Thick smoke billowed across the Muggleborn Registration Committee Office.
It hadn’t taken long for the ashwinders to lay their eggs, causing magical flames to erupt in various areas of the room. Crackling fire licked at cabinets and desks, chairs and bookshelves. Rolf’s mouth was covered by a bubblehead charm, but the acrid smoke still burned his eyes. Ash sprinkled throughout the room like snowflakes. He kept his wand aloft as he tried to contain the flames to certain area, but this fire was wild and untameable.
Perhaps, he thought to himself, it was time to go.
He took a few steps backward, his attention honed in on the fire, until he found himself stumbling into the pointed wand of a woman he recognized. “Umbridge,” he said, stupidly.
“You, you did this,” she stammered. Dolores attempting to keep her calm as everything she had worked so hard for was crashing down. Her world, her livelihood al taken away. She pointed her wand at him and with conviction said, “you will pay for your crimes.”
Dolores watched as the fire raged around them. Engulfing the room as pieces of structure fell. She wanted to arrest him. For him to see judgment in front of the Wizengamot. She coughed having inhaled too much smoke already.
Dolores attempted to cast the spell to arrest this man in front of her.
But the magizoologist’s reflexes were sharp: as Rolf’s wand arced through the air, the arresting chains were transfigured into a burst of confetti. He didn’t like hurting other people, but didn’t this woman deserve to suffer? She had hurt so many people. She had arrested Becca.
“Depulso,” he shouted in return, hoping to send Umbridge flying back into a burning bookshelf.
It had been a long time since Dolores was in a duel. Her reflexes not as fast as they once were. She attempted to shield herself but wasn’t fast enough flying back into the bookshelf. Dolores screamed in surprise and pain. “Bombarda,” she tried to cast in his direction as she staggered forward and fell to the ground, breath knocked from her and her pink tweed having caught fire.
The cannon charm blasted Rolf back against a wall that was, thankfully, not on fire. One of his ribs had cracked on impact, and he winced as he pulled himself to his feet. He kept his wand trained on Dolores as he weighed his options. His gaze flicked back and forth between the woman’s face and the fire creeping up her clothing.
Then, with certainty, “Immobulus.”
Dolores aimed a spell to her back trying to douse the flames. Dolores started to reach panic mode, she looked at the boy. “Help me,” she said with fear in her voice, just before she was hit with the immobulus charm causing her to freeze and fall flat.
Rolf stared, his eyes watering as the flames flickered around them.
He felt a pinprick of guilt as he turned on his heel. He didn’t have it in him to kill anyone. But Dolores Umbridge was evil, wasn’t she? If he walked away, she would be finished by simple laissez-faire. He slowly walked toward the door, doing his best to ignore the pinprick that was slowly becoming a tight pang of conscience.
He could just leave her. She deserved it.
Rolf was almost at the exit when he slowly exhaled, turning back around to give Umbridge one last look. She was immobilized, but her fear was plainly written on her face as the fire began to envelop her.
“Please help me,” Dolores cried from the ground accepting her fate. He was walking away. Dolores kept asking for help, her voice getting softer with each chant. She couldn’t feel what was going on but she knew the fire was burning her, slowly engulfing her.
He couldn’t let this woman burn to death.
Rolf released the freezing charm. Umbridge was no in shape to walk — the burns had seen to that — so he levitated her with a swish of his wand, squinting through the smoke in order to float her body over toward him. “I hope you don’t thank me for this,” he muttered, somewhat under his breath.
With that, he used the portkey to take them both away from the rapidly burning office.
Andromeda Tonks & Ted Tonks v. Bellatrix Lestrange
The MRC’s office was smoky, unbearably hot, and had been thoroughly dismantled by the Order, piece by piece. The destruction wasn’t quite finished when Ted found herself in the worst possible company. Then again, she’d been wanting to murder Bellatrix Lestrange since she found out about Gawain’s death – it somehow elevated her hate, which was surprising, since she didn’t think that was actually possible – and here she was. Alone.
Ted ducked around the fire, summoned what looked like a very heavy paperweight shaped like a cat and sent it straight at Bellatrix’s head.
Flashes of crimson from the end of Bellatrix’s wand got lost in the open flames surrounding them. She spared one for the cat without a second glance as it exploded in mid-air. She’d spent months waiting for another chance to kill Ted Tonks, compressing anger and shame in equal measure until it produced her current state of murderous rage.
Her pulse pounded in her ears as Bellatrix sent another two fireballs flying at her target.
Because there wasn’t enough fire in this room already. Clearly. Ted dodged the fireballs, one of them singing her hair and briefly slicing off a portion of her sleeve, leaving a hole and burnt skin behind. “Fucking hell,” Ted muttered, ducking behind a desk and aiming a suturing spell directly at Bellatrix’s face, following it up with a couple of blasting curses. Not her usual thing, but some brute strength aimed at her sister-in-law felt good.
