AN: Okay, next chapter. Also, kind of curious how many complaints I'll get for Dumbledore's portrayal. *shrugs* I guess I'm about to find out, eh? - MB
Also, amusing note: it's actually getting that the Chapter Roman Numeral part of the title is eating up the character limit so much that I can barely fit an adequate title anymore. Note to self -- don't do that ever again. :P
Previously…
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!"
The moment his "bodyguards" opened fire, Harry sprung into action, completely ignoring the hail of bullets at his back. Launching himself forward, he quickly shifted his arms into the chitinous, onyx blades he had previously demonstrated and lunged at the nearest Venati, using his arms to impale two of them through the head—moments before they were then shredded apart by the armour-piercing bullets of the ADST.
Shifting his right arm back into human form, Harry kicked himself off the ground sideways, using his left arm as leverage as he moved sideways and landed on an attacking Venati's body. Landing left-foot first, he then brought down his right knee and, shifting his right arm back into a blade mid-swing, pierced the Venati's neck, severing it almost completely.
Taking out his impaled arms, he was about to get attacked from behind when he merely closed his eyes, adopting a look of concentration, and three spikes suddenly shot out from his back, impaling the Venati in the head, chest area, and front right leg. It died with barely a yelp as it hung off his back spikes, which he quickly retracted.
He was pleased when he saw that not only had the ADST unit seen everything, they also didn't seem to care. Instead, they held their ground with military precision, alternating between shooting from the hip or precision firing with their fully automatic assault rifles. Slowly, though, they were making progress, as the circle of Venati became wider and the way to the Imperial lines became more and more possible.
Eventually, the ADST unit made its way to Harry, standing ominously on guard behind him as they heard their ITT fly away. There was no more use for it on the ground. From here on out, they would keep killing, or be killed in the end. No retreat, no surrender.
"There is only one measure of success," Harry reminded his men as he observed the wary throng of Venati around them. Without raising his arms, he morphed them back into their onyx blade shapes, adding an elbow spike to them as well. His eyes seemed to burn with green fire, with sickly green wisps of vapour escaping his eyes. "Kill or be killed."
Helen Parker, Lance Corporal, First Legion, 2nd Company watched as her CO shifted his arm from human to weapon in a matter of seconds with a dispassionate gaze. Helen, a veteran of both the RNA and the India Campaign of 1995, was one of the few in the whole world who, like her other First Legion comrades, knew what the Duke had done to preserve the planet.
She didn't know the full details, of course—she figured there wasn't a single soul throughout the entirety of the human race who knew that much other than the Duke himself—but she knew of the experiments, of the deliberate calculations he had taken in making sure the world was guided in the right direction.
Helen had always known about the Venati. Well, maybe not always—but certainly after the India Campaign, when the future Duke had told them exactly what they had fought. She considered that the day the First Legion was born, for all intents and purposes. Even if they had all stared at him in horror back then, the weight of that revelation markedly changed them all. Maybe it was coincidence that, barely two years later, they were all brought back together in their new respective regiments to fight as part of the Royal Northern Army in Scotland. Or, more likely, they had all felt drawn to the now-promoted Colonel Harry Potter, whom they had all known as a wee lad. Hell, Helen herself was five years his senior, and she had been among the youngest in the India detachment.
She surmised that watching the young man before her now was somewhat akin to how a big sister might feel after watching her youngest brother make something of himself. It was a mix of apprehension for his safety and genuine pride. However, overpowering both feelings was also the inexorable sense of duty that every soldier felt when marching into battle.
He was not her honorary sibling right now. He was the Iron Duke, Hero of the Empire.
Her leader.
She heard him as he spoke. Grim words indeed, but never more true than right now. Here they were, 50 ADST-armoured First Legion soldiers and one Human-Venati hybrid, surrounded by innumerable Venati foes. Suicidal odds any other day.
Perfect for the First Legion.
The First. No one ever questioned why they were the First. Not that the reason was complicated, though. They were the First because they were the first Imperial soldiers who had come face to face with the dark reality that were the Venati. They were the first to meet them, and then bleed because of them. Like their emblem suggested, they were the Sword and Shield of humanity. They were the Snake Eaters, the Empire's Finest.
They were the First.
She heard the sergeant shout then, giving the order to split up into FAM teams and spread out along the circular area their point-defence had formed.
She immediately glanced at the person to her left, Private Jack Miller, another India veteran like her. Even if she couldn't see his expression through the ADST-issued helmet, she knew he was looking right back at her. It was a sense that developed over the years of camaraderie on the field of battle. With a nod, the two immediately slid into position, bumping into each other's backs as they levelled their fully automatic assault rifles and silently dared the Venati to attack.
It didn't take long. The Duke and they had already killed quite a few of the creatures, and the other Venati seemed to take offense both to their fellows' deaths as well as to the Duke's mere presence. Thus, within a few seconds of the 50 soldiers splitting up into 25 FAM teams, the Venati lashed out, quickly sprinting towards them in order to render their weapons inconvenient.
Helen and Jack, along with their fellow mates, were having none of that. Instead, they opened fire the moment the Venati seemed to twitch their muscles for movement, quickly mowing down twenty of them within seconds of the shooting starting. Yet, the odds against them were overwhelming enough to warrant some of the creatures to get close. When they did, they lashed out with their muscular legs to claw at the ADST armour, which took the hit with minimal damage. When this did happen, Helen quickly let go of the assault rifle's forward grasp and lowered it to her sidearm, which she drew and used to shoot the offending creatures at point blank range, all the while keeping up a steady rate of (inaccurate) fire at the throng of Venati around them.
The Duke was also quite helpful in that regard. Whenever the creatures go in close, he would often morph his arm into one some sort of organic whip, which he would in turn use to drag the creature away from the soldiers and throw it at its fellow Venati, often bowling them over in the process and scoring multiple kills whenever he followed that up with a morphed arm blade.
