A distinctive alarm chime sounded throughout the cháteau, causing four sets of eyes to snap open.
Harry and the girls had been in a deep state of meditation, substituting it for sleep so that they could stay alert in case they needed to act quickly.
The chime was unexpected however. It meant that something had triggered the perimeter ward around the island, a lot of somethings given the volume and frequency of the chime.
"What is it, what is going on?" Etal hissed, both curious and annoyed. Unlike them, he had actually been asleep and didn't appreciate being woken up.
Harry stood and walked to the balcony, peering out into the night. The Full Moon had been less than a week ago, so it was still fairly bright, but he couldn't see anything. He didn't need to though, only one thing in this world had that distinctive feeling to it.
"There's a chill in the air, a familiar one." He said grimly, speaking in English to answer both the quetzalcoatl and the girls. His expression quickly turned into a scowl as he remembered telling Adrastia less than twelve hours ago that Voldemort wouldn't mount a direct attack on Spellhaven. He'd been wrong apparently. "We have dementors incoming, gear up."
They had been meditating fully dressed in the expectation of trouble, so it took only moments to throw on their basilisk hide coats.
"Etal, could you go take a look at how many enemies there are?" He hissed. The quetzalcoatl's peculiar wind-based nature would let him slip through the wards as easily as a phoenix flamed through them.
Etal hissed back a confirmation and zipped outside.
The four of them didn't wait for his return and immediately started making their way downstairs. They'd barely made it out of the room when Harry sensed the Broom Disruption Field and the outermost war ward going up. He was glad once again that the girls had convinced him to hire Kincaid. The American former Auror was competent and knew when to wait for orders and when to act on his own initiative.
It wouldn't do any good against the dementors, who could only be blocked by physical barriers, but it would allow them to deal with the soul-devourers without interference.
"You think it will be that bad?" Fleur asked a little later, noticing that they were heading towards the portal mirror that connected to another just like it in Potter Manor, back in Britain. The original idea of evacuating people to Ravenhead had been scrapped ages ago.
"We have to assume that he's throwing everything he has at us if he's come here." Dora answered.
Harry paid the brief conversation no mind as he opened up the curtains that hid the portal mirror. It was a huge and ugly thing, a solid five meters wide, that had both Fleur and Narcissa complaining about aesthetics. They had complained even more when he had insisted on remodeling the front door and entrance hall to be just as massive, but both he and Dora had put their foot down on that one. If they were going to have the portal inside the cháteau, then narrow hallways leading to it were a big no-no.
Speaking of Narcissa, the blonde witch was standing on top of a stairway in her silk night robe and looking more than a little alarmed.
"What's going on?" She asked.
"We're under attack, get dressed." Harry replied curtly. It would be her job to take charge on the other side and keep people from doing anything too stupid.
Narcissa hurried to obey.
By the time that the four of them made it out the front door, the temperature had started dropping noticeably and the beginning of a dark cloud was already forming over the island as the dementors' combined aura did its work on the weather. There was a reason that Azkaban only had two seasons, those being this winter and next winter.
The soul-devourers were fortunately not terribly fast even though they could fly and had not yet reached the residential area, but they were closing in.
Etal zipped back at that point, halting his momentum in mid-air in ways that should be physically impossible.
"How many?" Harry asked.
"Hundreds, all flying on brooms. The strong snake smelling/tasting wizard is also here." Etal replied shortly.
"Crap." Harry muttered. How the fuck had Voldemort duped so many people into joining up with him in just one year? The outer ward wouldn't hold up for long against that level of assault. Voldemort wouldn't even have to cast a Spellshear at it, meaning that he wouldn't need to expend any of his own strength before their inevitable showdown.
As if to mock his thoughts, the ward began to flare with spell impacts, just a few at first but more and more with every moment until there were hundreds of them.
He cast a variant of the Sonorous Charm on himself, one that was designed to project his voice all over the island instead of just increasing volume.
"Everyone wake up!" He said normally, but his voice boomed loudly and seemingly came from everywhere. "This is Harry Potter speaking. The island is under attack by hostile forces. Non-combatants are to evacuate immediately, take only what you need with you. Combatants are to escort them and keep order. Anyone capable of casting a Patronus should do so immediately." He repeated his message, just in case anyone had been too out of it by the abrupt wake up call to understand it properly the first time.
The girls had by now cast their own Patroni, sending out a trio of glowing ravens. The forms that their Patroni took was a rather unsubtle indicator of the close relationship between them.
"We should split up for now." Dora said assertively, already floating in the air. "I'll go that way." She said, pointing southwards.
Fleur and Luna voiced their agreement and also rose into the air.
"Please go with Luna and watch out for her." Harry asked of his scaly friend.
"Very well." Etal agreed easily. He was fond of Luna as well.
"Be careful." Harry said to them all before they flew off and then focused on making his own Patronus. Even all this time after learning it, that spell remained one of the more problematic ones in his repertoire for the simple reason that it required more than knowledge, skill and willpower from the caster. His disposition was naturally dour and poorly suited for it.
Still, it was definitely easier to cast now than it had once been. He had so much more tethering him to this world now than he did when he first learned it, so much more that he wanted to protect. He focused on the love he felt for his girls, their shared future that he would not allow to be taken away, the home they had built with their own hands that was now under threat.
The Patronus animal was usually real-sized, but Harry made his the size of a skyscrapper. It didn't make it any more powerful, but that wasn't the point. Seeing the giant spectral guardian would give people something to move towards.
And it worked. People were now clearly converging towards a single location and the giant raven Patronus flew circles around the area, scattering any dementors it encountered.
Harry was once again grateful that he hadn't been more stubborn about the island's security. Everyone was moving quick and with as much organisation as could be expected in this situation. Kincaid had insisted on running a few evacuation drills after being put in charge of Spellhaven's defences, something that Harry knew he would have never gotten around to doing. The man could be heard bellowing orders in the distance even now.
Still, not all was well. Even with more than twenty Patroni in the air, it wasn't enough to cover everyone because they were too spread out and aside from those cast by the four of them, none of them were really strong enough to hold back so many dementors. Harry clearly saw them swarm over several groups of people that weren't sufficiently protected and felt their voices go silent. Then things went further sideways.
The ward finally collapsed under the assault, sending out a sort of spiritual shockwave that everyone immediately perceived as a loss of protection. Half a dozen Patroni immediately winked out of existence in response.