Bellatrix easily shielded herself from the suturing spell. She wanted to point out that just because she wasn’t wearing a mask didn’t make it open season on her face, but that would’ve been a waste of breath. She saved it for her next spell, a noisy explosion from the end of her wand as she hastened to cast it before Ted’s blasting curses cut her off.
She slid backwards across the floor, gasping for the air the blast had knocked out of her. But a twitch of Bellatrix’s wand sent the desk in front of Ted exploding back on her.
Ted managed to block the explosion, though the noise knocked her back a step. The desk? Not so much. It ripped apart into a hundred pieces of painful wood, one of the bigger pieces hitting Ted head on and a fair few of the smaller embedding themselves in her skin as she skidded backwards, slamming into the nearest wall. Still gasping from the impact she cast something Bellatrix probably wouldn’t – but really should have – expected. It was a healing spell, the equivalent of creating an intense adrenaline rush and approximating an anxiety attack of sorts.
Still shaking off the impact of the blasting curses, Bellatrix wasn’t as quick to her feet as she might’ve been in her younger days. Or maybe it was the smoke billowing around them and the heat of the fire that had sweat beading on her forehead. It threatened to roll down into her eyes, so she swiped at it with the sleeve of her robes.
She didn’t know what hit her next, but it coursed through her body to the ends of her limbs, making her hand tremble around her wand. The room seemed hotter. She could barely breathe. Her heart hammered in her chest.
All but gasping for breath, Bellatrix did the only thing she could, and channeled the rush of adrenaline through the end of her wand. “Crucio!”
One of the main functions of adrenaline in this amount was causing a lack of focus, loss of precision and other basic dueling functions. Unfortunately – for Ted – she was still picking herself up from getting a heavy smack to the head, so Bellatrix’s target was more or less stationary. The curse hit true.
She was also close enough to the wall that she smacked it a second time as the Unforgivable hit her. Everything blacked out for a second, and then her body was filled with more pain than she knew what to do with.
Crumpling to the floor she started screaming.
"Vespulis!"
A long bang sounded.
The scream had caused Andromeda's attention, feeling emboldened by the lack of desire to hide their involvement and strengthened by the absolute mess around her for once. (It may have had something to do with her not being required to clean it up.) However, considering the last time she heard that noise, the one ripping through her veins like a shock to the heart, it was when the Death Eaters had come looking for answers and found none.
What Andromeda found upon entering the scene was that she was wearing woefully inappropriate shoes and Bellatrix Lestrange casting a torture curse on her wife. It was an instinctual reaction to go for something painful in return, although perhaps releasing a swarm of irate, magical wasps into an enclosed space was not the most forethought plan. She just needed a distraction and it would serve, as she rushed over to Ted.
Bellatrix had waited too long to have a Tonks at the end of her cruciatus curse. She wasn’t pleased to be cut off when she’d only just gotten started but what had her skin crawling with anger wasn’t the wasps she’d only half-successfully fended off. It was the vigilante behind it — Andromeda.
She’d sustained stings all over her arms and face before a burst of angry magic surrounded her feet with dead wasps. Even as they started to swell, she was undeterred — her single focus now was finishing what she’d started.
Lifting her wand, a wave of wasp carcasses rose with it. Bellatrix sent them piercing through the air, stinger-end first, at the two vigilantes.
Andromeda gritted, placing an arm across her face before sending a jet of freezing cold water in the direction of the onslaught. Perhaps not the most offensive spell, but it would do the trick for the moment. "You've never looked better!" she declared, tossing her elder sister a look from over her shoulder.
Ted, finally back on her feet, used one of her favourites, a spell she knew for a fact that Bellatrix hated. A dozen syringes, conjured and following close behind Andromeda’s jet of water. With any luck the former would disguise the latter.
Bellatrix didn’t have to find herself on the receiving end of that spell a second time to know she wanted nothing to do with it. She cast a shield charm that stopped them mid-flight. A glance at their bent tips and she grimaced inwardly at the thought of Bunni having to pull more of them out of her back.
With a blast at the ceiling above the Tonkses’ heads, Bellatrix sent two Killing Curses into the fray — one for each of her enemies.
"Move!"
Dodging the lesser of two evils, Andromeda pulled herself down out of the way of the streaking green only to be smacked by falling debris hard enough that her vision blurred and her stomach rolled. Fighting a retch, she sent out an Incarcerous, not that they'd know what they were meant to do with her if it worked.
“You’re so predictable,” Ted muttered to her sister-in-law, glancing quickly at her wife and back up. Then again, predictable… they could both be predictable. Time for another healing spell.
She cast a few slashing spells, followed by a spell intended to undo blood clots. In a healthy person it’d increase blood flow rather excessively. At least that was her intention.
