Title: Harry Potters and the Ultimate Scooby Gang, Part 4
By Nopporn Wongrassamee, the Evil Author
"Is the sun down yet?" Spike demanded again.
"Not yet," the Watcher answered again, annoyance creeping into his voice. There was all manner of fascinating phenomena occurring outside. A primitive stone castle was busy transforming itself into a humanoid mass as the space-time continuum was tearing itself to shreds. The Watcher's academic curiosity was piqued, but this undead primitive kept distracting him.
"Is the sun down yet?"
"Not yet."
"Is the sun down yet?"
"Not yet."
"Is the sun down yet?"
"Not yet."
"Is the sun down yet?"
"Yes it is!" the Watcher roared, his patience finally snapping.
"Is the." Spike paused as the Time Lord's words registered. "Really?"
"Yes, the planet has rotated so that this location is no longer receiving direct sunlight," the Watcher said slowly, as if to a small child.
"Well, alright then," Spike said, turning to charge out through the TARDIS' outer doors. "Niblet, Spike's coming to the rescue!" With that, Spike was gone, the doors swinging shut behind him.
Moments later, the Watcher heard a shriek that was abruptly cut off by the sound of rapid combustion. Then there was blessed silence. The Watcher smiled. What he had told the vampire was technically true; the inside of the TARDIS had never been in direct sunlight.
***
The first returning fragment was like a breath of fresh air. As each spectral memory of a past Slayer returned from bashing Dementors, they each contributed a little more strength to hold down Buffy's inner demon. When half of them had returned, Buffy felt sufficiently in control of herself to move.
The returning spectral Slayers also brought something else. They added new memories, their experiences while separate from Buffy. They also told of rifts that led elsewhere. Buffy quickly deduced that she must have stumbled through one of these.
Experimenting with this odd ability, Buffy released a few fragments of her self. Not many, just enough to scout the way back to the dimension Buffy had come from. Immediately, the fragments took the form of past Slayers who had been especially good trackers.
Buffy was in the mood to kick something's ass.
***
"How." Draco began.
Draco Malfoy had never really used any of the Unforgivables before, but he was confident that his Avada Kedavra had been perfect. The energy of the curse was the right shade of green. The energy bolt was neither too diffuse nor too dense. It even trailed the right amount of smoke.
So why had the Muggle in black barely flinched when Draco's curse had struck him squarely in the back? Oh, the Muggle had more than fliched. He had spun around and started stalking towards Draco, waving a - to Draco's eyes anyway - huge and very sharp sword.
"Y'know, I've been hit so many times with that damn spell by different versions of that Umbridge lady that I think I've developed an immunity to it," the Muggle growled at him. With his free hand, the Muggle roughly grabbed Draco by the collar of his robe and raised his sword arm. "I am getting sick and tired."
"Don't hurt me!" Draco shrieked, quickly crossing his arms over his head in an attempt to protect himself,
"Xander, wait!" called out the witch behind the Muggle. Except for the hair, eyes, and clothing, she bore a remarkable resemblance to Willowmorte. "He's not zombified like everyone else around here!"
"Say what?" the Muggle replied in confusion. Thankfully, he hesitated from hitting Draco.
A small part of Draco wondered what the witch meant by 'zombified'.
"He's not being mind controlled like everyone else here," the witch said reasonably. "Maybe he could show us where Dawn is. Or at least he could tell us where to find that evil white bearded wizard guy.'
Draco blinked. Who was she talking about? The only white bearded wizard he knew was Dumbledore and no one ever called that old geezer evil. Meddling, addled, even senile, but never evil.
"So what's the plan, Wills?" the Muggle man asked.
"Okay, we use this kid to lead us to Dawn and/or the evil Wizard," the witch said slowly, obviously making the plan up just ahead of her words. As she spoke, her words came faster. "We get Dawn back and deal with the wizard in our own special way. Oh! We also have to watch out for."
