Chapter 32: Anti-Patronus

Stiles' dazed and stumbling alpha roared to life as he tore into the Forbidden Forest, filling his veins with fire and his body with determination. His mate was in danger, and no matter if Derek did or did not believe that Stiles had been the wrong choice, he would not let him die in this godforsaken forest. 'Show me to him!' he thought fervently, dragging at his wolf with every ounce of strength his exhausted body possessed. 'Bring me to our mate!'

Forcing his body to slow, he allowed Calcifer to leap from his shoulder, landing on the ground. 'Engorgio!' he shouted, thrusting his wand at Calcifer with stumbling impatience. Clambering onto the dragon's back, settling himself just in front of his wings, he called, "Let's go, Calcifer!"

Calcifer lifted from the forest floor with a flap of his wings, shooting into the sky darkening with clouds that were heavy with rain. He released a deafening roar as he soared above the treetops, looping backwards and settling on the weak spire of a tree. The tree moaned under their weight, but held well enough.

The announcer's voice rose from somewhere behind his back. 'Stiles Stilinski is the first to appear from the forest looking blood thirsty! There are fifty minutes remaining on the clock! Who will be the first to encounter an obstacle set up in the forest?'

Glancing back, Stiles could just barely make out the stadiums rising over the treetops. He'd made it that far in ten minutes on foot? It seemed impossible, but then again, so had werewolves when he'd first come to Hogwarts, and now he was the alpha mate of a pack. He supposed anything was possible now.

'Let's go save our mate,' Stiles thought to his alpha. Digging the book from the pack he'd slung over his back, he murmured, "Help me find Derek," before flipping it open. The book fell open to a page close to the front. He frowned, reading the title of the page. 'How to Keep Tabs on Your Alpha' it read, and he couldn't help but laugh. The two pages detailed a mid range spell of similar difficulty to the tracking spells they'd been taught in Charms except that this spell could be maintained for long periods of time and could either be used to track down an alpha or just to know where said alpha was at all times. The only problem with the spell was that you had to be intimate with the that alpha's magic, the taste of it, the feel of it, because it also picked up the location of every living thing in its radius.

Looking up and over the vastness of the Forbidden Forest, he shrugged. "It's worth a shot, I suppose. I'm not going to find him just hanging out here, isn't that right, Calcifer?" With Calcifer's huff of fire in agreement, Stiles raised his wand above his head and slowly begin to move it in ever growing circles. He shouted the spell, throwing his magic into it.

His magic burst from his wand, spreading out like the rings he'd drawn, passing over every inch of the forest. He'd never realized just how well his mother's ring helped focus his magic. It flooded out from him, pinging the location of every living creature that it passed over back to him. There was a million giant spiders in their den. There was the herd of centaurs. There was a nymph lounging on the edge of the lake. There was a bird. There was Allison. There was Kira.

He waited impatiently, flexing his hand around his wand so that his knuckles pressed white against his skin. One minute passed, then five, ten. His magic had slowed, creeping through the forest.

Finally, there was Derek.

Stiles' wolf howled in triumph, surging against him, clawing at his insides. 'Take me to him. Take me to him! Take me to him!'

Clutching the book to his chest, Stiles leaned forward over Calcifer's neck. "Let's go, Calcifer!"

In the distance, he could hear the announcer rambling. 'What was that just now? What was that spell? I have never seen anything like it in my entire life! Did Stiles Stilinski just create a new spell in hopes of finding his object? It must be incredibly important to him! And there he goes!'

…..

Whatever Deaton was taking that made him think that this was a good obstacle to have as part of the Second Task, Stiles wished he had shared.

Stiles crouched just behind a thatch of bushes on the bank of a frozen lake. Calcifer, small once more, huddled against his neck beneath the invisibility cloak, grumbling low in his throat at he stared over the lake. Just across from them, tied to the pillar of ruins Stiles had never known even existed out here was Derek, his chin resting against his chest. His arms had been tied behind the pillar, and rope circled his body around his chest, knees, and ankles. Resting against his breast bone was Stiles' mother's ring, gleaming despite the lack of light.

Gliding through the air around Derek were numerous Dementors, swathed in flowing and tattered black cloaks. Stiles didn't even want to imagine what so many of them could do to the crowd just several miles from them.

"You would think they were trying to crucify him," Stiles muttered to the dragon on his shoulder, "Or just outright kill him. Fuck." He ducked down quickly as one of the Dementors turned in their direction, gliding slowly forward. His wolf growled deep in his throat as frost began to form along the edge of the cloak.

Stiles released the breath he'd been holding as another noise drew the Dementor's attention and it disappeared. "Jesus fuck. What am I supposed to do about all these Dementors? My patronus is nowhere near strong enough to repel all of them, and even if it were, who's to say that they just wouldn't go and say hello to everyone watching in the stands?"

Calcifer sneezed, a stream of smoke collecting in the top of the cloak.

"Exactly my sentiments." Huffing out a sigh, Stiles set the book on his legs. "Alright book, give me something to work with. I will try anything at this point." Opening the book, he watched the pages flutter to the very last spell. 'An Anti-Patronus For All Your Dementor Needs' the title read. "What the fuck is this?" he said, gaping at the spread pages.

According to the pages, someone had invented a spell, a type of patronus, that instead of repelling Dementors, would draw their attention and pull them in any direction it went. Unlike with a patronus where you needed happy memories to produce it, for an anti-patronus you had to dredge up the worst memory you had. The worse the memory, the stronger the anti-patronus. It was relatively unknown due to the fact that it caused the witch or wizard horrible emotional turmoil.

