AN: Let's see...I give myself...three hours before I get the first "WTF?!?!?!?!?1!111!" review. To avoid spoilers, I'll be discussing any of the problems I imagine will come up in said reviews. Other than that, have fun!

Oh, and for the record? Longest motherf****ng chapter I've written to date. Hope you enjoy it.

Edit: Sorry. Second longest chapter. "Living Will" is 300 words longer.

The world had ended.

Or, at least, that's what it damn well looked like from their perspective.

Staring around them, wide eyed in amazement, the ADST bodyguard detail assigned to the Duke watched as flames curved around the impressively solid bubble shield that their charge had summoned mere seconds ago. Kneeling on the ground, the Duke had a tired expression on his face as he continuously pumped more and more magic into the shield in a desperate attempt to keep it solid in the face of the overwhelming force of the Airfleet's vicious bombardment.

Even more impressive was the fact that the ground they stood on was even kept intact, given the massive craters that the shells were creating on impact. At the very foot of the shield, in fact, they could see the ground in front of it collapse as the bombing tore apart the ground at the most basic level. Only their small section seemed impervious to damage, which just caused them to give their commander admiring looks.

Not that this was something easy to pull off for said commander, however. Harry was definitely feeling the strain of keeping the shield solid in the face of multiple projectiles that each had the force of a small meteorite. He could only count his lucky stars, however, that they had not been right in the middle of the bombing, or else he would be in no condition to face Riddle later on. As it was, with them being all huddled a mere five minutes from the Imperial lines, he wasn't required to pump all of his magic into the shield, merely a continuous amount, which required him to regulate his flow of magic to an insane level.

Nonetheless, the amount of magic he was pouring was quite impressive. A lesser mage would have been drained dry in seconds. However, with this display, Harry had no doubts that Riddle would cave in and send out his lieutenants—he had to. After this absolute slaughter, there would be no other way to refill his ranks other than to distract the ADSTs with more powerful prey—thus the lieutenants.

For the first time since he had arrived on the ground, he allowed himself a small smile of anticipation. He knew full well that Riddle knew that his own chosen subordinates had been tampered with, which is why he fully expected the enemy lieutenants to be similarly altered. What this coming fight would show, then, is which of the two puppeteers was the superior.

This was something Harry had little doubt in—his people would prove superior; Riddle's lieutenants were, after all, a pale shadow of what Harry had Bill accomplish. A confident grin made its way on his face, even as sweat continued to build up on his forehead—a testament to how much effort he was putting in keeping the shield up, protecting the group from the torrential fire just beyond it.

He was lucky, too. With the bombardment still going strong, that meant Riddle would have to bypass him and go straight for the people he had specifically enhanced for this confrontation. There would be no more variables from now on—his plan would be perfect.

Of course, with that confidence, he also forgot Rule Zero of Anything.

Thou Shalt Not Invoke Murphy.

Hogwarts Second Gate…

Neville wanted to swear.

He really, really did.

Not without reason, either, if one thought about it. First, he had been cut off from most of his initial troops because of enemy dragons destroying the deployable bridge. Second, he had been forced to scale a massive cliff face with very improvised scaling equipment. Third, he and what little he had left of his troops were then forced to mount a point-defence at the Second Gate by themselves. Fourth, the little reinforcements he got afterwards were coat-tailed by the coming of the forces of Hell. Fifth, he had nearly gotten himself killed in a Venati ambush.

And sixth, for the second time, the Airfleet had decided to bomb the planet out of existence.

Or, at least, that's what it both felt and looked like, from his vantage point on the gate walls. Like the others who'd been defending the front of the gate, Neville had taken cover behind one of the parapets, waiting the bombardment out as it proceeded to render anything remotely physical into ash and glass.

Quite unfortunately, the rear of the gate was not so lucky in catching a break. The fact that the grounds were being annihilated merely served to give Neville a chance to rotate in some of the less weary ADSTs from the walls to help out the rear lines. He only kept one of them behind at all times—the ADST corporal who's vocal cords seemed to be suited for a drill instructor gig.

Well, that wasn't true. He didn't just keep her. He'd pretty much assigned Susan to stay near him at all times, too. He'd already nearly lost her once—he wasn't about to let it happen again. The redhead, however, didn't seem to appreciate the gesture, as she had been sent down to specifically fight the Venati.

Hell, even as they sat against the parapets, she wouldn't stop glaring at him—her helmet off—for his decision to keep her away from the action. Another sigh passed through his lips. Was their feud really never going to be truly over?

"Are you ever going to let this go?" he asked her wearily.

"Not until you let me go down there and do my job," she replied angrily.

"I thought I lost you once," Neville defended himself. "I'm not about to risk that again."

"Oh, sure, because I never thought you were dead…for like, say…two weeks?"

"I was on a mission!"

"So am I!"

"This is different! My mission didn't involve dealing with creepy, end-of-the-world-esque creatures from Hell!"

Susan rolled her eyes. "Oh, sure, bring that up, why don't you?" she snarked. "Just because my enemies happened to be stronger and deadlier than the ones you had to face in your mission doesn't mean you have the right to tell me not to fight!"

Neville goggled at her. "Are…Are you suggesting I'm jealous?!"

Susan made a visible show of restraining herself from rolling her eyes. "Why else would you be so bull-headed about not letting me fight?" she demanded, confirming his assumption. "You're just worried I'll outdo you!"

Of course, Susan never thought any such thing, but the moment he had asked her if she thought he was jealous, Susan couldn't help but immediately jump on that bandwagon and drive it for all it was worth. Neville, after all, was intensely competitive, even if that rarely showed. Moreover, they both believed themselves to be elite warriors, and such a challenge served to merely instigate his pride.

"Oh, you are so on!" he hissed, his hands now on the stone floor underneath him and pushing himself to his feet; Susan was equally fast in scrambling to her feet.

Both adults (even if their argument didn't seem worthy of that denomination) glared at each other as they stood a mere foot apart; Susan in her onyx-black ADST armour, and Neville in his army uniform. They seemed a personification of the rivalry between the First Legion and the rest as they stood there.

The two maintained their mutual glare for a few seconds before they broke their gaze and reached for their weapons of choice; Susan her fully automatic assault rifle, Neville his handgun and wand.

Neville turned his gaze to the fighting beneath them, his hands automatically reloading and readying his handgun, while Susan checked her rifle to make sure it was both loaded and ready for combat.

"First to a hundred?" he suggested calmly, as though what the two were planning to do wasn't, in any way, stupid or suicidal.

"Sure," came Susan's equally cool response, a loud click sounding as she pulled back the knob that ejected the last empty casing in the rifle's chamber and loaded another one.

"Stakes?"

"Loser does whatever the winner wants for a week."

"You're on."

The fighting at the rear of the Second Gate was as pitched as the fighting to the front had been, with a distinct difference.

Quite simply, there wasn't a wall between the Imperial troops and the Venati. More specifically, the Venati had pretty much rendered useless all the traps set up between the Imperial lines and the Venati horde through sheer numbers. Even now, most of the ADSTs at the front of the rearguard could see the pits full to the brim with Venati bodies, which served to give their still-live comrades a bridge over the hole.

Nonetheless, despite the lack of anymore barriers between them and the Venati, the Imperial troops were skilfully able to keep the Venati at bay. However, there was no guarantee that this trend would continue. Ammunition wasn't infinite, after all, and there was always the fear that the weapons would lock up.

In this kind of situation, some might even suggest launching an attack, in order to inflict such casualties on the enemy that they would cease their own attacks in order to recuperate. The problem with that particular plan, however, was that the Second Gate garrison was too small. Any losses they acquired—and they did suffer casualties from the continuous waves—was deeply felt within the defence of the gate's rear.

So it was quite surprising to the defenders when the ground before their lines—no more than ten meters away, in fact—seemed to shine brightly all of a sudden and then detonated in a fantastic explosion that made the defenders worry that the Airfleet had decided to just glass them too.

