Chapter 37:
– Amara Black –
The door of the Three Broomsticks slammed against the wall behind me hard enough to rattle every window in the pub.
Cold night air struck my face as I shot into the street.
Someone shouted my name behind me. Lily, probably. Sirius added something louder and considerably less sensible, while Marlene yelled for everyone to grab their wands. Their voices blurred together almost immediately. None of them could keep up with me once I decided to move.
My feet barely seemed to touch the cobblestones.
Hogsmeade had transformed in the space of a few minutes.
The cheerful little village I had spent the evening exploring was gone. Shop windows flashed with reflected spellfire. Smoke rolled over the crooked rooftops in heavy black clouds, carrying the bitter stink of scorched timber and burned potion ingredients. Somewhere nearby, glass shattered. A woman screamed. Three answering cracks of Apparition split the air as people fled without bothering to look where they were going.
Above it all, the Dark Mark hung against the night sky.
The enormous green skull glared down over Hogsmeade, a serpent twisting obscenely from its mouth. Its sickly light washed across the village, staining the smoke and snow-dusted rooftops the color of diseased flesh.
I stared up at it for half a heartbeat. "That is incredibly dramatic," I muttered.
Voldemort clearly had a fondness for branding.
Another explosion shook the street ahead of me. A group of witches and wizards came racing around the corner, robes flying behind them. One wizard still had his wand clenched in his hand but was using it only to shove other people out of his way. An older witch tripped near the curb, and two people nearly trampled her before a younger man dragged her upright.
I stepped aside as the crowd flooded past me.
It was difficult not to judge them.
Every one of these people possessed a weapon capable of bending reality. They could conjure shields, tear apart stone, summon fire, vanish across miles, or transform their enemies into furniture. Yet the sight of a few masked cowards had sent them stampeding through the village like frightened cattle.
I did not entirely hold it against them. Most people were not fighters. Fear did not become rational merely because someone owned a wand. The average witch probably knew more household charms than combat spells, and the average wizard seemed barely capable of casting while someone was shouting at him.
Still, some cold, newly sharpened part of me catalogued them as lesser.
The black-and-silver markings of my soul-bound wand burned across my forearm. I reached inward, and the wand flowed out of the tattoo in a ripple of black fire, solidifying between my fingers before my next stride landed.
Warmth ran from the polished wood into my palm.
The wand was not truly necessary anymore. Didi had woven it so deeply into my soul that I could cast without it as easily as I could breathe.
But I liked holding it.
There was something wonderfully direct about pointing a stick at someone and ruining their entire evening.
I followed the screams.
Sirius had told me about the Death Eaters from my own reality. Not often. He hated speaking about the war, and whenever he did, the memories dragged something haunted across his face. He had described masked raids, tortured families, bodies left beneath the Dark Mark, and pureblood cowards who pretended they were warriors because they attacked people in their homes.
By the time I had entered the magical world, the original Death Eaters were relics. Some were dead. Some had slithered back into society by claiming coercion. Others had been imprisoned before my Dumbledore began arranging their quiet release whenever politics demanded another convenient compromise.
Now I finally saw the legendary Death Eaters in person.
I was not impressed.
They were magical terrorists wearing cheap masks.
That was it. Just mediocre witches and wizards hiding their faces while attacking people who were too frightened or inexperienced to fight back.
They were not even using separate wands.
That detail offended me more than it should have.
Their government could inspect wand histories. It employed entire departments of investigators, curse-breakers, and Aurors. Yet these idiots apparently committed murder with their personal wands, wore the same masks to every raid, associated openly with known blood supremacists, and still remained impossible to identify…?
Either this timeline's Ministry was catastrophically incompetent, or half of it already knew exactly who the Death Eaters were and simply did not care…
Probably both.
Orange light flickered across the buildings ahead. I rounded the corner and found a shop engulfed in flames.
The painted sign above the entrance had already blackened beyond recognition. Fire poured from broken windows and crawled greedily across the roof. Shelves collapsed inside with a series of sharp cracks, sending whirlwinds of sparks out into the street.
Two masked men stood in front of it, laughing.
One was broad and heavy beneath expensive dark robes. The other had narrow shoulders and a ridiculous silver serpent clasp at his throat. Neither had noticed me.
"She should have been grateful," the broad one said. His voice sounded cheerful beneath his mask. "A filthy little Mudblood getting attention from both of us?"
"She thought she was too good for us after graduation," the thin one said. He aimed his wand at an upstairs window and sent another stream of fire inside. "Called me disgusting. Me."
The broad Death Eater laughed. "Where is she now?" he asked.
"Probably hiding in some Muggle hovel," the thin one replied. "She'll hear about this. She'll know what happens when a Mudblood slut rejects her betters."
I slowed to a stop behind them.
For all the grand language about blood and power, their motive was painfully ordinary. A woman had told them no years ago, and they had carried the humiliation around until a mask gave them permission to punish her for it. That was wounded little-boy pride with a wand.
I lifted mine. "If you two like fire this much," I said, "you should become better acquainted with it."
Both men spun.
The broad one managed to raise his wand halfway.
I flicked mine.
Invisible force struck them like a charging hippogriff. Their feet left the ground, and both men flew backward through the shattered storefront.
They screamed as they landed inside the inferno.
For an instant, I saw the broad Death Eater thrashing among the burning shelves, his robes catching almost immediately. The other tried to crawl toward the entrance, one hand stretching desperately through the flames.
I closed my fingers.
The fire surged.
It folded over them in a roaring wave, swallowing their bodies and drowning their screams. The shop's interior flared white-hot. Glass sagged in the window frames. Both figures jerked once, then stopped moving.
I released the spell before the blaze could spread to the neighboring buildings. With a twist of my wrist, I drew the outer flames inward, forcing the fire to consume only what was already burning.
I had no desire to destroy half the village merely because two men had annoyed me.
Not tonight, anyway.
I continued down the street.
My magic spread outward as I ran, brushing against every living presence around me. I tried to separate attackers from civilians, but Hogsmeade was too crowded. Witches, wizards, enchanted objects, familiars, house-elves, hidden wards, and creatures all pressed against my senses until the village became a tangled knot of magic.
There were too many signatures and too much panic.
Trying to count the Death Eaters that way was like identifying individual raindrops in a storm.
Fine. I had eyes. I had ears. And the Death Eaters seemed constitutionally incapable of committing atrocities quietly.
A scream tore through the night to my right.
I changed direction so sharply that one boot carved a groove through the cobblestones. I vaulted a toppled cart, passed through a cloud of purple potion smoke, and turned into a narrow lane between a clothing shop and a boarded-up apothecary.
Two Death Eaters had a woman pinned against the ground.
Her outer robe had been torn open. One man knelt across her legs while the other wrestled with the front of her dress. She fought them with everything she had. Kicking, twisting, clawing at the mask of the man above her—but her wand lay several feet away beneath a broken crate.
The kneeling Death Eater struck her across the face. "Stop squirming," he snapped.
She spat at him.
He recoiled with a curse, then laughed. "I like them spirited," he said.
His companion grabbed the torn fabric at her chest and pulled harder. "You should be proud," the second man told her. "Not every blood traitor gets to experience a pureblood's cock before she dies."
My wand moved before either of them noticed me. "Diffindo." The cutting spell flashed through the alley.
The man kneeling over her froze.
For one confused instant, nothing happened. Then the front of his robes darkened. Blood poured between his legs in a sudden sheet, splashing across the woman's torn clothes and the cobblestones beneath them.
He looked down.
The scream that followed was so high and broken that it barely sounded human.
He collapsed sideways, clutching himself with both hands. His severed flesh landed several feet away with a wet slap.
The other Death Eater surged to his feet. "What the fuck?" he shouted.
I stepped into the mouth of the alley, my wand resting loosely at my side.
The woman dragged herself backward, staring at me with wide, terrified eyes.
The standing Death Eater pointed his wand at my chest. "You stupid cunt!" he screamed. He did not ask who I was. He did not assess the situation or wonder why I looked completely calm while his friend bled out beside me.
He simply attacked. "Exaestuo Sanguis!" A dark crimson curse tore from his wand.
I recognized it immediately. Blood-boiling magic. How nostalgic.
I brought my wand up and caught the curse on its tip. The spell writhed against mine like a living thing, red energy coiling and snapping as it tried to force its way down the wood. The Death Eater's eyes widened behind his mask.
Catching a curse without a shield required precision, control, and a complete lack of hesitation. Turning it was harder.
