before they were lost in the darkness, he knew his situation wasn’t enough to cause the terror he was feeling. Mild irritation and frustration, yes—Harry could and would, if given enough time, discover how to get past this. If he didn’t get shot first, he would figure out how to free himself.

But even with the threat of death by stray bullet, being trapped in his own mind wasn’t enough to terrify Harry. Something else was going on, something he subconsciously knew and didn’t want to consciously accept. He was only aware enough to know he needed to run far and fast. Harry really, really wanted to wake so he could run from…whatever was causing the feeling. It was the same vague gut clenching terror he had felt when he found Quirrell standing in front of the Mirror of Erised. He knew he was in serious trouble, trouble he was in no condition to face, he just didn’t who or what was the source—the darkness, like Quirrell, was a distraction and a means to an end.

“It was decided long before my time the records are wrong. How interesting to see they are true.”

Harry’s mental self turned to face the speaker.

On the other side of the black space, standing next to a faded rust colored lightning bolt, was the ghostly form of a woman. Several thick layers of black feathers on the neckline of her low cut black dress framed her pale face and cleavage, and an elaborate gold headdress with red and purple accents held her hair back from her face. Neither did anything to hide shimmering white veins growing from her temples to frame her eyes; instead, they drew his attention to the pulsing veins. The woman’s makeup took it one step further. Purple makeup, a shade or two darker than the purple on her headdress, shadowed the area around the white veins, turning the disfigurement into something frighteningly beautiful.

Harry stared at the sorceress and ordered his body to wake up. He swore softly when his body ignored him.

Edea looked over her shoulder to smirk at him as she traced one gloved finger-claw along the edge of lightning bolt.

Harry bit his lip to stop himself from gasping at the sudden burning pain, but he couldn’t stop his very noticeable flinch. She scratched his scar again, and he flinched again, taking a step away from Edea and further back into the darkness of his mind. In turn, Edea did it again and again, causing him to move further and further back to avoid the pain.

The gunfire and shouting was distant now, as was the new sound of blades meeting and shotgun blasts, signaling Squall and Irvine’s arrival. Harry knew that was bad. He was so much further from waking up now, yet he still retreated. He had the passing thought he should try to stop her, but he was tired and alone and…He yelped when Edea dug her nails in and pulled.

Edea’s smile turned into a smirk as she dragged her hand from the top of the blood-red lightning bolt to the bottom. “I wish the records had mentioned this. Such a useful weakness. I could have made use of you from your first moment here. Instead, I let that foolish SeeD take you away from me,” she murmured, stabbing the lightning bolt with her nails. A few drops of blood leaked free from the wounds and dropped onto the growing puddle on the black floor.

“You are a far better toy than this one. So much untouched potential.”

No.

Half-healed Dumbledore and Scrimgeour shaped wounds tore open, releasing several small ripples of emotions.

Intellectually, Harry knew Dumbledore had never seen him as a toy, but as a grandson or prized student. He was one of the few people Dumbledore had trusted enough to let in on his secrets, even though most of that trust had only been shown after the old man’s death. Secrets in the form of an old pensive full of memories and old records left to Harry in Dumbledore’s will, most to help him find and destroy the last Horcruxes, one a posthumous apology.

Secrets that caused the very wounds Edea’s words reopened.

Harry stopped, almost completely swallowed up in the dark.

He didn’t want to face the pain again. The pain was a distant thing in the dark shadowy corner of his mind Harry had retreated to. Everything was distant—the sounds from outside his body, the pain of Edea touching his scar, the knowledge and old hurt of everything Dumbledore had done mixed in with the love and respect Harry had for the man. Even the anger and refusal to be used again by anyone were distant, vague things, hardly worth noticing.

But they were there all the same, demanding to be noticed where the others were willing to be lost in the dark.

Edea, now solid and whole and capable of doing so much more than her ghost, traced his bleeding scar with her nails, smiling at the idea of using him…No, not him, just his body and his magic. Just like the Minister had wanted him for his image, not himself.

'Not again,' Harry thought desperately, his body automatically taking a step forward. He was no one’s toy. He had refused to be one for Scrimgeour; he wouldn’t be one for this bitch who didn’t so much as have Scrimgeour’s well intended, if somewhat pompous, arrogant and selfish, motivations behind her.

He wanted to go back—the pain was worse now, hot knives instead of needles, but he forced his body forward. He had made a mistake by retreating; he knew that now. He had given Edea a chance to take advantage of Voldemort’s old link to his mind and, if the ripping disapproval he felt was anything to go by, the woman was rapidly learning how to manipulate the more painful aspects of it.

But Voldemort had opened the link by accident when Harry was a little over a year old and had taken advantage of it in the hopes of controlling his future enemy. Harry wasn’t that weak toddler now; he was a seventeen year old, pissed off wizard who hated snakes, politicians, and power-hungry morons who liked to play games with his life—all things Tom Riddle had, been or done at one point. Edea qualified as two out of three. All she needed was a pet snake to fulfill all Harry’s mortal enemy requirements.

Harry took another step forward, this one far more determined when compared to his previous shuffles. He smiled grimly, remembering he wasn’t as alone as he had thought, and a faint sea-green light appeared under his feet. A hole opened up in the floor in front of him. A large, sea-green rabbit-squirrel jumped out and into his arms, sniffing Harry’s face and nuzzling him affectionately. Harry returned the gesture with an ear rub and cuddled Carbuncle close as he walked forward.

