Face to Face
Apparation always had an element of risk to it. This was unavoidable, and one of the reasons why many witches and wizards never actually learned how to perform it, that and the intense discomfort. One of the most dangerous possibilities with apparation was that one could apparate into wards meant to block it.
There were protections for that. They, too, had an element of risk in them. Hermione had, in fact, never had to rely on that advanced magic before, woven into the act of disapparation by her intent as they left the Ministry of Magic. But today, suddenly, she felt a sensation in the middle of apparation that was worse than anything else that she had ever known.
An interrupted apparation took every bad feeling she'd ever experienced in the midst of apparation, and magnified it a hundred times. It was like a storm of pain, a twisting, wrenching feeling through her entire body, nausea, agony, disorientation and confusion all combined into one. She lost the food she had eaten hours before, without even thinking about it, and she wasn't the only one who did, either. To be honest, as her mind started processing again, Hermione thought that the experience had been worse than being hit by a Crucio.
She only dimly became aware of the hammering of a group of machine-guns. They were very close, and the action sounded absolutely desperate. Then, suddenly, she realised that a massive horde of Inferi was almost upon them, and only three machine-guns from a platoon of the Black Guards, hammering away with incendiary and tracer bullets while rocket-flamethrowers tore chunks in the horrible, hideous mass, were keeping them from being overrun.
The men firing phosphorous grenades from the under-barrel launchers on their rifles looked desperate, resigned, terrified. They were at the point of breaking, their barricades being actively physically assaulted, the dead only feet away from them and livid and angry, eager to claim their bodies and add them to their own as only the continuous fire held them back, and it was a thin and fading chance that their line would hold.
And then with a grunt and a gasp, a little woman, all of 5'2", hair like a tangled mop of black above her uniform, kicked herself up into a kneeling position, her boot in her own vomit. A sneer of contempt for danger was on her face. Her bent wand was in her hand, and her face was filled with contempt and defiance for the foe, the monster behind the inferi. "Bombarda Maxima Incendiarus!"
The curse sailed across their defenders and spun down neatly, controlled through the air by adjustments, snaps of her wrist of her wand, and detonated in the midst of the Inferi with a terrible surge and whoosh of flame that vanished a huge mass of them.
Her Bella. Her Bella, who never quit and always fought to the end and didn't know the meaning of the word danger.
And then the second went off.
Andromeda. Just as strong as her sister.
Hermione never imagined she'd have ever seen Narcissa Malfoy lose her lunch, or breakfast in this case, but they all had, and it didn't stop her. It didn't stop Hermione, either, as she struggled to her feet, and joined in the magical counterassault.
The gunners had a moment to frantically pour water on the barrels, the sound of sizzling and crackling. It was followed by oil, from the spare can in one of the APCs they had arrived in, which had been knocked on its side by a surge of Inferi against it and now served as part of their barricade. A coating of oil on the guns, gently smoking. The barrels might well be close enough to melting that their accuracy was shot, but they didn't need it to defeat this enemy. They just needed maximum fire, for as long as they could have it. They attached new belts, cycled the actions… Opened fire again. Bent and burnt replacement barrels showed they had already ruined at least per gun as they fired and fired and fired, linking belts on the fly so that there was no pause in their fire, in the stutter of tracers going down range.
Now all five of the witches were in the fight over them. They tore through the depths of this horde of the dead, incinerating the next block of the street. While the men with gun and grenade held them off at point-blank, the witches worked further down, avoiding the risk of hurting their own men while they ranged down the street and burned through the rest of the mass.
It was a spectacle of fire and fury and utter desperation. They ripped through their enemy with the pitilessness of someone who was executing a slaughter, who hated what they were fighting, who knew that there was nothing human on the other side. Buildings burning, set alight by the magical firebombs detonating in the middle of the street, clouding and choking the sky with black smoke, buffeting in gusts over their position, soot caking at their skin and the June sun overhead well-obscured.
And then it was over. There were simply no more of the dead who were coming through the smoke. The fire continued with hesitations and pauses until the order rang out from Hermione's lover's clear and sharp voice. "Cease fire!"
She spun her wand and slipped it delicately into the holster at her belt. Flashed a little wink to Hermione, then addressed the Platoon Lieutenant. "Good job, Leftenant. Get your men a rest."
"We were going to retreat, but when you arrived," he offered, saluting, stuttering, emotionally not much better than the dead they had just been fighting, "we stayed, to cover you, but if it had been another..."
"And you did, that's the only part that matters—you were needed and you did your job. We had a bad apparation, Leftenant, we would have been overrun if you had fallen back. And we were fucked up too," Bellatrix offered. "That was at least a minute to recover. Considering you just saved the life of the Prime Minister and Regent, I'd say that's a Victoria's Cross for you."
