24th August 1944, Bay of Biscay, off Bordeaux.

Easing the Typhoon around in a low, flat turn, he opened the throttle up to the emergency power wire. The Sabre engine's roar became a bellow and, obscured by the sea state, he began his attack. The ship he identified as his primary target was a fifteen-hundred ton destroyer, cruising out of Bordeaux.

Flying out of an Advanced Landing Ground in western France, Charlus Potter's wing was spreading out into two-man formations on a Rhubarb, hunting down and shooting up enemy troop formations, blowing up bridges, tunnels, trains and vessels. The first warning Charlus had of the fact his enemy had been alerted was the sky around him opening up into puffs of black smoke and tracer snaking past the Typhoon.

Heeling about, broadside on, the Elbing opened up with its nine Flakvierling, chewing up the sky around him. The Typhoon shook as a shell smacked through the skin of the port wing, not penetrating but leaving the metal like it had been opened up with a giant steak knife. Then Vicky, a South African flying for the RAF, his wingman made a mistake. Charlus would never know why, whether it was the stress of the moment or the perpetual fear that they were all suffering from, but he reared his Typhoon up to climb out of the attack. Immediately he was bracketed with shells, the Typhoon shaking as Charlus watched in through tired eyes. The aircraft rolled a hundred-and-eighty degrees in its vertical climb, slowed and stalled. Then a sheet of orange flame billowed from the engine, the aircraft flicked onto its back and tumbled into the sea.

Taking his eyes off the spot where his wingman went down, Charlus pressed the attack. Bounding along, the massive chin airscoop barely inches off the peaks of the waves, he jammed the throttle through the wire and into emergency power. Then it was there, right in front of him. Guns all along the broadside fired, flashes from their muzzles spewing shells from her four-inch guns to men crouched at the rails with small arms. All aimed at the Typhoon.

Charlus picked out his spots to attack, as the ship turned into his attack to present less of a target. He could see a bank of torpedo tubes and he could see mine rails aft. A moment to touch a switch and then a salvo of rockets left his aircraft, racing for the stern of his target, one rocket after another jettisoning from under the wings.

Not all hit, but enough did to slow the enemy ship, and fires broke out. Still with the line of attack open, Charlus switched to his quad twenty-millimetre Hispanos and opened up. The muzzles on the long protrusions from his wings flickered and flashed, his thumb clamped on the gun button as the cannon spat shell after shell.

A flakvierling fell silent, an empty revenge for Vicky as the crew were cut down, their thin sheet of steel no protection, instead turning into shrapnel with every shell. He briefly drew the guns to bear on the bank of torpedo tubes, sweeping the shells across the superstructure. Charlus could see a loader carrying a shell to one of the guns cut down. Then a spine-shattering thump, a one-and-a-half inch shell smacked into the underside of the Typhoon and two more passed through the port wing without detonating the nearly empty ammunition boxes. The cannons clacked loudly, falling silent as the last shell left each gun. Then a terrific explosion and a jarring impact as the ship blew up. Charlus jammed his foot on the rudder and wrestled the Typhoon as it clipped the mast, rearing out of the water.

Hydraulics gone. No pressure. No undercarriage, no pitch adjustment, no flaps. The wing was bent back and had a scar cutting into it from a wire. Charlus could barely keep the thing flying straight with his foot jammed into the floor with the rudder hard over. Throttling back, he made for France, and hoped to either find somewhere secluded to crash-land and burn out his aircraft, or to bail out.

December 1944, Blackhall, Blackmore Vale, Dorset

Arcturus Black, the third of that name born to the House of Black didn't know what to think. What to say. What to do. His sister had received, through her personal mailbox in the local muggle village post office a telegram. Charlus Potter had named her next-of-kin, and he had never realised that his cousin, who was as good to him as his sister, had even exchanged more than a few stinging words in a Hogwarts hallway with the Potter scion. And there was a thing.

Charlus Potter, somewhat quiet compared to some of the more boisterous Gryffindors. But unlike many of them, as expected of the get of Simeon Potter, he had a steely core and a solid backbone. Not bad for a halfblood. Most conversations between him and any of Salazar's house were a frank exchange of words, followed by an even franker exchange of curses. A wizard Arcturus respected, even after one fight resulting in Charlus landing him in the Hospital Wing after blasting him down a corridor with a Norse battle spell.

The first he knew of his sister's relationship was a confession after he'd finally broken her door down, three days after she'd last left her rooms. That stark, empty telegram. DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT ACT. SQN LDR C.S POTTER IS MISSING PRESUMED DEAD. DATED 31ST AUG 1944.