"Gotcha!" interrupted Willowmorte. Appearing out of thin air behind her twin, Willowmorte wrapped her arms around the other witch's head. There was an explosion of magic that threw Draco and his assailant through the air. Before they hit the floor, the world shifted around them.
***
Willow screamed. Willowmorte screamed. Finally in physical contact with each other, past the other's protective shields, the two versions of Willow Rosenberg were automatically trying to drain each other of their stores of magical power. Unfortunately, both drew on ambient power sources to fuel their magics. This set up a vicious feedback loop that grew steadily stronger. A moment's slip by either one of them would result in a magical explosion that would shred what little integrity local reality still had.
Willowmorte was willing to risk it.
Willow Rosenberg was not.
TRANSPORT.
***
Dumbledore sighed in relief. The brief battle between the two witches inside his remade Hogwarts had caused quite an itch. Now the two had taken their battle to another dimension. His two most dangerous opponents had just taken each other out of the picture. The ones left behind couldn't possibly be a threat.
His new body was just about ready. With just a smidgen of will power, Dumbledore willed it to sit up.
Hogwarts sat up.
***
Stepping through the last rift, Buffy finally made it back to the dimension with the glowing green castle. Only it wasn't quite a castle anymore. It was a giant made of masonry. Somewhere in there, Buffy knew, was Dawn.
Buffy looked up. And up. And up. One of her spectral scouts had reported that Dawn was in the head. Now, what was the quickest way up there?
Buffy put two fingers two her lips and whistled. Loudly. The glass in several windows visible on the giant's stone hide shattered at the shrill sound. The giant looked down at Buffy. Idly, Buffy noticed that the giant had a long beard that was also stone; it seemed like a waste of mass to her.
"You, hey you!" Buffy called up. "You give me my sister back right now or I'll."
Buffy was interrupted when the giant's hand came crashing down to squash her. She was hit squarely by the center of the palm imprinted itself deeply in the earth. Suddenly the hand jerked back into the air, as if in pain. Buffy's Scythe was stuck blade-first into the palm. Hanging on to her weapon, Buffy came up with it.
***
The boy, Draco, was blubbering. Xander didn't blame him. If Xander had just traipsed through a series of alternate realities where he was making out, having sex, or was otherwise being intimate with another guy, Xander would have been blubbering too.
Xander wondered what huge glasses and lightning scars meant. The sight of familiar glowing green corridors wasn't enough to banish the pondering from his mind. However, the view out the window was.
"Why is the horizon turned on its side?" he wondered aloud.
This was enough to stop Draco from blubbering. Wiping away his tears, the young wizard gawked at the view. The line of the horizon was vertical.
"Merlin! We're going to fall!" Draco said, panicking. He threw his leg over the broom he had acquired from one of his alternate selves. "I gotta get out of here!"
"Whoa there, pilgrim," Xander said, grabbing the broom's tail end. "You're not going any.HEY!"
With a kick of his legs, Draco was airborne. The securing charms that kept Draco seated also kept Xander attached. The two shot through the open window.
***
The magical explosion separated Willow and Willowmorte from each other. Although the explosion was on the scale of a nuclear explosion, the Hogwarts of this reality had already been nuked once. The additional damage did little except make the crater deeper.
The wind howled as air rushed back in to fill the vacuum created by the initial explosion. The two super witches got up and squared off with each other.
"Well, well, well," Willowmorte chuckled darkly. "If it isn't home sweet home."
"What?" Willow shouted back in confusion.
"This is my home reality, where it all started," Willowmorte shouted back. "Every living thing on this world was sacrificed, killed to empower me! Do you realize what this means?"
"What?" Willow shouted again.
"There's no magic left in this world to draw on!" Willowmorte told her opponent, grinning maniacally. "No magic but what we brought with us! It's down to what we have in our own personal reserves! And you expended a lot of your reserves just to get us here while I'm still almost full. You feeling lucky, girl?"
