A/N: Purposefully tried to have Harry disorientated or something here.

Chapter 32: Attack on the World Cup

After the match had ended, rather spectacularly, the 'mingling' resumed. We'd quickly strayed away from the 'evil French hag', after which I'd had a pleasant conversation with Abhay Patil about the appalling lack of 'proper' magical transport, namely his families flying carpets. Hedwig and I had managed to slink away from the rest of the parasites and found Draco looking at a map of the site. He'd almost jumped out of his skin when we'd asked what he was doing, continuing to wear the scowl whilst explaining how big my animagus was, he looked interested. After Lucius collected his son, we found Sirius again and headed out into the camp-site for some drinks, which has been going well until an explosion went up not far from us, a few people had cheered, but then the screaming started after the second one hits.

"What was that?!" Sirius, now with his wand drawn, looks around wildly. I pop my own into my hand just after watching a bludgeoning hex smack somebody in the back of the head. This causes more panic in those around us, eagerly trying to get away from the aggressors. Tall hoods, black robes that seem to suck the light in from around them and the masks. "No..." Sirius' arm goes limp by his side. Death Eaters. Lots of them.

"Sirius." I give him a shove. "Go to the stadium, find Tonks – Help the Aurors." I point to the, now burning, stadium.

"What about you?"

"Somebody has to draw their fire." I shrug, giving my wand a flick, shielding one of the curses that hurtles towards the fleeing crowd. "Don't try and argue, take Amanda somewhere slightly more safe. The Aurors'll appreciate another wand. Hedwig, get in the air so I don't miss anything heading for my back." She kisses my cheek and transforms, quickly heading up into the sky. Arguing about her going away would only take up time. I throw up another shield as a curse comes at us causing Amanda to scream, this puts Sirius over the edge. He takes her hands and they run.

"I count 33." Hedwig tells me, giving me a view of their layout. "Is this a good idea?"

"I very much doubt it." I twitch my wand and catch another few curses before stepping into view of them, firing a couple of body binds to get them warmed up.

"Be careful."

The bloody starts to pound in my ears as a sort of humming starts in my head. Almost like voices telling me what to do. James Potter wanting a fight with flashes and finesse. Albus Dumbledore with his ruthless efficiency or Gellert Grindelwald wanting to tear them limb from limb. Maybe a mixture of it all? The tents around me has already been reduced to rubble.

"Kill him!" One of them shouts after deflecting my body bind. If I'm asked, they escalated it first.

I side-step the killing curse and, with a flourish, draw the debris of broken tents together into a large elephant to draw their attention for the moment it takes me to transfigure some nearby rocks into four hulking, 8 foot tall knights. Seeing a curse headed my way through Hedwig's eyes, I point my wand over my shoulder and a protego shield springs into place and drops again a moment after absorbing the spell. I fire a couple of wards on the shields of the knights to keep them together just in time as the elephant is destroyed.

"Focus fire on the minions! Reducto!" One of them snarls. Their forces, if they can be called that, are now spread out in a wide semi-circle, desperately trying to land a curse on the overly-agile knights. I transfigure the ground into a barrier whilst I put together a few more stone guardians. Why fight them myself when these guys can?

"They're trying to surround you." Hedwig tells me with no small amount of panic in her voice. I bring my wand up in time to block the dark purple slash meant to decapitate me. I return with a volley of bone breakers aimed to their chests. One of these hitting their thick skulls is the last thing my 'image' needs.

"Get higher, I don't want you to be hit." I instruct as I trade curses with the three newcomers. Their repertoire s limited, but deadly. Spells to spill my guts or burst my veins, hexes to disrupt the ground and many attempts to knock things into me, but simply blocked or fired back into them.

