Sullivan and Snape both felt a chill crawl up their spines as they stared at the two-meter-tall abomination. The thing was covered head to toe in thick, dripping black slime. Was this really what was left of a Slytherin?
"ROAR!" The monster bellowed and charged straight at them.
Snape reacted instantly, flicking his wand. "Incendio!" A roaring wall of flames shot from the tip and swallowed the creature whole.
Sullivan didn't waste a second. "Reducto!" He hurled a Blasting Curse right into the heart of the fire. The explosion ripped outward like a bomb going off. Thick black smoke billowed everywhere, and half the marble columns inside the temple cracked and toppled.
The whole building was coming down. Sullivan, Snape, and Teemo bolted out just in time.
The massive burst of magic had already drawn every eye in town. Just like yesterday, the smiling villagers' faces twisted in grotesque ways as they mutated into Inferi, surging toward the three of them from every direction.
"Teemo!" Sullivan shouted.
The little house-elf was already locked and loaded. The second any Inferi got within fifty meters, he would start pulsing the Magical Disruptor. He just had to make sure the timing didn't overlap with Sullivan's or Snape's spells, or he'd accidentally cut off their magic mid-cast.
Sullivan and Snape kept their eyes glued to the collapsing temple. The marble dome had already caved in. They couldn't tell how badly the monster or the Hopping Pot had been hurt inside the rubble.
BOOM!
The mutated horror burst out of the wreckage. Its body was scorched black from the flames, and a deep dent marked its chest where the Blasting Curse had landed. But it wasn't slowing down. In each of its massive hands it held one of the temple nuns—still in their white robes.
Sullivan blinked. "Is this thing seriously playing knight in shining armor?"
Before he could finish the thought, the monster's head split open down the middle like a gaping mouth and swallowed both Inferi whole.
The second the bodies disappeared into it, the creature's wounds began knitting back together at a visible speed. By the time it finished, it looked even bigger and stronger than before.
Sullivan and Snape exchanged a horrified glance. At the same moment the Hopping Pot leaped out of the ruins, laughing like a lunatic. "Hahahaha! See? That's right—he can devour the Inferi to make himself stronger!"
"Bet he never imagined that after he died, the very Inferi he created would become his own power source."
The monster charged again. Sullivan snapped his wand up. "Levicorpus!"
A powerful magical tether yanked the creature's legs out from under it and hoisted the whole thing upside-down into the air.
Snape shot Sullivan a quick, amused look. Back in their school days, Sullivan's dueling style had been pretty basic, and Levicorpus was the spell he'd relied on most when fighting the Marauders. It was practically their old signature combo.
If they'd been facing James Potter right now, Snape probably would've followed up with a Bat-Bogey Hex or a Teeth-Expanding Jinx just for old times' sake.
But this thing wasn't Potter. Time to turn up the heat. "Sectumsempra!"
A vicious cutting sound sliced through the air—sharper and louder than the one Sullivan had used on the troll earlier.
The invisible blade carved a long gash across the monster's throat, but the wound was shallow. Not nearly deep enough.
Snape was already winding up for another Sectumsempra barrage, hoping to saw the creature's head clean off with repeated high-frequency cuts, just like Sullivan had done before.
The monster had other ideas. Its upside-down arms suddenly stretched and reshaped into legs, while its original legs twisted into arms. Its head retracted into its torso and popped out from between its new "legs."
"What the—?!" Sullivan couldn't stop himself. "It can do that?!"
The creature now had leverage. It flexed every muscle and ripped free of the Levicorpus charm with a violent twist.
Snape didn't hesitate. He went straight for the strongest, most familiar dark magic he had. "Fiendfyre!"
A roaring blue serpent made of cursed flame exploded from his wand and streaked toward the monster.
Most kids at Hogwarts could technically cast Fiendfyre, but most of them also died to it because the stuff was almost impossible to control. It wasn't really fire—it was a living curse that wanted to devour everything.
Snape's version was precise. The serpent flew straight at the target.
The monster clearly knew how dangerous Fiendfyre was. It ripped its own arm clean off at the shoulder and hurled the limb like a javelin. The blue serpent coiled around the severed arm, swallowed it whole, and left nothing but a dying patch of blue flame on the ground.
"Snape, if it's getting this bad, just let it loose," Sullivan suggested. "Full power—let the flames eat everything."
"No," Snape snapped. "Uncontrolled Fiendfyre will destabilize the whole pocket dimension. We might never get out."
While they argued, the Inferi had closed to within fifty meters. Teemo yelled, "Firing!"
He squeezed the trigger. A spherical wave of magical disruption burst outward from him, expanding a full hundred meters in every direction.
Every Inferi in range froze mid-step, eyes blank, stuck in a temporary system crash.
The mutated monster, however, wasn't affected at all. It leaped into the nearest cluster of frozen Inferi, gulped down three of them in quick succession, and came up even stronger than before.
The fight settled into a brutal rhythm. Teemo fired the Disruptor every seven or eight seconds exactly as Sullivan had ordered, keeping the Inferi locked down.
But no matter what Sullivan and Snape threw at the monster—Blasting Curses, Sectumsempra, Reducto—nothing stuck. The second the creature took damage, it simply devoured more Inferi and healed stronger than ever.
They tried targeting the Hopping Pot directly a few times, but the damn thing was basically magic-proof. Most spells either glanced off or did nothing at all.
More and more Inferi were pouring in. Sullivan and Snape were burning through their magical stamina fast. They needed a way to end this—now.
Sullivan's eyes locked onto the Hopping Pot. The real target had always been the cauldron itself. He remembered how he'd handled the troll last time. If magic wasn't working…
Maybe it was time for something a little more old-school.
Still dueling with one hand, Sullivan reached into his undetectable extension bag with the other and started rummaging. His fingers closed around exactly what he needed—an old prototype from his early alchemy days. It looked a lot like a block of C4 and worked pretty much the same way.
Back then his thinking had been simple: My magic might suck, but if you push me far enough, I'll take you with me.
Luckily, no wizard had ever forced him to use it.
Looked like today the Hopping Pot was going to be the lucky winner.