A severing charm made quick work of her sister’s ropes, but when Ted’s spell hit her, it sent another rush through Bellatrix’s veins. Breathing had become a conscious thought — one that did nothing to calm her down. A deep breath was all she needed to focus on the thought at the front of her mind. With a sweep of her wand, the desk chairs lining the wall sprang to life and sprinted at the pair with brute force.
Without missing a beat, but now wholly aware of her own distraction, Andromeda moved to intercept. Blasting the chairs to pieces created a cacophony of noise and clumpy air, as things went everywhere. At this rate, there was going to be very few actual objects left in the room. Debris from the fight or ashes of it were lining everywhere. That was fine by Andromeda; it had practically been the point.
More wooden splinters. More debris. More bullshit, courtesy of Bellatrix. Ted was so over this. Another suture spell to the face, a bone resetting spell, another wave of disgust at using Healing to injure. She really wasn’t fit to be a Healer after this. Not in a million years.
Bellatrix wouldn’t be fit to be in the presence of a Healer after this. At least without trying to kill them. Her annoyance grew as she swatted Ted’s spells away like flies, deflecting them back in her direction.
“Blood traitors must die,” she declared. “You’ve already done more than enough to ruin things. It ends here.” With a bone twisting curse aimed straight for Andromeda.
Distracted by running defense, Andromeda wasn’t paying enough attention to her surroundings and turned too late to dodge the curse. Her legs buckled, with the bones screeching along the muscles with a blinding pain. She despised feeling helpless, but there was little she could do.
With Andromeda down hard, her bones audibly cracking and reshaping even through the loud noise of fire, curses and whatever else, Ted had had enough. While Bellatrix’s focus was on her sister she cast a lamina, sending a dozen or so knives towards Bellatrix, all at different height, target different parts of her body. Or possibly all of them. At the same time.
While vengeance made the powerful curse natural to Bellatrix, it consumed her entire focus. It wasn’t until she felt a knife slice through her shoulder that she recognized Ted’s attack. She attempted to turn away, dropping her curse in favor of a shield, but one of the knives sliced across her eye. Blood poured down her cheek, leaving her to fight with only half her vision.
But the thread of vengefulness remained, and as Ted’s attention pulled away to Andromeda, she took her chance.
“Avada Kedavra!”
It was that brief glance towards Andromeda that did it. It made Ted a fraction too slow, and you couldn’t afford fractions when standing face to face with Bellatrix Lestrange. Fractions meant Killing Curses, meant green flashes of light, meant being gone long before she hit the floor, sprawled upon piles and piles on debris, next to the woman she loved. There was no goodbye. No last moment. It was just the woman Ted loved — would always love — on the floor, with her wife’s body beside her and her sister holding the wand that killed her.
Although the pain stopped abruptly, Andromeda couldn’t tell what exactly had just happen from the spots in front of her eyes. Did it hit? Did it hit? “Ted?” In a flash of frenzied panic, Andromeda grabbed her wife’s arm (Merlin no- no) and left without hesitation.
Fred Weasley & John Dawlish v. Aidy Jugson
The hall was filled with smoke, stinging Fred’s eyes and bringing back uncomfortable memories of the explosion-fuelled smoke billowing from his home. But he couldn’t let himself be distracted by that; this time the smoke was a good thing, it meant that things were going to plan. Hopefully.
The reduced visibility did make keeping an eye out for Death Eaters slightly more difficult though, and even though he was sure the figure approaching was wearing black robes, he only shot a confundus at them, just in case it was one of their own who just happened to like black.
Aidy, on the other hand, was definitely not a fan of the smoke. There weren't any friendly, fun medicinal additions to this sort of smoke, so what was the point? All it did was make it hard to breathe, especially when she was stuck behind a mask.
While her sight was impacted, though, her hearing still seemed to be working fine, and a quick slash of her wand blocked the spell that came firing her way from Fred. "That was very rude of you," Aidy scolded him, sending a slicing spell and a blasting curse his way, as if that wasn't also a rude thing to do. "I just came out here to have a good time and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now."
Fred blocked the slicing spell but was caught off guard by the blasting curse, falling as the ground around him was damaged. It was starting to feel even more like his home explosion.
“You’ll be feeling more attacked soon,” he replied, aiming a dancing feet hex at her from his spot on the ground, giving himself a moment to get back up and extinguish the blasting-curse caused fire that was lapping at his legs.
Aidy had been just about to send a killing curse the younger man's way when his spell hit, and the sudden jerk of her legs shot the beam of green light flying off at the ceiling. Her legs moved into third position, then fifth, then she dipped into a pas de bourrée, then several pas de chats as if she'd suddenly decided to do a one woman performance of the Dance of the Cygnets from Swan Lake. After a graceful finishing backbend, Aidy shot a very fluid and whimsical Cruciatus curse at Fred, noting, "I shouldn't be the only one dancing here."
