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Amelia Bones had always been a pragmatic woman, choosing efficiency over flamboyance, specificity over mystery, science, logic and law over abstract concepts such as faith and trust. In her mind, it was easier to follow the law, even if the law was poorly legislated, mandated or executed, because it provided a framework, a line between right and wrong, even if it was in the legal sense of the term. Her traumatic experience that began with the Potter's demise only bolstered the idea that rules, no matter how archaic, were better than no rules.
And then she met Harry Potter.
And then she perished in a cataclysmic explosion that took it with a major chunk of the DMLE.
And then she was resurrected.
Honestly speaking, Amelia still had issues with that. A person dying, she could understand. A person coming back from the dead, that she had a problem with.
Even if the person was herself.
But none of the above helped her fight against Walden Macnair and his nigh invincible army.
And then Harry Potter did the unbelievable. Again.
As she closed her eyes, she felt the stirrings, felt the leftover shades that were still indubitably connected to her, their emotions throbbing and pulsating like a headache at the back of her head. It took her a couple of seconds to re-orientate her senses, and steady her vision. She knew what it was, and suspended her disbelief, choosing to trust her senses and believe in the person that had brought her back from the claws of death. Compartmentalised everything deep inside her until it was but an afterthought.
Battle first. Questions could come later.
"Walden Macnair," she said with the tone of an unrelenting judge sentencing the guilty. "For crimes of sedition against the Ministry, breaking of Ministerial oaths and sacred protocol, and multiple castings of Unforgivable curses and open display of your allegiance to the terrorist group known as the Death Eaters, I am deploying Martial Law, and sentencing you to death."
She raised her wand.
"The sentence will be carried out at once. Hit-wizards, take positions."
Blank silence rang at her statement.
Then the guilty laughed.
"Bitch's lost it. She escaped death once, but has lost it now." He sneered. "All this time, I wanted to kill you in battle. A fitting end for a fighter. Now? I'll put you down as an act of mercy."
He raised his wand, and yelled —
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
A lot many things happened that moment.
The unforgivable streak of green crossed the distance between them, clashing head-on with an opposing streak of purple mid-path, only to be deflected by several degrees. It hit a werewolf about two feet away, dropping him on the spot. The victorious yowling of the werewolves was quelled by the collective shouts of 'STUPEFY', as streaks of crimson light erupted out from the shadows from behind Macnair, smashing into him. The Ministry Executioner turned Death Eater was bodily picked up and hurled into the air. He sailed by at least a hundred feet, spinning through the air and crashed against a large tree trunk, possibly breaking his spine, and slid down, groaning.
"Yes," said Amelia. "That will do."
"Who's attacking us?" yelled a masked Death Eater.
Amelia smiled. "Judgement."
She raised her wand like a baton. "Squads!" she yelled. "FALL IN!"
The world itself seemed to hold its breath, the forest went still, as if Reality itself recognized the gravity of the moment. A chilling fog rolled in, obscuring the landscape and muffling all sound. The temperature plunged, leaving an unnatural stillness that could be cut with a knife, broken only by the faint rustle of spectral forms materialising from the mist.
She saw their leader step forward, out of its spectral heart, walking out to the front. A towering man in life, a towering man in death, cloaked in shadows, with eyes that burned with twin stars. He wielded his yew wand that felt like it was forged from the essence of the night itself, its shaft seemingly absorbing all light around it.
"Rufus…" whispered Amelia, looking at the spectral form of the now former Head-Auror.
The man did not speak, but merely held her gaze.
"The Death Eaters think they have won," she said. "They think that they have crippled the DMLE. They think that they can piss on our efforts to keep Britain safe, that this night is a grand statement before the entire world, heralding the fall of our nation."
She met the spectral army's gaze. Kingsley Shacklebolt, bald and towering with his head cracked open stood, his characteristic relaxed grin plastered on his dead face; Savage, young and proud, and oh so diligent; Proudfoot, Connelly, Minchum, McDonald, Turnipseed, Milliphutt, Gambol — every single one of them stared back at her.
