00000 July 30 Eleven PM
"Welcome my loyal Death Eaters," Voldemort hissed as a series of pops announced the arrival of the last of his minions. He stood in the middle of a great stone cavern, the light of seven torches set in a circle serving only to enhance the oppressive atmosphere of gloom created by stalactites hanging from the ceiling. "A few days ago, my spies in the ministry reported several bursts of magic in the area called Godrics Hollow. Officially no one has lived there since the Potter's were killed, but Wormtail discretely snooped around and found my nemesis Harry Potter living alone and unprotected in the Hollow. The boy-who-ran-away hasn't even bothered to place the most basic of wards to protect himself."
Behind his mask, Severus Snape silently cursed. The Order had been discretely searching for Potter since he disappeared in muggle London, but there had been no leads. Apparently they were looking in the wrong place. Who would have guessed that he would have returned to the scene of his parents' murder?
"I have decided that you will all join me as I destroy that brat once and for all," the Dark Lord tried to rile his Death Eaters to a killing frenzy. "Together we shall raze Godrics Hollow to the ground and show the ministry and the whole Wizarding world that we cannot be defeated! Tonight shall usher in a new age. Through the death of Harry Potter the hopes and dreams of the pathetic sheep will be crumbled. With Potter gone, only Dumbledore stands between us and victory! He is only one man, no matter how powerful. We attack at midnight, and bring the boy savior a birthday surprise the world will never forget."
The Death Eaters sent up a feral cheer and several shot sparks into the air. Fires were lit and bottles of wine and whiskey were passed around as the Death Eaters began a revel in anticipation of that night's inevitably successful raid. Someone charmed a drum rhythm to play and the fires to flare in tempo. The mood started as one of anticipation, but as more and more people were dragged into the celebration, a mentality of violence and sadism began to prevail. The frenzy built and built, the blood lust of the Death Eaters growing with every passing moment. Muggle children were dragged screaming from further back in the cave. The glee and sadistic pleasure of their tormentors served only to make them scream louder which increased their captors' lust in turn.
With a cackling laugh, Voldemort joined the Dark Revel. He leveled his wand at a pretty blonde girl who couldn't have been five years old, just barely old enough to understand the horrors she was seeing. "Crucio!"
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With a scream of helplessness and pain, Harry seized control of his body and immediately wretched on the floor. The pain and fear in that young girls eyes as Voldemort towered over her made Harry physically ill. He felt the revulsion ease and was able to focus on the most important point that he had learned. "Voldemort and the Death Eaters are coming."
"So deal with them." Raistlin replied. "You will not surrender this tower by running. My work is too important."
"I can't take on all of the Death Eaters and Voldemort too! There's at least seventy or eighty of them coming tonight." Harry was panicking.
Raistlin made a noise that indicated he was thinking. "How long do you have until they arrive?"
Harry consulted his watch. "Less than an hour. If it were one or two I could handle it. Five or six would worry me. Seventy or eighty is insane. No one could stand against that number and expect to win."
"How big a part of his army is this? Will everyone be here tonight or is this a small raiding party?" His master asked, ignoring the numbers.
"I don't know!" Harry shouted. His arm slapped him harshly across the face. "Maybe half? I think he's bringing those who are rank and file. His closest advisors don't need the morale boost that killing me will bring."
"He must respect you then, to bring half of his forces out to kill one man." Raistlin theorized. Scribbling a list of nonsensical numbers and odd notations on a scrap piece of paper, Harry could feel his master smile. "We'll just have to kill them all. That's really too bad. Nothing irritates an evil mastermind than killing his servants. They seem to take it personally."
Harry began to settle down. If Raistlin had enough of a plan to return to his sarcastic humor then things just might work out. He retorted with a line that always seemed to generate the most interesting stories, "That almost sounds as if you are speaking from experience."
Harry could feel sadistic joy well up in his mind as his master had a small flashback. "Fear and power are the only things these idiots will understand, so we will just have to give them something to fear. This Voldemort will be angry and blame everyone around him, but his real problem lies in that he cannot allow anyone to become better than him. He wants to feel as if he is in charge. If you deny him that power, he will become irrational. I do so love watching a man's dreams crushed."