Their worries were put to rest, however, as two blurs dashed past the shocked front lines and into the cloud of dust that had been kicked up by the explosion. The Imperials' initial reaction had been to fire, but upon realizing that the two blurs had come from within their own lines, they had restrained themselves, lest they kill the people involved. Then again, there was an equal chance that the two people who had just dashed past them would die anyway, considering how monumentally stupid such a charge would be with only two people.

Regardless, the Imperial lines opened fire within seconds. They did not have the luxury of waiting and seeing what would happen before continuing their defence, after all. If a single Venati crossed into their trenches, there was a very real chance everything would collapse. They could only hope that the two warriors who had sped into the fray would be spared from a bullet in the back. Getting killed by friendly fire in the fight to save humanity just didn't seem like the best way to go.

For Neville and Susan, the solution to that problem was a permanent anti-ballistics shield that coated their skin. It would be worthless against the Venati claws and spells, but against regular bullets, it would serve better than three-inch steel. In fact, it had been the reason for the creation of the ME bullets in the first place. With the mages all but crushed under the might of the Empire, however, it was once again possible to use normal ammunition, especially since the Venati did not seem to have anything ready to counter the ballistic projectiles. Not that they seemed to care, however. They had the sheer weight of numbers to effectively ignore the threat of kinetic projectiles.

Sprinting towards the Venati, Neville and Susan seemed to take the creatures by surprise, though that was quickly brushed aside as the hellspawn charged the duo with vicious glee. Their horrific mandibles spread open as they let out howls of predatory anticipation, and Neville and Susan only mentally hesitated for a second as they faced the incoming wave of ferocious beasts.

Neville, however, wasn't a Brigadier for no reason. Thinking quickly, he gathered as much magical energy as he thought he could sustain in his hand, to the point where it even physically manifested itself as wispy, green fire coating his appendage, and leapt forward, magically-enhanced hand raised in anticipation for a strike. The target, however, was not a particular Venati, however, but the very ground itself.

With a ferocious shout, he slammed his magically-coated hand into the ground and watched in satisfaction as the very earth seemed to crack from the impact. If nothing else, the Venati directly around the point of impact were suddenly and violently thrown back from the point-of-impact shockwave. So suddenly violent was it that the Venati closest to the fan-like crater did not rise again from their lying positions over two meters away from where they had been standing.

Allowing himself a glance back at Susan and a cocky smirk, Neville raised five fingers. "That's five already to me," he gloated.

Susan scowled, not to be outdone. Raising her rifle, she quickly picked off a Venati that had wanted to take advantage of Neville's gloating to kill the Brigadier, followed them by five more kills.

As Neville turned around to see what she'd shot, Susan showed a very self-satisfying smile. "That's six for me," she countered.

Neville couldn't help the grin that was forming on his face. This was more like it. This, the sense of competition between two elite fighters—this was what he'd missed the most when he and Susan had been apart.

"Better not fall behind, then!" he answered with a cocky grin as he turned back to the Venati horde, momentarily halted due to the sudden show of strength from what they had assumed would be easy prey.

Twirling his wand with his fingers, Neville quickly came to the conclusion that the only viable way to be the first to a hundred was to use overwhelming power, not skill. Skill would net him a few magnificent kills, but would make him fall behind Susan, whose automatic rifle gave her the luxury of fast kills with minimum effort. Suddenly stopping the twirling motion, he pulled back his arm as far as he could, then swung it in an arc-motion before him, a vicious smirk on his face.

"DIFFINDO!" he cried, letting loose a wide arc of blue energy that raced forward with all the speed of a hurricane wind.

The spell did its job magnificently. The Venati, caught off guard by the sudden spell, were cut down by the dozen by the powerful spell. Neville grinned. The Diffindo curse was one of the most versatile spells there was. Depending on the used amount of magic, it could do anything from precision cuts to catastrophic damage, like he'd just performed.

His kill count was now at twenty. However, seeing Susan rip into the Venati with her rifle made it clear to Neville that he could not stand around at any point, if he was to win. Of course, even among all this killing, he could still feel the occasional bullets from the Imperial lines bouncing off his ballistic shield. He also made it a point not to count those he killed after a bullet had hit them.

Unlike Susan, Neville found comfort in using his magic. Even with the Empire standing triumphant over the ashes of the Old Order, Neville could not forswear his magic the way Susan could. While she still used it occasionally, it was as though she was ashamed of her heritage because of the Ministry and the Order's treachery against the Crown. Neville, for his part, understood that the actions of the misguided should not and could not reflect on him. Harry, for instance, did not forswear his magic, and he was the architect of the Empire's march of triumph.

He was a mage, pure and simple. He was born with a gift for manipulating the forces of nature, and he was damned if he would give that up just because some idiots could not face the coming wave of change and instead chose to betray the very people they were supposedly keeping safe through ignorance.

Susan, for her part, hated her heritage. She hadn't always, though. When she was at Hogwarts, she had fully enjoyed her gifts, and used them almost to the point where one could consider it abuse. Hell, all mages were brought up that way. They used magic for everything—cooking, cleaning, fixing, packing, stripping, and even for putting on clothes. It was ridiculous, in hindsight. It was as though the fact that they had these wonderful gifts gave them the right to become a nation of layabouts! Of course, her distaste for her heritage did not come until her entry into Ginny Weasley's little group of Royalist spies and saboteurs. She, like many others, had assumed that the group was acting along the lines of an appreciation group, much like she heard some Muggles congregated to celebrate and discuss particular people or historical periods.

Instead, she was swept away with the full magnificence of non-mage civilization. She listened avidly as she became aware of the thousands of years of budding human civilization far outstripped anything she had seen in mage society. She became aware that while the magical nations remained isolated and backwards, the world around them evolved at rates they could never match. The non-mages, far from letting their lack of supernatural gifts hold them down, had striven to overcome nature itself in their quest for total dominance over the small planet they called Earth.

She heard the tales of empires, great civilizations built on fire, blood, and steel, typically through the sheer force of will of one man. She heard of young men, driving their nation's borders to the far corners of the world, and she felt ashamed.

How could she not? For years, she had been taught that mages were superior due to their gifts. Her aunt had never stated that the non-mages were in any way less human, of course, but there was always a slight supremacist hint in all mage teachings anyway. Hell, Professor Snape's beginning speech at the very start of every year was almost an arrogant tirade of the superiority of potions, while Muggle chemistry, on the other hand, had already conquered and surpassed many of the achievements he had described. They called the Avada Kedavra the most deadly spell in the world, while the non-mages had created objects about the size of Hagrid which could flatten entire cities.

Where were their achievements? Where were their great Empires? What did mage society have to offer a world that had already surpassed them in nearly every way? They had gone into outer space, while mages still used candles as a way of lighting up a place.

But the real hatred towards her heritage did not come then. It came when the coup happened. When she realized that her entire home had been overtaken by a bunch of corrupt, cruel monsters who saw themselves as nature's finest creature, by virtue of a single gift. A gift that, if she wasn't wrong, Bill and Harry were working hard on to ensure would no longer be limited to a certain few.

Personally, she didn't know how she felt about that. Magic, in her opinion, was dangerous. She realized that during the coup. The ability to immediately transport oneself from place to place with almost minimal effort was not something everyone should have. It was just asking for trouble. However, she was certain that the duo knew what they were doing, and trusted them to ensure that the gifts would not be abused.

For her part, however, she would have none of it. She didn't care that Neville used his magic—it was his right. She would not use hers, however. Not unless she absolutely had to. She had not during the American campaign, and she would not here.

Her rifle raised, she dispatched Venati after Venati with deadly efficiency, quickly racking up her kill count with small bursts of fire that ensured her ammunition would last long enough for her to achieve her goal. Behind her, she felt a rush of wind, and while she killed the Venati directly in front of her, she also chanced a glance back, and saw Neville unleashing a supercharged Bludgeoning charm that blew a hole in the Venati horde.