The young Leftenant stared blankly in the exhaustion that took hold, like a spell, at the moment of a pause in a battle, not really thinking about such things at the moment. He nodded, once, and turned to order his men to turn out, to get some water, and maybe food, if they could stomach it.
Hermione watched the exchange, and then saw the platoon sergeant strike up a cigarette. She'd been doing so well about this, ever since being healed of her addiction at Ararat, but the crushing psychological burden of the battle against the Inferi in the streets of London was just too much—she felt guilty as she stepped over to the platoon sergeant, but it didn't stop her. "Hey, can you spare a cigarette?"
He handed one over with a light, wordlessly, and Hermione felt like a drowning woman given a life ring as she took a long drag and turned slowly around, looking at the ruins ahead of them, the life that would keep going on behind them, the abrupt change from a world destroyed to a world damaged but intact, the story of two city blocks.
Narcissa wiped her face off with a handkerchief. "Well. We must be on our way. We have to destroy the statue."
"And get Hermione away from the muggle cancer sticks," Bellatrix added, eliciting a blush of embarrassment from Hermione despite everything. It was not strong enough to keep her from taking another drag, however.
"How are we going to get there now?" Ginny asked.
Andromeda, who had been looking around, slyly pointed toward a 1989 Vauxhall Nova sitting abandoned behind the defensive position. It was at least the GSi. "We could drive the rest of the way."
"Oh Gods." Bellatrix stared blankly at her. "You want to go driving, in the middle of an Inferi horde that's overrunning London?"
"I'm a very good driver, and unless you have a better idea when there's an anti-apparation field?" Andromeda asked smugly.
"She has a point, Bella," Narcissa wandered over toward it. "But, Andy, you haven't the keys for it."
"Oh, don't worry about that." Andromeda pointed her wand at the door and commanded it to open. Then she swung herself down in the driver's seat and reached around to the hazard warning light switch. Pausing for a moment to put on her driving gloves that she retrieved from a pocket in her coat, with all the delicacy of a proper lady, she popped out the hazard warning light switch, reversed it to be upside down, and then put it back in again.
The ignition came on.
Hermione, cigarette dangling from her mouth, stared. Of all the things she had expected Andromeda Black Tonks to know how to do… "Damnit, Andy, where the bloody hell did you learn that?"
"Oh, Ted knew a thing or…"
"Was he a criminal?" Bellatrix blurted.
Andy shot her sister a dirty look. "Shut up, and get in. We're driving, Bella. He was a Cockney boy, and his muggle friends learned car tricks. Leave it at that. Hermione, can you get some of the soldiers to give us a bump start?"
Hermione pinched the cigarette and pulled it from her lips. "Unfortunately, Andy, we've got problems. There's another group of Inferi coming on," she gestured down the road, her eyes hidden behind the shades, feeling suddenly very tired. The leftenant and the sergeants were already shouting, calling their men back to their arms, back to their positions.
"Then you'll need to stay and help the platoon hold," Narcissa looked to the two younger women. "Sorry, but, someone has to."
"Agreed," Hermione gave a single nod.
"Damnit Cissy," Bellatrix began, but Hermione just shook her head, smiling wryly, and turned to two of the soldiers jogging toward their positions. "Hey guys, come on over! You'll get to say you gave the Prime Minister a bump start."
Bellatrix stared at her with a longing moment of regret, that made Hermione bite her lip and for a moment want to cry, but then with Ginny and the two men, they got behind the Vauxhall and shoved it forward until the engine caught and roared to life, with Andromeda holding the transmission in first gear. A moment later, dousing them in engine exhaust, she was off and roaring, crisply dodging the debris and hooking down a side-street before the Inferi arrived.
Hermione watched Bellatrix give a sort of lonely wave goodbye out of one window, and then sucked down the last of her cigarette and tossed the butt to the pavement.
Ginny shook her head. "You're crazy in love, Hermione."
"I need another cigarette before we come under attack," Hermione answered dismissively, refusing to answer it. But Ginny was right. And Hermione didn't give a damn about it, either.
Bellatrix wasn't sure if this was the most absolutely the most ridiculous thing that had happened to her or just close to it, at this point. Oh, not the worst, or the most horrifying, but the most fucking ridiculous.
They went tearing through the streets and Cissy could barely keep up with her in flinging fireballs at groups of Inferi as Andy was constantly shifting, braking, working the clutch, her gloved hands spinning on the stained old steering wheel with a manic grin on her face that confirmed at last for the world to see that the mousy middle sister was, in fact, a Black.
