Alastor dove over the railing of the grand staircase to avoid Abraxas Malfoy, who was creeping up the stairs while fending off Euphemia and James Potter, Lily Evans, and Gideon Prewett all at once, mostly with killing and blasting curses. The bastard's house elf was helping to shield him, cowering at his heels.

He used a charm to slow his fall sufficiently that he was able to hit the ground running. "Time to run!" he yelled, and barreled out of the room. He found Albus less than a minute later when he ran out of the front door of the mansion. He was monitoring the wards with Fleamont Potter, exactly as planned, oblivious to the inferno building inside the walls. "Albus!"

The old man spun around. "What has happened?"

"Abraxas showed up with his house elf."

Several second-story windows shattered loudly. Albus' eyes widened, looking past Alastor. "And you decided to cast Fiendfyre earlier rather than later, I see."

"Pretty much."

"Merlin's hat!" Fleamont sputtered.

Albus swung into action. He pointed his long, grey wand at the flames spewing out the window and intoned, "Mundarmori Annihilare!" That clawed arm of fire vanished, but more took its place. Urgently, Albus strode into the burning building. The Fiendfyre had not yet reached the entrance hall, but it did block the way back to the room with the grand staircase, where Alastor had left the others. "Mundarmori Annihilare!" Albus repeated, biting a gap in the fire. Gideon, Fabian, Remus, Peter, and Lily tumbled through one after another.

"James is back there!" Lily coughed, even as the gap closed behind her. Albus nodded and raised his wand again. He slowly bored his way through the fire, smothering flames with each footstep, though they clearly resisted even him.

"This fire has fed on something uncommonly vicious, Alastor," Albus said, his tone deceptively mild. Alastor's stomach twisted. Albus had told him that Fiendfyre gained the magical energy of whatever it consumed, yet he had not accounted for that before giving in to Sirius' reckless suggestion. Not that he blamed the kid. Sirius had trusted him to know his own limits, and he hadn't. Yes, it could also have endangered the mission to fight his way out with the horcrux, but now they might lose two brilliant kids due to his carelessness. He and Gideon joined in battling the fire, although their counter curses were less effective than Albus'. Finally, the gap opened sufficiently again for James and Euphemia to come through. They were cowering under shield and bubble-head charms and dragging a bloodied and unconscious Sirius with them. Thank Merlin for small miracles, that the brave lad wasn't burnt to a crisp.

"Abraxas?" Albus asked.

"Dead," Euphemia said dully. "Voldemort will be on his way. We should get out of here."

Alastor nodded briskly. "Teenagers out first, then the Potters. One of you lot give a heads-up to the Ministry. They would have been here by now, except Malfoy's wards weren't installed to regulation standard to notify them. Prewetts stay with me to greet the company while Dumbledore tends the fire. Move!" He hustled everybody out the door. "Fleamont! Open a hole in the anti-apparition ward!"

"Right where Remus is standing," Fleamont called back easily. The young wizard nodded and disapparated readily. Peter Pettigrew followed suit.

Just then is when a powerful blasting curse blew down the wall and wrought-iron gates enclosing the front garden. The anti-apparition field extended about two hundred yards beyond the gates, and just past the perimeter of the ward stood a figure robed all in black. Voldemort. Death Eaters were apparating to either side of him, more every second. Eerily silent, Voldemort rose up into the air as if under a levitation charm. Then he started flying closer, and fast. The cluster of Death Eaters broke into a run, racing across the empty space between them, wands raised to attack.

"James! Now! Protego Totallum!" Fleamont cried.

Alastor heard more people disapparating behind him and inwardly sighed in relief knowing Sirius and the other young ones were clear. This would be a real battle, the kind of head-to-head confrontation Voldemort and his accursed Death Eaters had been avoiding for years. People were going to die, but with luck, Voldemort would be one of them now that his horcrux was gone. Shame they had hellfire threatening their backs.

Alastor, Gideon, and Fabian formed a defensive triangle around Fleamont and Euphemia, who were both contributing to a powerful shield charm.

"Thought I told you two to clear out," Alastor muttered.

"And we ignored you," Euphemia said. "Alarte Ascendere!" That particular spell was invisible, the only reason to cast it in a fight. The masked Death Eater in the lead suddenly shot high into the air. She shrieked out a killing curse that missed by a wide margin, and one of her fellows slowed down to arrest her fall back to earth.

"Bloody civilians," Alastor grunted whilst casting a nonverbal stunning charm at a distracted Death Eater, who barely dodged.

Fabian erected crenellated earthen barriers in front of them, shielding from Unforgivables that could not be parried otherwise. A dark purple curse splattered across the embankment as soon as it was raised. Albus was still inside battling the flames. Alastor was not worried about being separated from him. The grand sorcerer was as much a force of nature as Voldemort, both unable to work on a team according to what he had seen.

