Disclaimer: Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse. JK Rowling is inevitable.

A/N: Ugh, what a mess. So here's what happened. First off, when the previous chapter went up, I was still writing the complete battle sequence, and I wasn't quite sure where to put the chapter breaks. I considered putting it right after Snape's scene, but I chose here instead because there's a bit of a timeskip at this point, so I hope it worked out alright.

Next was the fact that I wasn't sure if this chapter would end up being one chapter or two. It turned out to be two, but I didn't know that until I had most of what is now Chapter 22 written. Then, I got sidetracked by another project; that's on me, sorry. And then, I could have had this chapter done a week ago—maybe two weeks—but my computer up and died with no warning. I had a backup, but it was three weeks old, so I had to take it to Best Buy to recover the drive, and of course order a new computer.

The good news is that Chapter 22 is fully written, so it will definitely be up next Saturday. And then, we'll see, but I've been increasing my daily writing commitment to try to speed things up.


Chapter 21: The Battle of Britain, Part II

Dinner was served in the Common Rooms and was limited fare. The students hadn't at any point been confined per se except to the Old Castle, but teachers were patrolling the corridors making sure they didn't wander off. Students who were of age were allowed access to the battlements and tried to organise themselves into some sort of defence in case the worst happened, and a few go-betweens passed information back to their housemates.

People stood around nervously or huddled on the sofas as the evening wore on. No one in Gryffindor went up to their dorms, and on Professor Sinistra's advice, the Prefects stopped the few who wanted to. Should the wards fail, the Tower above them would be one of the most dangerous places to be.

Outside the windows was the most ghastly fireworks show they had ever seen. Bombs, spells, and stones exploded against the siege wards almost constantly, the ships' ammunition magically replaced. The Founders had done a good job, but Harry couldn't imagine how anything could stand up to this for long. Sieges were supposed to be mostly digging in and waiting, but this wasn't that. They couldn't get a great view of the fight, since Gryffindor Tower was at the back side of the castle, but for a while, it seemed to be a stalemate. Until, that is, they heard something worse outside the portrait hole: spellfire. In the corridors.

"Oh, no," Neville groaned in horror.

Harry didn't think. He jumped up and ran to the portrait hole.

"Harry, wait!" Hermione said.

He didn't wait. He had to know what was going on, and help if he could. It was only when he was halfway through that he thought he might be abandoning his post. He and Hermione were the only Prefects left in the tower, after all. "Uh…kids, stay here!" he ordered vaguely, and he jumped into the corridor.

He knew even before he heard her that Hermione had come out behind him. Outside, there weren't that many people, but the ones they saw, the sixth- and seventh-years who should've been on the battlements, were fighting running duels in the corridors—duels against attackers in red Durmstrang robes.

"What?"

"How?"

Harry spotted a knot of familiar faces trying to push a pair of Durmstrang fighters back, and he ran to them. "What happened? Stupefy!" He joined the fight.

"They attacked the defenders from behind!" Fred yelled. "Dumbledore and Grayson are the only ones still out there!"

Hermione joined in, cursing back at the enemies. They were outnumbered and soon incapacitated, but it was clear there were more where they came from.

"We have to clear them from the battlements to get the defences back up!" Katie shouted.

"I'll scout around!" Harry said.

He could hear Hermione yell, "Harry—!" again, but he was already in cat form, dodging between legs and spells with an ease that he could never have achieved as a human. Not many people even saw him down on the ground, and no one bothered him. He raced down the corridors until he reached the south-facing windows. It was then that he noticed Cho cornered by two Durmstrang boys, struggling to fend off their hexes.

He nearly changed back to human at her side, but he realised that was a dumb idea at the last moment and ran behind them. Standing on two legs, he immediately hit one of the boys in the back with a Stunning Hex, and he crumpled. The other spun around, but caught between the two of them, he didn't stand a chance.

"Thanks, Harry. That was close," Cho said.

Harry ran to her. "Cho, what are you doing out here?"

"Well, I couldn't just stand by, could I?"

"Hmph, Dumbledore might not like it, but—What happened?"

Cho winced: "I didn't see it, exactly, but it looked like some of the Durmstrang fighters swam to shore and slipped under the wards somehow."

"And climbed all the way up here?" Harry said.

"They had a little help."

"Avada Kedavra!"

Harry both heard the direction the curse was coming from and felt where it was going with his attuned magic sense. On instinct, he lunged forward, cat-like, and tackled Cho out of the way. The Killing Curse exploded against the wall just behind where he had been standing.

"It's the Slytherins!" someone cried.

Harry spun around. Cassius Warrington and Graham Montague stalked forward, their left sleeves rolled up to the elbow, revealing the Dark Mark. Harry swore loudly. "The Eagle and the Serpent! We shouldn't've got distracted."

Warrington and Montague both raised their wands while he was speaking, but by the time they did, Harry was holding the best shield spell he could manage wandlessly with his left hand and throwing hexes with his wand.