The werewolves, the terrorists behind the pale white masks and dark, billowing cloaks just stared at her, their features a varying mix of apprehension, fear and downright confusion. Ghosts they could understand, but ghosts casting spells? Wraiths possessing physical bodies they had known, but wraiths existing in tangible, corporeal forms…
Inconceivable.
Amelia didn't care. She didn't fear their attack any more than she feared this spectral army that had answered their call. Even her attackers knew that their game of numbers had been inverted upon themselves.
The predator had become the prey.
"These bastards think they can do what they want, without repercussions," she declared, glaring at her enemies. The ones that were responsible for the countless dead tonight.
"Let us correct their ignorance."
She levelled her wand at the groaning form of Walden Macnair.
"DEPRIMO."
The light purple curse was originally crafted to be used in civil construction, for the explicit purpose of drilling holes on the floor without affecting the strength of the entire structure. When it hit Walden Macnair's head, it obliterated it with the same efficiency, leaving the rest of the body, from the tip of the neck to the bottom, utterly undamaged.
Raising her wand high up in the heavens, she pointed it at the Dark Mark floating in the sky.
"DELETRIUS!"
The Dark Mark dissipated, as hoots and yells from the spectral army silenced the despairing howls from the Death Eater crowd. And Amelia Bones, like a primal dictator, raised her wand and let out a victorious war cry.
"KILL THEM ALL!"
And all around her, the Death Eaters began to die.
The first to attack were the wraiths, their forms shimmering like heat waves, yet cold as the grave. They flew soundlessly over the ground, their hollow eyes burning with an inner light that flickered like a candle in the wind. The werewolves, ordinarily too fast for an average mortal, found themselves on the defensive as the wraiths grabbed them, possessed them, twisted and burned their insides, and used their bodies to kill their own kind.
Behind them came the poltergeists, more defined but no less eerie. Dressed in the spectral remains of their mortal garb, their faces pale and translucent, features twisted in expressions of eternal sorrow, unfulfilled rage, or perhaps both. They marched in unison, their footsteps leaving no trace, their presence heralded by a low, mournful wail that seems to emanate from the very earth. Clad in tattered remnants of long-forgotten armour, they carried their wands in one hand, while spectral shields arising out of the rings they wore on their other hand, glowing with a ghostly blue fire. An army of Death Eaters came rushing at them, and found their spells passing through them harmlessly. But when the poltergeists cast, the spells tore through the Death Eater ranks.
Hovering high above the ground, jumping from tree to tree, were the banshees, their keening cries piercing the stillness and chilling the soul. Their hair flowed down like dark smoke, and their eyes looked like pools of infinite despair. Their lamentations were a sorrowful anthem of vengeance, making their prey fall to their knees, grabbing their heads and screaming while they pounced upon them, tearing them apart with their bare claws.
"They say civilization is a thin veneer over barbarism," said Amelia, as she casually met, encountering a shellshocked Emmeline Vance, and an equally perplexed Hestia Jones. "I hope Malfoy and his ilk like this tearing sound."
"But…." trailed off Emmeline. "This is… I mean, this is wrong. Necromancy is supposed to be evil. An abomination. Perhaps a necessary one tonight, but hideous all the same. And yet, look at it. It's amazing."
"Pretty good at werewolf-crushing too," quipped Hestia.
"Indeed," said Amelia. "Harry and I had a deal. Lucius Malfoy is his. Everything else is fair game."
She took careful note of the way Hestia stiffened at that.
"But… this, so many… I mean, this isn't supposed to be possible. And Harry — Harry did this?"
"It probably has something to do with so much death," said Hestia, attracting both witches' attention. The young woman fidgeted a bit at their stares. "Harry once told me that magic, especially powerful magic, leaves traces. And dying, especially in such a manner, leaves a lot of lingering emotions, curses and residual magic behind, which is what raises ghosts in time. I think what Harry did was… accelerate the process, using necromancy."
Emmeline arched an eyebrow. "And the poltergeists casting spells?
Hestia shrugged. "Gotta ask the man."
