Blanketing most of Paris, the softly pattering drizzle seemed to have pressed pause on the city.
Whatever the Muggles had been doing before, they now all stood rooted to the spot, eyes dazed, staring up at the sky.
Over the Seine, the Fiendfyre that had bleached the sky white had, in a single instant, boiled away every last drop of water in that stretch of the river! The riverbed lay bare and cracked, scattered with bicycles and slick black stones, hissing and steaming under a wall of heat.
The steel of the Muggles' iron tower could not possibly withstand the heat of Fiendfyre either. In the blink of an eye, nearly ten thousand tons of iron melted into liquid iron under the blaze, and then vaporized, rising in a glittering, shimmering cloud!
Yet although the steel had melted, the outline of the flame giant had not collapsed.
Born with a frenzied will to destroy everything, the Fiendfyre instinctively held that colossal shape together. It was a thing without bones, a body made only of hunger.
ROAR!
The flames rippling across the Fiendfyre giant's body curled back on themselves, and one by one, fierce magical creatures with hideous faces began to take form within them: dragons with huge jaws, basilisks with coiling, burning lengths, nundu with eyes like molten coins, and the like.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The thousand-foot giant threw back its head and loosed a roar that could rip the air apart. Then it advanced toward the riverbank one step at a time, leaving behind it, in the riverbed, a line of enormous, horrifying footprints of fire.
Each footfall made the windows of Paris tremble in their frames, and the bridges shivered like harp strings.
"Stop it! We have to stop it!"
"At any cost! At any cost, do you hear me?!"
On the riverbank, Vipor and Alastor, the two commanders who had hastily pulled the surviving ranks back into order, roared with their eyes wide to bursting, their faces red and glistening in the glare.
But next to the roar of the Fiendfyre giant, their shouts were pitifully faint, no more than the squeaking of mice at the feet of an avalanche.
The wizards had gone wild!
Hundreds, even thousands of curses swept toward the giant like the barrage from a Muggle machine gun. Stunners, Severing Charms, Piercing Hexes, even Unforgivables flew in blind, desperate, glittering arcs.
But most of the spell-light scattered at a single roar from the demon that had descended upon the world, and the few spells that did strike not only had no effect at all but only fed the giant's mountain-tall body!
Even a battle-hardened wizard like Vipor had given way to despair…
And Alastor, standing in the road that ran alongside the river, was gasping violently, the magical eye in his socket stuck fast and utterly still.
Thud!
"We can't beat this monster…"
A wizard slumped to the ground beside them, his wand rolling from his fingers, laughing bitterly as he stared up at the Fiendfyre demon that would trample them flat in just two more steps.
Paris, this city of enduring history, seemed fated to be reduced to ash tonight!
Only Bryan Watson!
Only Albus Dumbledore!
Only great wizards of a kind seen once in many centuries could keep Fiendfyre of this magnitude from wreaking further havoc!
But neither of them was in Paris now, and by the time they arrived, Paris would already have been burned to the ground.
Surging waves of heat rolled in, one after another, warping the very air until the buildings across the river seemed to swim.
On this side of the river, the glass of the Muggle buildings had long since shattered during the earlier fight between the wizards and the iron giant, and now the heat of Fiendfyre baked the brightly coloured shopfronts and awnings until they faded, charred, and cracked.
The wizards holding the road had to keep falling back, stumbling over glass and fallen signs. A small few, stubborn souls like Vipor and Alastor, were still trying to strike back, but it was no use!
One Fiendfyre dragon was the first to tear free of the giant. Spreading wings twenty feet across, it hurtled roaring toward the wizards making their last stand on the road, trailing sparks like a comet's tail.
It was over.
Vipor, his hair and beard scorched into curls, lowered his wand too, and the light in his eyes began dimming.
Probably not even Bryan had expected that these prisoners of Erkstag would go this mad.
True, tonight they had wiped out the whole gang of prisoners, yet they had failed all the same.
And just a moment before the Fiendfyre dragon could strike up its symphony of slaughter, dazzling green light suddenly surged up from the roof of a Muggle building behind the wizards.
That dazzling green glow lit up a patch of the night sky; then, trailing a gorgeous tail of flame like a meteor, it crashed thunderously into the dragon!
BOOM!
After an explosion powerful enough to make the very void tremble, the Fiendfyre dragon and the meteor were annihilated together in the void!
The wizards all looked on in astonishment, and turned to look back.
There, on top of the parapet at the edge of the rooftop, stood a figure with skirts flying in the fire-wind, raising high a wand that scattered points of bright green light like a handful of emeralds thrown into the dark!
"Do not despair!"
After the aged voice rang out, a string of firecracker-like cracks sounded above the wizards' heads, and a band of wizards dropped from the sky, landing heavily on the broken road.
