AN: here we are, the final battle. I won't bother you all with more of my ramblings, let's dive straight in!
CHAPTER 46 – Fateful end
As such things often go, the final battle at Hogwarts began with two armies facing each other. A stand-off of sorts between the two forces brought to the battlefield.
As soon as the first plumes had been sighted, the alarm had been sounded, rousing those that had been sleeping and warning those that hadn't. Chandra, who had rushed to the closest rampart as soon as the call to arms had sounded, studied the amassed enemy at the gate in the grey light of the cloudy early morning. She didn't need some form of visual enhancement to see that mostly they were humanoids –almost certainly wizards, though she didn't discount werewolves and vampires– but that a dozen of hulking brutes towered among them and that a number of cloaked figures hung in the air above.
Seeing their numbers, the pyromancer was glad they had thought of blocking all the secondary accesses to the school: a pronged attack would have been likely a winning strategy. The giants couldn't have fit in either the covered bridge on the southern side of the chasm next to the school or the tunnel coming up from the rickety old dock, but the wizards could have.
For some endless minutes everything was silent and still, then the wizards under Voldemort's command started casting. A hail of multicoloured spell rained on the wards, easily repelled by both the ancient and the newer defences, but while each spell was too weak to make a breach alone, the sum of them for a long enough time would surely suffice. It was an obvious plan, something even Chandra herself could see despite barely understanding the magic of Earth. It also had the very glaring flaw that it left the attackers motionless to better coordinate the salvos and therefore easy to hit.
So why isn't anybody firing back? She thought after a moment, looking around at her fellow defenders while she crafted one of her flame ribbons Where's the attack signal?
After some more seconds where the only sounds were those of the spells impacting the wards, she voiced her doubts to the guy to her left, a tall black man she remembered from the Order meetings.
"Too far," he grunted gesturing at the enemy "Our spells would lose too much power with the wards up, most certainly veering off target. No, better to save our energies for later."
Chandra blinked, then blinked again before facepalming. She let out a heavy sigh and then cleared her voice.
"Ok, welcome to warfare 101," she said loud enough so that everyone in her vicinity could hear her "Every guy down there is working to bring down our defences, so cutting even one of them down gains us some more time behind the wards. If we fill the air with spells then maybe we can incapacitate some of them before they make a breach. So now follow my lead and pass the word around."
That said she conjured a fireball twice the size of a human head and threw it at the enemy army. It flew in a long arc and impacted with a satisfactory big blast –she had created it to be concussive– that scattered some of the attackers. Soon some other spells followed hers, few at first but growing steadily with the moment. Most went indeed wildly off-course, as predicted by the man, but maybe one in eight or so fell in the still too tightly packed enemy ranks, causing panic and distress if not actually taking some of the attackers out of the fight.
Chandra's intervention turned the flow of the battle, which went from an attrition strategy that would have favoured the invaders to a more even exchange of fire. The attackers were also forced to move as they continued to rain punishment on the wards, making it less coordinated and effective.
After some time this went on, the fight shifted again as a single thunderbolt rained down amid the assaulting army, only to be immediately redirected at the wards. The formidable defences blocked the obviously powerful assault, but doing so reached their limit. At first a large crack hung in the air –almost as if the thunderbolt had fragmented reality itself– before it started expanding with a sound not unlike ice shattering and pieces of the wards looking like massive glass shards started falling to the ground while dissolving like an effervescent tablet in water.
Everybody stilled momentary while admiring the admittedly breathtaking spectacle, then the attackers spurred the giant and the shade-like beings ahead. The wizards didn't waste much time following behind them, a small number of them swooping towards the tall windows in plumes of dark smoke.
As a number of silvery animals lifted from the ramparts and started charging the shades –likely those dementors wizards had convinced themselves Liliana could summon– in mid-air, Chandra conjured a deep crimson fireball and threw it at a seemingly random spot in the courtyard. It impacted one of the previously prepared summoning circles, lighting it up in a massive blaze that soon took the vaguest of the humanoid traits –two pseudo-arms and something that could generously be defined a head with two blazing yellow eyes– and moved to intercept the giants on the access bridge.
As jets of water tried extinguishing Chandra's fire elemental –with mixed results, it was still basically a massive, living wildfire– while it battled it out with the foremost giant, a contingent of animated suits of armour started marching out of the open front doors, together with a veritable wave of skeletal rodents and even two of Liliana's spectres on their screeching, shadowy mounts.
