Trolls began moving forward, having torn down trees from the Forbidden Forest and stripped them of branches. These were large trees, with trunks two feet thick and each took several trolls to carry them.
For a moment Harry didn't understand what they were doing, but a moment later he saw it. They were making their own bridges, and when they were done the enemy was going to make its way across without any problems.
Peridot cursed under her breath, using terms Harry didn't understand. She spoke into something that looked like an oversized walkie talkie. Harry wondered if it had to be that size to work within Hogwarts, or if it was oversized because she'd made it from junk.
Either way, something was happening down below.
Dozens of house elves popped into existence down below. Gesturing in unison, they all blasted the near ends of the logs in unison, causing them to fall into the crevasse with the people who were making their way across the logs. Before the wizards had a chance to attack them back, they'd already disappeared.
"I taught them that," Peridot said smugly. "Sapphire helped, showing them what to do."
A green light flashed through the air and she ducked behind a crenelation. She grimaced as she saw that at least some of the wizards had brought their own brooms.
Twenty wizards were flying toward them on brooms at a high rate of speed, wands outstretched.
Peridot lifted her backpack mounted blaster and began to fire at the wizards on the brooms, laughing maniacally. "Eat blaster, Clods!"
Now that Steven was visibly here, there was no reason to keep Harry alive. Harry suspected that they were looking for the reward that was being offered for the first to kill either of them.
It didn't matter, though. Harry glanced back at Steven and Hermione. To his surprise they were dancing together in a strange half waltz. Before he could ask them why they were dancing in the middle of a battle, they began to glow.
A moment later they were gone, replaced by the same strange amalgam of the both of them that had made the night of the Yule Ball so entertaining.
Harry could only think that Steven had done it to protect Hermione. He was fast, but given the number of Avada Kedavras being launched toward them...
Before he could react, the creature lunged toward Harry, with a shield of rose colored force interposed between Harry and a green colored blast coming from behind him through the massive window; someone had gotten on a broom and circled around.
She lifted her shield and moved it over one of the crenelations, pulling backward with a sudden jerking motion. The stone shattered into smaller chunks.
The creature that had once been two of his friends reached down to one of the pieces of stone and took a firm grip on it. It had to be a five pound chunk of stone, put she picked it up like it didn't weigh anything. She pitched it underhand. It looked like a deceptively soft throw, but the wizard coming toward them suddenly plummeted off his broom.
She grimaced, but a moment later she was picking up other stones and was pitching them at the wizards on brooms, ducking behind the wall.
The walls provided fair cover, but her shield was better.
Harry crouched behind her shield, wand outstretched. He cast stunners at the wizards, which at the heights they were flying could be lethal. They easily blocked his spells, but their shields had a much harder time dealing with five pound chunks of stone.
Steven...Hermione...whoever she was kept throwing rocks, a grim expression on her face. Wherever she threw, a wizard generally fell. She looked increasingly sorrowful.
Her shield was deflecting avada kedavras, but cracks were appearing in it, and the avada kedavras flew in all different directions.
A stray shot hit Peridot, and her body vanished. The blaster fell to the ground along with the backpack and some of her other tools.
The amalgam whipped out her wand. With a flick Peridot's gem flew through the air. She looked at the gem for a moment, then gave a sigh of relief.
Apparently the beam hadn't gotten her in the gem and she was going to be all right.
There were only three wizards left in the air now. They'd gotten a lot more wary, and these were the best at dodging in midair.
"Hit the ground!" the amalgam said.
With a glance at her, Harry dropped to the floor of the tower. A moment later, the amalgam threw her shield, which was already breaking apart.
It slammed into the first wizard; a five foot wide shield was harder to dodge than a small rock, especially at the speeds it was being thrown.
What surprised Harry was that it bounced off the falling wizard, hit the second, and narrowly missed the third, who'd moved at the last second.
The amalgam cursed under her breath as a green beam of light smashed into the top of the tower, not a foot from where she and Harry stood.
"Stay down!" she said to Harry, shoving him through the door leading down below.
A moment later she was dodging, beams of light flashing through areas she had just been. She moved gracefully; it looked a little like the dance Harry had sometimes seen Pearl performing in the background as he'd studied Occlumency in the Temple.
The wizard on the broom was good at dodging. Once, twice, three times he missed being hit by a thrown stone by inches. He'd have made an excellent Quidditch player, given his skills on the broom.
Harry glanced at the stairs below him and wondered how safe he really was. In his imagination enemies were already making their way up the stairs to hit them in the back.
He glanced back at the battle, and the wizard was gone.
Harry stood slowly and headed back onto the walkway.
"What do I call you?" he asked.
She shrugged. "I was Stevonnie when I was with Connie. I'm someone different now. Hermeven doesn't sound right. Stevionne? Does it matter?"
Sounds of screaming came from below. Harry rushed toward the rampart, carefully looking over the crenellations.
He felt the blood running from his face as he looked at the scene below.
Giants were fighting trolls, smashing each other with wild abandon. One of the cerberuses was dead already; the other two were tearing away at giants.
Watermelon Stevens were everywhere, and what they were doing to the enemy wizards...
Stevionne was suddenly beside him, and her face turned whiter than Harry's.
"I didn't want any of this," she said. Harry could see tears welling up in her eyes. "There had to be a better way."
She began to glow, and a moment later Hermione and Steven were different people again.
"It's not your fault," Hermione said quietly as she hugged Steven tightly. "They chose this."
