"So, I was thinking of traveling."
Sirius jumped at the unexpected statement, tearing his eyes away from the shelves all around them — little crystal balls, faintly glowing a soft blue-white, stacked up to the distant ceiling, throwing eerie, overlapping shadows in every direction — and down to her. His mouth opened a good second or two before he spoke. "Oh? This summer, you mean?"
"No. I mean, if you want to go on a quick trip over the summer, I'm up for it." Ellie still hadn't ever been out of the country — Sirius had talked about going to Aquitania or Sicily last year, but events had gotten away from them. "I meant after this prophecy business I'll maybe go abroad for a while. A couple years, maybe."
"Oh." Sirius looked slightly surprised, but over the next couple seconds his blank confusion (and the nervous tension, primed for an imminent attack) quickly disappeared behind a grin. "That's a great idea! We can definitely do that, I'm in. Er, assuming you want your endlessly entertaining and devilishly charming godfather along."
"Well, of course," Ellie said, smirking, "why wouldn't I? I'll probably invite a few friends too. I mean, I doubt they can afford taking that kind of extended vacation, but I am filthy rich — what's the point in having all that gold if I'm not gonna spend it on fun shite?"
"Believe me, I understand perfectly." She didn't doubt it — the electric guitar he'd picked up back in September screamed it seemed neat and I'm wealthy enough I didn't second-guess the expense. (And also I'm a middle-aged man with insufficiently-treated depression and I don't know what to do with myself when my kid isn't around, but that was beside the point.) "Did you have anywhere in particular in mind, or were we just gonna drift around for a while?"
"Oh, I'm sure we'll get around, but I was thinking we'd stay in Illyria for a while."
Sirius blinked. "Aren't the muggles there in the middle of a war right now?"
"Oh my, are they? Slipped my mind. How about Caucasia, then? It's very pretty there, I hear. Or maybe just a bit south, in Armenia."
"Pretty, sure, but...isn't there fighting going on there too?" Sirius sounded slightly concerned now, his grin fading a bit.
"Bengal? Chocó?"
"Er..."
"How about Lebanon?"
"Okay, now I know you're fucking with me."
Ellie smiled. "You were so tense I thought you were going to break something, you could use a distraction. You're welcome."
"Yes, thank you ever so much, Ellie dear," Sirius said, voice dripping with disdain — he was smiling again, though.
Covered with a quick glance at their Unspeakable guide — they hadn't given a name, but Ellie hadn't expected them to — Ellie took a look around, trying to spot signs of a pursuer, or an ambush, but this place was too dim and shadowy to make out anything. Which just seemed very inconvenient — she'd think the Unspeakables would prefer to be able to see what they're doing, but okay. "We are almost there, I think. Not going to lose your nerve on me, are you, Sirius?"
Sirius scoffed, putting a conscious swagger into his step, his cloak swishing around him back and forth. "How could you say such a thing! I think I'm offended! I've been pulling shite like this for longer than you've been alive! Just sit back, Bambi, and witness a professional at— No, a legend! Witness the legend!"
"Uh-huh." Ellie rolled her eyes, turning a bit away to hide her smile.
They walked in silence for only a few more seconds before the Unspeakable came to a stop at the end of an aisle. Pointing down the aisle, in a voice completely absent of any expression — or any identifying characteristics at all, sounding completely bland and androgynous, like they were a bloody robot or something — they said, "You will find your prophecy about halfway down. Retrieve it, and return to me. Do not touch anything else."
"Yeah, yeah, horrible death, I heard it already. Come on, Ellie," Sirius said, swooping into the aisle. Ellie shot the Unspeakable a helpless sort of look before following after him.
It didn't take long for Ellie to find it — she didn't bother reading the labels, just followed the subtle pull on her magic. This orb, glowing with a soft, constant light like so many others, had a label under it like all the rest, which was mostly interesting in that one of the subjects was indicated with just a question mark, her name only added later. That did make sense, she guessed. Sirius had said she hadn't been explicitly identified in the prophecy, so the Unspeakables probably hadn't known it was supposed to refer to her until Voldemort tried to kill her...or, at least, they'd assumed afterward it did, Sirius was skeptical that was actually a one hundred per cent thing.
Also interesting, her prophecy was still glowing, when ones that had been fulfilled were supposed to go dim. Hannah had come up with a theory — which Sirius, Remus, Emma Vance, and even bloody Snape had all agreed since was plausible — that the prophecy had actually been fulfilled when Voldemort had blown himself up in '81. She wondered, how did they know a prophecy had been fulfilled? Was there some magic that did it automatically, or was it a determination the Unspeakables made, based on their own interpretation? That they'd clearly modified the label after the prophecy orb had been made suggested the entire process couldn't be automatic, but maybe the spells that went into making the orbs themselves were a whole different order of thing.
Oh well, who knows. She could ask the Unspeakable, she guessed, but she was certain he wouldn't answer. Shrugging the question off, Liz picked up the orb — the glass smooth and slightly warm against her hand, tingling with magic, the enchantments holding it onto the shelf breaking with an almost tactile pop-snap-snap — and stuck it in her pocket. "Right, let's go."
"Yes, let's." Sirius was still grinning from his earlier silliness, but an edge of a smirk had slipped into it — something sharp, vicious, a dark sort of glee. A very House of Black expression, really.
(Ellie wasn't entirely comfortable with just how violent Sirius was, but he was a good man overall, his heart in the right place, so she tried to ignore it.)
Now that she had the prophecy, the trap fully set, Ellie herself was finally starting to get properly nervous. There had been a hint of dread hanging over her the whole way down here, of course — though, not really that much worse than any time she expected a fight, to be honest, even just going into dueling practice felt pretty similar. But now there was an itch at the back of her neck, her fingers twitching, Ellie had to suppress the urge to look around, to hunch in toward Sirius, it was a struggle to act natural.