It was then that Hermione ran up and joined them, with Neville and Luna close behind.

"Watch out! They're Death Eaters!" Harry yelled.

"Avada Kedavra!"

His warning might have saved Hermione's life as she dodged out of the way just in time. However, five on two wasn't great odds for them, and Warrington and Montague knew when they were outmatched. The two Slytherins ran for it before they could take them down.

"Harry, you can't do that!" Hermione chided, smacking her brother on the arm.

"Hey, they attacked us," he protested. "And I was with Cho. Now look alive. There's bound to be more of them."

Indeed, the noise of battle hadn't left them. They could still hear fights in the corridor at a distance. Now that they were together, it was implicitly understood that they were in a better position to push the intruders back. By unspoken agreement, they ran toward the staircases up to the battlements.

"How did Death Eaters get in?" Neville said.

"I don't know," Harry told him. "Cho, was it just them, or were there more Slytherins?"

"There were more. We kept them from cursing Dumbledore in the back, but they scattered us."

"And we don't know how they got in," Hermione pointed out. "More could be coming."


"The wards won't hold long with Rookwood out there, Amelia," Corban Yaxley's smug voice echoed through the dark Solar System Room. "More will be coming."

"There's one of him and a dozen Unspeakables in here, Yaxley," Amelia Bones retorted, relying on the room's emptiness to echo her voice from every direction as his did. Curse Yaxley! She knew there had to be a spy in the Aurors, but he was too good. She'd glossed right over him. And curse him for sending that fake alert for her to come down to the Department of Mysteries right before the attack began! As per protocol, the Department had been sealed as soon as the Ministry was breached so as not to let their research fall into the wrong hands.

But that had been just what he wanted. Yaxley and three other Death Eaters had ambushed her when she arrived, and in the two hours since, they had led her and the other Unspeakables through this maze in the world's deadliest game of cat-and-mouse.

"Those meddlers won't have a chance to do anything, Amelia," Yaxley said. "Most of them have probably never fought a duel in their lives."

Unfortunately, that was true. The Unspeakables were trying, but they weren't much help. They were smart, sure, but most of them were scholars, not fighters. She'd seen a couple of them cut down already. No, she couldn't rely on them. Her best bet was to lure the Death Eaters into one of the Department's more dangerous experiments. She knew the place as well as they did, at least. The trick was not getting herself killed in the process, which was why they were still down here.

Amelia didn't give Yaxley another response. She concentrated, running through all of the spells she could use in this darkness. She needed to cast something without a visible bolt or a sound. While there were a few options for charms, there was a simpler way. She conjured a string of firecrackers and threw thew across the room. They exploded, distracting the Death Eaters so she could make a run for it and come up with a better trap. The hunt began anew.

And what she wouldn't give to throw that bastard Yaxley through the Veil of Death right now!


Harry's group ran into another group of half a dozen students of all houses fighting to keep the Durmstrang-Slytherin assault from getting up to the battlements. Well, no, it wasn't all the houses, Harry noted. There were no Slytherins fighting for the castle. But even then he amended mentally: there were no Slytherins fighting openly for the castle. That was hardly a certainty with them.

What was certain was that there were Slytherins fighting against the castle alongside Durmstrang students, and right now, both sides were pinned down in alcoves on a long corridor, throwing curses at each other. And it wasn't going well. First, Eddie Carmichael slipped on the floor and skidded out into the middle of the corridor where he was quickly stunned. Then, one of the alcoves gave way without warning, nearly burying Marcus Belby.

Eventually the attackers scattered, but when they reached the Grand Staircase a few minutes later, Harry could tell something was wrong. All of the stairs were rotated away from that part of the castle, cutting off the most obvious way down. Anyone trying to escape would have to double back and run into the Death Eaters again.

"No!" he said. "This is definitely not right. Someone must be messing with the castle."

"We know there are Death Eaters in Slytherin," Hermione pointed out.

"Yes, but controlling the whole staircase like this? How?"

"I don't know there are probably ways, though."

"We have to go back," Harry said. "Damn, and now they're between us and Dumbledore."

Neville shook his head. "The teachers can handle themselves," he said. "I'm more worried about the dorms. We can't let Death Eaters in there."

"The muggle-borns," Hermione agreed.

"We can't just play defence—" Harry started.

"Worry about that when we have a defence, mate," Neville insisted. "Let's move!"

Suddenly taking charge, Neville led the way. They ran back around toward Ravenclaw Tower, which was closer now, and back into the main group of defenders on that side. The resistance was strong here. They were even starting to push the Death Eaters back to the auxiliary staircases they'd come up. But just as Harry thought they might be able to secure the Ravenclaw dorms, his feline instincts twinged. Hermione must have spotted something too because both of them whirled around, and Harry put up a Shield Charm just in time, as a hex splashed against it. A seventh-year Harry thought was named Selwyn started throwing spells at them from just behind the knot of defenders. Minor ones—only ones to incapacitate, but still.