The curse hit Fred hard, body convulsing in a much less elegant dance and unable to fight through the pain to send a counter spell.
Rushing to the scene amidst the smoke proved to be a task, but John showed up right in time to catch -- whatever prance the Death Eater had been doing. The flashing red light caught his attention immediately, his eyes following the path of the curse as it hit the young man.
John quickly threw a stupefy at the Death Eater, following it up quickly with a blasting curse, aimed several feet in front of the robed assailant’s, to blast the floor enough to cause a distraction.
The Cruciatus was ended quickly as Aidy slashed her wand upwards to block this newcomer's stunner, sending it back his way. The blasting curse, though, was a little too quick on the heels of the first spell for her to miss completely, and she went tumbling back over a desk she'd tried to leap over a little less gracefully than she would have wanted.
She threw a binding curse at John, and while he was hopefully distracted by the ropes coming his way, she leapt back over the table and continued dancing his way, following off the spell with a high roundhouse kick at his face.
While John was able to deflect the stunner, and sent it spiraling upwards to the roof (and ducked as parts of the ceiling caved), he was not able to fully direct the ropes away from him. The kick, however, got him properly on the chin, sending him off-balance and taking several stumbling steps back.
John huffed, one hand coming to his lips as his tongue tasted the iron-like flavour of the blood from the punctured skin in his inner-lip. He cast a quick body-binding spell at the Death Eater, before hurrying to the young man. “Alright there, Weasley?”
“Alright,” Fred confirmed, sore and scraped but far from as badly injured as he could have been if John hadn’t shown up. He didn’t take his eyes off the Death Eater though, wand still at the ready and pointed towards her.
"Yes, yes, everyone's fine," Aidy grumbled, coughing in the smoke that was growing thicker with each passing moment. A wild leap had sent her diving to the ground to avoid the body bind spell -- the last thing she needed was to wind up frozen and paralysed in a fight with an Order member and an Auror -- and she snaked along the carpet until she found cabinet to hide behind to remove the dancing spell from her feet.
"Look boys, let's let bygones be bygones here. One of us is going to die before we leave here tonight, and it's certainly not going to be me, so I'll let you two decide amongst yourselves," she said, keeping her wand moving between the two of them and smiling behind her mask.
John quickly threw a shield charm, making sure to protect both himself and Fred, struggling to keep himself from rolling his eyes at the Death Eater’s wishes. He glanced at Fred, raised one brow, and whispered quietly, “We’ll stun her together, how’s that?”
Fred gave the smallest nod of acknowledgement at John’s idea. “Think you should reconsider not dying,” he told the Death Eater, timing his stunning spell to match the Auror’s.
"I can't see, I'm not deaf," Aidy scoffed at the boys’ whisper party. However, the smoke made it incredibly hard to see where exactly the stunners were going to be coming from, and threw herself down to the ground to avoid the spells, which narrowly flew over her head. This whole not-being-able-to-see thing in a battle was incredibly frustrating, and Adrienna was over it. "It's been fun, kids, but this smoke is really bad for my constitution. Cheers," she said, but not before firing several slicing spells at the direction John and Fred seemed to be before throwing up a shield spell around herself and hastily making her exit.
One of the slicing spells managed to cut John’s arm, and deeper than he would have liked. He was distracted enough that he hadn’t seen the Death Eater’s exit. Yelling out of frustration, he turned to Fred, “Come on, kid, looks like we need to fix ourselves up.” He’d ask other important questions later, since the blood spilling from his arm seemed to take precedence in that very moment.
Another slicing spell hit Fred straight on, choosing the wrong way to dodge in the smoke-filled room. “Yeah,” he agreed with a grimace (at both the pain and being called ‘kid’), trying to stop the blood flow with his hands. “I’ll see you later though,” he added, ducking away into the haze to find the Order portkey without the Auror.
Angelina Johnson v. Ignatius Travers
The corridor was so loud that Angelina, who’d been prepared for this, was having trouble getting her head on straight. It didn’t help, either, that all she could think about was Becca, who was why Angelina had been so insistent on destroying the Muggleborn Registration Commission files in the first place. This had to work. She had to help make sure it did. Something had to go right, for once.
Angelina was not the only person thinking that things needed to go right. Ignatius just had a very different definition for what ‘things going right’ meant. For him, certainly, it meant that the vigilantes suddenly trying to take over the Ministry were not going to succeed. They’d spent too much time finally holding its control — he refused to cede any of it now. Aiming his wand, he shot off a blasting curse.
The blasting curse caught Angelina — who’d been rubbing unhappily at one of her ears — along the rib cage. Something painful happened in her chest, but that was nothing compared to being sent backwards into a wall, the back of her head hitting with a wet thud. She felt, suddenly, like she was back in Fred and George’s shop and like maybe this had been a horrible idea after all as she tried to will herself to search for the curse’s owner.