Thankfully, she didn't have to manage it for very long. Only a few more aisles down the Hall, figures loomed out of the darkness in front of them. In the dim light, the scattered shadows, it was hard to pick out the featureless blobs very well, it wasn't until they were practically on top of them that Ellie could count them. There were eight, by the hint of figures visible under their heavy cloaks a mix of men and women, all wearing bone-white masks edged with silver.
Huh. Eight? Ellie had expected more than that. Voldemort would have expected her to have an escort, at the very least Sirius and one Unspeakable — Sirius was one of the more dangerous fighters on their side, really only passed up by Dumbledore, Moody, and a small handful of Aurors, and nobody could guess what any random Unspeakable might be capable of. Eight against two (two and a half, counting Ellie) were good odds, but considering who they'd be up against they weren't great odds.
Oh well. Eight would do. Unless they'd sent their very best, there was no way Ellie's side was losing, and they might even be able to capture them all alive. Ellie was sure Amelia would be very pleased to have eight Death Eaters to interrogate.
The Death Eaters came to a halt in front of them, cutting them off from the exit. One of them, a tall man toward the middle, spoke first, in a smooth, icy voice. "Good evening, Miss Potter."
The man's voice sounded...very familiar. While she was distracted trying to place it, frowning to herself, Sirius let out a low chuckle. "Lucy? I didn't expect to see you here. What did you do to get on the Dark Wanker's bad side?"
Losing control of the Ministry, she would guess — once she'd actually gotten the Order and the Department of Law Enforcement talking to each other, it hadn't taken very long to convince Fudge Malfoy was up to all kinds of sketchy shite with his Death Eater friends (even if they hadn't actually been able to prove the Dark Lord was back). Voldemort probably hadn't taken Malfoy's expulsion from polite society very well.
A high, angry hiss cut the air. "Show the Dark Lord some respect, Cousin, or I'll cut out your filthy tongue."
"Suck my dick, Bella," Sirius chirped.
...Oh. Crap. If Bellatrix Lestrange was here, this...might not go quite so smoothly as she'd been hoping. At least they still had a numbers advantage, without even calling in their backup.
"If the children are quite finished," Malfoy drawled, a clear note of irritation slipping into his voice. "Miss Potter, as much as our more...volatile companions might enjoy nothing more than to bring the Ministry down around our ears, there is no reason this must become a fight. We are here only for the prophecy."
One of the Death Eaters muttered, "Speak for yourself, Malfoy." Something about his tone was very unpleasant, Ellie almost felt unclean just listening to it. (Probably Travers, sick bastard.)
Before Sirius could say anything, undoubtedly making a bloody nuisance of himself, the Unspeakable stepped forward. "There will be no such exchange. None of you are leaving here tonight." With a flick of their wrist, a thick crackle of magic shivered across the air.
In a blink, the arched ceiling far above burst into yellow-white light — not particularly bright, but still enough to disperse the shadows filling the room, set Ellie to blinking against the sudden glare. In the same moment, the space around them wavered, a smear of shape and colour, abruptly resolving into a pack of people. More Unspeakables in grey and blue, Aurors in red and black, a few in the blue and black of Hit Wizards (who were actually mostly Order members). Directly opposite Ellie and Sirius, Moody demanded the Death Eaters kneel and surrender their wands.
Malfoy sighed. "Bella."
One of the figures next to him, narrower and much shorter, reached into her robes and pulled out...a glass vial. A potion of some kind? Lestrange chucked the vial toward the tile at her feet — a few of the Unspeakables cried out, wands moving, and the vial halted in mid-air, well above the floor. Before anyone could do anything more permanent about it, Lestrange cast a banishing charm, slamming it against the tile, smashed glass sent scattering.
Ellie scrunched up her nose — was that blood? An instant later there was a pulse of what was definitely blood magic, dark and slimy and sickening...though not as bad as it could be, unpleasant but not overwhelmingly so, the feeling didn't even linger. Must have been a voluntary sacrifice, the difference in the tone of the magic was quite glaring (to Ellie, at least). The magic washed through the room, a faint wave of reddish light, passing over her to no obvious effect.
The space between the Death Eaters and the Ministry people behind them folded, twisted. The distance separating them even opened up a few metres — probably some kind of space-warping spell bound to a ritual, which was kind of fascinating, theoretically speaking. Ellie was only distracted by the neat magic for a moment, though.
The Death Eaters must have anticipated an ambush: they'd brought with them, hidden from detection, at least another dozen wands. Probably more.
And, standing in the middle of the pack, tall and skeletal, skin smooth and pale, eyes shimmering a faint red...
Fuck.
Everyone moved at once, two dozen curses flying in every direction, people casting shields in blue and red and orange, or simply diving out of the way. Sirius had been one of the first to cast, a complex blasting curse lancing out from his wand even as he shoved Ellie to the side, she nearly toppled to the floor in one of the aisles. His spell hadn't been aimed at anyone, striking at Malfoy's feet, blowing Death Eaters back and to the sides — shields failing as they stumbled, spells cutting into the pack — tiles broken into shards and pulverised into dust thrown into the air.
"Go!" Sirius yelled, following after her. "Change, go, go!"
Without pausing to think, Ellie cast off her human shell, like sinking into a pool of warm water and out again, her hooves hitting the floor running. She bounded down the aisle, the clacking of hooves against tile almost inaudible over the crackling of magic and the pop of air bursts from spells resolving, Sirius scrabbling and panting behind her. (Some instinctive deer-ish part of her focused on the large dog chasing after her as the greatest threat, it took some effort to ignore it.) It didn't take long to get to the end of the aisle, Ellie turned to the right.
At least she tried, the tile was too hard and smooth — she'd been able to get pretty good speed, but turning so quickly, no, her feet were slipping under her, no good. She changed again as she came slamming into the wall, she braced herself with her hands a little, but she still hit pretty hard, bouncing off and staggering away.
Sirius slid to an easy stop next to her, smooth bastard. "Hey, you okay?" She didn't bother answering, just took two steps into it before changing again and bounding off.
