The Dementor floated, or flew, or did whatever it is Dementors do to get around, towards Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, along with 99 of his compatriots. This particular Dementor (for ease of identification, let's call him Bob from here on out) was aiming himself towards a particularly delicious-smelling (smelling being the easiest way to describe the way a Dementor senses fear, despite fear being an emotion and not a stench, and Dementors not having noses with which to smell conventional odours anyway) group of Humans on the right-hand tower above the main entrance to Hogwarts Castle. There were a half-dozen Wizards, nervous and hesitant. They appeared to Bob to be Aurors from the Ministry of Magic, his former employers (well, captors. Bob certainly was never paid, and Dementors did not consider themselves to be owned by Wizards), though he couldn't see the colours of their robes to be sure, because Bob, like all Dementors, was blind. They had to be Aurors, though, because there were too many of them, and they were too strong, for them to be the castles normal inhabitants.
Curiously for Aurors, at least in Bob's opinion, they did not have their magic sticks out trying to cast those bright painbringers they called Patronuses. This, Bob thought, would be easy.
Bob was very, very wrong. Auror Second Class Michael Bridgewater gripped the handle of the flamethrower. He remembered seeing them in a film about the Americans' campaigns in the Pacific during the War, but he'd never imagined he'd have the occasion to use one himself, especially after Professor McGonagall had come to his home when he was eleven to inform him that he was a Wizard, catapulting him into this world.
Now, he was standing atop a tower at Hogwarts he remembered from his school days, where he'd gotten a very memorable snog-plus-a-copped-feel from Angela Wilkins one night during his fifth year, clutching a flamethrower for dear life while he watched a formation of Dementors approach him and his squad mates. Oddly, he felt none of the expected cold and terror, but instead a happiness and warmth down by his ankles. Looking down for a moment, he saw a silvery Patronus in the shape of a chick hopping around and providing a bubble of calm. As the Dementors approached, the Patronus spoke, in the voice of their Auror commander.
"Give 'em hell!"
Instinctively, Michael pulled the trigger and watched a stream of hot jellied petrol fly from the end of the nozzle, straight into the face of the lead dementor.
The shriek was unholy. Even as Michael stopped the stream and tracked it onto a second Dementor, his first target and five others dropped like lead balloons from the sky. Flaming lead balloons. He noticed, in the corner of his eye, that his other half-dozen comrades on the left-hand tower had achieved similar results and as a consequence, the remaining 88 Dementors looked on the verge of falling back to the gates and beyond.
Well, that wasn't gonna happen, Michael reflected as suddenly a hundred Patronuses charged forth from the castle, leaping up to meet the Dementors, then encircle them and herd them towards the two towers, like lambs to the slaughter. Obliging them, Michael opened up on the foul creatures as soon as they were close enough. Own his own, he reckoned he killed 10 of them, which would make him a double dementor ace. He wondered if the Ministry would give him a medal for his performance.
Finally, the sky was clear of Dementors (though the ground was littered with their corpses), and the two fireteams were given pats on the back and told to head for the Entrance Hall, to provide a wall of fire in defence of the castle should her front doors be breached.
Lord Voldemort was not one for vocalised profanity often, but watching his Dementor force be destroyed as they were was so impressive that even he joined his forces in expressing their disbelief.
"What the fuck was that?" Pettigrew asked from behind him, quaking in fear.
"Potter, it appears, has been into the muggle comic books again," Lord Voldemort commented, leaning against the shack that had previously served as some sort of guardhouse just inside the gates.
"Milord?" Wormtail was clearly confused, not believing Lord Voldemort to be a comic aficionado. But Lord Voldemort had been a child once, and while he was a rather evil (he would say clever) child, he managed to nick his fair share of comic books from other kids at the orphanage and from the newsagents.
"His strategy, Wormtail, is straight from the comics, particularly those from Japan. Kill it with fire," the Dark Lord explained. "As you can see," he added, gesturing towards the still-smouldering dementor corpses, "it's quite effective."
Peter didn't appear to be taken with the idea of being set on fire while he was still alive and consequently burned to death. He fainted at the thought with a squeak. Idly, Lord Voldemort waved his wand and revived his Death Eater.
