They slipped out of Hogwarts like they usually do, went down to Hogsmeade and took a floo from there.
Today, they're down in Knocturn Alley again because Credence likes the taste of Dark artifacts (don't ask how they discovered that) and Gellert needs to stock up on some more potion ingredients anyway for his alchemy work.
Credence is now walking through crooked but towering shelves of Borgin and Burkes while Tom raises an eyebrow at the half-hearted 'Dark' magic. Tom always offers to just make some for Credence, but Credence says that Tom's magic is family, and he shouldn't eat family.
After Credence picks out a necklace and a withered hand, Tom haggles the price down as he pays for it because while they have more than enough money to burn, they shouldn't waste any. Harry once had a discussion with him, concerned that it was a holdover from Tom's days in the orphanage but no, Tom is just a miser from personality reasons.
Credence happily holds his suspicious paper bag to his chest as they step out and find Gellert already outside across the street, leaning back against a wall, his things tucked away in an expanded pocket.
Tom meets Gellert's eyes and they connect, not slipping past occlumency barriers but feeding each other information. They're looking through two sets of eyes now with a complete view of the alley. Eight people in the street, two street stalls, three open doors to nearby shops, two side passages – no, three.
There, Tom.
Your left, Gellert.
Get him over.
I see.
Tom puts a hand on Credence's upper back, walking calmly. Credence looks back at Tom and then at Gellert. Dust skitters over Tom's fingers. Gellert smiles, a flat press of his lips.
Gellert cancels out the first spell aimed for him and dives left, wand flicking out to tip over the street stall that had been blocking the third side passage. Tom plunges his hand through Credence's back and the ash explodes out on command, swallows another two spells and Tom runs through the moving shield, vaults over to meet Gellert who has ducked behind the stall, now built into stronger metals.
The three open shop doors slam shut and metal sheeting comes down, store windows flaring with protecting wards for a brief moment before dimming again because this is Knocturn afterall. Six people run, one stumble stumbles when they try to disapparate and hits anti wards instead. Three more people enter from one end of Knocturn.
The five attackers don't move, just wait with wands out in preparation. They don't look particularly noteworthy, nothing stands out, they're not malicious or cautious, just boring normal people doing their boring normal job. Professionals.
"Five?" Gellert complains. "Only? That's a bit rude."
"Shut up," Tom hisses and turns the metal sheeting onto a two-way mirror to peer through without getting out of cover. "Credence, let's go!"
The cloud obediently starts rolling back into itself.
"You must be joking," Gellert laughs, loud and wild, incandescent with his rage. "In our own fucking territory, brother?"
"Just think for a moment! You're always so arrogant, reckless-"
"You think too much," Gellert retorts sharply. "Hide away, Tom, always so scared – we promised we'd be monsters and here we are but fine, you stay here, mind the littlest one."
"Gellert!" Tom snaps as the blond charges out.
Rune chains spin themselves into existence and Gellert throws a hexagram down one end of the street that blows back anything not bolted down, and turns on the three people standing at the other side.
Spellfire arcs over the street, blazing lights and shattering the cobblestones, no time for counter spells because Gellert has always fought with a complete offensive, and it turns into a mess.
Credence condenses, sitting on the edge of a nearby rooftop, and offers up an apologetic shrug to Tom.
Tom grits his teeth and spins out from cover, back to the brickwork and close enough he can duck back into the stall, maybe escape through the small passageway. The two on Tom's side stopped the massive street-wide hexagram and as they unravel the final chain, Tom hurls an artificial brightness at them, a solar flare with all the radiation that entails. They block it.
They block it.
"Brother!" Tom barks out.
"Just a moment," Gellert calls back in delight and the streets start moving because of course he laid his web down under the shopping district.
The shops are shunted back, the road splitting, walls moving in and branching out. People further off scream in shock as the ground slides under them.
"Credence, watch him!" Tom orders because Gellert doesn't think, has no fear, needed to be cut down before he grew into this careless thing and Tom missed his chance to do it safely.
