A/N: Warning: this is the single most dialogue heavy chapter I've written thus far. And, quite possibly, one of the most plot significant to the story. For that matter, also the longest, period. - MB

Hogwarts Second Gate…

The fighting at the Second Gate was some of the most pitched defensive actions of its time. Though initially restrained to a mere frontal defence, the gate defenders were soon forced to shift their firepower to cover their rear as well as another dust cloud suddenly came into existence behind them. Fortunately for them, however, the trap-trenches that Neville had ordered dug had been completed well before the frontal attack had begun, and so many of the Venati found themselves confounded by the network of traps that allowed them to become easy pickings for the HMG-equipped defenders.

2,500 soldiers, crammed into a defensive structure supposed to be manned by 500 or so people. Cramped as they were, however, they made it extraordinarily tough for the enemy to reach their lines, as the well-supplied ADST squads had brought with them a wonderful variety of ammunition and weaponry. Whenever the Venati fell into the traps, the HMGs or rifle-bearing troops would then mow them down. The problem was that with every Venati they killed, the trenches would gradually fill up, which made it an impending danger that they would eventually become useless.

The ADST detachment under Captain Lyles took charge of the defence of the rear, holding their own surprisingly well, while Neville himself took charge of the front gate defence. Unlike the rear, however, the front was getting, almost literally, hammered. While there was little risk of the enemy scaling the walls, the constant ramming of the Venati—to a suicidal degree, even—against the gate itself was causing the door to gradually weaken, and already thirty men were stationed right behind the additional barricade works to push against the surprising force of the Venati ramming their bodies against the gate.

Neville swore as he watched another Venati ram itself to death against the gate, adding to a growing pile of corpses at its feet. This couldn't keep happening, or else the gate would eventually give in. Seeing as how the enemy numbers were certainly not decreasing, that made Neville worried.

Turning to the nearest high-ranking soldier within earshot, he yelled, "I want HMG coverage on the gate! Stop letting them through the kill zone!"

The Major in question, however, seemed unimpressed by Neville's exhortations. "We're trying, sir!" he replied hotly, even as he fired two shots wildly into the crowd of Venati at the feet of the wall. "There's just too many for our lads to keep them at bay!"

Neville had the sense to look abashed as he saw and indeed confirmed that his men were frantically trying to shoot down every incoming Venati that approached the wall. While it was clear that the beasts would not be able to scale the wall individually, that didn't mean that they would stop trying, and a few got perilously close to the top. Furthermore, there had been numerous attempts to use the corpses of other Venati to build stacks high enough to allow them to reach the parapets, which indicated a frighteningly ingenious intelligence in them. Of course, these piles were quickly vaporized with a well-placed grenade, but there were numerous close calls.

In the end, the Major's assessment rang true—there was very little the besieged defenders could do to increase their kill count without losing ground somewhere else. This was a problem that Neville could not surmise an answer for. At least, not until he, by chance, glanced at the castle and then felt like smacking himself in the face. He was a mage, for goodness' sake! Plus, he had that little boost that Harry had insisted on giving him.

Holstering his gun, he brought out his wand and then proceeded to roll up his sleeves up to his elbows. When the Major he'd mistakenly berated looked at him askance, however, Neville merely grinned viciously. "Get ready, Major," he warned. "I'm going to give us the breathing space we need!"

Even as he spoke, he raised his wand, pointing it straight forwards. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and wilfully channelled the magic through his body and towards the wand, feeling it accumulate practically on the tip of the wooden instrument. Once he was sure he had accumulated enough—a feeling he calculated by way of how probable it was his wand would explode with anymore magical build-up—he finally opened his eyes, raised his wand, and then swept it across his frame—his right leg sliding back as he bent over, a grin on his face—chanting out, "EXPULSO!"

With a mighty flash, a bluish barrier seemed to materialize from the tip of his wand and grew exponentially until it was as long and tall as the gate itself was, sweeping forward relentlessly like a tidal wave. Upon coming into contact with the barrier, the Venati were hauled off their feet and tossed backwards by the raging barrier. It wasn't a point blank thing, either. As the barrier moved forward for at least three dozen feet, the Venati horde was pushed back violently, often crushing several to death under its relentless pace.

When the barrier dissipated, there was a vastly different tactical scenario before the defenders. No longer were they hampered by the pressing numbers; they could now do their utmost best to keep the enemy at bay, and could, in some measure, succeed in doing so. Seizing upon this opportunity, the Major beside Neville grinned viciously before turning to his men and bellowing out orders.

"FIRE!" he roared. "FIRE, FIRE, FIRE! DON'T LET ANY OF THOSE SODDING TOSSERS ANYWHERE NEAR THE GATE!!"

With renewed vigour coming from the sudden decrease in immediate danger, the rampart defenders were quick on the uptake in following the man's orders. With the distinct sound of clicking running all across the ramparts, the soldiers locked in their new ammunition cartridges/belts inside their weapons and proceeded to let loose a hail of bullets that effectively created a border between the Venati and the "danger close" zone next to the gate.

Neville watched with unrestrained glee as his plan—impromptu as it was—worked beautifully. To be honest, it had taken quite a bit from him, but it was something he was now aware he could do several times a day, if it ever became necessary. Looking up at the Major—for Neville was pretty much supporting himself by his knees alone at this point—he grinned victoriously. "Enough space now, Major?" he asked wryly.

The Major grinned in return. "Quite so, Brigadier, quite so."

As the two men were exchanging congratulations, however, one of the soldiers came up to them, looking a little anxious. "Sir!" he cried out, trotting up to them.

Neville turned his head to observe the speaker and recognized him as the scouting sergeant from the vanguard—Willis, he believed the man was called. "Yes, sergeant?" he replied.

He watched the sergeant quickly go into attention and give a crisp salute, which he himself returned sloppily due to his exhaustion. "Sir, the lads and I have been keeping an eye on the tunnel that leads into Hogwarts! We think someone might be coming through!"

Neville groaned. More bad news? Even worse, this could adversely affect their flank. Hell, it wasn't just could, it would. Giving the Major a long-suffering look, he nodded at Willis even as the Major chuckled. "Alright. Give me a second and we'll go check it out."

"Sir, they could get through any moment now, and we need you to reinforce the blockage!" protested Willis. Neville groaned at the man's insistence, but agreed that this had to be dealt with immediately.

"Alright, alright," he acquiesced reluctantly, his body protesting his every move. "Let's go, then."

Willis nodded and quickly led the way while Neville made to follow, albeit much more slowly. It was glaringly obvious to anyone who looked that Neville was pretty much dead on his feet after that particularly powerful feat of magic, and so it was somewhat admirable that he was still managing to function—even better, to use his magic to seal another threat to the Imperial lines.

For his part, however, the Major just shook his head in amusement and chuckled, all the while keeping a steady eye on his men to make sure there were no problems in keeping the Venati at bay.

As he walked behind the rear lines, Neville couldn't help but evaluate the performance of both sides of his little last-ditch defence. The "Gate Line," so to speak, was infinitely more fortified than the rear, but had been ironically much closer to being overwhelmed than the rear was, if he was observing things right. The "Rear Line," by contrast, was completely overpowering the Venati onslaught, keeping them very much away from their immediate presence by way of traps and superior firepower. While the Gate Line lacked the former, there was no such excuse for the latter component, as the Gate Line had many more HMG emplacements than the Rear Line.

To his slight amusement and some confusion, Neville also saw several ADST with their helmets on, despite the fact that the Magical Shockwave had completely fried the electronic equipment. Then again, with their visors in place, Neville gathered that they served as good countermeasures against the dust cloud in front of them, which the wind could easily blow into their eyes at any moment.

Neville sighed. Another consideration he might have to deal with through the use of magic. He theorized that if the war didn't end soon, he would end up dried up of all magic! Somehow, just following through that thought, the mental image of himself being sucked into a dry prune popped into his head, making him snort once, though he quickly covered that up, despite the fact that no one could hear him over the gunfire.

