Chapter 6: A sandy grave, Part 1

A/N: Just a heads up that this chapter is where things start to properly diverge from what happened historically. I'll put more information about how it's different in an A/N at the end for anyone who's interested to read.

Traveling by sea was not something Celestia enjoyed, especially when she was rather violently deposited on said ship by portkey. The constant, rhythmic swaying motions played havoc on her stomach, the sooner they disembarked the better as far as Celestia was concerned, regardless of how much resistance they faced. Their ship's captain, a man by the name of Fredrick Hurbert had told them that the invasion had been delayed further while they waited for their arrival and to expect heavy resistance. Though he also said that him and the rest of the fleet would do their best to assist.

The fleet had been rather quiet for around two hours after they arrived, but all at once it became a hive of activity, soldiers began pouring onto rowing boats and Celestia found herself shoved into one. Celestia perched herself on one of the benches and took in the scene around her. It was grand on a scale she had never seen before, there must have been dozens of boats in the water, and that was just the rowing boats, the official naval ships were enormous, hundreds of feet long and armed to the teeth with cannons it was a wonder they hadn't won the war yet. Enchant a few of those to be feather light and pull them behind a horse and the war would be over in days.

The boats began to move and Celestia was filled with a sort of excited apprehension. Her thoughts quietened and her body tensed. She could see the Turks up on the cliffs and the end of the beach. The closer they got the more helpless the situation looked, even now the Turks were moving weapons into defensive positions, with every second they took to get to the beach the defences got stronger.
Celestia's eyes were drawn to one of the larger headlands as the sun glinted off the barrel of an artillery piece. There was a flash of fire as the gun fired, and a sense of panic overcame Celestia. There was no earthen wall to take cover behind, just open water and the flimsy hull of a wooden boat. The shell struck the water a few meters away from her, exploding with a plume of water. Not long after was another explosion, then another, and another. It was as if that first shell opened the floodgates and now came a torrent of death. Several boats had already been capsized, the men inside now left floating in the sea. It all seemed so helpless, they were sitting ducks, and even if they did make landfall, the Turks had the advantage, the odds were very much stacked against them. A thunderous explosion drew her from her despair, turning towards the source Celestia saw the fleet begin to fire back at the Turks, their shells blasting away chunks of rock and causing the Turks to scatter.

Now that the Ottoman shelling had died down Celestia felt herself relax a little. As they got closer to the beach the fleet stopped bombarding the shore and the steamers pulling their boats disconnected and turned to go back to the flotilla. The men in her boat grabbed their oars and began rowing. The man next to her, tried to shove an oar at her, which she responded to by shooting him a frankly withering glare. She may not be as stuck up as the rest of the Black family but that didn't mean she was going to degrade herself that much.

"C'mon mate, the Turks'll start shelling us again any time now and we'll be a lot safer if you start rowing." The man, with quite possibly the strangest accent Celestia had ever heard, was practically begging her, and while she did accept that he had a point she still refused to row.

Celestia just smiled at him and drew her wand. Pushing her way to the front of the boat Celestia planted one of her feet against the front of the boat, pointed her wand at the cliff and clearly intoned "Carpe Retractum!" A thick purple rope shot from the tip of her wand and latched itself onto the cliff. Celestia turned back to the others in her boat "I'd hold on if I were you." Leaning back, and planting the other foot on the boat, Celestia jerked her wand back, causing her, and by extension the boat, to shoot forward towards the cliff. It was only as they drew closer to their rather messy deaths that Celestia realise that this, perhaps, wasn't the best idea, flicking her wand to cancel the spell, Celestia began to cast the slowing charm but had to quickly abandon that idea as machine gun fire started being directed towards them. Quickly moving her wand in a different pattern practically bellowing "Protego Duo!" The simmering silver shield burst from the tip of her wand. Turning her head Celestia shouted to the men behind her "On my word jump!"

The boat was steadily drawing closer to the shore, and thus a rather sudden stop. Ideally, she would have slowed the boat down, but under this much fire she thought better of lowering her shield. Though only a few bullets had hit her shield any one of them would have killed her. "Jump!"