The Hall melted by around her, passing one aisle and another and another and another, the sounds of the battle angling further and further behind them. She was just wondering if they'd actually manage to slip away with none of them the wiser when three Death Eaters came spilling out of an aisle practically on top of them.
They were far too close for Ellie to stop in time, so she didn't try: she slammed straight into the first Death Eater, knocking him off his feet, shifting back human-shaped as she fell to the ground on top of him. She fired off a complex stunning spell at one of the Death Eaters still standing — nothing fancy, just prevented waking him up with basic revival charms — even as a purplish spell-glow tingling with dark magic sailed over her shoulder at the other one. Ellie stunned the one she'd run into before he could recover, then popped to her feet, shifting back and bounding off again.
A short run later and they were coming up on the exit. She gave herself a bit more time to turn this time, but it still wasn't easy, her hooves skittering and squeaking against the tile. Starting up again was a pain too, damn slippery floor, but it only took a couple good pushes to get moving.
...What the hell was that? This room had a big tank in the middle, smokey blue-green water filled with what looked like brains, with long, spiky tentacles. That was just...unnerving.
As she bounded into the room, a spell was shot off from behind her — the yellow-white of a stinging jinx, flying off to strike the frame above a door ahead to her left. Assuming Sirius knew what she was doing, she turned that direction, weaving between desks, giving the tank a wider berth than was probably necessary. (Bloody creepy, that was.)
Through the door was another room, though this one thankfully rather more normal-looking, desks and tables and a few blackboards littered with runes and diagrams. Sirius gave her directions with another stinging jinx, these desks were dense enough she didn't waste time going between them, instead hopped on top of one, leapt from one to the next to the next, tossing sheafs of parchment and empty tea mugs in all directions as she went, Padfoot yipping with amusement behind her.
Another room, this one more wide open — a ritual circle of some kind, it looked like, shapes carved into the stone floor ringed with runes, probably isolation spells, bookshelves and unidentifiable tools lining the walls. Sirius fired off another stinging jinx, which stuttered oddly as it crossed the circles on the floor but made it across the room alright. Ellie didn't notice any effect from the enchantments on the floor skipping over them, must be properly—
A crackle of magic passed over her head, striking the ceiling just inside the door she was aiming for, Ellie halted, switching back to human shape to whip out her wand. A patch of the ceiling shifted into a gross-looking yellowish-green, sticky strands drooping down toward the floor — Ellie had no idea what that was, but it probably wasn't safe to touch. Ellie glanced over her shoulder and—
Voldemort.
Fuck.
Voldemort got off one pain curse and one stunning spell at Ellie — she dodged the first and deflected the second into the ground — before curses were falling in on him from both directions, Sirius and whoever had followed him from the Hall of Prophecy. The air shaking with bursts of air, released simply from the force of curses striking shields (which was, just, unsettling, the amount of power they must have to be so forceful), Ellie slipped a little behind Sirius, reaching for her magic with a deep breath.
Winds that bring the rains of spring, surge forth at the call of we faithful and wash away the cruel winter...
The elemental magic took with a bone-shivering shudder, lightning crackling and snapping at Ellie's chest, the joints of her wand hand burning. A rumble of thunder shook the air, wind whipping at their robes, and rain came slashing down from the ceiling, smelling clean and green, the drops glowing the gentle silver-white of a patronus. Voldemort let out a high cry of disgust and rage — where the rain drops struck him, they sizzled and spat, steam rising from his scorching skin. He cast a nasty-looking shield, red and black twisted into hard angles, but the light-infused water drew smearing lines through the dark magic, punching through in only a few drops. The curses from Voldemort cut off as he focused on countering her elemental magic, while still defending himself from a steady stream of curses from Moody, Emma Vance, two Unspeakables, and an Auror Ellie didn't recognise.
"Ha! That's good shite, Ellie!" Sirius threw off a pale pinkish spell — a shield-breaker of some kind, judging by how one of the sides of Voldemort's shield violently shattered when it hit — but Sirius didn't follow it up, so that was apparently just for the hell of it. "Have fun with that, you snake-faced cock-sucker! Come on, let's go." Sirius led her through the nearest door into the next room, a surprisingly plain hallway lined with unlabeled doors. As soon as they were through, Sirius slammed the door closed, cast two different locking charms and a sealing charm on it, transfigured the floor just in front of it up a bit to physically hold it shut, and then cut into the ceiling, yanking down a fair bit of rubble, some of which he transfigured into steel bands crossing over the door — all in a handful of seconds, it was actually very impressive.
(With the way he usually acted, it was sometimes easy to forget Sirius was an especially talented wizard.)
They were about halfway through the hall when a door near the opposite side slammed open, a pack of Death Eaters spilling out. Ellie hit one in the lead with her light stunning charm, Sirius shot off a blasting curse — it hit a wall, stone shrapnel tearing into one of the Death Eaters before he could put up a shield, blood splattering across the floor, Ellie winced and looked away — even as he kicked open a door to their left. "Gemmeam!" Leaving her orangish shield spell hanging up, Ellie darted through the door first, a few retaliatory spells crashing into her shield, Sirius leapt through after her just as it failed.
They'd stepped into a vast chamber, most of it filled with unshifting darkness, the surfaces seemingly not letting light reflect off of them (it was kind of eerie), the only features a massive model of the solar system — the sun, the planets, the larger moons, the proportions and distances messed with so everything could reasonably fit. While they ran across the empty space — they'd probably have to cast spells soon, neither bothered changing — Sirius shot her a broad grin. "We make a pretty damn fine team, you think?"
Ellie smiled, a little shakily.
Soon spells were flying at them, not really aimed as well as they could have been, splashing randomly into the darkness around them. Ellie cast another orange shield over them, flinging bludgeoning hexes and stunning charms and cutting curses in the Death Eaters' general direction. They weren't too far from the door now, but their pursuers were catching up — the perspective-screwy effects of the solid blackness in the room was just as bad for Sirius's aim as it was for theirs.
