Title: Magical Thunder
Author: JoeHundredaire
Rating: PG-13/FR15
Disclaimer: Captain Fangirlhumper… err, J.K. Rowling owns the world the Harry Potter series takes place in. Wish the characters were mine so I could do utterly retarded things to them and watch my bank account get steadily larger, but sadly not mine. Since the story takes concepts from the source material, I feel I should mention that Toei Company owns Bakuryū Sentai Abaranger along with BVS Entertainment being the people behind Power Rangers Dino Thunder. Not mine, don't sue, et cetera.
Summary: A hidden force lies in wait to protect Hogwarts, one that not even the greatest of wizards can comprehend…
Joe's Note: This originally was written to accompany a two page comic that never got completed and has sat on my hard drive ever since. I've already copied out a bit of it to use in another Luna-centric story, but I figure that offering it up in its original form might be a good idea too. Enjoy.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Alexander, Howard, MJ, Daniel, Christopher, Timothy, Leigh, Noh, Jason, Chris, George, Koby, Judedeath, Ken, Thyatira, William, Wil, Thomas, Jack, Pat, Chris, Mitch, and Jess for sponsoring me on , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

Harry Potter skidded as he turned a corner, his trainers slippery with blood. Snape had an immense head start. Was it possible that he had already entered the cabinet in the Room of Requirement and escaped, or had the Order taken steps to secure it, to prevent the Death Eaters retreating that way? He could hear nothing but his own pounding feet and his own hammering heart as he sprinted along the next empty corridor, but then spotted a bloody footprint that showed at least one of the fleeing Death Eaters was heading toward the front doors. Good. Hopefully the Order had blocked off the Room of Requirement and that would funnel all the Death Eaters to one spot if they wanted to escape.

As Harry slid around another corner, a curse shot past his head. He dove behind a suit of armor for cover, the spell striking it and causing it to explode in a shower of metal shards. Harry spotted the brother and sister running down the marble staircase ahead of him and fired off several spells at them, but merely hit several of the multitude of portraits that lined the wall, sending the occupants scrambling into neighboring frames for cover. As he emerged from behind the wreckage of the armor, Harry heard more shouts and screams. Bugger; other people within the castle seemed to have awoken and were likely emerging from their dorms to see what the fuss was, giving the Death Eaters even more targets.

"Shit shit shit." Harry raced toward a shortcut, hoping to overtake the Carrows and close in on Snape and Malfoy, who must surely have reached the grounds by now. Remembering to leap over the vanishing step halfway down the concealed staircase, he burst through a tapestry at the bottom and out into a corridor where a number of bewildered and pajama-clad Hufflepuffs stood.

Ernie Macmillan was the first to find words. "Harry! We heard a noise, and someone said something about the Dark Mark…"

Shaking his head, Harry pushed Ernie and Justin apart so he could shove through. "Out of the way!" He sprinted toward the nearby landing and down the remainder of the marble staircase, reaching the Entrance Hall. The oak front doors had been blasted open, there were smears of blood on the flagstones, and several terrified students stood huddled against the walls, one or two still cowering with their arms over their faces. The giant Gryffindor hourglass had been hit by a curse and the rubies within were slowly trickling out, falling onto the flagstones below and shattering. And standing between the remains of the doors, wand in her hand as she held the Death Eaters at bay was… "Luna?"

"Move, you foolish girl." The giant blonde he'd seen fighting Tonks earlier stepped forward, pointing his wand at Luna. "I know the Lovegoods are purebloods. Even if your father's made a few bad choices in the past, you can always repent and join our lord in his crusade to preserve the noble traditions of our kind. You don't need to die tonight."

Luna raised her free hand and brought it up to her chest, a sparkle of green attracting Harry's eye as the light glinted off a large emerald set in an unfamiliar, clunky silver bracelet. Her voice wasn't misty as Harry was used to, but rather hard as steel. "Neither do you, but you've made your choice… and in turn have forced my hand. I call upon the spirits of the past! Velociraptor, grant me your power!" Twisting her wrist caused the gem to flare with a bright, inner light and when it died down, the bracelet was gone and replaced with a strange… Harry squinted. It almost looked like the head of an animal? That was a rather accurate assessment, he realized with further scrutiny; it had a green upper half and a silver lower jaw that moved as Luna pushed on it. Twirling her wand, Luna tucked it safely into place behind her ear before bringing her left hand up next to her head. Drawing her left hand across her body, she twisted at the waist as she pulled that hand back and punched her right hand outward. "Dino Thunder, Power Up! Ha!" Her right hand reached over to grab at the strange device on her wrist, and Harry shielded his eyes as the world exploded into green light.