For most duelists, anyway.
Morgana had made me practice with spells far more vicious than this one until my hands shook and my magical core felt scraped hollow. She had fired curses at me from every direction while criticizing my posture, my breathing, and once the expression on my face.
Apparently I looked "insufficiently elegant" while avoiding disembowelment.
I rotated my wrist. The Blood-Boiling Curse bent around the tip of my wand.
"No," the Death Eater whispered.
I sent it back.
The curse struck him squarely in the chest. His body locked. Dark veins spread beneath every visible inch of skin. He dropped his wand and clawed at his throat as his blood began heating inside him. Steam escaped through the gaps around his mask. Blisters rose across his neck, swelling and bursting while he staggered into the wall.
His scream became a bubbling choke. Then his knees hit the ground. He folded forward and did not move again.
The alley fell silent except for the wet, frantic gasping of his mutilated companion.
The first Death Eater had managed to drag himself several feet through his own blood. His mask had fallen away, revealing a young man with carefully styled blond hair and a face twisted by shock.
"Help me," he whimpered.
I looked at the woman he had been holding down.
One side of her face was already swelling. Her dress was torn, her lip bleeding, but she was conscious. She had crawled far enough to retrieve her wand and now held it in both trembling hands.
The wounded Death Eater reached toward me.
"Please," he whispered. "I'm dying."
"Yes," I said. "You are." I stepped around him and crouched in front of the woman. She flinched when I moved closer. "I'm not going to hurt you," I said.
Her gaze darted past me toward the dying men.
That was fair.
"Can you stand?" I asked.
"I—I think so," Her voice cracked.
I offered my free hand but did not touch her until she chose to take it. Her fingers closed around mine, cold and shaking, and I helped her upright.
The movement made her torn robes fall farther open. She immediately grabbed the fabric and held it closed across her chest.
I transfigured a strip of discarded canvas into a heavy black cloak and placed it around her shoulders.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Another explosion boomed somewhere beyond the alley. Green light flashed above the rooftops, followed by a chorus of screams.
The woman looked toward the street, panic rising again.
"Go to the Three Broomsticks," I told her. "The people with me will be there, or close to it. Barricade the doors, stay away from the windows, and hex anyone wearing a mask."
She swallowed. "What about you?" she asked.
I looked past her toward the burning village.
My wand pulsed warmly in my hand. Black fire whispered beneath my skin, eager to be released. Around us, Death Eaters continued screaming, laughing, and congratulating one another for terrorizing people who could barely fight back.
The alcohol in my blood had burned down to a pleasant heat. The leftover arousal from the basilisk battle still coiled restlessly inside me.
"I'm going to find the rest of them," I said.
The mutilated Death Eater whimpered again behind me.
The woman looked at him, then back at me. Something in her expression hardened. She tightened her grip on her wand.
"Three Broomsticks," I repeated. "Go."
She nodded and hurried toward the street, clutching the conjured cloak around herself.
I waited until she disappeared around the corner. Then I turned toward the wounded man.
He had stopped crawling. His skin had gone grey, and blood continued spreading beneath him in a dark, gleaming pool.
His eyes fixed desperately on mine. "Please," he rasped again.
I raised my wand. His expression loosened with desperate relief, as though he thought I intended to heal him. Instead, I gave him the mercy he had never planned to give his victim.
I stepped over the ashes and followed the next scream.
It led me into the small square outside Honeydukes, where three masked Death Eaters had cornered an elderly wizard beside an overturned sweets cart. Wrapped chocolates and shattered jars littered the street around him. His wand lay snapped in two beneath one boot, and blood ran freely from his temple.
One Death Eater held him upright by the front of his robes.
Another stood a few feet away, repeatedly casting the Cruciatus Curse on a younger man who had collapsed near the shop entrance. The victim's body bowed violently off the ground every time the red light struck him.
The third Death Eater was rifling through the elderly wizard's pockets. "Where is the register key?" he demanded.
"I already told you," the old man gasped. "The shop is open. Take whatever you want."
The Death Eater holding him laughed. "We're not robbing you, old fool," he said. "We're teaching you."
"Teaching him what?" I asked.
All three turned.
The man casting Crucio lowered his wand. The younger wizard on the ground collapsed, twitching weakly.
I walked into the square with my soul-bound wand hanging loosely between my fingers.
The Death Eater searching the old man sneered behind his silver mask. "That filthy blood traitors should know their place," he said.
I glanced at the broken sweets scattered across the cobblestones. "This is over chocolate?"
"It's about order," the one holding the shopkeeper snapped. "Not that a whore dressed like you would understand."
I looked down at myself. The fabric clung far too tightly across my chest and hips, and the lower hem had torn enough to expose considerably more thigh than Hogwarts regulations probably approved of.
"You tortured two men over sweets," I said. "That might be the saddest atrocity I've seen all night."
The third Death Eater raised his wand. "Avada—"
I disappeared. The world simply stopped acknowledging that I occupied the space in front of them.
His Killing Curse tore through the place where I had been and struck the stone wall behind me. All three men froze.
I stepped through the shadow beside the sweets cart and reappeared behind them. "Too slow," I whispered. Black fire flowed from my wand in three thin strands.
One wrapped around the wrist of the man holding the shopkeeper. Another coiled around the torturer's throat. The third seized the remaining Death Eater around both ankles.
I pulled.
The first man screamed as his wand hand came away at the wrist.
The second made a strangled, bubbling sound while the line of fire tightened around his neck.
The third hit the cobblestones face-first hard enough to crack his mask.
I flicked my wand upward. The man on the ground flew ten feet into the air, hung there for one startled moment, and then slammed back down onto the broken jars.
Glass punched through his robes and flesh. He screamed. I hit him with a Blasting Curse before he could finish. The explosion painted the wall behind him red.
The Death Eater missing his hand staggered toward me, blood pouring from the stump. He tried to cast with his other hand, but his wand was still lying beside the severed fingers. I drove a lance of black flame through his chest. He folded around it and burned from the inside out.
The last man clawed desperately at the fiery cord around his throat. His mask had begun melting into his skin. I let the flame constrict. His body dropped.
Silence returned to the square.
The elderly wizard stared at me. So did the younger man on the ground.
Neither looked particularly reassured.
I supposed I could not blame them. I stood calmly among their bodies while holding a wand that radiated enough dark magic to make the surrounding shadows twitch. "Are either of you capable of walking?" I asked.
The shopkeeper swallowed several times. "I believe so," he said.
"Good. Go to the Three Broomsticks."
The younger wizard tried to push himself upright. His arms gave out beneath him.
I sighed, crossed the distance, and crouched beside him. His face was grey with pain, but I could not see any obvious blood. Cruciatus damage was more treacherous than a simple wound.
I pressed two fingers to his throat. His pulse fluttered wildly.
I could heal myself. Healing someone else was more complicated, especially without knowing what the curse had damaged.
"Can you hear me?" I asked.
His eyes struggled to focus on mine. "Yes," he whispered.
"You're going to live." I had no idea whether that was true. It seemed useful for him to believe it. I summoned the old man's dropped walking stick and transfigured it into a rough stretcher. The shopkeeper understood immediately and helped me maneuver the younger wizard onto it. "Three Broomsticks," I repeated. "There are people sheltering there. Stay inside once you reach it."
The shopkeeper looked at the corpses. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Amara Black."
His eyes widened. That reaction was becoming increasingly familiar. I left before he could decide whether to bow, flee, or ask invasive questions about my family tree.
Another burst of green light flashed above the rooftops.
I ran toward it.
The next pair of Death Eaters had broken into a narrow home behind Scrivenshaft's. One stood in the doorway while the other dragged a teenage-looking boy into the street by his hair.
His mother clung to the doorframe behind them while the first Death Eater repeatedly struck her with a stinging hex.
"Your son was seen speaking to a Muggle girl," the man dragging him said. "You should have raised him better."
"He works in the Muggle post office," the woman cried. "He has to speak to them!"
The Death Eater kicked the boy in the ribs. "We don't need a blood traitor's excuses!"
I sent a Severing Curse through his knee. His lower leg separated cleanly. He collapsed with a scream, releasing the boy.
The second Death Eater turned toward me just in time to receive a conjured iron spike through the center of his mask.
The spike carried him backward and pinned him to the door. His body twitched once.
The injured man clutched the bleeding ruin of his leg. "Who—what the fuck are you?"
