Chapter Five

The White Wizard

Echoing footsteps startled Harry, until he realized they were his own. Compared with the commotion outside, the interior of Sportsmart was a veritable tomb. He tried not to dwell on that thought as he ghosted through a phalanx of darkened registers.

The lights were out, which made the shadows longer and deeper. As he pushed further on, the shadows became limbs that reached for Harry until he looked at them, and they straightened into normalcy again. Mannequins wearing jerseys and pads stared facelessly at his passing. A crisp taste of winter hung in the air, making goose bumps of his skin.

He shivered under his cloak. It wasn’t just the cold, or the malicious spookiness of the store. Something was wrong. Just…wrong. He couldn’t put it to words, or even to thoughts, but he felt a general anxiety that grew with each step he took.

Passing an aisle of hockey sticks, Harry came to an open portion of the store. The sprawling windows of the storefront were long out of sight, leaving back a minefield of shadows and displays. Harry reached the end of the aisle, and stopped with a gasp.

The smell hit him first, eliciting a gag that he tried to choke back. It was a noxious cocktail of an odor, one Harry had smelled before, from Cedric, and from Dumbledore. Memories assaulted him, drawn forth by the smell of death. He did his best to push them aside.

The source of the smell sat in the middle of Sportsmart’s footwear section. Benches and stacks of shoeboxes had been pushed aside to make room for a giant circle, which had been poured into the carpet in blood. More blood crisscrossed inside the circle, forming what Harry guessed to be a pentagram.

Harry had to guess at the shape because a pile of bodies obscured the floor. At least ten people lay in a heap, layered inside the confines of the circle, their limbs knotted together. There were several bodies in identical polo shirts, probably the store’s uniform. A woman lay entwined with a small child. Mother and daughter? Harry could only guess. But he knew the wide, stark emptiness in their eyes.

“Don’t do this, Alex,” Harry heard a deep, shaking voice say. He tore his eyes from the circle and saw two men standing on the other side. The one that had spoken, Harry recognized as the other Harry—Dresden, Murphy had called him. Harry Dresden. The shadows masked the tall man’s glare.

Harry had never seen the other man. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have remembered. The man Dresden faced was plain to a fault, with mousy brown hair that thinned and receded, and spectacles perched on a face that lacked any distinctiveness. He wasn’t short or tall, perhaps slightly thin, and wore a rumpled suit remarkable only in that it was drenched in red.

It was that blandness that made the man’s expression so disturbing. His lips were twisted with a pure delight that dimpled his cheeks. His eyes danced, flickering as though they could not settle on any one sight. When he spoke, there was a chuckle lurking under his words. “I can’t stop now, Harry. Don’t you see that?”

“You don’t want to know what I see, Alex,” Dresden said. He held his staff before him, gripped in whitened fingers. “But it’s going to be a fraction of what’ll happen if you don’t stop that spell right now.”

The mousy man lifted a dagger that Harry hadn’t seen. Its tip drizzled dark liquid as he waved it at Dresden, making the tall wizard flinch. A deep shadow at Dresden’s side suddenly bubbled with a basso growl that tickled the pit of Harry’s stomach. Harry’s hadn’t seen Mouse, either, until the great dog raised its hackles to the man.

Broken laughter made the man shake. His dagger remained trained on Harry. “You must see the real truth of things, Harry. I tried to tell you in my clues. I wanted you to appreciate what would come. Only you could, you know. They don’t know the real world like we do. I’m a prophet.”

“No,” said Dresden. “You’re Alexander Nemo. You had a rough life, and an even rougher time coming into your magic. It’s screwed you up in ways I could never even dream up. And what you’re about to do will kill millions of people in an instant, and a lot worse in the long run.”

“I’m not crazy, Harry. And I’m not a murderer, either. This,” Nemo said, and waved his dagger at the sickening pile, “is a necessary evil. I need them to open the door. The Queens will forgive my actions, you’ll see. I’m sure they’ll understand. After all, I’m bringing all their lost children home.”

“Last chance, Alex. Break the circle,” snarled Dresden.

The shiver in Harry’s spine became a violent spasm. He nearly shook himself out from under his cloak as the darkness around him began pooling together into otherworldly shapes. As Harry backpedaled, he watched the shapes creep toward Dresden, attracting Mouse’s rumbling growl.

“No chance, Harry,” Nemo said, and smiled. “Get him.”

The shapes exploded forth into diminutive warriors no taller than Harry’s waist. Shadow sloughed off them, revealing milky skin and bronze armor. Flaxen hair flowed out from beneath half a dozen battle helmets. With squeaking cries, the warriors charged forward, brandishing stone hammers and axes.

Harry suspected his own expression mirrored Dresden’s dumbfounded shock. “Brownies?” Dresden said. “You brought brownies to a fight? You gotta be kidding—“

Dresden’s disbelief became a grunt as the brownie horde fell upon him. His left hand shot up in reply. Something glimmered on his wrist below the cusp of his lone black glove.