The numbers weren't thinning, however. If anything, they seemed to be getting denser as they moved forward. Some of the Venati outright ignored them, too, as they dashed past them towards the Imperial lines—their goal not forgotten. It was only those who stayed to fight them that Susan killed. Not out of sympathy or gratitude, but because they were the easiest and most predictable creatures.

It amazed her, really, that such vicious predators could hold themselves to such high esteem as to be considered arrogance. One would think that after thousands of years of preying on sentient societies, they would understand the virtue of not underestimating their opponents. But then, if she understood Harry correctly, they had never lost an invasion before.

She immediately returned her attention to the Venati in front of her, casually riddling them with bullets as they got close to her, while the main horde seemed content in letting them march their way deeper into their ranks. Susan could understand the strategic thought behind that, anyway. The deeper they got, the more likely she and Neville would meet more and more Venati willing to face them. Furthermore, the deeper they got, the closer they came to the summoning portals, which she knew that neither she nor Neville could close. In fact, neither could the aerial bombardment still ongoing. All that was doing was killing whatever Venati was on the field, but was doing little to no damage to the portals themselves.

"Susan!"

She looked to the side, just after killing another creature, to see that Neville and she had become separated by a larger margin than she'd realized. It then suddenly dawned on her that this was another reason for the Venati to let them by. By doing so, they could subtly widen their charging numbers little by little, until she was unknowingly forced to separate herself from Neville far enough where neither could provide the other with aid.

This was most definitely a problem.

"Fuck," she swore under her breath, her mic synthesising her voice through her helmet. She needed to get back to Neville, but the only way was to run sideways, straight through the charging column of Venati that had thus far ignored her. To do so was suicide, however. Even if they'd ignored her wilfully thus far, running amongst them to get to Neville would be an invitation for them to flank her through sheer weight of numbers. Even if the conquest of the Imperial lines was more important to them, they would not pass up the chance to kill her if she gave them such an obvious invitation to do so.

The situation was quickly taken out of her hands, however.

Stuck in her quandary, she did her best to keep the Venati at bay, only to have her vision suddenly disappear as a blinding flash of light exploded. Wincing at the brightness, she quickly shut her eyes, only to then hear someone shout out at her.

"BACK! JUMP BACK!"

Instinctively, she did as commanded, and just in time, as it were. She felt a rush of hot air pass right in front of her, and she dared open her eyes into a squint, before they expanded into a shocked gaze as she watched a pillar of flame rush past her. Within the pillar itself, she could see the shadowy figures of the Venati that had lunged forward to kill her in her blindness, before they slowly disintegrated into nothingness. The howling of the burning creatures was terrible to hear, but she couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction as she watched the foul beings burn away to ashes.

Turning her head, she saw Neville holding his wand at the tip of the row of fire, while his other hand worked his pistol in order to keep his exposed flank safe from the Venati. Once he saw that Susan was okay, however, the Brigadier dropped the spell and, with skilful footwork, turned and unleashed a vicious Cutting Curse at a row of advancing Venati, slicing away their lives in an instant. More importantly, however, there was now a way for the two to link up, as the advancing Venati column had been stopped by the pillar of fire.

She didn't need him to tell her what to do, and he knew it. Thus, in silent agreement, she dashed sideways and took advantage of the column's momentary halt to quickly make her way to his side, her rifle always bursting with fire as she took down as many Venati as she could on her way. With just as much skill as he'd shown, she turned and bumped into his back roughly, her rifle firing off two more bursts as another two Venati crumpled to the ground.

"That's forty," she told him simply. "And that nifty spell doesn't count," she added crossly.

Neville couldn't help but grin as he dispatched five more with another burst of spell fire. "You're just jealous," he taunted. "That's sixty," he then said, killing two more with pistol fire.

"Cheater," she complained.

Neville barked out a laugh, before firing two more rounds from his pistol, then hearing it click. "Damn, out of ammo," he said with a jovial grin. He quickly sheathed the pistol and focused some of his magical reserves into his now-free hand. "You?"

Susan called up her HUD for a quick scan of her ammunition reserves. "I'm good for another six hundred rounds."

Neville whistled, impressed. "Been economizing your shots, have you?" He snuffed out four more Venati and then used his magically-enhanced fist to punch another so hard that its head collapsed entirely.

"A good shot needs only one bullet to make his kill," she told him simply, blasting away another Venati with remarkable ease. With how well they were both doing, one might have even assumed the two had trained all their lives for this.

"The lads are probably going to love us for making their job this much easier," Neville commented lightly as he vaporized another two and slammed another's head into the ground such that it resembled more a paste than a creature. By now, his uniform was positively covered in the blood and bits of the foul beings.

Susan snorted. "Lazy bastards," she muttered in agreement, killing another four. Then, without warning, she stiffened as a really bad feeling made her spine grow cold.

Neville seemed to sense the sudden stiffness at his back and turned his head curiously. "Susan? What's—"

He never had a chance to finish, as a spell connected with his exposed side and blasted him away, an explosion of blood and gore showering Susan's onyx armour. Susan's eyes widened in horrified shock as she realized what had happened in less than a second. Turning around, she could see Neville's crumpled body lying face down on the ground, his eyes, for all intents and purposes, glazed over. His left side looked like something had taken a bite out of it, and the exposed organs sickened her more than the carnage she had seen him inflict on the Venati.

Neville was dead.

Susan didn't know how long she stared at the immobile body of her lover. Maybe it was seconds, or minutes, or even days. Everything around her just vanished from her mind, and all that was left was her and his cooling body. There was no sound. No smell. Nothing else but she and him.

And despair.

"No."

The word came softly at first. Her lips had just parted barely more than a millimetre, but the sound that escaped them was clear as daylight. Then, she repeated it some more times, each time with greater and greater force of denial, until it was as though she was willing the very universe to rewind Neville's death so that she could save him.

"No!" she was screaming now, her duties completely forgotten as she dropped her rifle and went to his side, sliding into a kneel beside him. She hastily grabbed her helmet and almost tore it off in her haste. Quickly, she pulled him onto her lap and cradled him in her arms, shaking him slightly. "No…no, no, no, no, no!" she quietly sobbed and begged at the same time. "Neville, please! No!"

She didn't even register the fact that the Venati were not advancing on her and Neville. Instead, it seemed more like they were ignoring them altogether, going around them as they rushed the Imperial lines, now unimpeded in their task.

"Neville…" she whined in despair. "Neville!" she started shouting his name. "NEVILLE! WAKE UP! WAKE UP, NEVILLE!"

His still corpse made no move to answer her, his eyes blindly looking up at the blue sky, frozen in time.

"Don't leave me…" she sobbed as she bent her head down onto his bloodied chest, her cries muffled by his shirt. She couldn't care less that she was covering herself in Venati gore, either. "You can't do this to me, baby, not again!"

All at once, with the weight of a freight train, she could feel the guilt of having ignored him since his return at Harrisburg hitting her. Why had she been so obstinate? Why couldn't she have just accepted that he'd done what he was ordered to do? They could have had the months between then and now together—happy!

She had wasted it all. All of it on rage, on betrayal, on…on nothing! She could have had more months with him, and now he was dead! She could have married him in that time, and now he was dead! Someone had killed him. She knew that. It had not been a Venati that had ended his glorious life. Someone had deliberately killed him with a spell.

"Oh my…"

She paid the new voice no attention. Immediately, she knew this was his killer, and she felt something dark build up in the pit of her stomach. Something primitive and feral and violent.

"I got him good, didn't I?" snarked the newcomer. "Oh well, serves him right, blood traitor."

She had always assumed she'd felt fury before now. There were a couple of occasions when she had even told Neville that she was furious with him, and she had gotten into fights with others before when she was allegedly furious over some insult or slight. But this was different from those times. She could recognize it as a whole new level of anger. If what she had felt previously amounted to fury, then there wasn't a word in a language she knew that could describe the primitive rage that was coursing through her system now. Her teeth were grinding against each other so painfully, she had even managed to numb herself from it. Her open eyes could see nothing but red. Not just the blood on Neville's torn uniform, but even those areas that were not red seemed to become monochromatic.

