"You! How dare you strike at my Lord!?" Bellatrix shrieked, whipping her wand in Oleandra's direction. "Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!"
Oleandra narrowly avoided the first two curses as they flashed past in quick succession, only to realise that her opponent had anticipated the dodge; Bellatrix had been driving her straight towards the third. Suit the Lethifold took the reins at once, sending Oleandra shooting up to the ceiling to evade the final shot.
The other Death Eaters stood stunned, unable to process what they had just witnessed. It was well known that during the First Wizarding War, when they had last believed the Dark Lord dead, the loss of their leader had drained their ranks of all momentum, allowing Dumbledore's forces to bring a swift end to the Wizarding World's secret civil war.
If only they had believed him then, when the Dark Lord had boasted of his immortality… perhaps they might have salvaged the situation if they had all gone out to search for him, but owing to the Dark Lord's paranoid nature and his misplaced sense of invincibility, they might as well have gone picking daisies for all the good it would have done them. In hindsight, concealing the means by which he might be revived from his followers had not been the greatest of ideas.
"What are you doing, standing there gaping?" Bellatrix screeched. "You've all seen it with your own eyes, haven't you? The Dark Lord is eternal! Pick up your wands and kill our master's enemies, you useless mongrels!"
The madwoman's piercing voice at last shook her fellow Death Eaters out of their trance, ironically rousing first those who had been least loyal to him. Those who had managed to eke out a living during the interwar years, by claiming to have committed their crimes under the Imperius Curse, had since been punished to the Dark Lord's satisfaction for their lack of faith, and they had no intention of repeating the same mistake they had made the first time around.
"Gungnir, to me!" Oleandra called.
With a low, magnetic hum, the golden spear wrenched itself free from the Death Eater's shoulder where it had embedded itself after piercing through Voldemort's heart, and it returned to Oleandra's hand.
"Teiwaz, Raidhu, Elhaz!" Oleandra chanted. "The Ever-Victorious Spear, the Shield, the Rider! Spin as the Chariot's wheel, O Sure-Striking Spear, and protect me!"
Oleandra gave Gungnir a sharp spin, and the spear whirled so fast the shaft blurred into a golden disk. Rotating rapidly, the spear hovered in midair before her as it deflected the incoming hailstorm of magical bolts hurtling towards her, sending them ricocheting wildly back down the corridor towards their senders at random.
"No more Killing Curses!" Lucius Malfoy bellowed. "She's sending them all back towards us!"
"Cowards, the lot of you!" Bellatrix screamed. "Avada Kedavra!"
The Book of the Stars, floating just above Oleandra's left palm, snapped open, its pages riffling by themselves until they settled on a page bearing a runic diagram shaped like the Plough constellation.
"Ansuz before, Laukaz between, Uruz behind! Sowelo above, Raidhu below, Wunjo in my left hand, Teiwaz in my right hand!" Oleandra roared, slamming her palm down on the glowing runes painted on the pages of her book. "The Godforce, the Lake of Power, the Gateway Between Worlds! The Sun as my Chariot, gather 'neath my Standard, Odin's Spear… POLARIS GUIDING, GRAND CHARIOT!!"
Gungnir abruptly stopped spinning, aligning itself perfectly with Oleandra's arm as she almost lazily aimed it at her enemies… but at the last moment, catching sight of Harry wrestling with a Death Eater the size of a wardrobe in the midst of the group, she turned the spear towards the floor at their feet.
KRAKOOM!
Oleandra could hold Gungnir back no longer. The golden spear shot forth like lightning, carrying the force of a meteor as it tore through the hospital's lower floors, shattering the ground beneath both Harry's gang and the Death Eaters, and sending them tumbling down in freefall towards the ground floor, where the spear now stood half‑buried, still humming and crackling with power.
"Ascendio!"
"Arresto Momentum!"
A few of the quicker‑witted Death Eaters had the wherewithal to slow or reverse their falls, but Oleandra paid them no mind. She dived into the void, weaving between debris and Wizards and Witches drifting in semi‑arrested motion, catching Harry, Hermione and Sirius by the scruffs of their necks one after the other as they fell.
Suit the Lethifold's leathery hide flapped around her as she swooped towards the ground floor, struggling to pull up under their combined weight. Grunting with the effort, Oleandra spun on herself and vanished in a puff of blue feathers, narrowly escaping the fate of half a dozen Death Eaters and Heliopaths, who painfully crashed to the ground in a ring around where they would have fallen…
…
"Oof!"
Harry, Hermione and Sirius landed face‑first in a heap of slushy snow, while Oleandra touched down safely beside them. She had Apparated them to the nearest place that came to mind— next to the lake in Hyde Park. Oleandra watched as Harry and Hermione staggered to their feet, arms wrapped around themselves, shivering.
"You—!" Harry snarled, lunging at her, only to slip on a patch of black ice. "It's your fault Ron— Oof!"
"That's one way to thank your saviour," Oleandra said sarcastically. "Care to try again?"
Harry scrambled to his feet, but this time, Hermione held him back.
"Harry, you need to calm down!!" she said shrilly. "She wouldn't have saved us and killed Vol— You-Know-Who if she really was on his side!"
"But he's not dead, is he?" Harry roared, shooting Oleandra a murderous look. "For all we know— to her," he added, jabbing a finger in her direction, "killing him might as well be the same as killing Dumbledore, yeah? She just wants to take his place!"
"Shouldn't we at least hear her out?" Hermione said desperately.
She looked at Harry pleadingly. They only had the one wand between the three of them, and even if they were fully equipped, she didn't like their odds duelling Oleandra; not after witnessing how she had saved them from You-Know-Who.
"There's nothing to say," Oleandra said, jerking her head in Harry's direction. "He's too obstinate to listen to anything I might be inclined to tell him."
"Then why even bother to save us!?" Harry yelled in frustration.
Oleandra sighed and shook her head. She was exhausted. She had just cast a seven-rune Lokk on the same level of the Insigil of Lindorm, and without anyone's help, too. Her head was pounding, her muscles were half-atrophied, she was carrying a baby, and she desperately needed to rest.
"Because I owed Tonks a favour!" she said, exasperated. "Now that that's done, we can all go our separate ways, yeah? Excellent."