She glanced over her shoulder again just in time to see Sirius transfigure Saturn into water, which dropped to sluice over the pack of Death Eaters. Oh, she got it. She whipped her wand around, cast, "Cumfulmine!" even as Sirius shouted, "Rette!" Spells lanced out from both their wands more or less at the same time, Sirius's a very natural-looking bolt of blue-white lightning, Ellie's a more normal yellow-blue spellglow, though somewhat longer and narrower and quicker-moving than average. Sirius's struck first, a wave of electricity sweeping over the soaked Death Eaters, freezing them in place or throwing them off their feet, the force and noise intense enough he'd probably killed at least one of them.
Ellie's hit a moment later, the spellglow hitting one of the Death Eaters in the leg before the energy of the spell was released, yellow-white fingers of energy lancing out, jumping from one figure to the next, cracking and cutting and tearing, spreading much further than it normally would, touching all of the five or six figures before finally fizzling out. Their robes were thick enough she couldn't see most of the effects, though that one Death Eater's leg was now a twisted, mangled, bloody wreck.
She fought down the urge to gag, turned back around and kept running.
Stepping through into the next room just behind her, Sirius spat, "Son of a bitch."
They were in a sort of classical amphitheatre, rough stone carved into benches descending in tiered rows, surrounding an elevated platform in the middle. At the centre was an arch, sketching out a vaguely door-proportioned shape significantly taller than Ellie, made of ancient stone, cracked and weathered and crumbling at the corners. It appeared parts of the platform was composed of the same material as the arch, missing bits filled in with concrete to make a more regular shape when they'd moved it here — Ellie seriously doubted this was its original location, the Unspeakables must have found it somewhere.
Hanging inside the arch was a black cloth, tattered and frayed. There was something unnatural about that cloth — it was too black, with no variations or glare from the light or anything (rather like the room with the planets in it), save for uncountable dots scattered across it, twinkling like stars. It wafted gently — almost too gently, as though gravity didn't have as much of an effect on it as it should — in the breeze that circled about the room, so soft it was barely noticeable, but cold, intensely cold, though without the sharp bite of a proper winter wind. Thicker and softer, like a spring breeze, but still desperately, unnaturally cold...
Or, perhaps, the soft flapping of the curtain was creating the breeze, pushing the air around it, imparting a chill from some incomprehensible, eldritch magics. Ellie could really go either way on that, there was something, just, not right about that old bit of cloth, it was unsettling.
Though she probably shouldn't spend too long getting distracted by the thing — the room was a chaos of seven separate running duels, fleeing Death Eaters fending off Aurors and Unspeakables. Even as she watched, more poured in from multiple doors at once, a pack of Unspeakables and a group of Death Eaters managing to get surrounded in different areas of the room at the same time, it was such a mess.
Yeah, no thanks. Ellie turned around, heading back toward the door they'd just left, but froze before she got a couple steps. A battle had broken out in the room with the planets in the short seconds since they'd left. Ellie couldn't make out one side from this angle, but that figure there flanked by a handful of Death Eaters was definitely Voldemort himself.
Ellie turned back, looked around the amphitheatre — there wasn't a clear path to any of the doors, they were boxed in.
"Son of a bitch," Ellie agreed.
"Two o'clock!" There was a door in that direction, though there were Death Eaters and Aurors in the way. But she started moving anyway, trusting Sirius saw something she didn't.
She ran down the narrow ramp between rows of benches, gently arcing down toward the middle, they were about halfway down when one of the fights filling the room spilled out into the path in front of them. Blindly casting an overpowered bludgeoning hex at a Death Eater's back, Ellie jumped to the side, planted her feet on one of the benches, changing in mid-air, her hooves clattering onto a bench one row down, she hopped down, down, jumping quick and far enough to skip a row or two every time, the open space in the middle of the room was just—
Spellglows came in straight at her from multiple directions, she was pretty sure they weren't even intended for her, just bad luck. She was still in the air, falling, she couldn't dodge, she shifted back, magic called up with a heart-stuttering snap, "Aigídi!" the silvery shield appeared just as—
The three curses hit her shield right in a row, thud crack thud, her shield held but the force of the impact flung her back, crashing against the lowermost bench. She felt something in her hip pop, hot pain slashing out in thin bands. Grimacing, Elile staggered up to her feet, one hand automatically going to her side.
She blinked, glanced at her own fingers. Blood? What the...
A wavering voice, thick and gasping, "...Power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who—"
The prophecy orb. It'd been her pocket, it must have been smashed against the bench. Right. Ellie vanished the shards of glass stuck in her dress (some jabbed into her skin too, probably), Trelawney's uncharacteristically heavy, rasping voice abruptly cutting off. A quick-and-dirty battlefield healing spell cooled the pain down a bit, but more importantly stopped the bleeding (hopefully, at least), a numbing charm taking care of the rest of it.
Sirius was there, hand coming down on her shoulder. "You okay?" fury and an edge of panic on his voice.
"Fine. Prophecy's gone." Ellie started moving again, limping a bit before her injured hip loosened enough to run properly.
They made it across the central area, Ellie was just jumping up to the third bench when the door they were aiming for slammed open, a tight pack of Death Eaters pursued by a couple Aurors — the one with the night-black hair limmed with flickering red was definitely Dora, didn't recognise the other — Ellie staggered back, nearly toppling off the bench, managed to hop lightly one down. She glanced around the room quick, looking for a direction they could go where the fighting was thin, but they were everywhere, bodies jumping and rolling among the benches in a wild, uncoordinated dance, spellglows and the crackle of fire and lightning, the shivering curves of shields, the air sang and snapped with it all, it was everywhere—
They were surrounded.