"Guess you're next, huh?" the newcomer kept talking, apparently either oblivious to the wrath building up within the redhead, or simply enjoying the sight of her mourning her lost lover. "You've been a very bad girl, you know. The Dark Lord even had to ask us to come out and kill you all. You should be honoured."

"Shut up."

She didn't need to turn to know that the man grinned at her response. They always did. So cocky, so sure of their own power. They understood nothing.

"Whatever," he dismissed lightly. "You should be honoured to die by my hand. I, who am a lieutenant of the greatest Dark Lord ever to walk this earth! I, Anto—"

"Shut up."

This time he did, as he himself felt a measure of trepidation run down his spine. His grin slipped into a wary frown as he watched the redhead almost reverently lay down the body of the man he'd just killed onto the barren and bloody ground. There was something about her that made Dolohov doubt his chances. It wasn't lack of trust in his lord's "upgrades," but rather the fact that he could feel an awe-inspiring power radiating from the redhead.

"Dolohov, right?" she suddenly asked, still kneeling by her boyfriend's body.

He gave her a cautious nod. "That's right, blood traitor."

He watched her nod once. Then, slowly, she got to her feet, her back still to him.

"You know, Harry told me he'd given Neville a massive boost in power before sending him down here," her tone was void of any emotion or inflection. It was like hearing a computer talk. "Guess that didn't work."

Dolohov said nothing, instead keeping his wand drawn and ready to curse the little tart if she tried anything. He'd let her have her last moments before killing her.

"I never told him…" she continued, still in her monotone. "But Harry did the same for me."

Dolohov had but a moment to widen his eyes before he first felt, then saw the blast of angry blue energy blast him back a good ten meters. Landing on his back, he lay there, dazed, as he wondered just what the hell had just hit him. He'd been a mage for over a good five decades, and he'd never seen or felt such a spell before.

Groaning as he slowly lifted himself up onto his elbows, his eyes widened as he saw the redhead standing away from him, still by the boy's still form. Slowly, her armour was peeling off of her, falling chunk by chunk. Only the breastplate and her lower armour remained, leaving bare skin visible in all the exposed places. It wasn't to be admired, though.

Blue, mechanical lines seemed to race all over the exposed skin, glowing brightly as they appeared in every geometric shape. It was like looking at a technical blueprint for a computer chip. Her face was not spared, either, as the bright blue lines framed her face, looking like vicious, glowing scars.

But the most fearsome change?

Her eyes.

Her brown eyes were gone, replaced by blue, wispy, ethereal fire that reeked of magic.

Her hand was outstretched before her, the focus of the spell that had tossed him away like a rag doll.

This was bad. This was so very bad.

Susan Bones was furious.

"You should feel honoured, Dolohov," she said in her monotone, deliberately throwing back his words at him as her left hand crackled with the amount of magical energy being gathered there. "I'm going to kill you."

Hogwarts Castle…

Ginny felt Neville's death the moment it happened, racing up the walls of the main keep. The sudden shock of his death had almost made her lose her focus and fall off the wall, but she was quick enough to regain her concentration and keep going, until she finally reached the top and stayed there, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. Neville had been a close friend. He had been her first friend at Hogwarts.

She could remember when he and she had first started the Royalist group in this very school. They had been thick as thieves, enjoying the feeling it gave them to be holding such a grave secret within the very den of wolves they sought to undermine. She remembered how sweet and kind he was, and she was later not oblivious to the crush he had on her. She remembered that before she and Harry even grew close enough to feel romantically interested in each other, she and Neville had gone out a few times to test the waters, but had decided to settle for friendship. It was thanks to those dates that they were later comfortable enough to simulate a fake relationship when she and Harry grew close, thus keeping her off the Headmaster's radar.

He had been at her side through thick and thin, her loyal friend and companion. When she had left Hogwarts, he had not hesitated one second, despite leaving behind a very wealthy and proud heritage within mage society. Even loving Susan since those last few years, he even wilfully restrained himself and kept up the faux relationship with her out of sheer loyalty, and she respected him for that.

She loved him. As a friend, yes; but she loved him all the same.

She had always assumed Neville would be one of those who would live until after the war. She always imagined him as a cheerful old grandfather, surrounded by his children and grandchildren and telling them exciting stories about his younger days. He seemed the type. She could imagine him going on long walks with Susan, hand in hand as they finally enjoyed the peace they had all been working so hard to achieve.

And now, in a moment, all of that was gone.

Ginny couldn't even begin to imagine how Susan must be feeling. For all the rage the other redhead had shown towards her lover, Ginny knew that Susan deeply loved Neville with all her heart. She even remembered how crushed Susan had been when Neville had been presumed dead, prior to the battle at Harrisburg. Ginny shivered. She sincerely hoped that Susan had not been present when Neville had fallen.

If she was, then Ginny prayed for her to find Neville's killer, and butcher him.

If she didn't, then Ginny would be all too glad to do so herself, in memory of her fallen friend.

She quickly put a stop to that line of thinking as she felt her left hand give an involuntary shake. Grasping it with her right hand, she looked at it and saw faint, blue vein-like lines appear on the back of it, causing her to frown.

It was a quietly kept fact that out of all the people her husband had chosen to endow with his curious new magical empowerment, she had been the only one who's procedure had not happened without problems. It wasn't anything drastically fatal, nor would it hinder her in any inconvenient way, but it was something that she felt slightly humiliated of.

"Damnit," she growled under her breath. She hated that she, out of those Harry had chosen, had somehow failed the procedure. She had been frantic to ask Harry about it, but he had kept that easy smile on his face and lovingly comforted her that it was nothing serious. She knew better than to doubt him, but it still implanted a seed of doubt in herself that she couldn't shake off, no matter how hard she tried.

All this meant, however, was that she couldn't let go of her emotional control. If she went into a rage, she would have to consciously make corrections in all her moves so that the tremors wouldn't throw off her overall killing efficiency. Well, thankfully, she wouldn't have to fight anyone as skilled as Narcissa again. The deceased Malfoy matriarch had been quite possibly the toughest fight she had ever had to deal with, spars against Harry notwithstanding.

Thankfully, her current mission had no such fights in the works. Instead, she was to find and eliminate the ritual circle that was powering the MS 5 blasts that were tearing apart the bombarding Airfleet. Harry seemed certain that the cause of the blasts was a ritual, and according to his calculations, it was likely that the target would be at the Astronomy Tower, which happened to also be the tallest tower in the castle complex.

Gazing upwards, she looked at her target building with a small amount of trepidation. Heights didn't scare here—that wasn't it. No, rather it was the fact that she knew, for a fact, that Riddle was awake; quite possibly less than a couple dozen yards from where she was. Thankfully, it didn't seem like the Dark Lord knew where she was, or else was ignoring her presence, which worked just fine for her.

Using magic to lighten and speed up her footwork, she quickly raced down the shingled roof, making her way first up to the back of the main keep, then to her left. Fifty meters and she would be within jumping distance to the side of the Astronomy Tower.

Halfway there, however, she suddenly jumped slightly to the side, just in time to avoid getting skewered by the sudden appearance of chitin-like spikes on the roof. Without betraying or losing any cool, she crouched down, one hand on the roof beneath her, as she observed several shadows form on the roof, from which several Venati were emerging. This was most certainly new. She idly wondered if Harry knew about this.

"Should of known it wasn't going to be that easy," she muttered, two flicks of her wrists releasing her replaced, much more highly reinforced steel assassination blades. "Don't suppose you'll just let me pass?"

The creatures answered by snarling at her, and she noticed that they seemed a might leaner and smaller than the average Venati. Perhaps a sub-breed? Again, she filed that away for her mission report; though she wondered if there were more she should investigate.

The beasts threw themselves at her, claws first, and Ginny was glad to see that despite being quicker and obviously more agile, these Venati were still no match for her. With quick, surgical strikes, she calmly impaled each of them in the skull with her blades, always making her way further down the rooftop towards her goal.