Occasionally, however, the Duke forewent the use of his mutagenic arms entirely, instead relying on good old fashioned close-combat tactics and his magic. Helen actually watched him vaporize a Venati by ramming what seemed like a glowing ball of energy into its side, causing a magnificent explosion that obliterated the creature and five more near it.
Not that Helen herself was without her fair share of impressive kills.
One of the Venati, having somehow managed to survive a hail of bullets, had launched itself at her, aiming to topple her over and have the other creatures overwhelm her with sheer numbers. Unfortunately for the creature, she quickly broke off her back-to-back arrangement, slipped underneath the beast, and came back up behind it as it flew through thin air.
"Down, doggy," she said laconically, before riddling it with more bullets.
She heard the tell-tale click of an empty magazine then, and turned to her partner, who still seemed to be going strong.
"Reloading!" she informed him, before turning her full attention to ejecting the empty clip, grabbing a new one from her belt, and jamming it into place. The whole process took less than 2 seconds, but those were critical seconds where she could have been hit by any number of enemies.
She wasn't worried, though. Training dictated that while one of them reloaded, the other half of the team was to provide covering fire, and Jake was very good at his job. Quickly moving his forward arm to his hip, Jake grabbed a hold of a small submachine gun they all carried for this express purpose and snapped back into position at Helen's back, his arms spread wide as he let loose with both guns. All this time, he spoke not a word.
"Done," she said simply when she had finished reloading, once again resuming her killing spree. With a nod, Jake stopped firing with his SMG and quickly holstered it, returning his now free arm to the forward grip of his assault rifle and continuing his firing with deadly accuracy.
Helen quickly dispatched three of the nearest approaching Venati, each of them tapped twice in the head. A glance around her told her that the 50-man strong detachment seemed to be performing beyond expectations, with not a single loss yet to their name. The Duke, for his part seemed to be moving from team to team, often providing backup when things looked a little too hairy.
Their good fortune was bound to fail at some point, however. Good as the ADST-armoured First Legion troops were, the Venati were no slouches, either. They hadn't become the most lethal hunters in existence out of pure chance—it was all experience, adaptability, and skill.
As such, the first death in their 50-man group came when one Private Kyle Manning's assault rifle suddenly jammed in the middle of firing. Even though he had then proceeded to act according to protocol, one of the Venati was able to reach him before he had finished fixing his weapon and spear-tackled the man, bringing the soldier to the ground roughly and leaving his partner exposed, which other Venati quickly took advantage of.
Manning's partner was quickly overwhelmed as dozens of Venati attacked him suddenly from all sides while the Duke was away helping another team. Even though the ADST armour held on long enough for him to dispatch 10 of the offending Venati, it finally did give out, and Manning's partner died when a Venati morphed part of its neck into a long, thin lance and rammed it into his heart.
His partner's death enraged Manning into a frenzy, however, and after shooting his foe in the face with his pistol, he quickly aimed at the murderous creature that had killed his partner and shot it multiple times as well. Unfortunately, by shooting form his face-up prone position, he allowed a Venati to sneak in behind him and ram a morphed spike underneath his helmet, jamming it straight into his brain and instantly ending his life.
Upon noticing the end of two of their comrades' lives, however, the detachment renewed their assault with furious vigour, cutting down any and all Venati who tried to inch closer to them. However, the deaths of two of their own had also highlighted the inherent problem of their FAM tactic—something that their sergeant was quick to remedy.
"Double line!" Helen heard the sergeant roar over the comm. "Double-edged, stubbed formation!"
With a brief word of acknowledgement, she turned her attention to her partner and tapped him in the side with her elbow lightly, notifying him of their redeployment. With a short nod, Jake broke off his assault and provided covering fire as she made her way to the middle of their circular defensive area. Once in the middle, she turned and provided Jake with covering fire, successfully warding off the incoming Venati as he dashed over to the middle as well. Everywhere around her, the ADST FAM teams were nearing in to the middle, where Helen and the sergeant's FAM team were already waiting.
Once they were all concentrated in the middle, they quickly got into position, forming two rows of 13 ADST each, with the remaining two members acting as the "stubs" of the double-line on each end, thus providing flank-covering fire. Helen was one of those stubs.
The Venati merely seemed to scoff at their new formation, having taken heart—did they take heart? At all? Did they even have something like a human heart?—from the successful kill of two of the otherwise seemingly unstoppable band of humans. Excited at the prospect of finally killing off these nuisances so that they could focus on the real danger—that being the Duke—they pounced on the armoured soldiers with all due speed, seeking a quick resolution to the fighting.
The ADSTs were having none of it, however. Feet firmly planted on the ground and assault rifles levelled at eyesight, they held their ground with unshakeable discipline. In the middle of the forward-facing line, the detachment's commanding sergeant kept their morale up with his speeches.
"NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER!" the sergeant yelled as the group opened fire and exterminated the advancing lines of the Venati.
"AH-OO!" The group responded with a loud, chanted yell of affirmation.
"NO SACRIFICE, NO VICTORY!"
"AH-OO!" they chanted again, once more mowing down the advancing enemy with deadly precision.
"IN LIFE, HONOUR!"
"AH-OO!"
"IN PEACE, VIGILANCE!"
"AH-OO!"
The First Legion soldiers chanted their Legion creed without missing a single step in their defence. There was a good reason they had the reputation of being the single most reliable Legion in the entire Armed Forces, after all, and that was partially due to the very obvious characteristic that one noticed when one spoke to a First Legion trooper.
Fanaticism.
Nothing short of that word seemed adequate, to be honest. Off the battlefield, on the battlefield—it made no difference. They were always seemingly ready to kill at the behest of the only man they ever acknowledged as their rightful commander: the Duke of Halifax. The Queen, they would follow to the death, but the Duke, they would follow into Hell.
