Magical Marvel: The Rise of Arthur Hayes : Ch. 140

Chapter 140: All Hallows' War Part - 4

The wine had gone warm.

Arthur set his glass down with mild annoyance. The grounds below lay empty now; the real storm had moved behind stone walls. From his tower perch he caught only flashes — occasional spellfire painting windowpanes, low rolling thunder that made ancient foundations complain.

Another blast rocked Hogwarts. Screams rode the shockwave up through the spires like smoke.

“Well,” Arthur murmured, rising and brushing imaginary dust from his robes, “one can’t properly document history while remaining too comfortably seated.”

Truth be told, he'd read about war extensively, studied it academically, but never truly witnessed one. Time to remedy that gap in his education.

Besides, there were people inside he’d grown fond of despite himself — Sirius and Harry, certainly. By extension, Amelia and Susan. And Madam Pomfrey, one of the few adults he liked at Hogwarts. If something happened to them while he sat here with warm wine, what exactly was he gaining all this power for?

With a thought, Arthur turned invisible and Apparated.

—

He arrived at the main entrance—or what had once been the main entrance.

Shattered armor lay scattered like discarded shells. Two bodies slumped in the shadows—stunned or dead, he didn’t stop to check. He moved deeper into the castle.

Inside was pure chaos. People fought desperately for their lives. Students in Hogwarts robes, bloodied and grim-faced, hurled spells with shaking hands. The sight cracked the cold, unbothered mask Arthur had been trying to maintain.

He’d expected fierce battles and plenty of death, but seeing barely-grown children forced into mortal combat was something he hadn’t prepared for.

Arthur pressed on, forcing himself to ignore it.

—

The next corridor stripped away the last of his detachment.

Two Hogwarts students lay dying, gut wounds painting the flagstones crimson. Their attacker — a wild-eyed witch branded with Grindelwald’s mark — was taking her time, administering a curse Arthur knew by its shape: a slow, exquisite form of torture magic.

“Does it hurt?” she purred, tracing her wand over the boy’s chest. “It’s meant to hurt. Pain purifies. Pain teaches. Pain—”

She never finished.

Arthur hadn’t felt himself move. One moment he was a spectator; the next, a portal opened beneath her feet. The volcanic end came so fast she probably died still smiling.

He stared at the empty space where she’d stood, jaw tight. Despite all his plans to remain an observer, to let the wizarding world learn its bloody lesson, seeing the consequences of war firsthand burned away any thought of inaction.

If he’d stayed away entirely, perhaps he could have kept his conscience quiet. Standing here, seeing suffering he could stop, that was not something he could live with.

He layered Stasis Charms over the two Hufflepuff boys he didn’t recognize, freezing them in the moment before death could claim them. Then two portals opened beneath their bodies, bearing them instantly to the Hospital Wing.

He moved on, grim and silent.

—

The further he went, the worse it grew. Atrocities multiplied like weeds. Enough was enough.

Lesson learned — now he would act.

Ironically, the people he'd come to protect needed no protection at all.

Sirius dueled five Death Eaters at once with only Amelia for backup, and he was winning. Years of training had made him lethal.

A few corridors away, Harry moved through dark wizards and acromantulas with the fluid grace of someone born to battle. Every spell was economical, every movement calculated. Susan shadowed him, her shield work keeping stray curses from finding lucky marks.

Since his chosen few were handling themselves, Arthur turned his attention elsewhere. He became a phantom haunting Hogwarts' halls, moving swift and silent through stairwells and rubble. When he found the truly murderous—the ones reveling in cruelty—he opened a portal beneath them and erased them from the battlefield.

To the defenders, it must have seemed like divine intervention. One moment locked in deadly combat; the next, their opponent simply vanished mid-curse. They didn't question the miracle. They couldn't afford to.

Wounded fighters received identical treatment: Stasis Charms to stabilize, then a portal to safety.

—

In the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey had long stopped being surprised by yet another body materializing out of thin air.

“Another one,” she called to her helpers without looking up from a chest wound she was sealing. “Stasis Charm, well done. Same as the others.”

“Who’s doing this?” a volunteer healer asked, wrestling with a particularly stubborn curse on a student’s arm.

Pomfrey allowed a small, tired smile despite the chaos. “Someone with a warmer heart than he’ll admit.”