It was fortunate, and at the same time quite unfortunate, that the path to the cavern where they had hid after the exhausting climb up the face of the cliff was behind their lines. For one thing, it meant easy access to it, but it also meant that if a sneak attack were to come from there, they'd never see it coming until it was too late. Plus, there was simply not enough manpower to man a permanent, heavily-entrenched defensive position whose sole reason for existence was to watch over a cave. Ironic, considering that they had more people than the gate was supposed to accommodate, but it was still the truth. If they pulled off people from any of the lines, it would only serve to detriment the defence, since the Venati onslaught wasn't tiring at all.

Thus, trudging down the path, Neville was calculating the many ways he could shift defenders to cover the road that led up to their positions. The road itself was wide enough to allow only about four adult men to stand shoulder-to-shoulder; and even then, barely so. Typically, this would mean that a bare minimum of soldiers was needed to adequately cover the path, but considering the sheer numbers of enemy beasts involved, Neville doubted that anything short of an actual stone wall, complete with ramparts and sandbagged HMG positions, would actually stop such an attack from this path.

It was at the very entrance of the cave, however, that Neville began to feel a slight discomfort in his stomach. Kind of like his gut was trying to tell him something, but whatever it was, it was muffled by exhaustion. Nodding to Willis, who had stopped inside and turned to look at him somewhat intensively, Neville took a few steps forward.

"Very well, let's see, then," he said, reaching for his wand. At first glance, he could already tell that the blockage seemed to be quite solid still, so he was unaware of what had made Willis think there was any danger of the enemy getting through, but better to be safe than sorry, right?

And then, just as quickly as he had made that assessment, his wand was gone from his hand, slapped away harshly by none other than Willis, who was standing in front of him with a slightly deranged grin.

"What the?" Neville barely got out, before Willis managed to grab onto his uniform. Instincts kicked in for Neville then, and a spin on his right heel allowed him to deliver a blow to Willis' midsection with his right heel, sending the man off him to the side. "Have you lost your mind, sergeant?!" he demanded angrily.

And then, Willis did the strangest thing. He started chuckling. And not a nice chuckling, like when a friend laughs at another's joke. Nah, it was more like the chuckling you typically heard the Joker using before he slammed a pencil into someone's face.

"Sssstupid human…" Willis hissed, slowly getting up from the floor, without paying any attention to his wounded side. "Sssstill won't sssee what'sss in front of you…"

Nevermind his previous feeling of unease, this one was off the charts. Hell, even his exhaustion vanished in a second as he realized that he had, unknowingly, walked right into a trap. Even worse, he was friendless and unarmed. Screaming wouldn't do any good, either, due in part to being inside a cave, and also because of the continuous gunfight outside. Hell, the assassins around him could basically kill him and walk out without anyone questioning anything. His own disappearance could be chalked down to continuous magical incantations to keep the cavern from becoming a third front.

"Riddle pay you off?" he spat, bringing up his two hands to his waist. He might have lost his wand, but he was still adept enough in wandless magic to defend himself, albeit briefly. "Is that it? What did he promise you? Riches? Power? Immortality?"

Again, Willis chuckled, and this time, so did the rest of his scouting force—or what remained of it, he reminded himself. Susan, two other women, and one other man had been reported missing from the group, he remembered. "Is that what happened to Susan?!" he demanded angrily. "Did you sodding fucks kill my Susan?!"

Willis' insane grin did not leave his face. If anything, it seemed to stretch more than humanly possible. "Who knowsss?" he hissed amusedly. "We sssshan't tell!"

And then, Neville understood. Willis and his merry band of traitors suddenly bent forward until they were on all fours, and then their shapes blurred and shifted—and Neville knew he'd been had.

"Venati," he spat.

"Pointssss to the man with a brain!" he heard the creature formerly known as Willis say amid animalistic chuckles. "At the very leasssst, his magical core will be delicioussss!"

This was bad. This was very bad. Neville had no idea that Venati were shape-shifters, and, he expected, neither did his men outside. Plus, you know, he was facing four Venati. On his own. Without his wand.

Yeah, he was screwed.

Upon making this conclusion in his head, Neville saw the Willis-Venati creature start his attack, picking up speed in two meters and then lunging at him. One-on-one, Neville could handle, however.

With a grunt, Neville glared at his opponent contemptuously as he ducked, spun on his foot, and kicked the creature in the side. He heard it yelp as it was launched sideways, but also cursed as he then saw it pick itself up, none the worse for wear.

"Oh come on," he protested vigorously under his breath. "This is bullshit."

Even worse, V-Willis seemed to understand that going mano-a-mano was a very bad idea, and thus nudged his head imperiously towards Neville as a signal to his fellow hellspawn.

"Correction," Neville wryly commented to himself as he watched the four Venati circle him hungrily like a pack of sharks, "this is bullshit."

And then, just as it seemed that the four beasts were about to rush him, he heard the sound of gunfire—and not the kind outside, but instead the kind very close to him. A yelp followed, and as Neville turned to look, he saw one Venati go down—it's head playing the part of an exploding watermelon—while the others seemed either immediately responsive to the attack on their fellow Venati, or simply lunged at Neville, taking advantage of the distraction.

Said Venati was quickly shot down by another shot from Neville's saviour, which he was barely able to distinguish due to the light filtering in from behind the figure at the cave entrance.

"Since when do you swear so much?" asked a female voice which, despite being somewhat muffled by a helmet, Neville would have been brain-dead not to recognize. "I swear, the last time we saw each other, you weren't nearly this potty-mouthed!"

Neville gave a wry grin. "Oh, you know how it is," he commented sarcastically. "You spend a few days with soldier boys, you get shot at, explode a staircase, and generally fight a last-ditch battle for your skin—guy's got to let loose at some point, yeah?"

The woman at the entrance grinned, and only then was Neville able to notice that she wasn't alone. Three more figures were at her flanks. "See now, that is more like you," commented the woman, seemingly ignoring the threat of two still very much alive and dangerous Venati.

"What issss the meaning of thisss?!" V-Willis hissed angrily. "Who daress intrude on our feeding?!"

Another shot rang in the cavern, making Neville wince from the echo, and V-Willis' last remaining cohort was lying on the ground, also dead.

"You talk too much," the woman stated blandly, a smoking pistol sitting in her extended hand.

Neville rolled his eyes, though he kept a wary watch on V-Willis, who was in a particularly aggressive stance to his left. "Let me guess," he said sarcastically. "Harry sent you."

The woman gave him a bright smile. "Knew there was something between those ears of yours!" she back-handily agreed and complimented him simultaneously.

Neville couldn't help the growl coming from his throat. "That brat's always been too clever by half," he muttered. "Not telling anyone his plans, keeping everyone in the bloody dark…"

The smile was wiped off the woman's face. "Now you know how it feels, Neville," she told him seriously.

Neville had the decency to look embarrassed. "I know, I know…"

V-Willis, however, was not a happy camper. There was nothing quite so infuriating as being ignored by one's enemies, after all, and even more so when one was part of a race that basically made it its life mission to consume all things in its path.

"Ignore me, will you?!" he raged, scratching at the stone floor angrily with his front paws. "I'll sssshow you!"

With that, he burst into action, lunging straight for the woman, though it was one of the other people around her that lunged into action first. The person to the woman's immediate right suddenly got in the way of the lunge and brought up a combat, pump-action shotgun, which she aimed rather deliberately at the Venati's face.

"This is for Sergeant Willis," was all Neville heard the enraged feminine voice say, shortly before a loud blast signalled the end of V-Willis.

Neville couldn't help but make a face at the gore. He wasn't particularly weak-stomached about this, but it served to lighten the mood some, which was a perfectly natural way to cope with near-death experiences, he found.

"Yuck," he said. "Hellspawn brain bits."

"Not really the time for horsing around, Neville," the woman at the forefront of the execution squad reprimanded him. "We've got a fight to deal with outside."

Neville waved that away, instead choosing to sit down against a rock and finally let his aching limbs rest. The Major on the parapets and Captain Lyles had everything quite well in hand, in his opinion. "That comes later," he told them severely. "Now, Susan, mind telling me how this near-miraculous return of yours occurred?" he asked, all traces of humour gone from his face. "And I'm going to guess that the murder squad behind you are the missing elements from my vanguard scouts?"

Susan grinned inside her ADST helmet as she hoisted the armour off her head and tucked it underneath her left arm, revealing wavy, chin-length hair where a cascade had once been.