Moments later, all of the island's veela and their assorted lovers rushed out of the commune in a single large group. The veela alone numbered nearly a hundred at this point and that much Light attuned magic was completely irresistible to the dementors.
"Shite." Harry grunted to himself and started flying in that direction as well, his huge raven Patronus doing the same. He saw that several among their number were casting Patroni or at least Patronus mist, but they were far too weak to fend off that many dementors.
Halfway there, he felt the next ward going up, once more preventing the Death Eaters from adding to the chaos.
It was a strange sort of blessing that the veela group had young children and pregnant women among their number. They refused to leave anyone behind and moved only as fast as the slowest among them, which kept them huddled close together. Thanks to that, Harry was able to command his raven Patronus to fold its glowing wings around all of them.
Harry had long known that the dementors were only partially physical, as indicated by the fact that you needed magic to even see them. It had been a long time since he had last encountered one of them and his insight into had grown a great deal since then. Now that he was this close to them, his sight breached the darkness of their being and perceived the truth within.
Desensitised to the draining aura of despair they exuded by years of dabbling with the Dark, he strode towards the nearest dementor fearlessly and plunged his hand into its chest.
There were no words to describe the sensation that engulfed his hand. It was like reaching outside of the world. The cold was familiar though. It was the same cold that claimed a place in his own soul, the endless, greedy chill of the Void. His magic began turning Dark due to the direct exposure and his body, linked directly to his magic due to his runes, began to grow cold.
And in the darkness, Harry's grip closed around something that had neither mass nor form, but was undeniably there.
The dementor had once been a wizard, one who had delved too deep into Dark and been lost to it, now he was reduced to an empty husk, a conduit for the Void to sate its hunger. It retained a faded echo of its humanity, but had no true will of its own. Hunger was all it knew and would follow anyone that offered to sate it or bow to the threats of anyone that could deny it.
Harry needed to do neither. Why should he, when he held in his hand the lynchpin of the dementor's existence? The nebulous state of limbo that it existed in might have made the dementor invulnerable to any kind of conventional physical or magical attack – you couldn't close a wound in the world by attacking it after all – but it also left what remained of its original soul completely exposed.
"Hollow vessel in the form of man." He intoned with the finality of a death knell. "Heed the will of your new master."
The dementor did not resist the enslavement. It couldn't have even if it had the will required to do so, not with Harry reaching inside it.
The other dementors froze for a moment and then began to flee. While not truly intelligent and not really valuing their freedom, they retained an instinctual understanding that losing it would mean being unable to sate their endless hunger without permission.
Harry wasn't content to just let them go however. He pulled his arm out of the dementor he'd just taken control of and flew towards the next and then the one after that. He managed to get six of them before they were too scattered to be worth the bother.
The six dementors he'd enslaved waited placidly for instructions.
"Go eat the people attacking the wards. Touch no other." He ordered.
The dementors obeyed instantly. Their higher reasoning might not be anything to write home about and one wizard looked the same as another to them, but they did have an uncanny ability to comprehend the meaning behind words in a similar manner to the way Marae and Etal did. They knew exactly who they had been ordered to eat.
"Harry?"
He turned at the amazed inquiry, finding himself face-to-face with a wide-eyed Aurélie. She was holding her crying daughter and looking awed, disbelieving and even slightly afraid.
Harry felt an irrational urge to kill her, but he shook it off. He was well familiar with what over-exposure to Dark did to him by now.
"You should go." He said simply, taking deep breaths and trying to bring himself back into balance.
Aurélie's face took on a stubborn cast that reminded him a great deal of Fleur and he knew that she was about to do the exact opposite of what he'd suggested.
Sure enough, she handed the wailing Arielle over to Fleur's mother and drew her wand.
"You think I will let you stand alone?" She asked challengingly. "This is our home too."
This spurred another twenty or so veela, nearly a quarter of their total population on Spellhaven, and perhaps fifteen of their human lovers to step forward, either out of shame or pride. Some of them were part of Spellhaven's militia, but not all. He hoped that the ones who weren't had at least some skill with combat magic or else they would be more of a hindrance than a help. Still, they weren't really in a position to turn anyone down.
Something had to be made clear though.
"Alright, but don't hesitate. Fight to kill." The enemy was too numerous for pussyfooting.
"Of course." Aurélie looked at him as if he'd just stated something blindingly obvious.
Fleur, Dora, Luna and Etal flew back in at that point.
"You scared away the dementors, Harry." Luna said over the rapid French conversation Fleur was having with her family.
"Typical." Dora snorted, which made Harry smirk. "Now what are we going to do? That ward won't last much longer and we're seriously outnumbered."
Harry frowned in thought. Things were much improved now that the dementors weren't causing a panic anymore, but the situation was indeed still dire. There were still the sphinxes to consider, but the lion hybrids were anything but stupid. They wouldn't reveal themselves to an airborne enemy that they could do nothing against.
"We need to thin out their numbers and ground them." He determined.
"Any ideas on how we're gonna do that?"
Harry glanced at the dark clouds brewing above them. "One or two....."
XXXXX
Voldemort had been a bit surprised when his minions ran into a Broom Disruption Field. Nobody used that ward anymore, on account of it being nearly useless. The enchantments on brooms were generally too solid to be messed with passively.
Although he had to admit, as he saw several of them fall into the dark waters below, that it was still good against very poor fliers or those with old and beaten up brooms. The others were only slightly slowed and had a little more trouble maneuvering, but that was all.
As the ward went down, Voldemort silently chided his enemy for making it so big. Harry Potter had tried to protect everything and would now be paying for it.
Seeing the second one go up mere seconds after the first fell made him frown. Perhaps his nemesis was more sensible than he'd thought, although that kind of ward layering was very expensive.
Seeing the dementors flee so quickly elicited another frown. Seeing a handful actually come out and begin attacking his followers made him blink in surprise. That was unusual behavior for dementors. If they were driven off they normally just left the area. How had Potter convinced them to switch allegiance in the middle of a battle?
Time enough to ponder that later, right now he had to do something about the fact that they were attacking his forces.
Voldemort couldn't conjure up a Patronus to save his life. He'd never even tried to learn the spell and simple fear of death wasn't enough to cast it anyway, which was the only emotion he had that was even close to suitable for powering it. Having a fractured soul didn't help either.
But there were other ways of handling dementors.
With a twirl of his wand, the Dark Lord bound the six of them in heavy conjured chains, weighed down by an even heavier anchor. Conjuration wasn't his favored branch of magic by a long shot, but he was still better at it than almost anyone.