"I can't hear you!" Willow shouted in reply, gesturing at her ear. "The wind's too noisy!"
Willowmorte smacked the palm of her hand to her forehead. One perfectly villainous gloat had just been completely wasted. She suddenly missed having minions.
"Fine, whatever," Willowmorte growled. She assumed a ready combat stance, energy crackling from her fingertips. Her double did the same. "Let's dance."
***
Buffy was proving to be quite a handful. Sure she easily fit between the giant's thumb and forefinger. But that didn't mean she couldn't at least make a nuisance of herself. Although in her opinion, managing to pry loose the tip of the giant's pinky made Buffy more than a nuisance.
Unfortunately, this was taking too long. Buffy was not getting any closer to the head. According to her latest scouts, Dawn was fading fast. It was taking a lot f her current strength just to pry herself from between thumb and finger.
Another of Buffy's spectral scouts returned, bringing news of something else, or rather, someone else. Xander was nearby, and he was flying! There was hope yet.
***
With some effort, Xander managed to haul himself onto the broom, sitting just behind Draco. He then noticed the direction they were heading in.
"Turn us around!" Xander ordered Draco. "We gotta go back!"
Draco looked back at Xander then at the castle-turn-giant behind them. "Are you mad?"
"No," Xander replied, whipping out his sword. "I'm armed!"
The broom promptly did a one eighty.
"Do you have a plan?" Draco asked nervously.
"Sure I do," Xander replied. He just didn't know what it was yet, but he wasn't going to tell the kid that.
"Yo, Xandman!" a feminine voice called from nearby.
Surprised, both guys turned their heads to see what appeared to be a ghost paralleling their course.
"Faith?" Xander said incredulously.
"Not exactly," the spectral Slayer replied with a wink. "Dawn's in the head of that thing. Follow me!" Without another word, she zipped ahead.
"You heard the lady," Xander prompted his pilot. "Follow her!"
They zoomed after Faith.
***
On a dead world, Willow and her evil twin circled each other. There had been a preliminary exchange of magics as they probed each other's defenses. Despite the fact that she couldn't hear her double, Willow was well aware that she had the inferior reserves of power and that there weren't any local sources to draw upon. Willow needed to find a power source and fast. The lack of external sources reminded Willow of her rides in the TARDIS, where she had to limit her energy intake.
Willow eyes widened as she suddenly remembered that she could draw on more than just magic.
Ignoring her opponent, Willow collapsed herself into a seated lotus position, complete with her eyes closed. Her senses reaching out, Willow sensed her evil twin's surprise at Willow's sudden vulnerability. She was hesitant to attack, and suspicious of being lured into a trap. It was a trap in a manner of speaking. But it was the hesitation that was costly.
Willow flared with power.
The ground began to shake.
"How are you doing that?" Willowmorte shrieked in sudden fear and confusion. "Where are you getting the magic from?"
"What, have you never thought of trying alternate energy sources?" Willow asked rhetorically. Power streamed into Willow from the deep Earth where the currents of magma and immense magnetic core held sway, untouched by the surface destruction this world had suffered. Worlds were alive in more ways than one. "Here," Willow added, "lemme show you."
A crevice in the ground opened up beneath Wilowmorte's feet. Willow's evil twin fell in, her screams cut off when the crevice slammed closed. Willow felt the other's psychic signature wink out of existence.
Releasing her link to this Earth, Willow breathed out heavily and shivered. No matter how necessary it seemed, killing her other self was way too creepy. But there was no time to rest. She still had to rescue Dawn.
Willow wondered how Buffy and Xander were doing.
***
Buffy shot out from between the giant's thumb and forefinger like a watermelon seed. Unfortunately, the giant was holding her straight down at that moment. A few meters later, Buffy hit a rift.