By the time she had reached her optimal jumping point, there were twenty Venati corpses strewn behind her, and not a single new crease or scratch on her robes. To be honest, she felt a little disappointed—was this really the great enemy she had to fear? With a sigh, she gathered her magic at her feet and jumped off the main keep roof towards the tower, easily latching onto its side with her hands as she grasped the centuries-old stonework.

With expert grace, she pulled herself further and further up the tower, keeping a steady pace as her feet and hands expertly sought out cracks and jutting stonework to provide herself with adequate grip and support. As she climbed her way up, she studiously kept clear of the windows, just in case there were patrols within the structure. Instead, she would often circumvent them entirely, such that by the time she had reached the open-ended top of the tower, she had circled the tower's circumference twice over.

Even though she was good at this sort of thing, however, it didn't mean that she wouldn't tire from it. Thus, when she reached the top, she felt a wave of relief hit her as she pulled herself over the parapets and landed on the top of the tower in a crouch, her arms held to her front, ready to deploy her hidden blades at a moment's notice.

With great care, she examined her surroundings and used every inch of her assassination expertise to ensure that she wasn't walking into a trap. The last thing she needed was to walk into the ritual room and get surrounded from all sides by the enemy. Even she had her limits, after all. With a silent movement of her left hand, she brought it before her and, curling all but her index and middle fingers, she whispered the incantation for her desired spell.

"Sensus."

Without any sound, a small, radar-like image formed up before her eyes, giving the magical outline of the entire complex. It was a nifty spell that she'd created for her assassination work. Basically, like the radar, it would ping off of magical signatures, thereby giving her an precise location and power-levels of all enemies in range. Quietly, she counted up the dots on her image, grimacing at the numbers that seemed to be drowning the area around the Second Gate. She felt a little guilty when she felt relieved that the numbers near her own position were much, much smaller.

"Twenty," she whispered to herself. Fortunately, it seemed as though the magical signatures were separated into smaller groups—no doubt as patrols. There were ten, however, gathered in the chamber she was assigned to go to, however. No doubt a guard detail for the ritual circle.

For a few seconds, Ginny closed her eyes, mentally going through every way she could pull off this assignment. Going down the stairs would be the least direct way, and also the most predictable. Yet, if her sensory spell was correct, it would also take her away from any patrols. Blasting her way down, straight through the roof, was another way—the most direct, in fact. However, she had two floors to go down on, and upon breaking through the very top of the tower, she would inevitably alert the Venati patrols in time for them to return to the chamber. Her third option was to scale down the tower again, look for a window, and get in that way. It was the middle ground in terms of directness, and it would avoid the patrols altogether, but at the same time would severely limit her escape routes if anything went south.

Where it any other assassin, the choice would have been simple—take the third option. The average Imperial Assassin was brought up to complete their mission, regardless of personal consequences. Thus, lack of escape routes would not be a problem for them—merely incentive to finish their mission as quickly as possible. For Ginny, it was different. She founded the Imperial Assassins. She was their master, and thus had not been brought up with them. She had a lot waiting for her back home. She had a daughter, a husband, and a family to walk back to. Going in all suicidal-like would be incredibly heartless of her.

Still, she understood that she needed to make a choice, and quickly. Every second she dallied meant that the circle could once again be used to take down more Imperial airships. She grit her teeth as she opened her eyes, her mind made up.

"Fuck it," she hissed, turning her head towards the parapets. "Option three it is."

However, just as she was about to straighten up to move back the way she came, she felt her instincts scream at her to dodge, which she expertly did with an impromptu roll to the side, finishing up in a crouched, ready stance, her two hidden blades now visible.

Where she had been standing a second ago there now was a vicious, chitin blade impaled into the ground. Had she been any slower, it would have gone straight through her heart. Looking up, she saw a figure at the other end of the chitinous blade racing down from the skies. This was her attacker. With a boost to her limbs, she quickly rolled out of a second strike, and then a third as the attacker neared the top of the tower. It was only when her attacker landed that Ginny recognized her enemy, and let out a small groan of exasperation.

"You again?" she cried out, half in exasperation, half in incredulity. "How many times do I have to kill you before you just stay dead?!"

Standing before her was Narcissa Malfoy, yet again. A few changes had taken place in the blonde woman's appearance, however. Her pale blue eyes were now covered by a silken, white piece of cloth that surrounded her head. Her robes had been changed as well—which was understandable, given their state following their last fight—but Ginny could still see the hint of vast number of bandages at her neckline. It was clear that however Narcissa had survived, it had been a close thing.

"Like I told you once, whore, it'll take more than you to take me down!" spat the blonde as she stood there, her brows scrunching up as she gave an eyeless glare.

With surprising accuracy, Narcissa's arms—or rather, those chitinous tentacle-blades that replaced her limbs—lashed out at her, causing Ginny to have to flip backwards several times as she was forced from position to position by the incredibly fast attacks. When she felt her back hit the parapets, however, Ginny simply rolled sideways, demonstrating her exceptional athleticism by dodging the blades with expert aerobics. She would crouch beneath one strike, then use one foot to launch herself sideways, before then using her hand to make a one-handed handstand as both blades raced to either of her sides.

With her free hand, she lashed out at the tentacle blades, trying to sever them from Narcissa's control. Unfortunately, it seemed that the chitinous material was just as strong as Harry's, which confirmed her suspicions that Narcissa had, somehow, been fused with a Venati.

"Shit," she hissed as she back-flipped away from another strike, landing harshly on the tentacle blade that had been trying to spear her. With all her might, she thrust down onto the tentacle with her hidden blades, with predictable results. She swore as she both felt and saw the blades break. Left with no hidden weapons, she drew her melee sabre that hung at her side. It shamed her to use the weapon, as an assassin was supposed to only ever draw it if their cover was blown—which in turn reeked of incompetence. She knew that was an unfair assessment, considering that her opponent was half-Venati, but the shame remained true.

Thus, with the goal of avenging her lost honour, she grasped the sword's hilt tightly as she held it in front of her in a perfect kenjutsu stance. Every assassin had their own style of sword fighting, with some being outright stance-less, but she had adopted the Japanese normalized fencing stance for her own following her assignments to Japan before the Empire had been reconvened.

Narcissa, for her part, seemed amused at the action. "You think that little knife of yours is going to cut where your hidden blades didn't?" she mocked, her tentacle blades rearing up at her sides. Then, with her expression twisting in unrestrained fury, she launched the tentacles forward, ready to end her rival's life. "DIE FOR YOUR ARROGANCE!"

Ginny felt disappointed by the attack, however. It was a textbook blind attack, and she easily parried the first tentacle and then the second with minimal effort. What she didn't expect, however, was to see a third tentacle suddenly rush at her as she blocked the second.

She wasn't the best for nothing, however.

With a feminine grunt, she pushed aside the second tentacle and swung up her blade to divert the third tentacle's attack upwards. The fact that it did seemed to confirm another suspicion of Ginny's. The tentacles, probably due to their chitinous nature, were extremely linear in their attacks. While it did seem like they could bend, the angle of curvature was quite wide, meaning that she didn't have to fear a sudden attack at her back if she passed the edge of one.

Confident with her newfound information, she launched herself forward, now that all three tentacles had passed her. To her surprise, two more shot forward from her body, making for a total of five tentacles now in the fight. Without so much as a flinch, Ginny half-turned on one foot and launched herself in the air diagonally, spinning in the air just as the two tentacles passed by her harmlessly, merely cutting strands of hair or cloth as they raced by lethally.

Once on the ground again, she resumed her run at Narcissa, whose sightless eyes seemed to be somehow tracking through the bandages. This was new. Ginny had never known that Venati, or hybrids for that matter, didn't need sight to see. Or did they? Maybe her enemy was using the other senses to track her, such as sound or smell. Maybe the tentacles emitted a sort of sonar signal around them that let her know where Ginny was.

Whatever the reason was for her ability to track her, however, Ginny was not deterred in her attack. Despite being only a couple of meters away from her target, she knew full well that the tentacles had enough time to curve by now that they could strike her at her back if she didn't move in quickly and finished this fight.

