I ran. I ran as fast as I could, wishing I had a gun, a knife, something that would make me less of a liability right now.
For the last six weeks I'd been stuck in this underground hellhole, trapped by those bastards in grey cloaks. It took me the first two weeks to really wrap my brain around the fact that I really was in the British Ministry of Magic, being held by the Unspeakables in their Department of Mysteries, and that the year really was 1995 and not 2018.
And, as a bonus, it seemed that magic had no direct affect on me.
To be clear, it just meant that something like a Stupefy or Legilimency, things that directly affected the target, would just not work. Something like Aguamenti or Incendio, which conjured something, would still affect me. It was even possible I'd tank an Avada Kedavra or Crucio, but fortunately that hadn't been put to the test and I really didn't want to find out.
But let me back things up a second and go back to where I had apparently not only been tossed twenty three years back in time but also into a universe that previously had only existed as a book and movie franchise.
And more to the point how I was running around, trying not to get hit in the firefight between Harry Potter and the rest of the Ministry Six and the Death Eaters. Completely unarmed, and though I had taken a few hits for some of the kids, I really didn't want to try and get too close to any of the Death Eaters. For one, my hand-to-hand training during my Army days was better than a decade behind me, and for a second thing I didn't want to find out the hard way that in this reality Bellatrix Lestrange was also a kung-fu master or habitually carried a knife or something equally unpleasant.
And so I was forced to duck into yet another room in the DoM, this one holding a set of massive shelves that held a truly impressive collection of junk. And I don't mean "junk" as in "trash" or "scrap," I mean junk as in "a lot of randomly collected items." I desperately scanned the shelves for something, anything that might be useful. And that right there was the moment when I won the Second Wizarding War.
My hand landed on a dirt-covered dull green ring by accident. I hadn't seen it, and when my hand landed a flash of jade green light blasted out from underneath it. I snatched my hand away, recalling the other flashes of green light I'd seen that night, but this was a richer green. The color of life, not the pale green of the Avada Kedavra. The ring glowed from within, lifting off the shelf and as the centuries of dirt fell off it, revealing what was quite possibly the last sigil I ever expected to see right then. The ring spun faster, then shot at me as I heard a voice calling my name.
Outside the DoM artifact room, the fight raged until a burst of that same jade light blasted the door off its hinges. The spellfire stopped as the Ministry Six, the Death Eaters, and the newly-arrived Order of the Phoenix looked at the door, wondering what happened even as I lifted my voice to take the oath for the first time.
"In brightest day, in blackest night, no Evil shall escape my sight! Let those who worship Evil's might beware my power: GREEN LANTERN'S LIGHT!"