Actually, Bella kind of loved that.
Andy hooked another sharp skid turn, putting down rubber as she used brakes, transmission and then the gas pedal in a symphony of machinery that coaxed an almost impossible performance out of the ridiculous little car. Bellatrix leaned out the window, relying on the seatbelt but feeling like it restrained her more than she was comfortable with, a whisper of distant Azkaban. On the other hand, she didn't want to fall the fuck out, either.
A snap of her wand, and she knocked an abandoned bus out of the way. "There you go, Andy!"
"Bloody hell, Bella, tell me when!" Andy exclaimed, even as she took advantage of the gap, and Narcissa somewhat delicately, but very precisely, sent a fireball down one of the cross-streets when she spied Inferi further down.
The engine protested as the RPMs abruptly changed through the shift. Bella wondered how long it would take for Andy's shoe to wear a hole in the carpet…
Narcissa sank back, breathing hard. "There's so many of them. I don't think we have much time until the defences collapse entirely."
Bellatrix couldn't help but think of Hermione, left behind with a platoon of Black Guards with half-melted machine-guns and dwindling ammunition, and a single Weasley. "They are starting to spread through the streets," she acknowledged, eyes wide with that fanatical intensity that still came naturally to her. Even as she spoke, she was tipped into the door of the car as they screamed through another ninety-degree turn and had to negotiate a slalom course of abandoned cars. "Damnit Andy, you are having too much fun with us!"
"I am trying to keep you alive and get you to a scrap yard on the outskirts of London as fast as I bloody well can," she snapped back, shifting up as they accelerated after pulling straight in a stretch of empty and open road. "Now mind ahead, let's clear some roadblocks before we get to them!"
Bellatrix leaned out of the window, the airflow buffeting her head and face and sand and grit pounding at her, her hair trailing behind her wildly. With a smirking grin, she called out a bubble-head charm and the clinging magic bubble of air served just as well as a face shield. "Cissy, bubble-head! It works much better!"
Her younger sister muttered something irritated about her irrepressible cleverness and followed suit. The two snapped their wands, making objects featherweight and pushing them aside.
Andy shot through a narrow gap between rubble and an abandoned vehicle, and then there was the sickening pop of one of the tyres going. They skidded hard to the right and she cursed and fought the wheel. "Bella, Pop the second one! In the back! Left!" Cursing again, she overcorrected and then corrected again, fighting the tendency to spin out of control as she ran on one rim.
Sloshed from side to side and glad she'd already thrown up, Bella leaned out the side of the tiny nightmare. A cutting spell. Against a tyre.
Two rims in the back, wheels in the front. Good enough. Andy straightened out, still driving at a shockingly fast speed for the conditions and now the condition of the vehicle, too.
Bellatrix started laughing in manic hysteria. "Gods, Andy, you've lived for this, it seems."
"Well it seems she has, but she's right out as the Minister of Transport," Cissy added as she sank back to the cushions of the front passenger seat. "I think speed limits on muggle motorways clearly exist for a reason: Avoiding giving the passengers heart attacks."
Andromeda struck a defiant, proud, bemused thrust of her face up in an exaggerated way, and then swung them down one street. "Complain or not, here we are."
"I thought you said you were going to quit," Ginny remarked softly, looking at the second cigarette in Hermione's lips in five minutes.
Hermione couldn't avoid looking at her balefully, and defiantly took another drag. She didn't give a shit anymore. "That was before hundreds of thousands of Inferi erupted from the ground in London."
"Sorry," Ginny responded lamely, her face a white sheet, as they turned back to what they were were about to face again. "Do you think we have the range? I'm starting to worry we're depleting our magical cores."
"We probably are, throwing the same spell over and over again," Hermione shrugged. "Well, we've got to do it, so we'll do it. I think we've got the range now."
Ginny's eyes glinted for a moment, and she turned down-range. "Let's." She snapped her wand back as fine as a she could, and a moment later, Hermione joined her. They tore the front out of the wave of Inferi with interlocking explosive fire spells down a street already ruined by them, and all the better that the Inferi tended to keep launching frontal assaults on the same dozen locations or so in the city, as it had the effect of minimising the area of damage.
Of course, on they still came. It was all well and good only if they could hold them, and the same groups were under constant attack, while others, protecting groups of civilians, found their undead, unnatural enemy never approaching them. But who knew what passed for sense in Voldemort's black soul.