"Busy," I said. I pointed my wand at his head. His skull burst against the cobblestones.
The mother screamed.
Her son did not. He stared down at the body, then at me, his expression shifting through horror, relief, and something close to awe.
"Take your mother to the pub," I told him. "Help anyone you find along the way."
He nodded rapidly.
I continued running before either could thank me.
The violence was doing something increasingly dangerous to my body.
Every spell I cast sent a pulse of heat through my magical core. Every time an enemy fell, my demonic instincts purred with dark satisfaction.
The butterbeers should have dulled everything.
Instead, the alcohol had loosened whatever restraint I normally kept wrapped around myself. My skin felt too sensitive beneath my robes. My breasts ached whenever the fabric dragged across my nipples. Heat pooled low in my belly with every kill.
My pussy throbbed in time with my pulse.
It was absurd. People were dying around me. Buildings were burning. Voldemort's followers were terrorizing an entire village.
And some feral part of me wanted to drag someone attractive into an alley and fuck until the sounds of battle disappeared.
Being a Succubus Queen was deeply inconvenient.
I adjusted my stride, trying to ignore the slick heat gathering between my thighs.
Cold shower later. Massacre first.
Rapid footsteps pounded behind me.
I spun, my wand already raised.
"Amara!" Lily came racing around the corner with her red hair flying loose behind her. Sirius was half a step ahead of the others, wand drawn, black robes snapping around his legs.
Remus, Peter, Marlene, and Alice followed close behind. They were breathing hard.
I was not.
Lily reached me first and grabbed both my arms. "Are you hurt?" she demanded. Her green eyes swept over my face, throat, chest, and torn robes. She looked one heartbeat away from either kissing me or slapping me. Possibly both.
"I'm fine," I said.
"You ran out alone! Into a bloody Death Eater attack!"
Sirius stepped directly into my space before Lily could continue. His hands landed on my shoulders, surprisingly gentle despite the urgency in his expression. "Let me see you," he said. His grey eyes searched me with naked concern.
The expression struck me harder than any curse had tonight.
"I'm all right," I told him more softly.
Sirius's gaze dropped to the blood streaked across the front of my robes. "That isn't all yours?"
"None of it is mine."
His shoulders loosened. Only slightly. He looked behind me at the smoking street. "What happened?"
"I took out the trash."
Marlene stopped beside Lily, bent forward with her hands on her knees, and gulped air. "How much bloody trash?" she asked.
"Only a few Death Eaters," I said. "I still haven't found their main force."
All six of them went quiet.
Alice looked past me toward the distant fires. "You killed them?" she asked. "All of them…?"
"The ones I encountered."
Peter swallowed audibly.
Remus's face had gone pale, though his wand remained steady in his hand.
Lily tightened her grip on my arm. "You could have been killed," she said.
"I fought a sixty-foot basilisk before your classes ended."
"That does not make this safer!"
"No, but it does make these people seem disappointingly ordinary."
Marlene straightened slowly. "How are you not terrified?" she asked. "The Dark Mark is in the sky. People are dying. There could be dozens of them."
Alice nodded, staring at me as though courage might be contagious if she stood close enough. "How are you this brave?" she asked.
I glanced upward at the enormous green skull. The truth was that I did not feel brave. Bravery implied fear overcome in service of something greater. I simply did not consider the Death Eaters frightening enough to fear.
Another explosion thundered from the far side of Hogsmeade.
The windows around us rattled.
Peter flinched. Remus placed one steadying hand on his shoulder.
I looked between them.
Peter was gripping his wand so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. His eyes kept darting toward every alley and rooftop. Remus concealed his fear more effectively, but I could hear his pulse accelerating.
They were eighteen. Adults, yes. But young adults with school dueling experience, not hardened killers. Perhaps letting them follow me into a battle was not my finest decision.
"Peter, Remus," I said, "you should go back to the Three Broomsticks." Both boys stiffened. "The people sheltering there need protection," I continued. "You can guard the doors and help the injured. Marlene and Alice can go with you."
Marlene's head snapped up. "Oh hell no! Absolutely not."
Alice squared her shoulders beside her. "I'm not hiding in a pub while Lily is out here."
"I wasn't asking for volunteers," I told them.
Peter surprised me by stepping forward. His wand trembled in his hand. His voice did too. But he spoke. "That's not what Gryffindors do," Peter said. He looked terrified. He also looked determined.
It was unbearably cute.
I hated that I knew what another version of him would become. This Peter had not betrayed anyone. He had not framed Sirius or handed the Potters to Voldemort. Right now, he was simply a frightened young man choosing not to run while every instinct begged him to.
Remus nodded. "He's right," he said. "We stay together."
Every one of them stared at me.
I sighed.
Marlene laughed breathlessly.
Lily stepped closer until our shoulders touched. "We're coming with you," she said. "You can waste time arguing, or you can accept it."
I looked at the six stubborn Gryffindors gathered around me. This was how people died. It was also, infuriatingly, how bonds were made. "Stay close," I said. "All of you." Sirius opened his mouth. I pointed my wand at him. "That includes you."
He raised both hands. "I would never dream of disobeying you… cousin." His grin widened.
I turned to the others. "If I tell you to move, you move. If I tell you to get down, you do not ask why. If someone falls, the nearest person shields them while the rest keep fighting. Nobody chases an enemy alone."
Lily arched one eyebrow. "You mean the way you did?"
"I'm stronger than all of you."
"That is not a denial…"
"It was not intended as one."
Alice nodded solemnly. "We promise."
Marlene lifted her wand. "Stay close. Follow instructions. Mock you for hypocrisy later."
"Perfect." We moved toward the far side of Hogsmeade.
I took the lead. Lily stayed at my left shoulder, Sirius at my right. Remus, Peter, Alice, and Marlene formed a loose group behind us.
They were not soldiers, but they adjusted quickly. Their wands remained raised. Their attention shifted between windows, alleys, and rooftops instead of fixing entirely on the fires ahead.
Perhaps Hogwarts taught more than I gave it credit for.
We had crossed half the street when two masked figures stepped from behind an overturned carriage.
"There they are," one Death Eater said.
The other laughed. "Students! Out past curfew! How naughty!" His mask was carved into the shape of a grinning skull.
Sirius moved before I did. "Confringo!" His curse collided with the Death Eater's shield and exploded in a burst of red-gold sparks.
"Get behind me!" Sirius shouted.
"No!" Marlene shouted back. "Stop trying to be dramatic!"
The Death Eater returned fire with a slicing curse. Sirius twisted aside, the spell passing close enough to cut three strands from his hair. His expression changed. The playful arrogance vanished. "Those were my best strands," Sirius said coldly. He launched into the duel.
The second Death Eater fired at Lily. She raised a shield so quickly that the curse rebounded into a nearby lamppost.
The masked wizard attacked again. Stunner, Bone-Breaker, Blasting Curse.
Lily blocked all three. Her movements were tight and controlled. No wasted flourishes. She shifted her feet with each defense, changing angles while forcing him to turn with her.
The Death Eater expected a schoolgirl. He received Lily Evans.
"Expelliarmus!" she shouted.
He blocked it.
Lily immediately followed with a silent trip jinx. His right leg snapped out from under him. Before he hit the ground, she cast again. "Depulso!"
The spell struck him in the chest and hurled him backward into the side of the carriage.
Wood splintered.
His wand flew from his hand.
Lily summoned it before it struck the ground, then hit him with a Stunner so powerful that his entire body slammed flat against the carriage and remained there for a heartbeat before dropping unconscious.
She stared at him. Then at the captured wand in her hand. "I did it," she whispered.
"You took him apart," I said.
Lily looked at me, shocked. "I've never won that quickly against someone outside school."
"You're an amazing witch," I told her. "Far more powerful than you think."
Her face flushed despite everything happening around us. I gestured toward the unconscious Death Eater. "And he was trash."
That helped.
Lily laughed once, breathless and disbelieving.
Watching her fight stirred something strange inside me. Morgana had once told me that my birth mother possessed extraordinary potential. Lily Potter could have become one of the finest witches of her generation if she had continued training seriously. Instead, she had settled beside James Potter, stepped away from real danger, and allowed her magic to soften while he built his reputation.
Magic was a muscle. Neglect it long enough and it atrophied. Perhaps that was part of what happened to the woman who gave birth to me. She had once been this—quick, brilliant, fierce—and then folded herself into James's life until there was not enough of Lily left to stand between her husband and their unwanted daughter.