"Behind you!" Hedwig says needlessly. I crouch down and a curse sails over my head. I retaliate with a large gout of fire, very large, and a reducto using the 'duo' modifier, which causes two spells to fire out instead. The small pieces of dirt and rock that get thrown into the air are quickly transfigured into needles, I use this new swarm to take out the two Death Eaters behind me before twisting my hand and sending the darts at the others. They whizz past my body, barely missing me. With those dealt with, and bleeding, I head back to the bulk of the battle, sending a great wall of fire towards those combating my constructs. I bring my free hand up with my wand and the fire morphs into a swarm of flying bears – I've taken this little trick for Gellert, although he did it with Fiendfyre instead. I send out stronger explosive hexes to scatter the Death Eaters whilst I draw upon more transfigured soldiers, sending a pair of burning golems into the fray. The most effective way to fight multiple combatants as a single fighter is to 'even the odds' a bit. In numbers anyway. "Tall, white and arrogant incoming." It can only be Lucius … or any other of the Death Eaters for that matter.

"Confringo!" I thrust my hand out to the oncoming spell and it freezes in the air, hissing wildly about 10 feet from me. Lord Malfoy stands a short distance away, mask partially cracked, hood smoking around his neck, wand outstretched towards me.

"Well, that didn't go how you intended, did it?" I cock my head sideways a bit. I tilt my palm in the curse flicks back towards him, he has to dive to the ground to avoid it. "Fulmen telum!" The lightning strike spins out of my wand and hits the man, throwing him away.

"They're trying to escape." Hedwig points out as a knight slices the hand that clutches, or once clutched, a portkey.

"Nice catch. And fly higher." I flick my wand in the air, summoning a large anti-portkey ward around the area. They look to have gotten their hands on portkeys cleared to pass through the greater wards. That doesn't bode well. "Anyone dead?"

"Just beaten and bruised, but alive. Luci is looking crisp-" She gets interrupted by a huge flash of light exploding next to me, blinding me.

"Contego Maximus!" The golden shield springs to life as a hail of … things barrage against it. With only Hedwig's sight to go with, I can't count on dodging.

"Harry!" Hedwig lowers to get a better look.

"No!" I bark. "Stay up there, if you get hit then I've got no chance." I drop the shield and fire back. "Ossium Satani!" An exploding bone curse, I'm sure it would hurt if it hit. I follow it up with vein bursting curses and another wall of fire peppered with arrows. 'Dark' magic, but it's not like he's throwing tripping jinxes at me either. I use my free hand to rub my stinging eyes, but settle for closing them. I have the small mercy of still being able to see the blurry magic through my eyelids.

"Har-!" This time she doesn't finish. The bastard hit her.

"Ignis rumpitur montem!" I point the 'Volcano charm' in the man's general direction before spinning to catch Hedwig with my wand, gently lowering her to the ground about 50 metres away. I twist again and the killing curse misses me by inches, I let Hedwig fall the last couple of feet and turn back to my assailant. Blind. I exhale slowly whilst the rage builds inside me as I begin 'Lily mode'. The spells start to pour out of my wand as my senses slow down. I am still mostly blind. Hedwig is fine. One target remaining. I am still mostly blind.

"Crucio!" That one doesn't look nice.

"AAAAAAH!" I snap out of the stance instantly, falling to the floor. It feels as though I just jumped off the astronomy tower. The description in writing of being hit by the cruciatus says it feels like thousands of red hot needles pushing into your flesh, this is an accurate description. It only lasts for a second. My sight starts to return as the man stumbles towards me as I try and grope around for my wand.