It would be a cold comfort, but if he lost, knowing he had tried was better than simply giving up.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Squall motioned for Quistis to stand guard with Irvine over the two morons propped against the wall farthest from the door (Zell was already guarding the door). Quistis frowned slightly, her eyes flickering to where Rinoa and Selphie were kneeling next to Harry’s unconscious form and whispering about how to wake him, but she did move to stand next to Irvine, her whip ready in her hands. Squall mentally added reluctance to follow his orders she didn’t agree with to his list of Quistis Trepe quirks, and then proceeded to ignore it for the moment—asking why she didn’t care for that particular order after forcing him to make so many over the last few days was pointless and unprofessional.

For the moment, he would ignore her behavior. He had plans to corner her as soon as they were relatively safe and had a decent chance of being alone for five minutes, though.

With a reproving glance at Quistis for her hesitation, making her blush faintly, Squall wiped his gunblade clean on what was left of the sheets from the bunks, and sheathed his blade as he walked over to the huddle around Harry. He had, with one of his quick ‘Do they need a Cure?’ glances during the fight, seen Harry had a small, steadily bleeding cut on his forehead and Rinoa had two or three bullet grazes on her left arm. He had thrown a couple of Cures Harry and Rinoa’s way and thought nothing else of it. He was surprised to see Harry’s wound still there and bleeding.

“Cure spells don’t work,” Selphie said to Rinoa as Squall stopped behind them. “I tried an Esuna in case it was poisoned, then a Cure, and it still didn’t heal. Are you sure one of Biggs’s bullets did this?”

“It’s the only thing that could’ve, isn’t it?” Rinoa said, sounding lost. “I was guarding him the whole time, and I didn’t see anything hit, but…I even cast Protect on him when he didn’t wake up. A Protect should have prevented this, so I don’t know what it’s really from,” she added sheepishly when Selphie gave her a hard stare.

Squall stared at the slowly growing wound, trying to figure out why its placement made him feel uneasy. Head wounds always bled more than other wounds…The growth could simply be a trick of the light and blood…

Shiva nudged an image of Harry hesitantly touching his scar to the front of Squall’s mind. Harry’s mysterious wound was in the same place his scar was, and Seifer did say Edea wanted Harry’s powers.

Shit.

Squall stared at the bloody wound with a growing sense of impending doom. He could kill Harry or let whatever was going on play out. If Squall killed him, there was a good chance Edea would receive Harry’s magic if one of the girls wasn’t capable of holding his magic. If he let it play out and Harry lost, Edea would have Harry’s power in addition to her own and a puppet. It was a lose-lose situation unless Harry won whatever battle was happening in his mind.

Despite the soothing sounds Shiva was making, something in Squall’s gut dropped at the thought.  Theory said the two were equals, but Squall didn’t know enough to know the odds of Harry winning any sort of fight against Edea, let alone a mental one. Dreams supposedly could be controlled by the dreamer and if that was true, Harry might have the same control during a mental battle of wills, but it was obvious to any who looked Harry was mentally and emotionally exhausted by the fight he had been in right before landing here. Home turf advantage meant nothing if the fighter didn’t have the will to use it.

Fuck!

Squall scowled at the wound. He knew this had to do with one of the hundreds of things Harry had left out of his story, and he had let Harry get away with not being at all detailed because Squall had been tired and not in the mood to listen to someone’s pitiful life story. It was a stupid oversight Squall planned on correcting.

If they survived and Harry wasn’t under Edea’s control, Squall planned on correcting his stupid mistake.

With how fixated he was on the bloody scar and calling himself eleven different kinds of a fool, it was sheer dumb luck Squall saw the pool of sea-green light under Rinoa and Selphie.

With speed he didn’t know he possessed, Squall grabbed the backs of Rinoa’s duster and Selphie’s dress and pulled the girls back as a giant hole opened in the metal floor. Carbuncle, about three sizes smaller than normal, roughly the size of a child’s small teddy bear, jumped out of the hole, crawled onto Harry’s chest, and rested his red gem right over the wound.

Squall blinked at the sight of Carbuncle and the smug ‘I was right’ feeling from Shiva, complete with a mental wiggle-shake happy dance. He outright stared when tiny Reflects sprouted from Carbuncle’s gem, slowly covering the bleeding scar. Summoning itself while the summoner was unconscious was not normal Guardian Force behavior. Nowhere near normal. Not that Shiva was ever normal for a Guardian Force and he had rarely used Siren and Ifrit before loaning them out to Selphie and Rinoa for the mission, so it wasn’t like Squall had much to go by other than his teammates’ reactions and what he had been taught.

From the corner of his eye, Squall saw Selphie readying her nunchaku and glaring a hesitant Rinoa into readying her slingshot, and he sensed the others were shifting their positions in case they needed to attack the sorcerer. In contrast, Squall felt his agitation calming. Whatever was going on in Harry’s head was being handled by Carbuncle and Harry.

