"So, if Gryffindor's beaters start going for brute forcing your chasers you want your beaters, me and Nate, to target their seeker instead of protecting your chasers?" Uriel asked standing above one of the desks in their classroom, with Felix standing next to him with his strategy notes splayed all over the desk and a blackboard next to them as Felix wrote and erased things on it to better graphically explain what he wanted from him and his team for this game. Uriel felt increasingly lost in all the geometrically increasing amount of information pouring from Felix and kept trying to remain concentrated and absorb everything his friend was trying to explain to him, even if some of it made no sense to him.
"My chasers can handle the Gryffindor beaters all day long with their eyes shut and their hands tied behind their backs. Their seeker, as overprotected as he is, can't. So, bombard his arse and their beaters will hunt you and Nate instead, leaving your chasers alone", Felix explained.
"So, you and Nate take one for the team? That's it?"
"Yes and no. Look we don't have enough time, so listen good. We only have fourteen hours for me to teach you six years' worth of strategy for this game."
"Fourteen hours! I need sleep you know", Uriel exclaimed incredulously, scratching his head nervously.
"Not today you don't. You need to know stuff to act "me" convincingly otherwise my team will know it's not me out there, we have trained together almost daily for a year and two months, save for Christmas, Easter and Summer, they know me, they know my strategies and they know how I move and talk. So, you have a lot to learn in half a day", Felix replied, ending his wish for the possibility of sleep.
The day passed and night arrived and passed. Four pm came and everyone but Felix stood waiting for him in his abandoned house's basement, passed the Whomping Willow tunnel.
"He's late", Claudia moaned, wanting to get this done and get back in Hogwarts' safety.
"I'm here, and only two minutes late, stop your whining", Felix appeared through the doorway,
Even Socrates seemed to have parted with his usual calm and gathered demeanor. Emerick was pacing up and down and Ethel was tapping her foot on the marble-granite tiles. Professors Willows and Cooper fidgeted with their fingers but tried to not display any obvious signs of stress or impatience.
"Everyone here?" Professor Cooper spoke before Claudia could reply to Felix. "Good, Claudia, Socrates with me. Felix and Emerick with Professor Willows. We go in as stealthily as we can and exit the same. The house is next to the cemetery, so we'll use different access points, my team will go through the cemetery and hide while Professor Willows' team goes in the back and enter the house. It is imperative we not get caught or drawn in any kind of dueling. We are to rescue Professor Jordan and that Lethargos person, and leave. Understood?" They nodded.
"And if we are discovered? Attacked?" Felix inquired, wanting to cover all possibilities.
"We are going to apparate in, if Azrail has placed a disapariton jinx, these are portkeys linked with Hogwarts' Hospital Wing, touch them outside of the school and you'll be instantaneously transferred there", Professor Willows replied, giving them each a pouch.
"Nice foresight, hopefully we come back in one piece", Claudia remarked pocketing the pouch with the portkey inside.
"That's the idea, yes, Mrs. Russo, it's time, hands please", Professor Cooper told them extending his hands for them to hold onto, as did Professor Willows.
Professor Cooper and his team apparated in the cemetery, Claudia and Socrates behind a statue of an Angel of Death, a hooded, robed figure of a Grim Reaper with wings of black granite holding a scythe in one hand and a tombstone on the other, towering above them.
Professor Cooper had apparated behind them just inside the cemetery's wall.
"I expected an army", Socrates whispered, scanning the cemetery for any other presence.
"The Headmistress must have lured them away, that boy will go running at the slightest whiff of the Shadeglass", Professor Cooper whispered back, wand in hand.
"Aren't we going inside the house?" Claudia asked, annoyed.
"No, our task is to wait for them to come to us and provide a distraction if the need arises."
"The Headmistress has a cruel sense of humour", Claudia remarked.
"I believe it was Mr. Burton's request", Professor Cooper told her, kneeling down behind them.
"Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen…" Uriel tried his best to emulate Felix's idioms and way of speaking and standing as he gave the team the pre-game talk and strategy.
The two teams mounted their teams and kicked off the ground. Uriel saw the Headmistress missing from the stands and Professor Nightingale substituting Professor Willows. Uriel knew why they were missing, as was Claudia, Emerick and Uriel. He hoped no one else would find it suspicious.
The game started and as Felix had predicted the Gryffindor Captain, a seven-year Asian girl with a shaven head and fierce hazel eyes, directed her beaters to attack and harass the Hufflepuff chasers, trying to brute force them out of the game.
Uriel signed to Nate "Go for their seeker!" Nate nodded blasting a bludger at the seeker's way.
Three bludgers and ten minutes into the game later the Gryffindor captain redirected her beaters to protect their seeker.