So instead of falling through the air, Buffy found herself crashing through several stone floors before coming to the stop. Getting up, Buffy looked down at herself in disgust. Her outfit was now so damaged that it was little more than a few strips of artfully placed leather rags. This whole brouhaha had started out as a shopping expedition, after all.
Looking around, Buffy realized that she wasn't alone. She was in what appeared to be a classroom full of school kids. A version of her appeared to be teaching the class. Amazingly, no one had apparently been hit by flying debris. They were all - especially the boys - ogling her.
Buffy pointed her Scythe at her alternate self. "Would you happen to have any clothes I could borrow?" she asked.
***
As they raced around the giant's head toward the face, a gang of ghosts pounced on Xander, Draco, and Faith. Magic sword or not, Xander had trouble keeping the ghosts away. Faith on the other hand was having a grand old time.
"Xander! That way!" Faith cried, pointing as she severed the head of ghost whose head was already mostly cut off. "I'll keep these boys busy."
"Go!" Xander told Draco while skewering a girl ghost with thick glasses. Other than pinning her to the sword, the ghost was mostly unaffected. With a flick of his wrist, Xander flung her away.
"You're kidding," Draco muttered as he complied.
They zoomed up a nostril.
It was dark and claustrophobic. The nose hairs made from chains and multicolored banners trying to grab them didn't help. But between Draco's skillful, desperate flying and Xander's sword shearing through anything they could evade, they made it through to Dumbledore's well-lit office.
They arrived traveling at around ninety miles per hour.
It was a small office.
The securing charms saved Draco's life, anchoring and cushioning him safely to the broom when they came to a sudden stop. Being a passenger, Xander wasn't so fortunate. He sailed through the air over Draco's head and hit the far wall with a fatal crunch.
A horrified Draco looked straight into the eyes of the Headmaster. Dumbledore looked down at the broom handle impaled directly into his chest, then up to meet Draco's stare. There was a twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes.
"Weren't you born as the seventh month dies, Mister Malfoy?" Dumbledore gasped. Then he expired.
TO BE CONCLUDED.
By Nopporn Wongrassamee, the Evil Author
"Is the sun down yet?" Spike demanded again.
"Not yet," the Watcher answered again, annoyance creeping into his voice. There was all manner of fascinating phenomena occurring outside. A primitive stone castle was busy transforming itself into a humanoid mass as the space-time continuum was tearing itself to shreds. The Watcher's academic curiosity was piqued, but this undead primitive kept distracting him.
"Is the sun down yet?"
"Not yet."
"Is the sun down yet?"
"Not yet."
"Is the sun down yet?"
"Not yet."
"Is the sun down yet?"
"Yes it is!" the Watcher roared, his patience finally snapping.
"Is the." Spike paused as the Time Lord's words registered. "Really?"
"Yes, the planet has rotated so that this location is no longer receiving direct sunlight," the Watcher said slowly, as if to a small child.
"Well, alright then," Spike said, turning to charge out through the TARDIS' outer doors. "Niblet, Spike's coming to the rescue!" With that, Spike was gone, the doors swinging shut behind him.
Moments later, the Watcher heard a shriek that was abruptly cut off by the sound of rapid combustion. Then there was blessed silence. The Watcher smiled. What he had told the vampire was technically true; the inside of the TARDIS had never been in direct sunlight.
***
The first returning fragment was like a breath of fresh air. As each spectral memory of a past Slayer returned from bashing Dementors, they each contributed a little more strength to hold down Buffy's inner demon. When half of them had returned, Buffy felt sufficiently in control of herself to move.
The returning spectral Slayers also brought something else. They added new memories, their experiences while separate from Buffy. They also told of rifts that led elsewhere. Buffy quickly deduced that she must have stumbled through one of these.
Experimenting with this odd ability, Buffy released a few fragments of her self. Not many, just enough to scout the way back to the dimension Buffy had come from. Immediately, the fragments took the form of past Slayers who had been especially good trackers.