Shiva giggled in the back of his mind. For the first time since junctioning the ice spirit, Squall firmly and forcefully told her to shut the hell up, following the order with a threat to lock her away in one small portion of his mind. He didn’t care if she was over a thousand years old, wiser than he would ever be and more than a touch crazy. Quite frankly, he didn’t need her finding everything about his life amusing, and he definitely didn’t need her giggling her way through what was bound to be an annoying argument with Quistis where she questioned his decision to take Harry to Garden without actually arguing with him, only suggesting, which would leave Squall looking like an ass when he ordered her to back down.

A picture of Shiva cradling a scratched hand, one eyebrow raised as she looked down at a pale brown kitten with blue-grey eyes, appeared in his mind; the GF equivalent of ‘Oh, my kitten has claws after all.’ Squall, reluctantly amused, snorted at the image before he could stop himself.

“Squall?” Selphie asked, taking her eyes off Harry’s prone form to glance at him. Her always open and easily read face showed concern and worry, something echoed in Rinoa’s expression and probably the others’.

“Shiva,” Squall said, waving their concern off. He turned his back on Harry and Carbuncle—blatantly demonstrating he didn’t believe Harry was a threat, while silently hoping Carbuncle would warn them if something went wrong—and scowled when he saw Zell was paying more attention to what was happening inside the cell than the halls.

“If Seifer comes back, you’ll be on the receiving end of a sucker punch.”

Zell flushed. Whether it was from his callous remark or the thought of Seifer getting one over him, Squall didn’t know, but it did make Zell return to watching the hall from the door they couldn’t risk closing. Irvine, Squall was both surprised and confused to see, still had both his eyes and his gun aimed at the Galbadian soldiers. He was disappointed to see Quistis’s attention was divided between him and Harry with glances here and there at Biggs and Wedge. Squall felt a tic developing when he was forced to glare her, blushing once more, into doing what she should have been doing in the first place—watching the Galbadian moronic duo. He ignored her frequent and suspicious glances at Harry and Carbuncle. If it wasn’t for Shiva’s constant smug, confident attitude about the pair, he would be doing the same thing.

In the corner of his mind he let Shiva live in, so the thought probably wasn’t completely his, Squall found it highly amusing the only ones who showed any signs of trusting the sorcerer, other than him, were the ones that drugged him—Shiva and the squirrel-rat didn’t count.

Squall looked at his watch and frowned. He and Irvine had shot a series of Blizzard spells at the cameras (something they wouldn’t have been able to get away with if the guards hadn’t been occupied with Seifer’s departure, and Squall still expected to find twice as many guards between them and their exit than they had encountered on the way in, especially if they found their comrades he and Irvine had left behind), and the max time limit of eleven minutes before the spells melted was rapidly approaching. A max time limit they had no chance of having with how hastily they had flung the spells as they opened the cell door. If Harry didn’t wake up in the next thirty seconds, Zell would have to carry him out, and Squall’s fight with Quistis would be twice as annoying. And Squall so didn’t want the headache of convincing Zell to carry Harry on top of ordering Quistis around, which still felt awkward as hell.

There was a pained scream turned gasp that could have only come from Harry, and Squall spun around, absently noting Quistis, Zell, and Irvine had also turned at the sound and Selphie shifted her stance, ready to swing her nunchaku at the sorcerer at the slightest hint of danger.

A sorcerer who looked pitiful as he hugged Carbuncle and made half hearted attempts to wipe blood from his face.

Squall let out an impatient sigh, snatching what was left of a pillowcase from one of the destroyed bunk’s pillows off the floor. He stalked over to the bullet dented sink, one of the two inanimate objects Biggs hadn’t completely shot to hell (the other being the toilet), and ran it under cold water. With what was left of his dwindling patience, Squall grabbed Harry’s face and wiped most of the blood away, ignoring Harry’s attempts to pull away when Squall touched the surprisingly healed and tender scar, before throwing the ragged pillowcase on the floor.

“Better?” Squall demanded, unable to keep the sarcasm and his growing annoyance with almost everyone in the room from his voice.

Not that he had tried.

Not that the sensation of Quistis, Zell, and Selphie’s eyes on him, staring in shock, was helping.

Harry’s expression quickly shifted from tired, shocked, and somewhat grateful to a tired, nonverbal “Fuck you, asshole!”. Carbuncle also tried to get in on it—Squall was sure the squirrel-rat was attempting to manipulate one of his paws into forming the universal symbol for what Harry’s expression so clearly said.

“Can you walk?” Squall asked when he noticed Harry was trembling.

Harry’s expression turned stubborn. He nodded and used the wall to pull himself up, one arm always firmly wrapped around Carbuncle, who was still trying to flip Squall off. Squall ignored the squirrel-rat and tried to help Harry (they were running out of time), only to get his hands slapped, and clawed via Carbuncle, away.

Squall rolled his eyes and motioned to the others it was time to leave. He gave it five minutes before Harry collapsed on the floor and he had to carry him, and he would wait for the stubborn idiot to realize that. The argument if he didn’t would just be a waste of precious time.

Quistis wavered for a moment, giving Harry and Squall the same sad, suspicious, hard look, before turning on her heel and following Zell, who had shot one very confused look Squall’s way as he ran out and towards the stairs. Squall couldn’t help but feel grateful they had left, putting the mission first; those were two conversations he was not looking forward to.