Biting back the frustration (and terror) crawling up her throat, Ellie turned around, hopped down toward the flat space around the central pedestal — firing a bludgeoning hex at a Death Eater who came too close, thrown back with a sickening wet snap, his shoulder was definitely dislocated at least. He wasn't moving, but Ellie followed up with a stunning charm anyway. Sirius cast a slicing curse over her shoulder, a spray of blood flying from one of the other Death Eaters cornering a couple Unspeakables, and then they were passed, Ellie ran toward the centre of the room, skidding to a stop at the bottom of the stairs up to the arch.
She pointed, but she had only gotten a couple syllables out before Sirius's wand was already moving, as though reading her mind. He conjured an arc of stone curving from a bit to their side up the stairs and down to their other side, cutting off about two-thirds of the room. As he transfigured the wall, the golden sheen of bronze quickly spreading across it, Ellie sketched a few glowing runes in the air — an enchantment for durability, an interference spell, an anchor against vanishing — cast it at the wall with a flick of her fingers. The spell took harder than she'd expected, she shook out the pins and needles in her wrist, spun to put her back to the wall.
Even cut down to a third of the room, she looked upon a messy chaos of battle, shifting too quickly for her to really keep track of. It seemed like everyone had made their way here, the amphitheatre almost too full of fighters for them to all dodge properly without bumping into each other — the Death Eaters were outnumbered, barely, but they were holding their own, the sides too evenly-matched for either one to hold on to the advantage.
Where the hell was their back-up?
While Sirius shot spells into the milieu, seemingly at random, Ellie ducked back, starting in on another bit of storm magic, something big enough to fill the whole room, give their side a leg up. This was her role in big battles like this, Moody said — gifted with an exceptional volume of raw magical power, there were spells available to her that weren't to most people, wide-scale magics that could limit the options of entire crowds of opponents or turn the tide of a losing fight single-handedly. Dumbledore did a similar thing, using transfiguration to corral and bind throughout the entire field, restricting his opponents so they were easy targets for his allies to pick off. Ellie, though, had a talent for high elemental magic, which was rather more flashy, rain and fire and lightning.
But also less easily exploitable: the incantations for these things were usually quite lengthy, and couldn't be shortened very easily. Ellie need a few seconds unmolested to get them off, which was often easier said than done.
Ellie was only a couple words into a storm-based mass knock-out spell when she had to cut off to move, barely dodging a sickly orange-yellow Cruciatus, a snap protege catching a yellowish curse, shattering it instantly, she ducked under a blue spellglow, some kind of blood-mediated curse — couldn't tell what it did exactly, but she could feel magic that acted on blood, her skin crawling and the hair on her arms and back of her neck standing up — she deflected a blasting curse up into the ceiling, raining shrapnel down somewhere behind her, ducked and spun under a wide-angle cutting curse, coming up with a blasting curse of her own, but it was caught on a shield, jumped over another cutting curse, and leaned out of the way of two torture curses at once, and—
Finally, a trio of Aurors fell on the Death Eaters firing curses at Ellie and Sirius, distracting them enough Ellie could at least take a breath without getting killed. Christ...
Ellie knew the moment Voldemort stepped into the room. It was almost tactile, an aura of fear tingling across the air as everyone, Death Eater and Auror and 'Hit Wizard' and Unspeakable looked in the same direction all at once, the lull in the fighting ending after only the briefest pause, taking a desperate quality to it, spells frantically cast seemingly with no rhyme or reason, the wild assault actually taking the Death Eaters by surprise, several in Ellie's field of vision falling in a handful of seconds, she and Sirius taking a few more, spells falling into their backs, but they were running out of time, the air shuddered, the cold wind somehow growing even colder, an absolutely terrifying volume of magic keying up behind her, Voldemort gathering himself to—
Then, with a slamming and a crashing and an explosion that had shrapnel tumbling all the way down to Ellie's feet, a section of the wall to her right was blown open, and more Aurors and Hit Wizards (real ones this time) were pouring into the room — along with a handful of people out of uniform. Ellie spotted Amelia Bones, Professor McGonagall, Rufus Scrimgeour, Bríd Ingham, Augusta Longbottom, and gracefully sweeping into the room near the front of the pack...
...Dumbledore.
The black dread on the air broke in an instant as their back-up finally arrived, the dozen little battles going on all across the floor now much more favourable to the Ministry, Dumbledore, Amelia, and Longbottom making a beeline for Voldemort himself. The battle now firmly turned in their favour, Ellie let herself relax, ever so slightly.
But the battle wasn't quite over.
There was a discordant shiver of magic from behind her, she turned around in time to see the wall of bronze shudder, dissolve, progressively transfiguring into a viscous, greenish-black fluid. Ellie had no idea what that shite was, but she didn't want to wait to touch it to find out — she grabbed Sirius by the sleeve and yanked him back and to the side, the torrent splashing to the floor within a metre of his shoes. Ellie tried to vanish it, but it wasn't— Of course, her anti-vanishing enchantment was still in effect, dammit. She started transfiguring patches of it into stone instead, Sirius caught on after a second or two and took care of the rest.
The air around Dumbledore and Voldemort was shuddering and cracking, heavy enough Ellie's skull rang, bronze and glass and glimmering black stone flying back and forth around them — she skipped out of the way of a stray greenish spell from Voldemort, leaving the ground where it hit blackened and smoking. Okay, breaking line of sight would be a good idea, she pulled Sirius around a bit more, putting the arch between them and the dueling grand sorcerers.
They had a few seconds to cast a couple spells at distracted Death Eaters before a spike of dark magic appeared in the air above them, quickly falling at their heads. Ellie dove left and Sirius right, and where they'd been standing a figure in Death Eater robes fell, crashing heavy to the ground, surrounded with hissing black and red fire. The flames dissipated to reveal a woman with wild black hair, robes askew and mask missing, a weeping cut carved across her temple, thin lines of blood drawn down her face, lips pulled into a very familiar grin and grey eyes dancing as her wand turned toward Ellie—
She dove out of the way before the curse even left Lestrange's wand, a spellglow lancing through where she'd been standing a second ago to slam into the benches, as quick as a blink, eerie white flames licking at the stone. Ellie brought her wand up, but Lestrange was already aiming at her again, her wand hand twisted, but then she cut the motion off, spinning on her heel almost unnaturally fast to bat away a spell aimed at her back, but Sirius had expected her to block it, he'd gotten very close, punched her right in the face.
