Chapter 14

Harry came back to a compartment in a total uproar and a still throbbing face. Everyone was on their feet, with Fleur pointing her wand at Tonks's head, while Tonks was trying to desperately explain something.

"What happened?" he groggily asked, attracting the attention of everyone in the cabin.

"This succubae," Fleur snarled, not lowering her wand. "Started things out by striking you in the side of the face! She then proceeded to obliviate you of something! She was just going to tell us what it was… or else."

"As I was saying." Tonks said with some exasperation. "I woke up, was feeling better, and heard that Harry was talking in his sleep." Harry cursed slightly, he always forgot that he had developed that habit after the Tournament.

"I wanted to see if it was anything I could tease him about later." Tonks admitted. "So, I snuck over to him… and he was having a nightmare, a bad one. He… he started saying You-Know-Who's name over and over again while still asleep. He wouldn't wake up, so I eventually punched him out of desperation. It worked, and once he opened his eyes… I did something we should have done a long time ago… I obliviated HIS name from Harry's memory."

"You what?!" Harry exclaimed. "What gave you the right to do that?!" He strained hard, and realized that she was telling the truth, he could no longer remember his mortal enemy's name.

"Because you are too stupid to realize… or maybe you just don't care… that most of us refuse to use his name for a damn good reason. So, you spent the last few years using his name all the time, building it up into a habit that you can't or won't break. Therefore, the only answer is to make it that you don't know it at all."

"Tell me what it is!" Harry roared at her, surging to his feet. "You had no business deciding if I should be scared of a bloody name…"

"It's the Taboo you jackass!" Tonks screamed back at him, her hair instantly flaring the brightest red any of them had ever seen. "Did you forget already what happens? People who say the name, both then and now, either were killed or vanished, never to be seen again!"

Harry backed down a little, cowed by the anger in her voice.

"But Dumbledore always said that you shouldn't be scared of a name…" he started to say lamely in defense.

"Because he never had to worry about the consequences of saying his name." Tonks said in a calmer voice, the red slowly leeching out of her hair. "He was a great man, but he often forgot that not everyone was as great as he was."

"Ummm…" Hedwig said while raising her hand. "You said that his name is Taboo. That it attracts the Death Eaters? Master said it. Does that mean we are in danger?"

That brought a sudden silence to the cabin.

"I… I don't know." Tonks admitted. "He was asleep, and I don't know what the criteria for the curse is…"

"Yes, we are." Harry miserably broke in, feeling very small. Everyone turned back towards him.

"Why do you say that?" Lily asked.

"He used the connection again." Harry explained, after straining for a few moments to remember You-Know-Who's name. "said he wanted to make me an offer, a deal, so that I wouldn't go after him and he wouldn't go after me. Now, it's clear that he was just goading me into doing what he wanted, I started cursing him out using his name. That must have been what Tonks heard… I've kinda developed the habit of talking in my sleep the last few years during nightmares. Before he killed the connection, or should I say Tonks killed the connection, he looked victorious. So yes, I think we are in danger."

"Merde!" Fleur cursed. "What do we do then?"

"We need to flee." Lily answered. "At once. Everyone grab you thi…"

She fell silent as they all felt a wave of magic wash over them as an anti-apparition and anti-portkey ward snapped into place. Meanwhile, the faint sound of the engine changed, and the train noticeably sped up.

"It appears we are too late." Lily commented idly. "And they are making it impossible for us, or anyone else for that manner, to just jump off."

"So, what do we do?" Fleur asked again, this time with the smallest touches of panic in her voice.

"It's impossible to cast those spells on a moving area like a train." Tonks answered, slipping into Auror mode and effectively taking over the situation. "They had to have brought ward stones, which means what we need to do is find them and destroy them. Then we can escape. The muggles will have to fend for themselves, they surely have a means of stopping the train from the outside."

As she spoke, the sound of gunfire echoed down the length of the train, followed by dozens of screams of terror. The sound of a magical explosion silenced the gunfire and spawned even more screams. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry thought he saw a body tumbling down the side of the tracks.

"Those stones could be anywhere on this train, and more then likely at the very front near the engine." Harry pointed out. "There is no way we can fight our way to them, and even if we did, I'm fairly certain we'll have defeated all the Death Eaters anyways. Also, why do the Muggles have guns?"

Lily stuck her head out of the compartment door and looked up and down the corridor, seeing several other concerned passengers doing the same thing.