Harry and Hermione were both good duellists, though. Selwyn was hit by a Stunning Spell in his side and collapsed to the floor.

"Phew," Harry said. "Good thing we noticed him behind us."

Hermione looked down at the boy in thought, biting her lip. "Wait a minute," she said. "Isn't he a Hufflepuff?"

They looked at each other in horror.

"They've got agents in the other houses!" Harry whispered.

Hermione was rapidly turning white. "What do we do?" she asked.

"Stealth," he said firmly. "Outflank them." And before she could object, he changed back to cat form and ran off down the corridor.

Both of them had the sense not to shout it out, but Selwyn hadn't gone unnoticed. The other fighters noticed one of their attackers wasn't in green-trimmed robes or Durmstrang red. Their defence broke almost immediately. Harry could smell the panic building as he ran. Anyone could be an enemy agent, be it by Polyjuice, Imperius, or mundane persuasion—and he had a nasty feeling it was the third.

Sure enough two other students started throwing hexes—one Ravenclaw and one Hufflepuff. Harry heard Neville roaring behind them, "Traitors!"

Hermione was right on Harry's tail in otter form. He turned and saw her looking back to Neville. Harry batted her with a paw to tell her to come along. He didn't like to do it himself, but Neville and Luna could handle it for a minute. They had to.

Where's Cho? he thought. He tried to pick up her scent, but with all the running around, he couldn't be sure which trail to follow. Acting on a hunch, he found her trying to get back around to the Gryffindor side of the castle. He ran to her side and changed back to human. "Cho!"

Cho yelped and jumped about a foot in the air, spinning to point her wand before she saw who it was.

Harry didn't wait for her to speak. "We're being sabotaged! They're in the other houses! Where's Professor Flitwick?"

She blinked in confusion.

"Professor Flitwick!" Harry repeated.

"He went back up to the battlements, but—"

"Get somewhere safe!" Harry changed back to cat form and quickly found the way up there. In retrospect, he probably could have sniffed out Flitwick directly, but he'd had to warn Cho, too.

The Charms Master, in the heat of battle with the forces down below in the Lake, didn't even flinch when a cat ran up beside him and turned into one of his students. "Mr. Potter?" he said, seemingly without looking.

"Professor, there are Hogwarts students with the Death Eaters," he reported. "Not just Slytherins, either. They must've been recruiting all over the school!"

That did make Flitwick stop and look at him. "The other houses?" he squeaked.

"Yes, sir. Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws."

"And Gryffindors," Hermione said breathlessly, suddenly appearing beside him. "I just saw Kenneth Towler duelling the Weasley Twins. The upper years can't hold the line like that, sir."

"Towler?" Harry said in disbelief. "After what happened to his sister with Greyback?"

Hermione ignored him. "And I think they must've let the Durmstrang students in too."

"But how?" Harry asked. "Even Hogwarts students shouldn't have access to the wards."

Hermione stumbled as a horrible thought struck her: "What if they do, though? Professor, how secure are the wards from the inside?"

Professor Flitwick's face fell: "Oh, bugger."


It was just Percy Weasley's luck that he'd been stuck on Level Four when the Ministry was breached, in the Magical Creatures Department. He was about as far as possible from both the Minister and any of the exits, with Death Eaters roaming the halls—and werewolves, if the shouts he'd heard bouncing through the corridors were true.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much he could do, cut off as he was. In retrospect, he probably should have run straight to the Minister's office when the alarms went off. Merlin knew he might be fired if they all got out of this alive. But he'd remembered his father's words first. He focused on evacuating the division he was in, and then, his insistence on being the last one out led to him being cut off.

When someone or something smashed into the offices on Level Four with wands blazing, Percy knew he couldn't get to the exit. He thought fast and ducked into the last place anyone searching the Ministry would think of: the Centaur Liaison Office—the office that no one he knew had ever gone near because no centaur had ever used it.

He nearly fainted when he ran in and discovered the office was occupied by a skeleton dressed in moth-eaten robes and covered in cobwebs. He was greatly relieved when, on closer inspection, the skeleton was a fake—a prank probably planted there years ago given the amount of dust.

Once he caught his breath, Percy started thinking. His father had to be around here somewhere, but he would have been up on Level Two, which would have been one of the Death Eaters' prime targets, along with Level Six. He could only hope Dad had got out before everything went to hell. He tried to guess what the optimal way out of here would be for himself. If he stayed here until after the battle was over, would he be able to slip out unnoticed? No, probably not. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wouldn't leave such a valuable prize as the Ministry undefended. Which meant, as much as he didn't want to, he would need to find his way out now.