Now an owl had arrived bearing a letter signed and sealed by Charlus' hand.

Dorea.

Disregard previous communiques, am alive.

Supernumerary to 2 Sqn, 122 Wing, 2nd TAF.

Based at ALG B-80 Volkel.

Bloody cold.

C.S Potter.

Arcturus snorted at the last bit before the signature before rereading it. Nearly as devoid of emotion as the telegram. He stared at his sister who was climbing up one of the bookcases to find a book.

"What are you doing Dorea?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Looking for an Atlas. Then I'm going to work out where in Merlin's name Volkel is." she replied curtly.

"Sounds Germanic." Arcturus replied, before pausing; "You cannot think of going there. The Moat is still in lockdown, and Grindelwald still holds Germany."

"There are ways and ways of getting out of Britain without magic. Do open your mind Archie." Dorea replied; "The Moat stops all transport by magic in and out of Britain. That doesn't mean that a fishing boat won't do the job just as effectively, if slower, than a portkey."

Boxing Day December 1944, 15,000 feet above the Dutch-German border.

"Wolfhound leader, drop your babies." Charlus radioed, smacking the release for his drop tanks; "Twenty miles, time on target is four minutes. Echelon starboard."

The squadron, only ten operational aircraft rolled out into echelon starboard, with him leading the stack. The Tempests were roaring along at a good four-hundred miles an hour, higher and faster than the majority of the Luftwaffe or the Flak cannons could reach them. If they were to be intercepted, the Germans would have to sacrifice speed for clime rate, or clime rate for speed, and they were a small target for the most powerful Flak.

"Wolfhound, this is Kenway, news isn't good. Strike ordered to continue without flak suppression."

Some days weren't worth getting up for. Rheine-Hopsten was defended by multiple Flak battalions, with up to five-hundred muzzles already searching for the ten Tempests.

"Wolfhounds, target one o'clock. Attack... Break! Break! Break!" Charlus barked into his R/T.

The Tempests veered in every direction to split the fire as black puffs of smoke began. Rolling inverted, Charlus threw the hefty frame of the fighter into a steep dive, almost vertical. One of the black puffs had his aircraft rattling with shrapnel, but Hawker's tank-like fighter shrugged off the damage and kept diving, intact. As his altimeter wound down through two-thousand feet, he spotted a flak post spitting flames and lead at the scattered fighters. In a moment he released his two five-hundred pound bombs, just in time to see one of the Tempests swatted out of the sky by a direct hit from a shell.

"Christ! Green Six blew up!"

Poor kid. Not even on the squadron a week.

Hauling back on the stick, a couple of parked fighters came into his gunsight, ungainly on their long legs, sat on the concrete. He walked the flashes up their fuselages, hauling the Tempest around in a tight turn, his cannon spewing shells. A second Tempest raced past him, in a moment he saw the pilot slumped over the controls before it ploughed into the hard-standing and blew up.

A Tempest raced down the runway, firing into an aircraft taking off, and then suddenly there was a fast-moving Focke-Wulf abeam it.

"This bastard isn't flying today if I have-"

A burst of cannon fire, a collision and three aircraft were tumbling across the runway in flames. Shells slashed through the air, Charlus mindful to not allow his aircraft to climb much above twenty feet. For a moment he was staring down the barrels of a flakvierling mounted on a truck. A brief burst and the blast catapulted him skyward. Hanging out of his straps, he saw another Tempest climbing, climbing... falling.

To hell with it! Screams on the radio. A wing with an RAF roundel on the edge of an inferno in a field next to the airfield. The aircraft shaking with more near-misses. Throwing the aircraft around, he fired a last burst in the direction of the hangars and fled. Throttle wide open, skimming the hedgerows, Charlus fled. The guns had cut down half the squadron.

"Wolfhound leader, radio check."

"Green three."

"Green eight."

Silence.

Seven aircraft and seven pilots not responding. Heavens.

"Wolfhound section, formate over Rheine." Charlus sighed.

They were pulling back together to return to Volkel when suddenly Eight went down in flames. Breaking into a hard climb followed by a half-roll, Charlus spotted the long-nose Focke-Wulf diving back towards the trees. Slamming open the throttle through the emergency power wire, he dived after it. Gaining bit by bit with the engine roaring away, he closed to five-hundred yards and fired.

