After the earth-shaking avalanche swept through, all it left behind was a devastated stretch of snowfield.
Broken branches from shattered trees still lay scattered across it, and amid the rumble of the avalanche continuing on into the distance, they seemed to be protesting their own innocence.
"Do they... have some kind of blood feud?" Madam Maxime murmured.
Given their strength, she had no doubt the two of them could easily have Apparated away before the avalanche hit.
And yet, with her own eyes, she had clearly seen the instant both of them were swallowed by it.
"I... I only know Tver's been pushing You-Know-Who really hard, but..." Hagrid was still badly shaken, and even his voice came out in ragged breaths.
"I don't think Tver would be that reckless, not to the point of taking himself down just to get rid of You-Know-Who..."
Unlike the two of them, who were still in disbelief, the black Dragon, relying on its instincts, sharply sensed that something was wrong.
But before it could react, a dazzling blue-violet blaze exploded from the area where Tver had been buried. Not only did the surrounding snow fail to smother it, it seemed to feed it instead, making it burn hotter and fiercer.
In less than half a minute, the flames spread across the entire area, melting all the snow into water, then turning that water into scorching steam.
Just from the steam alone, the black Dragon could sense a force capable of destroying everything, and it hurriedly beat its wings twice, putting as much distance as possible between itself and that area.
At the same time, Voldemort did not stay idle either after sensing the power of the flames.
In the part of the field the fire had not yet reached, as though protesting the blaze's violence, a lifelike serpent's head suddenly rose high out of the snow.
The serpent's head twisted, and a huge snow-white snake burst forth.
No.
Not just one.
All around the flames, one giant snake after another rose up, almost too many to count, every hollow eye fixed on Tver at the heart of the fire.
The air grew so heavy that Hagrid and the others in the distance unconsciously held their breath.
For a moment, time itself seemed to freeze...
Boom.
The giant snakes lunged forward all at once, surging one after another toward Tver with their mouths wide open and full of fangs.
Bang!
The flames seemed to come alive. One true fire dragon after another, formed entirely from flame, pounced with hooked claws and saw-like teeth, tearing apart every giant snake that tried to attack Tver.
Once the giant snakes realized a direct assault on Tver in the center of the flames was not worth it, black light instantly spread over their bodies. Then, with agility completely at odds with their size, they twisted around and began using both their massive bodies and that strange magic to clash head-on with the fire dragons.
Whoosh.
Whistle.
The collision of fire and snow instantly erupted across the mountainside. Every time a giant snake was swallowed by flames, and every time a fire dragon was buried under heavy snow, it set off another burst of thunderous noise and violent tremors.
Boom.
At the center of it all, Tver and Voldemort still controlled their magic with perfect composure. Their wand movements were no longer as fierce as before, but the power they unleashed was far greater than any of their earlier exchanges.
Watching from the sky, Hagrid and Madam Maxime were completely stunned.
As Headmistress of Beauxbatons, Madam Maxime's understanding of magic far exceeded that of an ordinary wizard.
And yet, as she watched the two of them fight, she realized with bleak disbelief that she was like a first-year student. She could not understand any of it at all.
As for Hagrid, although he had always loved huge, vicious-looking creatures and had never been the sort to fear anything, even he could not help feeling a flicker of dread as he watched the giant snakes and the fire dragons.
Enduring the sharp pain in his arms, he reached out and touched the black Dragon's scales, beautiful in pattern and hard beyond belief, then sighed with emotion.
"It really is better this way."
But what neither of them had expected was that another avalanche was coming.
The avalanche brought on by the black Dragon had only just been burned away by the battle, and now a new one, triggered by the fight itself, came sweeping down from the mountaintop.
This time the avalanche was noticeably smaller in both scale and force than the previous one, but it was still an avalanche.
And yet the rushing snow was either turned by Voldemort into more giant snakes, or vaporized by the heat of Tver's flames.
The two of them seemed to be using the avalanche itself as fuel for the battle.
Whenever most of the giant snakes had been worn down, fresh snow from the avalanche would arrive and help Voldemort slow the spread of the flames.
And as for Tver, every time his flames devoured a huge amount of snow, not only did their power not diminish, it actually increased. They grew even more active and violent as they lunged at Voldemort.
But as the battle wore on, both Voldemort and Tver gradually slowed their wand movements and looked up at the towering mountain with obvious displeasure.
The snow was gone.
Flying above them, Maxime could see it clearly. Each new avalanche carried less snow than the one before, and by now there was no longer enough snow left on the summit to trigger another one.
As for the ground where the two of them were fighting, all the snow had long since been consumed, exposing dark earth charred black by the flames.
"What a disappointment," Voldemort muttered irritably.
Compared with Tver, who could sustain such immense flames on his own, Voldemort could only cast large-scale, long-lasting magic by borrowing from the surrounding environment.
Otherwise, all he could do was release one-off area spells like ordinary magic.
And snow was the best material he had for Transfiguration.
The soil on the ground would work too, but compared with Tver's flames, it required far too much magic, and what it created would be much more cumbersome. It simply was not worth it.
So if the fight went on, he would definitely be the one taking the loss.
Voldemort did not care whether retreating from a battle was embarrassing or not.
Besides, he had not lost yet.
With that thought, he casually flicked his wand at Tver. The giant snakes still left on the field instantly stopped maintaining their agile forms and instead hurled themselves at Tver like soldiers making a final charge.
The fire dragons around them were not foolish enough to just watch. Their flames surged, and within a few breaths, the searing heat and the fire dragons' counterattack had melted the giant snakes away completely.
But once the steam cleared, Voldemort was nowhere to be seen.
Realizing Voldemort had truly fled rather than hiding somewhere to fire off a sneak attack, Tver let the flames around him disperse as well.
Once it understood the battle was over, the black Dragon in the sky gathered its courage and slowly descended, carrying Hagrid and Maxime down to Tver.
Then it lowered itself flat to the ground.
Too terrifying.
Looking at the scorched black earth below and feeling the lingering heat, the black Dragon only now realized that when Tver had struck it during the tournament, he had actually held back.
Unfortunately, Tver was not Hagrid, so how could he possibly understand what a Dragon was thinking? He only assumed it was making it easier for him to climb back onto its back.
So instead of Apparating, he simply stepped on its head and returned to a comfortable spot.
That had been one of his discoveries during the journey. Between the spikes on the black Dragon's head, there was actually a nice little hollow where he could sit quite comfortably.
On the surface, he had rushed all the way here without pause.
In reality, he had been touring Europe on the back of a Dragon.