The Fall of Dumbledore: The White King

Agony

Silence hung thick and suffocating in the Slytherin dormitory common room as Hades' words detonated like a Blast-Ended Skrewt amidst their raucous gathering. Draco went rigid, his patrician sneer evaporating as all the color drained from his already pale features.

"Pettigrew?" he finally rasped, the name emerging strangled and disbelieving. "As in Peter Pettigrew? The traitorous rat who sold out the Potters to the Dark Lord?"

Hades inclined his head fractionally, eyes glittering with dark intensity. "The very same. I saw his name with my own eyes, slinking across the outer grounds."

Crabbe and Goyle exchanged one of their trademark dimwitted looks, the profound implications of this revelation clearly lost upon their stunted faculties. Draco, however, shot to his feet in one blurred motion - long legs carrying him in an agitated prowl before the smoldering embers of the fire pit.

"If what you're suggesting is true," he hissed in a tone edged with rising panic, "then we are all in mortal peril! That wretched coward must be brought to justice at once, Potter-Sna—"

"Enough!" The snap of Hades' command lashed across the suddenly brittle silence with authoritative force. "We move forward from here as a unified cadre, Draco. The insipid blood politics that have long divided our efforts must be put aside in service of this ultimate revelation."

Rising from his chair, Hades crossed the intimate distance separating them until barely a wand's length remained. His eyes bored into Draco's with fevered intensity, searching for any lingering reservation or hesitation. At last the blonde gave an infinitesimal nod, squaring his shoulders with aristocratic resolve.

"Very well, Hades," he murmured in a tone dripping with dark sincerity. "Lead on...and we shall follow."

Their course determined, the Slytherin quartet swept from the dormitories like a stygian tide of adolescent fury and conviction. All pretenses of schedule were summarily abandoned as Hades guided them across the serpentine paths and shadowed cloisters winding between greenhouses and annexes. The Marauder's Map remained unfurled at the vanguard in the heir's grasp, its enchanted paths rippling and coalescing into a steadily solidifying path.

At one point, Crabbe's brutish boot scuffed a loose stone underfoot with a resounding clatter in the dead silence of dawn. Hades instantly rounded on the trembling oaf with an arctic glare. "Maintain absolute discretion you simpering fool," he hissed with murderous venom. "For if Pettigrew eludes our grasp this day, none shall walk unaided from these grounds again."

The hulking boy's porky features washed pale in the filtered sunlight as he bobbed his head in mute contrition. Satisfied, Hades resumed tracking the meandering trail, all of his senses attuned to even the subtlest flutter of movement in the spectral stillness.

Then without warning, it happened.

A twig snapped in the overgrown hedgerow to their left, followed by another and the unmistakable sound of a body crashing through the underbrush. The four wizards immediately spread into a combat fan, wands leveled and slashing through the shadows.

"Come out, Pettigrew!" Hades' amplified voice seemed to pierce the very aether with its implacable resonance. "There is nowhere left to run, rat-man! Face your recompense at last!"

Manic laughter echoed from the concealing brambles, chilling their blood with its unhinged mania. Then a slight, hunched figure came tumbling out into the narrow trail clutching a twisted wand in one gnarled hand. What little they could make out of his features in the wan moonlight suggested a grotesque fusion of man and verminous rodent.

"You arrogant little shites know nothing!" Pettigrew's reedy tone was a mixture of shrill panic and profound bitterness. "I've bided my time here...lurking underfoot while the truth moldered away. You think you've beaten me? I'd laugh if it weren't so utterly pathetic!"

With a sickening lurch, the paunchy figure thrust his wand forward, forcing them to dive for cover as a torrent of concussive blasts erupted from the twisted tip. Once the fusillade relented, Hades shot a look toward Malfoy, the silent communication seamless. _Allow me to distract the rat, then you strike from behind._

Draco gave a faint nod, using the fractured terrain as cover to loop a wide berth around Pettigrew's firing position. In the meantime, Hades leaped out to draw the traitor's wrath and withering blasts.

"Tell me, Pettigrew!" he shouted across the scorched expanse separating them. "Was it thrall...or did you sell out the Potters willingly for your cowardly life?"

The crimson flares erupting from the traitorous wizard's wand sputtered and died, and his cadaverous face cracked into a ghastly rictus grin. "You always were a perceptive one, Harry...or should I call you by your true name now?" Blazing with mocking contempt, Pettigrew spat out the next words like a scourging curse.

"How does it feel...clawing at the vestments of your birthright...only to find shame and betrayal interwoven into the very fabric, Heir to the House of Snape?"

Hades felt as if his innards had been plunged into an Arctic void at the implications gusting from behind the older wizard's vile insinuations. But before he could muster any sort of response, a thunderous cry split the night from the opposite direction.

"Burn in hellfire, Pettigrew!"

Draco came tearing around the bend, wand clutched in both hands as he snarled off a blinding volt of electric fury. But the treacherous wizard was no longer where they'd expected, scuttling backward in a crouch with baleful hatred etched across his twisted features.

His knuckles whitened around the focus of his wand as he pivoted toward Draco like a snake about to strike. Reacting on instinct, Hades hurled himself forward - hands scrabbling for purchase against the leaf-strewn earth as he flung his own body between the traitorous wizard and his best friend.

For an endless, breathless heartbeat, he felt as if he were floating in a strange duality - perceiving Pettigrew's hateful mask in the frigid moment before the detonation, while simultaneously tasting the rich copper tinge of his blood. Then the maelstrom erupted tenfold with Hades at its epicenter, scouring away all thoughts of betrayal or anguish into the infinite black...

Draco's anguished scream echoed across the shattered ground long after Hades' consciousness had winked out like an extinguished ember.