"Speaking of, where is he?"
Breathing was difficult.
Walking was difficult.
Doing both, amidst the chaos all around, with the sheer stench of death and darkness, while walking around, blindly searching for her father, was almost impossible.
Papa… Papa… her mind cried out, and reeled in growing horror when she couldn't sense him. She was alone. Unable to find her father. Unable to portkey out safely because of the anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards. She could only hope that her father was safe out there, probably looking for her with his bodyguards. She didn't want to entertain the possibility of him remaining inside the stadium when it exploded.
Her mind went back to Potter's smug smirk, and humiliation warred with fear for the prime emotion in Fleur's mind as she trudged through the forests, her disillusionment charm constantly flickering in and out, no thanks to her current state. She knew that she had taken a risk by running after the mystery that was Harry Potter, entranced and repulsed by his contradictory powers. However his magic worked, Fleur did not know, but experiencing a hundred orgasms all at once was something she had never expected to experience, definitely not inside a filthy loo of all places. Her body still shook, while craving his touch, wanting to scream and run away, and also curse him with every spell she had ever known, all at once, while being at the brink of throwing up, unable to stand the dark, intense, lingering emotions of death, destruction, sheer horror, and the countless screams that pervaded into the night.
Speaking of Potter, he must have something to do with this. He had been planning something with Narcissa Malfoy of all people, and even Fleur had heard of the bigotry of that family. If something happened to her father because of this, if he….
She didn't finish the thought.
Yes, Porter would die for this. Horribly, and in the worst agony that Fleur could conceive. She didn't know when or how, but Potter would die. To feel this… this lost wasn't something she could accept. She had thought that she'd….
Something stirred in the corner of her vision. A shadow moving where there was nothing to move about, no moonlight or raging flame to cast it.
Clenching her teeth, she levelled her wand and hurled a bolt of raw magic directly at it. It wasn't really a spell, for Fleur wasn't really a witch. She was a veela, a being of emotion and magic, and unlike witches, magic flowed through her veins, permeating her every cell. When she chose to, she could direct it outward in a brutal, destructive bolt of energy that could pierce through a steel armour. And when she was too enraged or threatened, she could transform into an avian form and hurl fireballs of the hottest, bluish flames, capable of scorching even stone. She didn't know who it was that was sneaking up to her, and she did not care, for if they meant well, they wouldn't be sneaking up on her cloaked under some disillusionment charm. She struck to kill.
It didn't do much good.
The barely visible shimmering in the air grew and twisted, easily dodging her bolt of magic, which got choked in the darkness. Fleur clenched her wand tighter, as a bodiless foot appeared before her. She cast again, a blasting hex, only for it to vanish into a pinprick of light.
Fleur shuddered, as the flickers became more concrete, before the invisibility cloak was lifted away, revealing a hunched figure that gave her the impression of an overgrown school kid, or perhaps a little boy trapped in the body of a much, much older man. His clothes were neat and evenly pressed, his hair combed back and his face cleaned and well-presented. But one look at his eyes, and another shudder went down her spine.
Those eyes burnt. Within them was shining brilliance, fevered activity and searing madness. They were the eyes of a fanatic, of a man who was completely and totally devoted to one thing and one thing only. His lips moved constantly, muttering one single sentence over and over like a mantra.
"Kill, kill, kill. Kill Lucius Malfoy."
"Who — who are you?" asked Fleur, her accent coming out despite her efforts. Her allure was flaring dangerously, responding to the fear coursing through her as well as the ambient emotion around.
"Kill," repeated the man. "KILL LUCIUS! KILL LUCIUS! KILL! LUCIUS! MALFOY!"
He was frothing by the end of it.
"Oh-kay," said Fleur, slowly taking a backstep. "I'm not Lucius Malfoy. "E's… e's gone… zat way!" She pointed in an arbitrary direction. "S'il te plaît, let me go!"