A tidy little section at the bottom of the second page read: 'Side Effects include, but are not limited to: blackouts, survivors guilt, severe emotional trauma, suicidal thoughts, conjuring of ghosts, and reanimation of corpses. Do not attempt this spell if you are pregnant or already of unsound mind. Use with caution.'

Stiles groaned, looking between the book and Derek's prone form pinned to the pillar. Muttering a curse under his breath, he said, "The things I do for the people I love." He tucked the book back into the bag followed by the invisibility cloak. Calcifer launched himself into the trees, finding purchase close to the trunk.

Shooting to his feet, Stiles threw his arm towards the lake. Dredging up the memory of the visions he'd had at the end of the first task, the feeling of his insides unraveling, the image of his friends lying dead all around him, he shouted, "Expecto hostium!"

Thick, inky darkness spewed from the tip of his wand, landing gracefully on the ice. The depthless blackness of the wolf's coat was a stark contrast to the white beneath its feet. Turning, it stared at Stiles with hollow eyes.

Dread flooded Stiles' body, a hundred times worse than anything the Dementors could ever make him feel. The memory of Danny's death swept through his mind's eyes, his mother's, Laura's. The screams of the Hales' as they burned alive rang in his ears. A cold worse than any he had ever felt before swept through his body. His wolf cowered, tucking its tail between its legs, its ears pressed flat to its skull.

Suddenly, he knew. He was going to die here at the mercy of this thing that he had conjured for the whole school to watch from whatever form of viewing they had conjured up. His knees began to buckle beneath him.

The wolf jerked its attention to the Dementors descending towards it. Whirling, it darted towards the forest, silent as it fled across the ice. Where its paws met the delicate surface, deep cracks and fissures formed.

In moments, the lake was clear of Demetors and anti-patronuses, and was already beginning to thaw.

Stiles sagged against a tree, his legs trembling beneath him and his stomach churning with unease. Calcifer hovered before him, making soft, worried noises. "I... I'm alright, Calcifer. Just give... Just give me a moment," he whispered, closing his eyes to everything around him, against the images that reeled through the forefront of him mind. Finally, pushing away from the tree, he said, "Let's get Derek."

…..

'Stiles Stilinski is the first to have retrieved his object, none other than Derek Hale, with seven minutes still on the clock! He has shown some impressive magic today, and what seem to be some spells of his own making! We can only hope that Allison Argent and Kira Yukimura fair so well!' the announcer called, his voice growing ever louder the closer that Stiles drew to the stadium.

As Calcifer alighted on the grass before the Forbidden Forest, Stiles slid from his neck, dragging Derek down with him. He laid him out, quickly checking his vitals. The pack streamed from the stands, gathering around him with wide grins.

'Kira Yukimura has gathered her object!' the announcer shouted excitedly, overshadowing any words they may have said, 'She's looking a little worse for wear after her tussle with the giant spiders, but she came out swinging! And now Allison Argent also has hold of her object after her battle with the centaurs! She seems to have a few bruises and is bleeding, but is otherwise unharmed!'

"Does he always have to end his sentences with exclamation points?" Lydia muttered irately, leaning over Derek with her wand in hand. "I have no idea what Deaton did to him. I can't seem to wake him up."

Fear slid through Stiles' body, solidifying his blood. He forced it down. "He'll be fine. I'm sure of it."

Before Lydia could reply, Allison's scream lit up the forest, sending birds into flight.

"Look after him," Stiles said, pressing a quick kiss to Derek's forehead before shooting to his feet. He swung up onto Calcifer's back, shouting, "Let's go, Calcifer!" They shot into the sky, disappearing before the others could even blink.

…..

"Allison!" Stiles shouted. He could still feel his magic pinging off of her from the spell he'd cast nearly an hour earlier. She was just on the edge of the centaur's territory, a bow and quiver of arrows thrown over her shoulder as she stared up at something in a tree. "Allison, what happened?"

"Stiles, I-" She threw a hand over her mouth as he landed beside her, spinning and bracing her arm against a tree as the little amount of food she'd been able to get down before the Task made a reappearance. She cursed viciously in French. "Why? Why does this keep happening?" she whispered when she'd stopped retching, spittle and bile slipping passed her parted lips, "What kind of monster can keep doing this?"

Stiles didn't have an answer for her, at least not one that he could give her without mentioning a few choice people and spilling the pack's secret. She wasn't ready for that, and even though he trusted her more now, she was still an Argent. Kate was still her aunt.

Instead of answering her, he wasn't even sure he could answer with how dry his mouth had gone, he stared up at the body. The body hung about six feet off the ground, held aloft by a chain wrapped around the corpse's throat. It's body had been burned beyond recognition. The only discernible feature was the fact that the body had been female.

Somehow though, Stiles knew exactly who the body had been. "That's... I think that's Ms. Blake, the Ghouls Studies and Ancient Runes teacher." Turning from the body, he rushed to a tree to relieve his stomach of its own contents.

So, according to google translate, 'expecto patronum' translates into 'I await a patron' or 'I await a protector', so when I picked the words for the anti-patronus spell, I just found an antonym. So 'expecto hostium' translates to 'I look for the enemy'. I'm sorry if I'm butchering things here, but coming up with fake spells is actually kind of fun.