"I have to imagine that they will go car to car looking for us." She said as she pulled her head back in and closed the door. "For which, starting at one end is more efficient, and they clearly have control of the locomotive. I think Harry is right, the stones will be there. However, I think we need to modify the plan a little bit. Yes, we try for the stones, cause even if we defeat all the Death Eaters, we are still stuck here until they are destroyed anyways. However, we can help both ourselves and the Muggles at the same time."

"I don't know…" Tonks said slowly. "This is going to be already hard enough to cover up by either side…"

"It's a lot easier when there is no one left alive to tell the story of what happened." Lily countered. "There is no way they will leave any of them alive."

"We cannot let that 'appen!" Fleur immediately protested. "My people would never let such a massacre go without finding the truth. The discovery of our world would only be a matter of time then."

Tonks cursed, then nodded her head in agreement.

"You're both right." She said, her eyes taking a far-off look as she thought rapidly. "Ok. Same plan, just a slight variation. As we move forward, we tell all the passengers that they need to evacuate to the back of the train, as far between them and the Death Eaters as they can get. Obviously, we can't tell them they are Death Eaters, and the muggle media already thinks the violent spill overs from this war are the acts of terrorists, so we will use that. More than likely that's why there was armed security on the train, especially since it crosses the border. If we are able to defeat them, then we destroy the stones and stop the train before escaping. It will give them a chance to at least run away or for Muggle authorities to get here and protect them. If we can't, then at the farthest point we can get, we severe that car from the front of the train and use charms to slow it down. Once the engine takes the stones out of range, we escape, and the rest of the train slows to a stop, with the same outcome for the muggles. I'm sorry, but I just don't see us escaping if we try to do more for them than that."

"Are we sure the front is the only place zey are?" Fleur asked, still not entirely happy about the plan, but also unable to think of anything better. "This plan is for naught if they are also in the back working their way forward to catch us from both sides."

"They aren't" answered Lily and Hedwig at the same time, who then stopped and looked at each other.

"I know what tactics Death Eaters like to use. They herd their victims into place rather then do any kind of flanking moves." Lilly answered the unspoken question. "They feel it adds to the terror of their victims, and it is fairly effective once they realize they are trapped."

"Former owl." Hedwig countered. "I still have a pretty good ear for determining where sounds are coming from, and all the screams have been coming from the front of the train."

There was another, louder explosion, and the train actually lurched on its wheels. With loud squeals of protest, they flung massive showers of sparks up into the air that turned the train cars' interior orange as they glowed through the windows before the rocking settled back down to normal.

"Well, whatever we are going to do." Fleur remarked after they regained their balance. "I think it is safe to say the sooner we do it, the better."

"Agreed." Lily said, her hand going to the hilt of her sword, before she stopped and looked at the close confines of the train. Wondering why her first instinct was to draw the sword, she instead pulled her wand from its own sheath. "Tonks, I think you'll agree with me when I say the two of us take the front and do the bulk of the fighting. Fleur should follow us and do mostly defensive work so that we can focus on attacks. Harry, I don't want to hear any complaints from you, but I want you well back of us, watching over Hedwig. She has no real means to attack OR defend herself, and so you will need to do so for her. Plus, in the worst case scenario, you can cut the cars apart yourself, and then the two of you flee. Hide. Somewhere very far away."

"Lily is right." Tonks said. "I know you can be a good fighter, but you don't have the training I have, Lily's experience, or Fleur's schooling. You have, to be blunt, been extremely lucky so far. If we get out of this, that will change as we can start to train you, but it wont matter if you get killed, ok?"

Harry grumbled clenching his fists, but he knew deep down that the two of them were accurate. He knew he was good at Defense against the Dark Arts, but at the end of the day, his useable repertoire of combat spells was extremely limited, and he instinctively used the same ones over and over again anyways. He idly wondered if he would be this way if he had never met Ron, then angrily shoved the thought away.

Lily placed her hand on his shoulder, making him look up. Green eyes met green eyes.

"We are not dismissing your accomplishments." She told him gently. "You just need to learn that you do not need to be at the front all the time. That others can protect you instead of trying to protect them. Ok?"

"Yes." He finally managed to get out from between gritted teeth. "I'll watch our backs."

Lily frowned for a moment at his changing of what they wanted him to do, but in the end decided the outcome would be the same.