"Crucio!" He starts the unforgivable again. My back arches as I scream, the pain coursing through my body. The curse feels as if it's trying to pull the flesh from my bones whilst cooking it. It begins to push through me in waves, never holding the same feeling long enough for me to get used to it. As the unrelenting torture curse continues, I try my best to send the man, who appears to be the non-imprisoned Lestrange brother, a hateful glare, but it's not really possible whilst screaming. I try and focus on the people that were merrily dancing here only minutes ago, but the task proves to be impossible. My left eye suddenly switches off or bursts, which I'm sure it would have hurt a lot were I not being under the unforgivable curse of pain. I curl up into a ball at his feet, trying to somehow lessen the pain as it pounds relentlessly against my every nerve. I start to panic. He's not letting up. He's going to keep going until I die. I'm going to die. The pain begins to happen in slow pulses. Is it ending? Am I ending? I can almost understand the man's hatred towards me, however misguided it might be, but I'll be damned if I don't at least take him with me if he's about to destroy my brain. We're now at the 260 second mark and the waves of pain are almost a whole second apart now. 1 … 2 ... 3 … I jerk my arm during the 'low' part of the pulse and a spike forms out of the ground in a flash and hits him in the chest. I try and sigh in relief, but I've long since screamed my throat raw. I think I was aiming for his heart, but my glasses are somewhere else, although with only one eye, it still would have been hard to aim.

"Gak!" Lestrange gurgles.

I hope Tonks is OK.

The first thing I can experience is pain and the loud ringing in my ears. I've been in Saint Mungos for … 15 minutes now, almost 20 minutes since I lost consciousness. I didn't die. I try and talk, but I can only manage a cough. Someone makes some muffled sounds, probably talking, as they cast some spells on me, no doubt to try and divine my state, but I didn't die!

"..er. Mist … er! Mister Potter!" My head is pounding, but I crack my eyes open – One of them anyway – to look at the healer. A woman, blurry, short, and red hair. She shines her wand in my good eye for a moment before pointing it, ineffectually, at my busted one. Something is pressed to my mouth a few seconds later. Water! Sweet, sweet nectar of the Gods! More sound starts to reach me as my ears as I wake up more. My body still creaks inside as it shakes from the Cruciatus exposure. 'Exposure' sounds like a much less horrific thing, doesn't it?

"T-tonks." I croak out. If anything's happened to her, I'll climb out of this bed and show the bastards that did it what a dark lord can really do.

"Miss Tonks is fine." A pleasant voice reaches informs me as more healers gather near my bed. Light blue aura.

"Glaa-ses." I try and move my arms, but my fists painfully ball up, digging my fingernails painfully into my palms. I tense up my whole body as the heat washes through me again. I try not to recoil as my glasses are none-too-gently set on my face. They feel too heavy. The lenses are cracked and the frame is gnarled partially, having been stamped on, but the faces swim into focus. Four healers methodically attempt to reduce the damage caused, I can see in their eyes that it's not working. I've theorised that the three Unforgivables cannot be blocked by any known shield charm because they are not the same 'brand' of magic. Similar to how Goblin magic doesn't line up perfectly with that of Wizards, Pixies, or House Elves – The Unforgivables might be bastardised versions of another form of magic, so they cannot be shielded against by the generally known form. That, however, is just my guess, medical journals just say that the Cruciatus is almost impossible to treat. I screw my eyes shut again as another fit of pain has me biting my lip, drawing blood. My arm pushes out and makes contact with one of the healers wands. Anderson. Mahogany and Unicorn tail hair. 55 years partnered, which happened just 14 days after the wand was crafted by Ollivander. I can add 'Psychometry induced headache' to my list of ailments. Fantastic.

A/N: 'Pain pain, go away.' Was my first idea for the chapter title. Hopefully i've done the horror of this particular curse justice so far, it's real fucking nasty.

I know that in canon that the three Lestranges are in Azkaban, but here Rabastan wasn't sentenced. Politics!

Had a couple of things about pairings. Harry/Tonks is, quite obviously, here and here to stay. I have a loose plan for Hedwig and another, shall we say, avian inclined witch. Hermione and Harry's relationship is platonic, which i hope is the right word. Harry/Hermione in this particular story ... is an impossibility.

I want to screw with the canon lore when it comes to dragons because dragons are cool, but probably no reawakening of some crazy, long forgotten race of all-powerful, anthropomorphic race of dragons.

We'll see how it goes, Enjoy!