I now have all of the chapters finished (only two left, yikes,) besides cleanup, and they will all be posted within a week of each other! Thanks again for staying with me and being the best readers I could ever ask for!

The End

PART II

Rene Nelson
September 11, 1996
5:27 P.M.
The American Academy of Magic

Rene ran through the hallways, her middle daughter bleeding out in her arms. Jessica was still conscious, somehow, but her eyelids were fluttering and she was pale and cold. "Don't die on me, baby girl!"

"I'm so sorry, mommy..." Jessica breathed, cries of pain and sadness coming from those breaths. Tears started streaming down her face as she leaned her head against her mother's shoulder.

She couldn't tell her daughter that it was okay, because it wasn't. What she'd done was wrong. Everything—lying, torturing, killing, maiming, pillaging, destroying...it deserved no forgiveness, only rehab and lockup for a very, very long time. She was sick in the mind, and that took time to heal.

But Jessica was dying. Even as Rene set her daughter on the medical table and brushed her hair way from her face, she knew it from the light dying in her eyes. She was pushed away by Dr. Swells, though, and she couldn't help her little girl anymore.

She could still help her eldest daughter, though, and she ran out of the surgery room, filled with too many injured soldiers, to make her way down to the makeshift birthing room that'd been set up for Leigh Ann. Only, when she got down the hall, she saw dead bodies and lots and lots of blood.

My baby! Panicking, she pulled out her pistol and wand and crept up the wall towards the door. The bodies at the door were all KKK, but one hand lying in the doorway belonged to a Marine.

Her heart was beating a mile a minute as she braced herself to peek into the room, expecting the worst. Her heart leaped into her throat when a gunshot grazed the wood next to her head. "Shit!"

"Mom?" came a scared gasp from inside.

Leigh Ann. Rene breathed a sigh of relief and replied, "It's me, babygirl!" She turned and went in, slowly, as not to scare Leigh Ann, and saw the other Marine on her guard duty dead near the turned-sideways hospital bed that Anna was using as a shield. While her daughter was terrified and tired, she still managed to get a laugh out of her mother when Rene saw that her daughter was wearing only an ammo belt, a Marine's helmet, and her hospital gown.

When she saw that it was safe, Anna stood up slowly from behind her shield and hugged her mother. She wouldn't cry, but she shook as she placed her head in her mother's neck. Sore and emotional, the girl couldn't have gone through more in the short amount of time after giving birth.

Rene didn't ask about her granddaughter. It was a silent understanding that, when the going got tough, Jason would take Samantha to a safe, undisclosed location until he heard through news outlets or local media providers that all was safe. But Leigh Ann was missing her baby and was frightened all the same.

"Viktor," the girl said as a statement, not as a question.

Rene had been in such a hurry trying to defend Jessica and Leah Sampson, she'd almost completely forgotten about her future son-in-law. Thinking, she remembered him last fighting the General...or, she should say, the Grand Dragon. Which Leigh Ann didn't know about yet.

Explaining that to her daughter took two tries, because it didn't register the first time. When it finally did, Leigh Ann's face turned to pure horror. She kept saying that, no, it was wrong, that couldn't be right. Because, if it were, he had killed her favorite teacher, her best friend, and so many more people she cared about. People that other people had cared about.

He'd tortured her.

Rene didn't even have the heart to tell Leigh Ann about Jessica yet. That would be a discussion for another time, when she wasn't suffering from postpartum depression or anxiety in general from all that had happened in the last twelve hours.

"Take me to him," she said then, grasping her mother's shoulders.

"Leigh Ann, you aren't fit for duty." Rene knew that the only thing that would get through to her daughter at that point was orders. Orders would keep her emotionless and tactical—elsewise, she'd go in, guns ablaze, and get herself and others killed. "Stand down."

"No." The word surprised Rene so much that she almost let her daughter walk right past her. Fortunately, the girl was slow enough from the pains of pregnancy that Rene could easily turn and grab her arm before she could make it out the door. Leigh's eyes were full of a passion that Rene had never seen before. "Let me go! He's risked his life for mine, I'm not going to let him die!"

She almost didn't let go, but then thought of a better way for her daughter to be safe. "If you're going to go in, at least know your enemy and surroundings." Leigh had to concede to that. "There are at least thirty Members left, including Harrington. We have maybe fifty soldiers left."

Leigh blanched. "That few?"

Rene nodded and started taking a bullet-proof vest off of one of the Marines at her feet. "We have the west side of the Mess Hall taken over. The tables are being used as shields. Viktor was last seen on the teacher's podium, so, with the shields, you should have a straight cover until no-man's-land." She gave the armor she'd taken from the man to her daughter, who was slipping it on, as well as the pants he was wearing.

Leigh tightened them with a belt and lastly slipped on too-large shoes that would have to do. She nodded solemnly at her mother. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," Rene said as she primed her pistol and shot a small spell out with her wand. "We've still got a Dragon to kill."