Back in the saddle again, they slung their wands against an enemy that didn't stop. The Inferi were unbreakable, they could only be destroyed. Once again, now, the machine-guns opened fire, the remaining belts of incendiary ammunition torn through with terrible rapidity. It seemed like only a coda to the effort of the two witches, though. Against this horde, soldiers with incendiary weapons could die bravely, and buy time for civilians to run—unless aerial support turned the tide in their favour. Witches could simply annihilate the attack.
Jets streaked overhead, laden with fuel-air explosives. Ten hours in, the fate of London hung in the balance. They could stop the outbreaks now, or the city would be utterly destroyed, fatally damaged, as ruined as Hamburg or Dresden.
Breathing hard, through air choked with oily smoke, through the stench and the heat, the world tinted through dark sunglasses. The mass of Inferi slowed down, deterred by the flames ahead of them as the first wave burned. It was the closest thing to a loss of morale they had, the natural aversion to fire that was inbuilt in the spell.
With the blocks ahead already ruined by fire, it was as good a chance as she was going to get. "Hold them for just a minute, Ginny!"
Ginny knew what she was going to do, but this time, there was no complaint, no hesitation. She covered down for them both.
"Fiendfyre!" And Hermione tamed it and trained, spun it and whirled it, called it forth as a roaring herd of animals, pounding into the mass, spinning, looping, catching the outriders of the Inferi, hammering through the centre of the great mass. Kept it together for as long as she needed it, controlled it up until the end, never once lost the direction of the living fire, kept it contained within the firebreak of already burned-out buildings, incinerated the mass, and used all of her skill and all of her talent, the Brightest Witch of Her Age, to wipe out another entire column of the monstrous dead.
The streets in front of them suddenly fell silent, and only the sounds of guns and jets and bombs and artillery and the wail of sirens, all distant but also close, were sounding from blocks and blocks away. Ahead of them, secondary flames guttered and choked, and the stench of the burning of old flesh wafted over them.
Hermione had been pushed to the limit, she had pushed herself, pushed her magical core to the limit. But until the end, it was skill rather than strength that mattered, and this time, there had been no losing control.
She dropped down into the seat of an empty Land Rover, breathing hard, looking around and slowly convincing herself that they had held, just like they had held the gateway to Diagon Alley earlier in the day. She wasn't even sure where in London she was, it didn't even matter, it was just one more place where in front of her everything was destroyed and behind her everything was safe.
Ginny came up and shoved a canteen into her hands. "Drink before you faint, 'Mione."
She guzzled the water. In the strange lassitude after combat, there was only concern in her mind. "Do you think they got there?"
"I can't believe you two, but I think Bellatrix will do just fine." A pause. "'Mione, what about Harry?"
Hermione looked up. "When this is over, we all get together and talk. We all plan. I won't say more until then, Ginny. I'm sorry, I just can't."
The three Black sisters rushed into the scrap yard. A place where muggles used torches and jackhammers to cut apart the ruined detritus of their own civilisation was a fitting place for the end of the Might of Magic statue… Except, if they had tried cutting into it, they would have found an unpleasant surprise with how enchanted it was.
The three came to a stop before it, in a yard empty, abandoned, the workers having long fled, having no idea of what they held. A few diagnostic spells quickly showed the magnitude of the talisman that they now collectively faced.
"We will have to sever the tie to him, before we can destroy it," Andy observed after a moment. "Cissy, you're the best Legilimens among us…"
The elegant blonde of the Black sisters nodded. "Then I suppose it is time for me to be reacquainted with Lord Voldemort," she said, settling on the balls of her feet, rocked back, wand ready. She focused on the statue—and froze in place.
The expression on her face became a rictus. Sweat beaded from her face. Her wand-hand shook with the intensity of the unseen war that she was fighting.
Andy glanced from Cissy to Bella with a look of discomfort. "She's fighting him? Now? Gods, Bella, I think that's blood from her eyes."
"I think you're right," Bellatrix grimaced, feeling that Narcissa was pushed to the limit, straining, so far into her battle that she wasn't even noticing the two of them talking. And Bella was the second best of the Legilimens among them. She raised her own wand, despite …
Time stood still.
Bella, welcome back, His voice echoed in her mind. It's been a while, I believe the only longer time that we haven't spoken in your adult life was when you were in Azkaban. I suppose you liked it more than I thought. I have to admit, it would be a delight to send you back, but despite your newfound love of the Order of the Phoenix, it seems you or at least your sister is still a Slytherin. Very clever of the two of you.
Bellatrix was frozen under the power, too. I just wanted Azkaban destroyed, do you think…
That my Death Eaters weren't happy? Of course they were happy, since so many of them spent time there. But it was a hardening place, a place that made them more to my liking. Not you, apparently. I made you everything that you are, Bella. I gave you the daughter you betrayed me for. And now … A mudblood? Really?
