November 5, 1981
7:00 AM
There was a reason that Mandy Brocklehurst, time-traveller extraordinaire, was afraid of going to sleep. She had nightmares, and the nightmares weren't limited to any one specific things. Many scenes from the Second Wizarding War gave her nightmares…
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Antonin Dolohov gave a swipe with his wand while shouting something - an incantation, probably, and purple flame emerged from his wand and hit Mandy's father, directly in the chest. He screamed and fell to the ground; being a Muggle, he had no way of defending himself from Dolohov's spells. The Death Eaters laughed uproariously.
Only the fact that Mandy was in the next room, under a Disillusionment Charm, saved her life as the Death Eater seemed not to know she was there.
Dolohov did nothing else and with a twist Apparated out, as did the other Death Eaters.
She reversed the Disillusionment Charm and ran to her father's side, but Dolohov's spell - whatever the fuck it was - was a lethal one, and he was already dying.
She tried to check for a pulse - some sign, any sign that he could still be alive, and she felt it, for sure, but it was getting fainter, and fainter, and fainter…
The pulse was no longer there. Mandy screamed up at the heavens, uncaring of who could hear and uncaring that Death Eaters might hear and come off to finish the remainder of the family.
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"You'll let me escape, Potter," Bellatrix Lestrange said with a demented grin, her wand to Ernie Macmillan's throat.
Anger and rage burned in the Ravenclaw. Bellatrix had murdered so many people -
so many people - and they had almost backed her into a corner and then, Bellatrix was correct, wasn't she? She would wriggle out of this one. They couldn't do anything about the innocent hostage she had. Nailing Bellatrix now would only get Ernie killed.
(At this point of the war, Mandy and many others in the Resistance still valued innocent lives. Ernie hadn't done any harm to anybody in his life, so…)
(Mandy hoped she still valued innocent lives, but she honestly wasn't sure anymore.)
Harry's face was unreadable. Slowly, Mandy, Astoria Greengrass, Neville Longbottom, Viktor Krum, and Miles Bletchley watched as Harry Potter's face turned to a mask of pure hatred.
But no one, not even Bellatrix, could have predicted what could have happened next.
"I never liked Macmillan, anyway," Potter said, before pointing his wand at Ernie and calmly saying, "Avada Kedavra."
Even Bellatrix was stunned. "What - but - but - this isn't how people like you are supposed to -"
"You don't know me," Potter said in a tone of dark amusement, and with a start Mandy realized it was true for the rest of the Resistance as well. They no longer knew Harry Potter, this murderer who no longer valued the lives of innocent people. When did he turn into… this?
"Tragic you're still holding the useless dead weight," Potter continued, (shocking many with the vitriol towards a man who had been completely loyal to him) "but I'll have to make do anyways. Pryrus Impactus!"
Bellatrix's eyes were wide, still stunned that Harry Potter - someone she thought subscribed to those "dumb ideals of the do-gooders" had simply murdered the hostage without a second thought. The spell - a combination of a Bludgeoning Curse and an Incendio Curse - lanced through Ernie's corpse and Bellatrix's hasty shield and hit her right in the chest, throwing her nine feet backwards through a hole in the wall. A slight POP of Apparition told them that Bellatrix still had enough magical energy left to escape alive.
Potter turned around, to face the angry visage of Viktor Krum. "Vot the hell was that, Potter?" he practically screamed. "Since vhen do we deal with hostage situations by - by - just murdering the -"
Potter only stared coolly back at Krum, and something in Harry Potter's eyes must have made the former Triwizard champion very, very, afraid, for he stepped back and said nothing more.
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"Avada Kedavra!" twenty voices screamed. Voldemort, in the center of the circle, was taken utterly by surprise. He had very, very strong magical prowess, so even caught off-guard he managed to raise a tremendous shield of marble, enough to take seventeen of the Killing Curses.
But blocking seventeen out of twenty Avada Kedavras isn't enough. The three remaining Killing Curses smashed into him full-force. Voldemort screamed in equal parts outrage, horror, pain, and fear as he was hit by the Killing Curses and fell to the ground… but there was no THUNK.