The Tempest shook, flicking over onto its back with every blast. Cannon shells tore through the Hawker's frame. A sharp pain ripped into his side and one of his own cannon jammed. Rolling out with a glance in the mirror before it too was blasted away by a shell revealed a second lock-nose '190 sat on his tail. Pushing the nose down a few degrees and entreating every bit of power from the Sabre, he fired a burst from the three remaining cannon, Charlus watched as pieces flew off the lead '190, then it flicked over, one wing departing from the fuselage, the aircraft tumbling into the woods.

Then Wolfhound Three was behind the second '190, which decided discretion was the better part of valour. Chopping the power, the German pilot flung his aircraft on a wing-tip, fired a highly-accurate burst into Green Three before racing away.

"Don't pursue." Charlus grunted over the radio; "Return to base."

December 1944, Advanced Landing Ground B-80 Volkel, Holland.

Leaving the NAAFI truck outside the on-base canteen, Dorea Black once more thanked whatever deity that before the war, before Grindelwald, Charlus had taught her to drive during one of her summer 'outings' from the House of Black. She adjusted her badly-fitting uniform and walked out to where she could see the aircraft parked outside the shattered remains of the hangars.

Each aircraft seemed to be in varying states of destruction, although not as badly as the bomb-blasted wreckage that had once formed the huge buildings in which aircraft would once have been serviced and stored. The air was cold, the snow thick on the ground. The roar of engines regular, as each working fighter was run up every half-an-hour to stop the oil freezing. A couple of aircraft were simply stripped of their parts, dragged to a corner of the airfield and burnt out.

All this hive of activity was going on before her eyes.

"CRASH TEAMS CONDITION RED! I REPEAT CRASH TEAMS TO READINESS!" bellowed a tannoy.

Dorea felt her disillusioned brother flinch at the noise. Their eyes were dragged briefly to the ringing of bells as a couple of fire engines raced by, mounted by alien forms in white asbestos suits. Then there was a flicker on the horizon, two smoking aircraft approaching the runway. One of them lowered its undercarriage, coming in to land.

Then everything went wrong. The following aircraft's engine cut out, a sudden silence, interrupted by a huge explosion. The landing aircraft's undercarriage leg on one side collapsed. The aircraft slewed around, then flipped, cartwheeling across the airfield in a horrific fireball. Suddenly Dorea's fist was in her mouth. The heat from the blast could be felt a hundred yards away.

With some skilful handling, the second aircraft managed a dead landing, with no engine, and no hydraulics to power the undercarriage and flaps. For a moment, teetering on its nose, it looked like the aircraft would flip onto its back, but then it fell back to earth and the crash men were around it, the other fire engine racing towards the burning wreck of the first Tempest.

"Don't know why they're bothering. Not like there's anything to rescue." snorted an RAF engineer who was approaching the NAAFI truck, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

Dorea didn't even look at him, trying to keep her stomach from rebelling.

"Whose are they?" asked a voice she distantly recognised as her brother, having dropped his disillusionment charm and opted for a transfigured copycat uniform that they'd seen a middle-ranking army officer wearing in London.

"Looks like Old Man Charlie Potter's lot. At least one of them now. Went an hour or two ago with eight aircraft. Looks like the flak did 'em good." the engineer replied gruffly; "Don't know how Old Charlie's still alive, his squadron's going through about a dozen pilots killed every month, not to comment on wounded and LMF'd."

When eventually a jeep reached the NAAFI canteen, it disgorged a figure that neither Dorea or Arcturus really recognised. With a pronounced limp and one hand pressing a bloody bandage to his side, Charlus made a beeline for a hot, heavily alcohol-spiked cup of tea, running his other hand through his pure grey hair. A weak smile, a grimace in truth, appeared as he spotted the Black, just pronouncing the pallid grey colour of his sunken face, the black bags under his eyes and the crow's feet.

"Archie. Dee. I'd give you each a hug but one of you would find that undignified and for the other... well I'm not exactly up to it right now." Charlus's voice was far gruffer, almost a rasp compared to what they both remembered.

"What happened?" Dorea asked hesitantly; "Five years shouldn't change you so."

"Once you've dodged death one too many times, you stop giving a damn and just get on with the job. Norway, Glorious, Britain, Malta, Burma. Knocks seven bells out of a man." Charlus shrugged, before grimacing with pain. "Come on, I'll probably be off my head with morphine by tomorrow morning, so we'll speak now."

I had an idea about fleshing this out, I may one day, but I wanted to touch on this idea I had.