"You cut you hair," Neville noticed intelligently, causing Susan to roll her eyes.

"Oh, sure, notice the hair first. No, 'why are you dressed as a Shock Trooper, Susan?' or, 'Susan, why didn't you tell me you were alive?'" she mocked him. "Seriously, Neville; priorities."

Neville scoffed. "Priorities, you say. I've got a thousand questions—" he noticed her stare, "—a hundred questions…fine, fine, maybe ten questions I'm dying to ask you, but unless you've been staring at a wall all day, I'm a bit exhausted from single-handily saving the Gate Line by sweeping the enemy away with magic. Plus, attacked by Venati, remember?"

Susan rolled her eyes. "Wimp."

"Tell you what, darling—next time we need a massive magical barrier to keep the enemy away, you do it," Neville snapped back.

Behind the two, the remaining three members of Susan's squad were watching with barely veiled amusement beneath their helmets. One of them leaned over to the other two and even asked,

"Are they always like this?"

The feminine voice was answered by another such female voice. "Don't know. Never saw them together," the other woman admitted. "Though, my money's on this being some sort of weird, cathartic foreplay."

"Hilliard…" warned the seemingly only male member of the team.

"Fine, fine…"

And then, right before their eyes, Susan launched herself forward and tackled the Brigadier backwards, followed by some intense hugging and kissing that made all three other people blush underneath their helmets and look away.

"…and there's the foreplay part validated," said Hilliard amidst sniggers.

"Hilliard…"

The woman pouted inside her helmet. "You're such a prude, O'Hara."

The other woman, the missing Naomi Porter that had been declared dead by the impostors, merely rolled her eyes at her two comrades. Instead of commenting, however, she turned her attention to the dead carcasses of the Venati, and her gaze saddened.

"I can't believe the sergeant's dead," she mumbled, barely audible if not for the intercom inside the helmet.

She felt a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Hey, just be glad we found you when we did," Hilliard said, trying to comfort her. "If we hadn't, you wouldn't have been able to shoot that…thing in the face right now."

"Small comfort," opined O'Hara. "Willis, Jameson, O'Neill, Miles…that's a lot of friends gone."

The man flinched as he saw Hilliard's helmet snap towards him, feeling the glare rather than seeing it. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Susan and Neville, however, were in their own little world, making up for lost time and such. Being humans, however, they did eventually need to come back up for air, even if all they did was grin stupidly at each other.

"I missed that," said Neville with a grin.

"Can't say I disagree," agreed Susan.

"So, really, what did happen to you?" he asked curiously, well aware that they were not exactly in the most opportune of situations for making up for lost time.

Susan sighed, reluctantly ceding to the fact that their playtime would have to be postponed until after the battle. Pushing herself off of him, she got up and turned away from him, putting her helmet back on as she did. Thus, when she started speaking, her voice was slightly altered by the helmet's speakers. "Hilliard, O'Hara, and I caught up to the scouting team well before you did," she told him. "From what we could see, they had separated to better cover territory, though we could only see Porter missing from the group. We were going to call out to them when they entered the valley entrance when they were suddenly ambushed by the Venati."

"Why didn't you help them?" he asked, half-curious, half-astonished at her inaction.

"We tried," she retorted. "Or, rather, we were about to, but it was over in a matter of seconds. The Venati easily tore through their uniforms like it was paper, and before we knew it, they were dead. It took a damn lot not to give away our position then. O'Hara had to restrain Hilliard from screaming."

Neville glanced at the group of three ADST by the cavern entrance and saw one of them look away, while the other stoically nodded in affirmation.

"We tracked the group's camp easily enough, though," continued Susan. "It was just a matter of extrapolating their base from the path they had taken down to the valley entrance. The problem was, since we had to keep away from sight, in case the beasts saw us again, we had to take the long way around. So, imagine my surprise when we saw Sergeant Willis and the rest of the killed scouts strut up to the camp, live and well."

"The Venati that ambushed them," Neville filled in knowingly. Susan shrugged.

"I've got no way of knowing that. Honestly, one Venati looks the same as another. What I did know, however, was that something was wrong if someone had decided to masquerade as a dead man. So, we quietly infiltrated the outskirts of the camp, where we were hoping to find out what was going on, when O'Hara spotted Porter hiding up a tree."

"Did she know?" asked Neville.

Susan shook her head. "No, she just adopted that position in order to better keep an eye on the camp while staying in cover. It was sheer dumb luck, however, that we managed to get to her at all. Hilliard volunteered to sneak up the tree, since she's the most agile of us, and get her, which took a lot of skill without giving away our position."

"And after that?" pressed Neville. "Susan, you didn't just evade a Venati ambush, you also happened to fall off the bloody map! What happened?!"

Susan shrugged. "We made away as quickly as possible, stopping only after we'd reached the column—though not the head of it. It so happened that we made contact with Captain Lyles first, and he patched us through to the Invincible, where orders were given to get us in the ship. So, even before the First Legion detachment disappeared from your camp, we were given a Portkey and sent to the ship, where we were debriefed by Harry and told exactly what's what. Then, he gave us a choice."

One of the women at the cavern entrance scoffed. "Some choice."

Susan smirked in her helmet. "He offered us two choices," she repeated. "One, we sit out for the rest of the fight, since he figured we earned it for giving him the vital piece of intel that was the Venati's presence on the field," she rose one finger of her gloved hand to reinforce her point. "Or two, we get an immediate promotion to the First Legion, and get our revenge on the Venati by becoming part of his ADST unit."

Neville looked at her askance. "What does the ADST unit have to do with Venati?" he asked. "Aren't they just highly mobile shock troops?"

Susan shook her helmeted head. "The Atmospheric Drop Shock Trooper unit was created with one goal in mind—countering the Venati threat," she explained.

"We make the bad things go dead," piped in Hilliard, earning herself a thwack on the helmet from Porter. "Ow!"

Susan rolled her eyes. "Quite," she nonetheless agreed. "The Venati threat was seen by Harry to pose a more pressing danger than the golems, as he had fought these himself in India—"

"He did?"

Susan kicked his shin lightly. "Yes, now let me finish!" she reprimanded him when he yelped. "Anyway, Harry knew that the Venati needed to be dealt with through means other than conventional weaponry, as they were agile and quick. Thus, he ordered Bill to find some way of creating a material light-weight enough to protect his chosen soldiers from physical attack of any kind."

"Why not equip the entire army with this material?" demanded Neville. "We could have saved thousands of lives!"

Susan fixed her ex/current boyfriend with a glare. "You think Bill and Harry didn't know that?" she asked rhetorically. "Unfortunately, even with the formula in hand, it takes time to create the alloy," she banged a fist on her chest plate, making it give out a solid sound. "Hear that? It acts like ceramic, sounds like ceramic—hell, it feels like ceramic, but it's not. This baby could take an AK head on and survive the meeting."

"What's that got to do with Venati?"

Susan grinned. "An AK is supposed to be the ultimate death-dealer, remember? If any armour we make can be made to not only resist an AK, but also not explode on impact, then even Venati claws can't get through it."

Neville's eyes widened. "An entire company's worth of Venati-proof soldiers?!" he breathed.

Susan shook her head. "An entire Legion's worth of Venati-proof soldiers," she corrected. From outside the cave, a growing din could be heard even over the sound of bullets. "In fact, if I'm not mistaken, that should be our reinforcements right now."

She looked over at Hilliard. "Private Hilliard, go see what the hell's going on!" she ordered.

The woman in question quickly saluted Susan before dashing outside momentarily. She was gone for about five minutes before she came right back, practically skipping her way in. "Right in one, Colonel!" she confirmed. "The First is coming!"

HMIS Invincible

"Sir, we've got reports from both General Sulu's forces and the Second Gate that the Venati infiltrators have been eliminated!" reported one of the bridge crewmen as he juggled with the different buttons and knobs on his console. "ADST forces have successfully purged our ranks and are holding the front lines."

"The First Legion reports green readiness in the prep rooms, sir," announced another crewman.

"Vehicle status?" demanded Wolf as he made an electronic signature on an electronic pad he was just handed by a crewman.