"Good." She finally said, "Then let's get ready, because we are going now. Tonks, do you have everything packed up again?"

Tonks drew her own wand and shrugged. "I never really took anything out, so yeah, we are good to go."

As best as they could, the group gathered by the door, before Tonks and Lily ducked out into the corridor, their wands up and scanning for targets.

"Clear!" Tonks called out, and the other three also moved out into the corridor.

"Ok." Lily told them. "As we move forward, tell any Muggle we pass to head to the back of the train, watching out for terrorists dressed in black with white masks on. Tell them we are… uh…"

"Gendarmerie." Fleur answered. "We are still in France on a French train, so its more believable then saying something like your MI5 or even Interpol. Plus, my people hold them in high respect that they will not question it too much… but I think that it would be best if I do the talking."

"Right." Tonks said, blushing slightly at the flaw in her plan, then joined the others in whipping their heads around as a fresh volley of gunfire broke out, the multitude of gunshots echoing up and down the length of the train. It was joined by an alarm that started to blare in every train car. "Huh, thought they would have killed all the muggle guards by now. Good. The sound of gunfire will make things even easier to get the Muggles moving. Let's stop wasting time and get going."

As they started making their way through the car and into the next one, it was clear that the alarm and the gunfire had done most of the hard work for them, and all the train passengers were already awake. They were all too happy to follow the order to head to the back, often with little more then a pointed finger from the "officials." The only real problem they had was an elderly British tourist couple, where the husband was confused and thought he was back in World War 2. They ended up getting him to go in the back by telling him he needed to protect the "civilians" from the "Nazis" with a piece of luggage transfigured into looking like an old rifle.

Once they entered the coach cars, things could not be different. Between the wailing alarms, and the much closer sound of combat (Harry could have sworn he briefly heard the rapid fire of an automatic weapon of some kind before it abruptly fell silent), and the passengers were in a sheer panic. They were forced to literally push some of them out of the way and towards the back to keep progressing. This was hampered by the fact that they were starting to see some of the wounded from the battle that was still somehow raging in the cars ahead of them.

The next car they entered was completely empty, its passengers having already fled and been directed to the rear. Here was their first actual sign of combat, with several spells having punched their way through the walls between the cars, making an eerie sound as the wind rushed in.

As they neared the door to the next car, they suddenly staggered backwards and took cover behind seats as the door suddenly burst open and the body of a muggle fell through it, his gun clattering away from his hand. His body was covered with burns, the skin literally bubbling in places, and with him came the cloud of smoke from a fire burning fiercely somewhere up ahead.

"Bubbleheads!" Fleur called out, casting the charm on herself. "We won't be able to breath without them!"

Casting the spell on both himself and Hedwig, Harry peered out from behind the seats they had taken cover behind and tried to look into the next car. The smoke made that next to impossible, but watching it interact with the holes in the walls of the car gave him an idea.

"Can either of you channel a wind spell in there?" he called out to the trio of women ahead of him. "There is no way we wanna try and advance in all of that, we'd be as blind as a bat."

Lily and Tonks exchanged glances before nodding and raising their wands together. Streams of air started billowing out of the tips of their wands, and started swirling around the smoke in the next compartment like horizontal twisters. A slight twist of the wands sent the smoke smashing through a window on each side, and streaming down the sides of the train.

Within seconds, the car was cleared of the majority of the smoke filling it, and then all hell broke loose. Looking back, Hedwig wasn't sure who was more surprised. Her master and his friends, or the trio of Death Eaters who had been just steps away from emerging from the now vanished smoke and entering their car. All she did know was that both sides stared at each other for a few seconds before one of the Death Eaters recovered first, flinging up his arm to point directly at Harry.

"There he is!"

The sudden yell stirred both sides into action, and a flurry of spell fire broke out into the space between the two cars, as the Death Eaters leapt to the sides to seek out their own cover, but not before the Death Eater who had identified Harry took a piercing hex to the shoulder. Tonks grinned as she fired off curses, noting how undertrained these Death Eaters seemed to be, a fact emphasized by the fact that one of them stood up completely from behind his cover to take his next shot. A quick cutting curse had him slowly sinking back down, clawing at his ruined neck that was gushing blood.

Lily meanwhile managed to nail the already wounded one with a bludgeoning spell straight through the chair he was cowering behind and into the Death Eaters chest, caving it in with a spray of blood from their mouth. She blinked a little at the strength of the spell and glanced down at her ring that glinted a little in the train's lights. She frowned, shoving her momentary fears to the back of her mind, and focused on the task at hand.