Said Duke was doing a right proper job of instilling the fear of God into the Venati, too. Despite their massed firepower, the damage they were inflicting on the Venati was just not comparable to the damage he was singlehandedly dishing out on the forces of true Darkness.
He was like a bloody whirlwind hitting a town made of hay. Combining his magic with his mutating body was just bloody unfair, as far as the Venati were concerned.
Hell, even they hadn't thought the merging of Venati and human cells possible.
Then again, neither had Harry. He'd just gone with the flow on it.
Plus, the humans had actually found a way to neutralize their psychological and physical effects on the humans? What the hell had happened to the nice, ready-to-be-consumed race they had encountered less than two decades ago?
The results being, many, many dead Venati littering the grounds of Hogwarts as the Duke and his detachment of ADSTs, combined with hundreds of other, much bigger detachments scattered among the Imperial lines and within the Venati ranks themselves, mowed the Dark army down.
And yet, despite the apparent gains they were acquiring, Harry couldn't help but feel worried, even as he impaled four more of the foul creatures on his spiked arm. The creatures themselves, while positively terrorizing and lethal, were not the true threat he was seeking out. That honour was reserved for the man…or thing currently residing in Hogwarts Castle.
The plan was quite simple. They had already vaporized his golem army, forcing him to reveal the Venati ahead of schedule and thus reveal one of his aces, but now it seemed to be much harder to proceed to step two: forcing out his lieutenants.
How many more Venati did he have to kill to prove how dangerous he was to Riddle's plans before he sent his trusted lieutenants to kill him?
Sighing in frustration at his inability to come up with an adequate answer, he focused once more on dispatching the Venati more and more spectacularly, hoping that the incredibly showy—and totally misleading—acts of power would convince Riddle of the need to eliminate him immediately.
The now-defunct SAS said it best, he found.
He Who Dares, Wins.
HMIS Invincible…
"Judging from the looks on your faces, I'd wager you found out about something that I'll probably have to smack Harry for divulging later on."
Those were the words of Bill Weasley upon seeing the five frazzled, most intelligent members of the Order of the Phoenix barge into his personal laboratory on the Invincible. As a point of interest, it hadn't actually been designed as a lab; the room was actually supposed to be his living quarters.
Hermione blinked at the amazingly accurate statement. "How did you--?"
Bill rolled his eyes before pointing at the disk that Dumbledore was carrying like it was a precious object. "Who do you think gave that moron the holographic recorder?" he asked dryly. "It's not like those grow on trees y'know."
Just then, Fleur walked out of an adjacent room, carrying a small stack of papers. She looked quite unhappy with the menial labour, but stopped upon sight of the mages.
"What are…isn't that your prototype holographic recorder?" she asked Bill, changing questions mid-sentence.
Bill rolled his eyes. "It sure is," he confirmed deadpan.
"But you gave that to His Grace."
"I sure did."
"He said it was for something important."
"His living will, in fact," corrected Bill.
Somehow, that didn't seem to faze the Frenchwoman at all. "So why do they have it?"
Bill raised an inquisitive, and cocky, eyebrow at the group as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Why indeed?"
The five mages, who had been looking from Fleur to Bill back and forth during the short interplay seemed to shrink under the irritated gaze of the disk's creator. Obviously, he hadn't meant for his new toy to fall in their hands, and like a little boy with his toys, was extremely jealous over who got their hands on it.
"The Duke…" Hermione braved, "…sent it to us—I mean, to Dumbledore, before he left."
Fleur couldn't help it. She snorted out loud in laughter. Had her hands not been occupied carrying the small, important stack of papers, she would have covered her mouth when she did.
Bill seemed equally amused. "As far as excuses go," he replied deadpan, "that rates about as credible as 'the dog ate my homework.'"
"Actually, that happened to me once," Fleur interjected, finally deciding to put down the stack on Bill's horrendously cluttered desk. "Our family dog, Toutou, got a hold of my charms work and ate it."
Bill raised an eyebrow at her. "Did the teacher believe it?"
"What do you think?"
A cough.
Bill and Fleur turned their heads towards the group of mages, seeing Arthur Weasley hide his mouth behind a closed fist as they did so.
Bill waved away their obvious frustration at his and Fleur's byplay. "Fine, fine," he conceded, annoyed. "What earth-shattering information did my foolish brother in law reveal so I can smack him appropriately later on?"
"Everything," was Hermione's single-word, and yet strongly passionate answer.
Bill was unimpressed. How many times had he heard that before? "Indulge me. Define 'everything'" he countered, making mocking air quotation marks as he repeated her answer.
Hermione glared at him for the display, but thankfully cooler heads prevailed as Dumbledore chose to take over.
"Mr Pot—The Duke saw fit to inform us of how he…directed, for lack of a better word, the events after the coup towards this particular battle," he informed the eldest Weasley child.
Bill audibly groaned at this, banging his head violently against his wooden table once and keeping it there. "Of all the…idiotic things to do…" he muttered irritably. He briefly moved his head so that he could see the group from the very top of his sight. "I assume he said why he had to do what he did?"
The group nodded, and Bill once again groaned as he smacked his head with the table. Hermione, not one to be slow on the uptake, quickly seemed to grasp what Bill's frustration seemed to stem from.
"Wait, you're not angry at him for telling us, are you?" she asked shrewdly.
Unmoving from his prone position on the table, Bill instead raised a hand to wave that question off. Seconds later, however, he did raise his head and fixed a stern glare at them.
"Of course not," he answered irritably. "That part I knew he was going to do. All part of his plan to utterly crush your faith and open your eyes."
After hearing Harry himself explain the things he had done over the years, the group of mages just couldn't bring themselves to being surprised at that revelation. Instead, they watched as Bill got up and paced his small study area with his hands wildly gesticulating.