Irvine, who had recognized the moronic duo’s names from Selphie’s conversation with Rinoa about their exam, hit Wedge, then Biggs with the butt of his shotgun to make sure they really were out cold. Wedge did nothing more than fall over, but Biggs groaned as he was knocked out and slumped to the floor, causing Irvine to smirk as he offered to escort Selphie and Rinoa from the cell. The girls shared a look and pushed the pervert out the door. Squall just grabbed Harry’s arm and helped the pissy sorcerer navigate the debris from the fight.

Squall wasn’t surprised when Carbuncle took this as his cue to leave—he had been around far longer than a Guardian Force should. The squirrel-rat started wiggling in Harry’s arms to jump down to the floor, and Harry let out a panicked shout of denial. Instead of following Irvine out of the cell, Selphie and Rinoa turned back to see what the latest Harry related problem was.

What happened next was what Squall would always say convinced Selphie Harry was one hundred percent harmless. It also confirmed Squall’s suspicions as to why Harry hadn’t woken up during the fight and why his scar had bled.

Harry shamelessly begged the squirrel-rat not to leave until they were far, far away from the “bitch from hell”.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Fleur Delacour’s mother was deathly afraid of werewolves.

During the last minute wedding preparations, the woman had avoided Remus Lupin by any means necessary, coming just short of hexing Remus to get away, thoroughly pissing off Tonks, Harry, and numerous Weasleys and causing Fleur no end of embarrassment. After she heard of Bill’s encounter with Greyback, it didn’t come as a surprise to anyone when Mrs. Delacour stunned Bill and forcibly checked Bill into St. Mungo’s long term incurable diseases ward in an attempt to save her baby girl. The two week delay it took to get Bill out had been enlightening for everyone, as Fleur displayed her hidden cunning side and Harry learned why Fleur had been chosen to represent her school during the Triwizard Tournament.

It was also during this time Harry met Gilderory Lockhart’s newest roommate, Mr. Dewitt Haymers, a former Unspeakable.

Dewitt Haymers was the sole survivor of a Death Eater raid. The man had been forced to watch as his entire family was murdered and tortured, and the poor man had also been tortured himself, the unlucky victim of an extended Cruciatus curse. As a result, the man’s mind had retreated to a time before he knew of magic, the age of five years old. Harry had run into him several times, as Haymers was a better escape artist than Lockhart and prone to wondering the hospital calling for his mother while carrying a small pink teddy bear—a nurse had confided to Hermione the man went into violent screaming fits anytime someone tried to give him a toy remotely associated with magic, including stuffed toys of the symbols of the four houses of Hogwarts.

As he followed Squall through the prison, obediently staying back as Squall sliced through the soldiers and guards the others had left behind and avoiding being captured or used as a hostage, Harry was uncomfortably aware he was doing a fair imitation of the man he had almost become minutes before.

That didn’t stop Harry from clutching Carbuncle like the sanity preserver he was, despite knowing the animal’s continued presence was only possible due to the thin thread of magic Harry constantly fed him.

By the time they reached the tenth floor, Harry was reasonably sure Squall thought he was useless and only keeping him alive so Edea wouldn’t have a chance at his magic. The glances Squall threw his way had more than a touch of disgust and frustration under the professional concern. It made Harry’s large chunk of shame and embarrassment that he wasn’t doing anything to help hard to ignore. It wasn’t like he couldn’t help. Although Gryffindor’s sword was enchanted so he wouldn’t accidentally kill himself with it and far away in another reality, Harry was sure he could wield one of the dead soldier’s swords without looking like too big of an ass or killing himself with it, and his magic was eagerly awaiting his command to do something, anything.

But Edea scared Harry, in some ways more than Voldemort, and he didn’t want to do anything to attract her attention. Voldemort had tried to posses him as well, but where Voldemort would have been satisfied with releasing Harry from his control and letting Harry remember later what he had done with his body and deal with the consequences, Harry suspected Edea would have forced him to watch as she used him and enjoy breaking him at the same time, leaving him with the memories and the knowledge he had repeatedly tried and failed to stop her. In abstract, it was a difficult choice which was worse, but as Edea was alive and Voldemort was dead, any situation involving her automatically became worse.

Edea could also stop bullets. Harry knew from a fragmented vision of a raid where the pain had been so great Voldemort hadn’t been able to hold his mental shields in place, Voldemort hadn’t been able to stop a shotgun blast from blowing off half his shoulder and having to apparate away to seek immediate medical attention before he was forced to create another new body. It made Harry wonder how powerful Edea was.

All those thoughts and wonderings coupled with the sheer exhaustion from his fight with Voldemort and lack of sleep the night before left Harry feeling just as useless and weak as Squall’s glances implied and wishing bravery and stamina could be bottled and sold as a potion in this reality. He could use a shot or two to last him until he got somewhere safe for another breakdown. His five minute fit in the showers last night was not enough.

Six meters or so from the stairs leading to the eleventh floor, a loud alarm screeched, rows of red lights fell from the ceiling, and suddenly there was steadily increasing sound of several people—soldiers, Harry’s mind corrected—running in their direction from the floor below.

