Esmerele ran perpendicular to the sound of the falling trees. She cleared the air just five feet in circumference as to not give away her location.
She felt alone. Completely and utterly alone.
A tree fell closer than she'd expected and she quickly receded into the shadows and took aim.
A giant, clearly injured by something, came stumbling through the mist.
She didn't know what to do- to kill it would seem brutal and perhaps even unnecessary. Didn't she merely escape death? Fighting against an enemy for no clear reason except against her mother's word?
What had these giants been told about her? About her mother? Donal's cause?
Let someone else deal with the ethics, she decided.
With a flick of her wand, she sent the giant sprawling through the air, flinging him into the time space vortex into another location at another time.
He might have the skill to come back. He might not. But she could not play murderer.
At least, not now.
Xxxxxxxxxx
Pomona raised her tired eyes to be greeted by an all to familiar stone ceiling.
"Goddamn it," she rasped.
To her left lay Narcissa Malfoy, She looked as if she hadn't had a proper meal in years and her already pale skin cast a deathly pallor.
Poppy came around the corner and saw that the Herbology professor had indeed awaken.
"Minerva sent you back. You have a subdural hematoma."
"The hell-"
"You were hit on the head by a fallen tree."
"I have to-"
"No, you're out of the line of fire."
Poppy adjusted something to the right of Pomona's peripheral and the world began to recede.
"Rest," she heard. And her world turned black.
Xxxxxxx
Minerva could sense that something had changed. She didn't know what, but something.
Sprinting forward on her nimble paws, she realized that the forest had grown eerily silent.
Not knowing whether to take this as a good or bad thing, she climbed up into the nearest tree, trying to gain a better point of view as to what was going on.
There were fires in the northwest quadrant, still billowing smoke up into the misty air. She knew that at least three, possibly four giants must be gone, leaving maybe one or two lurking in the darkness.
Where was Donal?
Was he even here?
She cast out a spell to clear the air, if only for a second, and caught a glimpse of a clearing off in the distance.
Two bodies lay together, forming a perfect cross shape in the brown, decaying grass. One body, a blonde male, lay on top of another, and her heart stopped.
She couldn't know for sure, but deep down her soul knew that her son's body was lying there.
Unable to think, mind blind with fury, she took off blindly towards Percival's body.
From off in the distance, Donal saw a pattern of moving branches and knew that his latest kill would provoke exactly the response he intended. Moving into the corner of the clear, he waited.
And waited.
Until the gray striped tabby emerged from the grass, a full standing woman, crying out in pain for the loss of her only son.
Minerva screamed and grabbed Percival's beautiful, frozen-featured face. Hadn't she been warned? Hadn't she known the cost?!
A movement out of the corner of her eye alerted her to a presence in the distance. She grabbed her wand and stood up sharply.
"Incinio Duractum!" She cried, and a wave of flames shot out from the tip of her wand. Fuel by rage and anguish, the flames engulfed the adjacent trees, setting them all ablaze in the blink of an eye.
Donal fired out a shield, barely keeping himself from being consumed by Minerva's flames.
"SHOW YOUR GODDAMN FACE!" Minerva cried, marching forward. She flung her arm and sent out a barrage of rocks, flames, dirt, anything and everything that she could hurl out towards Donal.
"I WANT TO SEE THE LOOK IN YOUR EYES!" She yelled, not knowing, not thinking what she was doing, her magic pulsing through her arm, rage and fury and sheer power pushing the curses out and away from her body.
Donal fired back, sending the rocks soaring back through the air. A few hit Minerva, no doubt leaving several sizable bruises, but she didn't flinch, and with another thrust sent more sparks and lines of deadly curses and hexes and spells back through the air.
"YOU'RE GONNA JOIN 'EM MINERVA!" Donal cried, "EVERY LAST ONE OF 'EM!"
He could feel himself growing weaker, his defensive spells barely keeping the rain of shrapnel and hexes away from his body.
Minerva heard a spell ricochet off one of the last standing trees, and before she could react it hit her square in the back. She twisted in pain, falling to the ground.
She raised her hand and sent up another spell in an attempt to protect her just long enough to reach inside her robes and grab a potion.
She didn't have the chance.
Before the words left her lips, she saw Tessa emerge from the darkness, running towards her mother at breakneck speed. When she saw the curse fly from Donal's wand, she sent out her own, and red hit green with the power of all the McGonagall's combined, sending the wand soaring from his hand.
Without hesitation, she raised her wand again, and with the words she'd remembered from hushed conversations and books locked away with a key and chain, she cried, "AVADA KADAVERA!"
A emerald light, the color of her clan, shot from her wand, intent on its victim.
Donal's body rose through the air, convulsed, and fell limply to the forest.
And with that, the forest once again fell calm.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx