The Easter holidays are almost over when the Russians finish with their setup. E'jeah takes one look at them starting before she begins packing away the electronic equipment. Moody isn't even that gentle as he opens his trunk to the expanded compartment, and just throws the computer components in before closing it all and grabbing E'jeah's hand while his other hand is shrinking the trunk back down. As soon as the trunk is shrunk down, E'jeah disappears in a flash of phoenix fire, Moody along with her.
10 ritualists and 30 dragon hunters don't even notice their disappearance as their attention is focused on the entrance to the hibernating hive. As the ritual reaches a crescendo a cloud of fire appears above the circle with creatures and faces forming as it angrily tries to escape it's bonds. Beneath it, a funnel of air slowly starts to form, leading through the narrow opening in the rock and ice to the chambers below. Suddenly, the funnel reaches the cloud of fire and transforms into a tornado of fire, sucking down into the hive and through the permafrost torching everything in its path.
Off to one side, a diviner, bent over a polished silver plate with a thin layer of water covering the surface, calls out to the dragon hunters, "It's working, it's working."
One of the dragon hunters turns to translate the message to the two brits that brought them the information and gave them so much knowledge on the layout with their strange magical device. As they walk over to see where the pair have gone, the fire comes into contact with the first of the ancient yautja thermal converters. As it does, it begins to power still more ancient machinery. As the fire comes in contact with a second thermal converter, a depleted fusion reactor starts to fire before throwing an error to the system. This reroutes the charge that's being generated to massive capacitor banks while atmospheric pumps start to draw in oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, and compressing them into separate fusion storage tanks. What little atmospheric helium and water that can be found is split and pumped directly into the fusion chamber. By the time the fire reaches the third converter, the system has enough energy to spare to start activating the rest of the hive complex. There, massive electrical furnaces start to pump warm air around the complex while adjusting the walls so that the fire is contained to the converters that are buried through the earth to the power centre.
Above ground the Diviner starts to shout that something's gone wrong, but the ritualists are committed until the last of the Fiend Fyre goes underground.
Deeper underground, at the centre of the complex, the platform that should hold the queen slowly rises to the laying platform. Once there massive electrical discharges play over the frozen form of the queen that's laying to one side of the shaft the platform came from. As they do, the queen is jolted out of hibernation, and the same systems note the movement and begin broadcasting a countdown timer.
On the surface, the last of the fire funnels into the cave and burns up the last of the tether between the surface and the fire.
As the ritualists make their way to the tents the leader of the expedition makes his way over to the diviner, "Did we get them all?"
The diviner shakes his head sadly, "No, there is one left deep inside the cave."
A thump from deep underground interrupt their conversation as the capacitors discharge all at the same time to create the magnetic bottle and ignite the hydrogen and helium mix in the fusion reactor. Now starved of magic and combustible material the fire also burns itself out.
The diviner replaces the water that was spilt with the rocking of the earth before recasting the spell they were using. As they do, the spell takes a while to locate the large Raka that they found before. When it does, the queen has already moved off of the platform and its electric shocks. It is now starting to lay eggs, and it already has two eggs on the floor around it.
The leader shakes his head, "We cannot allow it to replace its eggs. Dragon Hunters, gear up and prepare to beard the dragon in its lair."
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A mile above the dark side of the moon, a Yautja home ship receives the activation signal and sounds an alarm. One of the Yautja left on the ship looks up from their observations of earth to investigate the alert. Taking a second glance it walks over to the computer and enters the code being broadcast from the awakened hive. As the map of the hive renders, its eyes are immediately drawn to the icon for the queen away from the laying platform. A group of 30 icons breaching the entrance to the hive causes it to snap it's head up before swearing and barking some commands into the communications suite. As the other two members of the hunting party still on ship come running, they watch as another movable wall is removed somehow, and the dots move on.
Moving the display back to the Queen, they're startled to see just how many eggs she has laid already. Almost like she's gearing up for an inter-hive war. One of the other two has already moved over to the main communications station to call their clan and inform them of the development, while the third edges the ship around the moon so that the earth is in view of the sensors. Once there, they begin an in-depth scan of the planet to locate any rogue traces of xenomorphs, as an inter-hive war is likely to end with the planet becoming uninhabitable for non-xenomorphs very quickly.