The team of five crewmen that were huddled together around the hangar communications panels seemed to exchange messages in hushed tones for a few seconds before they all reported in.

"Hangar One is ready for deployment."

"Hangar Two, same."

"Hangar Three, same."

"Hangar Four, same."

"Hangar Five, same."

"All deployment hangars are green light for vehicle drops," summed up the lead crewman before he reached over and activated another communication line. "The Duchess also reports green readiness, sir."

Wolf turned his head to look at Harry. "I guess that's your cue?" he suggested.

Harry nodded, though he made no move to leave his chair. Instead, he kept his head propped up on his left fist while he tapped his right-hand fingers on his chair arm, a pensive look on his face as he studied the battlefield hologram.

"Most curious," he said slowly.

"What is?" asked Wolf as he handed back yet another electronic pad to a passing crewman.

"Riddle," answered Harry simply. "He's not used the castle to send up another one of those catastrophic magical shockwaves again."

Wolf snorted. "Bit of a breather, if you ask me," he said bluntly. "Our shields were shot to hell from that last one."

"Exactly!" exclaimed Harry, his right hand shooting upwards in a show of frustration. "Everything is thus far going to plan, but even so, Riddle shouldn't be wasting the opportunity to use such an effective weapon! It's not his style!"

Wolf shrugged. "Perhaps there's a hitch in the process?" he suggested. "maybe he can't channel that much magic and summon the Venati?"

Harry waved away that explanation. "Of course he can't. That's not the point," Harry countered quickly. "He has three lieutenants, however, who together can amass that amount of magic, however. Seeing as how they're not on the field, there's no reason for them not to be using the castle as a magic channel."

"Perhaps they wish to lull us into a sense of complacency?" Wolf offered half-heartedly, frowning as he observed another pad in his hands and shook his head at the crewman next to him. "Check the numbers on this report again."

"Problems?"

Wolf shook his head. "No; someone just fudged up a report with a typo," he replied, before turning his attention to the impending assault on the Venati forces. "Your Grace, perhaps the reason that Riddle has been unable to use the castle as a weapon again is because he's not the one powering it. Maybe it's become far more complicated when there are numerous power sources."

Harry nodded, showing his acceptance of that possibility. "If that's so, Admiral, then we need to deploy immediately before he has the chance of using that while we're in mid-air," he concluded as he pushed himself onto his feet and walked towards the exit. "You have the bridge, Admiral."

Wolf saluted crisply. "Aye, aye, sir," he replied, before looking to his own XO. "XO, mark in the log, I have the bridge."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Hangar Bay One…

Harry was definitely amused when he reached his destination. Apparently, someone working the Hangar communications systems was either a Yank volunteer or a fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival, because he could hear the speakers blasting out the band's all-time song, "Fortunate Son."

Sure, it was an anti-war song, for the most part, but then any soldier who said he wasn't anti-war was either lying, or a psychopath.

Either way, it provided an amusing ambient sound over the din of the troops preparing to deploy to the ground. Unlike their fellow brothers in the ADST contingent, the rest of the First Legion wasn't about to mass deploy via drop pods—that would be suicide now that the Venati have come to the forefront.

Instead, they were going in via the same transport ships that had evacuated Dumbledore. Hundreds of them were now lined up throughout the four deployment hangars, their rough look clashing distinctly with the much smoother outlines of the Imperial fighters that had made it back to the ship's protective shields before the MS 5 hit.

Harry couldn't help but wince when he saw how many fighters were missing from their deployment racks. The losses from the MS 5 had been…catastrophic, to say the least. Barely 1 out of every 3 fighters deployed during this battle had made it back. Only the dragon squads had survived without much casualties, although the shockwave did serve to give the younger dragons the human equivalent of a brain aneurysm.

The worst part was that the fighters and dragon handlers probably had the easiest part of this fight. They certainly didn't have to deal with the Venati on a face-to-face basis. Even now, years after his own personal tête-à-tête with one, he dreaded facing such a creature in combat again.

But he had to. This was what he had driven to practically all his adult life. He couldn't just sit this one out and justify the innumerable atrocities he caused over the years to himself. There was simply no other way.

Harry gave a practiced smile as he was greeted by the members of the First Legion, all of whom had fought by his side from the very beginning of his personal crusade. They understood, even if he never told them. They had seen the very pits of hell and come back as changed as he was. No one else understood. No one else could.

He smiled lovingly up at his beautiful wife as she met him on the ramp to his designated transport. Standing there in her assassin robes—undoubtedly with some of the ADST body armour underneath—she was just as stunning as when he'd married her. She was the sole anchor to reality, the very reason he had orchestrated everything. His daughter had come afterwards, and while he loved her to death as well, Ginny had been his inspiration.

Taking her hand in his, he gave her a reassuring squeeze as she looked at him curiously, seemingly feeling the unease that raged within him. He couldn't tell her, not even right there as she stood by him, ready to go down into the most hellish fight she'd ever face in her life. He couldn't let her know what he'd done, what he'd learned, what he'd chosen to do. Love her as he did, he still couldn't trust her to understand his reasons.

She was his wife, but she was not his companion on the lonely throne that one sat in when one had all the information. She had tasted normality, and peace. She was forever tainted by that experience.

Even as he turned to give his—probably—final speech to his men, he could not resist thinking about the measures he had taken to ensure that his legacy was not forgotten. It was not his daughter, nor was the recipient his comrade Admiral Wolf. It was not Ginny, nor his parents. Not his brother and sister, nor his brothers-in-law. Not his Queen, nor a simple commoner.

Ironically, he handed his legacy over to the one person he could not bring himself to stop hating or distrusting. Why? Well, because only someone who has faced the unbearable loneliness of knowledge could understand what his legacy meant.

It was history-making, he knew. Whoever had his hands on his legacy also possessed the ability to make or break the Empire. It was his living will.

He just hoped Dumbledore would understand it fully.

His speech was done now. The men were ready. The time was upon them.

Loudly, the ramp came up, and sealed the transports for departure.

HMIS Invincible Med-Bay 1…

Dumbledore looked at his small audience with a grave look. Minutes earlier, he had been handed a small disc that he instantly recognized as a holographic recording device. Even stranger, the messengers had been one of Potter's closest aides, who herself admitted to being ignorant of the disc's contents before leaving him. She had given him no other instructions and had then merely left.

Curious, he had begun the recording for a few seconds before quickly turning it off and rewinding it. This was huge. Immense, even. He needed his closest council with him. None of the more emotionally-invested members of the former Order of the Phoenix, however. He needed the rational minds.

Thus, he had his nurse call down Hermione Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Frank Longbottom, and Mad-Eye Moody. He would have summoned Severus as well, but he had a feeling the man already knew, as did the young Malfoy heir.

The three men and one woman he had called were now sitting around his hospital bed, an anxious look on two of them, while the other two were more gruffly curious.

"Well?" asked Moody. "What's all this about, then, Albus?"

Hermione seemed about to round on the man for so rudely demanding answers from a recovering patient, but Dumbledore waved her off. "I have received a most interesting package from mister Potter just now," he told them. "I believed that you should all see it at the same time I did."

"You haven't even previewed it?" asked Frank with raised eyebrows. "That's…reserved of you."

"I admit, I did sample the first few seconds," conceded Dumbledore. "But that was all. I have no idea what the rest says."

"Why would the Duke, the man who hates you the most, send you a message, Albus?" asked Arthur worriedly. "Especially now, after the destruction of Hogwarts grounds?"

Dumbledore shrugged. "I have honestly no idea, Arthur, my boy. That is why I thought you should be allowed to see the contents as well."

Hermione, her focus now entirely on the metallic disk on Dumbledore's lap, looked somewhat excited and curious. "I admit, I'm interested in seeing what the Duke has to say," she told the other men, who all nodded shortly afterwards.

Satisfied that he had a willing audience, Dumbledore frowned as he observed the disc and hesitantly pressed the button he thought was the one he had pressed earlier to activate it. To his fortune, it was, and seconds later the image of Harry Potter, standing less than ten inches tall, had materialized on the disc. Avidly, the five leaned in to better hear what the image had to say.