“Warning! Escapee alert! Monsters will be set loose…”

Harry blanched. There was more to the automated message, but Harry’s mind was stuck on the word ‘monsters’. As a result, he didn’t protest when Squall grabbed his arm and started a mad dash towards Irvine and Selphie’s somewhat shielded spot on the stairs. Squall recklessly flung sleep and thunder spells in the direction of the three soldiers still alive as they passed the slowly opening doors on the right. One brief glimpse of a blue creature with a skull-like head trying to squirm free before the door fully slid back was enough to give Harry’s muscles the energy to easily keep up with Squall.

A panicked squeak escaped his mouth when Irvine aimed his shotgun in their direction; then an angry gasp when Squall purposely tripped him, sending them both crashing towards the metal floor as Irvine fired his shotgun.

He wouldn’t remember it later, but after they fell to the floor, Harry unconsciously cast a series of Protect and Shell on himself and Squall when he looked back to see a Fira spell traveling down a dying soldier’s sword. Right as Irvine moved to the left so they weren’t in his line of sight and Squall moved to stand and start running again, Harry automatically yanked Squall back to the floor and curled around Carbuncle and the bag, half laying on Squall to hold him down as the spell traveled over them.

Unaware of the measuring look Squall was sending giving him as he pulled free of Harry’s grip, Harry’s eyes followed the path of the Fira. He gasped when it hit Irvine in an explosive tornado of red and yellow flames with a small star shaped burst of hot blue flames in the center, and gapped when Irvine jumped free of the spell, still pale skinned with only the hem of his leather coat barely singed.

“Not possible,” Harry breathed, everything he knew telling him Irvine should be nothing more than a blackened husk of a corpse.

“Deal with it,” Squall snapped, jerking Harry up and dragging him forward.

Harry let Squall pull him along like a rag doll, the shock making it all that much more difficult for his brain to process and send the ‘Monsters are almost free. We don’t have our wand; time to run like Dudley, Voldemort, and a pack of Dementors are on our heels’ command to his muscles.

Then Squall shouted, “Thrustaevises, Wendigos, GIM52A models!” as they reached the bottom of the stairs, someone else shouted back “Clear!”, and they followed Selphie and Irvine up. As Squall hit a red button to close the gate to that floor, Harry just had to look back to see what monsters looked like. He let out a nervous laugh when he saw what was running and flapping their way. Those things could not be real.

Harry knew his way of coping was strange and morbid, but he was surprised when his brain supplied the image of him at eleven and in Hagrid’s hut as a coping mechanism. Hagrid was cooing as a baby blue lizard-bird with too many wings wiggled its way free of a bright blue egg while a much smaller version of the tan and dark moss green, flat faced gorilla-things growled at a parody-of-a-human navy robot hiding under Hagrid’s bed. Surprise aside, it delivered the results Harry needed. His system got a jolt of adrenaline and he was almost keeping pace with Squall, even as he bit his lip to stop the panicked, frustrated shout of “Could this reality be more fucked up?” from escaping.

A gorilla-thing (Harry guessed it was a Wendigo; Thrustaevis sounded like a flier and G-whatever sounded like a robot’s name) slammed into the gate, warping the metal, and yanked at it with its hands. Hands, ‘cause those appendages were nothing like paws or claws.

Harry didn’t need Squall to tug his hand or glare now. The scream of metal on metal as the Wendigo ripped the gate free was more than enough for Harry to find his second wind.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The second Squall and Harry reached the thirteenth floor, a trio of Moombas pulled a large switch down and a thick metal door to slid over the stairs, sealing the room off from the rest of the tower. Squall resisted the urge to turn around and smack Harry when the boy squeaked in surprise for what had to be the nineteenth time since leaving the cell. Yes, Selphie could break a man’s neck in one move; yes, Quistis could slice a Thrustaevis’s wings off with her whip; yes, Zell could knock a Wendigo back three feet, and yes, there was a herd of little lion things helping them, but was it necessary for Harry to squeak at every little Hyne damned thing?

Even as he let go of Harry’s hand and started towards the stairs to the control room, Squall could hear Quistis and Zell arguing, about what he couldn’t tell, and Rinoa trying to convince the two to calm down. Irvine’s distinct drawl broke in and mentioned Selphie and computers, and Selphie was…

“You don’t look good. Come on, let’s get you upstairs. There are chairs there.”

“Thanks. Um, what are…?”

“They’re Moombas. Cute, huh?”

Selphie was with Harry.

Halfway up the stairs, Squall mentally cursed as he turned around.

Selphie had an arm wrapped around Harry’s waist and was helping him walk through the herd of Moombas, who were also trying to help while avoiding Selphie, and towards the stairs. Harry was pale, almost grey, sweating, and breathing heavily. He had been fine that morning and he was in decent shape—fit for a civilian and more than capable running for a good while, so it was a bit of a shock for Squall to find he looked like a gentle puff of wind would knock him over. When Squall added in last night with what they were doing now, Harry’s condition made more sense.

Hiding a wince, Squall walked down the stairs. He could get Harry back up to escape condition; Selphie was needed upstairs if Irvine’s ramblings were right. “Selphie, what do you know about chip keycards?”

Selphie frowned at him, the same disapproving frown from the Timber-Rinoa incident, as she said, “The outdated things Galbadians use? A little. Enough to enter new commands, but I don’t know enough to overwrite any preexisting ones.”