"How does Felix know this stuff!" Uriel wondered to himself as Natalie cooperated with Eloise to score a goal, the first of the game.
Felix entered through the house's rear, kitchen, door, followed by Emerick and Professor Willows.
The kitchen was in disarray, dirty and with cobwebs dotting the corners of floor and ceiling alike. Dry and moldy remains of food lay about the benches, stove and fridge. The odours reaching their nostrils foul and the electric light above them flickering.
Felix froze on his tracks near the kitchen door, hiding behind the wall. A second later the others heard footsteps coming from below the basement and from one of the other rooms in the ground floor.
"Lord Azrail is not here, Lilith. He's gone after a lead", came Marigold's voice from the corridor outside the kitchen. Felix and the others retrieved their wands on instinct.
"Where's our guests?" Lilith asked sounding bored.
"In the basement as always guarded by Bloodfang singlehanded and like a cyclops", Marigold cackled at her own joke.
"Sandra?" Lilith did not laugh at Marigold's stab at Bloodfang.
"Patrolling the village and cemetery, no one knows we're here", Marigold replied her mood swinging in an instant from joyous to annoyed.
"I'll go check from the terrace, I'm bored I want to kill something…", Lilith replied before sounds of steps ascending the stairs echoed across the otherwise empty house.
"He has all but the Shadeglass, won't be long now", Marigold stated.
Almost an hour later Hufflepuffs were leading one hundred to Gryffindor's eighty. Uriel batted one of the bludgers at Gryffindor seeker and with a quick motion drank from his Polyjuice potion flask. With his attention drawn away from the game, he failed to see one of the Gryffindor beaters blasting the second bludger his way. Before he could react the bludger caught his arm holding the flask, breaking bones in his fingers and making him drop the flask. He cussed aloud and ignoring the searing pain in his hand he made a vertical dive for it.
"Fuck!" He swore internally when the flask shuttered on the ground below. His actions were ignored by most as Gryffindor scored a goal to mark ninety to a hundred eliciting roaring cheers from the Gryffindor students in the stands. Uriel hid his hand healing it with Episkey, hoping no one would see him, as use of magic during the game was prohibited, and handling his beater's bat sent a bludger back at the Gryffindor who had taken aim at him, debrooming him.
"Natalie! Italian wedge!" He yelled at her, unable to remember the words for Felix's made up sign language.
Natalie nodded and she and Eloise with Steven formed a wedge formation and with parade-synchronicity begun to invert it, inner, outer, inner, outer, repeat. The Gryffindor captain tried to counter it with his chasers trying to individually steal the ball from them, which failed completely leading to the Gryffindor team becoming disorganized and ceding four goals in a row to Hufflepuff in a distance of fifteen minutes.
For Uriel timed passed excruciatingly fast now, in forty-five minutes the Polyjuice's effects would pass and he'd transform back into Uriel. "Come on Katya….catch that Golden Snitch", he muttered to himself.
Marigold stood in front of the basement's steps entrance and for the better part of an hour she had not moved an inch, standing there with her hands behind her back, leaning against the doorframe, humming a tune to a song only she could hear.
"What are we going to do?" Emerick mouthed to Professor Willows who signaled him to be quiet and waited. What he was waiting for was understood when Marigold closed her eyes for a second and in an instant Professor Willows sprang from behind the wall and with a B wand-motion he nonverbally cast a sleep at Marigold who a blink later lay on the floor sleeping. "Bewitched sleep, let's go."
A loud bang came from outside, from the direction of the cemetery.
Hufflepuff was ahead one hundred and ninety to Gryffindor's one hundred and thirty, Gryffindor was giving the game every ounce of bravery, determination and strength the team had to give but Felix's strategies and the team's single-minded determination to win had the Gryffindor team running after them rather than deploying their game.
"Ten minutes remain, come on Katya!" Uriel thought to himself trying not to get too distracted from what he had to do as "Felix".
Nate batted the bludger right at Jerry, one of the less courageous Gryffindor chasers making him yelp and drop the Quaffle. Steven was right there behind him ready to grab the Quaffle, as he did and after some passing with Eloise they found Natalie who scored for two hundred to Gryffindor's one hundred and thirty.
With less than a minute left Katya caught the Snitch, but Uriel knew it, he did not have enough time to leave the Quidditch pitch before the Polyjuice's effects were undone. He was done for.
As the Stadium erupted in cheers with Professor Nightingale signaling the game's end and Hufflepuff victorious, Natalie flew next to him.
"Felix told me to give you this if there was need, thanks for helping", Natalie whispered to his ear, forcing a vial in his hand.
"Th-thanks…" Uriel cut off himself as Natalie sped off to join the others. Uriel lost no time, popped open the vial's cork and swallowed its contents, trying to make it look like he was wiping the sweat off his brow.