Spellfire from both sides resumed, now much more precise thanks to the lessened distance and absence of wards. Chandra summoned a spitfire and went airborne, hoping in part to get into a better position and in part to draw some fire away from the bastions. She also thought that she might spot Voldemort to fry his bald head once and for all.
Black-purple lances flew from the castle's entrance towards some of the bottled giants, spearing them through as if they hadn't even been there and felling them on the spot, indicating that Liliana had entered the fray attended by Hermione and Pansy, who had been tasked solely with shielding the necromancer.
Voldemort's forces finally managed in overcoming the fire elemental, who died with a loud hiss as the last of his flames were extinguished, and proceeded to fight for the courtyard. A couple of giants who had been kept back started throwing huge boulders at the ramparts from behind the enemy lines, causing most of the defenders to focus their fire on those on threat of being crushed.
The ground forces in the courtyard faced the strength of the charging giants, managing to still them as Chandra continued raining streams of magma on the large brutes' heads. The supporting wizards would have likely tried to take her off the sky had they not been tied with repelling undead rats and screeching spectres. The stall didn't last long though, for a massive burst of wind scattered the two spectres before a barrage of those green killer spells took them out, freeing some of the attacking wizards to pelt the animated armours. Chandra was sure it had been Voldemort himself that caused that windblast, yet she realised that she was the only one left who could really free the defenders of the two giants still pestering them. With an annoyed grunt, she detected her spitfire into a swooping pass above the assembled wizards to avoid retaliation. Someone still rose in the air in a plume of black smoke trailing after her.
Meanwhile some of the defenders on the ramparts had to head back inside to stem the assault of the Death Eaters that had broken through the windows. Madam Bones herself led them in a hunt through the twisting corridors. Thankfully they had ordered all the non-combatants to hide in the dormitories where it was safer. Unfortunately, the invaders being Death Eaters meant they were Voldemort's elites, a completely different animal than the riff-raff out in the courtyard.
Still, that same riff-raff was forcing the defenders in the courtyard into a slow retreat towards the castle, despite Liliana having almost single-handedly slain all the remaining giants: the armours still standing simply lacked the range or the numbers to resist the assembled wizards' assault. It didn't help in the least that the necromancer needed far too much time to animate corpses as big as the giants'.
And while the battle was starting to take a turn for the worse for the defenders, Chandra's spitfire was shot down by a green spell from her pursuer, forcing her into a crash landing that stopped her from getting to the last two giants. Voldemort himself landed a short distance away, staring at her with undisguised hatred.
"You destroyed my horcrux, you ruined the work of a lifetime," he hissed, anger obvious in his tone "You killed my sweet Nagini!"
The pyromancer didn't reply verbally but threw a fireball at him before rolling to the side and scampering to her feet. He deflected the attack and retaliated with a smattering of multicoloured silent spells. Chandra kept diving out of the way of Voldemort's barrages and conjuring walls of flames to cut his sight while pestering him with a flurry of small fireballs, all with the express intent of biding her time to the ribbon build even more mana for her to use. She wasn't about to go for any middle measures with him since she wasn't sure how long it took him to plant another of those fire-absorbing runes; also, the longer she kept him busy the more time she gave Dumbledore and Liliana to come help her.
Inside the castle the situation was rapidly deteriorating: those students that had reasons to hate the resistance or to join Voldemort's camp had started attacking their fellows as soon as word of the Death Eaters' breach had reached them. This forced the defenders to split up even more to both cover more ground and keep the students in check, limiting their ability to quickly deal with the invaders.
Meanwhile the courtyard had been lost, prompting Hermione to trigger another of Chandra's summoning circles –all it took was a strong enough fire charm, as the pyromancer had foreseen not being present in person to trigger them all– before the doors were closed in front of the attacking wizards. The fiery giant boar that emerged from the circle couldn't stop the siege alone, but it did cause lots of damage to the attackers with its indiscriminate charges and gave the two witches and one planeswalker enough time to re-seal the entrance.
Seeing the courtyard taken, Dumbledore guided all those that remained on the ramparts back inside, hoping to bring help where it was needed. This in turn freed the two rock-caster giants, who tried to join the siege and avenge their fallen brethren.
The key word being tried, as Chandra crushed the whole flame ribbon, using all its accumulated mana for one of her biggest spells. It wasn't quite the Worldfire in neither scope or power, but the fiery conflagration that engulfed the stretch of land they had been battling on was still powerful enough to reduce the two giants to charred skeletons, to burn the few dementors that had drifted close hoping to snack on whoever lost, and to carve a massive crater in the ground.
