Chapter Text
Harry pressed his back against the scratchy trunk of a palm tree. His shirt was already sticking to his skin, damp with sweat. He counted his breaths; three seconds in and three seconds out, until the air barely seeped from his nostrils.
Silent.
He strained his ears to hear beyond the cacophony of jungle noise — the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the rustle of foliage. It took all his concentration to isolate the sounds, and he risked putting off enough magical ozone to be identified by a sensitive Tracking Spell. But Harry wasn’t worried. He’d been following these traffickers for months now, and while they were resourceful enough to produce and move massive amounts of illegal potions through the dense jungle, they had yet to employ the delicate and precise sorts of magic required to detect Harry, even as he skirted the perimeter of their compound. Assuming the information he received from his informant held true, Harry could move freely within their wards with little to no interference, so long as he kept the magical force to a minimum.
The compound itself was Disillusioned and surrounded in a thick barrier of Notice-Me-Not Charms, but Harry didn’t have to see it to know it was there. He could feel it, the magic buzzing like a hive, and absolutely swarming with the Ministry’s Most Wanted. His objective today was not to take them down, only to gain intel: map their movements, evaluate the span of their perimeter, assess the threat level. But Harry was getting antsy. Two months deep undercover, and countless hours preparing, most of it spent chest deep in the jungle, swimming in humidity and fighting off as many man-sized insects as actual wizards. It had been too long since he’d seen real action, and in its absence, his patience wore thin.
The crack of a twig echoed through the cottony silence of Harry’s Enhanced Hearing Spell, and he slipped his wand from the holster strapped to his thigh. He turned his head slowly to peer around the trunk of the palm.
Something shifted between the massive fronds of a fern, and Harry tracked it as it slipped stealthily through the undergrowth. Definitely human.
Harry returned to his concealed position behind the tree, but before he could plot his exit strategy, he caught movement at his twelve o'clock. He gasped and dropped to his knees, but he wasn’t fast enough. Harry barely had time to curse his own stupidity before he heard shouting in a language he didn’t understand, and an angry spell zinged past his left ear and hit the tree. Splinters exploded around Harry like shrapnel and he threw up a hasty Shield Charm. It proved advantageous because three more curses, coming from all directions, crashed into his magical barrier and burst in a shower of sparks.
Harry spun around and spotted another caster moving quickly through the jungle, and dashed towards them, leaping over a felled tree trunk. He disabled his Shield with a thought and flung a flurry of binding charms at the fleeing wizard. The man stumbled and went down with a shout.
Harry kept running, ducking behind trees and beneath the cover of the vegetation, eyes scanning the path ahead of him for signs of danger. He leaned into his Hearing Spell only to catch movement all around him.
Panic, foreign and unwelcome, flared to life in Harry’s chest.
He was surrounded.
The thrum of potent magic at Harry’s back alerted him to the nearest attacker, and Harry dodged his curse by dropping to the ground and rolling away. He leapt smoothly to his feet and cast back. His brick wall of immobilising charms slammed into the pursuer and sent him to the ground, stiff as a plank of wood.
Harry didn’t make it another step before a curse collided with his left shoulder. He stumbled back, then hissed as the area erupted in searing pain. He turned and cut the attacker down with a spell, but another curse crashed into Harry’s right arm and his wand went flying, lost somewhere on the jungle floor.
He growled as what felt like fire burned its way across his bicep to his forearm, and Harry’s tenuous grip on his control shattered. The frustration and panic swelled until they burst from him, and a force field of magic snapped forth, whip-like, bringing the three nearest attackers to their knees.
Harry took their moment of distraction to stumble away, ripping away the quickly dampening sleeve of his shirt to inspect the spell damage to his arm. He grimaced when he caught a glimpse of the wound; sliced clear to the bone and teaming with poisonous Dark Magic, which slithered and knotted between the tattered planes of flesh in shadowy tendrils. The surrounding skin was quickly turning black. He didn’t have much time.
He looped the torn sleeve around the wound, then, using his teeth and his left hand, tightened the knot to stymie the bleeding. But the makeshift bandage was saturated in a matter of seconds. Blood dripped from the cotton and coursed down his arm in rivulets.