Disillusioning himself, Percy peered out the door. The division was a mess—desks overturned, holes in walls, parchment and broken glass scattered everywhere, burn marks on the rug. But there were no Death Eaters in sight. He took just a moment to register his offence at what they'd done with the place and then thought that because he'd cleared out the division so efficiently, they'd probably trashed it out of spite and moved on. He might have a chance yet, at least to get down to Level Six.

He made his way to the back corner of the Ministry, closest to the Minister's office, but farthest from the lifts that the initial wave of attackers had apparently used. He crept quietly, listening for the sounds of battle. He could still hear plenty, but not close by. He was nearing the stairwell when he felt a swooping sensation pass over him and froze. Homenum Revelio.

"I know you're there!" a voice hissed. "Show yourself." It was hushed, tense, nervous, and he only thought he recognised it. Percy cautiously crept around the next corner, preparing to drop the Disillusionment Charm. Casting a spell would give him away anyway, and he needed to be able to see himself.

He did it at the same moment he saw who it was. His father was creeping along the corridor, back to the wall, pale, by coiled like a prowling…well, weasel. His eyes widened when he saw him.

"Percy!"

"Dad!" he said, and he got halfway down the corridor before he caught himself. "Hang on. Um…how did Bill find out about his send-off party when he finished Hogwarts?"

Dad paused in his tracks as he reoriented himself. "As I recall, Charlie and his friend Maya didn't know how to be quiet."

Percy half-lowered his wand and turned it back down the corridor, hurrying to his father's side.

"Thank Merlin, Percy," Dad said, quickly hugging him. "I've been looking everywhere."

"We can't stay here. We'll be trapped," Percy said. "What's happening, Dad?"

"I'm sure you could hear the fighting. I ran into Fudge and Kingsley. They're getting out now. Fudge actually did pretty well against the Death Eaters."

"Good. I knew he had it in him. We still have Level Six, then?"

Dad shook his head: "I wouldn't trust it, but Kingsley thought we could punch through. What about you? What were you doing here?"

"I stayed behind to make sure everyone got out of the division, but then they blew the windows in."

Dad stopped and looked straight at him, admiration on his face. "Good show, son," he said. "Now, let's see about getting ourselves out of here."


"If someone's tampering with the wards, they can only be doing it from the Headmaster's Office, or from the foundations of the castle," Professor Flitwick said. He could run fast for someone his size, but Harry and Hermione were easily able to keep up.

"And only Professor Dumbledore can get into his office, right?" Harry said.

"They shouldn't be able to," Flitwick said. "The foundations are more likely."

"Could they bring down the wards?" Hermione asked.

"If they can get enemies into the castle, I'd say it's likely. The castle will fight them, but it wasn't design for this kind of attack. We have to hurry."

The three of them raced down the staircases on the back way to the ground floor. With the Death Eaters sabotaging the Grand Staircase, it was that much harder, and they had no idea how many more might be scattered around the castle.

Sure enough, when they got to the second floor, their luck ran out, as three Death Eaters (or so they presumed, although one of them was in Gryffindor robes) jumped out from around a corner. Professor Flitwick, out in front, was caught by surprise. He managed to put up a shield in time to avoid being stunned, but they had him on the back foot. As he began duelling back, a bolt of green light flew at them, and Flitwick, Harry, and Hermione all dove out of the way.

Flitwick retaliated with some dark-sounding curses that Harry and Hermione didn't recognise, and the two of them joined in with as much offensive magic as they knew, but casting Killing Curses was a pretty good way to keep an opponent from cursing back, and they struggled to wear down even just the lead Death Eater.

Then, one of the Death Eaters suddenly turned to the side and exclaimed, "What the—?" And a curse hit him in the chest from out of sight in the next corridor.

The second Death Eater tried to fight back, but she went down to another curse, and the third, caught in a crossfire now, was unable to keep up the fight. He tried to run, but Flitwick hexed him in the back.

"Who's there?" he squeaked.

Neville came around the corner, out of breath looking the worse for wear. From the cuts and the tears in his robes, it looked like he'd taken some glancing curses.

"Neville!" Harry and Hermione both said.

They started forward, but Neville held up his wand.

"Hang on, you're still Harry?" he said. "Er, what did I say was the craziest thing William Wallace did?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Longbottom?" Flitwick said.

Harry ignored him and answered, "It was when the Scots hoisted their kilts at the English Army—" ("What?" Flitwick said.) "—Neville? What are you doing here? What about the battlements?"

Neville shook his head: "It's hopeless up there. We can't mount a defence when the only people we can trust are the teachers."

"But there can't be that many Death Eaters?" Hermione said.

"That doesn't matter when you can't tell who's going to curse you in the back, Hermione—"

"Quickly, students!" Flitwick interrupted as he hurried on his way. The others started to follow him.

"Where's Luna?" Harry said.

"Here, Harry," she called, stepping around the corner behind Neville and joining the group as they rushed down to the ground floor.