TOM RIDDLE. FATHER: A MUGGLE. Bellatrix tore back at him in defiance and rage. MY LINE HAVE BEEN WIZARDS AND WITCHES OF BRITAIN FOR THREE THOUSAND YEARS.
As was my mother's line! He tore back in rage. But you shove your tongue into something that came out of two muggles.
Then we're all the same now, aren't we!? But my line will endure.
And mine. Win or lose, after all. If I win I live forever, and if I lose, you will nurse the House of Gaunt at your side. You made that choice.
You have no right to her, and you abrogated your own power and claim! The mental duel around them exploded in light and thunder.
Perhaps you are right. I created her, as another mark upon you. You can cut off your arm, Bella, but you can't remove the stain on your soul. His power descended upon her, overwhelming, overweening, buffeting her mind in waves.
I can make my own future, and in this you have no more power over me! You are a ruin, commanding your last offensive, in the ruins of a crumbling Empire, half a man, the shadow of what I once followed! Bellatrix countered.
She felt the cold pit of despair open up around her soul.
Oh Bella, my lovely Bella, you could have stood by your Master, and enjoyed the power of our dark utopia. But now … You will die, and you will die more miserably than all on this world who have died before. A suffocating, squeezing crush of power descended around her.
I will not merely destroy you. I will feed you to Azi Dahaka, and obtain the utter extirpation of your soul. And I will do the same to our child, and thereby make sure that you understand the completeness of your defeat and how utterly I am removing the reward that I gave to you.
Then a third presence joined the fight. You will not have her without a battle! Andromeda exclaimed. She was the weakest, but her heart shone, untouched by the corruption that Voldemort had long indulged. Her presence was sufficient to free Narcissa from the locked-in mental battle that she had waged to a desperate stalemate with only Bella's help.
You pushed us apart in school, Cissy accused. You drove the wedges that sent Andromeda away, disowned. That sent me to my marriage-bed, and that sent Bella into your power. You will not drive us apart again.
I wanted the 'Brightest Witch of Her Age', as pathetic as she turned out to be, he cackled, but the power he brought against the three of them together was inadequate. They pushed him back, driving the shattered remnant of his soul away. Once this man might well have been too great for all of them, but he had sacrificed so much of himself…
And Bella felt the dim link to one more. An idea flickered within her. Hope. The Water of Life…
That link, those whispered words through Voldemort to Nagini, prompted an immediate, unhinged, enraged response. Damn you all! You will not! You will not! I will let just a measure of Azi Dahaka into me, I will control his power in this world, and I will suborn it utterly to my power! Those who obey me will prosper, and those who do not will be as cattle to the Devourer of Worlds!
But his words, his rage, were as an uncoordinated flailing. Andromeda pushed back: Perhaps, but not today, Tom. Not today.
The three sisters came together. With a roaring scream of defiance, they pried Voldemort loose and sent him back to Anatolia, metaphorically and magically. As they did, Andromeda, the least invested in the mental fight, snapped a Bombarda Maxima.
The statue disintegrated into a million bits.
All across the city, on that horrible June evening, the Inferi withered away, collapsing and fading into piles of bones.
Notes:
1. Yes, you really can do that to a Vauxhall Nova... Or at least an episode of Top Gear would have you believe it, anyway.
2. Bump start is where you put a manual in gear and then push it to force the ignition of the cylinders and starting the engine. It does require the ignition to be on to provide a spark.
3. Many machine guns intended for continuous fire had water or oil cooling jackets. The barrel can get quite hot in sustained continuous fire, and it's very intensive and a main limiting factor in the rate of fire. Of course those men wouldn't have cared much. They did have quick change barrels, but were outright wrecking them from the heat. In the modern day, most machine-gunners only fire in disciplined six-round bursts, but this was, of course, insuffiicent against the Inferi. So one option is simply pouring more water and oil on them to try and cool them.
4. Continuous or linked belts are where belts, typically of 250-rounds of ammunition, can be linked while they are being fired, so the loader can hook a second belt onto the first while the first is being pulled through the action of a machine-gun. This allows for fire to be continuous without a pause to load a new belt and cycle the action.
5. Fuel-air munitions disperse an aerosolised flammable into the atmosphere and then detonate it. They're also called thermobaric weapons, and they're quite popular with the Russian armed forces.
6. Tracer ammunition generates light on incendiary principles, but is distinct from true incendiary bullets; but both involve flame and could be used in this pinch, as tracer would be much more common, for marking targets for other weapons in more normal circumstances.