That did not excuse her. Nothing could. But looking at Lily Evans now, wand raised and eyes bright with the shock of discovering her own strength, I could see the woman my mother might have become.
A shout pulled my attention back to Sirius.
His opponent sent a stream of purple fire racing toward him. Sirius conjured a stone barrier, let the flames strike it, then transfigured the entire burning slab into a flock of black birds.
The birds swarmed the Death Eater's face. He staggered backward, cursing and clawing at them.
Sirius stepped through the chaos with an almost insulting amount of confidence. "Stupefy!"
The red bolt struck the Death Eater directly beneath the chin. His feet left the ground. He flipped backward over the carriage and landed in a heap beside Lily's opponent.
For half a second, everyone stared.
Then Peter cheered. "Yes, Sirius!"
Remus laughed in relief.
Marlene slapped Sirius between the shoulder blades hard enough to make him stumble.
Alice raised both arms. "Two for Gryffindor!"
Sirius straightened his robes as though he had just completed a planned performance rather than nearly lost part of his face. He looked directly at me. Then he gave me a proud, shamelessly flirtatious wink.
I rolled my eyes. "Congratulations," I said. "You successfully defeated one piece of trash."
"Only one?" Sirius asked. "I thought the transfiguration deserved at least two."
"It was acceptable."
"Acceptable," he repeated, placing one hand over his heart. "From you, that is practically a declaration of love."
Lily stepped closer to me. "She already has someone for those."
Sirius glanced between us. His grin became dangerous. "I'm aware."
The heat between my thighs throbbed harder.
Wonderful. Masked terrorists, unresolved parental trauma, a possessive redhead, and young Sirius Black flirting with me in the middle of a warzone. Exactly what my self-control needed.
I looked toward the far end of the village.
More spellfire flashed beyond the rooftops, far denser than anything we had encountered so far. Screams rose beneath it, accompanied by the unmistakable thunder of a coordinated magical battle.
There. The main force. I tightened my grip on my wand. "Celebration later," I said. "We found the real fight."
The others followed my gaze. Their excitement faded.
I stepped over the unconscious Death Eaters and started forward. "Stay close," I ordered.
This time, no one argued.
A wall of pressure tore down the street, hurling shattered roof tiles, splintered timber, and fist-sized chunks of stone toward us. Peter shouted. Alice threw both arms over her head. Sirius started raising his wand, but I was faster.
"Protego Maxima." A curved wall of black-silver magic erupted across the road.
Debris hammered against it in a deafening barrage. Broken bricks burst into dust. A wooden beam struck hard enough to send ripples across the shield before tumbling harmlessly aside. Heat washed over us a heartbeat later, carrying smoke, ash, and the sharp metallic taste of powerful curses colliding.
When the air cleared, half the building at the end of the street was simply gone.
Flames climbed through the exposed rooms. Furniture burned inside shattered bedrooms. A bathtub hung precariously from what remained of an upper floor, its pipes spilling water into the street below.
Beyond the wreckage, the edge of Hogsmeade had become a battlefield.
Witches and wizards moved through smoke and spellfire, some dueling in pairs while others fought in tight groups. Shields flashed blue, gold, and crimson. Curses carved glowing scars through the road. Conjured creatures tore at one another between overturned carriages and burning hedges.
Then two spells collided above the open field beyond the final row of cottages.
One was a spear of green-black energy surrounded by screaming faces.
The other resembled a twisting phoenix forged from white fire.
They struck in midair.
The collision detonated with enough force to flatten every blade of grass for fifty feet!
Lily stopped beside me. "Is that the Dark Lord?" she gasped. Her voice came out much smaller than usual.
I followed her stare.
A tall figure stood at the far end of the field, surrounded by a storm of black robes. He was pale enough to look carved from old bone, with narrow red eyes and a face that still retained faint traces of human beauty beneath the corruption. Darkness bled from him in coils, staining the air around his body.
Voldemort.
Across from him stood Albus Dumbledore. His robes were singed at one shoulder. His beard whipped wildly in the magical wind, and his hat had apparently decided not to survive a second battle in one day.
Voldemort slashed his wand through the air. A dozen obsidian blades appeared around Dumbledore and attacked from every direction at once.
Dumbledore did not shield. He transfigured the ground beneath him into a spiraling tower of silver mirrors. Each blade struck a mirrored surface and vanished through it, emerging from another mirror pointed back toward Voldemort.
Voldemort twisted his wand. The blades melted into black serpents before they could reach him. The snakes coiled together, forming a winged beast large enough to swallow a horse.
Dumbledore sent the white phoenix diving into it. The creatures collided, tearing each other apart in an explosion of feathers, fangs, and burning magic.
My eyes widened.
I could feel their magical cores from across the battlefield.
Dumbledore's power was vast but so tightly controlled that almost none of it leaked unnecessarily. It sat inside him like an ocean compressed into a glass sphere, every drop directed by decades of discipline.
Voldemort's magic was different. Deliberately malformed. It moved through him like a furnace filled with razors, every spell carrying layers of intent and preparation that most witches would never recognize before it killed them.
My own core was larger than either of theirs. That realization sent a delicious pulse of satisfaction through me. I possessed more raw magic than Albus Dumbledore. More than Lord Voldemort. Separately, at least.
But watching them fight murdered any temptation to confuse power with victory.
They knew far more spells than I did. Their transitions were instantaneous, every attack flowing into a defense, every defense creating the opening for another attack. They transfigured, countered, conjured, cursed, and manipulated the battlefield without pause or visible strain.
I have power. They had mastery.
At my present level, either of them could probably make me regret challenging them alone. I might overwhelm them if I survived long enough to force a contest of raw strength, but reaching that point would be the problem. They would spend the entire duel inventing increasingly clever ways to remove my organs.
Good thing those could grow back now…
Still, this was a useful measure. My Dumbledore had a century of arrogance stuffed into one elderly body, but he was still a version of the man fighting before me. My Voldemort was more experienced, more damaged, and possibly less stable, yet his foundations would be similar.
Now I knew approximately where I stood.
Below them, another duel raged through the remains of a stone wall.
Alastor Moody was instantly recognizable even without most of the damage that had later earned him the name Mad-Eye. He was younger, broader through the shoulders, and still possessed both of his original eyes. A scar cut through one eyebrow, but his face had not yet become the battlefield of ruined flesh Sirius had described.
He fought like a man who expected every shadow to contain a murderer and was usually correct.
Two Aurors moved with him, covering his flanks as they traded curses with a cluster of Death Eaters. These masked attackers were nothing like the pathetic men I had already killed. Their shields held. Their movements were disciplined. They used cover, attacked in coordinated patterns, and deliberately forced the Aurors into overlapping lines of fire.
Leading them was a woman. Wild black hair framed a pale, beautiful face. Her lips were pulled into an ecstatic grin, and her dark eyes burned with manic delight as she pirouetted between two curses and answered with a stream of violet fire.
Bellatrix Lestrange.
My breath caught. She looked younger than the woman who had followed me home from London, burned down my hotel because I left without telling her, and accepted false memories of motherhood with terrifying enthusiasm.
This Bellatrix had none of that softness. She looked like violence given a beautiful body. Every movement radiated devotion to Voldemort. Every scream she pulled from an Auror made her laugh harder.
Sirius stopped at my right. "Fuck," he muttered.
I glanced at him. He stared at Bellatrix with a mixture of anger, disgust, and genuine nervousness.
"My cousin is as mad as everyone says," Sirius said. "...Possibly madder."
"She's certainly enthusiastic," I replied.
"That is not the word I would use..."
Bellatrix spun beneath Moody's curse, then fired three spells in rapid succession. Moody blocked the first, ducked the second, and redirected the third into a masked wizard trying to flank him.
The Death Eater's robes erupted into carnivorous vines.
Strange. I was about to help a younger version of Alastor Moody fight an alternate version of my adopted mother.
In my own reality, I had killed Moody and sent his severed head to Dumbledore in a parcel.
Bellatrix had later cooked me breakfast.
Multiversal travel had turned my life into a joke no sane person would believe.
"Students!?" an Auror shouted.
A woman in dark red robes had noticed us standing at the end of the street. Blood ran from a cut above one eye, but her wand remained steady. "What in Merlin's name are you doing?" she yelled. "Get back to Hogwarts!"
A second Auror glanced toward us. "Run!" he shouted. "Now!"
Unfortunately, three Death Eaters had noticed us at the same time.