Keeping her sabre angled upwards down by the side of her legs as she ran forward, Ginny glared at the blonde as she came within striking distance. "Third time's the charm!" she taunted. "Try to stay dead this time!"

With a sudden stop to her run, she used the accumulated kinetic force to swing up her sabre, aiming to bisect the blonde and thus end her life once and for all. To her horror, however, Narcissa seemed to smile at the attack. Before she could even realize what had happened, five more tentacles burst out from Narcissa's chest beneath her robes, two of them deflecting the sword strike and the other three racing for Ginny's vital points.

With a desperate curse, she jumped backwards, only barely avoiding getting stabbed in the heart, neck, and liver. However, this didn't seem to do much to dissuade the tentacles, as they suddenly raced at her with unprecedented grace and mobility. Ginny swore.

She'd fallen for the oldest trick in the book.

Coming to this realization, she quickly knew that her back was now severely exposed as well. Narcissa had deliberately made her attacks linear to lure Ginny into the optimal kill zone—one where she would be surrounded by the highly mobile tentacle blades.

A quick glance behind her confirmed this. The other three tentacle blades were racing towards her back, and with five more at her front, it seemed to Ginny that unless she thought up of something now, she was going to be unequivocally dead.

Not for the first time, she felt ashamed of herself for her lack of success. She was supposed to be the best assassin in the Imperial Assassin's College, but another person uneducated in the dogma of assassination had outclassed her. To be fair, that meant that Narcissa was just as unpredictable as Ginny herself was, but it also meant that Ginny should have known this and accounted for it.

As a flurry of options raced through her mind—all of them quickly rejected as improbable, if not impossible—Ginny finally came to a conclusion that she didn't like. She would have to abandon her assassin training and go with the gift her husband had granted her. It was the only way for her to even the battlefield.

With a frustrated scream, she raised her left hand and curled all her fingers but the index and middle fingers and held it in front of her face. "Avolo!"

With a puff of smoke, she disappeared from Narcissa's view, causing the blonde to snarl in hateful, frustrated fury. "I WILL NOT BE DENIED BY REVENGE!" she screamed out. "GET BACK HERE SO I CAN KILL YOU, WHORE!"

"I'm right here, idiot," she heard her rival say from behind her. With a vengeful grin, Narcissa created ten more tentacles from her back and lashed out at where she presumed Ginny to be.

To the blonde's horror, however, the blades suddenly disappeared from her consciousness. It was as though someone had cut her link to them—which wasn't possible! Not unless they were actually severed from her body.

Turning around quickly, half-curious, half-furious, she saw Ginny holding the severed tentacles in her hands, black ooze on the ground at the point of severance. The redhead's entire exposed body was covered in glowing blue lines that seemed almost mechanical in nature. Even her face was framed by them, all of them looking like vicious scars.

Her chocolate-brown eyes, like Susan's, were gone, replaced by the wispy, ethereal blue fire that reeked of magic itself.

Unceremoniously, she let go of the severed tentacles, dropping them on the ground as though they were trash. Then, after stretching her neck and cracking her knuckles, she slid into a ready stance before the stunned Narcissa and gave a confident glare.

"No more games," she stated with absolute severity. "One way or another, this time, only one of us is walking away alive."

Skies Above Hogwarts…

Charlie had never had such a bad day in his life as today.

Sure, his time at the concentration camp hadn't been a walk in the park, but by all possible estimations, today was far worse.

First, everything had seemingly gone to plan as his Dragon Lancers helped the Imperial fighters in the air take down the enemy dragon contingents. Then, everything had gone to pot when the MS 5 hit. Being one of the older dragons among the Dragon Lancers, Zeke hadn't been affected by the shockwave, but Ruby—Foster's dragon—had become disoriented by it. Considering that some of his squad had their mounts outright die by way of brain aneurysms, it had been a godsend for the American woman.

Nevertheless, they now found themselves highly undermanned as their 100-strong airborne wing had now fallen to about 30. The MS 5 had been catastrophic to their numbers, to say the least.

Then, secondly, four Imperial airships had been taken down, causing him and his men to have to dodge the falling behemoths as they continued their ferocious air battle with the few enemy dragons still in the air. The worst part of that was that without their golem masters, the dragons were just running wild—which seemed to be infinitely more destructive than their previous state.

Thirdly, he had seen the portals open on the ground and the vast number of enemies streaming forward towards the Imperial lines. If he was honest with himself, he had always held a little bit of doubt towards Harry's story about the Venati. However, seeing them now on the field, he could no longer deny their existence, and was thus incredibly worried for the safety of his little sister, who he knew would be on the field at some point.

The absolute worst part, however, came when, right after he saw some sort of black mass move around on the Astronomy Tower. From behind the castle rose several dark figures, all of whom seemed to be larger than the average dragon. To his relief, however, they were no numerous in number—merely forty of them in total.

That relief, however, was short lived as the enemy flyers came closer. With increasing horror, he realized that the flyers were not dragons, but rather some sort of sub-species of the Venati, adapted for flying. The two-story long airborne Venati had a dragon-esque appearance to them in that they held a reptilian head and four paws, but that was where the comparison ended. On their backs were hundreds of chitinous spikes that he shortly discovered were capable of being fired.

Swearing as loudly as he could, he pulled Zeke's reins sideways and went into a barrel roll as twenty such spikes raced by him, taking down both an unsuspecting Lancer and one of the riderless dragons.

"BOSS!" he could hear Foster screaming through the comm.

"I'm fine!" he reassured his Lancers just as quickly. "All Lancers, spread out! Watch for those spikes!"

"How the hell do we kill these things?!" he heard one Lancer shout out as they watched a fellow dragonrider assault one of the Venati with no effect other than his own death.

Charlie did some quick thinking. One-on-one, it was clear that his Lancers would get butchered in a confrontation with the Venati. He would have to improvise, then.

"All Lancers, focus on a single Venati at a time!" he ordered, readying his lance. "Do not, I say again, do not engage a Venati by yourself!"

Numerous sounds of confirmations flooded the comm. then, to Charlie's relief. He hoped that no one would act against the order, or else he would be losing many, many more riders by the end of this fight.

"All Lancers, on me!" he then ordered as he prodded Zeke to dive and attack at one of the low-flying Venati. With an animalistic grunt, the Green Welsh obeyed its rider's order and plunged down towards the Venati in question, its wings tightly wrapped around its reptilian body to minimize wind resistance.

If it hadn't been for the magic that kept the wind from blowing Charlie away from his saddle, he had no doubts that he would have been falling to his death by now.

Regardless, Charlie kept his spear tightly tucked underneath his armpit as they raced down towards the unsuspecting Venati, his Lancers all behind him. Waiting patiently for the correct moment, Charlie suddenly gave out a yell and actually jumped from his saddle towards the head of the creature, attempting to use gravity as a way of increasing the lethality of his lance's strike.

To his shock, however, the back of the Venati's head seemed to bubble, as though boiling. More horrifically, however, was the fact that something seemed to be rising from within it. As he felt his lance's blade connect with that something, he realized what it was.

A scythe.

Rising out of the Venati was a scythe.

Even just repeating it in his head, Charlie felt like this was the most ridiculous sentence he had ever heard, but there it was. Undeniably, a scythe was rising from the bubbling head of the Venati, and at its hilt seemed to be a human hand, which slowly rose out of the Venati's head until a fully matured human being was standing there, his scythe in hand as Charlie watched, standing on top of the Venati's neck, where he'd landed after the blow had failed to hit its mark.

Charlie was only dumbstruck for a moment, however, as he quickly realized that his new opponent was wasting no time in attacking him, scythe already in the air and swinging at his head. With a curse, he brought up his lance and blocked the strike with the metallic pole.

"What the hell are you?!" he demanded, still reeling from the fact that moments ago, he had seen an actual person materialized out of the back of another creature. Through the comm., he could hear Foster ordering the other Lancers to break off their attack, and was thankful for his second in command's quick thinking.