“Shit,” Harry cursed as his vision swam. He was used to seeing his own blood with the amount of injuries he incurred in his line of work. But the volume of life-sustaining fluid he was leaking wasn’t the only thing that worried him. Black smoke seeped from the wound, coiling, thick and oily, above Harry’s arm. And that was a very bad sign indeed.
Harry felt the attackers at his back before he saw them, their magic a metallic tang on his tongue, and he spun around just in time. He Disarmed them with a blast of wandless magic so strong, they flew backwards ten feet, one of them cracking their head against a tree, and the others landing somewhere amongst the dense underbrush. Their wands flew obediently into Harry’s hand, and he snapped them in half, tossing them aside. He quickly Summoned his own wand, hidden wherever it had fallen, but didn’t wait for it before he started sprinting directly for the magical barrier separating the hidden compound from miles of uncharted jungle. If he could just get beyond the Anti-Apparition wards, he could escape.
Harry’s wand caught up to him, and he snatched it out of the air as he ran. He slashed aside flowers the size of umbrellas and ducked beneath a leaf, large as a bus. He could see the barrier shimmering beyond, a silken curtain not fifty feet ahead.
A curse hit Harry smack in the centre of his back, sending him sprawling onto the ground. He threw out an arm to catch himself, but the injured limb buckled under his weight and he smacked his face against a rock, splitting his lip. Blood filled his mouth and Harry spat it into the dirt.
He flipped onto his back just as the attacker landed on top of him, pinning Harry to the ground by his wrists with a punishing grip. Harry freed a knee and was able to get the wizard in the groin, but it didn’t dislodge him and earned Harry a fist to the face. Harry grunted and flung himself upwards, cracking his skull against the other man’s, who went stumbling backwards, hands at his face and blood trickling between the webbing of his fingers.
Harry attempted to scramble to his feet, but the bastard got him by the ankle and dragged him down again. Harry’s head was throbbing dangerously now, his vision blacking out at the corners, and his right arm had gone completely numb. He cast one last forlorn glance at the magical barrier, close enough to feel, but far enough away that he would never make it.
He twisted around and threw out his free leg, the heel of his boot slamming into the bridge of his attacker’s nose with a sickening crunch. The man wailed, curling in on himself and releasing his grip on Harry’s ankle.
Harry crawled another few feet, but it was already too late. He could feel the magic pressing in around him, hear footsteps vibrating against the ground. They were everywhere.
He was surrounded and wounded. The fight was already over, and he needed to get out before he lost consciousness. If they didn’t kill him, they would interrogate him, torture him, do anything to drag information from him. Harry Potter was a well of information, but they’d have to kill him before he’d talk, if the wound on his arm didn’t take care of him first.
As his vision narrowed down to a dark tunnel, Harry cursed the informant and his fake intel. He fucked Harry over, assured him the place wasn’t manned at the perimeter, that the wards would be the greatest obstacle. He’d been sold out, and if Harry survived this, he vowed to find the double-crossing arsehole and throw him away in Azkaban for two lifetimes. After Harry finished with him, of course.
Harry threw up some shaky wards, and fumbled in his pockets, fingers numb and sticky with blood. He extracted the emergency Portkey — a BMW car key on a Manchester United fob — and activated it. It would drop him at the base in Sector D, and from there, he’d have to hope his luck would hold out, because that far north was manned less than twenty percent of the year. He had one shot to get out of here, but to do so, he was going to have to bring down the perimeter. It would take a massive amount of magic, and Harry’s reserves were draining rapidly, pulsing away in time with the blood that seeped from his arm.
The Portkey vibrated in his fist. He had five seconds to go.
There was shouting now, and though Harry couldn’t understand the words themselves, he knew what they were saying. They were surrounding him, the circle closing in.
Four.
He clutched the Portkey in his good hand, and looped the useless fingers of his right around the string he wore at his neck — a grounding force, a memory.
Three.
Harry took a deep breath and concentrated the last of his magic, gathering it unto himself until it pressed against his ribcage, hard enough to crack the bones.
Two.
He released all the oxygen in his lungs, and with it, a gale force of power. Everything he had left, no holds barred. The magic burst from him in a deafening blast, rolling over the forest and levelling it flat. Anguished shouts echoed around him, muffled, as if Harry was listening from underwater.
One.
Everything went black.