Sorry for the delay. I was sick, then I had to catch up on the work that I missed because I was sick!
Another chapter added to the one-shots too.
It was almost a relief when Narcissa rushed in from usual morning tea on the balcony to warn them that the ICW were arriving. The week after they had finished the wards had been spent with the entire order on tenterhooks, nobody knowing when they might find themselves at war again.
For Hermione, the worry was that their very experimental wards wouldn't hold.
They had prepared for this exact moment. Hermione sent out a message using the new protean coins warning everyone to either leave or return immediately. Grindelwald double checked the warding and Neville's patronus arrived five minutes later to let them know all the doors were shut.
Hermione stood with Gellert on the balcony, watching as a group of purple robed wizards cautiously climbed up from the forest. They sent out a red spell occasionally, testing for the wards. It was a tense moment as they neared the wards and the first spell hit the ward.
The result was cataclysmic.
Silvery light spider webbed across the shield from the point of impact, rising almost vertically upwards before being lost in the glare of the sun. The thunder followed just as the afterimage was fading, shaking the stone beneath them and sending a couple of small stones slithering down the mountainside.
Once the boundary had been established, more purple robed figures appeared and began setting up a perimeter. Hermione's hands slowly relaxed on the railing as the wards successfully deflected spell after spell.
Over the next hour, the invading wizards quickly established the massive line of the wards. Even the warded boundary of Malfoy Manor was smaller. She almost wished she was in amongst the ICW to hear their reactions to such a large ward.
'They will attempt an attack sooner than they would have if the wards were smaller.' Grindelwald pondered, watching through a pair of complicated binoculars as purple tents were magically erected. He flicked a set of filters down over the lens and started sweeping their surroundings again, looking up into the sky and down at the ground beneath them and twiddling one of the silver knobs on the side.
'They've put up their own muggle repelling charm and an anti-apparition ward over us. There's something else but it's hard to see behind ours; a caterwauling I think.' He decided, passing the binoculars over to Hermione.
She looked through them, then looked back without them, then looked again.
A thick purple film blanketed everything making the shapes of their surroundings difficult to make out. Experimentally she twiddled the knob and noticed a little gauge in the corner dial up. A bright flash of pink almost blinded her, then a lattice of gold before it settled on purple again as she stopped twiddling the knob.
She twiddled it in reverse, stopping on the gold lattice and fiddling with minute movements until each glowing golden strand was visible. It stretched like a net across the valley, down past the woods and up to the snowline above them. She twiddled it again, focusing this time on the blinding white-pink which she recognised quickly as their own warding, the colour identical to that which had lit the runes. She took a moment to marvel at the sheer footprint, realising that the ward burrowed underneath the foundations in a shape almost like an egg.
She had no idea how Grindelwald had managed to identify the caterwauling charm, so she just handed the binoculars back to him and resolved to ask when there was less of an audience.
'A caterwauling charm doesn't make sense if they plan to attack us.' Draco muttered into the silence, Gellert sent him a glare that clearly said he was being foolish.
'They're not attacking, they're holding us here. You don't set up tents to attack.' He said patronisingly.
'We need them to attack for my plan to work. We need international outrage or we'll be stuck here forever.' Hermione baulked as soon as she'd said that, wondering when she'd become so calculating. Gellert looked over her appraisingly before nodding.
'Send out an owl notifying people that they should practice their bubble head charms before tomorrow lunch. Address one to Fleur Delacour's father; he works in the French ministry if I'm not mistaken. Send another to Kingsley at work and every other ministry employee that was our ally.' He ordered decisively and Narcissa nodded, managing to look dignified even as she hurried inside to write the letters.
'Mr. Malfoy, I believe you are adept at potions?' He demanded and Draco nodded quickly, looking as though he'd rather fade into the stone behind him than talk to Gellert. 'Make us a Cough Potion, but stir anti-clockwise after adding the honey.'
'But Sir, stirring anti-clockwise after adding honey; you'll make clouds of noxious gas.' The Slytherin protested and Grindelwald quirked his mouth.
'That's genius Gellert!' Hermione exclaimed as she finally connected the dots in his plan. She ignored Grindelwald's smug expression. 'Find Seamus and take him with you. I'll conjure some birds.'
Six hours later, Hermione held cardboard box of dead birds. Seamus had managed to blow up the first three attempts at the potion, creating several ominously disfigured specimens and a couple that had been charred beyond recognition. The only successful attempt had created the predicted noxious fumes and had killed the birds in seconds. She was grateful at least that the conjured birds weren't actually alive so they hadn't had to sacrifice such innocent little creatures for such a minor role.
Neville waited at the doors as they slipped through the tiny opening, only just wide enough to fit the box through. The moon threw everything into sharp relief, gilding the damp grass in silver and creating ominous pools of shadow behind the bare boulders. Neville had offered earlier in the week to fortify the gardens, a notion that Grindelwald had found laughable at the time but now proved to be a stroke of effective brilliance.
In the light of their wands, it was almost impossible to watch for roots on the ground and check Neville's map of booby traps at the same time. Courtesy of some potions brewed by Slughorn and the children, the plants had gone haywire sending crawlers and roots across the path. Boulders and shale were now strewn across the hillside and one had to climb over and around them. He'd placed jinxes on the rough hewn stairs and laced the wildflowers with potions, there was a boggart in the gap beneath a slab of rock and Kappas in the little stream, not to mention the ascent itself would be enough to tire most potential attackers. All the while, spells and potions could be raining down from what she now realised was actually a very strategic balcony.
Gellert's appreciative sounds were enough for Hermione to grip the map a little tighter as they scrambled down an almost vertical slab of rock on the "safe path". It was very abstract; left out the door, up the hill after the first boulder and hang another right, follow the stream for a bit but stop before the shale slope.
Safe to say, she was dreading having to climb back up again but this mission needed both her and Grindelwald.
They stopped in front of the wards, pausing to collect themselves before beginning a loud conversation about how the students were so terrible at potions that they'd never have enough made by tomorrow.
Grindelwald had been right about the caterwauling charm, it blared deafeningly as they stepped across the invisible line and Hermione and Gellert froze facing two startled looking ICW wizards. She quickly dumped the box, then scrambled as if she'd just dropped it, shouting out to Gellert about how they'd reveal their recipe even as he dragged her back behind the shelter of the wards.
They watched in satisfaction as the two shocked wizards finally approached the box and after some discussion took it to their superiors.