"Anyway, I thought Selwyn was Cedric's friend, and he turned on us," Neville started again. "Hell, I almost hexed Seamus because I thought he was acting funny. We can't trust anyone up there, so we figured the only chance was to come down and find where they were getting in."

The turned the corner to the flight to the ground floor. Two more Death Eaters were guarding the exit.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Five on two would have been good odds, but a narrow stairway was a death trap when Killing Curses started flying. The curse flew over Flitwick's head, and, with his cat-like reflexes, Harry managed to pull himself and Luna against one wall. Neville pushed Hermione against the other. Luckily, Flitwick held the pair off for the couple seconds it took them to recover, and the defenders made short work of them.

"Phew, that was close," Neville said.

"Thanks," Hermione said. "I really need to get faster. I could've died just then." Neville spared a moment to hold her comfortingly, and she kissed him briefly.

Harry was slightly more practical: "Professor, where'll they be letting people in?"

"With the West Wing fortified, it'll have to be through the Boathouse via the drainage tunnels," Flitwick said. "Near the Slytherin dungeons, but the controls will be directly under the Great Tower."

"I'll scout ahead," he said. "Luna, colours."

He shrank down to cat form. Flitwick jumped and said, "Mr. Potter—!" in protest, but Luna already had her wand out. She waved it, and Harry's white feet and scar fur vanished, turning him all black, and he ran off across the ground floor, toward the Great Hall, and then down the stairs to the Slytherin dungeons. He dodged around feet as he went, seeing both friend and foe fighting down here as well. Some of the students had been caught down here and were trying to fight their way through the Death Eaters, along with some of the house elves, but they were mostly pinned down. He noted with sadness that some of them were lying dead.

There were Durmstrang thugs guarding the entrance to the Slytherin Common Room, keeping the younger students and possibly some who were disloyal inside. He ran past them before they could question a cat wandering at a time like this and followed their scent for a short way, but there didn't seem to be more coming. Maybe they thought they had all they needed.

Then, Harry ran to the space under the Great Tower. He stayed back in the shadows when he saw then. There were a dozen witches and wizard here, guarding the area and cursing anyone who got close, and in the middle, four people were casting spells that sent shivers down his spine just to look at, experimentally tampering with the wards.

He ran back. When he reached his friends, he changed back to human and shook his head. "It doesn't look good," he said. "I think they stopped coming in for now, but they're really dug in. Over a dozen. Maybe if we can unite the defenders down here—"

"Or call reinforcements from above," Flitwick said. He waved his wand and produced a glowing orb of light—a Patronus—and it flitted upward through the ceiling."

"I'm worried we don't have time, Professor," Luna said.

"We'll have to make do, Miss Lovegood," he said. "And prepare for the worst. Now, let us see if we can gather our allies out there."

Unfortunately, there was a complication. As Neville pointed out, they didn't know who they could trust. Two of them tried to curse Harry on sight.

"Mr. Potter, get back upstairs," Flitwick ordered.

"But I can help!" Harry protested.

"Not when you're the target, Mr. Potter. The four of you shouldn't be fighting to begin with. Get yourselves to safety. I'll sort them out and do what I can here."


Cornelius Fudge froze at what might possibly have been the most shocking thing he'd seen tonight.

"Hello, Cornelius," Dolores Umbridge said sweetly as she pointed her wand at him from the entrance to the Floo Network Authority. She had traded out her usual pink clothes for black robes, although she still had that black bow in her hair. She had ambushed them on their way in and even managed to stun Shacklebolt with a lucky shot, though Fudge was sure the Auror would never have fallen for that if he'd been looking for it.

"Dolores, what is the meaning of this?" he blustered, trying to project anger rather than the creeping dread he was feeling.

"I can't very well let you leave, Minister," she told him as if she were lecturing some bottom-rung maintenance wizard. "Who knows what trouble you could cause out there?"

"Where's Auror Tonks? She was supposed to be here?" he said.

"The Lady Pantera can be most distracting, I'm told."

"What are you doing, Dolores! Turning on the Ministry? On your Minister for Magic? It was bad enough that I couldn't trust Scrimgeour, but you?"

Umbridge giggled her creepy giggle. Fudge had thought she was a solid employee at first, but ever since the werewolf fiasco, she'd increasingly unsettled him. "You aren't my Minister anymore," she said. "You haven't been ever since you took Dumbledore's and that brat Potter's side in this."

"Dumbledore's side? That You-Know-Who is back? Look around you!"

"Yes, most unfortunate," she agreed. "I thought the mutts would get to you before any of the Aurors did after I finally convinced you to send Rufus away. Figures they couldn't even get that right. It's a good thing I stayed to make sure the job was finished."

"What?" Fudge gasped. "You? But you said Rufus wanted my job—"

"I told you exactly what you wanted to hear. You were looking for an enemy in your ranks, and I gave you one."

Fudge's heart started racing even faster. She'd played him? Right there in his office, and she'd played him like that?