Buffy was in the mood to kick something's ass.
***
"How." Draco began.
Draco Malfoy had never really used any of the Unforgivables before, but he was confident that his Avada Kedavra had been perfect. The energy of the curse was the right shade of green. The energy bolt was neither too diffuse nor too dense. It even trailed the right amount of smoke.
So why had the Muggle in black barely flinched when Draco's curse had struck him squarely in the back? Oh, the Muggle had more than fliched. He had spun around and started stalking towards Draco, waving a - to Draco's eyes anyway - huge and very sharp sword.
"Y'know, I've been hit so many times with that damn spell by different versions of that Umbridge lady that I think I've developed an immunity to it," the Muggle growled at him. With his free hand, the Muggle roughly grabbed Draco by the collar of his robe and raised his sword arm. "I am getting sick and tired."
"Don't hurt me!" Draco shrieked, quickly crossing his arms over his head in an attempt to protect himself,
"Xander, wait!" called out the witch behind the Muggle. Except for the hair, eyes, and clothing, she bore a remarkable resemblance to Willowmorte. "He's not zombified like everyone else around here!"
"Say what?" the Muggle replied in confusion. Thankfully, he hesitated from hitting Draco.
A small part of Draco wondered what the witch meant by 'zombified'.
"He's not being mind controlled like everyone else here," the witch said reasonably. "Maybe he could show us where Dawn is. Or at least he could tell us where to find that evil white bearded wizard guy.'
Draco blinked. Who was she talking about? The only white bearded wizard he knew was Dumbledore and no one ever called that old geezer evil. Meddling, addled, even senile, but never evil.
"So what's the plan, Wills?" the Muggle man asked.
"Okay, we use this kid to lead us to Dawn and/or the evil Wizard," the witch said slowly, obviously making the plan up just ahead of her words. As she spoke, her words came faster. "We get Dawn back and deal with the wizard in our own special way. Oh! We also have to watch out for."
"Gotcha!" interrupted Willowmorte. Appearing out of thin air behind her twin, Willowmorte wrapped her arms around the other witch's head. There was an explosion of magic that threw Draco and his assailant through the air. Before they hit the floor, the world shifted around them.
***
Willow screamed. Willowmorte screamed. Finally in physical contact with each other, past the other's protective shields, the two versions of Willow Rosenberg were automatically trying to drain each other of their stores of magical power. Unfortunately, both drew on ambient power sources to fuel their magics. This set up a vicious feedback loop that grew steadily stronger. A moment's slip by either one of them would result in a magical explosion that would shred what little integrity local reality still had.
Willowmorte was willing to risk it.
Willow Rosenberg was not.
TRANSPORT.
***
Dumbledore sighed in relief. The brief battle between the two witches inside his remade Hogwarts had caused quite an itch. Now the two had taken their battle to another dimension. His two most dangerous opponents had just taken each other out of the picture. The ones left behind couldn't possibly be a threat.
His new body was just about ready. With just a smidgen of will power, Dumbledore willed it to sit up.
Hogwarts sat up.
***
Stepping through the last rift, Buffy finally made it back to the dimension with the glowing green castle. Only it wasn't quite a castle anymore. It was a giant made of masonry. Somewhere in there, Buffy knew, was Dawn.
Buffy looked up. And up. And up. One of her spectral scouts had reported that Dawn was in the head. Now, what was the quickest way up there?
Buffy put two fingers two her lips and whistled. Loudly. The glass in several windows visible on the giant's stone hide shattered at the shrill sound. The giant looked down at Buffy. Idly, Buffy noticed that the giant had a long beard that was also stone; it seemed like a waste of mass to her.
"You, hey you!" Buffy called up. "You give me my sister back right now or I'll."
Buffy was interrupted when the giant's hand came crashing down to squash her. She was hit squarely by the center of the palm imprinted itself deeply in the earth. Suddenly the hand jerked back into the air, as if in pain. Buffy's Scythe was stuck blade-first into the palm. Hanging on to her weapon, Buffy came up with it.