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Moody and E'jeah appear in a bunk room with oversized furniture. As Moody starts to head to the door, E'jeah grabs his shoulder, "Stay, Queen is on the way with a face-hugger."
Moody stops and leans against the table while they're waiting. When the door opens, it's only the fact that E'jeah has a hand on his wand arm that stops him from firing whatever spells he can at the biggest damn Raka he's ever seen. When it reaches out a claw and a face-hugger jumps off, E'jeah has to pin him down while it attaches to his face.
"Calm, say calm. If you do then it won't knock you out, and you'll be free to wander the ship. Otherwise, you'll wake up on the bed with a sore throat in an hours' time."
Moody wakes up on the bed an hour later, his throat scratchy and a glass of water visible on the table. As he brings his hand up, he smiles as he realises, he's holding his wand. After running through a large battery of spells, he finally determines that the glass of water is actually sapphire, but the contents of the glass are in fact water. Taking a sip, he smiles as he realises that he's far from the reach of any of the myriad enemies he's made over his long career as an Auror and Hitwizard. After throwing up a battery of wards and protections over the door, Moody climbs back onto the bed. Then, for the first time in a couple of decades, he relaxes. His wand still held in his hand, but his eye makes lazy orbits in its socket rather than the frantic spinning it normally does.
It's a short while later that a voice says, "Ohh, these are good. Now why did you do this. No, no, that's no good, that sort of thinking would kill a hive under orbital bombardment. Also no thoughts about how the material can be degraded without magic. Sound doesn't travel through the area, good to hide your own sounds, but learning to move silently better. Hmm, right, coming in."
Moody starts at that thought, and reflexively fires a banisher at the xenomorph that pops into the room with him. One that it adroitly dodges by jumping onto the wall. It then starts dodging more and more of what he's throwing at it.
"You need to work on not telegraphing your thoughts, and on your speed. Your wand it just too slow. Right, I see, you can't feel the hive yet. I'll be back when you can. I'm Rula by the way."
Breathing heavily, Moody stares at the place the xenomorph just disappeared from. His eye whirling rapidly again.
"How can you see anything with your eye going that fast? You'd never see a Yautja hunter coming doing that. Or a scout for that matter. Stop! You just missed me, see, no behind you, up bit further around. See, I'm just sitting right here. Ohh, we need to get some of these, where did you buy this, wait, can we… Arry, Arry, look at this. This might even be worth learning to be human."
Moody stares at the place between bulkheads where Rula is lying along the length of a structural beam. How does he know they're bulkheads and structural beams?
"Oh, you're starting to pull memories from the hive."
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On a ship that is now high above the northern pole of the planet below, the four members of the hunting pod watch the scanners with a growing sense of frustration and excitement. First, they found the probable cause of the Queen laying eggs at such a furious rate, in a xenomorph trace in the north of a small island a quarter of a rotation from the hive. A deeper scan of the location brought up the remains of over two dozen eggs that the locals must have destroyed. At the same time, the 30 humans that entered the training ground were attacked by the face-huggers before being disabled personally by the queen. While two of the hunters were gearing up, the third watched as a wave of face-huggers left the hive for the surface and away from the scanners in the training ground.
This is when the three of them made the decision to move the ship into a polar position so that their own scanners could look at the hive site as well as keep track of the lone chest burster they found. None too soon, they were able to start a more detailed scan of the area, revealing another 20 humans, 19 humans.
"No'dtaid, didn't you do the maintenance on the sensors?"
No'dtaid lashes out at Bote, "Idiot, I did. Look, an infected human just appeared here, 3 degrees from their previous location."
"Pauk! I'm sending the data to the clan ship."
Bote soon came back, "The matriarch has ordered us to maintain sensor contact and cancel all other hunts on the planet. We have 20 pods coming in for a grand hunt, there will be much honour to be gained."
That was a few days ago, now the hive numbers nearly 100 fully grown xenomorphs with another 20 three degrees away from the main hive. The Queen hasn't stopped laying eggs, even though the local wildlife has been completely depopulated within 10 knells of the hive. Suddenly the scanner beeps as it detects a Yautja appear outside the hive, eliciting an immediate response from the xenomorphs inside. All four of the Yautja come running and Bote heads straight for the communications to warn the Yautja of the incoming danger. He stops only inches from the button as the scanner shows another 8 Yautja appear and take up positions by the entrance.