“Can you use some of the keycards Irvine’s collected to get us access to the Missile Base?” Squall asked as he gently nudged the Moombas away and moved to Harry’s left side. He wrapped an arm around Harry’s waist and pulled him free of Selphie’s grip. Squall found it disturbing the Moombas were now muttering Laguna’s name in-between growls to each other and following him as he slowly guided the exhausted sorcerer to the stairs. “We need to get in. Seifer’s launching missiles at the Gardens late this afternoon.”

Squall twitched when Selphie whimpered—he was reaching his limit of helpless noises—and ran past them. She briefly turned back, glaring at him fiercely, and waved her hands at Harry. Repressing an annoyed sigh, Squall nodded, and Selphie spun back around and leapt up the stairs. There was a chorus of frightened yips and five new Moombas raced down the stairs to join the ones surrounding Squall.

“Damn it, Selphie! Why did you have to threaten to skin one of ‘em?”

“Not now! Get out that chair! Irvine, keycard!”

“Why? I need to-”

“Move, Zell! Squall says Seifer sent out orders for the missile base to fire at Trabia and Balamb Gardens.”

“You can’t be serious. Irvine, where…”

Keeping one ear on the conversation going on in the room above, Squall sat Harry down on the stairs and knelt down in front of him. Ignoring Harry’s weak slaps and protests that he was “Perfectly fine; go away, jackass” and the squirrel-rat’s nips, Squall grabbed where he thought the bag was, luckily found the zipper on his first try, opened it, and dug around till he found the stash of potions wrapped inside the clothes.

Squall ignored the regular Potions and Hi-Potions. Instead, he went straight for the emergency stock of Elixirs. He pulled out one of the half doses he had prepared in case Harry needed one and unscrewed the cap. “Sip it. Too much too fast and you’ll get a head rush. If there’s any drug left in your system, this should clean it out,” he said, adding the explanation to soften the order as he handed the small plastic bottle to Harry.

Green eyes blazing, Harry opened his mouth, presumably to verbally tear into Squall, and then shrugged and sighed tiredly. “Is there a reason you didn’t give me this earlier?” he asked, his gaze alternating between warily eyeing the bright blue-green liquid and glaring at Squall.

“Elixirs are expensive, and I have no idea how you’ll react to it,” Squall explained. He frowned when Harry’s gaze turned from mildly wary to fearful. “We don’t have time for this. Seifer’s ordered the missile base to fire on the Gardens. We need to leave soon, and I can’t keep dragging you along,” he said, aiming for the other boy’s pride.

It worked.

Harry glared at him as he started sipping from the bottle, grimacing at the horrid taste. “Why would he want to destroy a garden?” he asked quietly in between sips, obviously hoping his question wouldn’t be heard by the others.

Squall’s initial thought was ‘What kind of moron is he?’. Then he saw the honest confusion on Harry’s face and realized none of them had explained what they were or where they were from. “You know we’re mercenaries, right?” Squall asked, hoping Harry was smart enough to enough to have at least caught on to that little fact. With all the hints and clues they had inadvertently dropped and Rinoa’s blatant demands they follow her orders because she was their client, Harry was either extremely stupid or in severe shock if he hadn’t.

Harry made an ‘I don’t want to think about that’ face as he muttered, “I figured it out. A little late, but yeah, I know.”

“We’re called SeeDs,” Squall said.

Several new questions were added to his mental list when Harry’s face managed to go paler, almost a true grey, despite the Elixir and he came close to dropping the bottle at the name. After a moments thought, Squall decided to save his newest questions until Harry understood why it was so important they stop the missiles. “There are military schools known as Gardens in three different countries: Trabia, Balamb, and Galbadia. Edea plans on using Galbadia Garden as her base of operations since it’s primarily used for training Galbadia’s military. The Trabia and Balamb Gardens train SeeDs, and she appears to hate SeeD. Having Seifer order a missile launch is the easiest way of getting rid of us.”

Harry nodded in understanding, his expression vaguely apologetic, as if he thought they wouldn’t be able to stop the missiles in time. Squall ignored his desire to punch Harry for that and went right for what he wanted to know. “Where have you heard of SeeD before?” he asked, taking note of how Harry flinched and turned away. “Harry, I need to know.”

“Edea,” he whispered, looking down at the floor, briefly letting go of Carbuncle so he could rub the lightning bolt scar on his forehead. He glanced at his hand, as if checking for blood, and then wrapped his arm around Carbuncle once more, hugging the GF like it was a stuffed toy. “She said I was good toy. Said she’d made a mistake by letting you, a ‘foolish SeeD’, take me from her.”

Squall sat back on his heels. Harry’s voice had turned somewhat mocking when he had mimicked Edea, but the primary emotion behind his words had been fear. At that moment, everything about Harry, from the way he was now clutching Carbuncle to his chest to his defensive posture to the way he wouldn’t meet Squall’s eyes, said Edea terrified him. Squall considered asking why—Harry had the same powers as Edea; he should, theoretically, be able to fight her head on even if the fight would end in a stalemate—and then thought better of it. The terror that had been so clearly displayed just seconds ago was gone, and Harry was now calmly finishing the last of the Elixir. Squall didn’t know how Harry had suppressed it so quickly, but he didn’t want to deal with it if his question brought it back, either.