"Of course, that wasn't supposed to happen until after he died," he explained in frustration. "IF he died, to be more precise. It's called a will for damn good reason, damn it all!"
Fleur's face registered immediate comprehension and shock, as did Hermione and Dumbledore's, but the other three mages were a few seconds behind.
"That idiot promised me he wouldn't do this," continued Bill, even as his brow scrunched up in thought. "Damn it, if I'd known he'd do this…"
"He doesn't expect to survive, does he?" breathed Hermione, hands shooting to her mouth in barely concealed horror.
Bill actually stopped his pacing to stare at her with a glare. "No, he just thought he'd share his living will before he died for the kicks, I'm sure," he snarked. "Of course he thinks he's going to die, silly girl!"
Hermione couldn't even bring herself to look outraged at his offensive tone, instead consumed by the idea that the Duke of Halifax, probably the most powerful man alive, thought he was going to die in the combat beneath them.
Fleur, despite being similarly horrified, was nonetheless better trained than Hermione at controlling her emotional impulses, and quickly got to work. "Why is he thinking this way?" she asked quickly. "He easily eclipses most of the world's fighters, magical or not! Does he expect Riddle to be stronger than him?"
Bill actually paused to consider the question, silently thankful for the presence of rational mind in the midst of such emotional tumult. "No…" he mused, eyes narrowing as he frowned in pensive thought. "No, that can't be it. Harry is smart; if he thought Riddle was much stronger than him, he wouldn't engage him in a one-on-one battle…not without first severely weakening him via alternative methods."
"Surely, forcing Tom to sustain the entire golem army, then summoning the Venati must count as such a way of draining the enemy?" Dumbledore suggested.
Bill thought for a moment and then shook his head in the negative. "No…that would be too simple. Furthermore, we have the fact that Riddle actually managed to pull off a Magical Shockwave type 5, which we can only imagine must have been an incredible waste of power. That's not someone with limited reserves would do off hand," he rationalized as he continued his pacing. "No…if I had to venture a guess, and seeing the present evidence we possess…I have to guess that he thinks Riddle and he are too evenly matched to have one of them succeed in killing the other without taking themselves out in the process."
"What about the prophecy?" asked Dumbledore suddenly, catching Bill off-guard.
"Prophecy?" he asked dubiously. "What prophecy? Did some old crone make one about this?"
Dumbledore nodded. "Our former Divination professor, in fact," he confirmed.
Bill snorted. "Trelawney?" he guffawed. "That old bat? That hardly counts as hard evidence, Dumbledore. That woman predicted someone's death every day!"
Even Hermione couldn't contain her snort of derision at the thought of the batty professor from her school days. She never could muster the self-discipline to even pretend to respect the now-deceased Divination professor.
Dumbledore seemed to shrug in agreement. "Nonetheless, this prophecy was real," he pressed. "It fulfilled all the characteristics of a prophetic trance, and sure enough, most of the events it described were fulfilled soon after."
Bill crossed his arms. "Explain."
Lacking an actual Pensieve, Dumbledore decided to actually recite the prophecy to Bill, who absorbed the words with academic vigour. From the corner of his eye, he could see Fleur similarly analyzing the information provided, and was once again glad to have her at his side.
"This changes things," Fleur stated finally after a long pause.
Bill nodded. "And yet, it changes nothing," he added.
Only Dumbledore this time seemed able to follow the duo's train of thought, with even Hermione seeming a little lost.
"Beg pardon?" she asked.
Bill shrugged his shoulders, arms still crossed. "The prophecy has been fulfilled up to the very last condition for their final fight," he explained. "Harry's been marked, he somehow survived getting AK'ed to the face, and they're both facing each other."
"There is the matter of the Horcruxes, however," interjected Dumbledore.
Bill waved that aside. "The Horcruxes were already hunted down," Bill said deadpan. "They were destroyed even before we got to them."
Dumbledore seemed shocked by the revelation. "Destroyed? By whom?"
"Not us," was all Bill said. "But if you really want my guess, Riddle had a hand in it."
"Preposterous!" Dumbledore protested. "Why would Tom, who fears death more than anything, destroy his own anchors to eternal life?"
Bill raised an eyebrow. "Maybe he found something better," he suggested blandly. "Say…the Venati?"
Dumbledore paled. "Surely, he couldn't!"
"Harry did," Fleur pointed out.
"By mistake, on his own admission!" Dumbledore shot back, growing more and more worried with every passing second.
"But Riddle knew," Bill replied calmly. "He spent the majority of his incarcerated time in Harry's mind. We know this."
"Which means…" realized Moody, who had been silently following the conversation. "That Riddle has become obsessed about merging with a Venati as well."
Bill nodded in agreement. "Exactly. The problem was, no one knew how," he stated.
"Knew, as in, now you know?" asked Hermione, suddenly feeling a chill go down her spine.
Bill nodded. "It was necessary," he stated simply. "We needed to know how Venati cells worked."
"How so?" asked his father, who had been staring at his son with quiet worry as the young man acted less and less like the son he'd known.
"Venati can morph into other shapes—did Harry inform you of that?" he saw nods. "Good, easier on the explanation then. Basically, from the moment he bailed me out, he had me working on Venati genetic coding, which we obviously had a problem with, considering there were no known Venati on the planet," Bill explained. "Of course, that ceased to be a problem when we found out, at his next physical—this one administered by myself—that he was genetically…evolving, I suppose, into a Venati-Human hybrid."
"How come no one else noticed before?!" demanded Frank, obviously confused by this discrepancy. "Surely, it should have been obvious to someone else if you caught it!"
Bill raised an eyebrow at that. "No one else was looking, or even working on, what I was," he said tightly. "Most people content themselves with the routine, and it's not different with doctors. They test you and expect you to be healthy; I don't. I see everything and everyone as a source of potentially new information. So I looked harder than most."