The dementors sank into the sea the same as anything weighed down by over half a ton of metal. Their draining aura would eventually free them, but not in time for it to matter.
For the next couple of minutes, Voldemort watched his servants batter down the second ward. He could have shattered it easily himself of course, but he enjoyed the thought of Harry Potter cowering under it as it was slowly overwhelmed.
He smiled when it finally went down. Then he scowled as another, smaller and stronger, went up. This was starting to get irritating.
"Can I go now, Master?" Bellatrix asked like an impatient child.
"Yes, now you can go." Voldemort said magnanimously. "And don't forget to burn everything on the way."
"Thank you, Master!" Bella shouted joyously as she sped forward, her high-end broom and significant skill with it allowing her to overcome the Broom Disruption Field easily. Nearly a hundred others followed behind her.
Had Voldemort been slighly more human, he may have felt the urge to roll his eyes. As it was, he just ordered several other teams to advance.
Above them, the dark clouds began to flash with discharges of lightning.
XXXXX
"That's the last one we can sacrifice without a fight." Dora said grimly when the second ward went down. If the third one fell now, they couldn't raise the fourth without cutting off a lot of people from their escape route.
"I know." Harry replied, but did not move or look at her. His focus was entirely on his spellwork.
Harry had been fascinated by lightning from a very young age, when he had seen the flashes of light in the clouds and the boom of thunder as it shook the house at #4 Privet Drive. That fascination was at least partially fuelled by how his obese cousin bawled fearfully in the arms of his mother and how the even more obese Vernon Dursley rushed about the house, frantically unplugging everything. Seeing his abusers so cowed by a force of nature had appealed greatly to the resentful child he'd been at the time and made him look upon storms fondly ever since, the more violent the better.
When he'd learned about his magic, one of the very first things he wanted to do was find a way to control lightning. That proved to be a lot more difficult than he had imagined, but Harry didn't care. It was lightning, it was worth the effort.
It was an ambition that had taken a bit of a backseat over the years, but it was never forgotten. Even when he grew out of the phase where flashy displays were considered the end all and be all of magic, it still lingered in the back of his mind and he eventually returned to it once his general knowledge of the magical arts became deep enough to attempt it again.
In the proccess, Harry had become something of an expert on the topic of lightning and storms as understood by mundane science.
That knowledge was being put to use now as his spells created conditions more favorable for a lightning storm. An invisible air vortex was created to suck in heat energy and water vapor and funnel them up into the clouds. Further spells were cast up at the clouds to agitate the movement of the tiny water and ice particles within, increasing the speed at which the massive electrical charge required for a lightning strike was generated.
Harry was vaguely aware of what was going on around him while he was doing this, but none of it really registered as important. The Raven Host had assembled, the island's militia was organised, the evacuation was proceeding steadily and outside the wards, Spellhaven was burning.
It was only Luna's sound of distress that brought his focus out of the clouds.
"They're burning the forest!" She said in a horrified tone. "We have to go help Marae, she's hurting!"
That startled him enough to bring him back to the here and now. Indeed, Harry could now feel Marae's pain and hear her crying for help.
"Go, but be careful." He said. "This is almost definitely an attempt to lure us out of the wards. They don't know how strong you are, but don't let them swarm you and don't hold back."
"And what are you doing to do?" Dora asked shrewdly, already rising into the air.
"What else?" He retorted wryly. "Someone has to keep Voldemort busy."
"Harry, you said you wouldn't fight him alone!" She shouted back.
"Etal will be with me and he'll want to talk first anyway. They always want to talk first." Harry knew this because he kind of wanted to talk first too. Maybe it was a failing of powerful wizards everywhere, this ridiculous urge to debate philosophy with one's enemies instead of killing them? At least he could claim that he was doing it to keep Voldemort out of the fight. "Still, I won't turn down help if you finish on your end first."
"Fine, but take your own advice and be careful." The metamorphmagus near-ordered. Then she swooped in pulled him into a kiss. "For luck."
"So cliché." Harry found the time to quip before receiving another two kisses for luck.
"I do not understand how doing that is supposed to increase your luck." Etal complained as soon as they flew upwards.
"It is meant as a final show of affection between lovers who know that they are going into danger and that one of them may soon die, they only say it is for luck to avoid acknowledging the possibility of death." Harry explained.
"Humans are so strange." Etal complained some more.
They had cleared the ward barrier at that point in their upward flight, just in time to see the corkscrewing trail of a Spellshear slamming into it and bringing it down.
Looks like Voldie got impatient. Crap. Harry looked down and quickly assessed the situation.
There were black-robed figures swarming everywhere, throwing fire on everything within reach. Quite a few had already dismounted their brooms, no doubt due to the strong winds generated by the brewing thunderstorm. Many of them were heading towards the column of fleeing people now that the third ward was down, but Harry didn't have time to do anything about it. The Raven Host and the island's militia would have to fend them off on their own despite being significantly outnumbered. Fortunately, he could also see the sphinxes rushing in to flank the Death Eaters, so they wouldn't be alone. The fourth ward would go up as soon as the last of the evacuees were behind the ward line, which should be relatively soon, then it would be just a matter of fighting to run these invaders off.
Harry knew that it was incredibly callous of him to think that even if they were defeated here, he and the girls could easily escape by simply flying away. All the other fighters would die or worse, including Fleur's grandmother and one of her cousins, but they would survive just fine as long as they weren't killed outright.
He put it out of his mind. Voldemort wouldn't be winning this day.
"Come on, we have to hurry now." He said.
"You are the slow one." Etal retorted petulantly and flew circles around him just to prove it.
"Not all of us can be one with the wind." Harry shot back. The quetzalcoatl could fly upwind and not be bothered no matter how strong said upwind was. His reverse engineered flying spell still needed some tweaking before it would be anywhere near as efficient, but he doubted he would ever be as at home in the air as the feathered serpent.
Soon they reached the clouds and Harry plunged in without hesitation while Etal stopped just below. It was freezing cold and the constant booming of thunder was deafeningly loud, but Harry pushed those distractions away.
Magic was a peculiar thing. It always carried the imprint of its caster, which was the reason why enchanted objects sometimes seemed to have a personality and why complex feats of magic worked by more than one caster could mutate strangely.
Harry had noticed this, examined it, studied it and learned to use it deliberately.
He did this now, spreading his magic outwards, weaving it into the storm and giving it a pseudo-sentience. The storm now carried a piece of him within it.
