"Fire at will!" Hermione shouted, but before the words had entirely left her mouth something very odd happened — a quartet of elves, all on flying carpets, popped into existence around the veela, a glowing, silverish barrier snapping instantly into existence between them, enclosing the furious, fire-casting bird in an inverted triangular pyramid.
Hermione, who hadn't cast her scatter-shot stunning charm yet, and Theo, whose blizzard spell took a couple of extra seconds to complete, had time to stop themselves — Hermione, at least, wouldn't want to hit the elves, whatever they were doing, she assumed Theo's reasoning was the same — but Mallory and Nick, who must have started casting before the Durmstranger was evacuated, didn't. Mallory's curse was cancelled by a wave of disruptive magic strong enough Hermione could feel it from here before it managed to take effect properly. Nick's called a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky, which hit the pyramid with a sizzling crack, and...almost seemed to be pulled into the spell?
What the...
Hermione honestly couldn't say which happened first, the lightning strike or Fleur running into the boundary the elves had cast, but one or the other, or possibly the combination of both — though she didn't think the lightning had actually reached the bird? — obviously knocked the veela out. She crumpled to the bottom of the pyramid, and then the elves...popped away, taking her with them, as quickly as they'd appeared.
The Hogwarts defenders just sort of...stared at the empty air for several seconds, collectively stunned, the fort silent save for the music and the Weasley twin's voice.
"What happened?" Violet asked, as she apparently realised no one else was doing anything.
"I...have no idea," Hermione admitted. "The elves just..."
"Ingrid wasn't wearing red," Weasley broke off his commentary long enough to remind them. "Fleur set her on fire. Elves took her out." Ooh...right... Dishonourable conduct. Violet winced, presumably at the idea of veela fire being used on a human, a sharp intake of breath hissing between her teeth, but Weasley didn't stop long enough to let her — or anyone — respond. "Bad news, Maïa! Ced's broom got torched. He's on his way back on foot. And we have no idea what happened to Envy, the two she was dancing with left off to go attack Beauxbatons, we got distracted and she fucking vanished, and—" He broke off laughing too hard to speak.
"What?!"
"It's– It's little Tori. She's— Honestly, that might be the funniest thing— She needs a distraction at Durmstrang, apparently — must already've switched Beauxbatons, we didn't notice, girl's good — so that brilliant, ballsy little psycho just— She stopped an elf and asked if she could make a shout-out and just– just asked, in front of the entire bloody audience, if we could— Fuck!"
"What now?!"
"Nothing— It's fine, just people taking exception to our brilliant exploitation of the arena's mechanics. Don't worry about it, Gin's with us, and we're in the middle of our section, we've got it under control. Tori's heading back this way to get around the fire — about half the arena's on fire, have we mentioned that?"
No, no they had not. Or rather, they'd mentioned that there were trees on fire, but they hadn't said half the bloody arena!
"If we get a couple people out to the little spur of trees where Ingrid and company had their cannon, I think she'll spot them on her way through."
Hermione nodded. "And then they can work out the specifics of their diversion for themselves. Alright. Nick, Mallory, Theo, you three go help Tori. Get that fucking flag! I'll stay here with Neville to hold the fort — I don't think we should be facing much more opposition—"
"Pretty much all the fighting is at Beauxbatons, now," Weasley confirmed.
And she'd been keeping a running total of casualties, she was fairly certain about half of the opposing fighters were down and out, plus however many Beauxbatonnais were sitting around waiting for their healer to patch them up. Almost all of the offensive ground-forces, she thought. She was just assuming that Lyra was still keeping Cæciné busy, and everyone in the air except Harry and Krum was fighting over the Beauxbatons flag — which Tori better have already stolen, she'd said she was going for theirs first before she slipped off into the trees.
Assuming she had, they were in a very good position, by Hermione's reckoning.
"Okay, then, I think Neville and I can handle anyone who comes back this way, so."
Mallory nodded, conjuring a large wooden platform inside the wall and hopping down to sit on it. "Come on, Nott, Jones. All aboard."
They joined her somewhat cautiously. This wasn't a thing they'd really practised, getting people into and out of the Fort. Yes, they had discussed, theoretically, if they did need to get someone through their defences without completely dismantling them, they could levitate them out over the defences. If they wanted to bring someone back in, though, they'd have to break the ward dome or do something Lyra called a 'bubble-gate'. (A 'Shielded Object Defence-Integrative Transportation Maneuver' to people who insisted that 'bubble-gate' sounded ridiculous.) Apparently there were certain shield charms which were compatible with the spells which made up their dome — casting any of them to form a sphere enclosing a target would allow the target to be pulled through the dome.
Hermione considered this a fairly obvious security flaw, but they'd needed some way to circumvent their own defences. Their Champions were both going to be on the outside and wouldn't be able to win without either coming back in (or getting the Hogwarts flag out there with them, but that was riskier, especially if there were any veela still in the game at that point). And it wasn't really as bad as she'd first thought. In order to exploit the potential weakness, an enemy invader would need to know which shield charm to use and, since maintaining the shields in question would preclude the casting of any other spells, said invader would have to physically scramble through the ditch and over the wall.
If they really needed to, they could probably levitate people out by their robes (inanimate objects were much easier to levitate than living people), but they had unanimously decided that that would be far too uncomfortable to use in a non-emergency. Instead, the plan was to have one or two people levitate a platform, while whoever was riding it over the wall maintained the necessary stabilising charms to keep it balanced and level. It was...theoretically sound.
In practice, there was some wobbling, and Nick nearly fell off into the ditch filled with man-eating plants, but Theo managed to catch him while Mallory doubled down on the stabilising charms and, after perhaps twenty very tense seconds, they touched down safely on the other side. (Somewhat less than gracefully, but it wasn't like Hermione had ever claimed to be good at this sort of thing.)
Mal vanished the platform with a casual flourish, Nick gave the defenders a mocking salute, and half a minute later all three of them had vanished in the trees. Hermione bit her lip anxiously, watching them go.
"I hate waiting," she announced, to no one in particular.
The SOD-IT Maneuver isn't just Lyra taking the piss...it's all cursebreakers everywhere taking the piss. That's the actual name because they have to have official, non-silly sounding academic names ('Polonian Cross-Dimensional Inversion' rather than 'Spinning Door', etc.) for reports when they're working for governments or banks or whoever, but cursebreakers who actually work out in the field (not directly in contact with the people who pay them, most of the time) universally think it's ridiculous that they have to have non-silly sounding names, so in the event that a tactic is "officially" named by a cursebreaker in a site report or the like, rather than an academic wardcrafter, they tend to have rude or silly acronyms. Academics and cursebreakers seeking legitimate employment then try to pronounce these in the least rude or obviously silly way possible, insisting that "SOD-IT" is pronounced "SODIT" or "SO DIT" rather than "SOD IT" like, "please ignore my embarrassingly immature, trouble-making colleagues' stupid sense of humour, I swear I personally am a professional and not taking the piss." (It's possible I enjoy coming up with extraneous cultural notes too much xD)
—Leigha