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Severus Snape was having a really bad night. Not only did he despise the revels, but he could not make an excuse and leave to warn Dumbledore. If Potter really was hiding in Godrics Hollow, he was a dead man. The Order would never trust him if he stood by and allowed their Golden Boy to be hunted like a dog, and Voldemort would kill him slowly if he tried to leave and warn them. All he could do was tapping the emergency code on the Order insignia sewn to the inside of his pocket. Unless this cavern had been shielded somehow, at least they would know something big was about to happen.
Perhaps in the fury of battle Snape could arrange to fall against the boy wonder and have an emergency portkey trip. He would have Potter curse him and leave him there while he escaped. Allowing the brat to escape would surely mean punishment for his failure, but if he wanted to survive this war he needed the Order. He had long ago heard Voldemort promise Lucius Malfoy that as soon as they secured victory, he would be allowed to kill him. That was why he started spying for Dumbledore in the first place. It wasn't some twisted sense of idealism or remorse, just pure survival instinct.
Spotting a break in the crowds, Snape sunk back into the darkness of the cave and tried to circle back to the apparition point. He carefully avoided the notice of the common foot soldiers and medium ranked Death Eaters who were looking to drag stragglers back into the revel.
It was as if they could diffuse the horrors they would commit by being only one of a faceless mob and so sought to surround themselves with savages and brutes. Most of them did not truly have the stomach for the Dark Lord's forces. They agreed with the goal and loved the promise of power, but deep down they were scared shitless. So few of them loved the savage brutality that came with being on the front lines. Ironically, those that did enjoy the sadistic acts and murder were promoted to the upper echelons where they rarely saw any action. By the time Severus arrived at the scene of a raid, everyone had been defeated and they were just playing with the survivors. Torturing a muggle whose spirit was already broken was just not the same as watching them go from defiance and anger all the way into that submissive fear.
Alas, Severus' escape was not to be. When he got to the apparition point, Voldemort was just arriving as well. He could not just leave while being watched by his master.
"Exciting isn't it Severus?" Voldemort gestured to what was left of the evening's entertainment. Most of the muggles had died by now, but there were a few who were unlucky enough to be captured by the more "creative" Death Eaters and were still alive and mostly sane.
"Not very, most of them are nothing but weak willed sycophants. Less than half of the prisoners lasted even fifteen minutes." Snape observed. "Besides the noise and stink of so many bodies has always repulsed me, as you know."
"I agree, but I was referring more to tonight's raid. The men are in a good mood, and I'm finally going to destroy the Potter brat. If you stick close I'll let you reveal yourself just before we finish him off. I know of your longstanding hatred of him. How will he feel to see you there? Perhaps a last fleeting glimpse of hope, when he thinks he's being rescued? It will be so good to finally watch the life leave his eyes in a flash of shock and fear."
"It might be fun." Snape conceded. "If he were anyone else to you, I would ask to deal with him myself. I'd rescue him, convince him to trust me, help him along, and then when he trusts me more than a brother I would enjoy seeing the look of hurt betrayal as I turned on him. I'd break his considerable will over a period of days before finally killing him. The subtle and sweet savagery of patience is something the rest of these simpletons will never understand. It would be all the more sweet because of the debt his father owes me, to make the son pay for the sins of his father." He gave the Dark Lord a hopeful look.
"As tempting as that sounds, you know how important that boy is to me. That prophecy has something to do with him. I cannot allow the chance that he will somehow grow and achieve that potential. I promise you can 'rescue' some poor sod soon. I do love it when my followers show true passion." Voldemort turned from Snape to yell at the reveling followers. "The time has come! Everyone grab your wands and don the masks. We strike tonight!"
The cheers were deafening and reverberated throughout the cavern. Far above them, a small child ignorant of the world's evils tossed and turned in her sleep, plagued by nightmares she would never understand.