"And poor Amelia. Why do you think she couldn't ever get her paperwork sorted?"

No! That bitch had undermined their entire defences? That was enough! "Expelliarmus!" he shouted, and they both started hexing. But as horrifying as tonight was, he wasn't worried about her. He was nearly certain he was a better duellist than Dolores Umbridge in a fair fight. He tried to manoeuvre them around so that he could get to the Floo, but he only made it halfway.

"Crucio!" she screamed.

Fudge's eyes widened as the curse struck, and then his world was blind agony. Even in the last war, he'd never been subjected to the Cruciatus Curse. An Auror might have been able to endure—at least to hold on to their wand, or else to dodge—to do something. But when Fudge was aware of his surroundings again, he was lying on the floor, gasping for breath, and Dolores was standing over him, holding his wand.

"Y-y-you c-can't d-d-do this!" he whimpered. His tongue wouldn't obey, so badly the curse wracked his body. "I g-gave you this job! D-d-doesn't that m-m-mean anything to you?"

"I'm sorry, Cornelius, but I've been made a better offer. An offer by people who actually listen to my views on mudbloods and half-breeds."

"Are—are you m-mad, Dolores?" he stammered. "It's You-Know-Who! He d-doesn't care about you. He doesn't care who he kills!"

"The Dark Lord rewards loyalty," she said in her most sickly-sweet voice, "and as I am the highest administrator who will remain behind, I will be valuable to him. Goodbye, Cornelius…Avada—"

CLUNK!

Dolores fell to the floor unconscious as something solid, not a spell, hit the back of her head. Fudge looked up to see his saviour, and a shadowy figure emerged into the light. It was Severus Snape.

"You?" Fudge gasped.

"So it would seem," he replied, tossing aside the bloody fire poker he'd hit Umbridge with.

"Why didn't you curse her?"

"A spell might have been noticed," he said curtly. "Up. Quickly."

Fudge staggered to his feet and retrieved his wand. Snape saw to reviving Shacklebolt. "So you're really on our side, then?"

Snape didn't answer the question. "Britain is not safe, Minister," he said. "You'll have to flee the country."

"You're certain of that, Snape?"

Snape nodded. "Did you have time to hear the prophecies from the Keeper before the attack?"

"The—the Keeper?" Fudge sputtered. "How could you know—?"

"I'm a spy for Dumbledore, Fudge, and I don't have time for inane questions! Did you hear both prophecies?"

"Both?" Fudge said, but he restrained himself from saying the next part out loud: There were three. No need to give that bit away if this was a trick. "Yes, I did," he said.

"Good. Then you will know that the Ministry will not hold today. You need to get out urgently so that you can rally the people."

He saw the plan, then. Even if this was a trick, he could work with this. "Rally the people," he said. "Right."


Nymphadora Tonks winced as she bound her injured leg and healed the bone as best she could, hidden behind a desk in the Ministry Atrium that honestly didn't offer much cover.

She knew she was lucky to be alive after a black jaguar with murderous red eyes had bounded into the Floo office, thrown her to the side, and then pounced on her, throwing them both out the window when she tried to get up again. It was only her painstaking work in learning wandless magic that let her land in one piece, and it was only a lucky shot that distracted La Pantera from ripping her throat out long enough for her to scrabble away. Tonks had been surprised the Dark Lady was even here, but Voldemort must have made some kind of deal with her.


Three days earlier.

"Lady Pantera, will you join our forces at the Ministry?" Voldemort had asked.

"What's in it for me?"

"I'm sure there will be something in the Department of Mysteries that could interest you."

She thought about this for a moment, then stood up straight. "Alright, I'm in. It should be fun."


La Pantera had leapt back up twenty feet to the Level Six window she had dropped from to tear after some other prey, while Tonks managed to drag herself to cover. There were still random duels happening in the Atrium, but with most of the attackers moving up into the corridors, both sides had largely abandoned it, except for a few Death Eaters guarding the lifts.

It was some minutes later that a running firefight, presumably of Ministry workers cut off from the lifts and their attackers, piled out of the stairwells and started conjuring barricades across the Atrium. She could see one or two Weasleys fighting, and a few of her colleagues, but Tonks was on the wrong side of the barricade, which meant that she had to hunker down some more and look for a target of opportunity that was worth the risk of being spotted.

Things only got worse when La Pantera crashed out of another window in jaguar form, this time tumbling as a grey-haired man with the wind whipping around him flew down after her. La Pantera and Old Coyote squared off in what must have been only one phase of a duel for the ages, and the Atrium was torn apart as magic flashed faster than she could follow. Shards of broken glass swirled in a storm before being changed into butterflies, which then attacked and somehow still did damage.