"Log date, June 7th, 2008," the hologram stated clearly. "First entry. Marked: Final."

"June seventh?" commented Hermione. "That was the day before the offensive was launched against Hogwarts!"

Dumbledore nodded, but hushed her all the same. She had the grace to look embarrassed for the seeming triviality.

"I am Harry James Potter, Duke of Halifax. This…this is my living will," continued the hologram, hesitating only once. Everyone gasped.

"Tomorrow, we begin the final step," he continued, ignoring the gasps. "The Imperial Fleet has been assembled where ordered, and those elements unneeded for this campaign are already sweeping the globe for the remnants of our enemies."

"It should feel like a weight being lifted from my shoulders, or so everyone tells me, but it sure as hell doesn't feel like it. If anything, it feels like an anvil weighing me down—increasing in weight with every passing second," he stopped to chuckle ruefully and pass a nervous hand through his messy hair. "God, listen to me now. I sound like one of those so-called emo kids, if my vernacular is correct."

"It is," Hermione added in softly, catching no one's attention as she did so.

"The truth is, if the general wisdom holds up, I guess it's been a burden so hard to bear because I've told no one about it," Harry continued. "Well, if that's true, consider this me sharing."

He laughed again. "God, I hope that's you listening at the other end, Ginny. I don't think I could ever face anyone else if they heard me talking like this," he joked about, a boyish smile on his face. "Even more so, because everything I've done, everything I'm about to confess, I've done for you."

Arthur couldn't help but glow with some measure of fatherly approval at this honest display of affection from his estranged son-in-law. The other men, too, seemed to be impressed with Harry's loyalty to his wife.

"I guess I should start at the beginning, yeah?" Harry said, scratching the back of his head anxiously. "In that case, I suppose everything started in India, in 1995. Remember that month I suddenly vanished into thin air?"

"I do," mumbled Arthur. "Ginny was inconsolable. We never did find out why."

"Well, the truth is, I died."

Even Dumbledore couldn't contain the shock he felt at this enormous pronouncement. It was only when they realized the recording had kept going on that he stopped it and rewound it to the exact moment where Harry made his terrible announcement and kept it there.

"What does he mean, he died?!" all but screeched Hermione as she stood up suddenly.

"This is…unexpected," agreed Frank, his arms crossed and his burrow furrowed in thought. "Perhaps we should listen more, see if he elaborates on this."

"Y-Yes, that would be most wise. I agree," said Dumbledore shakily before turning the recording back on. Hologram Harry didn't seem the least aware of their shock and kept going as he had on that day.

"Guess that scared you, huh?" he said with a rueful smile. "Well, sorry, but it's the truth. I did die. For a few minutes, I'm told. A creature called a Venati spiked me in the back just after I thought I'd killed the blasted bugger. Most painful thing I've ever felt, let me tell you. Spent a month in recovery for it."

"That explains his absence," commented Moody.

"But if I'm alive, why tell you at all, right? I'm guessing that's what you're thinking, Gin. Oh, and by the way, I'm just assuming that's you on the other side. Much less embarrassing that way."

"I'm telling you, Gin, because something changed. The Venati changed me. Not in a psychological sense, but in a real, physical sense," he explained. "But I'll get to that a bit later. For now, rest assured that I'm still me, and I still love you with all my heart," he said with a soft smile. "But now, back on topic, yeah? I died, recovered a month in India, and during that time, I was left with a lot of free time on my hands. So, like any normal person would after having a near-death experience with an unknown force, I researched the hell out of it."

Harry looked pained now. "You don't understand how hard it was not to look into them, Gin. The Venati were haunting my every dream. If I closed my eyes, I could see the one that killed me. If I ate, the food would suddenly turn into blood—my blood. A rustle in a hospital bush made me jump and scream. It wasn't physically changing, of course, but mentally speaking, I was losing it, and the Venati were at fault. And I wanted to know why."

He crossed his arms now, looking dead serious. "I used the down time to ask for books on known Magical creatures and found nothing. I looked into Dark Ritual books and found even less. I couldn't understand why no one had ever heard of any creature known as the Venati. Hell, even Command seemed reluctant to admit they existed, and even then only because I was backed up by what little was left of the expedition army. Of course, this apparent black hole of information wasn't nearly enough to stop me from looking into the Venati, so the moment I was released from the hospital, I put in a transfer for Italy, since the name sounded like Latin to me. It was."

"Venati…that means Hunter, doesn't it?" Hermione asked Dumbledore for confirmation. The old man had to think for a moment before nodding.

"Venati. The Hunters," confirmed Harry. "At the time, I couldn't fathom why the Venati had used such a human designation for their species. Now, I figure they kept it from one of their earliest incursions into our world, when the Romans named them such."

"Incursions?" mumbled Moody interestedly. "That implies they've been around more than once."

Hologram Harry shrugged his shoulders. "In the next few days, everyone will come to see the Venati, but they'll all think this is the first time they've come onto our plane. The First Legion and I know better. The Venati haven't just come to our world twice, but hundreds of times. Ever since magic was practiced, they have come here."

"At first, it wasn't even humanity's fault. Records from Roman times indicate that some poor sap would sometimes cause a summoning portal to open if consumed by rage and other darker feelings. It would be a complete accident, one that would rectify itself quickly upon the person's realization of what they'd unleashed, or their death, but it did happen. As time went on, however, they realized that there was a direct correlation between the ability to use magic, and the presence of the Venati."

Harry raised one finger then. "That was my first terrible discovery. Venati are drawn to worlds with magic," he said seriously, stunning his unseen audience. "They are multi-dimensional creatures who feed and reproduce on magic. The reason their numbers are so immense is due to their consuming of entire worlds already. This was confirmed in 200 AD, when a team of mages successfully captured one and fed it a magic-capable slave. The captured Venati then split into two in a process very much like mitosis, and was able to escape its cage with its partner. They were thankfully put down almost immediately."

"Mitosis?" asked Dumbledore as he paused the recording. Hermione nodded.

"It's something that simpler organisms are capable of doing," she explained. "Asexual reproduction, in its simplest form. One could also, I suppose, call it a form of natural self-cloning."

The men around her paled at the thought and returned their attention to the recording.

"One of the researchers, a man I know only by the name of Marcus, postulated that we were not the first world that the Venati encountered due to the captured Venati's hissed taunts—the same type I suffered through in India while the creature toyed with me. He managed to weed out an important fact from the Venati during his research, one that forever put me on the path I am now on," he explained before taking a deep breath, as though steadying himself before giving a terrible announcement. "When Venati find a world with magic, they do not rest until everything on that world is consumed. Unfortunately, that means we've come to the attention of those who would see our species eradicated to satiate their hunger."

"Merlin's beard!" breathed Arthur in horror.

Harry continued. "It gets worse. According to Marcus, no world has ever managed to repel an all-out Venati assault. The only case of survivors, he claims the Venati said, was that of a civilization which was able to fly into space, thereby guaranteeing that the Venati could not follow. We, unfortunately, do not have that luxury."

"Thus the Airships…" Hermione said with growing understanding. "I get it now! Making the Airships was more than just a military decision, don't you see?" she told the group. "It was an escape! A way to keep humanity out of Venati reach!"

"The Venati have since learned, however," Harry continued, effectively taking the wind out of Hermione's proverbial sails. "They will not make the same mistake again. They are intelligent creatures, capable of adapting to practically any situation they face, and they have a unique physiology that allows them to effectively hunt down any species ever created."

"Armed with such knowledge, what could I do but stare in horror?" continued Harry, looking more and more distressed. "It was as though everything I had found was prophesising the end of the human race! Of you, Ginny! Was there no solution? No weapon forged by man that could end their threat? Was I doomed to know where we were all collectively headed and still do nothing but stand by while it happened?!"

Dumbledore then felt something he never thought he would for the young man—sympathy. Genuine sympathy. The look of utter torment on Harry's face at that moment really rammed in the heavy burden the young man had been forced to carry.

"It drove me mad, Ginny. Even on duty, I couldn't get the idea of the world being consumed by the Venati out of my head! Every house, or building, or even just the rolling plains would become dead and burnt out to me. Happy families and couples would haunt my vision as broken cadavers—food for the hellish creatures I had faced in India."