"Creation of my will, listen to the great word; fulfill your purpose and cast your lightning against these invaders!" Harry said firmly, using the words as a vessel for his intent.
Life certainly wasn't lacking in irony. Harry had long ago discarded spell incantations as being unnecessary, only to later discover that there was power in words after all, albeit not in the way that the average wizard thought.
Spell incantations were mostly just a trick to focus the mind on the task at hand and indeed had no power in and of themselves, but there was something more subtle beneath. When a wizard spoke, his intent was brought out of the realm of thought and given presence in the physical world. This happened even when someone with no magic spoke, although their words had no tangible power then. Nobody could lie to Harry since he had realised this. He could hear the falsehood in speech, no matter how good a liar someone was.
This knowledge had come, bizarrely enough, from Harry's study of Parseltongue and his animagus given ability to speak to corvid bird species. He hadn't been content to just use those abilities and leave it at that. No, he wanted to know the how and why of them, so he kept digging and digging until he found the common root.
It wasn't a well defined magical talent like Parseltongue, but it was the gateway and foundation to many similar abilities. He had already learned how to speak to canines, several other bird species and some rodents. One day he hoped to be capable of understanding any human language without needing to actually learn it.
But there was more to it than that. Inanimate objects and natural phenomena could also be spoken to, if you knew how. Wood and stone, wind and water and fire, a wizard could speak to these things. If casting spells was imposing your will on the world, this was asking it for a favor. Far less taxing on the wizard and impossible to dispel precisely because it wasn't a spell.
He was far from having complete mastery of this, but the storm was of his own making and that gave him power over it. It would listen.
And it did. Harry felt the storm regard him for a moment and then turn its attention to those below. He didn't wait for it to begin pelting the Death Eaters with its lightning and plunged downwards again, collecting Etal on the way and making for the powerful presence of Voldemort.
The Dark Lord was placidly hovering in the air, seeming content to observe the battle below without joining in himself. He was alone, which Harry found rather unusual. Had he really sent all of his minions into the attack and left nothing in reserve?
"Harry Potter." Voldemort said in greeting once he came close enough, his soft voice easily carrying over the wind.
"Tom Riddle." Harry returned in the same tone of voice.
Voldemort looked momentarily annoyed at the use of his birth name, but his expression cleared quickly.
"I hope I didn't come at a bad time." He said faux solicitously.
"Not at all, although you really should have called first. We would have prepared a proper welcome for you." Harry replied faux graciously.
The two powerful wizards let the silence between them drag on for a few seconds. The tension between them was so thick that even the rain that had just begun falling seemed to avoid them. Even the near-constant booming of thunder as bolts of lightning arced from the dark clouds above seemed muted, so oppressive was the atmosphere.
Harry noted with some consternation that his enemy had cast a defensive spell over himself that would prevent lightning from striking him, sort of like a very specialised Notice-Me-Not. So much for that vague hope.
"Will you not introduce me to your companion?" Voldemort asked.
Harry raised an eyebrow and then shrugged.
"Voldemort, meet Etalpalli the Quetzalcoatl. Etal, this is the Dark Lord Voldemort, born Tom Marvolo Riddle." He finished the entirely out of place social ritual in Parseltongue.
"A pleasure to meet one such as yourself." Voldemort hissed courteously.
"I know." Etal hissed back aloofly.
"Rather full of himself, isn't he?" Voldemort directed the question to Harry, actually sounding amused.
"I think all the girls cooing over him may have gone to his head." Harry agreed.
Another bolt of lightning interrupted their conversation, as well as Etal's indignant response.
"You seem to be copying me quite a bit, Harry Potter. I could scarce believe it when my servants told me that you were a parselmouth and now I discover that you also copied my flight spell."
"I see magic, I learn magic." Harry shrugged.
"Indeed? But how could you have 'learned' a hereditary ability like Parseltongue?" Voldemort asked.
Harry's smirk was briefly shadowed by a bolt of lightning that struck directly behind him. "It was actually a lot easier than you'd think, but a smart wizard doesn't reveal his secrets."
"Hmm. For someone that has caused me so much trouble, you don't seem terribly eager to fight me, Harry Potter." Voldemort changed the subject. "Are you afraid?"
"Not particularly." Harry shrugged again. "I just can't really summon up much enthusiasm for it. There are so many other things I could be doing right now, yet here I am, having to deal with my home being invaded. Have you ever just sat down to start working on something, only to have your bowels suddenly inform you that you need to go take an urgent shit? That's kind of how I feel about this whole situation."
Voldemort definitely looked annoyed now, unsurprisingly. Another bolt of lightning cut through the sky.
"Why do you even fight me then, when you clearly have no personal stake in it? Stand aside and I will leave you be."
Harry wouldn't have believed that even if he couldn't hear the falsehood in the words themselves.
"You shouldn't make promises you can't keep." He chided. "You're set on taking over the world and the path of conquest is like spinning a burning wheel; you can't stop spinning it or you'll get burned...of course, you'll eventually get burned no matter what. In any case, I have my own plans for the world and you are a variable that I could do without, even if actually getting rid of you is turning out to be a tiresome chore."
"You have plans for the world? Truly?" Voldemort asked skeptically. "You seem more intent on cutting yourself off from it and wasting your time frolicking with your many women on this island of yours."
"It isn't time to enact them yet and frolicking with my women is a pleasant way to pass the years. You should get a few of your own and try it sometime, you might discover that world domination is less appealing after a good fuck."
Voldemort looked annoyed again and opened his mouth to say something, but another bolt of lightning cut him off. Then he got an odd look on his face as he stared at something behind Harry.
Harry, being curious and not particularly concerned that his enemy would take advantage of his inattention to get in a cheap shot, turned around to see what the big deal was.
There was a twisting tower of fire raging in the distance.
"Huh, looks like my girls decided to get serious." He commented idly.
"Then perhaps so should we." Voldemort 'suggested', bringing his wand into a ready position. "Are you ready to die, Harry Potter?"
"I alone will decide when my heart and my voice go silent." Harry replied resolutely, his expression becoming focused as he devoted all of his being to the coming battle. "And it isn't going to be today."
"We shall see." The Dark Lord hissed back.
By unspoken agreement, they both took the next lightning strike as the signal to begin.
XXXXX
Earlier....
After separating from Harry, Tonks, Fleur and Luna flew at speed towards the place where scores of Death Eaters were throwing fire on everything.
"There are a lot of them." Fleur commented unnecessarily.