A task that got much harder by the half dozen Death Eaters that had just entered the other car and were slowly making their way to their sole surviving comrade, taking great care to use the available cover of the seats and taking shots carefully. These were clearly proper Death Eaters, and their skills showed it.

"Well, this is a lovely time." Fleur remarked conversationally as she deflected a curse aimed at Tonks. Her hair fluttered as a curse fired by Harry flew past her and narrowly missed its target. "Still think that the plan is gonna work out?"

Lily aimed a bombarda down the other car, and grimaced when there were no screams of pain when it made contact with something and exploded. Seconds later though, they were all flung to the floor as another massive explosion rocked the train from up ahead, causing the lights to flicker and dim. Tonks scowled as she got back onto her knees and relieved one Death Eater of their wand hand who had not scurried back to cover quick enough.

"The hell did you do?" She demanded of Lily, who shook her head in denial.

"That wasn't me. We are barely staying on any offense at all, never mind taking the time to build up a spell like that. That fire up ahead must be hitting something explosive, cause I don't see how there is anyone left alive up there."

She glanced out from cover and did a quick count of the opposition and cursed. There was now over a dozen Death Eaters in the next car, to the point that unless it was a fatal hit, they were healing each other of any wounds that they were receiving.

"I think its safe to say that this is as far as we are gonna go." She pointed out. "Which means we are stuck with splitting the train apart, but I have no idea how to do that without leaving cover. Any ideas anyone?"

Tonks bit her lip and Fleur looked back to search Harry's eyes, while Hedwig just stayed as small as she could against the floor. Harry just shrugged, he was on the verge of moving up a couple of rows to better help Fleur on the defense.

"I don't know." Tonks finally admitted. "I'm trying to think but they are kinda making it hard to do even that. Shit!"

She yelped as a torrent of fire roared into their car like a flamethrower, setting seats ablaze and melting plastic and metal alike. It was only quick thinking by Fleur that spared them of the same fate. It meant though that she was no longer on the defense, and the Death Eaters quickly exploited that. The cars and the surrounding landscape lit up with multicolored flashes of light as the Death Eaters poured a hailstorm of curses and hexes into their car, all while Fleur continued to hold back the wall of fire that seeked their flesh.

Another spell sped past Fleur's head, and suddenly the flames died out, its caster slowly toppling over with part of her skull missing from a cutting curse. Fleur glanced back again at Harry and gave him a tired nod of thanks, who grimly returned it. That momentary distraction would prove telling, as both of them missed the bone breaker that sailed in and nailed Tonks in the wand hand.

Screaming in pain, her wand dropped from the useless hand and rolled away. Eyes open wide in panic, and cradling her broken hand to her chest, she scrambled after her wand on the floor, momentarily forgetting to stay under cover. She just about had her fingers on it when she was suddenly yanked backwards just as three Killing Curses slammed into the floor where she had just been. Hedwig watched helplessly as the wand continued rolling into a pile of still burning seats.

Harry had seen the danger Tonks was in and had cast the summoning charm on her back. However, he was almost as tired as everyone else was, and wasn't able to stop her flight before she crashed into him, knocking him over onto his back.

"I knew you wanted to jump me." Harry joked through clenched teeth.

"Not the time." Tonks hissed back at him, then rolled off with a moan of pain. Lily tried to keep back the Death Eaters as Fleur moved to Tonks's side to examine her hand.

"Merde." She cursed under her breath as she ran her wand over it. "This will 'urt a lot." Tonks just nodded, before screaming loudly in pain as Fleur reset the bones in her hand with a series of audible cracks that could be heard even over the battle. Whimpering slightly, she used her metamorphic powers to hold the bones in place until they could be healed properly later. She carefully flexed her fingers before looking around.

"Did anyone grab my wand? Where is it?"

"I didn't see where it went." Harry admitted, and Fleur nodded in agreement as she went back to help Lily defend their car.

"Then come on Harry, I need you to summon it back." Tonks said hastily. "Lily can't cover us forever."

"That may not work." Hedwig said timidly. "After Harry pulled you back, I saw it roll away… I… I think I saw it roll into one of the fires…"

"Harry!" Tonks instantly yelled, turning towards the car entrance. "Do it now!"