Not a moment later Bloodfang came running up the stairs, having heard the explosion from outside and stepping over the unconscious Marigold as if she wasn't even there he run for the exit to the cemetery, wand in hand.
"Let's grab them and leave!" Emerick whispered somewhere between excited and terrified.
Felix lost no time vocalizing his agreement and just run through the kitchen doorway, and down the stairs to the basement. They opened the cellar door and blasted open the makeshift cell's door. It was dark, too dark and everything smelled of rotting flesh and human excrement and piss. Azrail did not care much for where or how his prisoners vacated their natural needs.
Felix ignored the rancid odours helping Professor Jordan stand with a hand under his armpit.
"Professor! We need to go!" Felix tried to walk him out as Professor Willows tried to help Lethargos, legless and armless, but Lethargos just shook his head "no", long black hair sticking together, probably unwashed for months.
"It's a trap! LEAVE!" Professor Jordan, exhausted and malnourished, yelled at them barely able to stand on his own.
"Yeah, we don't intent to stay here anymore than we have to, but do you want to come with us, sir or would you prefer to stay sometime longer in Azrail's hospitality?" Felix's frustration and anxiety showed as he did the unthinkable, mocked a Professor.
"Right…Lethargos, when ready chew on this, it should be…make for a most spectacularly eruptive experience", Professor Jordan retrieved a bread crumb from his pocket and placed it in Lethargos' open mouth. "Azrail should really not underestimate that which he doesn't know or think beneath him...I can multicast and Azrail does not even know what that is", if there ever had been a grin that could be described as malice incarnate, the one adorning Professor Jordan's lips would be it.
Lethargos closed his mouth and nodded.
"We're getting him with us", Felix stated but was met with a head shake from both men.
"No, it is time for me to move on. Take care of my creation, child", Lethargos had to pay caution not to accidentally bite on the bread crumb as he spoke.
"He wishes to die, we need to leave, NOW!" Professor Jordan tried, as frail as he currently felt, to push Felix out of the cell.
"I have so many questions…" Felix sighed, frustrated.
"And you will have them answered, just not by me, not now. It is well beyond time I join the realm I have been fascinated by my whole existence, and it has been a very long one. Of the three of us I was the most fascinated and afraid by death in equal measure. I never thought I would ever meet one who would be more so than me", Lethargos concluded closing his eyes.
"Give us fifteen minutes…" Professor Jordan told the man who nodded back.
Loud noises came from outside, as chains and other items from within the house rattled by unseen shockwaves.
"Goodbye Lethargos, I'd say it was a pleasure to meet you, but…" Felix left the cell with the sentence unfinished.
They had been crouching behind the statue for well over an hour when they saw red sparks up in the sky. "They've entered the building, took them long enough!" Claudia whispered trying to change weight from one kneeling leg to another as they kept crumping up after more than two hours of crouching and kneeling.
The cemetery consisted of only a few graves, most of them of the Riddle family, like Marvolo Riddle's next to his father, placed there by his daughter well after his death, and only a few of the village nearby. Claudia desperately wanted to leave, she did not like it a single iota, the cemetery or the house abandoned for decades if not more, with shutters hanging by their hinges and windows broken, graffiti on the outer walls and the paint faded and at places removed by the passage of time and human-made vandalism.
Yet the fates appeared to have decided she would spend more time there as the minutes passed and it would be close to another hour more before Sandra approached the cemetery pacing slowly, only much to Claudia, Emerick and Professor Cooper's horror she was not alone. Azrail accompanied her.
"They have not the Shadeglass, I needed her to believe I had fallen for her trap, my remnant father's remnant army can kill some Aurors…and die for me while we stay here and protect Lethargos until he gives me what I seek", Azrail told her in a hollow, malicious voice.
"Well, fuck!" Claudia moaned in a whisper. "Oh, sorry…"
"Considering our current circumstances, Mrs. Russo "Oh, fuck!" is more than appropriate", Professor Cooper interrupted her.
"Excruciatingly apt, one would think", Socrates whispered, his fear increasing.
"Why, my Lord Archangel Azrail?" Emerick thought Sandra was revolting, hunched with long, unkept nails with grime underneath them, torn robes that had seen better days and a skin yellowed by disease as puss-blisters and scars covered it. Her voice reminded him of nails scratching a blackboard.
Azrail did not reply her until after they had entered the cemetery, standing between it and the house. "My brother is not the only one drinking from that seer potion, my lil' spy in Hogwarts told me all about it, before they sabotaged his supply. You can come out from behind that statue now, it hides you well, but not well enough, brother."
"Is it time for that distraction, Professor?" Claudia voiced, the Gryffindor in her desiring her to burst out and prove her courage.