She recognized the magic and knew exactly who it belonged to. Her most brilliant student, trying so desperately to be cold, to care about nothing... but unable to watch innocents die.

“Whoever it is,” she said louder, certain he’d somehow hear her, “tell them we’re grateful. And that we’re running out of beds.”

—

An hour passed like a nightmare on fast-forward.

Arthur lost count of how many Death Eaters he’d sent to volcanic ends — dozens, at least. The Hospital Wing overflowed with injured defenders he’d pulled from the brink. 

But he was only one man, invisible or not, and the castle was vast. He couldn’t be everywhere.

Some fell before he reached them; some killers slipped past. Even so, the tide was shifting. 

The Death Eaters were bleeding numbers, their cruelty punished with sudden, inexplicable disappearance. But the defenders were far from whole—the injured outnumbered the dead, yet exhaustion was setting in.

The fighting showed no sign of ending when the shout cut through it all.

“DUMBLEDORE’S TOMB!”

The cry sliced the chaos. Heads turned to the windows where green fire raged — magical flames eating through marble, consuming wards that should have been untouchable.

“No.” McGonagall’s whisper was a broken thing, horror-struck as she watched the tomb burn.

Arthur understood in an instant why Voldemort had been absent. While the battle raged, Tom had been grave-robbing.

Was he after the Elder Wand? Did he know its nature? Or was this nothing but an attempt to burn Dumbledore’s legacy and crush morale?

Arthur doubted the wand was his goal — Voldemort’s was still intact, since the canonical break had never happened in this world. Still, perhaps it didn’t work for him as well since the graveyard duel with Harry.

Either way, it didn’t matter. Voldemort wouldn’t find anything — the Elder Wand had long since become part of Arthur when he became Master of Death.

However, the defenders saw only sacrilege. Exhaustion burned away, replaced by incandescent fury.

—

Before they could channel it, Voldemort’s voice filled the air — everywhere and nowhere at once.

“You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery.”

Arthur could hear the smirk in his tone.

“Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss… and a waste.”

“Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Tend to your injured.”

Already, Death Eaters were pulling back in tight, efficient formations, leaving their dead where they lay.

“I speak now to you, Harry Potter. Your resistance has been… amusing. But you have allowed your friends to die for you rather than face me. I would have preferred your surrender, but I offer you another option. Duel me — one on one. Let us finish what began in Godric’s Hollow all those years ago.”

Somewhere in the castle, Harry went rigid; Susan’s hand tightened on his.

“If you do not come,” the voice purred, steel beneath silk, “I will kill them all. Every student. Every teacher. Every fool who stands between us. Their blood will water the grounds until Hogwarts drowns in crimson.”

“Don’t listen to him!” someone shouted, but Arthur wasn’t close enough to see Harry’s reaction.

“One hour,” Voldemort concluded. “The Quidditch pitch. Come alone, or bring your sheep — it matters not. One hour, Harry Potter… and we end this properly.”

The voice snapped off like a severed thread.

Arthur didn’t linger to watch the aftermath. He’d learned the hard lesson of watching too closely — every corpse a weight on his conscience, every dead face a future visitor to his dreams. Better to avoid everything and check on Harry to see how the boy would handle this seemingly impossible choice.

He Apparated to Harry’s location.

—

Minutes passed while Arthur stood invisible in the corner, watching Harry process the ultimatum.

The boy was surrounded by a ring of people who loved him: Sirius, Susan, the Weasleys, what remained of the DA. Voices overlapped, frantic: negotiations, plans, pleas for another way, anything that didn’t end with Harry facing Voldemort alone.

But Harry wasn’t listening. He stood perfectly still, and in his eyes Arthur saw something he recognized — the expression of someone who’d already made an impossible choice and accepted its weight. The same look Arthur had worn when he decided to face Ronan’s fleet, knowing it might kill him.

The look of a man who’d stopped counting odds and started accepting destiny.

“I’m going,” Harry said simply; his voice cut through the chaos.

Arguments erupted: Sirius practically roaring, Susan crying, everyone trying to stitch words into walls to keep him safe.

But Harry just stood there, a fixed point in a universe of panic, and repeated with quiet certainty:

"I've been training for this. I need to do this. Too many people have died." His voice cracked slightly on the last word. "I need to end this before any more do."

Arthur watched the boy—no, the young man—who'd been shaped by loss and war into something harder than anyone his age should have to be.

He genuinely didn't know how this would end.