Bill took a deep breath. "The results were outstanding. The merger between the human and Venati cells was so…innocuous that if it hadn't been for my looking for something different, then I would have never noticed it. Hell, one could say I was lucky to find the discrepancy at all, it was so meticulously evasive."
"But the results were undeniable," he digressed. "Harry had Venati cells in him, and neither of us could explain why. Certainly, the fact that he didn't immediately morph right there and kill me seemed reason enough to believe that he wasn't one in disguise, so we went with the hypothesis that he had somehow managed to assimilate the Venati when it attacked him in India," Bill said. "Either way, it worked out wonderfully for both of us. Harry got some cool new tricks, and I was given Venati genetic material, practically unspoiled and unblemished."
"But wasn't it merging with the human tissue?" asked Hermione, dubious.
Bill nodded. "Indeed, but not all at once, and not all of it was involved in the process. There were pockets, here and there, of pure Venati genetic material spread all across his body. We figure it's their way of hiding their true nature. Without the pockets, the Venati would essentially become the creatures they imitate, so these work as fail-safes—keeps the Venati mentality separate from the human."
"So the creature he killed was trying to overcome Harry?" asked Dumbledore, trying to keep up with the scientific terminology.
Bill nodded. "At least, that's what we figure," he confirmed. "However, there was too little genetic material available to completely overcome Harry, so what we're thinking is that it tried to merge as much as possible in order to keep itself alive until such a time where it could gain access to more of the Venati genetic tissue. We put a stop to that, of course."
"How?"
Bill grinned. "We forced it to completely integrate. We sought out the fail-safe pockets, erased them, and forced the rest of it to assimilate into Harry's genetic structure. The result is that now every inch of his Venati genes are now under his full control, whereas they would never have been if the pockets had still been there."
"So there's no chance he'll turn into one of those…things, right?" asked Hermione for confirmation. Bill nodded.
"No chance whatsoever," he confirmed.
"But what about Riddle?" asked Moody, irritated at the tangent they'd gone off on. "Can he do the same?"
Bill shrugged. "Probably not," he admitted. "The fact that Harry managed such a synchronized merger was a damn miracle. Unsupervised, and with little to no knowledge on how the process works, it's pretty much a guarantee that Riddle's persona will be absorbed into the Venati collective."
"…What would happen, in that case?" asked Dumbledore, feeling a rising unease.
Bill actually thought that one though. Pulling up all the information on the Venati he could remember off the top of his head, he ran some quick numbers before a grimace formed on his face from the results. "The Venati would gain access to all of Riddle's powers…plus their own genetic abilities," he theorized. "I can see why Harry's being so pessimistic, then. It really does look like he'll have to go take Riddle down with him."
At this point, Hermione slammed her hands down on his desk furiously. The glare she fixed on Bill actually gave the older redhead pause, though it didn't really intimidate him.
"Can't you do something about it?!" she demanded angrily. "You're his friend! His brother in law! Can't you…make some weapon and even the odds?!"
Bill narrowed his eyes. "What I do is not instantaneous, girl," he told her coldly. "I can't just pull out a solution out of my arse. I have to tinker, experiment, and refine. Does it look like I have the timeframe necessary for all that?" he hissed, before rising to his own feet and staring her down, his nose barely an inch from her own. "And don't lecture me on family! I followed mine. I've been helping Harry longer than any of you!"
"So help him!" Hermione dared him, not backing down one inch.
"With what?!" he demanded right back. "Weapons? The very best I could come up with—hell, the very best Alexandra and I could come up with—is on the ground already! Armour? The chitin genes he has in him protect him better than anything I could design! Power? He's already a hybrid of two very powerful species, and he was incredibly powerful even before that!" he informed her. "So tell me, girl, what else can I do?"
"Give him allies," she told him simply. At his stare, she elaborated. "Give him people who could fight at his side when the final fight starts up."
Bill laughed outright at that, rearing back his head and covering his eyes with one hand in sheer hilarity. "Give him allies?!" he asked, incredulously. "As in, genetically modify people with Venati genes to fight at his side?! Are you mad, girl?"
Dumbledore, however, didn't seem to think so. "Why not?" he asked simply.
Bill goggled at the group. "Are you all seriously asking that?" he wanted to make sure. When he saw them nod, he cracked up again. "Didn't you hear me earlier? The fact that Harry made it through was a miracle. What makes you think anyone else could handle the genetic strain of the Venati's cells in their body?"
While it seemed to mollify most of the group, Dumbledore was not so easily convinced. "How much time would one have, theoretically speaking, before the cells either killed a person off or absorbed them in a case where the patient was flooded with Venati cells?" he pressed.
"Fifteen minutes, at best," Bill snapped out, irritated by the answer. "Which, of course, makes any such procedure useless, because half of the genetically altered people would die off in less than half an hour, and the other half would join the other side."
And then, Dumbledore did something neither Bill or Fleur, nor the other mages expected. He stepped forward and plainly said, "Do it."
Bill goggled. "What?"
Dumbledore offered his left arm to the scientist. "Do it to me," clarified the old mage. "Merge me with the Venati cells."
"Dumbledore?!"
"Are you out of your mind, Albus?!"
Fleur, for her part, seemed to swearing in rapid French as she stared at the old mage as though he'd totally lost it. Which, considering what he was asking them to do, seemed to fit the definition.
Bill crossed his arms in a sign of rejection. "Hell no!" he refused outright. "Even if I ever considered putting someone through such a procedure, what the hell are you on to think I'd give you access to such power?" he demanded. "You've backstabbed the Empire so many times, it's a wonder you haven't hanged!"
"Albus," Frank was quick to get to the older man's side. "Think about what you're saying," the man tried to appeal to Dumbledore's reason.