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A series of cracks that reminded Harry of the machine guns in the violent action films Dudley used to watch caught Harry's attention. He had been standing atop the tower with Raistlin discussing the battle plans and waiting for their guests' arrival. Harry had cast several animation charms on trees in the forest below, and Raistlin wove an aura of fear and oppressive darkness around the trees and the tower itself. Harry's animations had only reached perhaps one tree in twenty, and the fear aura was temporary, but the Death Eaters didn't know that.
Soon after the staccato rhythm of incoming Death Eaters ceased, Harry's magically enhanced sight saw a blue blanket of magic spread from the pass near the Forbidden Forest and cover the small valley that made up Godrics Hollow. As it settled around him, Harry felt just the slightest squeeze over that part of his mind and magic that he had begun associating with teleportation and apparition. The Death Eaters did not want him to escape, but it sealed them in as much as it did him.
"They have locked themselves in the cage with a dragon, thinking it is a mouse." Raistlin chuckled in his mind. "Rile them up a bit and show me how well you have absorbed my lessons before I take over."
As the Death Eaters entered his forest, some still frenzied from the Revel shot spells into the air at random. The charmed drums had been brought as well. They beat out a deep driving rhythm "Boom… Boom-Boom Boom…" It would have been very scary if Harry had been sleeping when they approached, and with no way to judge their location. Unlike most raids which were a few Death Eaters appearing and striking like lightning before leaving, this was an army marching to war.
About halfway through the small stand of trees, the first Death Eaters began to scream as the animated trees attacked the invaders. Flitwick would have been so proud. Harry heard several voices call out explosion hexes and blasting curses before trees began to explode in showers of wooden shrapnel. Those unprepared or fighting the fear and trees cried out as shards of wood pierced their skin. The Death Eaters never bothered to find out which trees were charmed, and Harry could see a circle of trees falling or exploding around the Death Eaters. The circle turned into a wide corridor as they pressed forward once again, and shot out the path they had come to leave a wide escape route.
All too soon they had crossed the few hundred yards of wooded area and Voldemort stood atop the barrier mound, the last line of defense before the wide open plain in front of the tower.
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A few miles away to the south, Albus Dumbledore stood atop the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He was deeply troubled and had come up to the tower to think. Severus had been summoned away to a meeting of Death Eaters and sent an emergency signal not long after. Either something big was about to happen tonight or his best spy had been revealed to the enemy. The Order was on alert to watch for magic in Muggle areas, and the search for Harry Potter had taken on a frantic pitch in the last hour. All of those that were not waiting anxiously for word from the Aurors were scouring the low rent sections throughout London looking for a green eyed boy who'd gone to ground and hidden quite well.
His musings were interrupted by the sound of thunder echoing off the mountains to the north. Perhaps it was best he do his thinking inside on this night. Yes, that was a much better idea. In his office he would be near the floo the moment a call came through, even though Fawkes had promised to come retrieve him if that should occur.
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"Happy Birthday Potter!" Voldemort called out from atop the hill. "I hope you don't mind, but I brought some friends to our party."
"Not at all Tom, just give me a few minutes and I'll come let you in. I hope you all like arsenic in your punch!" Harry stood atop one of the crenellations of his tower and shouted down to his enemies. He was backlit by several torches and a small fire atop the tower, while a sonorous charm on his voice carried well. Having the light behind him made sure he would not be blinded by it at an inopportune time. For the moment, it gave him a clear shot at all of them, but also gave them a shot at him. If the fire got too heavy he could retreat to the middle of the tower where they would be unable to hit him. They would storm up the tower stairs and he could pick them off in the tight confines. He just hoped they didn't wreck up the joint while he did.
"You didn't have to go to all that trouble just for us." The Dark Lord taunted. "Besides we won't be staying long. I just wanted to drop off my gift."
"Oh really? What did you bring me?" Harry continued the banter.
"This… Avada Kedavra!"