One pointed.
Their attention shifted as a group.
Several wands rose.
The first curse came at Peter. Remus shoved him aside and raised a shield. The curse struck with a burst of sickly yellow light, driving Remus back three steps but failing to break through.
A masked Death Eater charged them from behind a ruined fence.
Peter recovered quickly. "Stupefy!" he shouted.
The Death Eater blocked the spell, but Remus attacked from the opposite angle. "Expelliarmus!"
The man twisted away and answered with a curse that ripped a smoking trench across the ground between them.
Peter looked terrified. He stayed beside Remus anyway. They began fighting the Death Eater together, Peter forcing him to defend high while Remus aimed low. Their teamwork was rough but instinctive, built through years of knowing how the other moved.
Two more spells streaked toward Marlene and Alice. "Down!" Marlene shouted. She grabbed Alice by the shoulder and pulled her behind an overturned delivery cart. Both girls landed hard in the road.
A curse shattered one wheel above their heads.
Alice leaned around the side and fired a Stunner. Marlene rose over the opposite edge, launching a Blasting Curse that forced the attacking Death Eaters to scatter.
"Good!" I called out. "Keep alternating!"
"I know how to duel!" Marlene shouted back. A green curse passed inches over her head. "Eeep!"
Lily raised her wand beside me.
Sirius moved closer to my other shoulder.
Both looked nervous now.
I stepped forward. My hips moved naturally beneath my torn robes as I walked into the battle. The heat between my thighs had not faded. If anything, the sight of so much powerful magic had made it worse. Every collision of spells vibrated through my body. Every scream tightened something low in my stomach.
A crimson curse came directly at my face.
I tilted my wand and caught it against the wood.
The spell twisted around the tip in a spiral of red sparks.
I redirected it into a Death Eater attempting to attack one of Moody's Aurors from behind.
It struck his shoulder and spun him through the air.
A second curse followed.
I blocked it with a shield no larger than my palm.
A third came from the left.
I stepped through it.
The spell passed harmlessly through the space my body occupied as the absorbed Cloak's power made me briefly less substantial than smoke.
The caster froze.
I flicked two fingers. His wand transformed into a black snake and wrapped itself around his throat. He dropped to his knees, clawing at it.
I continued walking.
Behind me, Sirius muttered, "Show-off."
"You're welcome to go first," I said.
"I'm comfortable here, thanks."
Lily kept close to my left side. Her wand tracked every moving shadow, but I could hear the rapid rhythm of her breathing. "You said to stay close," she said.
"I did."
"You neglected to mention you planned to walk directly through the middle of everything."
"I assumed that part was obvious."
A blue-white spell raced toward Lily. I caught it and threw it back without breaking stride.
The Death Eater who cast it barely managed to shield. His barrier cracked from the reflected impact.
Sirius fired through the opening. "Confringo!" The curse exploded against the man's chest and hurled him through a fence. Sirius gave me a quick grin. "Ha! Teamwork!"
"Try not to become insufferable."
"Oh please. I passed insufferable years ago… I now prefer indelible."
We crossed the outer edge of the battlefield.
The magical pressure intensified immediately.
Dumbledore and Voldemort's duel altered the air itself. Gravity seemed uncertain. The smoke flowed in conflicting directions. Loose stones rose several inches from the ground before dropping again whenever one of their larger spells collided.
Moody was still dueling Bellatrix.
She laughed as she sent a jagged black curse toward his head.
Moody dropped beneath it and rolled. The spell struck a stone wall, and every block in the structure began screaming with human voices.
He came up firing.
Bellatrix conjured a shield shaped like a grinning skull. Moody's curse struck between its teeth and shattered three of them.
She looked delighted. "Is that all you have?" Bellatrix shouted. "I expected better from Dumbledore's favorite dog!"
"I'm not the one hiding behind a mask and a madman!" Moody shouted back.
Bellatrix's smile widened. "Oh, I never hide." She was right. Her mask hung from her belt. Then she saw Sirius. Everything else ceased to matter to her. Her eyes locked onto him, and recognition transformed her manic delight into something warmer and somehow more disturbing. "Sirius!" she called.
Moody fired while she was distracted.
Bellatrix swatted the curse aside without looking.
She stepped away from him, spreading her arms as though welcoming a beloved relative home from a long journey. "My darling little cousin," Bellatrix said. "Have you finally come to your senses?"
Sirius raised his wand.
Bellatrix's gaze flicked over Lily, Remus, Peter, Marlene, and Alice. Disgust twisted her beautiful face. "Have you finally chosen the proper side of the family?" she asked. "Cast off these Mudbloods and blood traitors, and come stand where you belong."
Sirius stared at her. Then his mouth curled. "You're a crazy bitch, Bella," Sirius said.
Bellatrix threw her head back and cackled. The sound cut through the battle more sharply than any curse. "My poor little cousin," she said, looking at Sirius with delighted contempt. "Still playing at rebellion because Mother denied you enough sweets as a child."
Sirius's jaw tightened.
Bellatrix spread one hand toward the duel raging beyond us. "You have no idea what true power looks like," she continued. "None of you do. Look at him!"
Voldemort slashed his wand through the air.
The earth beneath Dumbledore erupted.
Great spears of black stone punched upward in a closing circle, each covered in glowing red runes. Dumbledore vanished between them an instant before they slammed together. He reappeared twenty feet above the ground, robes snapping around him as though he stood on an invisible platform.
Voldemort was already waiting for that. A skeletal hand the size of a carriage formed from green fire and swatted Dumbledore out of the air.
Dumbledore twisted before impact and transformed the hand into a flock of white moths, but the effort came a fraction too late. The remaining force caught him across the side and hurled him through the remains of a low stone wall.
Bellatrix laughed harder. "Even the mighty Albus Dumbledore cannot match the Dark Lord!" she shouted. "And you think your collection of Mudbloods and schoolyard friends will save you?"
Sirius's wand hand trembled from rage.
My attention was fixed on Dumbledore. He rose from the rubble almost immediately, but not effortlessly. One hand pressed briefly against his ribs before he straightened. His breathing had become visible in the cold air. There was blood on his lower lip, and the sleeve covering his wand arm had darkened near the shoulder.
He was struggling.
That did not mean Bellatrix was right.
The duel remained far from one-sided. Voldemort's robes were torn along one side, and a bleeding line crossed his pale cheek. One of his hands had been burned badly enough that the skin remained red and raw despite whatever healing magic he was attempting between attacks.
But Dumbledore was losing ground.
And part of that was my fault. Only hours earlier, he had followed me beneath Hogwarts, fought a sixty-foot basilisk, transfigured half the Chamber of Secrets, held back tons of stone, and poured enough magic into restraining that creature to exhaust several ordinary wizards.
He had not fully recovered.
Then Voldemort had attacked Hogsmeade.
The old man had gone directly from one impossible battle into another because apparently self-preservation was a skill Hogwarts headmasters taught everyone except themselves.
Dumbledore intercepted a spiraling curse with a disk of golden light. The impact forced him backward several feet, his boots carving trenches through the earth.
Voldemort smiled. For the first time, I considered the possibility that Dumbledore might actually lose.
The thought sent something cold through me.
This Dumbledore was not mine. He had not bound my magic, mutilated my mind, murdered Sirius, stolen my home, or treated me as an inconvenient obstacle in a prophecy.
He had believed me when he had every reason not to. He had allowed me to remain at Hogwarts. He had gone hunting Horcruxes with me. He had stood between me and a basilisk and repeatedly ordered me to remain behind him, as though my safety genuinely mattered. I was not going to watch Voldemort kill him because I had drained half his strength earlier that day.
Bellatrix continued ranting behind me.
I scoffed and started walking.
"Amara?" Lily called.
I ignored her.
The distance between me and the two legendary wizards was littered with shattered stone, burning grass, and the remains of spells that had not entirely stopped existing. A pool of silvery liquid crawled across the ground against gravity. Several black flowers screamed whenever the wind touched them.
I stepped around both.
Bellatrix noticed me leaving. "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" she demanded.
I kept walking.
"DID YOU HEAR ME, BITCH?"
That earned a glance over my shoulder.
Bellatrix's beautiful face had twisted with outrage. Moody had taken advantage of her distraction to move closer, his wand pointed at her spine, but she either had not noticed or did not care.
"My name is Amara Black," I said. "And your Dark Lord is severely overrated."
Silence struck the people nearest us.
Bellatrix's mouth fell open.