Tonks wasn't familiar enough with Native American magic to have a clear idea of what either of them were doing, but the show of power she saw terrified her. Old Coyote waved his staff and conjured what she first thought was a Patronus, but turned out to be an entire pack of spectral coyotes…which didn't make sense. Weren't coyotes solitary? Regardless, they swarmed La Pantera, nipping at her arms and legs and trying to snatch the magical knife from her hand. La Pantera retaliated with what seemed to be an Occamy—until its feathers caught fire like a phoenix. The flaming serpent tried to wrap around Old Coyote. But he spun around strangely and conjured a raincloud above his head that dropped a downpour on it and put it out.

La Pantera cackled and shouted something in her native tongue, and the cloud began to swirl, forming a small tornado and spitting lightning across the Atrium. That didn't even seem to slow Old Coyote down. He just took control of the tornado and pushed it at her. La Pantera severed a lock of her own hair with her knife and burnt it wandlessly. A second tornado appeared instantly, spinning in the opposite direction. When they collided, they exploded with a blast of air and a spray of water in all directions, so powerful that it knocked everyone to the ground.

After that, it was flashes of more "conventional" spells, but they still weren't like anything Tonks had seen before. Where they missed or dodged, they twisted the rubble and the floor of the Atrium in ways that gave her a headache.

Through all of this, the remaining fighters on both sides in the Atrium had more or less been cowering and trying to keep out of their way. But now, as the duel between the two Grand Mages tightened, the Ministry workers began to stir again, creeping toward the exit, and the Death Eaters began to stand up and pursue them.

And then, things went from bad to worse. Whatever ward was keeping the rest of the Death Eaters out must have broken because the lifts slammed down, and Voldemort himself stepped out, strutting along as if he owned the place. He was flanked by a dozen of his inner circle. Tonks could see Lucius Malfoy's long, blond hair on one of them, and her aunt was standing at Voldemort's side without a mask.

About half of the remaining Ministry workers began to run in fear, despite not having anywhere else to go. Voldemort opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment, another pack of spectral coyotes ran through the air at him. Old Coyote had backed up and got both him and La Pantera in his sights. The crazy bastard was going to try to duel both of them at once. Unless he had some even crazier trick up his sleeve this was going to be over very soon.

Voldemort conjured a shockingly large fireball without his wand and threw it across the Atrium at Old Coyote. La Pantera did something that made it shine as bright as the sun, and Tonks ducked; it felt so hot she thought the whole place would burst into flames. But Old Coyote conjured something whose shape she couldn't make out, and it ate the sun ball and seemingly all the light in the building with it.

The Atrium was plunged into a shockingly cold darkness. For a few moments, she was entirely blind, and even after that, the only light came from flashes of spellfire as disorganised and disorienting as a midnight thunderstorm. Tonks took her opening without hesitating. She scrambled along the wall, praying she wouldn't trip over anything in the pitch black, racing for the lifts. If Voldemort was down here, that meant the surface would be nearly unguarded.

A hex hit her in the back, and she fell to the ground with the distinct feeling that she'd been knifed in the kidney. She rolled over, got one spell off, but it went wide, and her wand arm was pinned to the ground. The light was starting to come back, and she saw her Aunt Bellatrix standing over her a leering grin on her face, twisted to appear even more grotesque in the low light. Tonks tried to turn her wrist around to cast a jinx at her, but she only managed a glancing blow.

Bellatrix cackled: "I'm been waiting a long time to get my hands on you, half-breed. You have polluted our family for too long. And then cavorting with a werewolf?"

"Oh, you don't like werewolves?" Tonks shouted as loud as she could, hoping some of the werewolves here would take notice.

Bellatrix snapped off a jinx that felt let being backhanded across the face. Tonks felt her face swelling up and guessed it was probably Furnunculus. "Shut up, half-breed!" her aunt said.

Pinned to the ground as she was, Tonks tried a ploy that was fifty-fifty between giving her an opening and getting her killed. Struggling against the stinging, she morphed Bellatrix's face and curly hair. "What's wrong, Auntie? Don't like looking in the mirror?" she taunted.

Most unfortunately, the result seemed to be the second option. Bellatrix's wand glowed green. "That's it, bitch!" she cried. "Avada Kedavra!"

But just as she cast, she was blasted out of the way, and the curse blew a crater in the floor next to Tonks's head. Tonks looked up, expecting that she had been hit by a stray curse from the duel, but instead, she saw an even more shocking sight.

Amelia Bones stalked out from the lifts, tattered, bloody, and with her monocle hanging from her robes, blasting aside the guards from behind. Tonks had thought the lifts were guarded on every floor, but apparently, that wasn't the case. Taken by surprise at any enemies actually coming out of the lifts, the Death Eaters went down hard. Tonks and a couple other Aurors capitalised on the opening and took down the rest of them.

Having already attracted more attention than she'd wanted, Amelia didn't hold back. "Everybody out!" she shouted, casting curses at the nearest Death Eaters. To Tonks's surprise, she managed to nail Bellatrix a second time, then, with a whispered word, she slashed a dark purple curse at her that should have ended the madwoman's life.