With the vigilante down, Ignatius relaxed a bit despite the smoke in the air and the noises surrounding them. She couldn’t possibly be the only one, he knew, but it felt good to have the upper hand. His wand was still aimed at the vigilante, but his eyes scanned the corridor for the friends he was sure had to be nearby.
Angelina’s unfocused eyes finally fell on both Ignatiuses and the two wands pointed at her and she blinked hard, once, twice, trying to turn him back into one person. She took a chance, though, and pointed her wand where she thought he was, coughing and then murmuring a rough blasting curse of her own.
Ignatius didn’t notice in time, the blast sending him back brutally into his own wall with a set of sickening cracks in his head and his shoulder and his ribs. The shower of debris that followed hid the sounds of anything else that was cracking, but Ignatius thought that it was probably far more than was comfortable. As was the dust in his lungs.
He felt venomous but he also felt disoriented, muttering “well that wasn’t good” to nobody in particular as he shot off a series of slicing spells in every direction his wand would go.
A few of the slicing curses flew harmlessly by her as she tried to haul herself to her feet, one rustling her ponytail it was so close. Angelina’s slow, steady journey upwards was cut short as one of the curses sliced deeply into her arm. With a fist pressed to the floor, holding her up as she tried to get her legs underneath her, her entire arm collapsed uselessly and she fell to the floor again with a grunt.
“I’m fine,” she said or tried to say over the blaring sound in the corridor. “That didn’t hurt.” But tears were leaking down her cheeks. Pushing back now instead, using her feet so she could use the wall to get up, a haphazard volley of arrows burst forth from her wand.
Ignatius thought, perhaps, that the vigilante had said something but he couldn’t quite discern it over the ringing in his ears. It didn’t matter anyway. He noticed the arrows but his shield was too weak to block them all, a couple of them embedding themselves into his arms and chest. He swore, trying to push himself up off the floor.
He managed it, but only barely, not stepping away from the wall. His grip on his wand felt tenuous as he sent some of the rubble in Angelina’s direction.
Blood poured down her arm and thudded loudly in her head and she felt sluggish and faint, swaying against the wall she’d managed to push herself up. Stubbornness kept her pinned to that corridor, though. That and she wasn’t sure she could remember where she’d hidden her portkey. A hasty shield bore the brunt of the rubble, but it was weak and a large chunk of the other wall caught her in the middle. She doubled over and slid down the wall again.
But she pointed her wand at Ignatius and then at a wall sconce near his head, casting a few biting jinxes in its direction so it or something would take a bite out of crime. Even if being a Death Eater wasn’t illegal anymore.
The last thing Ignatius expected was for the wall sconce to start trying to bite him. He found himself looking at it in confusion before finally having to fight it off, but it still managed to get a bite into his shoulder before a slash of his wand caused it to explode. When he focused his attention on the vigilante again, he shot off the killing curse.
The edges of Angelina’s vision was starting to grow dim, but the green of the killing curse was unmistakably something to avoid, even through the smoke. She threw herself out of its path to the floor and the wall behind her exploded in another spray of debris that made her cough pathetically against the floor. Her eyes fell on the bangle around her wrist and she remembered, suddenly, where she’d put her portkey. She tapped her wand to her bracelet and felt a tug behind her belly button, pulling her out of the Ministry and then out of consciousness.
Hestia Jones & Joe Bell v. Humberto Pyrites
In the middle of the hooplah, Joe avoided stray spells as he tried to throw spells of his own at the Death Eaters. It was his one chance to prove that he wasn't going to side with the Death Eaters, despite whatever the members of the Order — including his own sister — may have thought of him for staying put at his job. But it was no matter.
"Stupefy!" he yelled at a nearby Death Eater, fully intending to stun the man. The spell narrowly missed him and Joe repeated the incantation loudly. "Stop it!" he shouted after a moment, kicking a desk towards the assailant to stop him from advancing on him.
Humberto was furious. He’d been engaged in a puppet show for children when his dark mark had burned, and now he was engaged again in fighting within the bowels of the Ministry. His wand flourished and deflected a stunning spell, and then he obliterated a desk with a blasting charm. Nonetheless, it did stop him from moving forward.
Behind the mask, he snarled, “Stop it!” in a mocking tone that mimicked his detested ex-husband, Dedalus Diggle. “You work for us!” He wasn’t sure who the man was, but Humberto knew he was a member of the DMLE. “What are you doing?! Stop them!”
"I don't think so," Joe grumbled, not caring in this moment to take orders from a Death Eater. He'd had enough of it for the past seven months and he was just at the point of not giving a fuck anymore. He glanced around the room momentarily and before thinking about it, shot an explosive firebomb towards the Death Eater, purposefully aiming it at his feet. "I've had enough of taking orders from the likes of you," he spat, before throwing his own blasting spell.