The twelve of them leapt from the boat as it slammed against the sandbank, flipping over. Rolling onto her back as she landed Celestia raised her wand "Fumos." A thick black cloud of smoke began to pour from her wand, the strong coastal winds blowing it further inland blinding the Turks. The issue what they were to do now they were on land; the rest of the invasion force was still a fair ways away and none of the other magicals were stupid enough to attempt what she had. Their best bed was to try and advance further up the beach, both to draw fire from the rest of the troops and to try and find solid ground to dig into.

"Right, get behind me and if you think you can take out a Turk go for it. We're going to be advancing, see if we can't find some better ground!"

Waving her wand and creating another shield, Celestia began marching up the beach, the sound of shot and shell engulfing them, their very world becoming one of fire, ash, and sand. Each bullet and piece of shrapnel that struck her shield felt like taking a blasting curse at point blank range, and yet she pushed forward, soaking up the blows like a sponge. The progress was slow but steady.

Celestia cast her eyes behind them and watched as scores of men clambered out of boats and the assault began in earnest. Bullets whizzed past her from both directions as the ANZAC forces began firing upon the Turks, attention no longer solely on her and her squad Celestia took a moment to breathe, to find some semblance of calm in the chaos around her. The sounds of battle died from around her as she watched a streak of yellow light fly towards her. She had just enough time to shout, "GET DOWN!" as the spell struck her shield and shattered it causing her to stagger back. Celestia swished her wand, forming another shield just as a shell exploded in front of her, blasting her of her feet, but leaving her relatively unharmed.

Pulling herself to her feet, Celestia tried once more to advance further but found herself being pushed back, despite Ottoman attention now being split she found herself unable to advance further, her attack's momentum stopped by whatever wizard lay on that ridge. Celestia grimaced before turning to the men behind her "Looks like this is where we stop. I'll try and keep the bullets off you, but I'll need you to start digging in." The men nodded, grabbed their spades, and began constructing a trench. It was rather novel, Celestia mused, to have people actually listen to what she said. With a wave of her wand Celestia conjured a shield. She stood there in a stoic silence, her body battered and bruised, her limbs feeling leaden and her mind sluggish and yet she endured, each blocked shot drawing from her already nearly depleted reserves of magic and willpower.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there, time became something beyond her perception, all that mattered was that moment, everything else faded into the background, it was only her and the bullets and shells that tried to strike her down, she knew, of course, that there were people behind her that she was protecting but she had lost all awareness of them. That was until a hand grabbed the back of her uniform and pulled her rather roughly into a sandy hole. It seemed she'd been out there for longer than she thought as several boats worth of soldiers had made it up to their line, stretching the rapidly expanding trench over to one of the headlands and making good progress towards the second, even if it kept collapsing.

Celestia pushed herself off the wall, though before she even got halfway up her arms collapsed and she fell back, her vision swimming, a pounding in her head. She was exhausted and she wasn't sure how she hadn't collapsed long before now.

A canteen of water was handed to her and she drank deeply, the water unpleasantly warm much needed. It seemed she had only had it a second, but it had already run dry. "I'll fill it up in a minute, just give me a second to rest."
The unfocused blob that handed her the canteen laughed "No need Black, just get some rest."

Celestia just grunted and shut her eyes, drifting off into sleep not long after.

A/N: There we are, another chapter. I'm not particularly happy with this one, but I'm never happy with what I've written so that's just par for the course. I apologise for how long this took, especially since I've had reviews now. Anyway, below will be what is different for my version of Gallipoli compared to what happened historically (though there aren't that many changes that can be seen in this chapter). Do let me know if you want me to continue saying what's different between this story and history.

The first difference would be the time. The historical invasion started at around 2:54 AM. My version occurred several hours later, sometime between about 7 AM and midday as the invasion was stalled to await the arrival of the MEF. This delay allowed the ships to correct their course and land on target rather than the mile off that they were historically. This meant that the invasion force suffered the full brunt of the Ottoman defence (which was stronger as more troops had time to arrive prior to the attack) as. This was because where the real ANZAC forces landed, they were close to a cliff that provided cover from Turkish artillery. Rather than dig into the sand they scaled the cliffs and took over an abandoned Ottoman trench. That is, it for the differences I can think of right now. More may come as this section continues.

Thanks for reading.