Sirius made a strangled sound that might have been laughter.
Then Bellatrix shrieked. "Black?" she shouted. "You dare use my family's name, you filthy—"
Moody attacked.
Bellatrix spun aside, forced to abandon me as a blue curse tore through the space her head had occupied.
I turned away while she screamed obscenities at both of us…
The pressure surrounding Dumbledore and Voldemort thickened with every step.
Magic crawled across my skin. The air smelled of iron, storms, old blood, and something rotten beneath all of it. My nervousness tried to rise. I crushed it.
I gathered every unstable emotion inside me instead. The lingering fury from the Potters, my homesickness, my hunger for Lily, the ache of seeing Sirius alive, the violence singing through my blood, the throbbing heat between my thighs, the humiliation of being thrown out of my own reality by Trigon.
I forced all of it into a single point! Voldemort. The markings on my forearm burned. My wand pulsed in my hand like a second heartbeat.
Dumbledore noticed me first. He had just transformed a swarm of flesh-eating shadows into harmless autumn leaves when his eyes shifted past Voldemort and found me approaching. They widened. "Miss Black," he said. Even during a duel against the most dangerous dark wizard in Britain, he somehow managed to sound like a tired teacher discovering a student in a restricted corridor.
Voldemort followed his gaze.
I stopped several paces from Dumbledore, placing myself slightly to his right rather than directly beside him. Close enough to support. Far enough that Voldemort could not strike us both with one spell.
"You look like you need some help, old man," I said.
Dumbledore's expression moved through alarm, exasperation, and something dangerously close to relief. "This is not an appropriate place for a student."
"Then it's fortunate I'm barely one. I have yet to attend a single class after all…"
Voldemort stared at me. His red eyes moved slowly over my body. There was no lust in the examination. None. That alone was unusual. My succubus nature affected almost everyone to some degree. Attraction did not always become desire, and powerful people could resist it, but I could normally sense the flicker, the involuntary physical response before discipline buried it.
Voldemort had nothing to bury. My demonic senses reached toward him instinctively and found absence.
At some point during his pursuit of immortality, the idiot had discarded his cock entirely. The mutilation carried the residue of ritual magic, deliberate and permanent. He had traded part of his own body to strengthen something else, perhaps his magical core, perhaps the stability of his transformed form, perhaps merely to sever another supposed human weakness.
What a miserable existence…
No nose.
No hair.
No cock.
And he called that immortality…
Voldemort's gaze returned to my face. Another man might have looked at me with desire. He looked at me as if evaluating an unusual potion ingredient. "The Mudblood whores grow more arrogant with every generation," he said.
I fired the Killing Curse. "Avada Kedavra!" Green light exploded from my wand.
Voldemort's red eyes widened. He ducked. Actually ducked. The curse passed over his head and struck the remains of a burning tree behind him. The trunk split with a thunderous crack and collapsed in a shower of embers.
For one beautiful instant, Lord Voldemort was crouched in the mud with surprise on his noseless face.
I smiled.
He rose very slowly. Then he turned his head toward Dumbledore. "You teach your students the KILLING CURSE now?" he asked.
Dumbledore sighed. It was a remarkably weary sound for a man standing between two people who had just attempted murder. "I have never had the privilege of teaching Amara Black anything she knows," he said.
"...Privilege?" I repeated.
"I was being diplomatic." His eyes remained on Voldemort. "But, of course it would have been my privilege to have taught you…"
Voldemort's attention snapped back to me. This time, recognition entered his expression. His face tightened. "Amara Black..." There it was. "Severus told me about you," he said.
I raised one eyebrow. "The greasy stalker talks about me? How flattering."
Voldemort ignored that. "You appeared inside Hogwarts without history, without family, and without explanation. Within two days, objects hidden for decades were disturbed by you!" His voice lost its theatrical smoothness. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY HORCRUXES?"
Dumbledore went very still beside me. Voldemort realized what he had said a heartbeat too late.
I grinned. "They're in a better place." My stomach, specifically. The memory of those soul fragments tearing apart between my teeth sent a warm shiver through me. Voldemort must have seen something in my expression, because his face shifted from anger to the first edge of genuine unease.
"How?" he asked. "How did you destroy them! THEY ARE INDESTRUCTIBLE!"
"That would spoil the mystery."
His magic surged. Every loose object within twenty feet lifted from the ground. Stones. Broken wands. Burning branches. Fragments of glass. A dead Death Eater's mask. They began orbiting him in a violent ring. "Tell me!" Voldemort said with a scowl. The debris launched toward me.
I raised my wand. "Reducto." The curse left my wand as a broad wave instead of a single bolt. Everything in its path shattered simultaneously. Stone became dust. Glass turned to glittering powder. The mask burst into silver splinters.
Voldemort's second attack came through the debris. A narrow ribbon of darkness whipped toward my throat.
Dumbledore flicked his wand. The ribbon transformed into a chain of red silk an inch from my skin. It wrapped harmlessly around my shoulders before falling to the ground.
"Thank you," I said.
"You are most welcome," Dumbledore replied. "Please consider retreating."
"No."
He sighed again. "I expected that answer…"
Voldemort attacked again. This curse made no visible light. I sensed it only as a wrongness moving through the air.
I shifted sideways.
The earth where I had stood rotted instantly. Grass blackened. Soil collapsed inward. Small bones surfaced from beneath the ground and crumbled into grey powder.
I answered with fire.
Black flames erupted from my wand in the shape of a massive serpent. It opened its jaws and lunged.
Voldemort drew a circle in the air, conjuring a shield of translucent red crystal. My serpent struck it hard enough to fracture the entire surface.
Dumbledore attacked the fracture. A lance of white fire punched through the shield.
Voldemort vanished before it reached him.
"Behind you," Dumbledore called out to me.
I dropped. A silver curse passed over my head. I rolled across one shoulder, came up on one knee, and fired three Cutting Curses without looking.
Voldemort blocked two. The third sliced through his robes near the hip and drew a thin line of blood. His eyes flared. "You dare harm Lord Voldemort!?"
I couldn't help smirking and then licking my lips slowly. "I've done considerably worse to pieces of your soul."
He thrust his wand toward me. The pressure struck like an invisible mountain.
My shield appeared just before impact.
Black-silver light curved around my body. The spell hit, and the entire world seemed to punch forward. My boots tore through the ground. I slid backward ten feet, then twenty, magic screaming against magic.
My shield began to crack.
Dumbledore sent a twisting blue curse over my shoulder.
Voldemort broke his attack to defend.
The pressure vanished. I inhaled sharply. He was stronger than his earlier spellwork had suggested. Not in total magical reserves, my core remained larger. But Voldemort compressed his power with terrifying efficiency. Almost none of it escaped unused. He struck with exactly as much strength as each spell required and reinforced it with techniques I could not yet identify.
Morgana would have adored dissecting his casting style. After insulting it for several hours first.
Voldemort transformed Dumbledore's blue curse into a wave of black water and sent it back toward us.
Dumbledore raised both hands. The water split around him.
I stepped through the opening and thrust my wand forward. "Corruptio Viscera!"
Voldemort's shield snapped into place. The curse struck and spread across it like diseased veins. The translucent barrier swelled in ugly lumps, its structure turning against itself. His eyes narrowed. He dismissed the shield before it could explode and Apparated sideways.
Dumbledore anticipated him. The instant Voldemort reappeared, the ground rose around his legs and hardened into polished iron.
I fired at his chest!
He bent backward with impossible speed, my curse passing close enough to scorch the fabric over his ribs. Then his body dissolved into black smoke and tore free of the iron restraint.
The smoke rushed toward me. A pale hand emerged from it, fingers tipped with unnaturally long nails.
I became intangible.
Voldemort's hand passed through my chest. His red eyes widened again as he rematerialized inches from me.
I smiled into his face. "Boo." I drove my knee toward where his cock should have been. My leg struck nothing useful beneath the robes.
Right. Ritual mutilation. I adjusted halfway through and slammed my knee into his lower abdomen instead.
The impact folded him slightly. I seized the front of his robes with one hand and unleashed raw fire through the other.
Voldemort blasted me away before the flames could consume him.
I flew backward.
Dumbledore transfigured the ground beneath me into a mound of deep snow. I landed in it hard enough to disappear up to my shoulders but avoided breaking anything. "Still think I should retreat?" I called.