Harry had now placed his face in his hands, his figure bent forwards as though he was going to retch. "I hope you forgive me, my love," he then said softly. "Because in my madness, I found the answer to the problem. The most ignoble one, to be sure, but the answer all the same. I couldn't just let anyone know what I had found. They wouldn't understand! They would think it the mad ramblings of a traumatized soldier! They would have locked me up and thrown away the key! I had to do something, and I had no time to flesh out alternative plans!"

Harry straightened up and clasped his hands behind his back. "Peace through superior firepower," he enunciated clearly. "I understood then. If the Venati had the numbers, then I would obliterate them through superior military strength. But the UK didn't have the numbers to do this. The Imperial Army at the time was a laughable force of a few thousands. Britain could not do it alone. I needed allies. I needed soldiers. I needed…" he trailed off for a moment before taking another deep breath.

"I needed the Empire."

Dumbledore paused the recording again, stunned by what he'd heard so far. His companions were similarly struck dumb.

"After all these years…" Hermione whispered, looking on the verge of tears. "…no wonder he hates us!"

"What have we done?" exclaimed Dumbledore in horror.

Imperial Troop Transport A-5

"Touchdown in ten minutes. Prepare for hostile surface conditions."

Harry sat passively in his seat, the metallic safety bar lowered down onto him to keep him from falling due to turbulence or enemy fire. His arms were crossed and his eyes were shut as he awaited the moment they landed. Unlike his First Legion soldiers, Harry was not wearing ADST armour. He didn't need it.

He wasn't being arrogant, either. The truth of the matter was, the Venati would also sense something different about him the moment they began combat. He would be their main target, because he would also be the most dangerous one as well as the hardest to kill.

He calmly opened his eyes then and extracted his left hand from his crossed arms. Staring at it calmly, he watched as the rough, pale skin suddenly began glistening a metallic hue, only for it to disappear just as quickly when he tucked it back under his right arm.

There was a reason he was the most dangerous man alive.

"People will probably get it wrong for the coming centuries."

Meanwhile, Dumbledore and his cohorts had reactivated the hologram, torn between eagerness to listen for more information, and shame from what they realized they had done.

"The Empire was not the end I was seeking. It has always been a simple means to a greater end. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that it was already in place, I probably would have used any global system I could find, such as the United Nations, to bring about global unification. When I first realized what the Venati were capable of, and how woefully unequipped we were to deal with them, I realized that it was impossible to stop them if countries had to singularly deal with them. The concept of the nation-state ceased to be a logical impediment. It became an obstacle. The nation-state had to be destroyed and replaced with Empire if humanity was to stand together against the Venati."

Harry then surprisingly snorted derisively. "Of course, there will be detractors. Peace-lovers and spineless fools who would argue that consent would have been a better form of unification. That if all the world knew what we were dealing with, they would ultimately unite. Hogwash," he spat hatefully. "Even if everyone accepted my warning, do you really think they'd have bowed their heads to a global institution? Hell no! There would be bickering over leadership, petty politics, and even dissent. Some would give up altogether, preferring to step aside and watch the world burn! Others would become traitors, conspiring with the Venati in the pathetic hope that they would be spared! They don't understand! They can't understand! The Venati don't negotiate! They kill! They burn! They consume!"

Harry's rant slowed down eventually, his holographic figure breathing heavily as he got over ten years of pent-up anger out into the open. "Even worse were those blasted mages in the Ministry of Magic!" he raged. "Myopic, blundering fools! They refused to back off, to submit to the greater good, and for what?! The right to become a nation of hermits?! Every time they dropped the ball, it was time lost that I could have used to set the world up for combat-readiness against the Venati! And that fool, Dumbledore! Always with his eyes to the sheer bloody sky, that one! With his uppity morality and preachiness—why can't he seen that there are more dangerous things out there than his stupid obsession over the metaphorical battle of Light versus Dark?"

Throughout his cathartic rant, Harry's holographic expression seemed to become more and more haunted with every passing moment. "He has no idea—none at all, of the real enemy, and what's worse, he doesn't want to. None of them do. As long as they can attribute it to Light or Dark, they live a life of meaningless existence, with their heads buried in the sand while the rest of us fight the inevitable tide."

"I couldn't let them bring down everything I've worked so hard to achieve, Ginny," he continued. "Couldn't let them bollocks everything up just as we were about to achieve total dominance over the Magical world! The world was supposed to watch as Project Archangel put the Empire back on the map, and then bow their heads in submission before our superior firepower! The coup, the war—none of it was supposed to happen!" he railed. "If it wasn't for the damned mages, if it weren't for the damn Council of Death!"

Hermione was openly sobbing now, despite her best attempts to rein the unbidden emotions in. "What have we done?" she sobbed, rocking herself back and forth. "What have we done?"

Dumbledore stayed silent, as did the other men. There was truthfully nothing they could say at this point that could justifiably calm the distraught young woman.

"The Council…" Harry continued, somehow managing to rein in his own despair. "…the Council. Yes, that was something important I found out. They weren't supposed to exist. They were an anomaly—completely outside my plans and predictions. The Death Eaters should have scattered—should have remained splintered with the disappearance of their master. Instead, out of nowhere, this Council appears? Too convenient. So, of course, I dug deeper, trying to find out where they came from. I did," he declared darkly. "And when I did, I had them all killed."

"As you've probably guessed, the Council of Death was the work of the Venati," he explained, again shocking his unseen audience dumb. "Not Venati themselves, of course; I would have detected the opening of such portals. No, they were the work of the Venati indirectly. They had sought out the most malleable of Death Eaters and whispered in their minds until the fools believed the voices to be their own minds. They were directed by the Venati in order to provide a conduit for their arrival. It was the perfect arrangement. The Venati, through the Council, would have access to thousands, and later millions of lives ready to die for them—all of them highly trained fighters. These would, in turn, engage my own forces and we would deplete each other until the Venati would meet minimal opposition to their inevitable invasion."

Harry took a deep breath and reached seemingly outside the hologram for something, before his hand returned with a glass of water, which he avidly drank. Giving a gasp of relief, he then proceeded to put away the glass before continuing. "The coup was the single most devastating blow they could have delivered to me at the time. Everything I had worked for was, in an instant, robbed from me. It was devastating. The sheer losses of life, the idea of losing mum, dad, and my siblings. The idea of losing you…it damned near killed me. Even worse was the realization that we were now completely open to Venati invasion. There was nothing in place anymore to protect us. As far as I knew, the Venati had won. I…I gave up."

"I had no idea…" breathed Dumbledore.

Harry seemed to straighten up then. He wiped his face with his sleeve and got back into a cocky stance. "Of course, that lasted only a short while. After I went through the usual motions of grief, I realized that giving up was exactly what the Venati wanted, and so I decided to give them as much grief as I could in revenge for what had been taken from me. I thus created the NBLF with the intention of propping myself up as the eventual leader of a united world," he admitted, giving his unseen audience a somewhat cocky grin. "That's right. You heard me. There was a time when 'Loyal Harry Potter' had dreams of sitting on the Imperial throne. Damn near got to do so, too."

"Remember the Conclave of Imperial Brethren? That was my idea. Or rather, part of my plan. By leading by example, I made sure that the world would be eventually split up among strongmen and warlords—the strongest of which I would then invite into the Conclave, and slowly work into assimilating them. Most importantly, however, was the need for someone else to bring up the idea of all out war on non-Imperial holdings. I couldn't do so; it would immediate alienate the more freedom-loving of the warlords, like McDonald and O'Connor. So, naturally, I had to let the fallout from such a plan to fall on someone of aggressive reputation, and Tybalt filled that role wonderfully," he said with a smirk. "Of course, it probably helped that some of my raids diverted the Yanks' attention from my own holdings to his. We were still warlords, after all, and we couldn't trust each other all that much."

Harry looked frustrated then. "Of course, everything changed after the American Offensive. When we found the Shadow Heir, I had my own doubts, to be completely honest. After all, I had already put into work the plan to make my own ascension to the throne possible. Hell, even if I didn't want to take it for myself, I at least was about to accrue enough influence to basically be able to nominate anyone to take it legitimately. With the Shadow Child's survival, however, that threw a wrench into the plan, to my utter frustration," he admitted. "The old plan wouldn't work anymore, you see."