And with that, the battle was joined. Harry stepped aside and let the sickly green curse blow past him harmlessly while bringing his wand up over his head. He twirled his wand and with each twirl, the fire whip he was conjuring grew just a little longer. With a swishing move, Harry brought the impossibly long line of flame down. Voldemort took a half step back and let it barely miss his noseless face. He looked up at Harry and raised one eyebrow in a questioning gesture that was lost over the distance between them.
With a wave of the Dark Lord's hand, a deadly volley of curses in every color of the rainbow soared towards the tower. Thankfully most were shot too high and the rest bounced off the repelling shield the DA had studied the previous year. At his master's urging, Harry rained down every curse and hex he had learned at Hogwarts. He danced from one crenellation to the next as he ducked and dodged incoming curses. Most of his curses were easily avoided given the long distance they had to travel. None of the Death Eaters wanted to be the first to step into the open space before the tower that offered no protection. If they tried to approach the single door, Harry could curse them with ease while they had to shoot at an increasingly smaller target. Harry harassed the Death Eaters while their curses either missed entirely of splashed against the magically strengthened stone of the tower.
The battle had been raging for nearly ten minutes before Harry began mixing magical traditions. The curses and jinxes you could learn at Hogwarts were remarkably easy to cast, but only worked against one person at a time. The new spells he was learning were just a touch more "pure" magic but more involved when it came to their casting. He would never choose the hold person spell he had learned from his master over a body bind, but when it came to affecting a whole area instead of a single target the new magic was better.
Taking great care so his movements would not bring him into an oncoming curse, Harry dampened his fingers with spit and flicked the water skyward while concentrating and speaking a few words aloud. In moments, storm clouds began to form over the Death Eaters and icy rain began to fall. The rain froze almost immediately upon striking the ground or skin of the attackers, making everything slick and causing some to slip and fall as they moved out of the way of incoming spells. A thick darkness soon overtook the death eaters and was lit only by the passage of spells in either direction. Torches fell to the ground useless to light their paths. Quickly the attacking force split into two groups. Some drove back the darkness with light spells while others. Harry responded by aiming to cripple the light bearers who were excellent targets while the slippery ground slowed their movements. All the while Voldemort alternated the cruciatus curse with the killing curse to force him to dodge as well. One slip would be deadly
Harry was quickly becoming exhausted with casting a constant flurry of blasting curses and bone breaking spells in between the new spells. Stowing his wand away, Harry rolled small balls of dragon dung with sulfur in either hand. With a flick of his wrist and a shout, two tiny meteors streaked to either side of Voldemort. Where they struck, enormous balls of raging fire exploded outwards for thirty feet in every direction. Finally the Dark Lord himself was forced to throw up a shield of his own to escape the flames. Harry took advantage of this momentary drop of incoming spells to cast two more of his own. He shot a brilliant cone of blinding light at the Dark Lord and the immediate area, and followed it by causing a bolt of lightning to shoot from the storm clouds which just missed as his target ducked to the side.
"I am sorry Master, but there are too many of them and I am too weak. Take control of me now." Harry ducked behind one of the crenellations and ceded the control over his body to his master.
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Severus Snape shot a tickling charm up at the tower even though he intentionally missed. The Potter brat was over a hundred feet away given his elevation and distance from the attacking army. How did these fools honestly expect to hit him when their spells took several seconds to make it to him and they all shot at the same place? If Snape didn't know that Voldemort merely intended to force Potter to waste his strength before moving forward he would have called this a futile endeavor.
The "faulty portkey" plan was looking to be less than hopeless. At this rate he may be forced to reveal himself and kidnap the boy at the very last instant, something that would be most unfortunate. While he knew that Potter was his only hope at living past the end of the war, he also knew that the "light" side would be a lot less understanding about his hobby of torture. Sure he could still lord his power over every student to pass through his class and practice light torture on students dense enough to get detention, but the rush of power and control just wasn't the same.