"Nononono," the man said in a singsong voice, shaking his head like a rabid dog. "So many to kill! Can't let a single leave! Honestly, it's like I'm spoiled for choices," he said, cupping his chin, as if lost in thought. "All those mudbloods need to die! Die die die! So much fire, so many screams, it's just wonderful! But father won't like it. No Barty no, you must not let yourself be seen! You must not let yourself be seen! LACERO!"
Fleur instantly raised a shield, letting the spell splash against it. She sent a jolt of allure at him, hoping to confuse him if not make him leave. Instead he just gazed at her wolfishly, a hungry gleam in his eyes.
Fleur instinctively took a step back. Just her luck to fall prey to a crazed madman. Stupid Brits and their stupid insurgents! "I'm not Lucius Malfoy! Go kill 'im instead! Leave me! Let me go!"
"Nononono," said Barty in that same singsong tone. "Father is clear on this. I must not be seen! Barty came here, and you saw Barty! That means Barty gets to kill you so that nobody sees Barty! And then, I will kill Lucius Malfoy. Now, die."
The madman began hurling hexes and curses, while also being creative with the environment, transfiguring it into traps and weapons, a dozen at a time, and using it all to attack Fleur from all directions. The boar he had transfigured from a vine was charred to death with a single fireball, and her wide-area vanishing charm took care of mad swarm of mosquitoes that was buzzing around her, before casting twin blasting hexes at the two roots he had enlivened to attack her. But the man was almost unstoppable. He was barely spending time to voice incantations, chaining spells constantly, while raving on and on about how he would kill Lucius Malfoy. No flashes, no dramatics, just constant spell furies and intelligent use of the environment against his opponent. Fleur quickly realised she would need to transform into her avian form and escape if she wanted to live.
Where was the DMLE? She glanced in the direction of the still burning building, and at the forest that had recently gone up in teal-coloured flames of all things. She had heard werewolves howling, and sounds of spellfire, while she constantly searched for her father amidst the chaos.
Meanwhile the man kept on chattering.
"I saw Gawain Robards on the way. Bastard captured me when that betrayer Karkaroff sold me out. I can kill him. And Karkaroff's hiding I know not where, but I can kill him too. So many to kill. So many options. But first I'm gonna kill Lucius Malfoy!"
Insane. Utterly, definitively insane. Just her luck to attract a crazy, murdering psychopathic Death Eater.
She glanced at the massive floating sigil in the sky, the Dark Mark, she recognized from the history books. Recent British history always found its place in the minds of French historians while they were preparing history books for Beauxbatons undergrads. Someone had died, someone important.
Her anxiety tripled. "BOMBARDA MAXIMA!"
The powerful exploding curse hit the ground between them, which erupted in a cloud of dust and rock, and Fleur spun around, and began running as quickly as her legs could take her. Not a very good prospect, since her legs were still feeling like jelly from the orgasmic high Harry Potter had affected her with. She cast a quick ascending charm on herself, lifting herself by twenty feet into the air, feathers exploding over her body and her mouth arching and expanding into a beak, before something grabbed her right leg and yanked her down. Shocked, her wand fell off her hand, and Fleur shrieked in that half-human, half-bird form, as she was slammed down against the ground with a herculean force. Screaming, she shut her eyes and waited for the inevitable.
The pain never came.
Fleur blinked, confused. She had sorta been expecting to be dead at this point. And if not, badly injured with her skull fractured and her face distorted, possibly in ways beyond the capacity of healers to recover. Instead she found herself just inches above the ground, floating in mid-air.
"Oooof!" She grunted, as she dropped unceremoniously on the floor.
"Not dead?" She heard the psychopath mutter in surprise. "Not dead, not dead! I told you. Father said, 'Barty, you must not be seen!' Don't you get it? Imustnotletmyselfbeseen! Imustnotletmyselfbeseen! Imustnotletmyselfbe—"
He rushed at her, jumping at her form, ready to straddle her from above —
—And then an invisible force slammed into him with the force of a freight train and sent him flying by several dozen feet. His body hit a tree trunk and dropped down with a thud. He didn't move after that.
"Now, now, that's not the way you treat a French delegate. And then you wonder why the French think poorly of us."