Dumbledore paused it then as Arthur seemed about to explode with a question. "Yes, Arthur?" he asked politely.

"I don't understand!" exclaimed the Weasley patriarch. "If he'd been setting himself up as the next King or Emperor, or whatever, why let the Shadow Child take it away from him?" he asked in confusion. "He certainly proved himself ruthless enough to take other, more drastic actions!"

"It's simple," interjected Hermione, showing an amazing ability to understand the Duke's inner workings. Even she seemed surprised by how simple it all really was. "Can't you remember? When the Duke of Halifax was leader of the NBLF, the main thing about him was his loyalty to the British throne. If he opposed the succession after finding the Shadow Child, he would have lost the support of pretty much the entire NBLF and the other Loyalist factions."

Rather than speculate, however, Dumbledore simply turned the recording back on, and hologram Harry unfroze himself to continue his speech.

"With the Shadow Child revealed, and not by my own hand, there was little choice in the matter. My own forces had stayed with me partially out of personal loyalty, but also partially because of their own loyalty to the British throne, combined with a desire of bloody vengeance. To oppose the succession would have been political and military suicide," he stated simply, confirming Hermione's logic. "So instead, I took her in, and made sure to be the most influential member of her entourage. I didn't just want a puppet on the throne—I wanted someone as ruthless as I needed Earth's leader to be in order to efficiently stamp out the Venati threat. Someone who wouldn't need mollycoddling and shy away from the idea of glassing continents, if need be."

"This is all very…cold of him," Frank opined, having stayed silent for most of the recording up until now. "He's been playing half the world like an unseen puppet master."

Dumbledore nodded. "Yet, there is an elegance and adaptability to it that cannot go without admiration," he stated. "Lesser men would have collapsed under the strain of all these changing events, but it just seems to goad mister Potter on."

"The greater good demanded that a Queen of steel sit on the Imperial throne, and I delivered," Harry then said vehemently. "I took a raped, beaten, and traumatized girl and forged her into a weapon against the Venati. I took the mismatched forces of three of the most powerful military factions in the world and turned them into an army. With almost one swift stroke, I undid all the damage that the Death Eaters and those blasted mages from the Order had done in 1998," he declared triumphantly. "Of course, things only got better from then on. I found you, my sweet Ginny, and my family. I found a daughter I never knew I had, and rebuilt the world to my image. I took a decadent, splintered world and forced it together through steel and purified it by fire."

"We are now almost ready, my love," he said with growing excitement. "In a few days, we will have begun the offensive on Hogwarts; the last remaining magical citadel on this planet. Every other such location of great magical concentration has been methodically wiped clean off the globe, and Bill has been working on the final piece of the puzzle that will allow us to forever seal this world from the Venati," he grinned. "And, of course, that fool Dumbledore has already reached Hogwarts, and is no doubt telling Riddle of the supposed alterations that some of our best have gone through."

"Wait, supposed?" interjected Dumbledore, surprised. The others, however, focused on a much more different piece of information.

"What does he mean, you went to Riddle?" demanded Moody as he stood up abruptly. "You told us it was involuntary!"

"Headmaster, please explain yourself!" even Hermione was enraged by this revelation.

Dumbledore seemed to shrink in himself at the onslaught of angry looks he was receiving. "I…I had thought Potter uncontrollable," he admitted. "Tom…offered to kill Potter, while making an Unbreakable Vow not to seek out and exterminate the Order or the other Wizards and Witches, blood status notwithstanding. It…was too good an offer to pass up."

Arthur Weasley, a normally calm man by any account, seemed on the verge of an apoplectic fit. "You dealt with Riddle?!" he all but yelled, red faced from his extreme anger. "That…monster that possessed my daughter?!"

Hermione, however, brushed aside her father-in-law's indignant yelling and zeroed in on something Dumbledore had let slip. "What do you mean he made an Unbreakable Vow not to seek out Wizards and Witches, regardless of blood status?" she demanded. "I was under the impression that he wanted half-bloods and muggleborn exterminated."

"So were we," added in Moody with a growl, followed by a nod from Frank.

Dumbledore hesitantly shrugged. "To be completely honest, I don't understand either. It was his idea to include that clause, even," he added. "I had been about to suggest it, but he beat me to it. I merely thought that Tom might have turned a new leaf."

Frank slapped a hand to his own face in frustration, while Moody shook his head in disgust. "And we wondered why Potter held us in such contempt?"

Dumbledore had enough pride to look indignant. "I understand my mistake now, Alastor," he snapped. "After Tom made it clear what he wanted my golems to do, I wanted none of it, and he imprisoned me, as you well know."

"Bit late for a change of heart, there, Dumbledore," observed Frank coldly. "Who knows how many Imperial soldiers would try to kill you if they knew that the man who created the golems who killed their mates was on this ship?"

Dumbledore seemed resigned to his fate, however. "Whatever happens, happens, Frank," he told the man simply. "My sins are too huge to be washed away with simple death, however."

Hermione, for her part, was growing disgusted with the whole affair, and simply motioned to the recording. "Please, continue the recording," she half-asked, half-demanded.

Obligingly, Dumbledore pressed the button and hologram Harry unfroze once again.

"Of course, that part was all thanks to you, my lovely flower," Harry practically crooned, making Hermione blush unwillingly at the way he'd spoken the words, again meant for Ginny. "Such a brilliant plan in its simplicity. Hide an object with another."

"A red herring," supplied Hermione when she saw the confused looks.

"We didn't want word of Project Valkyrie to get out, so we created Project Faust. An external, artificial core!" he laughed. "Can you believe how gullible some people can get? A little masterful transfiguration and charms work, and the rest was essentially light shows. Sirius, of course, proved to be an amazing magical master—catching that AK and snuffing it out. Of course, he'll probably never admit that all it took was split-second Disapparation coupled with fancy lights to make it look like he caught the AK. A real masterpiece, in any case."

Harry grinned conspiratorially. "Of course, mine was just as masterful, if I do say so myself," he essentially gloated. "Putting up glass barriers around the Death Eaters, placing them under a contained distance sensory-alteration charm, and charming them to look like an abandoned Harrisburg? The whole thing drove them mad!"

Arthur looked at Hermione for answers now, ignoring Dumbledore altogether. "Distance sensory-alteration charm?"

Hermione nodded. "Basically, he charms people to believe that the distance they are covering is much greater than it really is, meaning that although the victim may feel like they are moving forward, they're really just running in place."

"Ingenious," breathed Arthur in admiration. Even Dumbledore seemed shocked at the ingenuity of the charm.

"So that's how he did it," he mumbled to himself, before continuing the recording.

"It was all a load of nonsense, of course. External cores? Bill would have been over the moon if any such breakthrough was possible. No, the real importance was on Project Valkyrie, which no one thankfully ever found out about," Harry continued, a satisfied look on his face. The image then blurred suddenly, sizzling out of existence. After a moment of shocked silence, however, the hologram returned, though this time, the Harry they were staring at seemed much more serious and lacking any of the levity his previous incarnation had.

"I admit, I'm impressed, Dumbledore," the recording said then, startling the assembled mages by looking straight at Dumbledore. "I honestly thought you would have stopped long ago, probably out of disgust of my actions and plans. You have a harder stomach than I gave you credit for, it seems."

The figure then looked to its sides and continued. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Ms. Granger-Weasley, my father in law, Neville's father, and Moody are all there as well, yes?" he surmised, to their shock. The hologram chuckled darkly. "How pointless. Asking a rhetorical question via recording? Not the best way to guarantee an answer. It's no surprise, though, that you would surround yourself with the aforementioned, Dumbledore. I imagine you watched a few seconds, decided it was potentially ground-breaking information, and chose to include the more rationally-inclined members of your former organization? Face it, Dumbledore, you're an easy book to read."

Hologram Harry clasped his hands again. "Let's see…how about some context, first? I've just woken up from dealing with Riddle in my mind, Viktor and his squad got you out of Hogwarts, and Ginny put two blades through Narcissa Malfoy's eyes. So, in taking the time to freshen up, I've decided to update this living will of mine with more recent information, as it were."