Tom turns and runs down the passage that has now widened, stumbling as the cobblestones ripple under his feet. He'll lose the other two who are chasing after him and then double back to drag Gellert away by his fucking hair.
Knocturn grows, blooms like a flower, pushes Diagon into a crooked mess. People stampede to the nearest floos, others try to tear down the anti-apparation wards but Gellert has only reinforced it.
Buildings grow and collapse where Gellert has his standoff, the boy in concentric rings that spin so fast they make solid golden lines.
Further along, lights flare up above the rooftops, reality splintering like a broken mirror and summoning through a massive snake made of jagged glass.
There are more people, controlled or a part of the group, it's hard to tell. The puppets die easily, the conductors do not, and the boys are running through the maze of swirling streets, Tom leading away but Gellert chasing.
Credence carves open a roof to get to the ones trying to supress Gellert's wards but gets lost in an illusionary maze that stutters and flickers under the press of his antimagic ash. They layer it over him until it's a solid pressure but he spirals to a point and cracks through. They've already run. He grows, lurches up higher and realises all the people running through the streets aren't running away – all of them, they're all circling his brothers.
Tom deflects a spiked yellow, ducks a blazing orange and his spell makes the air hazy, slippery, peels open like teeth but dissipates with a spell chant. The ground swallows one person, a lucky shot he knows and that makes Tom's teeth ache from how hard his jaw is clenched, but another joins in, a quick caster, and Tom needs to focus on defence. All of his multitargeting spells are too soft, too easily countered, he'll have to do this one by one.
Gellert slaughters his way through puppets, maybe imperio, maybe a potion, maybe just lower ranks, he doesn't care enough to check. They die easy, but there's so many, and they don't fear – he can see it in their eyes. Fools, the lot of them. Gellert's breathing is ragged from hunting them, distracted with controlling the entire shopping district, high on the rage that makes his spells bright enough to blind because how dare they.
But this is not making fellow students kneel. This is duelling practice with Albus, this the Unspeakable batting away their spells and showing them how to do it better.
The boys are barely holding their own and that's finally starting to sink in.
A misstep and Credence moves in front of Gellert, except they were aiming for Credence from the start. Ash bleeds into the air before whips of blazing red wrap him in thick rope, and the bindings burn, constrict.
Credence hits the ground hard, limbs numb and unworkable. The red spears tendrils into his form, keeps him locked as a human and then starts dissolving him where the red roots touch him, from the inside out.
Credence starts seizing.
Gellert is thrown back, hits the ground and the curse digs into him, into his stomach, rips through and keeps burning. Gellert shrieks in pain, back arching as his insides are torn open, hands scrambling to hold it together, push it back in. His wand, where's his wand?
An attacker steps up to him, looms above the blond, wand pointed down at the child.
Gellert screams.
Tom sits behind an empty crate, trying to stay as small as possible, yew wand held in both hands, knuckles white, clutched to his chest. Tom shakes because he doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to get hurt. He doesn't even know what spell hit Gellert, what the counter curse is.
What was that spell on Credence - surely Dark, maybe Spanish in nature with that reverse clockwise spiral, could probably counter it with a rune chain, what's that paragraph the Unspeakable showed Tom, a while back, it was – it was…
Tom sobs. He drops his wand and clamps his hands over his ears because Gellert is still screaming.
Harry.
Harry, Harry, Harry.
"Harry," Tom whispers.
Hanging from the boy's necklace, the resurrection stone darkens.
The street is swallowed by darkness.
Harry steps into shadows when they beckon. He steps out, eyes flaring bright, toxic green as he peers through the darkness, pulls the mind from the man standing over Gellert, unravels the two women holding Credence down.
Harry casts the shadows out further, stretches them until they pour down every street, fills the cracks and bloats the shops.
People fall to their knees in supplication as the wave descends. Eyes wide as the abyss peels them open with gentle hands. Whispered apologies as they are laid down. Washed away in sorrow.
Drowned.
And it all hushes into silence when Harry snuffs it out.
.
A/N: and I oop