High-pitched laughter, sounding even younger than the teenage twins who produced it. Little giggles in stereo, surrounding them. And alongside the giggles, spiders poured forth from the dancing wands of the skipping Carrow twins.
"I can't tell which chittering noise is worse." Hermione whispered to Cedric, who somehow managed to crack a good natured smile in response.
"Remember, they don't have enough power to make all the spiders poisonous, but they're smart enough to mix the poisonous ones with the others." Cedric spoke evenly, his reminder being less meant to jog memory and more meant to bring on a prepared state of mind. Hermione had learned this after reminding him several dozen times of how good her memory was.
She brandished her wand and gave an internal sigh. "I can't believe I'm doing this." And from her wand came the image (not the form) of a mighty, ancient serpent, at whose presence the spiders' line broke as nearly half went scurrying into the forest.
The twins' giggling didn't subside, even as Cedric and Hermione refreshed their shields and turned on them in proper dueling stance.
In the moment the pairs faced off, Hermione's image of a basilisk set off a great hissing cry, and she gave a look of shock and the unearthly sound, and a look of greater shock at the strange reply it found.
"Close your eyes." Cedric and Hermione reminded each other simultaneously.
"Brilliant idea, Fred."
"Well you know it wasn't mine, George."
"I know, I'm just telling you. It's brilliant!"
Neville looked up from his transfiguration, less patient than he normally felt.
"Yes, when you ask the greatest dark wizard of the last century how to take over a major government, you get a well thought out and effective plan."
Neville was still a bit uncomfortable with the idea of asking Gellert Grindelwald for advice. And perhaps more worrisome for him was how easily Fred and George took to it. He'd always admired the twins, even in his first year when they'd teased him mercilessly. But at times like these he worried a bit about their moral integrity.
"A bit touchy, inn'e, Fred?"
"You would be too, if..." Fred trailed off, and the twins' heads turned to Neville in somber unison.
They returned to transfiguring the structural supports of the Ministry of Magic into swamp biomass in silence, and Neville's mind wandered to his friends back at Hogwarts.
And to their foes.
Filius Flitwick did not look like a dueling champion. He did not act like a dueling champion. Yet as tempting as these sentences are, they are false. Because Filius Flitwick WAS a dueling champion, and so whatever manner he chose to look or act in really was how dueling champions looked and acted. And looking back at past famed champions, from Alastor Moody to Baba Yaga to Lucius Malfoy, one might decide that a coherent notion of what a dueling champion ought to look like was a bit of a pipe dream anyway.
But those sorts of conversations were in Filius' distant past. His current conversation, with one Bellatrix Lestrange, went rather more like this:
"INCARCERO!" "IMPEDIMENTA!" "AVADA KEDAVRA" "STUPEFY" "FINITE INCANTATEM" "COGISEMPRUM""PETRIFICUSOCULUS"
And had quickly escalated into words unheard by mortal ears for decades, incantations original to each and spells long thought lost to time. Bursts of black smoke, Slytherin's ancient secrets known only to the Death Eaters. Wordless power native to goblinkind.
This had been Sinestra's idea, actually. A "locally optimally partitioning strategy" she had called it; pairing the strongest duelists. Lily had called it good for morale, and Filius agreed. Not fighting Bellatrix Lestrange was definitely good for everyone else's morale.
But while others might not yet notice it, Filius could feel the strength of Bellatrix' magic on his shields. He could see where her madness outwitted his predictions. He could tell you, down to the second, down to the spell, when he would lose this duel.
Minerva McGonagall was doing something that she always told students never to do. Something she'd been told never to do, even by Albus when he had been her teacher. Something she had expelled students for. Something that three of her students might have died from had she not arrived in time. One of only four causes of concurrent student death since the founding of Hogwarts.
She was using transfiguration to attack people.
Wrapping feet in stone had been largely ineffective against the Death Eaters' flying charms.
Reconfiguring the battlefield had made their flight paths more difficult, and had given the guardians more avenues of attack, and had given her students more cover.
She had been satisfied with this, one good idea, for a moment or two. Then a death eater had tossed a single green bolt at one of her students.
Turning the intervening air to lead had not helped, only showered shrapnel on the surroundings. Transfiguring the ground beneath Padma's feet had not helped-it tripped her, but at such an angle that she was still in the path of-
Transfiguring a piece of lead shrapnel into a boulder as it hurtled toward the death eater had helped. Helped her feel better. A little. A different kind of bad, at least.
She kept doing it.
Lily Potter was not a dueling champion. She was not party to ancient secrets of Slytherin or of goblins. She had not honed her practice of charms or transfiguration for several decades, to the point of genius or even of creative usefulness.
In fact, Lily Potter's natural reflexes were somewhat bad, and she was not a notable duelist at all. In school, her best subject had been potions. The last Great defense professor, before Voldemort's curse was placed on the position, had retired just before her first year.
Lily Potter was 34, nearly a baby by the standards of Dumbledore.
But Lily Potter was of the family Peverell, and she had some measure of power over death.
Her strides unseen, her whispers of "innervate" unheard, her power conserved for the trump card Voldemort would never attack without holding.
When Hermione's false basilisk hissed, many things began to happen.
Filius' memory coughed up a tale fifty years past. His estimate of the length of his battle dropped ten seconds. His sympathy for Rubeus Hagrid waxed. Bellatrix started, and then cackled. Gloriously, joyously, rapturously. Distractedly.
Flitwick poured his magic into an enormous prismatic barrier. After a moment's notice and hesitation, Minerva joined him.
Cedric grabbed Hermione, whose wand was still wantonly, blindly blazing, and disapparated.
And Lily Potter performed what might have been the largest side-along apparation in the entire history of magical Britain.
Minera looked over the courtyard of Hogwarts, her Hogwarts. Everywhere transfigured ditches, corpses, scorchmarks, crushed stone and broken tree limbs, still twitching. Death eaters, still, dozens and dozens more.
And Filius Flitwick. The only member of the Hogwarts staff older than she was.
She looked at him, as they poured their magic together into the barrier which now guarded no one.
He looked back at her, and she saw resignation in his eyes, and he whispered in such a way that it felt only she could hear, "go."
She saw Bellatrix flying headlong into him, and ten charms and hexes were coming at her as the death eaters regrouped, and she disaparated.