Harry slid in behind her and thrust his wand forward.

"Accio Tonks's Wand!" he called out, and a burning stick flew towards them and clattered to the floor, where Fleur extinguished it with her own wand. Tonks gingerly picked it up, and her shoulders slumped. The only warmth she felt from it was from the heat of the burned wood.

"Its dead." She said softly, falling backwards onto her butt heavily, staring at it.

Harry cursed and scurried over to the seat Lily was behind, narrowly avoiding a blasting curse that tore a hole in the floor.

"Tonks is out of the fight." He told her quickly, sending a cutting curse into the side of one of the Death Eaters who tried to rush the door. "Her wand is destroyed. Whatever we are gonna do, we gotta do now before we run out of gas in the tank. I don't think we can hold them off until the train just stops."

"No." Lily agreed. "That won't happen for ages, and I don't even know if the muggles have a means to stop the train on their end. Surely they would have tried to do it by now if they did. I just can't think of anything, and this damn ring has picked a wonderful time to stop talking to me!"

Harry didn't answer right away as he shot off another piercing hex, then focused his attention on the hole in the floor of the car. A small smile formed on his face.

"We will circle back later to how that ring talks to you." He informed Lily. "But for now, I think I know what to do. Everyone get back!"

Lily looked at Harry and saw the same look of determination that James used to get on his face, especially when he thought up a new prank, and knew there was no point in asking too many questions or trying to dissuade him. She just ducked out from behind the seat and hurried back to where the other women were taking cover.

Tonks looked up from her destroyed wand when Lily did this, and glanced over to see Harry aiming his wand down towards the floor to where the two cars joined. She frowned trying to figure out what he was going to do and her eyes drifted to the same hole in the floor that he had seen… and the car frame that the coupling was connected to. Her eyes suddenly widened and she surged to her feet, ignoring the curses that sailed past her body.

"Harry don't!" Her scream, fueled by knowing what he was about to do, failed for a second time that night to stop him in time.

It wasn't his fault. Not really. It was, after all, a common flaw among the magicals to occasionally display a stunning lack of logic, and Harry was no exception. He had seen that It would be possible to cut through the couplers without having to leave the train car, but rather then using a wide area cutter to do the job, he instead went with an overpowered Bombarda to blast the area apart.

The others briefly lost sight of him as he was enveloped by his own explosion. Then, through a storm of fire, sparks, and molten shrapnel, Harry was hurtled backwards out of the blast, this time it was Tonks who was doing the catching. The pair tumbled head over heels down the car before finally coming to a stop.

Harry's world swam and his vision was tinged with red. His left side felt weird, and he idly noticed that he couldn't hear anything past a sharp ringing. Tonks's face came into his field of view and her lips moved, but it seemed like no sound came from them. He tried to lift his head, but his neck was having trouble obeying his wish.

Eventually, he managed to lift it slightly, and saw Fleur and Lily standing by the shattered remains of the front of their car. Fleur was furiously exchanging spell fire with a furious looking man, while Lily was doing something with her wand pointed at the ground. He couldn't help but grin slightly when he felt the gradual deceleration of their half of the train, and a gap started to form. The man saw this and made an effort to jump from his car into theirs, only to be blasted backwards by Fleur.

He let his head fall backwards.

"We did it." He said softly, then his eyes closed, and he knew no more.

A/N: You don't have to remember to not say someone's name if you can't remember said name to begin with. Harry will soon find a loophole around this, question is, what will You-Know-Who do about it?

I am still hard at work going over previous chapters, doing slight rewrites, but most grammar and spelling corrections. Some of which I can't for the life of me understand how they got through the first time around.

For those who repeatedly messaged me after the last chapter asking if this story is abandoned, it is not, and in fact I already have the next 3 chapters written, and awaiting editing. Life has been busy as of late, with me still having to handle the fallout of a death in family, and repeated bouts of Cold, Flu, and Covid.

I have also been working on another project, which I am very proud to say is now available. If you like my writing, and want to help support me, go check out The EPS Files on Amazon eBooks. It is my first foray into releasing original content, featuring the mysterious EPS organization, whose job it is to make sure that we continue to think that myths and legends are exactly that. This short story series is part of a much larger universe that will be slowly unveiled, and eventually lead to my full length novel series, the first of which is already written.

I am looking forward to going on this new journey with all of you, and as always, leave a review on how you think I am doing!