"…bloody hell! What was that?" Hermione instinctively opened her mouth to chastise Ron for his language but then thought better of it. The school was under attack by Death Eaters. Now was a perfectly acceptable time to be cursing. Flicking her wand, she wrapped the last downed Death Eater in ropes and - for once in her life - decided against hypothesizing in favor of skipping straight to investigating.

The blast of bright green light, almost the exact same color as a Killing Curse, had come from the Entrance Hall and so that was where Hermione headed. Reaching the landing for the staircases that formed the core of the school, she descended as rapidly as she could. It wasn't until she reached the third floor, though, elbowing through a group of Ravenclaws to get a better vantage point, that she finally spotted something amiss. And what she saw definitely counted as amiss. For as odd as the wizarding world was sometimes, and as many strange and wonderful things as Hermione had seen, she was fairly certain that even they drew the line at green and white spandex jumpsuits paired with odd, animalistic-looking green helmets. "What the fuck?"

"Hermione! You swore!" Ron looked scandalized as he puffed to a stop beside her, face flushed with exertion. "You never swear! That's one of the signs of the apocalypse, it is. And… hello there." Catching sight of the green-clad figure, her boyfriend came to an abrupt halt, eyes taking on the same glazed look as when he was around a veela. "Blimey. She's… wow. They don't make witches like that around here. Not sure I like the color, though. Does she come in red?"

Hermione went to slap her boyfriend upside the head before realizing that he'd spotted something she herself hadn't: the spandex-wearing figure was indeed a girl. Caught up in the oddness of it all, she'd allowed her analytical side to become derailed and Ron of all people had noticed something before her. She felt deeply, deeply ashamed.

The crowds on the stairwell waited with baited breath as they continued to watch the standoff below, the green girl holding the Death Eaters at bay with her presence alone. Movement in the corner of her eye made Hermione glance over and she sighed in relief as Harry sidled up next to her. When he'd run off before, she'd been worried about him getting hurt or even killed in some insanely brave but equally stupid act. And she'd seen Neville and Ginny upstairs. That meant that out of their little group, five of six were accounted for. "Have you seen Luna?"

"You could say that." Harry let out an odd, slightly hysterical chuckle before gesturing down at the mysterious figure in the Entrance Hall. "You're looking at her, Hermione."

This was starting to become a bit of an uncomfortable theme but… what the fuck? Hermione stared in disbelief as Luna pulled some kind of futuristic-looking gun out of a holster over her right hip, arm snapping out away from her body and causing the gun to transform into a sword. This was… utterly unlike anything she'd ever seen in her research about anything in the wizarding world. They had no guns. They certainly didn't have guns that turned into swords. And spandex? Forget about it. So was this all a different kind of magic, new and previously unknown to her… or something else altogether?

"No more pain. No more suffering. No more destruction. It ends tonight." Luna twirled her sword twice before switching to a two-handed grip and holding it out in front of her. "You… end tonight."

The Death Eaters held position for one moment longer before the huge blonde growled and hurled a curse at Luna. Her sword whistled as she twirled, deflecting the black bolt of energy away from her body. That seemed to set off the others and they converged on her, all except for Malfoy, who plastered himself the wall and tried to inch past the mess, eyeing his schoolmate fearfully. As Luna jumped and twirled gracefully, using her sword to deflect what spells she couldn't avoid, Hermione had to admit he had the right idea. She was a bit scared of this Luna too.

That fear went to a whole new level as Luna slipped inside Alecto Carrow's personal space and brought her sword up. Luna slashed at the Death Eater, allowing the maneuver to carry her around to face the others while presenting her back to her target. Before Hermione could shout a warning, the man's head fell to the ground, his body collapsing like a puppet with the strings cut.

Sweet Merlin.

Good God. Luna had just killed a Death Eater. Harry stood with jaw dropped, watching as the Carrow brother collapsed to the stone floor of the Entrance Hall, blood spurting from his neck. Luna had killed a Death Eater. Why… why hadn't any of them ever thought of taking the battle to that level? Death Eaters didn't stun. They killed. The light side stunned and captured, the dark side led prison breaks and then went back to killing. The dark side was winning. How could they possibly win the war if they were afraid to actually win a battle?