"Take five men and see if you can find or create boats to take you across the lake and fight your way into the Castle. If you are able to breach, make your way to the Great Hall and kill everything in your path," he directed.
"Yes, my lord," Pettigrew murmured, bowing before Voldemort before straightening up and moving to scamper off.
"And Wormtail?"
"Yes, milord?"
"You may not take any other Inner Circle members with you." Lord Voldemort knew he was sending Peter on a fool's errand. Potter would not have neglected to defend any of the entrances into the castle. Still, Peter was a fool, and had more than his fair share of fool's luck. Perhaps the guards Potter had set guarding the lake entrance would be bored and unprepared.
Pettigrew deflated. "Yes, milord." The rat Animagus ran off. Lord Voldemort smirked.
"Trolls and giants forward!" he shouted to his creature handlers, who unchained the specific creatures he had ordered and pointed them at the castle.
"Giants and trolls advancing, my lord," Auror King reported. "5 giants, looks like 16 trolls."
"Any Death Eater support behind them?" Harry asked. King took out a pair of omnioculars and was silent for a moment.
"I don't see any, my lord," King said.
"Broom teams, launch!" Harry ordered. King relayed the command via Patronus message, and the next thing Harry saw was ten streaks of red through the sky, with long strands of rope connecting pairs of riders.
Auror First Class Rachel Dawson was headed for the second giant on the left side of the wedge. Her partner, Auror Third Class Edward Sweeney, was struggling to keep up: her broom was a Nimbus 2001, while he was limping along on a Cleansweep Eight, which was about as old as he was, and not even in the same league as hers. Of course, as an Auror First, her salary was sufficient to be able to afford certain good things in life. An Auror Third like Sweeney barely pulled in enough Galleons to stay in bread and milk, much less a decent broom.
Of course, if the Knut-pinchers at the Ministry would get off their arses and release some extra money to allow the Auror Corps to buy some decent brooms for their best fliers, who provided aerial support on raids and at outdoor events, they wouldn't be having this problem. Rachel was just glad Lord Potter wasn't out here on his Firebolt being shackled to the poor sod on the Comet Two-Fifty, like her neighbour Auror First Class Kelly Newhart and her Cleansweep Ten.
"Get ready to wrap up, Sweeney!" she shouted, receiving a nod in acknowledgement as they neared the giant, who either didn't see them or was too slow to recognise what they were up to and try to stop them.
"Go!" The order was hardly needed, as both Aurors were approaching the beast at something approaching 150 kilometers per hour. Without it, however, each ran the risk of being catapulted off their brooms when the rope snapped to against the solid hide of the giant. At that instant, both had to break towards each other, then pass within an inch of each other while they applied the charms that would secure the rope portkeys to the back of the giant and activate it. The manoeuver went off with nary a hitch, and both Aurors were speeding back towards the castle as the Giants were pulled away from the battlefield and sent to the French Alps.
Lord Voldemort stood slack-jawed as his giants were sent somewhere by Portkey. He hadn't thought it possible to transport such large creatures by such methods. Obviously, Potter (or probably Dumbledore, since to his knowledge, Potter had not taken Arithmancy) had developed a Portkey powerful enough to whirl away all that mass.
Again, Lord Voldemort wished he had completed his mission that Halloween Night. Without Potter, he would have surely triumphed. It had to be Potter's tactical plan; there was no one in the Ministry now (nor had there been in the 70s and early 80s) with the strategic vision Potter was putting on display. If he had been going up against a standard Ministry battle plan, the Dementors would have killed half the Auror force, the Giants and trolls would have taken out half the rest while the idiots attempted weak, Light spells against them, and he would have had maybe a quarter of the original force to face when he brought his Death Eaters to bare.
Instead, he was the one on the receiving end of the beat-down, which did not please him in the slightest. Grabbing another Inner Circle member, he ordered him to pick out another five non-Inner Circle Death Eaters and go over the Viaduct Bridge to try and breach the castle that way. Grabbing a second, he ordered the woman to take the werewolves and try and breach a hole in the side of the castle opposite the Viaduct. Barring that, they were to burn down the Quidditch Pitch, because Potter likes Quidditch and FUCK Potter.