“Your insolence—” Humberto’s retort was cut off as his feet went up in a rapidly-spreading inferno that engulfed his precious orphan-kicking boots before spreading up his shins and igniting the hems of his robes. A shriek followed from the Death Eater before a sweep of the wand doused his legs leaving black smoke curling. It didn’t stop the blasting curse from catching him in the gut and pitching backwards against the wall with a crack.
Dazed, but hardly out of it, Humberto was done with all of this. These Hitwizards had now twice gotten in his way. He shook his masked head, and then snapped off a bludgeoning charm with his wand, followed by his other hand snapping at the wrist, extended, and flicking some cursed playing cards.
Joe, for a moment, seemed pleased at himself for causing enough distraction to the Death Eater as flames surrounded the masked menace. But he didn't dare put down his wand, not even for a quick second, because he didn't trust that the Death Eater wouldn't do anything worse. Instead, Joe was just about to aim another stunning spell at him when —
Playing cards?
A confused expression shot through Joe's face and he couldn't help but snort. Why would Death Eaters have playing cards? And then — oh.
He scoffed, and rolling his eyes, he threw the disintegration curse at the other man, aiming pointedly at the arm that threw the cards. In the back of his mind, he still couldn't believe that this was an actual move, but Joe diverted the cards to a nearby fire, watching as the cards crumbled into a pile of ashes.
Everything was smoke and noise, and Humberto’s head was still smarting from the hit against the wall. That was why it was a surprise when the Hitwizard’s spell caught his hand and it practically vanished into dust up to his mid-forearm. Gaping in shock behind the mask, the Death Eater couldn’t feel anything wrong as the nerves had evaporated with the rest of his hand, but a gut reaction caused him to recoil in horror. His wand flashed as he did so, firing a haphazard blasting curse back at the Hit.
The blasting curse seemed to waver even as it approached its intended target, but erratic as it was cast, the curse hit the Hitwizard, sending him flying backwards. Joe yelped in surprise, and he could see himself falling down, but before he could realise the full spectrum, his head caught the edge of a desk. Instantly, everything went quiet though there was a barely audible ringing noise coming from somewhere that Joe couldn't quite place.
He blinked once, twice, thrice… but the images in front of him weren't formulating together. There were sudden flashes of light but his vision was going blurry and blurry and blurry…
His body fell to the ground, wand clattering at his side.
The Death Eater wasn’t finished with his prey in the slightest. Humberto stalked forward, one hand missing entirely, and flourished his wand. A decidedly dark and sinister curse, there was a flash of silver light that mimicked a thousand pin pricks. The toxic shrapnel hurled with tremendous force towards the prone body which it struck and pierced all over without so much a reaction.
“My hand! My GLOVE!” Humberto thundered behind his mask. He took another step forward; he wasn’t finished.
Yes, he was, if Hestia had anything to say about it. She sprinted down the hall behind the pair, and stopped just short of barrelling into the Death Eater. Instead she kicked him, hard, in the spine before taking a step back and drawing her wand.
“Get away from them if you’d like to keep your other hand,” she snarled, taking a moment to glance beyond Humberto to check on the person on the ground. Her heart skipped a beat when she realised it was Joe, but there was nothing she could do for him now without going through the Death Eater. Still, fury was written all over her glamoured face when she sent a blasting curse at Humberto, a little extra force behind it.
The kick had sent Humberto stumbling face first into the wall once more, his face smashing up on the inside of his mask and breaking his nose. When he turned his assailant had already made her way over to the downed hitwizard. With blood streaming down his face and dripping out from under the chin of the mask, he quivered with rage. “Fug-ooh!” the blasting curse obliterated a shaky shield and rocketed him back against the wall even harder, his ribs cracking under the pressure.
Losing and heavily injured, there was a real sense of desperation present now. Gasping for a breath, he sent back his own blasting curse, and then followed up with something far more deadly. Pushing all his anger and hatred from the last few weeks, he bellowed “ABADA KEDABAH!” as his wand flashed green.
Hestia sent up a shield, blocking the blasting curse before she ducked down at the first syllable of the Killing Curse. There was no way she was dying here. She got up, looking angrier than before, and stormed towards the Death Eater. “That is quite enough of that!” she barked, before conjuring a flock of birds to peck at her opponent, a punishment for annoying her.
When the birds disappeared, she followed up by sending acid spewing in Humberto’s direction. She wanted a decisive end to the fight, and acid usually did the trick. Nobody liked acid.
A flick of his wand vanished the birds, but the Death Eater was nowhere near cognizant enough to plan ahead at this stage of the duel, not with as many injuries as he was racking up that were causing him to slow down.