The wave of brownies crashed against a shimmering wall of bluish energy. Sapphire light cascaded beneath their hammer blows and falling axes, stopping them in midair well away from Dresden. Though the attacks never landed, their force seemed to push at Dresden all the same. He was forced back several steps, keeping his arm raised as the clamoring brownies followed. Mouse trotted backward beside him with teeth bared.

As Harry watched, he realized the brownies’ true purpose. They appeared comical in their oversized bronze armor, but they were forcing Dresden back all the same. And in the meantime, Nemo approached the body circle, flicking his dagger to and fro.

With each step Nemo took toward the circle, the wrongness in the room sharpened. The cackling man brandished his arm from his sleeve, and puckered the pale flesh underneath with the tip of his dagger.

“With this final gift of blood and flesh, I beseech thee.” Nemo’s words resonated across the room in spite of the softness of his voice. Some other power carried the words to Harry’s ears, making the flesh on his neck crawl up toward his forehead. “With this final act, let there be no more gateway. Let there be two no more. Demolish the wall, e’er hence let there be one glorious truth!”

Dresden shouted. He tried angling his staff around the nigh-invisible wall before him. The brownies batted his stick aside. They kept him pinned to the wall of shoes, with Mouse trapped behind his shield, kept at bay by the raining stone blows.

Reflexively, Harry’s hand strayed to his back pocket. The grip of his wand brushed his fingertips. One expelliarmus spell would fling the dagger from Nemo’s hand…

…and alert the entire Ministry to Harry’s presence. One act of illegal underage wizardry—not his first, he recalled with chagrin—would likely turn his life into a circus of bureaucratic buffoonery. He might never get the chance to escape and fulfill Dumbledore’s mission.

But as he watched the dagger open nonsensical patterns in Nemo’s arm, he knew he had to do something.

Harry sprinted forward as Nemo reached the circle. As the madman pushed his arm over the pile of bodies, Harry tackled him at the waist, throwing both of them to the floor. A patter of Nemo’s blood struck the beige carpet outside of the circle’s edge.

Nemo screamed, and thrashed. A flailing, bloody fist struck Harry’s nose, turning his world into stars. He fell off Nemo and clutched his face. Wet warmth spread into his palm while his eyes sorted themselves out.

As his vision returned, Harry saw with sickening dread a vibrant sheaf of cloth trapped under his legs. His cloak had come loose.

Grasping his arm, Nemo lanced Harry with a smoldering glare. “You!” he snarled.

“Me?” Harry said through his hand.

Nemo shot to his feet, forcing Harry to scramble backwards with just one hand. “Usurper! Glory hound! You seek to make this miracle your own. But the Queens’ favor will be mine, and mine alone!”

He thrust his dagger at Harry. The chill in the room became a memory as light pulsed from the blade. Harry flung himself to one side, narrowly dodging the stream of white heat that poured from the dagger. Smoke and embers burst from the carpet where the stream passed, stripping the floor down to scorched concrete.

Harry rolled until a foot stomped down on his shoulder, slamming Harry onto his back. He stared up in breathless horror at Nemo, who grinned at him from behind the luminous blade of his dagger.

“The coming utopia shall brook no meddlers!” Nemo declared, and thrust his dagger.

“Forzare!” The word rang out, resonant much in the same way as Nemo’s voice had been. Harry had little time to wonder what the word meant before an invisible fist hammered Nemo in the back. Nemo stumbled off of Harry and onto his knees.

Dazed, Harry lifted his heavy head, and saw the glare of Dresden’s shimmering wall vanish into thin air. A thin, glistening, sticky sheen clung to every inch of Dresden. The translucent material evaporated off the floor almost as quickly as it drizzled from the end of his long coat. Illegible, unintelligible runes smoldered across the length of his staff. Behind him, Mouse shook a disturbingly empty bronze helmet clutched in his muzzle, spraying more of the stickiness everywhere.

“I tried it the nice way,” Dresden said, and leveled the end of his staff at Nemo.

Nemo’s cracked smile collapsed, breaking open with a gut-wrenching sob. “Why can’t you see it, Harry? We’re living in shadows! We walk in dreams!”

Narrowing his eyes, Dresden said, “Now we do it my way.”

“Summer’s wrath!” Nemo screamed, clutching his dagger in both hands.

“Forzare!” bellowed Dresden.

Harry closed his eyes, and still he saw the hellish storm flare from Nemo’s dagger. The white heat spread toward Dresden until it struck his spell, splitting into two waves that scorched the world to either side of the tall wizard.

Both wizards bolted to opposite sides, each trying to outflank the other. Harry pressed himself to the floor as heat and force crisscrossed the rippling air. There were no curses or hexes that Harry could discern, only raw forces being thrown as fast and as hard as magically possible. Twice he had to jerk out of the way of an errant bolt that cooked the floor where he had been. His evasions took him to the edge of the circle, where the nauseating smell overpowered him.