As the Death Eater murmured her assent and scampered off, Lord Voldemort watched in frustration as a group of Aurors walked out of the castle and fired volley after volley of blasting curses at the still-advancing trolls, making mincemeat of them. One of them paused as the group walked back, and the next thing he knew, a terrier Patronus stood in front of him.
"Bring it, Baldy," the terrier said before dissolving. Lord Voldemort recoiled in hatred.
"ATTACK!" he screamed to his forces, so incensed small bits of spittle flew from his mouth. The Death Eaters obediently charged forward, Unforgivable Curses on their lips.
Peter Pettigrew was universally regarded as an idiot. He thought that the assessment was unfair. Sure, he wasn't really "great" at everything he did. Or at anything, really. But he was an Animagus, which was a distinction shared (officially) by seven other witches and wizards, along with the late and not-really-lamented-much-by-Peter James Potter and Sirius Black.
But one thing he did seem to have in large quantities was luck. The boats that commonly conveyed the ickle firsties to Hogwarts on September first were exactly where he expected they would be. Commandeering three, and loading his strike team onto them, he had one of the others cast the Disillusionment Charm on the boats and their occupants, before tapping the side of the boat with his now-invisible wand to set them off on their journey across the Lake.
The famed curtain of ivy rippled briefly as they passed through it, to sail into the Boathouse. They made their way to the dock and quietly stepped out, noting the complete absence of anybody in the dock area, which relieved Peter. Even the portrait which had greeted him as a firstie was gone, frame and all. This development he met with equal measure of both relief and anger, because the secret passage the portrait had hidden would have allowed him to go from here to the Grand Staircase and the Entrance Hall without having to go through the castle and fight.
"What's on the other side of the door?" a short, fat Death Eater asked.
"Dunno," Peter said, pulling out his wand and casting "Hominum Revelio." The spell returned nothing. Confidently, he ordered his men to move out. One Death Eater walked over to the door, threw it open and strolled out into the hall.
Five seconds later, he was blasted back in, his remains, now visible, smoking.
Sir Ron Weasley was bored out of his helm. He couldn't fathom why Harry had decided to send him and twelve Aurors down to guard the lake entrance, while Neville had been assigned the Viaduct and the Twins were guarding the Headmaster's Office. The Hufflepuffs were patrolling the East Wing, the Ravenclaws had the West Wing, Seamus and Dean were in the Entrance Hall with the Slytherins, awaiting the main clash Harry predicted would happen there.
Ron was frustrated. Why wasn't he being given a chance to fight? He was Harry's lieutenant, he deserved a prestigious posting, not some safe bolthole nobody would come through. His mental rant was interrupted by a light pink tendril of magic coming through the keyhole of the door to the Boathouse. The Aurors tensed, because they recognised it. Ron didn't, but it didn't matter because his shield bands snapped up and reflected it back to its source.
The Aurors drew their wands and prepared to blast whoever had cast that spell from inside the Boathouse. Just a few seconds later, the door was flung open and a Disillusioned person stepped through the doorway, illuminated by the moonlight streaming in from the Boathouse and the torchlight in the castle. Twelve spells flew by Ron's head, Blasting Curses, Bludgeoning Hexes, and Cutting Curses. Eleven of the twelve hit the target, knocking it back through the doorway, probably dead if the gouge in the wall from the missed spell was any indication.
"Death Eaters!" Ron exclaimed.
"No shit," one of the Aurors replied.
"Let's get 'em!" Ron said, drawing his sword in anger for the first time.
As it turned out, Ron and the Aurors didn't have to go get them, because the Death Eaters were more than content to come out to be gotten. Four of them came out, shouting Killing Curses. Ron saw two Aurors fall, while two others conjured objects to take the curses.
"Hominum Revelio Maximus!" Ron shouted, cancelling the Disillusionment Charms on the Death Eaters, and illuminating a rat in light pink. His eyes widened. Wormtail was here! The bastard rat who had caused so much trouble in his third year was right there for the taking. So Ron took him.
