Smoke lingered long after the spells stopped.
The celebratory field—hours ago a sea of banners, lanterns, and laughter—had become a graveyard of blackened canvas and splintered wood.
Burned tent frames jutted from the earth like ribs.
Charred trunks lay cracked open, their contents scattered and trampled into mud.
The smell was the worst part.
Ash.
Burned fabric.
And something heavier.
Heavier than smoke.
Heavier than fire.
Bodies were being counted.
Cassius stood apart from the triage lines, one wand still loose in his fingers, staring upward at the fading green skull in the sky.
The Dark Mark pulsed faintly now, its edges fraying against the night, but it remained unmistakable even as the aurors worked to use the elimination curse to rid the skies of ireland of this monstrosity.
Around him, healers moved in coordinated patterns.
Some knelt beside the injured, wands glowing gold as they sealed wounds and purged curse residue.
Others closed the eyes of those beyond saving.
A dozen white sheets had already been drawn.
Two dozen more forms lay under Ministry containment shrouds—black for the attackers.
Close to half the dead from this attack were Death Eaters.
The rest were not.
A mother who had tripped while dragging her son.
An elderly wizard struck from behind while attempting to shield strangers.
Two Bulgarian supporters caught in crossfire.
Unlucky.
Unarmed.
Unprepared.
The reality settled over the field like frost.
Victory from earlier that evening felt obscene now.
Footsteps crunched over scorched grass.
Cassius did not turn immediately.
He already knew the magical signatures approaching.
Authority.
Restraint.
Contained fury.
Amelia Bones stopped several paces away, her monocle glinting in firelight.
Her expression was carved from granite—controlled, but simmering.
Beside her stood Sirius Black, whose jaw was tight, and bore the unmistakeable feeling of a man who desperately wanted to say something but do to the woman at his side was utterly incapable of doing so.
For a moment, none of them spoke.
The Dark Mark twisted overhead before finally fading away into nothing returning the churning cloudy sky back to its normal form.
Finally, Amelia's voice cut through the crackling embers.
"Explain."
It was not loud.
It did not need to be.
Cassius lowered his gaze from the sky and met hers evenly after turning round.
"You were here, you know what happened." Cassius responded dispondently.
"I saw children," she replied sharply, eyes flicking toward the girls standing several yards behind him. "Students. Engaging in lethal force against the dark lords followers."
Her gaze snapped back to him.
"And i saw the deaths those same students caused."
There it was.
Ministry hypocrisy at its finest.
Death Eaters, literally the worst scum in all of the United Kingdom at the moment, and yet she's targetting the people who stopped this act of terrorism, just because they killed the terrorists?
Not outrage at the Arcanum wands-for-hire who likewise caused death, at least not yet.
Not even outrage at the death eaters who attacked this sacred event in the first place.
Her focus was entirely on them for now.
"You used killing curses," she said flatly.
"No," Cassius corrected. "We used terminating spells."
A subtle distinction.
An important one, afterall one was dark magic that caused damage to ones own soul with each use, while the other was technically classified as white-magic, a spell that used the power of science combined with magic to induce an electrical short circuit of the body itself rather than extinguishing the soul contained within the vessel.
Her jaw tightened.
"They are still dead."
"Yes."
"Why! They could be captured!"
"Captured...? They themselves were killing people, innocent people i might add, for what purpose would we waste time trying to restrain them all the while they can keep killing other innocents that would then be our conscience.
The word carried no apology, instead redirected the inquiry into whose lives were more important a turn that caused the seasoned witch to stumble in her interrogation..
Behind Cassius, the girls stepped closer, faces and hands streaked with soot, but the looks upon their faces clearly showed they stood with Cassius.
The life of one innocent was worth more than a hundred assailants.
And even as young as they are now, they stood resolute in their desicion to take a life.
Perhaps later they would react negatively due to their actions on this day, but for now still fueled by the adrenaline and belief in their struggle against the forces of darkness they remained undeterred.
They had crossed a threshold tonight.
There was no undoing it.
Sirius finally spoke, voice low.
"They were casting Avada Kedavra into crowds Amelia..."
It wasn't a defense not entirely.
It was a statement of fact.
Amelia did not look at him however.
She just looked past at the Aurors under her command still moving bodies, the deaths caused at the hands of these children.
"You should have left things to the adults."
Finally her resolve shifted.
But still she attemptedly laid blame at their feet.
"You mean the same adults who ran along with the crowd abandoning their duty to protect all of us 'children' along with the fans from across the world?"
Amelia wanted to retort but it was true...
When the Death Eater attack began, the security forces of the ministry ran, taking dozens of minutes until she and her lieutenants could round them up and re-enter the campground to pursue the death eaters.
The only forces who held their ground were the Arcana Wands for hire, and Cassius along with his girls.
"Ev-Even still you're children!"
"So? I'm the under sixteen Dueling Champion of the world, all of us here have had three years of dueling practice in competitive situations along with live 'combat trials' while at school."
His fame was spread far and wide but Amelia couldnt help but see him as he is right now, simply a fourteen year old boy, one who had just committed cold blooded murder, be it in defence of other or not.
Sirius on the other hand, looked less worried than before.
His posture even had relaxed clearly only worried that the taking of life would have caused his godson or his girlfriends to become affected clearly something they were presently not.
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