The five Order members were quickly pinned down by a barrage of deadly curses from about twenty masked Death Eaters. Luckily, Voldemort himself ignored them. Instead, he darted into the burning building, blowing out a huge chunk of the wall with the force of his passage. He was looking for his horcrux, Alastor thought with satisfaction. Well, good luck to him. And better luck to Albus. The clash was sure to be awe-inspiring, but Alastor had his own work to do.

"Prewetts! Focus on disabling the weak! I'll keep the elite busy until we get our reinforcements. Potters! Hold the anti-apparition ward until the Ministry gets here. Attacks of opportunity only, and clear out once more aurors arrive. No arguing. Get to it!" He launched stunner after stunner towards the Death Eaters, chaining the wand movements together as quickly as possible. It was a simple spell to cast, and a simple spell to block or dodge, but it got the job done. He observed the enemy ranks, quickly picking out the better fighters from the way they reacted to his attack. There were five expert duelists here, the ones he would try to contain until help arrived. Another five had some talent. The other dozen were inexperienced footmen, and the faster they could be cleared out, the better.

Gideon and Fabian were a stellar team. Right away, Fabian sent out a wide-sweeping but otherwise narrow-field Deprimo, blasting earth, gravel, and flagstones across the front rank of the charging Death Eaters. The majority could easily counter that attack, casting the debris back down into a solid path, but Gideon stunned three that were tripped up. Next, Fabian animated a phalanx of garden statues. Most of them weren't very big, but they were still made of stone. Half the footmen were bogged down fending them off. Gideon followed that up with a cascading Kinesia jinx, which hit and bounced off about ten people. It failed to take any more down but left them bruised and limping. The Potters managed to hit someone with multiple stunners at the exact moment as a stone rabbit jumped on their foot.

Meanwhile, Alastor hit two of the better duelists with partial tree transfigurations. It really was a good strategy in a melee that no opponent had yet managed to totally preempt; he had employed it several times since that victory in August. And now, one Death Eater was quite literally rooted to the spot, while another was shuffling about blindly; his face and both hands had turned to wood. Alastor quickly stunned the blinded one. Unfortunately, the one who had grown roots remained perfectly able to shield and would probably be back in the fight soon enough.

He saw Gideon break through one of the enemy shield charms and sent a nonverbal Avifors at the unsuspecting villain. His aim was true, and their wand arm burst apart into five crows that squawked around for a moment before flying away. That was more effective than he had anticipated; the Death Eater collapsed in a screaming heap, clutching their shoulder. He silently thanked Sirius for the idea, but he'd rather not see what happened with a more central hit. It would probably be both lethal and grisly. He dodged an incoming Avada and cast a finger-removing jinx and horn-tongue hex at another Death Eater who was aiming at Gideon. The large man howled wordlessly and bent over, folding his mutilated hands to his chest. Merlin, Alastor loved those spells. The only problem with using them against these bastards is they were reversible, if you had access to Skelegro and a sufficiently talented healer.

They all had to duck behind the crenellations when ten killing curses fired towards them at once. When Alastor lifted his head again, the Death Eaters had spread out. They would have to change tactics. Indeed, both Prewett brothers turned to aim at the Death Eaters on their farthest flanks, trusting Alastor to mind the center field.

Alastor grinned when a newcomer with the unmistakable red mane of Rufus Scrimgeour suddenly appeared in the distance, beyond the limits of the anti-apparition ward. The cavalry was here. Just in time, too. "That's your queue, Potters," he said without looking back. He rapid-fired another round of stunners and blasting curses. Meanwhile, Rufus fired off a few freezing jinxes at the Death Eaters' backs, followed by multiple stunners and the ropes of an Incarcerous.

As soon as Fleamont dropped the anti-apparition ward, Rufus apparated closer, mere meters behind the Death Eaters. Alastor grinned and shouted, "Incendio!"

He aimed not at the enemy but at Rufus, who caught the spell with his own "Incendio Duo!" Now they had a line of fire linking their two wands, the spellfire hotter and more powerful than either of them could (safely) manage alone. Rufus cast a wandless shield charm and started running along the line of Death Eaters, herding them before him. As they started bunching up, Gideon lobbed a blasting curse into their midst.

Only the enemy footmen could be caught in such a way, unfortunately. Two quicker, wilier Death Eaters, a man and a woman, managed to apparate out of the line of fire, to reappear right next to Fabian's little earthen fort.

"Confringo!" the man cast, his deep voice shaking with rage. The embankment blasted apart. Alastor was forced to drop the Incendio Duo in favor of shielding himself. The Potters, thankfully, finally, took his advice and apparated away from the scene entirely. Gideon and Fabian apparated closer to Rufus, surrounding a band of Death Eaters and quickly enacting an Incendio Tria and a new, tiny and therefore very strong anti-apparition jinx to confine them. That was a textbook auror technique. If the team were not interrupted, they would be able to rapidly stun and secure everyone inside the enclosure.