"Minister Bones!"
Alastor stared in astonishment at the witch a few paces away, her expression cold and solemn. Then his magical eye quivered back to life, and his face grew ever more moved. "You shouldn't have come here… Amelia, what are you thinking? If all of you die here tonight, the wizarding world is finished!"
"And if we cannot stop this Fiendfyre giant, then the wizarding world will truly be finished—"
President Quahog of the Magical Congress of the United States said with a bitter smile.
"Haah… haah…"
The sight of the towering, hideous Fiendfyre giant left Barnah, who had landed at the very front of them all, breathing in deep, heaving gasps. In just a few short breaths, the heat had drenched him in sweat and singed his hair and beard.
In a daze, it felt as though time had flowed back half a century, to that night in Paris when the most feared dark wizard in history had unleashed a blaze at Père Lachaise Cemetery powerful enough to destroy the entire city!
"Goblins! Wizards!"
Barnah, his frail body swaying in the roaring fire-wind, turned his face and shouted at the top of his voice.
"Listen to me, all of you! You are Paris's last line of defence! There is no one behind you but the city! Surround the giant! Everyone, wands into the ground!"
The monstrous beasts that had split off from the Fiendfyre giant scattered in every direction, pouncing on anything that could burn, and the road behind them lit up in a dozen new places at once.
There was no time left for the wizards to hesitate. Their fighting spirit was rekindled; the wizards and goblins moved at his words, one after another vanishing on the spot, and reappearing in a vast ring around the giant, each one planting a wand or a dagger or a bare fist in the cracked earth.
"Now, pour out everything you have!!!"
Barnah roared it, till his old voice cracked.
"Finite Incantatem!!!"
The defiant roars of wizards and goblins rang out across Paris!
RUMBLE!
The earth, trembling violently in response, split into fissure after fissure, and endless golden light poured out of them, becoming beneath the night sky an unbreakable barrier that in an instant penned in the thousand-foot Fiendfyre giant!
Fiendfyre and barrier collided with an ear-splitting roar.
Yet even that roar could not drown out, in this age when magic kept fading, the unwilling, unyielding roars of those wizards who, wave upon wave, spared nothing of themselves, only so that magical civilization might shine with a still more dazzling light!
It was over…
This night in Paris, destined to be written into the history books, was at last coming to an end.
Those who lived would be regarded by the world as heroes. And the fallen would be immortal, their names shining in the annals of magical civilization, undimmed for a thousand years!
Only, the wizards that night had forgotten that a house-elf had given his life for their victory.
'Kreacher…'
Sirius withdrew his gaze from the burning city and looked numbly at Kreacher in his arms, the body already cold.
Cliodna had set them down on a flat rooftop above the shattered street, and the golden light of the barrier washed over the tiny, still face and turned the white down on it to gilt.
For most of his life, he had loathed Kreacher.
Because Kreacher always carried a stifling, reeking stench: the rot of the Black family.
It was only after he came back from Azkaban, when he and Kreacher together had wrested Regulus's body back, that things between them had eased a little.
But—
Why did his heart ache?
Sirius thought it dully.
Perhaps it was because now, the only one left who had witnessed the pain of his first half of life, spent desperately trying to break free of the Black family and never managing it, was Kreacher?
'Mistress says Master Sirius is the pride of the Black family, too.'
Was that true?
The corner of Sirius's mouth twitched, and his heart was filled with a sense of absurdity.
That hopeless mother of his, from the screaming portrait with its endless tirades about blood traitors and filth, would she really have said such a thing?
It must have been, after all, a hallucination of Kreacher's just before he died, mustn't it?
Pride of the Black family. He nearly laughed. He did not trust himself to.
"Was the task Voldemort gave you to kill me?"
Clutching Kreacher's body tighter, Sirius turned and looked at Cliodna with a complicated expression. His voice was raw and flat, scraped hollow by smoke and grief.
In the eyes of the world she was Voldemort's right hand, a dark witch whose relationship with Bryan was murky and hard to define—Cliodna.
She had saved his life before… and counting tonight, that made twice.
"I'm sorry. I did not expect him to suddenly make a move—"
Cliodna looked at Kreacher in Sirius's arms, and her tone was tinged with sorrow.
"Answer my question. Was the task Voldemort gave you to kill me?"
Sirius asked it again. He knew he was no match for Cliodna, and tonight he did not much care, and he was not afraid.
The Allied forces were right below; even Cliodna could not stand against them together.
"Voldemort gave me only one task—"
Cliodna pressed her lips together.
"Until it is all over, keep you from appearing at the British Ministry of Magic."
Until it was all over… the Ministry of Magic?
Sirius blinked in bewilderment.
Suddenly, Sirius's face contorted.
Gathering up Kreacher's body in both arms, he cried:
"Harry!"
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