Dumbledore glared at his group. "Enough!" he snapped, somewhat stunning them from the forcefulness of his voice. "I've thought this through well enough," he assured them, before turning his attention to Bill. "Mister Weasley, I'm well aware of the horrible things I've done to the Empire, but believe me when I say that this will not be such a case."
"Again, why should I believe you?" demanded Bill, still disbelieving.
Dumbledore raised the holographic disk he had been holding on to. "Because the Duke does," he stated plainly, putting the disk down on Bill's desk and turning on the final parts of Harry's speech, when he had directly addressed Dumbledore and the other mages.
Bill stared at the holographic projection of Harry as it spoke, a myriad of thoughts and emotions flickering through his eyes. Eventually, as Harry began to explain the Venati, he turned the disk off, his head bowed. "Give me one more reason," he dared, though it almost seemed like he'd given in already. "Give me a reason why I should help anyone effectively commit suicide?"
Dumbledore straightened up and gave the most defiant and determined gaze he'd given in nearly a century. "Because the weight of my sins is not something a judicial death can wash away," he stated simply. "But helping the Duke fight against the greatest threat to mankind in all of our brief existence, just might."
Bill stayed in that pose for a few seconds before raising his head, his eyes determined. "Fine," he conceded. "Harry trusts you, so I will as well."
Dumbledore nodded. "Good, when can we start?" he pressed, diving straight into business.
Bill glanced at Fleur, who nodded and left to make some preparations, while Bill took out a pair of latex gloves from his coat and pulled them on. "Right now," he stated.
The latex snapped into place as he finished putting on his second. "Congratulations, Dumbledore," he said, deadpan. "In sixty minutes, provided Riddle doesn't beat us to it, you're about to become the second known Human-Venati hybrid in existence. If you've got any affairs you need to get in order, I'd get them done now."
Hogwarts Grounds…
Harry grunted in exertion as he finished off his…err…well something kill.
Honestly, he'd lost track of the damn things after the…fiftieth? Somewhere near there.
It was a remarkably easy thing to do, losing count of kills, when surrounded by an apparently infinite army of identical creatures. Well, that, and the fact that between keeping count and staying alive, the latter kind of took over priority in brain function.
Either way, there was a pile of the damn things around him, and a lot more littering the path he'd carved for the ADSTs as they made their way through the Venati ranks. Miraculously, they had not lost a man since getting into their double-lined formation, despite all expectations to the contrary.
They made him proud, his First Legion.
But even the best of the best ran out of bullets, and even though they could just order a resupply drop, how many times could they pull that off before the enemy overwhelmed his men? Not nearly enough, by his estimation.
Even more frustrating was the fact that he had not yet caught whiff or sight of Riddle's lieutenants. He knew that reports said that Narcissa Malfoy was dead, but considering how crazy he knew Riddle was, he wouldn't have been surprised if he'd given the woman upgrades to stay alive, despite a couple hundred meters freefall and two blades through the eyes.
Bad guys built their lieutenants to be hard to kill like that.
Harry crossed his arms in an instant as a Venati lunged straight at him, his arms quickly morphing into their bladed forms in mid-movement. The moment the Venati's ugly head passed boss, he smirked at it and pulled his arms away, effectively severing the creature's head as though paper.
Another kill.
Not that the exertion was killing him—far from it. Thanks to both his conditioning as a soldier and the advantage his hybrid genes gave him, he could keep going on like this all day without much tiring. The problem was, not everyone was like him—especially the men and women behind him who, though they were doing an admirable job in slaughtering Venati by the truckload, were going to tire out well before he did.
Exhaustion equalled mistakes.
Mistakes equalled death.
The situation had not changed since they began the assault. His words still remained as true then as they did right now.
There was only one measure of success.
Kill or be killed.
Harry considered ordering his bodyguards to evacuate via airlift. They'd protest, certainly, but they couldn't disregard a direct order from him. They had practically indoctrinated themselves in that regard. He could order them to walk off a cliff and they wouldn't ask why. Not that he ever would, mind you.
However, such considerations were quickly brushed aside as a shiver went down his spine and his eyes widened as a result. Instantly, his gaze snapped up to the castle, which, though completely normal to his sight, was nonetheless accumulating enormous amounts of magic, if his senses were correct.
Oh, fuck.
He wasted absolutely no time. He tapped the headset locked onto his ear and immediately transmitted a signal to every other such transmitter in a ten kilometre region.
"CODE BLACK!" he yelled. "I SAY AGAIN, CODE BLACK!"
There was no need to explain what that meant, either. After the first MS 5 hit the fleet, it had been necessary to classify any such displays as a Code Black. Fortunately, they now knew how to protect their electronics on the field—or rather, Bill had finally finished giving them a clean bill of health.
The people in the sky would have to make do with what they had.
Turning his head to his contingent of bodyguards, who undoubtedly had already heard him screaming the order for all he was worth, he again wasted no time to instruct them on appropriate procedure, even as he skewered a couple of Venati who wanted to take advantage of his distracted state. "DEPLOYABLE SHIELDS!" he roared. "NOW!"
The sergeant at the head of the contingent didn't need telling twice. Instantly, the man's hand had shot to the Kevlar strap that crossed his chest and plucked an oval looking device the size of his fist from it.
"SHIELD!" the man shouted as he pulled the safety pin from the device and then threw it at his feet. Instantly, a bubble shield appeared around them—courtesy of Weasley & Weasley Defence Technologies. Essentially a contained Protego Maxima, the shield was good for maybe two minutes, which in this case was exactly the amount of time they needed.
No sooner had they deployed the shield that the castle began to glow exponentially brighter with every passing second. Soon, it wasn't a glow, but a pulse, concentrated along the length of the Astronomy Tower.
"MS 5!" roared Harry as he, too, put up a shield that would protect his core from the substantial blast. An MS 5 against a magical being that wasn't a dragon could cause anything from a temporary boost in power to a fatal aneurysm, and frankly, Harry wasn't about to test the odds.