There was a momentary lull, so Snape shot off another two harmless charms. Unless a cheering charm made him overconfident, Snape wasn't going to be responsible for Potter's death today. Suddenly two pea sized pieces of flame fell from the tower. One hit to his left and exploded outward with sudden fury. As he rolled out of the way of the first, he saw the second was about to his on his other side. He somehow managed to cast a flame freezing charm on himself as the second explosion washed him in its flames. A warm prickle of magic passed over him, making his nerves tingle. Just as he started to glow bright blue, he threw himself to the side as a bolt of lightning struck down from the clouds above. Where had the boy learned all this advanced magic?
When Severus climbed to his feet and looked to the tower in the middle of the clearing, Potter was no longer visible. Had he finally worn down? Had he been hit and fallen to his death? No, there he was, behind the jagged top of the tower. It looked as if Potter was sprinkling some glittering dust as he drew a circle in the air. The dust caught the light and sparkled brilliantly. When the circle was completed, the air inside lit up in a hellish red light and flames
Two monstrous scaly red hands reached out of the glowing circle and grabbed the edges. The hands pulled and a pair of glistening black horns veined in a glowing dark red slid into being. Within seconds, the most fearsome creature Severus had ever seen stood on top of the tower. It stood twelve and a half feet tall, and it's enormous muscular body was wreathed in flames. It had scaly wings which were tipped with claws, and a spiked tail. Harry said something to it in a growling and guttural language. It gave a loud roar of triumph and drew a six foot long sword that was shaped like a tongue of flame before leaping from the top of the tower and flying to the Death Eaters.
The sword severed heads left and right with an ease that terrified anyone who saw it. Guttural laughter rang out as the demon, for it could be nothing less, slaughtered people and licked the blood from his blade. The Death Eaters panicked and began shooting every spell in their arsenal at the monster, but even the Killing Curse was only successful at slowing it down. The Dark Lord threw an extremely powerful cutting curse at it and the beast was barely scratched.
Scared witless, Snape turned back to the tower, searching for the boy who unleashed this horror upon them. Potter was moving his hands in an extremely intricate pattern while wearing a silly looking green crown. What kind of lunacy was this, putting on a tiara and conducting the battle as if it were music? With a shout of pain, great red wings ripped out of Potter's back and he fell forward. In an instant, Potter's body was transformed from a human body into something else, something enormous, something Dragon!
The giant red dragon was the largest Severus had ever seen. As it flew to the opposite end of the line from where the Demon started, he could see the enormous cone of fire that came from its mouth, at least fifty feet. The Death Eaters curses and jinxes bounced off it's thick hide as they fought to save their own lives.
"RETREAT!" Someone yelled. The cry was taken up among all those still capable of fleeing. The Death Eaters started to run, caught between an angry dragon, an immortal demon, and a Dark Lord who would kill them all for their failures. Severus stood his ground as long as he could, longer even than the Dark Lord who began to cautiously retreat once it became clear that he was about to be alone against two unstoppable forces.
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"They're on the run, we've got them now!" Harry cheered.
"Not for long they're not!" Raistlin was entirely too happy. He loved the feeling of power that came with their fear. He loved hearing their screams and if he could he would make a wine of their tears. The dragon body did not hamper Raistlin as it would Harry and the only modification needed to perform magic was a slight tweak to his voice box. With a bellowing roar, magic rippled through the air and the ground between the Death Eaters and the safety of the pass where they could escape exploded and caused a rain of fiery boulders. It was as if a volcano had suddenly formed in the middle of the Scottish Highlands. The earth thrust upwards and split, magma that should be hundreds of miles below them formed a lake of fire right in their path.
Raistlin let out another cone of fire as he strafed the terrified army. Men fell to the ground and burned in his wake. The demon that had been summoned laughed and swooped on the dying to savor the last moments of their lives.
"Kill them all!" Raistlin yelled to the demon in the harsh language of the abyss. It was amazing after all these years that there were still some demons loyal to him in the abyss, but any would have been happy to comply considering the chaos they could cause. In the meantime, Raistlin had spotted his next victim, and knocked him to the ground before settling over him.
"Potter NO!" His victim screamed. Snape reached up to rip the mask from his face. "Oh God Potter, please don't kill me!"