"Yes," Dumbledore said. He sounded almost offended that I needed to ask. "The Dark Lord is my mistake to deal with…"
Voldemort emerged from the smoke with half the front of his robes burning. He extinguished the flames with a gesture. His face no longer held arrogance. Now he looked furious.
Good. Angry opponents became predictable. Unless they were Morgana. Then they became creative.
Voldemort raised his wand overhead. The sky darkened. Clouds spun above us, circling the Dark Mark. Green lightning crawled through them. Every hair on my body lifted as the spell gathered.
Dumbledore moved closer. "Whatever he casts," he said quietly, "do not attempt to catch it."
"That ruins half my strategy."
"I am entirely serious."
"So am I."
The first bolt fell.
It struck the ground between us and exploded into a forest of skeletal arms. Hundreds of dead hands clawed upward, grasping for our legs.
I burned them.
Dumbledore transfigured the flames into silver wolves.
The wolves raced through the field, tearing apart the remaining hands before leaping toward Voldemort.
He answered with lightning.
Three wolves disintegrated. The fourth reached him and sank its teeth into his wand arm.
Voldemort hissed.
I struck. A spear of concentrated black fire left my wand with enough force to split the air.
He tore free of the wolf and twisted aside. The spear grazed his shoulder. Flesh vanished and Voldemort staggered, one hand clamping over the smoking wound.
Dumbledore's next spell struck him squarely in the chest. A ring of golden light expanded around Voldemort and snapped shut, binding his arms to his sides.
"Now, Amara!" Dumbledore shouted.
I did not waste the opening. Every violent, desperate, lust-soaked emotion inside me poured down my arm. My wand screamed with pleasure."Burn." Black fire erupted across the field.
The golden bands Dumbledore had wrapped around him shattered as Voldemort forced both arms apart. He drove his wand into the air and conjured a shield unlike anything I had ever seen. It was a layered sphere of translucent bone, blood-red crystal, and rotating black runes.
My fire struck it. The field disappeared behind darkness.
The impact punched the breath from my lungs. Cracks raced through the ground beneath my boots, spreading outward in jagged lines. Dumbledore's robes snapped violently in the magical wind, and he raised one arm across his face as black sparks ripped past us.
Voldemort's shield screamed. Not metaphorically. Human voices shrieked from inside its rotating layers while my flames chewed through them one after another. Bone blackened. Crystal softened. Runes burst apart in showers of crimson light.
For a moment, the shield held. Then the outer layer collapsed.
Voldemort roared and poured more magic into it. The remaining barriers expanded, pushing back against my fire with enough force to bend the inferno around his body.
The wall split. Half surged past him on either side, setting the far field ablaze. The rest curled upward and dissolved into the churning sky.
Voldemort remained standing.
Barely.
The left side of his robes had burned away from shoulder to hip. The pale flesh beneath was blackened and blistered, and smoke rose from the ruined edge of his shoulder where my earlier spear had struck him. One side of his face had reddened beneath the heat, lending the noseless bastard the unsettling appearance of meat left too long over a flame.
His breathing came harshly now.
Mine did too.
The spell had consumed more magic than I expected, though my core still felt deeper than either his or Dumbledore's. Power churned inside me, enormous and hungry, but forcing that much of it through a single attack made my pathways burn pleasantly beneath my skin.
Voldemort straightened but his expression held pure murder. He looked less like an immortal Dark Lord and more like a corpse that had crawled out of a crematorium before the job was finished. But he was alive. His red eyes burned with hatred. "That," he said, his voice roughened by smoke, "was a mistake."
I rolled my wand between my fingers. "It seemed reasonably successful from here."
Voldemort raised his wand.
Dumbledore shifted beside me, his own wand coming up at once.
"You—" An enraged screech tore through the battlefield behind me. "HOW DARE YOU!" It was Bellatrix. I heard the hatred in her voice before I turned. "HOW DARE YOU HUMILIATE THE DARK LORD, YOU FALSE BLACK!" She had broken away from Moody. Her hair flew around her face in a wild black halo, and blood streaked one cheek. Her beautiful features had twisted into something feral as she pointed her wand directly at my back.
She was far away. Far enough that even a Killing Curse would take time to reach me. I could dodge it without effort.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Green light erupted from her wand.
I watched it come. There was almost something insulting about the attack. The curse carved through the smoke in a perfectly straight line, bright enough to paint the ground beneath it green. I had several heartbeats to move.
Then someone shouted behind me. "AMARA, NO!"
It was Sirius.
I turned my head. He was running toward me!
Everything slowed.
He had not understood. He did not know I had already seen the curse. He did not know it was too slow to touch me. He only saw death flying at my back.
"Sirius, don't—"
He dove. His body crossed between me and Bellatrix's curse.
Green light struck him squarely in the chest.
The world went silent.
The Killing Curse entered him with a soft crack of magic, and Sirius's body simply stopped being alive. His momentum carried him forward another few feet. He hit the ground shoulder-first, rolled once, and collapsed on his back in the scorched grass.
Behind him, his friends screamed.
Lily's voice tore through the night.
Remus shouted Sirius's name.
Peter made a sound like something inside him had broken. Marlene and Alice were yelling too, but their words blurred into meaningless noise.
Bellatrix stared. Then her mouth twisted with irritation. "What a waste," she said. "I didn't intend to spill true Black blood."
Something inside me shattered. I was beside Sirius before I understood that I had moved. One instant, I stood near Dumbledore beneath the pressure of Voldemort's magic. The next, I was on my knees in the burned grass with Sirius's head cradled in my hands.
Perhaps I had used Shadow Travel. Perhaps I had crossed the distance physically. Perhaps the world itself had moved me because I refused to accept where I had been.
I did not know. I did not care. "SIRIUS!"
His eyes were open. They stared past me at nothing. His face had gone slack except for the faintest curve still resting at one corner of his mouth. A cocky smile. The stupid bastard had died believing he had saved me, and he had looked pleased about it.
Tears blurred my vision. "You absolute fucking moron," I whispered. My hands shook against his face. "That curse was nowhere near me!" I didn't even know if it would affect me, anyways! I was chosen by Didi after all!
He did not answer. Of course he did not answer. He was dead.
Again. Not my Sirius. Not the haunted man who had found me in an orphanage and given me his name. Not the father who had chosen me when everyone else discarded me.
But close enough.
The same face. The same reckless instinct to throw himself between me and death without considering what losing him would do to me.
For one unbearable moment, Grimmauld Place replaced the battlefield. I heard Dumbledore's calm voice telling me Sirius was gone. I saw James Potter standing in my home and claiming Sirius's grief belonged to him. I felt the red flash of his curse and the freezing rain soaking me in the alley where they had dumped me like rubbish.
Not again! The thought rose from somewhere deeper than magic. It became a certainty. "No!" I declared, as if to the world itself. The dead did not answer. I tightened my grip on Sirius's face. "No. You don't get to do this to me."
Something stirred beneath my skin. The Resurrection Stone no longer existed as an object. Didi had dissolved it into my body and soul, transforming death from a locked door into a threshold I could touch. I had heard the dead when the Stone entered me. Countless voices across existence. Didi had silenced them before they destroyed my mind, but the path remained.
I could feel it now. Death clung to Sirius like winter. The Killing Curse had not merely stopped his heart. It had severed the connection between body and soul with brutal finality. His soul hovered at the threshold, already beginning to slip somewhere beyond my reach.
I barely knew what I was doing. I only knew his name. Sirius Black. And I refused to let him go.
I bent over him and crushed my lips against his!
Someone gasped behind me. It might have been Lily.
I ignored them all. My instincts took over. The instincts of the Death-Touched Queen Didi had made me. I inhaled through the kiss. A cold flooded my mouth. The remnants of Bellatrix's curse rose from Sirius's body as threads of poisonous green-black magic. They fought me, clinging to his flesh and the space where his soul had been anchored.
I sucked harder.
The death magic tore free. Frost spread across my teeth. The curse tasted like emptiness, like a door slamming shut in a lightless room.
I pulled it into myself anyway. My evolved magic devoured it. The Killing Curse unraveled across my tongue and disappeared down my throat.
Then I reached farther past his body. I found something warm moving away. Sirius Orion Black. The name rang through me like a bell. I seized the connection and pulled.
Pain exploded behind my eyes. For an instant, I stood somewhere that was not the battlefield.
A shore beneath a starless sky. Black water stretched forever in both directions. A tall, laughing shape stood knee-deep in the tide with his back to me.
I caught his hand. Not yet!