As the destabilised soil soon started to crumble into the nearby ravine –incidentally rendering the access bridge useless– Voldemort apparated onto a nearby hill, sporting tattered clothes and large patches of burned flesh even if nothing life-threatening. He kept his eyes on the still present dust and smoke cloud, but he also took a moment to consider that while he had barely escaped that last explosion he had no doubt that Nalaar had survived. He was even mostly sure he had managed to tag her with a bone-breaking curse in the rib cage but he wouldn't be surprised if she came out of the cloud throwing fireballs and everything. The girl had a penchant for not dying.
He was forced to shift his attention from where he thought the girl was when he heard a thunderous rumble coming from the school. He turned just in time to see his remaining forces in the courtyard being thrown in the air like as many ragdolls by a mix of massive tree roots and tentacles, effectively breaking the siege in the courtyard.
All he had left were his Death Eaters inside the castle and himself, plus a small number of dementors that still floated above the school kept away by the defenders' patroni. It was probably better to retreat and build his forces back. He wasn't arrogant or mad enough to believe that he could lay siege to the castle alone and without his horcrux too.
He spun on his heel, intent on apparating to the Ministry building, but it didn't work. It wasn't the same sensation of an anti-apparation ward, it simply didn't work.
"No running away," came a male voice from behind him "Don't even think about it."
"Urgh, I'm not sure if it's my shoulder that hurts more or your puns, Jace," groaned the pyromancer sounding extremely parched.
Voldemort spun around and came face to face with not only his redheaded nemesis but also a shady-looking individual in a blue hooded cape, with glowing blue tattoos on his cheeks. He looked immensely smug –but more importantly well rested and battle ready– while Chandra looked like some of the survivors of the bombings during the Great War: covered in scrapes and sooth but miraculously still alive. She was holding a hand to her left shoulder, her left arm hanging limp at her side, meaning she had managed to turn in time to avoid his last fatal spell but still got hit by it.
That was all Voldemort could see before a fireball impacted with his sternum, forcing him to take a step back. A mere instant of distraction, not even a second, but it apparently was enough for the caped intruder to summon a number of glowing blue snake-like fishes that swam in the air all around him.
"Tale's end, Tom," said Chandra conjured another head-sized fireball in her free hand "I got your horcrux, now I'm going to get you too."
"How?" demanded the wizard, his eyes jumping wildly from one opponent to the other "I'm the greatest dark lord to ever live! You're just a child! How could you stand up to me?"
He wasn't about to admit he had been defeated. He would twist the tale as much as he could, even if deep inside he knew perfectly well that a routed army plus the amount of injuries he had already received meant his defeat.
"I swore an oath," replied the girl with an expression that was halfway between nostalgic and amused "For everyone's freedom, I will always keep watch."
She threw her fireball at him. Voldemort sneered and raised his wand to cast a shield. If he couldn't apparate out of the way he could still protect himself and retaliate later.
"Protego maxima!" he chanted, perfectly willing to expend a little more power if it meant they would need longer to break the shield.
The scorched yew of his wand cracked under the strain, but a pale dome materialised in the air around him. The fireball splashed against it doing little damage, same as the ghostly fishes that had charged him as soon as he had moved.
"Avada kedavra!" he thundered pointing his wand at the interloper, pouring his hate and magic through the focus.
The pale wood fissured more, but the deadly curse flew toward its mark.
The pyromancer raised her good arm, palm open towards her enemy, and let out a pale yellow beam of searing heat that impacted Voldemort's shield with all the strength of a battering ram. The barrier started cracking.
The killing curse passed through the caped man as if he hadn't been there. The man just smirked as a number of mirror images faded into existence all around them.
"Avada kedavra!" Voldemort snarled again pointing at Chandra instead, sure that she couldn't magically create illusions to hide behind.
The focus in his hand shattered –having channelled far too much magic in too little time while already damaged by the explosion– letting out a rain of emerald green sparks that fell to the ground harmlessly.
Voldemort lowered his gaze to stare at his oldest companion uncomprehendingly, uncaring of the shrapnel that had wounded him or that his shield was failing. He had always had his wand with him, ever since he had visited Olivander at eleven, he simply couldn't fathom its loss. It was unthinkable.
For the first time in more than half a century, Voldemort truly felt powerless, like he had felt as a clueless child in front of Dumbledore. And it scared him, even more than the possibility of dying.
He heard the sound of his barrier shattering and raised his head, just in time for the beam of heat to cut a hole through his chest. It hurt incredibly, but only for the briefest of moments. Then, all he felt, was cold numbness as the world tilted to the side, darkness pressing at the edge of his sight.