However, Harry must have noticed Squall’s confusion, because as he tucked the empty bottle into the bag he said, “I’ve had a breather. As long as Edea doesn’t whack me with another Bludger to the head, I can take a few more surprises before I break again.” He paused and smiled wryly before amending his previous words, “As long as there’s someplace I can breakdown in private coming up soon, I can handle a bit more.”

“Can you last until we get Garden evacuated?” Squall asked as he stood, mentally adding ‘What’s a bludger?’ to the unimportant but odd section of his list. A section he knew would grow far beyond the two questions already on it (the other being ‘Who’s Merlin?’) with every conversation he had with Harry.

A shrug accompanied the wry smile this time. “Don’t have much choice, do I?” he muttered, pushing himself up. He was a little shaky as he stood, but the Elixir was doing its job. His skin was back to its normal tone and his eyes no longer looked like they were staying open by sheer force of will. He lifted his right leg and shook it, doing a full body shiver. “Is it supposed to feel li-“

A loud bang on the door over the stairs cut Harry off. Squall stumbled as he turned around, the Moombas huddled around him making it difficult to move and impossible to draw his gunblade. Another bang had Squall instinctively taking a step back, bumping into Harry.

A third loud bang against the door panel, this one causing the Moombas to run up the stairs and forming a rounded hand shaped warp in the metal, was followed by a short whimper from Harry that had Squall wrapping his hand around the hilt of his gunblade to avoid physically reacting to the sound. Never mind Harry’s confident words, he still wasn’t ready to deal with monsters.

“That’s one of those Wendigo things, right? Humans can’t do that, so it has to be a Wendigo, right?” Harry asked, poorly concealed panic in his voice.

“Humans who have powerful magic junctioned to strength can do that, but yes, that’s a Wendigo,” Squall replied as he turned to face Harry. He could see cracks in the calm mask Harry wore, but didn’t comment on them as Harry gifted him a strained smile and then raced up the stairs.

Squall followed at a slightly more sedate pace, but still at a run. He was once again greeted by Moombas hovering around by the emergency switch to activate the door panel to close off the floor from the rest of the prison. But instead of closing the door, the Moombas, who were watching Selphie with fearful eyes, were huddled there because it was the farthest spot in the room from the computer everyone except Harry was huddled around.

Looking around the room, it took Squall a moment to spot Harry in the middle of the Moombas, trying to calm them as he asked about the switch. Harry was failing, as he was just as frightened as the Moombas but for a different reason. A muffled roar from below had Harry doing a full body flinch, without a squeak or whimper this time, and Squall rolled his eyes.

“Zell, pull the switch to close off this level,” Squall ordered, walking over to the computer.

“Huh?” Zell looked up from where he was hovering over Selphie’s shoulder and grinned at Squall. “Man, where have you been? Selphie’s a computer genius or something. You should-”

“The switch, Zell,” Squall ordered again, pointing towards the Moombas.

Zell looked at where Squall was pointing and scowled briefly at Selphie before running to the switch, muttering under his breath about poor Moombas and botched skinnings. Seeing the amused smile on Quistis’s face and smirk on Selphie’s, Squall decided he was better off not knowing the full story. “Selphie?”

“I’ve taken care of the keycards,” she said, nodding her head towards the cards Irvine held up, not taking her eyes off the computer or her hands off the keyboard. “Now I’m arranging things so they’re expecting three new arrivals. I need to know who you’re sending.”

“You have the uniforms?” Squall asked, both curious as to when they had decided to sneak in dressed as Galbadian soldiers instead of breaking in and relieved they had managed to come up with a plan on their own.

“We still need to get to the garage in the east tower,” Rinoa said, briefly looking away from watch Selphie to smile at him. “Irvine and I have more than enough sleep spells for us to knock out a few guards and swipe theirs on the way.”

Squall looked at Quistis, who shrugged and said, “Security’s tighter there. This is the only way in with a decent chance of success.”

Squall nodded thoughtfully, vaguely aware Zell, Harry, and the Moombas brave enough to approach Selphie were coming up behind him. “Is anyone here better than Selphie at hacking or with computers in general?”

Rinoa, Zell, and Irvine all shook their heads, and Quistis sighed. “If you had asked me before this,” Quistis motioned to Selphie, “I would have said I was good, but…” She shrugged in a way that would have been sheepish from anyone else.

Squall glanced at Harry, but the awed expression on his face as he watched Selphie’s fingers fly across the keyboard said he was completely clueless about anything computer related. Not that Squall would have sent him, even though he was mildly tempted to so he wouldn’t have to listen to Harry’s squeaks when something else shocked his already frayed nerves. Of course, if he gave into that temptation, he’d have to send Rinoa as well for the way she kept poking at his barriers and forcing him to do things her way, Zell for how he was determined to be best buddies no matter how many times Squall shot him down, Irvine for his perverted behavior and tendency to flirt with anyone wearing a skirt in a five mile radius, Selphie for how she kept trying to force him to be nice, and Quistis for how she pushed most of the decisions his way and her habit of mimicking him. No, if he filled the missile base team with everyone who annoyed him, he would be the only one returning to Balamb Garden.