"Beg mortal!" The demon yelled from nearby. In a flash the man in front of it fell to the ground gutted from navel to neck.
"Potter… Harry… Please! Don't kill me!" Snape had tears and blood running down his cheeks as he begged the one person he hated the most for his life.
"Remember this… Snape." Harry had to remind his master of the potion master's name. "You will never speak of this. Swear it!"
"I swear! I swear on my life I'll never speak about it!" Snape screamed like a little girl. Even Harry was taking a bit of pleasure watching how far the abusive prick could fall. The power he now held over life and death was both intoxicating and very, very scary to Harry. Raistlin launched himself airborne and pumped his leathery wings. He breathed flame into they air as he slapped some of the last few Death Eaters with his tail.
Voldemort had reached the area beyond the anti-apparition field and turned to watch what was left of a fool proof raid fall to pieces. He was ready to apperate at a moment's notice, but felt the need to watch it all go to hell.
"Master, can you turn into anything?" Harry asked, having a sudden evil thought.
"So long as the spell is active, I can be any being in the cosmos. There is no limit to my power!"
"Turn into a phoenix that will put the fear of God into them." Harry suggested.
With an almighty screech, the red dragon changed into a giant phoenix. The wings shrunk and sprouted crimson feathers while the tail split into many long feathers. It looked eerily similar to a normal phoenix, but had a wingspan over fourty feet and looked fighting fierce. Severus Snape was snatched from the ground and used as a weapon. After being used to club a fallen Death Eater who was trying to get up before the demon got to him, Snape was thrown across the magma lake and into Voldemort.
As Snape and the Dark Lord struggled to their feet, a haunting voice rang in Snape's mind. "Remember Snape… Remember…"
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It was early the next morning when Voldemort reviewed the surviving troops. Of the seventy six who left that night, twenty returned and only twelve would fight anytime soon. The rest suffered broken bones or missing limbs from that thrice damned demon.
When had Potter become so powerful? A dragon and a phoenix? No one had more than one animagus form, and there had never been a magical animagus in the history of magic.
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A/N; this is without a doubt the greatest battle chapter I have ever written. In addition to straight battle I also delved a bit into Snape's character and the mentality of the Death Eaters in this chapter. Here are my takes on some of the main characters and their motivations.
Snape; a dark wizard through and through. He loves the feeling of power that the Dark Arts and their use bring. He especially loves destroying innocence and trust. Perhaps this is why he has a job teaching though he hates children, so many young minds and wills to break. He spies for Dumbledore because he wants to live through the war and knows that the Dark Lord will kill him when his power is secure.
Dumbledore; a Light Wizard beyond compare. He's made a few mistakes in judgment where Harry is concerned but he is not manipulative or evil. He is genuinely trying to help people and wants everyone to be happy. He overreacts with Harry because he sees the similarities between Voldemort and Harry. He does need Harry to defeat Voldemort, but he has not slipped into the "weapon" mentaility.
Harry Potter; is a "grey" wizard. He is neither evil nor pure good. He wears the Black Robes (usually associated with evil) for his decisions to put his own needs and wants before anyone else's or even above the "greater good". This self interest was best displayed by his decision for self gratifying revenge upon Bellatrix and Ron during his test. He could have handed them over to an Auror (the "good" decision), or killed them quickly for their evil deeds (the "grey" decision), but instead he chose to satisfy his own desire for vengeance before anything else.
Raistlin Majere; is an Evil with a capital "E" wizard. He loves to have power over others and has a need to be acknowledged by those around him. When it comes to magic, no one is allowed to be better than him. No one is allowed to even claim to be better. Due to his ill health in his previous body he sometimes feels weak and powerless, so to remedy this he will overcompensate by forcing others to acknowledge his power and strength. Whether he does this by good or evil acts varies, but he is a very volatile persona. For a great look at Raistlin overall, try the Wikipedia entry for him or www. geocities. com/lunastuff/char/Raist. Html without the spaces.