The spew of acid caught him in the face burning through the mask and melting its remnants into his face with a loud sizzle. The Death Eater screamed, but not for long as the melting continued, flesh and mask combining with flashes of magic as the charms fused things further. The Death Eater toppled backwards, slumping against the wall before tipping over into a heap where he lay unconscious and unmoving.
Hestia briefly grimaced, but didn’t feel too bad for the Death Eater, especially as she moved to stand over Joe, who was rapidly losing consciousness. “Joe? Joe?” She grabbed her friend’s arm, glancing around to make sure that no one else was coming. She had to get him out of here.
Katie Bell v. Graham Montague & Dempster Wiggleswade
The doors of the MRC office were just behind her, not that she could see them in the smoke, and Katie Bell was running full-tilt away from it as best as she could. Wand in hand, she stumbled a little as the smoke seemed to make her eyes sting, and she yelled out as she nearly collided with someone. She raised her wand, momentarily unsure if it was an ally or an enemy she’d encountered.
Dempster jumped in surprise at the near miss and hastily brandished her wand in Katie’s direction. Through the smoke, she could barely see what she was looking at, and through a cough building in her throat, she shouted, “Drop your wand! DMLE!”
Graham sent a blast of wind down the hall, trying to both clear the air and knock back the person Dempster had just run into it. What the fuck had the Order done now? He didn't even bother to wait to see if they were going to drop their wand, following up with a more forceful banishing spell.
The very opposite of dropping her wand, Katie clutched it a little tighter. “Get fucked,” she snapped in reply, nearly losing balance in the sudden gust of wind. “Expelliarmus!” She yelled towards the voice, the old Harry move. It sometimes worked out.
With a snap of her wand, Dempster sent the spell rebounding back at the vigilante. She didn’t pause to think about how strangely innocuous a disarming charm was compared to the rest of the spells she’d heard on her way over. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” she called to Katie, standing her ground. “Incarcerous!”
This was all going much too tamely for Graham’s liking — Expelliarmus? Incarcerous? Yawn. He didn’t have to play nice. Especially with a vigilante. “Crucio!” His cruciatus followed Dempster’s spell, determined to make sure this ended quickly and brutally.
Katie responded to Dempster with a particularly forceful blasting curse, trying to get the cover of the smoke back on her side again but not paying attention enough to her other opponent. She fell, screaming at the moment the curse hit her, her head bashing against the stone floor. She yelled out and tried to steel herself against the unbearable pain, instead sending a painting from the wall flying towards one of her opponents.
Dempster sent up a shield charm and ducked simultaneously, avoiding the worst of Katie’s attack. But her partner’s cruciatus curse left her taken back. She often boasted that she could handle anything, but she hadn’t expected torture. Slowly, she swallowed and watched the vigilante buckling over.
“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered. But finally, Dempster shook her head to snap herself out of it and with a sweep of her arm, she sent the shattered wood and glass from the painting flying back at her.
"Depulso!" Graham threw at the vigilante, before advancing on them. He wanted to know who this annoying little shit was, either to prove himself right or just to have someone else's friends to harass after they arrested them.
The banishing charm sent Katie skidding across the floor a few feet, barely able to keep hold of her wand. The smoke seemed to be thicker still, catching in her throat and making it making it harder to see her opponent as they neared her. Through the haze she could see him moving, and held onto her wand a little tighter. If he got closer then maybe she'd be able to catch him out. Katie groaned loudly, clasping her other hand to her stomach.
At that clear sign of defeat, Dempster’s training kicked in and she hesitated, opting to approach the vigilante slowly. When she saw Graham getting closer, she called out, “Careful! They still have a wand.”
Graham brushed off the warning from Dempster, too eager to confirm the identity of the vigilante to worry about being careful. As soon as he was close enough he squinted through the smoke, coughing insteading of laughing when he saw who it was.
"Of course it's fucking you!"
“Fuck off, Montague,” Katie snapped angrily, both hands now firmly around her wand as he closed in on her. Using the moment where Graham was talking, Katie cast a blasting curse up at his torso the moment that he drew close enough.
“You fuck —“ The rest of his retort was broken by him being sent blasted back, the force slamming him up against a wall as he felt several of his ribs crack. Growling, he sent his signature curse back at Katie, a skull wreathed in green smoke that would knock her out if he landed it properly.
Gasping both at Graham’s sudden impact against the wall and the eerie green smoke he’d just cast from his wand, Dempster tucked her chin under the collar of her shirt and chanced another arresting spell at the vigilante. Graham had clearly recognized them, but she couldn’t quite make Katie’s face out for herself. For now, she seemed doomed.
Katie threw up a shield charm against the green smoke, using the opportunity to stagger back to her feet. Gasping for breath, finding it harder still to see, she wasn’t quick enough to shield herself fully from Dempster’s spell and instead messily deflected it back towards the two of them.