Lestrange staggered with the blow, let out a high, gleeful giggle, and Sirius staggered with her, his sleeve caught with her off hand, her wand came around toward his chest, Sirius yanked back on his arm, pulling her aim off, Ellie started casting a stunning charm, but Lestrange spun down and around even as she finished, she turned her wand aside at the last second, missing Sirius by a hair—
With a twist of his shoulders, Sirius got his arm around Lestrange's neck, the tip of her wand came around to his side, he let out a yelp, jumping away—
Ellie only had an instant of warning, a wave of fire came rushing toward her, she leapt to the side, skipped up the steps toward the creepy arch, she shot off a blasting curse at Lestrange the second she could see through the smoke, Lestrange batted it into the ground near Sirius's feet, he cursed at the dust and sparks thrown by the explosion. Turning his wand on Lestrange—
He cut off, jumping out of the way of a rain of silvery darts slashing through the air at his chest. Lestrange swiped at Sirius, a cutting curse slicing in at him, but Sirius rolled, shifted into Padfoot, bounded up to Ellie in two quick leaps, turned back to throw spells back at Lestrange and the other Death Eater that had snuck up behind him, piercing curses and blasting curses and cutting curses, Ellie contributing a bevy of bludgeoners and stunning charms.
But none of them were hitting home. Lestrange and the Death Eater were working together surprisingly well — Voldemort's mad lackeys weren't exactly known for their teamwork. Lestrange was mostly focused with countering some kind of ice magic coming in at their backs, throwing the occasional curse in their direction just to keep the pressure on, while the other Death Eater mostly worked on defence. He was casting proper palings — in the middle of a battle, the madman — little glowing runes springing from his fingers one after the other as he countered Sirius's progressively darker and more dangerous curses.
That was a bit...intimidating. Ellie didn't think she'd seen anyone actually use runic casting in a fight, beside Emma Vance, Bríd Ingham, and Ellie herself, of course — and she'd only seen Emma doing it in practice duels, teaching it to Ellie, and Ingham in an exhibition, just to be flashy. It wasn't something people actually did, unless they either had a significant background in cursebreaking or were just a little bit mad. (Ellie would admit she was the latter.) If they had to fight Lestrange and someone skilled enough to use runic casting in a fight, at the same time...
This battle better be over soon, because if it wasn't she and Sirius were screwed.
Sirius let out a snarl of frustration as his nightmare curse, one of the ones that was practically unblockable, fizzled out two metres away from Lestrange's back. "B.J., you frustrating fucking bastard!"
Ellie cursed — of course it was Barty Crouch, god damn it... She started whispering, "Austre furēns, caelum ut effringat..."
The Death Eater chuckled, throwing a few more runes, the fuzzy outline of his paling firming a bit, shimmering in the air, a bevy of shield-breakers from Sirius sizzling uselessly against it. "I can help you with that if you like, Siri," Crouch said, a flirtatious lilt to his voice.
Sirius coughed, distracted for a second, scrambled to deflect another blasting curse from Lestrange. A few more curses pushed them back, Ellie tripped as her heel bumped into one of the stairs. Her concentration nearly broke, the lightning boiling in her stomach thrashing against its reins, but she clenched her teeth, hissed out the last few words, her voice rising, "...opera hūmāna frangās!"
She leaned around Sirius, a white bolt of light bursting from her wand with enough force she was nearly kicked back onto her arse, striking Crouch's paling in the blink of an eye. It didn't penetrate, but it didn't fizzle out either, branching into a hundred fingers of lightning spreading in every direction across its surface, Crouch scrambled to dismiss the paling, cutting off most of its energy supply, but still sparks were left hanging in the air, a thin mist flickering here and there. While Lestrange shot some more curses at Sirius, dodging a trio of flying bronze blades from the Auror behind them — Ellie could make her out now, it was Dora (thank god, they might make it out of this alive) — Crouch started casting a cleansing spell to disperse the lingering magic.
But Ellie was faster. She sketched out two runes — seal in Egyptian, mirror in Sumerian — the magic around Crouch and Lestrange twisting and shivering, the sparks flaring brighter with a chorus of crackling. Sirius didn't know enough about cursebreaking to have any clue what she'd just done, but he'd clearly guessed she'd done something, fired off a piercing curse at Crouch. Crouch, instinctively, cast a shield.
The shield snapped into existence, then immediately flickered out, the lighting lingering in the air tearing it into useless blue and purple sparks. Sirius's aim could have been better, though, the curse nailing Crouch in the chest, but too high and too far right to be lethal. It spun him around, blood flung in an arc around him (Ellie grimaced, tried to ignore it), but he was healing himself in a blink, shaking off the pain. "If you wanted to stick me, Siri, there are better—"
Lestrange cut him off with a snarl. "Not the time for flirting, Barty! This kid is fucking—" Cutting herself off, Lestrange ducked under paired spears of blue-white ice, aimed perfectly at where her head and heart had been, came up with a crackling black fire spell, which Dora smothered with this weird pink bubbly foam, which was then transfigured into pinkish-silver darts, Lestrange scattered them with a wild flail, leaving her open to a brace of piercing curses, she leaned out of the way of two and deflected the other two with a single well-coordinated sweep of her wand, retaliating with two quick cutting curses, the follow-through to either side sending blasting curses sailing off in Ellie and Sirius's direction...
Ellie managed to keep her shield-neutralising enchantment up despite Crouch's attempts to counter it, carefully corralling it to always keep the two Death Eaters covered — they couldn't cast any shields, or even anything that broke the flow of magic the way shields did. But even three (two and a half) against two, surrounded, even with a disadvantage so serious as not being able to cast a bloody shield charm, they were still holding out remarkably well.