Alastor twisted on his heel as well, popping up directly between the pair of Death Eaters. He spun his wand in his hand, clenching it across the middle of the shaft in his closed fist. "Hasta!" The wand instantly lengthened into a pointed spear, whose strike would deliver enough electrical energy to stun a hippogriff. Both Death Eaters managed to dodge away, but Alastor cracked away again before either could land their own attack on him. He shrank the wand back to normal and recast his shield.

The man whirled to face him the instant he reappeared. Oddly, the woman didn't. Instead, she ran towards the still-burning mansion. "Sirius! I'm coming!" she screamed.

"Bellatrix, get back here! If Sirius is still in there, he's done for!"

"No! Mundarmori Annihilare!" With that, Bellatrix Lestrange abandoned the battlefield and plunged instead between the arms of the inferno, beating down the cursed fire more effectively than Albus Dumbledore himself had. Actually, the flames had generally shrunk. Albus and Voldemort must have made some progress putting them out before finding eachother. As of the moment, a quarter of the building was a smoking ruin, a quarter still on fire, a quarter intact, and the last quarter encased in some kind of silver dome that could only be part of Albus' and Voldemort's duel. As he watched, the dome turned glassy and shattered, blowing shards out explosively, only for them to arc in the air and hurl themselves back down towards an unseen target. There was a great sound like a buried explosion. Part of the manor's remaining outer wall collapsed, and Alastor felt the earth beneath him tremor moments later...

Alastor paid for his momentary distraction. His shield splintered under a killing curse, and only his years of reflex training saved his life. He dropped to the ground and rolled back up into a crouch. He rolled straight into his opponent's wand; the man had apparated into his path. Alastor ducked again, but that only meant the Arrow Curse took him in the left eye instead of the throat. Oh, did it hurt, but Alastor swallowed the pain. He knew he would lose the eye, but the cursed arrow clearly hadn't reached his brain with its skewed trajectory. He would live, so long as he made no more mistakes. He tucked for a roll again but simultaneously touched the tip of his wand to his opponent's foot. "Orbis!" he gritted out. It was impossible for the Death Eater to dodge the vortex of dust and stones that rose up and swallowed him, burying him up to his nose in dirt. "Stupefy, Petrificus Totallus, Obscuro," Alastor said, leaving nothing to chance. The buried Death Eater disappeared from view. Assuming nobody tripped over his head or used Homenum Revelio, Alastor would be the only person able to find and retrieve him later.

That done, he disillusioned himself as well. He surveyed the battlefield. The original Incendio Tria was gone, its four captives lying prone and secured inside a conjured, warded silver cage. He could not see four of the Death Eaters he had previously disabled and presumed they had managed to flee the field. Gawain Robards, Theresa Proudfoot, and five Hit Wizards had joined Rufus, Gideon and Fabian embattling the ten Death Eaters still free. Frank Longbottom, Montgomery Savage, and the new recruit John Dawlish were working on a second Incendio Tria but seemed to be having a hard time holding it; as Alastor watched, a green killing curse shot out of a vertex and hit Savage. The auror crumpled, as did the confinement. Three Death Eaters emerged, including the one Alastor had temporarily given tree roots, now fully recovered, it seemed. The trio engaged their would-be captors mercilessly.

They still had numbers on their side, but not for long if the Death Eaters kept reviving their own. Alastor reached up with his free hand to lightly touch the shaft of the arrow sticking out of his eye. He vanished it wandlessly. He then pointed his wand in the general direction of his mangled eyeball and muttered "Episkey" to stop the bleeding. He apparated next to Dawlish. He threw out another partial tree transfiguration before dropping the disillusionment charm so none of his coworkers would blindly curse him. Shoulder-to-shoulder with Dawlish, he kept casting nonverbal hexes while he spoke. "Just me. I've been hit. Don't worry, I'll be fine. I'd like to take a few prisoners out of here sooner rather than later, if Crouch is ready on his end."

"Holding cells are ready, sir, count on it," Dawlish assured him.

"Meet me at the cage in one minute, then. Aquaglobus! Glacius!" He spun a sphere of water around two of the three Death Eaters and froze it before apparating away. Hopefully, Longbottom and Dawlish would manage to subdue the third before the ice melted. Longbottom was an excellent duelist and could easily hold his own against two opponents; three would be a bit much.

He reappeared next to the warded cage and quickly muttered the codes to dismantle it. Dawlish showed up the instant he finished. He grabbed the hands of the nearest two Death Eaters and apparated with them straight to the lowest level of the Ministry. Dawlish apparated in right behind him with the other two. "Four now, there'll be more coming," he announced. He grinned to see the captives rapidly levitated into a holding cell, with six security specialists working to strip off the masks and cloaks, confiscate wands and cursed items, and bind them with magical chains. Merlin, but the efficiency Barty Crouch had enforced on this department was a thing of beauty, no matter how irritating the man himself happened to be.