"Stupefy Triplicus," Ron whispered, dropping to the floor to avoid getting hit by spellfire while his team fought the other four Death Eaters. Three jets of red light shot from his wand. Pettigrew, predictably, tried to dodge the incoming spell, but ran right into the second jet. Summoning the stunned rat to him, Ron hit it with a full-powered Stunner before conjuring a cage for his one-time pet and depositing him into it. Looking up, he saw a Death Eater looming over him, wand at the ready.
"Ava-" he began, but was stopped mid-incantation when Ron pulled his sword up, inadvertantly slicing through the man's crotch. He dropped to his knees, squealing like the girl he now was as Ron hurriedly scooted backwards before drawing himself up and quietly putting an end to the man's screams by separating him from his main head. Looking around, he saw that that was the last of the small attack force: all the other Death Eaters (excepting Wormtail) were dead (two looked just as mangled as the first had been, the third was disassembled in a similar fashion to the one Ron had just killed. Four of his Aurors had been killed, and another two looked to be injured.
"You four stay here," Ron ordered, pointing to four of the unhurt Aurors. "The rest of you, come with me."
"What about the dead?" one of the wounded asked. Ron pondered for a moment, trying to remember what Harry had said to do with any casualties.
"Bring them along," he said. "They go to the Hospital Wing with you two," he elaborated, pointing to the two injured Aurors. Nodding, each of the Aurors going with Ron cast levitation charms on the dead and set off.
In the Entrance Hall to Hogwarts Castle, 100 Aurors, 40 animated suits of armour and 5 teenagers in silver-and-Chinese Fireball dragonhide armour stood, watching the doors to the castle shake under the assault against them by the 40 Death Eaters sent forward by Voldemort.
"Steady, lads," Auror Captain King said, his wand out and at the ready. "When they get those doors open, I want you all to blast whatever comes through with the strongest spell you can cast. If you can cast the Avada Kedavra, cast it. If you can't, cast a Bombarda Maxima. I want them to go down, and go down hard. Got it?"
The Aurors nodded. The suits of armour simply stood still. The 5 Knights looked at each other and nodded. Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas resolved to cast the blasting curse. The Slytherins would cast the Killing Curse.
Twelve Aurors near the front, the twelve with the flamethrowers, swallowed nervously. Their orders were to spray fire until their fuel ran out, and hope their fellows would shield them from any curses from the Death Eaters.
Shaking his head in frustration, Lord Voldemort strolled up the path toward the front doors of Hogwarts, deflecting potshots from Aurors remaining atop the towers as he walked towards his group of followers, who despite trying for the last twenty minutes, had been unable to break down, or break through the great wooden doors. And from what he could see of the wards on the doors while his followers sent their most powerful spells at them, they wouldn't manage it any time soon.
Still, he wasn't the last remaining Heir of Slytherin for nothing. Moving his followers aside, he stopped their spellfire and looked up at the doors.
"In the name of Salazar Slytherin, I command you to Open!" he hissed, stepping back immediately. Death Eaters resumed their place as the wards dropped and the doors swung open.
A/N: Hello once again, readers! I hope you enjoyed Part One of the Final Battle. I wrote it with a cinematic view in my head - like I would like to see a movie. I reference a few things in here, including Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings. I was also surprised by the way I went through this chapter creating so many OCs to do the dirty work. In fact, Harry only has two lines in the entire thing, for a total of nine words. Only four canon characters have speaking roles in this chapter: Voldemort, Wormtail, Harry and Ron. Seamus and Dean also make appearances, but don't speak. I'll see what I can do to rectify this error in the next chapter, which will feature a (hopefully) satisfying Wormtail death, a bit less of an easy time for the Aurors, an appearance of the supporting group, and the Death of the Dark Lord.
Next chapter might be late. This next week is full of celebrations. My brother turns 21 on Saturday, America's Independence Day is Monday, and my own 23rd birthday is next Saturday. The day after is the 10th, which is when the next chapter is due to be posted. I try to update around 1 PM CDT, but it might be later than that.
Until next time, everyone!
-Phoenix II