"Enough that we can't let them join the main fight." Tonks added grimly. The defenders were already outnumbered and didn't need this bunch attacking their flank on top of it.
"Will the three of us even be able to stop them?" The veela wondered. Powerful they might be, but a straight up fight against what looked like about a hundred Death Eaters was a bit much.
"We have to." Luna said plainly. She didn't want to lose any more people that she cared about. They were already hurting Marae and would kill her if this kept up, then they'd move on to everyone else.
The wind started picking up rapidly and bolts of lightning began to crack the sky.
"Looks like Harry's finished with the storm." Tonks said with a hint of satisfaction. "That should give them something to worry about."
And it did. The stiff wind combined with the Broom Disruption Field had already been making flying difficult and seeing one of their own get hit with a bolt of lightning was enough for them to decide that solid ground sounded good.
"Now's our chance." Tonks grunted, putting on some more speed. "Fly circles around them and cast area-of-effect spells on their periphery, try to corral them together."
"You two go ahead, I need to put out the fire in the forest." Luna said and flew off.
"Luna!" Tonks shouted after the little blonde and huffed when she was ignored. "She'd better not die on us."
"We had best keep our guests busy then." Fleur said, gripping her wand tightly. All three of them were capable of quite a bit of wandless magic by now, but were still too slow with it to be considered combat viable.
Tonks nodded her agreement and they went on the attack. With the Death Eaters forced to the ground by the wind and the rain and the lightning they now held a distinct aerial advantage and were able to perform strafing assaults without any need to watch anything but the ground. Still, there were so many enemies on the ground that it was a risky proposition nonetheless.
"THIEVES! DEFILERS! HOW DARE YOU STEAL FROM THE DARK LORD?!" A shrieking female voice sounded from below, obviously magically enhanced.
Neither Tonks nor Fleur replied, being too busy trying to force the Death Eaters to bunch up into a group, without much success it had to be said. There were only two of them after all and the Death Eaters' lack of discipline often had them running about like headless chickens.
"TO ME, YOU FOOLS! TO ME! WE WILL NOT FAIL OUR MASTER!" The same female voice screeched again.
In an instant, all the Death Eaters began converging on the shouting woman.
"NOW TAKE THEM OUT OF THE SKY!"
The return fire was far more organised and dangerous this time, forcing Tonks and Fleur to put up defensive spells and land somewhere out of sight. Still, they'd gotten what they wanted, which was to bunch up the Death Eaters.
"Was that your aunt screaming earlier." Fleur asked curiously, knowing of only one notable female Death Eater.
"Sounds just about crazy enough to be Bellatrix alright." Tonks said wryly.
Luna landed next to them, having finished with her self-appointed mission to put out the fires threatening the forest.
"What did we steal from Voldemort though?" She asked in confusion.
"I think she's talking about the flight spell."
"But that's not stealing, that's copying." Luna protested.
"They're almost here." Fleur interrupted, peering at the approaching enemies from the roof of the building they were on. "Are we sticking with the original plan or should we tone it down to make sure Bellatrix survives?"
Tonks pursed her lips, hair briefly shifting to an intense purple as she considered the options they had. Bellatrix was almost guaranteed to have critical information about another of Voldemort's horcruxes, but....
"We can't, there's too many." She said, shaking her head. "We'll just have to, and I can't believe I'm saying this, hope that she survives."
Fleur snorted in amusement, but sobered up quickly. "Let's do this then."
Tonks nodded and began circling her wand above her head in wide, ponderous motions. The wind began coalescing into a distinct tornado shape behind the Death Eaters.
Said Death Eaters halted their advance, unsure of what was going on. The miniature tornado wasn't strong enough to really do any damage after all, so what was the point?
They got their answer when Fleur did her part, channeling a stream of flame into the swirling wind construct and turning it into a twisting tower of fire.
"SCATTER!" The presumed Bellatrix shrieked as the contained firestorm bore down on the group.
They obeyed instantly, but the two witches had chosen their location well. There were only so many places for them to go and they directed the firestorm to cut off the most likely escape route, torching nearly two dozen of the Death Eaters.
There was some return fire of course, but that was what Luna was there for. The joint spell consumed all of Tonks' and Fleur's attention, so they needed someone to keep them safe. Her combination of magical shielding and floating debris blocked the sporadic counter attacks aimed at them.
It was only when Bellatrix herself started aiming blasting curses at the building they were perched on that they had to abandon their position and alighting on the next building over. The conjured firestorm lost cohesion almost immediately as a result and sputtered out in an incongruously anti-climactic manner.
"The Dark Lord has bid me to kill you, Niece!" Bellatrix sounded off again, this time not shouting but cackling gleefully. "You and the other two sluts."
"What a shrill woman." Fleur muttered irritably.
Tonks decided to reply this time, putting a quick Sonorous on her voice. "Old Snakeface must be getting pretty desperate if he's sending a nameless nobody like you after us." She said, deliberately poking at the fact that Bellatrix had been cast out of the Black family.
"KILL THEM, KILL THEM ALL!" Bellatrix howled furiously.
"Too easy." Tonks muttered.
Once again, the Death Eaters instantly obeyed, hurling spells at the trio of witches. Oddly enough, most of the spells were fairly low level and not exactly something that could be classed as 'dark magic'.
The next fifteen or so minutes were a running battle. Tonks, Fleur and Luna had extreme mobility, power, teamwork and the best armor known to magic on their side while Bellatrix still had a significant numbers advantage despite the losses her side had taken so far.
It was a slow grind where Luna would stay on the defense, Fleur on the offense and Tonks would alternate as needed. In this manner, they whittled down Bellatrix's forces while slowly retreating, much to the detriment of Spellhaven's architecture.
They did find the Death Eaters' fanatical assault a bit strange, as the losses they were taking should have broken the morale of any human force, but they didn't think on it too much given that Bellatrix was a known fanatic.
Similarly, they found the Death Eater's choice of spells a bit odd, as curiously few of them used anything particularly vicious. There was no real time to think on that either though, given that these people were trying to kill them.
As the Death Eater numbers dwindled, Tonks, Fleur and Luna were able to abandon their hit-and-run tactics and engage more directly, which caused the enemy numbers to dwindle even more rapidly. Before long, only Bellatrix and a handful of others were left.
"Looks like you won't be killing anyone today." Tonks mocked when it became abundantly clear who was winning this fight.
"DIE!" Bellatrix screamed shrilly, hurling deadly spells at her niece.