Alastor turned back towards the lifts and the lobby. The apparition wards on the lower levels were semipermeable and one-way, allowing aurors and no-one else in. Even aurors had to go back to the lobby to apparate out. It was a pain when Alastor was in a hurry to get back out to the field, but on the other hand, the one-way wards existed for a reason, to ensure the Ministry itself remained protected, both from without and within. He and Dawlish ran to the lift, which was already on standby while the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had the place on intake lockdown protocol.

The lift rocketed up to the lobby as soon as they were inside. "Just numb it," Alastor ordered the apprentice healer stationed inside the lift. She stared at his bloody eye socket a moment, then did as he asked without question. As soon as they hit the lobby, the two aurors disapparated back to the battle outside Malfoy Manor.

It had changed. Albus or Voldemort had done something. The fire was out. The sun was out. The world as far as Alastor could see was lit only in shades of red, and everyone and everything moved as if swimming through syrup. The exceptions were two towering fonts of magic blooming up from where Alastor had last marked the mighty duel. These lashed around each other furiously, and they were crowned by a crackling thunderhead. Shapes like human skulls and dragon snouts and bird wings roiled in the cloud. Lightning flickered at irregular intervals. Alastor had never personally seen such strange and powerful magic, almost formless in its purity, like a battle between gods rather than men.

He could gain no sense of who was winning. Looking about the human battlefield, it was clear the encroaching magical cataclysm had thrown Death Eaters and aurors alike into disarray. Everyone was equally affected by whatever Albus and Voldemort were doing, and no one was able to take advantage of it. Most were huddling in place behind shields. Two more of their own had fallen, and three more Death Eaters, dead or stunned. The few still attempting to fight could barely force their wands to work. Seeing the chaos, Alastor made a decision. The outcome here was too uncertain. It was time to cut their losses. "Go back, Dawlish." With effort, he cast a Speaking Spell to each auror and Hit Wizard still standing, ordering them to retrieve captives and casualties and then retreat on his mark. A minute later, he muttered, "Sonus Fragore." A loud sound like an explosion rolled over the area, startling everyone into action. Alastor apparated back to where he had buried and disillusioned his prisoner. He crouched under a shield and felt for the man's head. As soon as he found it, he apparated back to the Ministry.

The corridor outside the holding cells filled with people and the cracks of apparition. He shoved his unconscious captive into the nearest cell and stripped off his mask and outer robes. To his surprise, he recognized the man as Lord Corban Yaxley. Although he was a prominent pureblood and therefore automatically under Alastor's suspicion, they had never found any evidence or even heard any rumors connecting him to the Death Eaters, only Sirius Black's reports. Alastor finished patting him down, confiscating a cursed ring and spare wand, then conjured chains and stepped back out of the cell to let the regular security personnel take over processing.

He turned around to be met by Barty Crouch blocking his way. "It's over?" the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement asked crisply.

"For us, it's over," Alastor agreed. "We'll learn the final outcome when Albus gets back."

"You think he will?"

Alastor nodded curtly, not appreciating his boss's lack of confidence in his other boss. "I called the retreat because his duel with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was becoming a hazard to our own efforts. Albus Dumbledore is no fool though, Barty. If he decides he cannot win today, he will not needlessly lose either."

Crouch nodded neutrally. "Very well. Take care of your eye, then meet me in my office. You will tell me what happened."

"Officially, or unofficially?"

Crouch's eyes glinted. "All of it, and then we will decide on the official story to present to the Minister after Albus returns," he said quietly. He nodded sternly, turned on his heel, and left. Alastor grinned. Good man, Crouch. He knew about and disapproved of the Order of the Phoenix, and Alastor's membership in it, but he understood the necessities of war. The only way they differed was that Barty preferred to adjust the rules themselves, rather than unofficially appoint few, trusted individuals to go around them.

Author's note: it's hard to write a melee-style fight scene with Harry Potter magic that a) makes sense b) isn't boring and c) doesn't require too much recap afterwards to explain wtf happened outside the POV character's view. Don't get me wrong, I liked the fights in the original Harry Potter books, but Harry was a good one-on-one duellist, not a good general. He lost track of what other people not in his immediate line of sight were doing all the time, and of course he completely stopped fighting to just sit back and watch Dumbledore in OotP (mostly Dumbledore's doing, but still). I didn't want to do that with Moody as the tactical leader of the mission, at least not too much. I also wanted the aurors to have actual team strategies. Hopefully, you all are satisfied :)

I managed to draft the next chapters ahead of schedule, so updates will be ahead of schedule as well. Possibly even two within the next week. Thank you as always for the reviews.