It took reconstructing the scene from several witnesses after the fact to figure out what happened next. Apparently, La Pantera made a casual wave of her off hand, and Bellatrix was pulled like a ragdoll out of the path of the curse. La Pantera then said, "Watch yourself, Bella," without breaking her rhythm of casting. However, this unusual move may have distracted Voldemort—only for a split second, but enough for Old Coyote to get a spell in that pushed Voldemort aside and put a physical barrier between him and most of the rest of the fight. It looked like a long, earthen mound, but Tonks couldn't imagine it would hold for as long as a real one.

She ran. The surviving Ministry employees ran up the other side of the Atrium. The charge broke up the line of the Death Eaters, and they powered through to the lifts. They still lost a couple along the way, but in moments, they were out, thanks in no small part to Amelia's vicious cursing. Arthur and Percy Weasley piled into the same lift as her and Amelia, and Percy moved faster than she'd ever seen him and used an emergency key to override the lift and go straight to the surface. The Atrium vanished beneath the lift just before they heard a curse impact below them.

"Report!" Amelia barked.

Percy collected himself first: "Shacklebolt took the Minister to the Floo Office. I don't know if they got out. No one's seen Scrimgeour since the fighting started. Fudge said he didn't trust him. And people are saying Dumbledore's tied up at Hogwarts."

"Right. I'm in charge until we find Fudge or Dumbledore, then," she said. "First order of business is getting these people to a safe staging point." They all nodded.

"Boss, that was incredible!" Tonks gushed. "What happened down there?"

"Yaxley and some others trapped me in the Department of Mysteries with them," she said. "It was damned hard to find them in that mess, and Rookwood was trying to get in from the surface. I got here as fast as I could, but I had to take out the rubbish first."

"You killed Yaxley?" Arthur said in surprise.

She laughed bitterly. "I wasn't in a position to tell for certain, but I doubt he made it out with his leg cursed off."


Everyone in the castle, friend and foe, froze where they stood, as an incomprehensible sensation washed over them. To say it felt like an earthquake might be closest, but that really didn't capture it. Harry would say later than it felt the way shattering glass sounded, except it wasn't one glass, but an entire cathedral's worth. At that moment, the wards of Hogwarts fell, brought down from the inside.

The fading light of evening seemed to grow darker all at once. As they waited in horror, moments later, they could hear the roar of the attackers coming from the Lake. There was no doubt about what was coming next.

Albus Dumbledore looked out at his domain with tears in his eyes. The catastrophic collapse of the wards probably rattled him most of all. It was the saddest day in Hogwarts' history in his lifetime, for sure, and maybe ever. For all the disasters of his tenure—the last war, the Chamber of Secrets, Greyback's attack—there had never been such violence and destruction in his school. The mighty wards of Hogwarts had fallen, and he wasn't even entirely sure how. The castle was besieged by a full-scale naval fleet—something that had not been seen in the magical world in centuries. The grounds were burning, and students were fighting fellow students and Durmstrang's soldiers in the corridors, trying to keep the younger children safe.

"It's no good, Albus!" Grayson shouted. "We can't hold off Ngeze and an attacking army at the same time!"

"If we can take back the West Wing…" Dumbledore insisted. "Protected by its stone walls…"

"They're already inside! That damned fifth column sabotaged our protections. There's too bloomin' many for the teachers, and we're already asking the students for more than we have any damn right to! You heard the prophecies; the cavalry's not coming. We're going to have to fall back."

"Then it will have to be out of the country, Edward," he said. "Hogwarts will be last stronghold in magical Britain."

"Then we'd better start getting ready, hadn't we?"

Dumbledore had to admit Grayson was probably right. They might fight to a draw here for a good while, but with the infiltrators inside, it would be nearly impossible to drive them out again.

But he was still pondering this while fending off Kinani Ngeze's attacks from below when a silver light appeared on the southern horizon. It sped toward them, and a silver dog appeared before them on the battlements. "Albus, there are Death Eaters in Diagon!" it spoke in the voice of Sirius Black. "Looks like some kind of curfew."

Dumbledore and Grayson looked at each other in horror. It wasn't the act itself; it was was it meant if the Death Eaters were moving right now.

"Looks like we're out of time, Albus," Grayson told him. "If they're in Diagon, they must've already taken the Ministry."

But before he could answer, another Patronus appeared. "Death Eaters in Hogsmeade, Albus!" said Hestia Jones's voice.

So they were there, too. This really was it, then. Dumbledore looked around one more time. Everything he'd built. A lifetime fighting against the dark. A thousand years of legacy in these walls. All of it was falling down around him. He could fight the fleet in the Lake till morning, but he couldn't stand against the whole of magical Britain.

He could almost hear Minerva shouting at him. "Hang the castle, Albus! Just save the children!" And he made his choice.