She was too far gone to really take note of the fact that she had barely any support left, and what she did have was being mopped up by Fleur and Luna. Taunts had been exchanged over the course of the battle and now she was completely lost to reason. Added to her fanatical loyalty to Voldemort it meant that retreat wouldn't have entered her mind even if she had a way of achieving it. She'd rather die and take at least one of them with her than return in failure.
Tonks easily either blocked or avoided the spells. So easily that even she was surprised, in fact. Had they really become so powerful already that even Bellatrix was not much of a challenge? She was still dangerous of course, but Tonks was not finding herself particularly hard pressed fighting her.
"Were you always this weak?" She taunted.
Bellatrix was close to screaming in frustration at being treated with such casual condescension by a witch more than twenty years her junior, even if a large portion of those years had been wasted in Azkaban.
Bellatrix was so used to being feared that she'd developed an unrealistically high opinion of her own skills and was now being smacked in the face by reality.
True, she was fast and had good reflexes, her disposition was excellent for the Dark Arts and her killing intent always simmered so close to the surface that she could belt out Killing Curses faster than most people could throw stunners. She was counted as one of Voldemort's most dangerous minions with good reason.
But for all of that, she wasn't as powerful as her reputation would suggest. Her true strength had always been in her speed and viciousness, rather than in raw power or repertoire of spells. Magic required understanding, knowledge and will. Bellatrix could only really claim to have the last of those in any significant amount and even that manifested as a fanatical devotion to another rather than as personal strength.
Voldemort had made a dangerous assumption when he'd sent her to kill Harry's women. It couldn't even be called an assumption, as he'd simply taken it for granted that his nemesis would not help them become powerful in their own right, which was what he would have done in the same situation. After all, what kind of madman gave power freely to those best positioned to betray him? Stringing people along with tempting little morsels he could understand, but the thought of freely sharing powerful knowledge was sheer lunacy to him. Even Dumbledore had never trusted anyone enough to raise them up like that and it seemed only logical to Voldemort that if the old man had been that sensible, then surely Harry Potter would guard his knowledge of magic even more jealously.
Incapable of forming emotional attachments, Voldemort did not and could not understand why anyone would act in such a way that was entirely to the benefit of another rather than themselves.
So he had been sure that Bellatrix and those with her would easily be a match for Tonks, Fleur and Luna. He had even considered it overkill, but had assigned her so much backup just in case they had some of their own.
But she wasn't a match for any of them, much less all three. The power disparity was simply too great and much of her reputation came from her cruelty rather than her skill. Added to that, while her sadistic disposition might have been great for throwing out spells filled with malice, it also made her aggressive and reckless and ill-suited for fightning against someone that could force her on the defensive.
"Is that all, Aunt?" Tonks sneered after throwing the half-mad witch into a wall.
The metamorphmagus was not normally inclined to this kind verbal 'kicking them while they're down', but the battle had left her feeling more than a bit drunk on her own power.
"I really did expect more from her after all that talk." Fleur added faux sorrowfully, but her eyes were black and gleaming with the same kind of interest that a cat might have for a cornered mouse. She was in much the same boat as Tonks, if not worse. Her own veela nature was even more given to passion of all kinds, including battle lust, than a regular human.
Luna merely nibbled on her bottom lip, much less aggressive than the other two because she'd been playing defense the entire time, but it had also left her jumpy and constantly expecting another threat to manifest.
No amount of intellectual preparation could ever really prepare a person for their first pitched battle. War might be objectively horrible, but it was easy to forget that with the blood rushing in your ears, your heart thundering in your chest and your perception distorted into hyper focus. Worse still was the sense of invincibility and sheer righteousness that came along with it when you were winning against an enemy that wasn't even morally ambiguous, but outright evil. All three of them were still running on a battle high.
Bellatrix painfully picked herself off the ground, then she started cackling again. Hitting the wall had knocked her out of the unthinking rage she'd been in and now she could plan again. Escape was unlikely and direct attack had already proven fruitless, but she might yet get a partial success out of her mission. She could do this one last thing for the Dark Lord.
"She really is crazy." Fleur shook her head in disgust as the woman continued to cackle.
"Little girls, so blind." Bellatrix giggled in an unhinged manner. "You think you've won something here?"
"All your fellow Death Munchers are either dead or out for the count and you're about to be taken prisoner, I'd say that counts as a win." Tonks retorted.
"Fellow Death Eaters? These?" Bellatrix giggled again. "These weren't Death Eaters, just fodder brought here under the Imperius, and you've killed all of these poor, innocent people."
Tonks felt like someone had hit her in the gut with a hammer. It didn't for a moment occur to her that Bellatrix might have been lying, because the odd lack of impact their losses had on morale, the strangely low amount of dark curses and even the instant obedience finally made sense. No wonder they'd been able to carve through them like they were nothing, it had just been ordinary people in Death Eater regalia.
And it was perfectly plausible too. The average person simply did not have the strength of will to resist the effects of the Imperius. All it would take was sending out loyal Death Eaters and have each of them put a few people under it and you've instantly quadrupled your force. Most people would have trouble holding that many under the curse for an extended length of time, but if it only had to last for a day or so.....
Fleur and Luna were similarly shocked and all three dropped their guard as the gravity of what they'd done sank in.
Bellatrix seized the opportunity without hesitation.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" She roared, putting all of her hatred into the curse.
Tonks had just enough time to realise her aunt's game before the Killing Curse struck her dead center and sent her flying backwards.
"NO!" Both Fleur and Luna yelled, blasting Bellatrix back into the wall with enough raw magic to crack it, along with her skeleton.
Paying the now unconscious and severely injured Death Eater no more mind, they ran towards their fallen lover.
"Nymmie?" Fleur asked hesitantly, cupping the metamorphmagus' face.
Tonks coughed and cracked open her eyes.
"Nymphadora!" Luna squealed and hugged her.
"Ow."
"Are you hurt?" Fleur asked worriedly, backing off a bit.
"Just my pride, I could swear I heard Moody screaming 'CONSTANT VIGILANCE' in my head when I got hit." Tonks groaned and sat up, taking a look at her chest, which now sported a distinct circular discoloration. "Basilisk hide saved my arse, but that was fucking scary! I think I actually pissed myself a little."
Despite her words, she was a little bit hurt. The Killing Curse didn't normally have any kinetic energy to it, but hitting basilisk hide had caused some kind of reaction that generated it and her ribs weren't happy about it. Not to mention that she'd smacked her head when she hit the ground.