And then, the castle shot out its only weapon.
Seeing it fire off an MS 5 was not like watching a nuke explode. There was no explosion—no outward sign of change, other than a sudden, bright flash of light, followed by nothing. The real danger lay in the powerful shockwave of magic that was propelled at incredible speeds. It was like concentrating enough magic to level a mountain in one, tiny location, then forcing it to expand suddenly from an internal Banishment Charm. It was soundless, sightless, and totally lethal to electronics and somewhat so to unprotected magical creatures.
Fortunately, one only had to protect oneself from the initial blast to avoid the effects. The moment the shockwave passed his location, Harry dropped the shield and, seeing himself being attacked from all sides, curled into a ball and morphed every part of his body into long spikes that shot out instantly, terminating the lives of the Venati who had tried to use the MS 5—to which they are apparently immune—to kill the person they considered to be both an affront to their existence and their most dangerous foe.
Still, that left Harry with a problem. Whatever reason they had not to use the castle as a magical amplifier, clearly Riddle had overcome. They couldn't afford more of those blasts on a continuous basis—the fleet couldn't take more of those on a continuous basis!
Growling, Harry found that he had no choice. He clicked on his transmitter again. "Wolf, this is Harry, respond," he ordered in a clipped tone. Behind him, the sound of gunfire told him the ADSTs' shield had been dropped and the fighting had been renewed.
"We…cough…read you, sir!" he finally heard. From the static in the channel, he could imagine that things were going rather badly in the sky.
"Status?" he inquired, always taking care to kill the Venati who came close as he spoke.
"…hit pretty bad…ields…failed…orking on bringing…em…again."
"Losses?" he asked immediately.
"The…-sion…I…ay…ain…the Ascension…down…"
Harry grimaced. Losing the Ascension was quite the blow, considering that that it was one class smaller than the Invincible-class ships.
Nothing for it, then. He needed to end this problem now.
"Wolf, I need you to listen to me," he ordered seriously as he made his way back to his men. "Give us thirty minutes, then glass the grounds again. Do I make myself clear?"
"SIR?!" he could hear the incredulity over the comm.. Apparently, they'd finally fixed the damn thing.
"You heard me, damn it!" he snapped as he fell in with his bodyguards. "We are running out of time, and another one of those blasts and the fleet's done for! Thirty minutes, then set the earth on fucking fire, Wolf! Is that clear?"
"…Clear, sir. Clock is set…now. Good luck."
Harry heard the transmitter make a clicking sound, indicating that the line had gone dead. Wolf was probably pissed off at him as it was, so Harry couldn't blame him. If he didn't get his men out of the blast radius in thirty minutes…well…"danger close" wasn't a close enough word for how close from them the projectiles would hit.
Harry quickly dispatched two incoming Venati by snapping his arms forward, morphing them into razor-sharp whips, before turning his attention to his sergeant. "Admiral Wolf is probably telling the others, but we've got thirty minutes to withdraw back to the lines before we get hit by fleet bombardment!"
The sergeant nodded stoically at the order. "Yes, sir," the man acknowledged. He brought up his assault rifle, ejected the empty clip, and slapped a new one in. "Orders, sir?"
Harry morphed his arms back into human form, gathering as much magic into his hands as he could. "I'll open a path, you follow."
The man nodded, and Harry expected that he gave appropriate orders via the ADST internal comms.
Deciding that Neville was probably not going to need his help, given that Ginny had deployed there—and was too far away—Harry opted for a withdrawal to Sulu's side of the field. Setting his feet into the floor so as to get a good grip on the ground, he brought his curled hands to his sides, magic visibly accumulating in his hands as his eyes burned green, magical fire.
"Ready?" he asked through gritted teeth.
The sergeant nodded, rifle hoisted to eye-height. "Always."
With a grunt, gradually growing into a yell of exertion, Harry brought up his hands sideways, then at shoulder level flung them forward, as though throwing baseballs. Except, instead of leathery sports equipment, he flung two super-charged Bludgeoning Curses down parallel paths towards Sulu's lines, effectively either crushing or flinging away Venati from their way.
"GO!" Harry yelled, the green fire from his eyes now extinguished, making a dash down the suddenly open path.
The ADSTs were quick on the uptake, too, as they immediately formed a two-man-wide column and sprinted right after him. Making sure to keep his overall speed down so as to keep in pace with the ADSTs, Harry made sure to clear the way as the Venati quickly recovered from the sudden blast of magic and tried to ambush them from the sides.
The ADSTs, thankfully, were doing their part as well, using their armament to keep the Venati at bay as they ran past them. Considering how far they were from the Imperial lines—and the amount of craters they had to navigate—the group actually had reason to worry, unlike most of the other groups. Harry had actually specified being dropped practically in the middle of the Venati horde, in order to best taunt Riddle into bringing out his best warriors as he watched Harry dispatched his infamous Dark creatures with surprising ease.
Thirty minutes, then, was cutting it close.
They had already been running for 25 minutes when they saw the sky reddening, and the Imperial lines were maybe five minutes away, at best.
"We're not going to make it!" Harry heard one of the ADSTs shout out. It wasn't a shout of horror, either—merely of fact.
Harry knew that he could make it to the lines if he was alone, but he wasn't that type of person. He would leave no man behind. That left one option—one he really didn't want to put to the test, but it was becoming apparent that they were quickly running out of options.
"Keep running!" he yelled back. He would save the option as a dead last resort. Who knows? Maybe they would make it to the lines in time.
Except they didn't.
The sky was practically on fire when Harry realized there was absolutely no humanly way for the group to reach the Imperial lines before the shots came down. He toyed with the idea of banishing the ADSTs to the Imperial lines, but quickly shot that down as the mere physics of such a long banishment would end up killing the troopers on impact.