Nemo bounded past a pedestal for hiking boots, letting it explode against Dresden’s spell in his place. The glow of his dagger changed from white to blue. “Winter’s shackles!” he cried.

A sapphire gale spilled from the tip of Nemo’s dagger to envelop Dresden. The wizard flinched, drawing his coat up and around to protect himself. Frost spilled over the battered leather of the coat as the wind glanced off of Dresden.

But the ends of his long legs stuck out from the bottom of the coat, and swallowed the full force of Nemo’s spell. Dresden screamed as a thick layer of ice manifested around his feet. He collapsed on his side, dropping his staff.

Nemo cackled. Then he screamed as a large maw clamped around his wrist, dragging his dagger down. Mouse had circled around the magical fray, and now mashed Nemo’s wrist in his teeth, and dragged the madman off-balance with a toss of his head.

“Gah!” screamed Nemo. “T-Trolls’ Might!”

As Harry scrambled to his feet, he saw the tendons in Nemo’s bare arm tighten and jump. Harry started to run to the dog’s aid, but his first step slid out from under him, and he fell back to the floor. Looking back, he saw a spattered stone axe by his feet, the culprit of his misstep.

Nemo lifted his arm without a hint of effort. Mouse hung from his wrist, front paws wheeling. Snarling, Nemo launched a vicious kick into Mouse’s chest, again and again. A sharp crack resounded, turning Mouse’s growl into a whimper. But still, the great dog remained clamped to Nemo, with blood frothing from his mouth.

“Hey!” It was Dresden, crawling across the floor with his icy feet dragging behind him. He had abandoned his staff. Now he carried a shorter, thinner stick, like a long wand, which glowed with similar runes as he swung it up in one hand. “Fuego!”

A lance of fire leapt from the tip of the long wand and sliced through Nemo’s elbow. Even concentrated and focused, the fire’s heat made ash of Nemo’s arm from the shoulder down, leaving Mouse and Nemo singed, but otherwise fine. Mouse dropped Nemo’s hand as he landed, backing away as Nemo screamed and writhed.

Dropping his wand, Dresden rasped, “Hands off my dog.”

Nemo’s scream warped into a delighted, coughing cackle as he stared down the length of his phantom arm. Smoke ribboned from the stump at his shoulder as he twisted around. He bent down and scooped up Mouse’s abandoned prize with his remaining hand.

“With this final gift of blood and flesh,” resonated Nemo, “I beseech thee.” He tossed his disembodied hand, and brayed with laughter.

The hand tumbled in a high arc, one Harry realized would end in the bodies piled upon the circle in the floor. Dresden must have realized it too, for he shouted, “No!”

Harry whirled onto his hands and knees. Dresden’s barked command to Nemo echoed at the back of his mind—Break the circle. He didn’t know for certain what the circle would do should Nemo’s hand join the macabre offerings, but he knew he couldn’t allow it.

Purely on instinct, Harry grasped the stone axe at his feet. He threw himself across the floor, rolling, tumbling, making every ache and bruise on his body cry out. The circle’s edge came just into reach as the hand arced over him. With a shout, Harry swung the hand axe across his body and buried its head in the floor, bisecting the bloody line in the carpet.

There came a loud pop in his ears, like a sharp drop in air pressure. The hairs in his arm stood on end. Nemo’s disembodied hand flopped onto the back of the topmost corpse and rolled off, bouncing down to touch Harry’s axe, all without effect.

A raw howl tore from Nemo’s throat as he collapsed. He clawed at his face, sobbing into his remaining hand, until a body check from Mouse sprawled him onto his stomach.

Walking on thawed, unsteady legs, Dresden staggered to Mouse’s side. “Good boy,” he said, and scratched the shaggy dog’s ears. Then, almost casually, he crossed Nemo’s face with his heel, arresting the madman’s sobs.

Harry stared at the scorched hand splayed atop the stone axe head. Shuddering, he released the axe, and fell onto his back, panting. New twinges emerged from the receding adrenal rush. He ached, and breathed, until a tall silhouette and its shaggy companion loomed above him.

“That was some quick thinking, kid,” Dresden said as he offered Harry a hand. “Don’t let it go to your head, but you just saved this whole city. Maybe even the world.”

“Er, right,” Harry said, and lurched to his feet with Dresden’s help.

Dresden scrutinized Harry, lingering on his forehead. “Did you get trapped in the store? As far as I can tell, you’re the only survivor so far.”

“You’re more right than you know, hoss.” The sudden emergence of Ebenezer McCoy startled Harry. He whirled around, and saw the air shimmer with dispelling invisibility.

McCoy and McGonagall both stood at the edge of the battlefield. How long they had been present and unseen, Harry didn’t know, and didn’t care to know. Anger welled from the pit of Harry’s stomach to climb up his throat in a hot surge.

Nodding to the two of them, McCoy said, “Harry Dresden, meet Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. He's your new student, 'Professor.' ”