Fleur looked up at her unexpected saviour, and found herself meeting the gaze of the source of her problems.
Harry fucking Potter.
She tried to push herself back on her feet, but a sprain on her abdomen kept her down.
'Just take it easy," he said. "You might've got a sprain from that midair yanking. Nothing a quick Episkey would fix. What were you doing being alone by yourself at this time? And how did you come across that guy?"
She ignored him and attempted getting up a second time and succeeded. Lifting her wand, she cast a quick healing spell, and stood back up on her feet. "I zot zat walking outside ze stadium feeling a mixture of rage, pity and self-disgust would be ze worst experience in my life." She eyed him. "I've never felt zat way before."
"Well, experiences shape a man, or woman, I suppose."
She gave him a baleful look. "I was looking for my papa. 'Ave you seen him?"
Potter shook his head. "I can help you look for him."
"And why?" she questioned, narrowing her eyes. "What are you even doing 'ere?"
"Enjoying the weather?" Potter shrugged. "Oh, and keeping arseholes from ruining our stellar reputation in front of our French friends, I suppose. Look, I was searching for my own friends, when I saw the spellfire and intervened."
"So you were guided by latent chivalry, ze tool of ze patriarchy, to extract my undying gratitude?"
"Mm-hmm. Most people would just say thank you."
"I didn't want to be rescued."
"So, I should've just let him smash your cute face to mush?"
"I would rather 'ave saved myself," she said, casting cleansing charms on herself. "Better zan take 'elp from ze one responsible for all zis."
"Hang on! Me? Responsible?"
"Zon't lie, 'Arry Potter!" She warned, her accent in full force. Nearly transforming into her avian form, and failing to do that, only to be saved by her last man she wanted to see would do that to anyone. "I saw you. I 'eard you. Plotting with Madame Malfoi."
"Oh? You did, didn't you? Was that before or after you saw me planting bombs all over the stadium to cripple my country's defence forces and kill half of the spectators?"
"Zat does not matter!" She fumed. "You were planning something wiz 'er!"
"Clearly. You saw me doing something with Narcissa Malfoy. And someone set the entire stadium ablaze and murdered over a thousand people. And since the world cannot possibly maintain more than one conspiracy at a time, I'm clearly the one that detonated the stadium!"
"Bordel de merde!" She cursed. "If not for you, I would've been with Papa."
"Yes, because I asked you to leave your father and his security and come after me, didn't I? No, you wanted to eavesdrop on me so badly because the little girl couldn't hold her curiosity back."
Fleur had never had any use for the word 'incensed' before, but it was now the only conceivable way to describe the sensation of being near Harry Potter. Her body began to heat up.
"Listen you —"
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
Before Fleur could react, Potter grabbed her by her waist and pulled her to the right, evading the curse by mere inches.
She expected him to cast something offensive, instead he just lazily cast a confounding hex on him, followed by a Nebulus charm, clouding the entire zone in dense, black fog.
"Let's go," he said.
"What? Just like zat? 'E just cast ze killing curse at you! Wait, you are immune to zat curse, are you? What are you going to do? Cast something obscure? Or offensive like zat blasting curse?"
Potter deadpanned as her imagination ran wild with each passing second. "Despite what the whole world thinks, Dumbledore isn't training me in secret. I only know as much as the average third year passout, Miss Delacour."
Liar. His casual casting all but yelled that his training in spellcraft and combat was anything but normal.
"And even if I knew, that's a homicidal maniac right there. What do you expect me to do? Fight him and win because I'm supposed to be a hotheaded Gryffindor?"
Fleur opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it. She tried it again and again but to no results. She had expected him to fight him and satisfy his male bravado. From the raw power she had tasted, and his casual mannerisms, she was almost certain he could hold his own, at least against this madman. At the same time, it was obvious he wasn't telling her the absolute truth. He could have easily stunned the man or worse.
Instead he was just letting him go.
Damnit. Nothing about Harry Potter made sense.
"Fine!" she said. "Let's go find my father."