His opponent, however, was in no mood to chat, as he merely retracted his scythe back to his side and swung it around a few more times, showing off his dexterous ability in managing the usually unwieldy weapon. Then, with an incredible show of strength and deftness, he swung at him again, just as hard as last time.

This time, Charlie jumped back a little, mindful of the spikes behind him, and watched as the swing missed entirely. This seemed to give the stranger pause.

"That's two," he seemed to be muttering to himself.

Charlie immediately guessed that the man was talking about the number of misses, and wondered if that meant that the man had never before missed a strike.

"Interesting," noted the stranger as he pulled back the weapon and held it at his side. "You can actually avoid my strikes. I'm impressed."

Well, that answered that question.

"You wanted my name?" recalled the stranger. He seemed to think about it for a minute before nodding and sliding into a ready stance, wielding his scythe with only one hand. "Very well. Manage to land a strike on me and I'll tell you."

A lesser man might have been taken in by the show of arrogance, but Charlie knew better than to let such emotions loose in the middle of battle. So instead, the redheaded Dragon Lancer also slid into a stance and held his lance in both hands, aimed straight at the stranger. Around them, the fight in the skies raged on as Foster tried to lead the Lancers to victory.

The stranger moved first. Without a sound, he dashed forward suddenly and swung his scythe up at Charlie, his free hand grasping the pole in mid-swing, thereby increasing the centripetal force of the strike. Charlie, for his part, spun in the opposite direction on his heel and brought his lance to bear as though it were a baseball bat and met the scythe's strike head on. The weapon managed to hold against the scythe, though it was becoming apparent to Charlie that it was taking a great deal of effort from both of them to keep the deadlock going.

Almost as though they had read each other's mind, the two suddenly spun backwards, releasing the deadlock and facing each other once again. With a cry, Charlie took the initiative this time, jumping forward and aiming to strike down at his enemy with his lance. It was a predictable move, but one that Charlie had purposefully done.

As he predicted, his opponent dodged the strike and grabbed at the pole, aiming to disarm Charlie. The redhead, however, wasn't done. Lashing out with his foot, he kicked the man in the face, sending him stumbling back while Charlie landed in a crouch, spear still well in hand.

The stranger seemed somewhat shaken by the hit. Obviously, he hadn't expected this to happen. "You hit me…" he was saying shakily. "You actually hit me!"

Charlie smirked. "Don't underestimate me, moron!" he taunted. "I didn't escape hell on earth just to die in this hellhole!"

The expression on the stranger unsettled him, however. The man had palmed his face softly and then retracted it, as though observing the blood that now coated his hand, following the man's rather brutal nose break. Obviously, he hadn't heard Charlie speak, or had ignore him in favour of this strange action.

Then, suddenly, a maniacal grin split the man's face. His eyes wide and deranged, he suddenly vanished from sight and reappeared over Charlie, apparently deliriously happy as he swung down his scythe at the redhead.

Charlie had to dive forward to avoid skewered, and tumbled into a roll during his escape. Agilely getting back on his feet, he saw the scythe's blade embedded in the Venati's neck. Yet, as far as Charlie could see, the creature didn't seem to be feeling any pain, which only served to worry him further. Just how strong were these things?

Then he noticed that the stranger wasn't with his weapon, and the next thing he was aware of was a sharp pain in his stomach as the stranger rammed his fist into his midsection. Reflexively coughing out spit as he was launched backwards, he felt his breath catch as he tried to regulate his breathing once again. That punch had hurt, damnit!

When his vision came back under his control, Charlie saw the stranger standing above him, the same deranged smile from before still stuck on his face. Was the man enjoying this? The very thought of it made Charlie feel a little sick. Not that he had any time to continue that train of thought, as the man descended onto him and began punching Charlie continuously, battering the redhead's body with his bare fists.

"What's the matter?!" demanded the stranger, still grinning like a madman as he continued his relentless beating. "Where's that bravado? That confidence? Aren't you going to stop me? You hit me after all!" That seemed to be the wrong thing to say, as his eyes seemed to widen even more and his grin became all the more deranged, which Charlie hadn't thought was physically possible. "That's right! You hit me! You hit me, hit me, hit me, !"

Then, with the full force of his body, the stranger slammed a punch into Charlie's already battered stomach, and Charlie felt something inside him break and rupture, along with the protective armour. "YOU. HIT. ME!"

Charlie coughed out blood as he felt his oesophagus tear at some places from the viciousness of the blow. What the hell was wrong with this freak?! Was he really going to die at the hands of this crazy person?!

It certainly seemed that way, considering that the man had suddenly stopped his barrage of attacks and had walked back to get his scythe. Charlie, for his part, could do nothing, as his battered body was screaming in agony at the vicious beating it had received. Even worse was the fact that his lance had been taken from him by the madman, who casually tossed it off the Venati's back, allowing it to plunge down to earth unhindered. He was defenceless now. Even his armour had been battered out of any usefulness.

"Damnit…" he gasped painfully as he lay there, waiting for the madman to come back. He was furious with himself. How could he die in such a miserable place? How could this be the end of his life?

A shadow loomed over him. Glancing down, he saw the madman had returned, scythe in hand, the very picture of Death, were it not for the crazed grin and wide, deranged gaze. Charlie felt a mounting panic as he watched the man effortlessly raise his scythe with one hand at the bottom of its pole. This was it. The final blow.

Desperate to prolong his existence as much as possible, Charlie played for time. "Wait!" he cried out. "Your name! You promised!"

That actually seemed to stop the madman, who blinked at him in confusion before slowly nodding, scythe still in the air. "True," admitted the crazy person. He then shrugged. "Why would a dead man want to know, though?"

Charlie quickly thought up of an answer. "It's only proper!" he explained quickly. "Every warrior should know who their killer is!"

This seemed to amuse the man, judging by the arrogant smirk. "Fine. You want my name? You can have it. Curse it for all time as you spend the rest of your pathetic existence in hell!"

His crazed grin back in place, the man swung down his scythe. "I…am…BARTY CROUCH!"

Charlie closed his eyes as he saw the weapon swing down. This was it. He was going to die at the hands of one of Riddle's top lieutenants. When a second passed and nothing happened, however, Charlie was confused. Surely, it didn't take that long for a scythe to swing down. Hesitantly opening one eye, he looked up and saw the last person he wanted to see in this fight standing in front of him, facing Crouch.

"Foster?!" he shouted out.

The American woman was indeed holding back Crouch's scythe with her hands, her lance gone for some reason. Yet, despite having saved him, the scythe's blade had nonetheless managed to injure her, digging deep into her right shoulder. The brunette ignored Charlie's shout, focusing entirely on stopping Crouch from hurting her superior.

The brunette glared at Crouch for all she was worth as he stood there, amused by her interference. "Hands off the boss, you bastard!" she hissed, her slim frame shaking from the excruciating pain, but unyielding. Above them, Ruby and Zeke were both strafing the Venati they were on with breaths of fire, with little effect.

Crouch merely chuckled madly. "Stupid, stupid girl," he taunted, his hands on the pole twitching slightly, causing the blade to shift around in her wound and making her knees shake all the more from the pain. "Why don't you act like a good little whore and step aside while I kill that man?"

Showing extraordinary willpower, Foster managed a condescending grin. "Like hell, fuckface. Bring it!"

Apparently, this was the wrong thing to say, as the man's deranged grin widened a bit. Clearly, he had been hoping for some resistance. Roughly pulling on his scythe's pole, he lifted the weapon out of Foster's reach, compounding the damage already done to her body due to the rough movement. She let out a small cry as the blade finally slid out of her body and latched a hand on the bleeding wound. It was no longer deniable—her entire body was wracked with painful spasms. Not that Crouch cared, however.

Lashing out with a leg, he rammed it into her right side, making her give out another cry of pain as it served to aggravate the wound. Yet, even as she was hurt, she didn't budge an inch from her spot in front of Charlie's downed form.

"FOSTER!" she heard him yell at her. "Stop this, please! RUN!"