Harry wondered if Stevionne's will to kill had come from Hermione. Steven certainly didn't seem like he liked what they'd been forced to do.
"We should be better than this," Steven said. He glanced down at the battlefield and he winced. "I never wanted to hurt anyone."
"Didn't your mother have to fight to protect the Earth?" Harry asked suddenly, surprising himself. He'd been hearing Steven's history in bits and pieces for the whole of the time he'd been in school.
Steven looked up, then nodded.
"Sometimes you have to hurt the people who want to hurt other people," Harry said grimly. "If we don't, even worse than this will happen."
Steven was quiet for a moment, then sighed. "I just wish it could be different."
As Harry glanced back at the battlefield, he found himself wishing the same thing.
Watermelon Stevens were slaughtering Wizards, but they in turn were being slaughtered. It was ugly and brutal, and Harry wondered if this really was how things had to be.
The worst part was the the watermelons were losing. They just didn't have the numbers; the wizards outnumbered them four to one, and even though they killed one wizard and brutally injured another, they were falling faster than the wizards were.
The fallen decorated the battlefield like a drops of rain. Splashes of red were everywhere; not just blood but the crimson interiors of melons.
A greenish glow came from Hermione's pocket. She pulled out the Peridot gem, which began to glow and form.
Peridot reappeared. Her face looked oddly misshapen, and Harry thought that one of her legs looked longer than the other.
"What did I miss?" she asked. She seemed unconcerned that she had just been killed, even if only temporarily, or that she'd come back subtly wrong.
She glanced over the rampart, and nodded to herself.
Peridot raced over to her discarded equipment and barked out quick, incomprehensible orders into the walkie talkie.
Suddenly Harry could feel a rumble coming through the flood beneath him. He glanced over the edge of the rampart and he found himself staring.
A huge mechanical robot was rising from the ground, sending dirt flying everywhere. It was huge; at least four stories tall. Where it's head should have been was a tiny cockpit.
Before Harry could say anything, Peridot went flying over the side of the ledge. A moment later he saw her land inside the cockpit, a protective canopy sliding over her.
Her amplified voice exploded across the battlefield. "LAY DOWN YOUR MAGIC STICKS AND SURRENDER, CLODS!"
Although the Wizards paused for a moment, no one seemed to take her up on her offer. They simply turned back to fighting. A moment later the robot was wading into the battle. It grabbed a troll and threw it into the chasm.
A simple swing of its leg send dozens of forms flying through the air. Her voice cackled through the loudspeaker, and avada kedavras didn't penetrate the thick metal shell of the robot.
The remaining two cerberuses charged toward her, and suddenly she began to sing.
"LOVE AND DEATH AND WAR AND BIRTH, AND PEACE AND LOVE ON THE PLANET EARTH."
Steven sighed and said, "I think that's the only song she knows."
It was working. Even at the vastly magnified volume, it had an immediate effect on the cerberuses, who stumbled to a stop.
Peridot's robot continued its brutal work for almost two minutes more, tossing trolls and sweeping entire groups of combatants away with swings of its arms.
The wizards were beginning to regroup, however, now that watermelon Steven's were few and far between on the ground. Seeing that avada kedavra didn't work, they began to blast away at Peridot's robot with reducto spells, blasting away small chunks of metal.
Others began to blast at the base of the tower.
Harry felt the tower vibrating beneath him, and he felt a sudden feeling of alarm. Reducto spells could rip apart a stone wall, if enough of them hit it. Given the number of wizards below, all they had to do was keep blasting away and eventually the tower would come tumbling down.
Peridot's robot fell to one knee, one leg having been blasted all the way through.
The wizards kept up the firepower, blasting away at the arms and the legs, moving efficiently and ruthlessly.
The machine groaned and fell, and the assembled Wizards cheered.
They moved closer, blasting away at the robot. The reawakened cerberuses were tearing away at the armor, and Harry felt himself tense.
Even if Peridot became a gem again, a stray reducto could shatter her gem as easily as it could the stone of a wall.
A moment later, the dome which served as the cockpit exploded into the air, looking a little like one of those American astronaut capsules from the sixties that Harry had once seen on the telly while he was cleaning the Dursley living room.
A moment after that the robot exploded in a massive fireball that incinerated the cerberuses and anyone within a hundred feet.
"EAT FIRE, CLODS!" Peridot's voice came from the capsule, which was high in the air now., followed by cackling laughter. A parachute exploded from the capsule a moment later, but winds made the capsule drift to the east.
Her capsule disappeared into the distance.
Although only one fifth of Voldemort's army remained, those left behind cheered. Most of the giants had fallen back to the walls of the castle, and the watermelons were gone.
It looked as though the only defenders left would be children and a few teachers.
A dragon roared, and Harry stared as he realized that Voldemort was riding it. Given that he knew Voldemort could easily fly under his own power, this had to be to impress his followers.
An even louder roar came from the walls of the castle. Harry turned and stared; clinging to the walls of Hogwarts was a thirty foot tall monstrosity with magenta skin and six arms. It had thick green hair and multiple mouths.
It roared.
"Garnet's back," Steven said softly.
"That's Garnet?" Harry asked, disbelievingly. He couldn't understand how Steven could have been raised by a monster that size. It was large enough that even Hagrid would look like a toddler next to it, much less someone like Steven, who was smaller than usual.
Steven shook his head. "No..that's Alexandrite. That's all of the gems, together."