That left one choice.
He slid to a halt on the ground, his feet actually digging into the loose ground. "SCHILTROM!" he roared at his bodyguards. "ON ME! CIRCULAR SCHILTROM!"
Fortunately, his men were educated enough in military tactics to know what he meant, as they immediately switched from running back to safety to setting up a protective wall around the Duke, front-rank kneeling into position as the double-layered circle closed up.
"Consider yourselves lucky, lads," Harry said with a nervous grin, magic once again concentrating in his hands, though now open wide. He dropped to one knee and kept curled his hands into fists at his side. "You're about to witness an Airfleet bombardment at point blank range."
Then, they saw the very clouds in the sky get ripped apart as the first shot raced down to the earth, the path it left behind looking like a beam of light as it screamed through the air.
Harry's attention wasn't focused on the projectile, however. He had bigger fish to fry. Just as the shell made impact against the ground—mere milliseconds before it detonated—Harry opened his hands wide and slammed them both into the ground before him.
"PROTEGO MAXIMA!"
Hogwarts Castle Great Hall…
Seated in lotus pose in the middle of a large magical diagram written on the ground, Tom Marvolo Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort, glared at no one in particular as he felt the ground shake. He knew what had happened—the same thing that had happened to his golem army.
Clearly, his servants had, yet again, managed to fail him, despite the powerful weapons he provided them.
Well, this would not do. Potter needed to be exterminated once and for all. His allies would make short work of the Imperial forces in the event that Potter died, so he could afford to send his best, non-Venati servants to the field, since they clearly seemed to fail to grasp the workings of the castle's magical amplification.
Without breaking his pose, Voldemort brought up a magical screen before him, which quickly broadcasted the image of the Astronomy Tower's interior. There they were, his three bumbling servants—supposedly his best. Well, it was time to see whether or not they were as good as they were supposed to be, given all he had done to elevate them to their current level of power.
No free meals in this gig.
"My Lord!" he saw the three cloaked figures kneel to him reverently. It made Voldemort feel a little warm inside—oh, how he loved the grovelling!
Still, he sneered for good measure. "You three seem to fail to grasp the concept of bringing down those ships," he hissed angrily. "Can someone please explain why we just got attacked from the sky again?"
The leader among the three practically kowtowed to him as he bobbed his head up and down in apology. "My Lord, please forgive us!" he pleaded. "We…We had trouble getting the ritual to work!"
"There are three of you," Voldemort hissed back, interrupting him. "Pray tell, how is it that I can fire it without any trouble by myself, but three of you are incapable of doing so?"
Considering how much of a trick question that was—since answering any way would make it sound like they thought themselves comparable to him or totally incompetent—the trio did the wise thing and stayed silent. It suited Voldemort just fine.
"You three have a new task," he hissed. "Potter," he spat, "has been tearing a hole in our forces, and his band of merry little automatons have been doing a grandiose job at imitating him as well on both sides of their lines. I want them gone. Understood?"
"Yes, my lord," the leader stated calmly, a hint of anticipation in his voice.
"Focus on Potter," Voldemort ordered. "But make sure to take out anyone else in that ridiculous armour he made for his soldiers. I want nothing to stand in the way of our invasion."
"...and the ships?" dared the leader to ask.
Voldemort had a calm, sinister smile on his face. "I'll deal with them," he said coldly. "But you have no reason to even think about that, Crouch," he warned. "Focus on your own mission. Either come back with Potter's head, or don't come back at all."
There was no answer from Barty Crouch for a moment, before he put a fist to his chest and nodded. "As you will, my lord. It shall be done."
With that, the feed went dead, and Voldemort glanced to the side, where a couple of Venati were staring at him, seemingly torn between hunger and obedience. "Those ships in the sky are killing your brethren at an irritating rate," Voldemort noted.
The Venati growled at him, and then suddenly yelped as two chitin spikes came from the ground and impaled them, instantly snuffing out their lives. Yet, unlike the other Venati on the field, their corpses did not remain. Instead, they seemed to be sucked into the spikes, until no trace of their existence remained.
"THE HYBRID…" a deep, menacing voice resounded through the Great Hall.
Voldemort nodded. "Potter," he supplied.
Whether or not the voice paid any attention to him was lost on the mage, as he watched a large shadow move in the corner of his Great Hall.
"WE WANT HIM."
"My men will have his head, you can be sure of that," Voldemort assured the presence.
"ALIVE," it growled.
Voldemort frowned. "Alive, he will be an unstoppable threat," he reminded the creature. "He must be killed as soon as possible."
The presence gave a feral roar, but it did not serve to intimidate Voldemort, who remained in his ritualistic position.
"VERY WELL, RIDDLE…WE WILL LISTEN…THIS TIME…"
The mage felt like rolling his eyes. It was always like that with this creature. It kept making threats that the "next time," he would be uncooperative, when it really did nothing but obey. One of the perks of being the most powerful summoner of Venati ever.
"So the Airships…?" Voldemort pressed, retuning to his original point.
The creature was silent for a moment, seemingly considering what to do. Or just not replying. Truthfully, it was hard to tell with these beasts.
"…MY BRETHREN WILL TAKE CARE OF THE AIR MACHINES," it finally said.
Voldemort smiled in satisfaction. "Good."
The beast gave another growl, but Voldemort ignored it.
Really, for being the Venati Prime, the beast truly had to learn to cooperate more.
Though, in half an hour, that wouldn't matter…
Since he would be the Venati Prime.
Post-AN: I'm very well aware that the SAS didn't actually -coin- the phrase "He Who Dares, Wins." However, given the military context of the situation, it felt appropriate that Harry refer to them, given their British status.
Also, title reference: The Past - Dumbledore; The Present - Voldemort; The Future - Harry.
In case that wasn't obvious.