***
The boy, Draco, was blubbering. Xander didn't blame him. If Xander had just traipsed through a series of alternate realities where he was making out, having sex, or was otherwise being intimate with another guy, Xander would have been blubbering too.
Xander wondered what huge glasses and lightning scars meant. The sight of familiar glowing green corridors wasn't enough to banish the pondering from his mind. However, the view out the window was.
"Why is the horizon turned on its side?" he wondered aloud.
This was enough to stop Draco from blubbering. Wiping away his tears, the young wizard gawked at the view. The line of the horizon was vertical.
"Merlin! We're going to fall!" Draco said, panicking. He threw his leg over the broom he had acquired from one of his alternate selves. "I gotta get out of here!"
"Whoa there, pilgrim," Xander said, grabbing the broom's tail end. "You're not going any.HEY!"
With a kick of his legs, Draco was airborne. The securing charms that kept Draco seated also kept Xander attached. The two shot through the open window.
***
The magical explosion separated Willow and Willowmorte from each other. Although the explosion was on the scale of a nuclear explosion, the Hogwarts of this reality had already been nuked once. The additional damage did little except make the crater deeper.
The wind howled as air rushed back in to fill the vacuum created by the initial explosion. The two super witches got up and squared off with each other.
"Well, well, well," Willowmorte chuckled darkly. "If it isn't home sweet home."
"What?" Willow shouted back in confusion.
"This is my home reality, where it all started," Willowmorte shouted back. "Every living thing on this world was sacrificed, killed to empower me! Do you realize what this means?"
"What?" Willow shouted again.
"There's no magic left in this world to draw on!" Willowmorte told her opponent, grinning maniacally. "No magic but what we brought with us! It's down to what we have in our own personal reserves! And you expended a lot of your reserves just to get us here while I'm still almost full. You feeling lucky, girl?"
"I can't hear you!" Willow shouted in reply, gesturing at her ear. "The wind's too noisy!"
Willowmorte smacked the palm of her hand to her forehead. One perfectly villainous gloat had just been completely wasted. She suddenly missed having minions.
"Fine, whatever," Willowmorte growled. She assumed a ready combat stance, energy crackling from her fingertips. Her double did the same. "Let's dance."
***
Buffy was proving to be quite a handful. Sure she easily fit between the giant's thumb and forefinger. But that didn't mean she couldn't at least make a nuisance of herself. Although in her opinion, managing to pry loose the tip of the giant's pinky made Buffy more than a nuisance.
Unfortunately, this was taking too long. Buffy was not getting any closer to the head. According to her latest scouts, Dawn was fading fast. It was taking a lot f her current strength just to pry herself from between thumb and finger.
Another of Buffy's spectral scouts returned, bringing news of something else, or rather, someone else. Xander was nearby, and he was flying! There was hope yet.
***
With some effort, Xander managed to haul himself onto the broom, sitting just behind Draco. He then noticed the direction they were heading in.
"Turn us around!" Xander ordered Draco. "We gotta go back!"
Draco looked back at Xander then at the castle-turn-giant behind them. "Are you mad?"
"No," Xander replied, whipping out his sword. "I'm armed!"
The broom promptly did a one eighty.
"Do you have a plan?" Draco asked nervously.
"Sure I do," Xander replied. He just didn't know what it was yet, but he wasn't going to tell the kid that.
"Yo, Xandman!" a feminine voice called from nearby.
Surprised, both guys turned their heads to see what appeared to be a ghost paralleling their course.
"Faith?" Xander said incredulously.
"Not exactly," the spectral Slayer replied with a wink. "Dawn's in the head of that thing. Follow me!" Without another word, she zipped ahead.
"You heard the lady," Xander prompted his pilot. "Follow her!"
They zoomed after Faith.