Instead, a wraith-looking… thing of some sort emerged from the AK'ed Voldemort and shouted at the twenty, "You will all pay for this, you stupid fools. I am immortal, and no one defies the Dark Lord Voldemort and lives!" before the wraith fled.
"What the fuck?!" screamed Miles Bletchley. "What the fuck. He was hit with the Avada Kedavra! He was hit with three of them! How the fuck is he not dead? How the fuck are we going to kill him if he's one hundred percent fucking immortal! This doesn't make sense!"
"Maybe it was his ghost trying to spook us one last time," suggested Astoria Greengrass. "But that doesn't seem terribly likely either. But Potter hit him with the AK three years back and the exact same thing happened… the body just disintegrated and a wraith-like thing emerged… why does he turn into a wraith instead of dying? He always does this, he turns into a wraith instead of dying when hit by spells as deadly as the AK. The AK can kill a fucking chimera, why doesn't it kill him? And his deranged followers are always able to resurrect him after he turns into a wraith… Hell, there's a precedent for this. He didn't die back in '81 when the backfired Killing Curse hit him, he didn't die when Potter hit him with the Avada Kedavra three years back, and he didn't die just now when three Killing Curses hit him. Why won't he die? Why won't he die?" she sounded absolutely terrified.
Mandy sank to the ground. Were they completely out of their depth here? How could they possibly hope to win against a man who could not, possibly, ever, under any circumstances, die?
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With a gasp, Mandy woke up. She hated those nightmares, but she had them every night,
She'd managed to Confund the barman, Tom, into letting her have a safe place to stay; Merlin knows she needed it. Also, she'd had to Confund him into not recognizing that she bore a suspicious resemblance to the witch who had helped fight off Voldemort at Godric's Hollow; she needed to stay under the radar.
She reached for the tray of food on the table and for the morning's Daily Prophet. Hmm…. apparently Lucius Malfoy was in a Ministry holding cell for "unknown reasons." Well… she supposed Dumbledore could not exactly let it be known that a Death Eater had tried to kill him in his own office… that would just make him look bad, bad PR and all that.
Well, at least Lucius was imprisoned, although she fully expected him to bribe his way out of it and all that. Too bad she couldn't just break into the Ministry holding cell and assassinate Malfoy; she didn't even know where he was being kept.
Who could she stake out next? Dolohov was absurdly powerful and she needed to be really careful with him. She owed Dolohov for murdering her father, but if she got too angry and made too many mistakes, she could find herself joining him. Perhaps a target in which she was less emotionally invested…? The Carrows? They would always be together and she didn't really fancy taking two ferociously dangerous Death Eaters at once. Rowle was already dead, Snape was already dead, Travers was already dead, Rookwood was insensate and not even compos mentis so he wasn't a problem.
Hmmm… who next? Nott, Goyle, Jugson?
She had no idea her question was about to be answered for her.
Next chapter: Attack on Diagon Alley by Death Eaters. (Their master may have to lay low, but the Death Eaters sure as hell don't.)
Author's Note: Dolohov's spell killed Mandy's father in this story, while not killing Hermione Granger in canon, because in canon he did not speak the incantation. In this story, he did speak the incantation and that made the spell more potent and lethal.
Author's Note (2): In case this wasn't made clear earlier, the Resistance had absolutely no idea that Voldemort's Horcruxes even existed (because Dumbledore is a douche and doesn't disclose vitally important secrets). Thus they really do have no idea why he keeps coming back from the dead.
Author's Note (3): sorry for the lack of updates in such a long time; I haven't had free time for a while. Hopefully I learn better time management.
Author's Note (4): This chapter is also partially written to showcase how damaged our time-traveller is from fighting in a war. War is not glorious. It is not a case of 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.' It is absolute, unmitigated hell.
Author's Note (5): Apparently the option for line breaks no longer exists on and I'm no good with editing source codes.
Author's Note (6): "Pryrus Impactus" is a spell stolen from jbern's "To Fight the Coming Darkness."
Author note 7: Sorry, I had to reupload this chapter because some of the formatting - like what was italicized and what was not - was all wrong when I tried to upload the chapter.