Then the hive sentries reach the entrance and battle is joined. They watch helplessly as two additional exits are revealed where the hive starts to flank the hunters. Then the sensor glitches, and when it comes back online it shows the number of xenomorphs has changed and there are around 30 humans nearby.
No'dtaid swears, "Pauk, when did the xenomorphs learn tactics?"
Bote rushes back to look at what No'dtaid is pointing at, as he watches, it's clear that there are two groups of xenomorphs, and one of them is defending the humans and Yautja. There's also some sort of glitching static in the training ground itself, with the sensors getting faint locks on an unknown lifeform before it disappears. The Queen seems to be going frantic, as eggs disappear off the scanner with each glitch. The scanner glitches again, and suddenly there are three queens next to each other, and around a quarter of the xenomorphs on the surface turn back towards the hive. It's not long after that for the Hive they were monitoring to be wiped out completely. Including the 20 that were elsewhere.
As the xenomorphs and humans start to vanish from the scanner, the scanner glitches again, and the Yautja that were outside the training area are now inside. When the entire facility goes off line, the four of them are not that surprised based on the position of the Yautja in the facility.
Once the computer finishes reprocessing the scan data, and labels the existing xenomorphs before the first of the Yautja arrives. At the end of the replay, the four of them are at least able to take solace in the fact the attacking queens lost some of their own xenomorphs.
A few hours after the reprocessing finishes, the first of the hunters arrive and receives both the raw and processed sensor data. Over the next rotation of the planet below, the rest of the hunters arrive.
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It's during lunch on the last day of the Easter holidays when Quirrell drops his knife and fork as his chest explodes in pain. As he clutches at his chest, he shakes in agony before a small black creature explodes out of it, and scuttles off the table. As Quirrell tries to take a breath with his heart destroyed, and lungs torn open, a black mist seeps from underneath his turban before forming into a ghostly figure and shooting out of the school.
Over at the Slytherin table, Millicent Bulstrode sees the creature scuttling past the table, and leans over to catch it with her hand.
"Oh, you are a cutie aren't you. You must be ravenous after all that effort."
Deftly avoiding its biting mouth, she takes a chicken drumstick from the table and carefully holds it towards the creatures mouth.
Around her, the other Slytherin, that didn't return home for Easter, back away as she coo's at the creature while it devours the chicken, bone and all.
As she continues to feed it, Theo ventures, "Bulstrode, um, do you have any idea what that is?"
Millicent nods, "Of course I do, it's a baby one of those creatures the Hufflepuff's turn into. You can see the dome at the front is the same. Aren't you a little cutie, you are, aren't you. Anyway, they're much like the lizards that we keep at home for their tails. Not that I'm going to take your tail, don't worry." She hands it a cube of raw meat from the bowl that an elf has kindly put on the table.
Almost an hour later, as the meal is just coming to a close, a distressed looking Septima walks in with a sleeping baby in each arm. Behind her comes Moody and a few Veela, along with a couple more babies.
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Half way through the easter holidays, Donald finally builds up the courage to return home and talk things out with both Theresa and Sally. As he lets himself in, a shiver runs down his spine as the house smells weird, and the only sound that's audible is the fridge-freezer in the kitchen. Behind him, the door closes with a bang and he jumps slightly. A frown develops on his face as he checks the living room, and then the kitchen. Especially when he opens the fridge and the smell of off milk hits him. Slowly, he makes his way upstairs, his heart and stomach dropping with each step. As he enters their bedroom, he can see that it's exactly as he left it, except the note he wrote is lying on the floor. Carefully, he reaches down and picks up the note and turns it over in his hands, before slumping on the bed, tears slowly trickling down his cheeks.
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Ptiana stares at Ennantum as he tries to steal one of her strawberries, "Just because you're in a hive, doesn't mean you can eat my fruit."
Ennantum looks at her, "It's not just your fruit, it's for all of us."
"No way, the Grangers bought it, and they're part of my hive not yours. Ask one of your own hive members for fruit."
Ennantum huffs, "I was going to bring you a dirigible plum later, but see if I care. First you wouldn't help us out with an egg, and now you won't share fruit that was bought for everyone."
Ptiana nudges a punnet of strawberries towards Ennantum, "Now, let's don't be hasty."