He was going to have to work on that. Graham pushed himself to his feet, only to find his wand arm getting tangled up in the chains of the arresting charm. He stumbled back a few steps, a cough from the smoke changing to a howl as pain lanced from his broken ribs.
“Get her!”
Dempster angled a frown at Graham before she made a move for Katie. “You’d be better off turning yourself in now,” she cautioned. “Maybe instead of Azkaban we’ll bring back the public stocks for you.”
Katie didn’t say anything in response, glancing over her shoulder briefly to see if she still had an escape route before using the portkey that was weighing down her jacket pocket. “Bombarda!” she yelled out, casting the spell at the door closest to Dempster.
Dempster could see the gears turning in the vigilante’s head and she lashed out with her wand to make one last attempt to stop her from leaving. She did it her way this time, and tripping jinx shot across the room, followed by a stunning spell.
The jinx hit her just as she was going for the portkey and Katie tripped spectacularly, legs splaying out as her ankle buckled beneath her, somehow managing to keep hold of her wand in the process. Her spare hand connected with the portkey hidden in her pocket in the same moment that she yelled out in pain. She disappeared just as the stunning spell went whizzing over where her body had just been.
Dempster cursed under her breath at the bare spot on the ground where the vigilante had been moments before. They were so close to catching her. But a secondary glance in Graham’s direction made it abundantly clear that this wasn’t over.
“Come on,” she said, levitating him with a flick of her wand. “Let’s find someone to put you back together.”
LEVEL 6
Lumos Boot & Lakshmi Patil
Everything had happened so fast.
At the first sign of trouble, Lumos had flung herself beneath her desk and had only just worked up the nerve to sneak out, thinking invisible thoughts as she crept out of the obliviator offices. Only, the moment she stepped out into the corridor she had to fling her hands over her ears and her shoes promptly vanished, her first step forward hurting so much it nearly brought her to her knees. She glanced down. Were those —
There were legos covering the entire floor from her perch outside the offices to the lifts.
With her socked foot, she swept some of the legos aside. Some of them moved, but others refused to budge. But she knew Lakshmi was working tonight and she had to get to her. So as carefully as she could, she tiptoed down the hallway, wincing nearly every other step, catching the wall so she didn’t fall.
She’d never been so happy to see the lifts. Or the floo offices.
“Lakshmi!” Lumos called out, fighting to be heard over the blaring sound.
When she saw her friend, though, panic finally overtook her, tears welling in her eyes. She dropped to her knees at Lakshmi’s side and called her name. She looked dead. She couldn’t be dead. But after a moment of quietly melting down, she took a deep breath and pressed two of her fingers to the side of Lakshmi’s neck.
Lakshmi’s pulse jumped beneath her fingertips and Lumos breathed a sigh of relief. But there was still no telling why she was unconscious. After pointing her wand at her friend, she screwed her eyes shut and murmured, “Rennervate.”
With blinking eyes, Lakshmi regained consciousness, the stunning spell having vanished with her friend’s counteration. Everything was blurry at first, partly due to smacking her head on her desk, but it cleared enough for her to make out her best friend. She’d recognize that blue anywhere. “Lumos?!” she questioned, seeking confirmation as she tried to sit up.
The blaring noise was a sharp reminder that this wasn’t a dream, and she hadn’t just fallen asleep working late.
“Come on,” Lumos said, already reaching for Lakshmi to help her to her feet, wrapping an arm around Lakshmi’s shoulders. “Are you okay?” Her voice started to wobble during her next question. “Were you attacked?”
Lakshmi was unsteady on her feet. Her head was pounding, and hidden by her hair on the side of her head was a swelling goose egg. She leaned rather heavily on her friend as she sought her balance enough to be able to get out. “I think so,” she answered, still not entirely with it. “I think I hit my head?” she reached up to pat her hair, wincing as the pressure found a sore area. “I wasn’t attacked.” She was sure of that. “Everything went off all at once and it was so loud and everything rattled —”
She stopped herself. “I must have slipped getting up, I was so startled.”
“Let’s get you to St Mungo’s, okay?” Lumos held onto Lakshmi a little tighter while also trying to get a good look at her head. She couldn’t see anything through her hair, though. “Can we floo or do you want to try going outside to apparate?”
“We should floo,” said Lakshmi instantly. “We shouldn’t go out there.” Her eyes darted to the door to the hallway leading out of offices with obvious apprehension. The noise was still going on, but she didn’t want to know what kind of attack this was. Still leaning on Lumos’s shoulder, she snatched her wand from the surface of her desk.
A shaky Incendio lit the office fireplace.
But Lumos gave Lakshmi a nervous look before either of them could step into the fireplace. Was flooing with a head injury really that much safer? She heard a loud thud outside the office door, though, and reached for the pot of floo powder. The fire flared bright and green. Holding Lakshmi tightly to her side, she said, clearly, “St Mungo’s!” and led them both forward and away.