"Shut up, boss," she hissed through the pain, her eyes never leaving Crouch's figure. "You saved me back then, and I'm repaying the favour, so be a nice little boy and stay down while I kick this fucker's ass!"

She heard Crouch bark out a short laugh. The madman was getting quite amused by the injured woman's predilection for boasting. Even she had to admit that she was outclassed in this fight. That didn't mean she'd give up willy-nilly, though. Unlatching her uninjured hand from her bleeding shoulder wound, she pointed it straight at Crouch and waved it tauntingly towards her.

"Come on, asshole," she goaded him. "What'cha waiting for? Too scared to take me on?"

Crouch grinned madly. This woman was very amusing indeed. "Have you no fear, whore?" he asked.

Foster scoffed. "Whore, huh?" she said, ignoring his question. "I'll have you know, I've never let a single man touch me."

Crouch barked out another laugh. "Right, because all you humans are so restrained!" he cackled. Charlie and Foster, however, noticed his word choice immediately. For all his appearance as a human being, it was clear that he didn't seem to believe himself to be one. "Why else would you jump in front of a blade if not to save your lover?"

Now it was Foster's turn to laugh, though Charlie gave a chuckle as well, both of them acting as though they were privy to some unspoken joke. For both of them, however, the act was incredibly painful as it aggravated their wounds.

Crouch frowned, angry at being left out of the loop. "What? What's so funny?! TELL ME!" he demanded, sounding—and acting—like a spoiled child.

Charlie's laugh had diminished into a constant snicker, but Foster had managed to regain enough control to explain. "Boss and I? Together? That's real funny, freak," she complimented him mockingly. "I bat for the other side, don't you know?"

That was more than Charlie could handle, and he intermittently gasped in pain as his body was wracked with laughter. Tears of both pain and mirth mingled on his face as he let loose his amusement. Crouch, for his part, looked disgusted by the revelation.

"And you call me a freak?" he snarled. He lifted his scythe for another strike. "You're nothing more than an abomination of nature! DIE!"

"Bigot," Foster muttered under her breath as she bent backwards and avoided getting decapitated. "What? Can't handle the thought of two women doing some sweet lovin' without the need of a man?" she taunted—which, in hindsight, seemed a bit unwise, considering how infuriated it seemed to make him.

However much she was taunting Crouch, however, Foster knew she couldn't beat him. She was weaponless, injured, and forced to defend the lying body of her superior, whom she was just downright unwilling to leave to die. He was her partner, and were she heterosexual, she might even have called him her soulmate. However, since she wasn't, she merely considered him her closest friend. Besides, she wasn't one to get tied down to anyone.

Regardless of her feelings, however, Crouch was going to kill them unless she somehow miraculously managed to pull a worthwhile plan out of her ass. However, that was a bit of a stretch, considering just how unbelievably screwed she and Charlie were. As though to reinforce this, Crouch lifted his scythe yet again, and this time she knew it was the end. There was simply no way to dodge this oncoming blow, no matter how she tried.

As Crouch readied to end her life, however, she heard a dragon roar above them, and immediately thought of Ruby and Zeke. However, as she looked up, she saw neither, but rather a most surprising scene indeed.

Despite being smaller than the airships by a great deal, the airborne Venati were giving the Airfleet a damned time. She could see the creatures fly right through the defensive shields and rip into the armour, while the faster defence systems harmlessly pinged off the chitinous skin. She was sure not even these creatures could sustain a Leviathan or Basilisk-class round, but they were moving too fast for that sort of target lock.

However, what was surprising her even more was the sight of a Norwegian Ridgeback, onyx in colour, diving straight at them, its jaws open as it readied to bit down on the wings of the Venati she, Charlie, and Crouch were standing on. Saddled at the base of its neck, however, was a man wearing a uniform neither of mages nor of the Empire, but rather the ocean blue of the American Resistance militia.

"YEE-HAHA!" she heard the rider cry out, a cross-spear glistening in his hand.

Crouch, stunned by the sheer randomness of this new combatant's entry into the fight, simply watched, frozen mid-strike, as the dragon came barrelling down towards them. With a simple movement of one hand, he then whispered something, and the Venati they were on launched out about fifty spikes at the newcomers, successfully skewering the dragon, although the rider was nowhere to be seen.

The reason for that, however, was because he was now crouching between Foster and Crouch, cross-spear in hand. Foster looked down at him as he raised his head and gave her a wink.

"Hey there, pretty lady. Charlie: you look like shit, man," greeted the newcomer as he stood up amidst the jingling sound of spurs moving, facing Crouch. "And you, don't y'all know it's damned rude to hurt a woman? Who the hell raised you?" he berated, much to the amusement of Charlie and Foster, but to the anger of Crouch.

"Who the hell are you?" spat Crouch, swinging his scythe at the newcomer.

The newcomer grinned as he easily blocked the strike between two of his spear's three blades. The smile became wider as he heard the sound of explosions overhead. With the exception of him, everyone looked up and saw an amazing sight.

Where the Imperial Airfleet had been having trouble with the airborne Venati—with one of the airships looking like it would be out of commission for some time, judging by the holes in its hull—someone was nonetheless managing to hurt the creatures. Looking behind them, towards the opposing end of the valley, they saw small spots in the sun that they suddenly realized were not spots at all, but rather the very best thing that could happen to them at this point.

Reinforcements.

The newcomer grinned before spinning on his heel and dislodging the scythe from his spear, and in the process managed to inflict a cut Crouch's chest. "You asked for my name?" he recalled, and Charlie was suddenly hit by a feeling of déjà vu.

Charlie watched in amazement as his friend's skin suddenly became alight with blue, mechanical-looking lines that raced over each inch of his bare skin. To Crouch, who could see the lines frame the man's face, the whole look was terrifying to behold, especially when the man's eyes were drowned out by ethereal, wispy blue fire that he could feel the magic pouring out from.

"Colonel Nathaniel Pike of the Third Texan Dismounted Lancer Volunteers, American Resistance. At your service," he introduced himself, his youthful grin never faltering. "Pleased to meet'cha."

Post-AN: Yep, them Americans are back. And ready to kick some ass, too.

Now then, in an attempt to head off what I imagine will be a deluge of "WTF?!" reviews, I shall attempt to answer your questions as best as I can foresee them.

1. Nevile Dying: Yes, he's dead. At least, I think so. I'm not quite sure myself. See, at first, I was just going to have both him and Susan kick some ass and take some names, including Dolohov's, but after much consideration, I realized that not only was that predictable and cliché, but it would be contrary to where I wanted to take Susan, character-wise. I mean, I figured I've been pretty much characterizing her as a hard-boiled soldier, but one with a seeming adversity towards magic--something more said in its absence than actual writing, and expanded upon here. That being said, what could possibly be reason enough for her to use this super-boost to her magic? Answer: Neville dying.

2. The OCs are Back: With the return of Nathaniel Pike, I'm going to go ahead and take a wild guess that some people might not enjoy the return of these somewhat obscure OCs. After all, it kinda detracts from the asskicking main HP characters, doesn't it? Hell, I made Pike the one with the superpowers, not Charlie, which I'm guessing some of you might have been wanting. So why? One: because I'm mean like that and I like throwing curveballs; and two: because Pike's been in on the plan since Harrisburg. If you don't believe me, check the post-Harrisburg attack chapters again; specifically the one dealing with the final Death Eater assault.

3. Airfleet: Another potential question: why no focus on the Venati/Airfleet combat? Simply put? I suck at aerial battles. The Battle of Salt Lake City was one instance where I pretty much had to write one, and even so, I'm so very not satisfied with it. That doesn't mean that there won't be scenes taking place in the Airships from here on, but rather that the tactical aspect of it will be, for the most part, glazed over. You'll still get to see Wolf direct the ships, and you'll get the feelings from the people within the Airships, but no blow-by-blow combat description. Sorry.

Hope that covers the main points. If not, well then I'll see to answering your question as best I can via Review Reply. Cheers -- MB.