"Let's be clear here, Dumbledore. I hate you," he declared vehemently. "I despise you. In fact, there are very little ways one can describe how I feel about you within the confines of all the human languages combined, but rest assured that I wish you were dead. However, even as I hate you, I do recognize the intellectual mind behind the skewed vision of reality. Were I a different man, and had I grown in a different environment, perhaps you would have filled a paternal role in my life as you no doubt wished you could in your efforts to control me. That has not happened, nor will it ever."

Harry didn't let up, however, and continued. "That being said, I have decided to leave this living will of mine in your hands because of two reasons. You have the intellectual capacity, combined with the right amount of ruthlessness, to understand why I did what I did. Second, I gambled on the idea that you would have others listen in on this, and if I am correct, then the five most rational minds in the former Order are now listening to me and the others have set you straight, making you clear-headed enough to understand what I'm about to divulge. With their help, I expect that you will come to understand what humanity is dealing with right now, and take the appropriate actions to save it should I fail."

"Got that right," mumbled Moody, who had his real eye glaring at Dumbledore reproachfully, while his electric-blue magical eye was focused on the recording.

"The Venati, as you've no doubt just been educated by myself, are the biggest threat to humanity. Not just because they consume anything and everything, nor because they are attracted to worlds with magic. They are the most dangerous threat to humanity because, on a genetic level, they are perfect," warned Harry. "Not in the sense that we should all aspire to become Venati, but because their genetic structures are, in a word, parasitic. It sounds like an error in biological terminology, but it really, really isn't."

"You see, Venati are, as I've explained before, shape shifters. However, the method by which they shape shift is intrinsically linked with their genetic makeup. One cannot look, feel, and come across as human, after all, without actually being human."

"What?" asked Frank, looking confused.

Hermione, for her part, looked downright horrified. "No," she breathed. "No way. That's impossible."

"What, girl?" demanded Moody. "What is it?"

"What he's suggesting…it's…no, that's completely and biologically impossible," she repeated herself, shaking her head in denial.

"At this moment, I imagine that Ms. Granger-Weasley has become something of a basket case over my choice of words," the hologram amazingly predicted. "Rest assured, Ms. Granger, I am not fibbing. Venati shape shift by taking their victim's DNA and reconfiguring their own to match it, with several, subtle alterations that, unless you modify your equipment to look for it, would pass undetected in all known scanning equipment," he revealed. "This is what allows them to take a human figure, while retaining their Venati mind."

Frank blinked. "I still don't understand," he admitted somewhat shamefully. "Isn't he just saying what happens with metamorphmagi?" he asked Hermione carefully.

The bushy-haired brunette shook her head wildly in denial. "No! It's so much more horrible than that," she replied, horrified by the revelation. "Metamorphmagi are, at the very most basic level, experts at self-Transfiguration. They can change the way they look, but what it's doing is temporarily changing their superficial appearance, not rewriting their genetic code. What the Duke is saying is…well…the Venati aren't just changing their appearance, they become you by actually changing their genetic makeup. It would be virtually undetectable. Magic users back in the day would certainly have had no method of distinguishing one person from a shape-shifted Venati counterpart."

"What's so impossible about it, then?" asked Arthur, curious.

"Arthur, changing one's genetic makeup would necessitate, in the best of conditions, a very slow and progressive process. It would take months, if not years of progressive gene therapy to insert new genes or take out old ones. What the Venati are doing is changing their genetic makeup on the spot, which, if done on a human, would undoubtedly cause catastrophic, cascading genetic failure. The body would become so overtaxed in trying to rewrite itself that it would eventually just cease to function," Hermione babbled the explanation away as she realized what kind of creature they were dealing with.

Hologram Harry seemed amused at something, even as the Order members fretted away. "And now I imagine that Ms. Granger has explained why this ability of the Venati's is so incredibly dangerous," he once again predicted with amazing accuracy. "But what she doesn't know is that there is a way to fuse human and Venati genes in order to create a hybrid."

Hermione's eyes boggled at the thought.

"Of course, when such an event happened, it was completely by accident," added Harry nonchalantly. "I personally would have never imagined, nor wanted to imagine, the idea of combining a human being with a Venati. Just the mental images would have been scarring for life."

He brought up an arm for apparent inspection of his left hand. "When it did happen, however, the recipient had no idea that anything had changed in him. He spent years in blissful ignorance of the fact until one day, while secluded in his quarters, he let out some pent up frustrations and realized that the fist he had punched against a wall was imbedded in it, and was now the shape of a blade. Like so," he said, just as his left hand seemed to blur and slowly morphed itself into a gleaming onyx-coloured blade.

"Observe. The material is no longer human in genetic structure," he recited as a scientist would, unknowingly ignoring the horrified looks of his unseen audience. "It is of chitinous texture, but with the durability and tensile strength of hardened composite steel. And, after extensive genetic testing by Bill, we have confirmed that is it entirely Venati in provenance."

He shifted his hand back into human shape and crossed his arms over his chest, adopting a semi-confrontational posture. "As you may have surmised, I am a Human-Venati hybrid, and believe me, not by choice."

Imperial Front Lines, ITT A-5…

Harry was already standing in front of the ramp when the ship touched ground, the sound of Venati throwing themselves at the metallic hull ringing all around him. Behind him, the soldiers of his prized First Legion were lining up in formation, their ADST armour ready to protect them from the Venati, while their fully automatic, non-magic enhanced weapons were all raised and ready to mow down some hellspawn.

Harry had his hands clasped behind his back, his stance wide and his head bowed slightly as he waited for the ramp to fall. When the activation klaxon rang and the lighting in the cargo hold turned green, Harry noticed it but did not react to it.

Patiently, he waited while he heard the sound of the ramp activating and slowly lowering itself, finally allowing the light of day reach the otherwise hermetically sealed cargo area of the ITT.

The sound of hungry Venati reached his ears, howling and baying for blood as was their wont. He sniffed in disgust once before returning to his patient demeanour.

"Steel yourselves, lads," he warned his men suddenly, even as the ramp lowered enough for some Venati to futilely try to stick their heads through the gaps between the ramp and the ITT's hull. "From here on out, there's no retreat without death. No victory without sacrifice. Last chance to back out."

The overwhelming silence gave him his answer. Finally, the Venati seemed to rein themselves in as they realized they would have to wait to assault the men inside the transport, giving the descending ramp a wide berth as they waited like the skilled predators they were.

Surprising them, however, the ramp stopped its slow descent about half-way before simply dropping to the ground with a loud thud, also kicking up a lot of dust. Almost immediately, the Venati sprung into action, but were just as quickly stopped when a particular smell assailed their sensitive noses. It was different, and at the same time, familiar. Even to them, it reeked of corruption of their own kind, which surprisingly drew them back as they realized there was something very wrong with this situation.

Out of the cloud of dust, they watched as a single man emerged, his hands clasped behind his back—seemingly alone in his venture. Immediately, they realized this man was the source of the wrongness they had been smelling, and growled in a feral manner as most predators did when threatened.

Harry, for his part, was unimpressed—an apparent benefit of having Venati genes in him now. He was no longer assailed by the impossible fear he had felt in India. Right now, they felt like any other animal, and that gave him an edge over them.

"Human…with the ssssmell of Venati?" demanded one of the creatures as it seemed to waver between aggression and apprehension.

"A gift from an old acquaintance," Harry replied simply as he unclasped his hands and brought his arms forward, changing them into the chitinous, onyx blades he had recorded in the hologram. "He sends his regards. Says to say, 'fuck you.'"

With that, he swung his two blade-arms downward, and with a little magic channelling, kicked up a wind that blew away the cloud of dust, revealing to the Venati the sight of fifty heavily armed ADSTs holding their weapons at the ready, their sights trained on the surrounding enemies.

"Impossssssible!" hissed one of the Venati.

Almost instantly, the creature's head was separated from its body by one of Harry's blade arms as he casually walked past it.

"I get that a lot," he stated belatedly. "First Legion!"

Immediately, the Venati forces immediately close to the ITT realized their predicament and lunged forward to rip apart the Imperial forces. They never got the chance.

"FIRE!"