Leigh Ann Nelson
6:13 P.M.
Mess Hall

The room was a disaster—bodies, everywhere. Ash from explosions and bombs, bodies, curses destroying the very foundation of the walls and floor, blood, wounded from both sides littering no-man's-land, blood, death, dying, wounded, dead.

The smell of the battle almost made me gag, but I swallowed it and clenched my gun tighter as I battle crawled to the first turned table. My body ached in ways I'd never expected it to, with stitches pulling in my nether-regions from birthing less than six hours before, my legs feeling weak, and my whole body just exhausted.

But I pushed on.

There were dying, hurting people in that room who were in more pain that I would ever be. I had to be strong for them. I had to kill the Dragon and end this war before everyone I loved died, like in the prophecy.

My baby was the baby that people hoped for, when none was left. I was the girl born under the seventh moon who would rise to defeat this evil, even if it killed me. I would let no more of my family or friends wait at heaven's door when all that bastard wanted was me.

I army crawled across the barricade that my mother had promised would be there. She was on the east side of the entrance, fighting off the Members up close. I prayed for her to stay safe and soldiered on, ignoring the cries of the hurt and injured until I reached my destination.

No-man's-land was a place full of dead bodies, smoke, bombs, curses, traps waiting to be tripped, and even more bodies. It was the completely open area between the fighting on both sides and the northern wall, which was where I finally saw Harrington and Viktor.

My heart tore in two as I saw Harrington torturing Viktor with the Crucio curse, much like he had me oh so long ago. Tears fell down my eyes before I found myself running toward the man, gun held with both hands, and letting out volleys of bullets directly at his body.

One hit his shoulder.

Another, his leg.

He finally turned to look at me when the last one pierced him straight through the stomach. His eyes widened in maniacal anger as he turned his wand on me, lips starting to for the curse that would kill me in one instant.

My gun shot the wand out of his hand. I raced further, pouncing on him, hitting him over the head with the butt of my gun multiple times until he blacked out underneath me.

Then, my bloodlust sated and I turned to see Viktor, lying, unmoving, on the ground. I could hear someone screaming in the background as I scrambled over to him, noticing the gunshots in his stomach, his legs, his arms... Blood pooled underneath him like a lake of death. The ash marks from the curses marred his hands and face. His body was still shaking from the shock of the last Crucio curse.

I realized later that it was me screaming as I held his head in my lap. The battle dissolved around us, the last of the Members being killed or throwing down their wands to keep from it. The dying were being found and taken to the Medical Ward, which included Viktor. I wouldn't let go of him, chanting my healing magic over him as much as I could. I wasn't an expert. I wasn't Dr. Swells or Doc.

They tried to take me, too. I didn't realize that they were on our side and I fought to get away from them. Every face looked like it was hooded with a white robe or covered in puppet makeup, like from the Halloween show. I clawed and punched, unable to shoot or cast spells as they had taken everything from me.

Looking behind me as I was pulled away by three adults, I expected to see General Harrington standing at the headmaster's podium, a look of devilish glee on his grotesque face, but I saw nothing.

The sunset coming through the broken glass shone in the pile of blood where he should have been lying.

October 2, 1996
11:34 P.M.
Safehouse

I felt the first few tears fall down my face as I watched my husband standing over his daughter's manger. He was staring down on her in wonder, not touching her, just standing there with his hand on the wooden edge.

He was gorgeous. Even with bandages covering his entire right arm and shoulder, his left leg, and his waist, he was still the most beautiful man I had ever seen. My heart swelled with love and pride. He was the best thing that had ever happened to me...and I didn't know how I would be able to do this. I'd lost too many people, so far.

Jessica was in the Medical Ward, dying. She'd betrayed all of us and had tortured me. To end all trust before there's more... Taking that news had been even harder than learning that George Harrington, the ex-headmaster of the American Academy of Magic, was the Grand Dragon of the wizarding KKK. Even harder was knowing that he was still out there, hurting more people.

Leah Sampson lost her leg, still lying unconscious next to my sister. No one knew if she would wake up or not.

Jason was only staying with Viktor, Samantha, and I for the night, before he would take our darling daughter away from us and on the run, to keep them both safe. Death. Poverty. Despair. Hope in a babe with none left to spare.

I'd already lost my favorite teacher and best friend to the madness.

Who would be next? My father was luckily overseas, away from all of the madness.

"I loff you," he said softly, kneeling next to his daughter's manger with a lot of effort. She was sound asleep, so she probably couldn't hear it. But it was the point. "I loff you so, so much...I vill never let anything happen to you, for as long as I am able. You and your mother...you are the only two things in my life that I care about. Not even my ovn life. I vould risk everything for you."

He was right. He would risk his own life for mine and for our children. But there was no way that I could live without him. He would no doubt kill himself to save his family, as he almost had in the birthing room. He would be next.

There was only one solution. I lifted my wand hand and watched the tip of it waver as it pointed at him.

To forget one's love to fight a war...

One word left my lips.

"Obliviate."