Quistis was his first choice. Not because Squall was annoyed with her, but because he needed a cool head on the team. Selphie was automatically in because she was the best with computers and had the highest chance figuring out how to stop or, at worst, delay the launch, but she also a little too emotional. Squall needed Quistis to balance that. Zell and Irvine would both encourage Selphie at her worst, but those were his only choices. He didn’t think Rinoa’s dedication to her cause drifted towards fanaticism and the Forest Owls’ goals had essentially been achieved when Edea killed President Deling, but that didn’t mean he wanted to risk having her anywhere near missiles capable of wiping out Galbadia’s capital.

Selphie suddenly stopped typing and tilted her head back to look at him. “Who’s gonna go, Squall?”

“You, Quistis, and Irvine,” Squall said, going with the idea that someone from Galbadia Garden would have the most experience with their military and could help the others act their parts. Irvine made a pained face and Squall turned to look at him, but that was Irvine’s only protest.

“Gotcha,” Selphie said, grinning at the computer. “Give me another few minutes and we can go.”

Squall nodded, even though she didn’t see it, and tapped Quistis’s arm. This wasn’t the best time, but he wanted to have this talk with her before she left. He jerked his head towards the other side of the room, and she nodded, subtly glancing Harry’s way, before she stalked towards the other side of the room.

Unaware a group of Moombas was following him, Squall frowned as he followed Quistis. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who had something to get off his chest.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry’s first instinct was to join the group of Moombas trailing after Squall, but he had caught the look the blonde woman (Quistis, maybe? It was the only name on his list of Squall’s friends that he hadn’t heard since waking up, but Harry didn’t know if it was her name. These people were horrible at remembering to introduce people.) had sent his way and it had not been a nice one. So he stayed where he was, clutching Carbuncle and hoping he didn’t look as lost and as miserable as he felt.

Harry wished he could explain he normally wasn’t this useless, that he was fully capable of facing a pack of Inferi and a couple of Death Eaters with nothing more than his wand and a small carry tank of gas. Unfortunately, he couldn’t without sounding like he was lying or bragging, and with his recent actions, it would definitely sound like a lie. A very big, fat lie.

The blonde woman gestured towards him with a short angry flip of her hand and then crossed her arms over her stomach. Harry winced and turned back to watching Selphie (At least he knew who she was from the Moomba thing) do whatever she was doing with the computer. Harry hadn’t used a computer since grade school and that was just once while helping the school’s librarian with something. After that, the closest he had been to a computer was cleaning the windows in Dudley’s room while Dudley shot box shaped aliens into smaller boxes. With his lack of exposure to muggle technology, Harry thought it was a major accomplishment he even recognized the machine that was part of the workstation Selphie was sitting in front of as a computer.

Actually, there were what looked to be six different or connected computers inside the workstation, and it was the same in the workstation on the other side of the round room. The whole thing, except for the monitors and keyboards, was covered in the same dark blue metal as the rest of the prison. Even the swivel chairs bolted to the floor were made of the same metal, with small, matching, worn cushions on the seats. All in all, the room kinda reminded Harry of a futuristic space travel show or movie he had seen a glimpse of once while dusting in the living room. A very metallic, archaic version of it, but it still made Harry think there should be a large video screen showing a field of stars where the stairs to the outside were.

Smiling at his thoughts, Harry absently ran his fingers through Carbuncle’s fur as he stared at the stairs, resisting the urge to go hide behind Rinoa and Irvine and strike up a conversation about para-magic or something. The blond man, Harry was pretty sure he was Zell, was staring at him and bouncing on his toes. Harry didn’t know if Zell was staring at him because he was worried Harry would loose it again like he had with Seifer or because Zell was working up the courage to talk to him, but it was making Harry nervous. Although, Harry was almost positive it wasn’t the second; the blond didn’t strike him as the type to get nervous when talking to new people, even if said new person had almost blasted someone else with giant chunks of hail.

Zell bounced one last time in a decisive way, sort of like a full body nod, and started to approach Harry, his mouth opening to say something. Panicking, Harry said the first thing that came to mind. He considered himself lucky it was actually relevant to their situation.

“Does anyone else think it’s weird no one’s come storming in here from one of the other towers yet?” Harry blurted out, looking at Rinoa and Irvine for help. That right there told Harry how desperate he was, but the way Zell had just stared at him for minutes on end made him nervous and willing to reach out for any allies. “I mean, shouldn’t we be overrun by now with soldiers? It’s not like any of us have been keeping watch and the door’s wide open,” he finished, nodding at the open door at the top of the stairs leading outside.

Zell swore softly under his breath, Irvine didn’t bother with being quiet about it, and Squall and the blonde woman stopped arguing and turned their heads to stare at the door, Squall throwing a surprised look Harry’s way before frowning at the door.

Harry felt guilty for disturbing the quiet, almost peaceful mood of the others, but he was more relieved than anything. Then he realized why everyone, including Selphie as she shut the computer down, was staring at the door. The door that led to the collapsible walkway they needed to cross to reach the garage on the other side.

“They’re setting up a trap,” Rinoa said flatly, voicing everyone’s thoughts. 



AN:  I planned on getting through the rest of the breakout in this chapter, but this seemed like a good place to end the chapter.  In the next chapter, I promise they'll finally leave the prison.