Both Fleur and Luna laughed, more in relief than in actual humor.
The levity abandoned them quickly as they caught sight of the battlefield and the many bodies scattered across it. Bodies of people that had been brought here against their will by the Imperius Curse if Bellatrix was to be believed.
And no matter how much they would have liked to, they couldn't bring themselves to disbelieve it. Sure, it had been kill or be killed, but these deaths would have sat a lot easier on the conscience if they were actual Death Eaters.
"We should go help Harry." Luna said calmly, choosing to not think about it for now.
The other two were glad for the new direction and quickly agreed, stopping only long enough to tie up Bellatrix and have Kreacher collect her before they flew off.
XXXXX
While his girls were discovering just how strong they'd become over the past few years, Harry was having the opposite experience.
Ever since coming to Hogwarts, he'd been ahead of the curve. Born into a privileged social class, the public giving him credit for his mother's final act, already having years of magical experimentation under his belt before his formal education started, possessing an innate talent for magic, performing rituals that should have by all rights killed him or worse but instead surviving due to a set of truly ridiculous extenuating circumstances and coming out of it with incredible benefits....
Harry had enjoyed almost every conceivable advantage from the start and had not been at all shy about using them. It had been mostly smooth sailing for him, with only a few incidents where he found himself in over his head.
Until now, because Voldemort was strong. And old and experienced.
Oh, Harry was quite sure that he was already better than him at actually being a wizard despite the age disparity, but the current contest was about who was the better killer and he was coming up short.
Granted, they'd only exchanged probing attacks so far, but it was already setting the tone of the fight.
"You are slow, Harry Potter." Voldemort noted with a distinct gloating tone as he landed on the roof of a building.
That wasn't true. Harry wasn't slow by any means, but his rejection of a wand did mean that it took him a few extra moments to gather his power for each spell. Against lesser foes it wouldn't have mattered, but against Voldemort it was a serious disadvantage.
Harry landed on another building on the other side of the street and retorted snippily. "I prefer to do things properly rather than quickly these days. I've had some....mishaps with unintended consequences in the past when I rushed things."
Voldemort's red eyes flickered towards his right hand, the one that had been burned when his spell backfired on him.
"You seem to have had quite the exciting life already, for one so young." He commented.
Harry had to smile in a twisted sort of amusement at this ridiculous conversation. "Yes, well....the alternative was to end up as one of the sheep and that would be a fate worse than death."
"There is nothing worse than death." Voldemort argued, sounding as if he truly believed that.
Harry's smile acquired a mocking edge. "Really? What about passive submission to meaningless rules? Would you have been content to live out your life as 'Tom Riddle, Senior Clerk for the Improper Use of Magic Office' or something similar like a good little slave?"
Voldemort's eyes narrowed in response. "The greatness of Lord Voldemort could never be constrained to such mediocrity."
"Then you admit that you'd rather die than be mediocre?"
"I will never die." The older wizard hissed, clearly unwilling to concede that he couldn't have lived that way.
"Even the stars must die." Harry said, looking upwards with another smile. He couldn't see the stars behind the clouds, but he could always feel them. Them, and the infinite darkness between them. "There is no path beyond the scope of Light, beyond the reach of Dark. Is there even any purpose to your actions, Tom Riddle, or are you just an empty shell of flesh and blood, a simmering cauldron of fear and hatred, shackled by falsehood and yearning for something you don't understand?"
Voldemort predictably didn't like that and responded by slashing his wand with an hiss, sending a scything ribbon of malice lashing towards him.
It missed as Harry took to the air, causing the roof he'd been standing on to crumble. He paid no attention to that though, focused instead on releasing the spell he'd formed during their conversation. A blue-purple flame that burned with a wrongness that hurt the eyes to look at roared towards Voldemort, who also took to the air to dodge it.
The Indigo Flame of Change hit the building and burst apart, crawling over the roof ravenously and leaving behind a mass of scaly purple flesh instead of tile.
A great eye opened and blinked up at Voldemort, its lid lined with twisted fangs. Then tentacles shot upwards from around it, one of them managing to snatch the Dark Lord's ankle.
To Voldemort's credit, he reacted with inhuman reflexes in spite of his surprise and quickly cut off the tentacle before it could yank him down. Just in time too. Any later and he wouldn't have been able to deflect Harry's follow-up spell, a whip of more conventional fire.
Harry was already on the move when the counter-attack came, far faster than he could hope to cast. He managed to release a volley of Magic Missiles before having to focus on defending himself from the deluge of flesh-rotting, blood-boiling, organ-rupturing and other nasty curses.
Voldemort was stupidly fast with his wand, throwing out an almost unbroken chain of spells that kept his enemies on the defensive. Harry simply wasn't fast enough to really turn the tables, nor was he so powerful that he could simply overwhelm him. Even the previously cast Magic Missiles didn't keep the Dark Lord's attention for more than an instant.
Fortunately, Harry wasn't fighting alone. Etal had laid low and kept out of sight for now, but he saw the perfect moment to strike while Voldemort was busy hurling a torrent of spells at Harry. The quetzalcoatl knew better than to try coiling around the powerful wizard, but he could certainly break his focus.
With that in mind, he whizzed through the air just behind Voldemort's head, causing the man to flinch and as he sensed the threat pass him by.
Harry took the opportunity to go back on the offensive, freezing the rain around him into sharp icicles and propelling them at Voldemort.
To no avail, unfortunately. Voldemort reacted easily fast enough to defend himself.
The battle once more fell into a lull as the two powerful wizards reassessed each other. It was clear to both of them that the fight was going to be long and drawn out if things continued in this vein.
Both were equally mobile. Harry's senses were more attuned and gave him an almost precognitive idea of his opponent's next action, but Voldemort was no slouch in that department either. Both had too much skill in the Mind Arts to gain any advantage there. Voldemort was faster at casting spells, but Harry had his armor and Etal to help him out.
Still, Harry conceded that he probably couldn't win this one. Sooner or later, Voldemort would manage to score a hit on the speedy quetzalcoatl and then he would have a firm advantage. It was almost enough to make him regret disdaining a wand, almost.
All in all, it was a good thing that he didn't have to win, merely stall until backup arrived. Truthfully, Harry would like nothing better than to fly across the distance and grab Voldemort by the neck, depriving both of them of the ability to cast spells. Unfortunately, that would include flight and would probably earn him a deadly spell to the face before he got even halfway there anyway.