The world snapped back!
Sirius jerked beneath me. Air tore into his lungs. His eyes flew wide. Life slammed into his body so violently that his back arched off the ground. His hands seized my waist on instinct while our mouths remained pressed together.
For half a heartbeat, he froze. Then he realized I was kissing him. And Sirius Black, recently murdered and apparently incapable of treating any situation with appropriate seriousness, the absolute bastard kissed me back.
Warmth replaced the deathly cold of his lips. His lips moved against mine. His tongue swept across my lower lip before sliding into my mouth, warm and unmistakably alive. The sudden sensation shattered what remained of my concentration.
He pulled me closer with surprising strength for someone who had been a corpse a second earlier, licking into my mouth as though resurrection was simply another opportunity to flirt.
A startled moan escaped me.
My entire body reacted.
The battle, the killing, the fear, the magic, and my already agonized succubus libido all crashed together. Heat surged through my belly. My nipples tightened beneath my robes. My pussy gave a needy throb that made me hate every decision that had led me here.
My fingers tightened in his hair.
His magic surged beneath my hands, bright and living and real.
Sirius kissed me as though resurrection by beautiful women was a perfectly ordinary part of his evening.
I pulled away before my succubus instincts could turn saving his life into something much less appropriate for the middle of a battlefield.
Both of us were breathing hard.
His grey eyes had regained their shine. A cocky smile slowly spread across his lips. "What happened?" Sirius asked.
I hit him hard enough that my palm cracked sharply against his shoulder.
"OW!"
"You died, you brave fucking dumbass!"
His smile faltered. "I—what?"
"You threw yourself in front of a Killing Curse!"
Sirius looked down at his chest. "I thought it was going to hit you," he said.
"It was coming from half the village away! I could have avoided it while drunk, blindfolded, and balancing a teacup on my head!"
"I didn't exactly have time to calculate the angle!"
"So you decided to die?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time!"
"IT WAS NOT!"
"I'm beginning to gather that."
Lily reached us first. She fell to her knees beside Sirius and seized his face between both hands. "You were dead…" she whispered. Her green eyes were enormous.
Sirius blinked at her. "I'm feeling much better now…?"
Lily struck his other shoulder. "You ass!"
"OW! WHY IS EVERYONE HITTING ME ALL OF A SUDDEN?"
Remus, Peter, Marlene, and Alice crowded around us. Peter looked as if he might either cry or vomit. Remus touched Sirius's arm with visible disbelief.
"You were dead," Remus said.
"Yes, Lily mentioned that part just now."
"No," Peter said, his voice shaking. "You were actually dead. Your eyes—there was nothing—"
Sirius's humor weakened. He looked at me. "What did you do?"
"I brought you back."
Silence spread through the group.
Behind us, Bellatrix began laughing. It did not sound amused. It sounded unsteady. "No," she said. She stared at Sirius as though he had risen from the grave in front of her. Which, to be fair, he had. "That's impossible," Bellatrix said. Her wand hung forgotten at her side. "No one survives the Killing Curse. No one can undo it!" she shrieked. "No one! The Dark Lord said—"
Dumbledore stood several paces away. He was staring at me with an expression I did not know how to process. There was shock in it. Alarm. A thousand questions he desperately wanted answered. But beneath all of that was pride. Genuine pride. Pride in me.
The expression made something twist painfully beneath my ribs. I looked away before it could mean anything.
Voldemort had not moved. He stood amid the scorched remains of my last attack, burned and bleeding, staring at Sirius with pure disbelief. Then his gaze shifted to me. Not my face, but to the silver-and-green locket Lily had given me rested against my chest. Voldemort's red eyes narrowed. "You brought him back from DEATH itself! What artifact do you possess!?" he demanded.
I glanced down. Snape had assumed the locket was protecting me from poison. Voldemort had now watched me reverse the Killing Curse while wearing it. His mind had connected the wrong points and produced the most convenient conclusion.
"I want it!" Voldemort declared.
Lily made a sound of pure outrage. "That is not yours!" Her wand snapped toward him. Then she realized she was pointing her wand at the Dark Lord and she squeaked adorably!
Sirius glanced between Lily and the locket. "You gave her jewelry? What's inside the locket?"
"This is not the time!"
"It feels relevant…"
Voldemort ignored both of them. His attention remained fixed on my chest. "You will surrender the artifact," he said. "Now!"
Something inside me went silent. The battlefield disappeared from my mind. Sirius's death was still in my hands. I could feel the fading cold of his skin against my palms. I could taste Bellatrix's curse lingering on my tongue. Voldemort had attacked Hogsmeade because I had destroyed his soul fragments. His follower had murdered Sirius while trying to reach me. And now he stood there demanding Lily's gift as if everything in the world existed for him to claim.
My rage had been building. Every fragment compressed into one perfect point. My soul-bound wand became unbearably hot. Black fire raced along the markings of my forearm and poured into the wood. The wand began vibrating so violently that the air around it screamed.
Dumbledore sensed what was happening. "EVERYONE DOWN!" he shouted.
I stood.
Voldemort raised his wand.
Too late.
"Go fuck yourself." I thrust mine toward him. I compressed everything. All that power. All that fury. All my fear of losing Sirius again. The black flames that emerged from my wand's tip collapsed into a beam no wider than my wrist. A beam of flames darker than pure hellfire and death.
The beam struck Voldemort's very hastily conjured protego shield. His trump card shield had already been used up earlier. It did nothing. His protego immediately failed.
Voldemort tried to move.
The fire struck his chest. It passed straight through him. A black-edged hole opened where his heart should have been. The flesh surrounding it burned white, then red, then collapsed into smoking ash.
I could see the ruined field through his body.
Voldemort staggered. His wand slipped in his fingers. Shock consumed his face. "This…" he gasped. Black smoke spilled from his mouth. "This isn't fucking over," Voldemort rasped.
I took one step toward him. "It will be." I said coldly.
"My Lord!" Bellatrix vanished with a crack. She reappeared beside him and caught his body before he collapsed. Her arms wrapped around his waist, heedless of the fire still consuming the edges of the wound. "No," she babbled. "No, no, no. My Lord, stay with me. I have you!"
Voldemort tried to raise his wand toward me. His arm failed.
Bellatrix glared across the battlefield. Whatever confusion Sirius's resurrection had caused was gone. Her expression contained nothing but hatred now. "I'll tear out your heart," she hissed. "I'll make you beg for death, you false Black whore!"
I smiled. "Take a number."
Bellatrix snarled and then she seized a black metal object fastened at her hip. It was an emergency portkey, I realized.
Dumbledore recognized it at the same moment. His wand rose. "Stop them!" Golden light shot across the field.
Bellatrix activated the portkey. Space twisted around them.
Dumbledore's spell passed through the distortion an instant too late, tearing apart the ground where they had stood.
Voldemort and Bellatrix vanished in a violent swirl of black and red.
The pressure blanketing Hogsmeade broke.
For several seconds, no one moved. The remaining Death Eaters stared at the empty space. Their Dark Lord had fled. Their leader had abandoned them.
For half a second, none of them moved. Then panic spread through their ranks. Some Disapparated immediately. Others reached for portkeys or began running toward the surrounding woods. The disciplined formation shattered into fleeing individuals.
Moody recovered first. "Take them alive if you can!" he roared at the Aurors. "Dead if you can't!"
Spellfire erupted across the field again.
I barely noticed.
My wand remained aimed at the crater where Voldemort had disappeared. Black fire crawled along its length and across my knuckles.
He had escaped. But I had hurt him. More than hurt him. I had burned a hole through his heart. That would not kill him while his Horcruxes remained, but it would cost him. Healing such damage would take time, magic, sacrifices, or all three.
The Dark Mark continued glowing above us. Its serpent writhed weakly. Then the entire image flickered and began dissolving into strands of sickly green mist.
Behind me, Sirius laughed weakly at something Peter said.
The sound pulled me back. I turned. He was sitting upright now, surrounded by Lily and the others. His hair was a mess. His robes were scorched where the Killing Curse had struck, leaving a circular burn directly over his heart. But he was alive.
Sirius caught me looking. His lips curved into that same cocky smile he had worn while dead. Then he touched two fingers to his mouth.
I felt my face grow hot.
The bastard winked.
I pointed my wand at him. "Do that again," I warned, "and I'll return you to the condition I found you in."
Sirius's grin widened. "Worth it."
Lily slapped the back of his head.
XXX