In fact, they were still pushing Ellie and Sirius back! Crouch mostly focused on defence, pelting the two of them with intermittent curses, Lestrange a dizzying whirlwind of motion and magic, holding back Dora (who was a terrifying duelist) while simultaneously keeping pressure on Ellie and Sirius consistent enough Ellie could hardly even keep up, it was just insane! Ellie would dodge and counter and deflect as much as she could, but every curse she needed to block with a shield had her pushed back another few steps — once her ankle caught badly enough on one of the stairs, slamming down hard on her bum — Sirius pushed back with her, one step, another and another. They were moving too, Lestrange and Crouch forced to slowly retreat by Dora on their other side, but Ellie and Sirius together couldn't hold them back, the spellfire too thick and wild and unpredictable and...
And Ellie was starting to get worn out, her breathing quick and heavy, sweat trickling down her back, her shoulder and wrist aching, her legs burning. How long had this battle been going on? It had to be a while by now...
And she and Sirius were running out of room to retreat.
Ellie stumbled back from another hit against her shield, and didn't hitch against another stair, glanced around to see they were on the platform in the middle of the room. The arch was only a few metres away, cold and eerie and alien. Ellie was distracted for a second by the symbols carved into the arch — was that Shang relic script? how old was this thing? had the Unspeakables really moved it here all the way from China? — before turning back around, throwing whatever she could think of at the advancing Death Eaters.
She and Sirius were right between Lestrange and Crouch on one side and the arch on the other. That seemed like a bad place to be.
Before Ellie could get Sirius's attention, tell him they had to move, Lestrange cast a wide-angled cutting curse, an arc of orange and yellow several metres wide, lancing out toward them. Ellie, instinctively, cast a shield charm to catch it, planting her feet and gritting her teeth. Which was, in retrospect, a fucking stupid thing to do.
Because Lestrange hadn't cast a cutting curse.
The band of light struck Sirius's defences first, the wall of conjured stone shattering into a hundred pieces from the impact of a high-powered bludgeoning curse. The shards of rock pelted Sirius with a dozen punches all at once, Ellie didn't have time to react, the curse struck her shield an instant later, the force carried through it into her, practically picking her off her feet and tossing her back, she slammed against something (the arch) hard enough her breath was let out in a harsh cough, she gasped—
Sirius was stumbling, bruised and battered by his own conjuration turned against him, still off-balance, just to her left...
...straight toward the arch...
Without thought, instinctively, Ellie's hand snapped out, catching Sirius's sleeve just under his shoulder, but he was still off-balance, still moving—
—he fell past her—
—Ellie's shoulder wrenched, hard, she was pulled sideways—
—and she fell—
—and she fell and she fell, through an empty void, endless black speckled with stars, tiny specks of white and blue and red, dancing around her, the blackness thick and heavy, crushing tight enough she could hardly breathe, but she still had a hold on Sirius's sleeve, she pulled herself toward him, and his arms were coming around her, hard and strong and warm, gripping her so tight she almost hurt, she clung back, listening to the desperate rattle of his breath, closing her eyes against the infinite night spinning around them—
The roar of surf, the scent of sea salt, wind playing with her hair.
Slowly, Sirius's shirt still gripped tight in her hands — he'd fallen through, she wasn't letting go, she'd almost lost him — Ellie sat up. For a moment, she was dazzled by sunlight, yellow and bright and warm. (She hadn't realised how cold the void had been, she was shivering.) They weren't underground anymore, the sky right over her head, clear and blue, so blue, vibrant and pure and cloudless. Around them was the sea, rippling with uncountable waves, whitecaps dancing at the surface, stretching to the horizon in all directions, crashing to throw itself against the shore.
The shore of an island, an absolutely tiny island, hardly larger than the kitchen at home, small enough the mist thrown by the waves sprayed them from all directions at once. The ground was made of white tile fringed with gold, looping patterns stitching them together. There was nothing else.
Standing over them, not far away, was a man. Or, a person, at least — they were so androgynous, face smooth and round and almost too pretty, body lean and straight, no hint in their figure of identifiable femininity or masculinity. A metamorph, perhaps, or a golem of some kind. They were dressed rather oddly, a wrap-around robe in a deep red, the cuffs and hems green stitched with gold, the skirt cutting off at the ankles and the baggy sleeves nearly hiding their hands. By how the cloth folded over their chest, Ellie guessed it was fixed closed at their waist, but Ellie couldn't actually see it, an overly wide sash wrapped tight around them, the top just under their ribs and the bottom halfway to their knees. The sash was mostly yellow and black, the colours twisting together in curving, asymmetrical patterns, almost looking like tongues of fire surrounding the twining figures of...
...dragons? Like, Chinese dragons.
Ellie frowned up at the person, her head cocking a little. They didn't look Chinese, really. Their skin was a few shades darker than Ellie would expect, for one thing — more light than dark, but still noticeably brown — their hair black threaded with odd tones of blue-ish green, eyes a gleaming, shimmering gold. (Metamorph, definitely metamorph.) Their features weren't quite right...though they didn't look European either, or really anything Ellie could put a name to.
That odd robe did strike her as Chinese, though. She meant, not now China, ancient China. Really, really ancient China — she was pretty sure newer (but still old) robes were fancier than this. More layers and more unnecessary bagginess, she meant.
Judging by, like, period films and drawings she'd seen in books, she meant, she was not an expert in ancient China.
Ellie was staring at them, confused and still a little dazed from whatever had happened when she'd been yanked through the arch, when they spoke. "I have long awaited your return, child. This is not the manner in which I expected you to arrive, but it will serve well enough." The voice was low and soft and smooth, though almost entirely expressionless. Ellie couldn't say whether it was a man's or a woman's — it almost sounded more feminine than not...almost.
"Er..." Ellie wasn't certain how to respond to that. They'd been waiting for her? To return? Return where?
"Mind getting off me, Ellie?"