"I've been wondering if you'd mind answering a little curiousity of mine." Harry inquired politely, as if they hadn't just been trying to horribly kill each other.
"It would depend on what has you curious." Voldemort replied reasonably.
"Let's say you succeed at everything. Kill me, kill Dumbledore, kill everyone that opposes you and take over the world." Harry began. "What are you going to do after that?"
"I will rule of course." Voldemort said as if it was obvious.
"Yeah, but have you considered what that actually means in practice? Sure, I expect there's going to be plenty of bowing and scraping, but surely even an egomaniac like you has to get bored of that eventually."
Voldemort scowled at him. "Harry Potter, you are beginning to try my patience."
"Well, prophecy aside, I wouldn't be your enemy if we got along, now would I?" Harry asked sardonically.
"You know the prophecy?" Voldemort jumped on the information.
"Of course I do, Dumbledore told it to me at the end of my first year in Hogwarts. Troublesome thing."
"What does it say?" The Dark Lord asked.
"Not telling." Harry said in his most petulant tone of voice, getting a scowl out of the other wizard. "Anyway, back to the topic at hand. You've conquered the world, everyone is either your loyal follower, dead or a slave too beaten down to resist. What does Lord Voldemort, God-Emperor of Earth, do now that he and he alone is in control of mankind's destiny?"
"God-Emperor of Earth…..I like it." Voldemort said, pleased.
"I thought you might." Harry drolled. "So, what would you do? You've broken humanity's will, there's no governments left to overthrow or even a resistance to fight."
He glossed over the inconvenient fact that the mundanes would sooner glass the entire planet with nuclear fire than let that happen. Voldemort wouldn't listen anyway.
The silence stretched on uncomfortably.
"You have no idea, do you?" Harry finally said, his words a flat statement more than a question.
"My plans are no concern of yours, seeing as you will be dead by then." Voldemort snapped.
"Uh huh." Harry replied skeptically. He knew a deflection when he heard one.
"And what about you?" Voldemort counter-attacked. "You say you have plans for the world. What are they? Expose us to the muggles? Breed with them? Become their servants?"
"Do I really come off as that kind of guy to you?" Harry asked incredulously before shaking his head. "Just because I'm your enemy doesn't mean that my views are diametrically opposed to yours."
"You agree with me then that the muggles are inferior to us?"
Harry nodded easily. "I do. It's obvious enough when you think about it. We have everything that they do and magic on top of it. That being said, this objective superiority only applies on an individual basis and even then only in a general sense. Magicals have more potential, but that often just makes them all the more contemptible for wasting it. As a society, mundanes have achieved more than us, at least in the developed parts of the world. I have no desire to subjugate or destroy them and disrupt the flow of knowledge they are uncovering."
"Muggle knowledge." Voldemort sneered. "What good is that?"
"Knowledge is knowledge." Harry riposted.
"So…what, your 'plan' is to simply let things go on as they are?" Voldemort scoffed.
"For the most part." Harry agreed. "As for what I would change…..well, I'm afraid I can't talk about that just yet. A lot of people would be quite upset with my plans and I'd rather not blab them out until it was too late to do anything about them."
"I've always hated optimists." Voldemort said, his body language regaining its previous hostility.
"What a coincidence, so have I."
And the battle was resumed, the two powerful wizards once more resorting to lethal spells as a means of conflict resolution.
Harry stayed largely on the defensive, only letting loose the occasional bit of offensive magic when Etal gave him an opening. He knew that the girls should be arriving soon and it wouldn't do him any good to take unnecessary risks.
The battle raged from building to building and across the sky, leaving ruin in its wake everywhere. Direct spells gave way to wide area ones, delayed effect ones, traps, unblockables, obscure or self-invented ones.
Harry quickly discovered that he just wasn't ready for this level of magical combat. He could sit on the defensive, but not attack and that was a surefire way to getting beaten down eventually. Although he could see that the blistering pace was draining on Voldemort as well.
In a distant corner of his mind that wasn't fully devoted to survival, he noted that he needed to do something to ameliorate the speed disadvantage of disdaining a wand.
And then another trio of spells shot towards Voldemort and forced him to backpedal in a hurry.
"Bonjour, gentlemen." Came Fleur's silky tones.
"Is this a boys only event, or can us girls throw in too?" Dora added.
"Hello, Harry!" Luna beamed, sounding entirely too cheerful for the situation.
"Girls." Harry greeted, amused by their entrance and grateful to see them unhurt...although that circular mark on Dora's chest looked like the result of a powerful curse. "Finished with your end?"
"Yep, we even bagged my crazy aunt." Dora nodded.
Harry grinned. "Excellent."
"So, Bellatrix has failed me." Voldemort hissed coldly.
"Now that's not fair." Harry chided. "It's not Bella's fault that she's trash compared to my girls."
Voldemort glowered.
The battle exploded again practically without warning as the Dark Lord tried to get in a cheap shot. To no avail, as none of them had let their guard down.
With it now being four on one, plus Etal, it was Voldemort who found himself on the defensive. Being bombarded with spells from so many sides was too much even for him, no matter how strong and fast he was.
"This isn't over, Harry Potter." He hissed when he managed to get a little breathing room and rocketed into the distance.
"Thank you so much for that keen observation, Captain Obvious." Harry snarked at the retreating Dark Lord's back.
"Harry, we've got something we need to tell you." Dora said with a grim sobriety that set off alarm bells in his head.
Harry looked at the three girls and noticed that they all had a distinctly guilty mien about them.
"What is it?" He asked apprehensively. What the hell had Voldemort pulled that he hadn't noticed?
XXXXX
Later.
Harry watched as the bodies of the dead were dragged off and the wounded recovered.
Spellhaven was severely damaged and there were bodies lying in the mud all over the place, ranging from silver-haired veela to tawny sphinxes. The vast majority of the bodies were dressed in Death Eater garb however.
Fleur was off talking to her grandmother, who he noticed now had her arm in a sling. Dora and Luna were sorting out the prisoners, trying to separate Imperius victims from actual Death Eaters.
He didn't have to hear what they were saying to notice the defeated set of their shoulders. The real Death Eaters had mostly bugged out when the battle started going against them, using their Imperiused fodder to cover their retreat.
A Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one.
"You cheeky motherfucker." Harry swore to himself. This was going to put such a stain on their reputation that it was unlikely to wash off anytime soon. He could already imagine the politicians gleefully rubbing their palms together, plotting all the ways they could feign outrage and milk this shitstorm for all it was worth.