***
On a dead world, Willow and her evil twin circled each other. There had been a preliminary exchange of magics as they probed each other's defenses. Despite the fact that she couldn't hear her double, Willow was well aware that she had the inferior reserves of power and that there weren't any local sources to draw upon. Willow needed to find a power source and fast. The lack of external sources reminded Willow of her rides in the TARDIS, where she had to limit her energy intake.
Willow eyes widened as she suddenly remembered that she could draw on more than just magic.
Ignoring her opponent, Willow collapsed herself into a seated lotus position, complete with her eyes closed. Her senses reaching out, Willow sensed her evil twin's surprise at Willow's sudden vulnerability. She was hesitant to attack, and suspicious of being lured into a trap. It was a trap in a manner of speaking. But it was the hesitation that was costly.
Willow flared with power.
The ground began to shake.
"How are you doing that?" Willowmorte shrieked in sudden fear and confusion. "Where are you getting the magic from?"
"What, have you never thought of trying alternate energy sources?" Willow asked rhetorically. Power streamed into Willow from the deep Earth where the currents of magma and immense magnetic core held sway, untouched by the surface destruction this world had suffered. Worlds were alive in more ways than one. "Here," Willow added, "lemme show you."
A crevice in the ground opened up beneath Wilowmorte's feet. Willow's evil twin fell in, her screams cut off when the crevice slammed closed. Willow felt the other's psychic signature wink out of existence.
Releasing her link to this Earth, Willow breathed out heavily and shivered. No matter how necessary it seemed, killing her other self was way too creepy. But there was no time to rest. She still had to rescue Dawn.
Willow wondered how Buffy and Xander were doing.
***
Buffy shot out from between the giant's thumb and forefinger like a watermelon seed. Unfortunately, the giant was holding her straight down at that moment. A few meters later, Buffy hit a rift.
So instead of falling through the air, Buffy found herself crashing through several stone floors before coming to the stop. Getting up, Buffy looked down at herself in disgust. Her outfit was now so damaged that it was little more than a few strips of artfully placed leather rags. This whole brouhaha had started out as a shopping expedition, after all.
Looking around, Buffy realized that she wasn't alone. She was in what appeared to be a classroom full of school kids. A version of her appeared to be teaching the class. Amazingly, no one had apparently been hit by flying debris. They were all - especially the boys - ogling her.
Buffy pointed her Scythe at her alternate self. "Would you happen to have any clothes I could borrow?" she asked.
***
As they raced around the giant's head toward the face, a gang of ghosts pounced on Xander, Draco, and Faith. Magic sword or not, Xander had trouble keeping the ghosts away. Faith on the other hand was having a grand old time.
"Xander! That way!" Faith cried, pointing as she severed the head of ghost whose head was already mostly cut off. "I'll keep these boys busy."
"Go!" Xander told Draco while skewering a girl ghost with thick glasses. Other than pinning her to the sword, the ghost was mostly unaffected. With a flick of his wrist, Xander flung her away.
"You're kidding," Draco muttered as he complied.
They zoomed up a nostril.
It was dark and claustrophobic. The nose hairs made from chains and multicolored banners trying to grab them didn't help. But between Draco's skillful, desperate flying and Xander's sword shearing through anything they could evade, they made it through to Dumbledore's well-lit office.
They arrived traveling at around ninety miles per hour.
It was a small office.
The securing charms saved Draco's life, anchoring and cushioning him safely to the broom when they came to a sudden stop. Being a passenger, Xander wasn't so fortunate. He sailed through the air over Draco's head and hit the far wall with a fatal crunch.
A horrified Draco looked straight into the eyes of the Headmaster. Dumbledore looked down at the broom handle impaled directly into his chest, then up to meet Draco's stare. There was a twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes.
"Weren't you born as the seventh month dies, Mister Malfoy?" Dumbledore gasped. Then he expired.
TO BE CONCLUDED.