Harry suddenly spotted Snape beside Malfoy, the pair leaving the remaining Carrow and the massive blonde man to try and distract Luna so they could make an escape. His eyes narrowed. Murderer. Betrayer. Like hell he'd let the man get away. Pulling out his wand, Harry loosed a battle cry as he charged down the stairs. "Snape!"

"Move, Draco!" The dark-haired man gave his protégé a shove as they scooted by past Luna, barely audible over the two-on-one battle raging between Luna and the remaining Death Eaters. "The Dark Lord wants Potter for himself. Staying and fighting him can only put us in a bad position with Him. We go, now!"

Reaching the bottom stair, Harry paused as he tried to figure out the best way to make it through the raging battle unscathed so he could pursue Malfoy and Snape. "Luna! I need a hole!"

Luna spun as she deflected one last spell before launching herself backward with an inhuman jump that put at least a dozen feet between her and her opponents. "On it!" Grabbing the blade of her sword, she did… something. One moment it was a sword, and the next it was a gun again. Her free hand hovered over her belt buckle for a moment, summoning a second gun in a flash of golden light, and then she opened fire. With only a handful of green energy bolts, she reduced the Death Eaters to blood and gore on the hall's flagstones, eliciting screams from the spectators. "Oh hush. The helmet amplifies my hearing and I don't need you all giving me a migraine because I tried to save you."

Yet another decidedly un-Luna-like statement - combined with her very un-Luna-like behavior - left Harry wondering if he'd ever really known the blonde… and then he set it out of his mind as he surged into motion again. Racing past her, he started momentarily as she whirled and joined him, easily keeping pace as they raced out into the night. "Out of all the Death Eaters to not shoot, you had to let these two pass?"

"Do you really want to criticize the killing skills of a girl who's younger than you but just took out half a dozen Death Eaters, Harry Potter?" Point. Luna cursed under her breath as they spotted two black-robed figures moving away down the lawn at a fair clip. Even at their top speed, there was no way either would reach Snape and Malfoy before the pair of Death Eaters reached the edge of the wards. Luna evidently had a contingency plan for such a situation ready, though. Skidding to a stop, she brought her left arm up toward her mouth. "Velocizord, arise!"

While he wanted to open his mouth and question her sanity for talking to her bracelet… Harry never even had the chance. There was a mighty crash from within the Forbidden Forest and then a strange, trumpet-like call echoed over the grounds. Snape and Malfoy then too stopped to see what was going on, but before Harry could capitalize on their pause to close the distance and engage them, a green and silver shape exploded out of the tree line, trumpeting again as it charged. "Sweet Merlin. Is that a..?"

Luna giggled, looking over at Harry. "A giant robotic dinosaur? Yes, Harry. Yes it is." Turning her attention back to the device on her wrist, she whistled softly. "Cira? See those two men in black?"

The shocks of the night kept on coming when the strange bracer's red eye flashed and then the lower jaw of the dinosaur head began to move, a soft female voice with an American accent emerging. "Yes, Miss Luna. What of them?"

"Kill them."

With Luna's casual instruction, the dinosaur gave what was definitely a nod before trumpeting and wheeling around, charging toward the still motionless Death Eaters. That seemed to spur Snape and Malfoy back into action and they began running again, growing ever closer to the boundary of the wards. Harry himself swore and gave pursuit, alone this time as Luna opted to remain behind. Hopefully he could take them both… or maybe Malfoy would be too pathetic to fight, like in the tower. Harry gripped his wand tightly as he charged after them… and then a shout rent the night. "Accio Harry!"

Harry flailed impotently as his feet left the ground, his body being yanked backward by an invisible force.

A split second later, a massive silver foot slammed down in front of him, crushing Malfoy and Snape beneath it. The spell abruptly dropped Harry onto his back on the lawn, and he pushed himself up on his elbows so he could watch as the strange mechanical dinosaur ground its foot down into the grass. If they hadn't died instantly, Harry assured himself, they were sure as hell dead now. Then the velociraptor switched motions, dragging the bottom of its foot back and forth several times. Eventually it let out a huff of discontent and turned around, passing Harry as it stomped back up the lawn.

Slowly climbing to his feet, Harry followed the dinosaur back over to Luna, watching as she rubbed her hand over one metal flank before reaching up and removing her green helmet. Her eyes were as changed as her voice, Harry saw, no longer wide pools of innocence and happiness. Instead, they had become jaded, flinty chips of slate grey. "Miss Luna?"

"Yes, Cira?"

"Doctor Oliver said we were only supposed to use the full might of our powers against the monsters that threaten your society."

"Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Cira."