"Oh, shite, sorry." Tipping to the side off of him — Ellie had sort of been straddling Sirius for a moment there, which was just bloody awkward — she popped up to her feet. Sirius moved to stand too, but he was sluggish and stiff, hissing. Hurt from the debris he'd been peppered by, she assumed. She gave him a hand up, started casting healing charms on him one after another.
"Right." A slightly unsteady glare settling on the strange person, Sirius pointed his wand right at their heart. "Mind telling me who the hell you're supposed to be?"
"I have worn many names, Sirius Nigellus. Most of them have been forgotten. Those that remain are not truly mine, but hopeless grasping in the dark, meaning forced onto a shape unseen and unknown."
Sirius frowned. "Was that even English?"
Leaning in close, Ellie muttered, "They're a metamorph. An old one." The Queen of Nightmares had said something similar, in a story Ellie had read — I pay no more attention to such titles as the wolf minds the frightened squeaking of mice...but blind curses thrown at something more ancient and more powerful than they can grasp...my true name has crumbled away, as you will one day...and still will I be here, when your Rome is no more, stone dust and memory faded...
(And she had sort of had a point: that meeting had happened two thousand years ago, and while the Roman Empire was long dead the Queen of Nightmares still lived.)
He just looked more confused. "But I can't feel them at all."
...Good point, Ellie hadn't noticed that. Everybody had a magical presence that could be detected (even by muggles, supposedly), and the more powerful the mage the more obvious it should be. The truly old metamorphs could be overwhelming just standing in the same room. Even if this person were putting in some effort to hold themselves back, to not terrify Ellie and Sirius too much, she should still feel something. But there was, just, nothing. Which simply wasn't possible.
Although...
The person standing in front of them didn't feel different from their surroundings, no discontinuity to single out a person, as though they were just part of the background ambient magic of the world...but there was something odd about that ambient magic. There was magic around them, yes, but it was...too thick, and...
...alive.
"I think..." Ellie swallowed, trying to force down the fear trying to crawl up her throat, to not let herself be overwhelmed by the enormity of the thought that had just occurred to her. "This, all of this, it isn't real. Not really. I think this is them."
The person smiled, thin and warm, but empty, as though there was nothing behind their eyes. Because there wasn't, this wasn't real, there wasn't anyone standing in front of them. Simply a representation projected before them, along with the sky and the sea and the tile at Ellie's feet, by a mind so vast and powerful it simply shouldn't be possible.
Ellie clenched her fists to keep her fingers from shaking.
"You are very perceptive, child. Only rarely do I communicate directly with mortals, and only a very few of those notice what you have with hardly more than a glance." Right, mortals, definitely an ancient metamorph...
With only the slightest hint of a shiver on his voice, Sirius said, "So is this the Styx, then? Gotta admit, prettier than I was expecting."
"You are not dead yet, Sirius Nigellus. The door you have fallen through does not lead to the land of the dead. It was a bridge, built to connect here and there, a facet of my work that had once been necessary but has now long since been abandoned. I'm uncertain how it came to be where you found it, but it truly doesn't matter."
This person...had built that thing? "No offence, but your work is really fucking creepy."
They just smiled. "The magics of the gateway were fractured long ago. They can no longer operate as they were intended, which has evidently had unintended consequences. The chill of death you felt is not a consequence of my work, but that of its caretakers in the millennia since the Severing." Their face going somewhat more solemn, voice low and dark, they said, "You know, child, that this Ministry of yours has been using my gate as an exotic means of execution. The magics broken as they have been, those cast into it do not traverse the void as was intended. How many souls have been cast out into nothingness, abandoned in isolation and starvation to descend into madness..." They shook their head.
"But...we're not dead," Ellie asked. Just to be sure.
"No, child, you are not. Most who fall into the void are sparks in the night, too small and too alien for me to grasp. But you I can feel, and you I can intercept. It was simple enough to draw you to me before you were lost." They glanced over to Sirius, their head tilting slightly, the faintest hint of curiosity. "Although, I hadn't realised you were not alone. I intended to rescue you, child, but you, Sirius Nigellus, were simply...caught up in the storm."
Sirius scoffed. "Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint."
"I am not disappointed at all. Your companionship will provide your Ellie no small benefit, I think." The metamorph paused for a moment, head tilting back the other way. "Speaking of unexpected companionship... The timing of your arrival is fortuitous. Not ideal, perhaps, but it does present an opportunity I had not anticipated. One of my chosen could benefit from your companionship and your guidance, I think."
"That's nice. I'd rather you send us back home."
"That which has been broken cannot be remade, not as it was. You know this, Sirius Nigellus." Sirius blinked at the odd person for a moment, clearly confused — and why shouldn't he, what had been broken exactly? "The magic necessary to carry you on is prepared, now. Farewell, and good luck."
Her heart jumping into her throat — she hadn't realised she had so little time to figure out what the hell was going on — Ellie yelled, "No, wait, what are—"
Ellie's breath was stolen with a crackling gust of wind, and the false world around her vanished in gold-white light.
[Shang relic script] — More or less interchangeable with Shang-era bronzeware script. Seriously old shit, is the point.
Right, so that's a thing. This fic appeared in my head when I was re-reading the Twelve Kingdoms books a while ago — that just keeps happening — and I do rather like it. For those who actually know this series, Ellie and Sirius are gonna tag along with Youko to En, and Sirius is gonna help Youko in the war against the pretender in Kyou, sticking around a bit afterward as an advisor and bodyguard. (Ellie has other shit to do, including hoping back home to deal with the life they left behind.) It might not be surprising at all to hear that having Sirius around makes Youko's early years in Kyou go very differently.
Those who do know Twelve Kingdoms, Ellie's aversion to blood should have been a big hint what's going on with her.
Those who don't, as I mentioned last chapter, Ellie and Sirius don't have any clue what the fuck is going on (and Youko isn't far ahead of them), so everything'll be explained along the way. Assuming I ever get back to this, anyway. I do like this fic, but I have far too many projects floating around unattended already.
Happy holidays and shit,
—Lysandra