"I think chaos and mayhem is more apt, for the situation at hand", Professor Cooper replied walking out from behind the statue.
"Where is my brother?" Azrail demanded, genuinely surprised as Claudia and Socrates followed Professor Cooper's lead.
"Ya know what, Professor? I think I can help with that…ENERGIA MORTIS!" Claudia yelled as she cast the spell Felix had taught them concentrating every fiber of her being into it.
Twenty meters separated them from Azrail, and Sandra and all twenty meters of air exploded as the three run for cover behind whatever tombstone they could find. They knew what would follow.
"Aim for his crotch, death is vulnerable to life it would seem, that's where his flaw of the Protection is!" Claudia yelled to the other three.
Sandra, shielded by the same blue-coloured protective spell Bloodfang had used the year before during their attack on Hogwarts and Azrail wearing the armour of the Old Gods, didn't even bother to move out of the explosion's radius.
Before the mushroom of flames had even subsided Killing curses started impacting the tombstones Claudia and the others were hiding behind, while they were firing any spell they could think of at Sandra and Azrail to keep them at bay.
"BROTHER! Come out before more people die because of you!" Azrail bellowed. "Avada Kedavra!" the curse impacted the tombstone Claudia was taking cover behind.
Bloodfang came rushing out, wand at hand, his only hand left with a patch over his ruined eye and drool leaking out of the corner of his eye. Whatever his cousin had done to him the year before it had left a severe mark on him, or so Professor Cooper thought as he sent a chocking curse at Sandra.
"What are you doing here! Where is Marigold? Go back to Lethargos you moron!" Azrail told his henchman with a look on his face as if he was about to execute him on the spot for leaving his guard of the prisoners.
Bloodfang turned to reenter the house when he was thrown back up against one of the Celtic Cross tombstones near him with a force that rendered him unconscious.
"Time to leave!" Professor Cooper yelled seeing Felix and the others emerging from the house. "Touch the buttons, you are too far for me to reach you!" He yelled to Claudia and Socrates.
They did as ordered, stuffing their hands in the pouches only to find out the portkeys did not want to work.
"Oh, what is the matter, little kids? Your portkeys won't work? I may not know how to cast the dissaparation jinx, but I do know how to make portkeys stop working! Avada Kedavra!" The curse bounced off the tombstone Professor Cooper was behind.
"One thing left to do, then. Fight and if need be die with honour", the Professor stated coming out of from behind the tombstone attacking Sandra and Azrail in a way which had them guarding and unable to attack back.
Exiting the house Professor Willows joined his colleague with Socrates and Emerick taking aim at Azrail with any spell, curse and jinx their six years of school had taught them.
Claudia kept levitating and throwing objects, tombstones and debris from the house's walls in front of her school mates and Professors, protecting them against the killing curses.
"May I, please, have a wand!" Professor Jordan demanded.
"No time, Professor. I have an ace up my sleeve, we need to go to Claudia and the others!" Felix told them and run into the thick of it placing himself between Azrail and Claudia's team just as one of Sandra's killing curses hit Professor Cooper felling him. Every time Felix laid eyes on his half-brother, it seemed to him as if Azrail lost a little more of his human appearance. His skin getting paler and smoother, his muscles eating themselves up leaving behind a skeletal figure and his eyes vacant of emotion from before now had acquired a reddish-white hue. Along with his version of the Protection being a Dementor's cloak and his elongated, pale skinny fingers wrapped around his scythe-wand, it made for a daunting, intimidating and very deathly sight.
The house behind them erupted in a primary explosion that sent roof tiles and wall pieces flying as the shockwave flattened them against the ground and a red-purple mushroom of fire and ash rose high above their heads.
"We need to leave! That's only the start!" Professor Jordan yelled getting on his knees, trying to stand.
"NOOOO!" Azrail yelled still standing unaffected by the explosion's mayhem.
"Everyone! Hold on to me!" Felix extended his arms to his sides.
Claudia held on to him with one hand and Professor Cooper with the other, as everyone scrambled to take hold of him except for Professor Willows who continued to battle Azrail with fierce determination.
Felix saw Sandra readying to strike them with yet another killing curse and swung his wand at her. A black jet ejected from the tip turning her to stone as her eyes begun to bleed and she danced uncontrollably.
In a blur and as a secondary much more intense explosion erupted from the shredded house Felix turned the wand at himself and cried "Manor!" with resolute conviction.
Emerick saw the pyroclastic flow churning forth, an unstoppable wall of fire, boiling ash and molten debris, coming at them at an unnatural speed making the ground beneath their feet shake and quake, and he knew that if that thing didn't kill them, Azrail would and at that moment like everyone else present except for Felix, he accepted death and made his peace.