HP/LOTM: Visionary - 430

Chapter 430: Dragonkin! Dragonkin! The Stealth Trio

At the heart of the battlefield, the fight only grew fiercer, and the two dragonkin fought harder with every passing second.

As they moved, the scales on their bodies scraped together with a grating, metallic screech. Worse than the sound was the heat that rolled off them in waves. Their blood was boiling, in the most literal sense.

Magic and dragon blood burned together, turning them into tireless furnaces. In the depths of February, the snow under their feet melted to slush and then to steam, carving a clear, scorched ring around them.

A wordless warning to the Death Eaters: step over this line and die.

At last, one of the Death Eaters could not bear the mounting pressure from Fabian and Gideon. He snapped first, hurling a Knockback Jinx at them, hoping to blast them off their feet.

The spell never even reached them. The searing magic around their bodies burned it away to nothing.

Fabian raised his hand. With nothing but unleashed magic, fire roared out and swallowed the Death Eater whole.

Fear spiked through the ranks.

"Damned Prewetts!"

More Death Eaters charged anyway, screaming, driven by the certainty that whatever waited for them here was still better than the Dark Lord’s displeasure.

Fabian moved first. He bent his body slightly; muscle bunched in his legs, then released with a force beyond human. He vanished from where he stood and reappeared in the middle of the Death Eaters’ formation, heart hammering, boiling blood driving magic and strength higher.

"Confringo!"

The Blasting Curse detonated in their midst. The courtyard shattered, shockwaves hurling shards of stone and clouds of dust into the air.

"Obscuro Mists," Gideon said.

He cast at the perfect moment. Fog surged out and mingled with the dust, forming a thicker, clinging haze that blocked every line of sight.

The two dragonkin, backed by raw physical force and unreasonable reserves of magic, became demons in the smoke, cutting Death Eaters down one after another.

Screams rose and fell on all sides.

Each cry meant one more Death Eater sent to meet Merlin. The unseen slaughter and the roiling smoke magnified their terror. None of them dared push forward.

"Useless," Voldemort hissed from the balcony.

His wand hand shook with rage. He flicked it, and a weather charm powerful enough to blanket London compressed down to the size of the Riddle estate.

Under a surge of black magic, a gale screamed into being, twisting into a whirling column. The air pummelled at every Death Eater’s mind, and at the same time, shredded the fog Fabian and Gideon had raised.

Unfortunately for him, that was exactly what the dragonkin had been waiting for.

As the tornado rose, they both lifted their wands and cast.

“Incendio Maxima!”

Twin pillars of fire shot into the spinning column. The harmless wind turned into a flaming dragon, and the lingering dust in the air flashed into a chain of secondary explosions.

Death Eaters still trapped in the courtyard were either burned alive in the firestorm or blown off their feet and out of the fight.

The two dragonkin stood in the centre of the ruin, crowned in flame.

“Damn the Prewetts,” Voldemort thought, teeth gritted.

Power like this. Tactics like this. Why, why were they not his?

He lifted his wand to join the battle himself.

Three spells shot at his back.

"Stupefy. Expelliarmus. Diffindo."

Red, scarlet and white lights streaked toward him. Behind his shoulders, a mass of black slime surged up and devoured them all.

"Rats, is it? What a surprise," Tom said.

His head twisted backward at an impossible angle. His body bent like a snake.

"Run!" Remus shouted.

He grabbed Sirius and Peter and yanked them toward the shadows.

Green light gathered at Voldemort’s wand tip. An instant later, two of the spells that had been blocked still exploded, blasting apart the balcony railing behind him.

By then, the two dragonkin had finished the last of the Death Eaters. They hovered in the air with their wings spread, drifting into position behind Tom.

"Hah. Five against one. Odds look good to me," Sirius said.

He wrenched free of Remus’s grip, ready to put on a show for Tom Riddle.

He did not get the chance.

Voldemort let his magic explode in a single pulse and flung them all backwards.

"Dragonkin. I will give you one more chance. Join me," Tom said, stretching a hand toward Gideon and Fabian.

He could not help it. He wanted them. Born weapons of war, backed by an old and fabulously wealthy alchemical house.

“You hold my wife hostage and trample on our pride, and you dare ask us to kneel? Do you think we’re the sort of men who’ll crawl at your feet?” Gideon roared.

Heat burst from him, magic so intense that for a brief moment he stood toe to toe with Voldemort.

"What a waste," Voldemort thought.

He could feel the will in that magic. The moment he had seized Eleanor, he had lost any chance of peace with the Prewetts.

"Avada Kedavra."

Green light erupted from his wand and arced high into the sky, bursting like a firework before trailing down in a rain of killing stars.

Fabian and Gideon moved as one. Both cast Transfiguration, shaping a vast umbrella of force over the Marauders’ heads.

Tom turned into black mist and rushed them.

The three under the Cloak fired every curse they could think of at the oncoming shadow.

The Killing Curse meteors smashed into the ground, throwing up a landscape of craters. Tom’s body vanished into the chaos.

No one noticed the small rat that bolted across the pitted earth, heading straight for Eleanor, where she still hung in the air.

He scurried up her arm and began gnawing at the vines that bound her.

A hand darted from the waiting dark.

"Expelliarmus. Stupefy."

Two spells in quick succession dropped Peter where he clung.

From under the hood, Rookwood slowly pulled the cowl back up over his face.