But the door swung shut immediately, and Draco grabbed him from behind and whispered, "Henry, no! This is the kind of fight that Father is always telling us to let him handle, remember?"
That might be true, but it didn't make things any easier, for Harry to just stand there and let Father face an enemy he believed should have been his. Harry bit the inside of his cheek distractedly, unable to remove his gaze from Father as he paced to the middle of the train station. Other shields were rising around him, shoving away the few people who hadn't retreated already.
"I have been looking forward to this," Crouch said. He was smiling. He looked mad. There was a patch of flesh missing from his cheek and covered by a gleam of silver that Harry hadn't seen in the vision, and his wand was clenched in his hands so hard that it looked as if it might fall to pieces right there. "If you knew how much, Lucius. If you knew."
"I think I can guess." Father fell into a defensive posture.
"You have no chance of winning, you know, traitor."
Father said nothing. Harry couldn't see his eyes from where he was standing behind the shield, but he could see from the tilt of his head that Father was looking straight at Crouch and probably didn't intend to move his eyes.
Crouch cast a spell without speaking. It was an awful, withering blue-white light, and Harry cried out involuntarily. Then he slapped a hand over his mouth, frightened that he would disturb Father's concentration.
Father laughed aloud, and stepped straight into the curse.
Harry wasn't the only one to cry out this time; Draco's cry echoed his. But the light seethed around Father and then disappeared. Harry's eyes widened as he saw a glitter like diamond dust on Father's skin. It seemed that he'd cast some sort of shield earlier, maybe while he was inside the dome with them.
"You always did start with that spell, Crouch," Father said. "A weakness." And he also cast a spell without speaking.
This spell curled around one of Crouch's silver hands and faded. From the way Father's own hand flexed, Harry thought he had forgotten that the curse wouldn't affect silver and was irritated at himself for forgetting. But part of the curse landed on Crouch's arm and pressed, and his shrill screams filled the air.
Harry smelled cooking flesh. He swallowed. From the soft laugh Father gave, he was pleased, and he raised a shield to deflect the nasty-looking spells that Crouch flung at him with ease. The only spell out of the ones Crouch used that Harry knew was the Blasting Curse.
Crouch and Father got closer and closer to each other, dueling with spells of increasingly strange color and a heavy smell that seemed to fill the air with ocean sharpness. Harry and Draco held on to each other, and Harry tried his best to see the battle for what it really was, to see if Crouch was tiring.
Or if Father was.
Then Father fell back under a heavy blow, and both Harry and Draco shouted at the same time again. Harry began to hammer on the dome shield that Father had imprisoned them under, desperate to get out and help—
Draco abruptly laughed. Harry stared at him.
"It was a feint, Henry!"
Harry followed Draco's pointing finger, and saw that Crouch had charged Father where he had fallen on the floor of the station. And that Father had sat up and directed a stream of Fiendfyre straight at Crouch's face.
Harry felt his mouth opening, sure that it was done now—
And Crouch lunged forwards, taking the blast on his silver hands, which only seemed to bubble a little, and broke the shield that must have been there. His hands wrapped around Father's throat.
Harry shouted and hammered on the shield dome that contained him and Draco. Draco was doing the same thing beside him. He watched long cracks spread up and down the dome, branching out, writhing like snakes, and then the dome shattered with a heavy sound like a tolling bell and they were free.
Harry stumbled to his knees, gasping from the sudden surge of magical exhaustion that shocked him. He hadn't realized breaking the shield would take power out of him. He reached for his wand with fingers that trembled, raised his hand and his head with so much fatigue that he was sure Father would be dead by now.
He looked up, and saw Crouch laughing, apparently slowly strangling Father and enjoying his thrashing—
And then Mother Apparated in behind Crouch and hit him with a spell that opened a huge cut in the middle of his back.
Crouch screamed and let Father go, rolling away. Mother hit him with another spell that severed what looked like his right foot. Crouch gave her a glare of absolute hatred, touched something fastened on his robe, and vanished in a swirl of Portkey colors.
"Mother!"
Harry said it first, he thought, but Draco's voice was just a beat behind. Mother dropped to one knee and cast a spell that shielded them with what looked like a transparent, traveling version of the shield dome. Then she immediately held her wand to Father's throat and began murmuring healing spells.
....
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