As a reminder, you can find MORE of this on my SubStar (dot adult slash KajaWilder), it's posted up past chapter 75 there... And if you guys haven't seen an update in at least a week, please let me know! I have a busy life, and I get distracted and forget things. This story (and PTaL) are supposed to be updated WEEKLY from now until they're both caught up with each other (like I was doing with FwB until this weekend).

And if you're just interested in discussing things with other readers, of course, you can go to my DISCORD here: h- t_ t_ p-s -: -/ -/ -discord . g-g / N9yDA8t6Cw (taking out hyphens, underscores, and spaces of course).

Chap. 84: Drifting / Through Red Snow

Nymphadora "Just" Tonks, Auror Third Class, surveyed the scene with as much aplomb as she could muster. This was not, unfortunately, the first battle she had been involved in during her short career with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and she worried sometimes that it would not be the last. Unfortunately, that aplomb seemed... lacking, inadequate to the task.

To the young metamorph's credit, several other more seasoned Aurors had already had to turn away from the carnage and vomit. Some were being treated even now by Healers from St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries for shock, and she imagined even more would show signs of what the Muggle Doctors were calling Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

She could imagine how such a sight might cause nightmares for years or decades to come.

The battle on the High Street of Hogsmeade Village had been fierce, and not for the first time, Tonks was reminded of just why she had wanted to become an Auror in the first place. Her mother, a Healer herself, had argued most severely against it once. Her muggleborn father, whose last name she had adopted as her nickname, had resisted too but had relented earlier than her mother. She had seen, even as a child, what Wizardkind could, and often would, do to each other when pushed to violence.

The magical world was a wondrous place, at times, full of mystery and, well, magic, both figurative and, of course, literal. Fantastic creatures, sights, and spells were everywhere to those with the eyes to see them. Eyes Tonks counted herself lucky to have every day.

At others, though, it was a place of stark terror and horror. Days like today. All Aurors, during their training, watched films of the carnage inflicted by muggles on muggles (and, rarely, wizardkind) during the great World Wars, and other conflicts up through the modern day. It was intended to help harden them against the worst of what Wizardkind could do to each other... and it sort of helped. Bodies exploded, ripped to pieces and shredded by the shrapnel of an air-detonated bomb or a powerful anti-personnel mine were remarkably similar to the aftermath of a pitched spell-battle. Only without the weirdness of it all.

A hand there, two fingers there, probably not from the same hand, the size was wrong, and a foot from what was probably a third body, with char and cinder and blackened viscera between them was a common sight on a muggle battlefield. The same could be seen that quiet, unseasonably snowy day in late spring in Hogsmeade Village, high in the Scottish countryside.

But the muggles didn't usually have the ability to turn people inside out, or boil the blood of their enemies while it was still inside them, or liquify an entire skeleton and leave the rest of the target to suffocate in unbearable agony over several minutes, as it the body no longer had the support it needed to draw air. And that was just a few of the more mild dark curses.

The weird ones were worse, in some ways. Here, a body had been ripped apart by its own intestines, drawn and quartered. Poor bloke had probably been alive when it happened, too. There, one man's face had been transfigured, possibly accidentally, into the hind end of a duck, and bird shite dribbled down the blasted-open remains of his ribcage. As she watched in macabre horror, one loose tail-feather was pulled away and started to twist and swirl in the wind along with the light snow.

Everywhere she looked, there were pieces of... well, things. Some bodies, some objects, some clearly partially transfigured (often badly) from one thing into another, either stuck halfway or only partly transformed. It was gruesome carnage, but it was also just a mess. Figuring out who was what, where each object had been and what it was, would be a tedious, time-consuming task. And, as an Auror Third Class, she was almost certainly going to be saddled with a good portion of that work alongside most of her remaining graduating class.

Kingsley Shacklebolt, who had both, helped recruit her to the Order of the Phoenix two years earlier, and assisted in her early advancement from Fifth to Third Class (citing her Metamorph abilities, her tactical mind, her observational skills, or her ancestry as a Black, depending on who he was chatting her up to), started issuing orders a moment later as he, too, had taken a moment to briefly assess the scene now that the spells had stopped flying.

Whatever that black-and-gray creature had been that whisked away Walden MacNair would be someone else's problem.

Without waiting for Shacklebolt to get to her, Tonks bent at the knees to examine what looked like a human (or at least human-ish) arm that had been torn free from something else and crudely transfigured into something that resembled a large, spiked boomerang, it was bloody in several spots. "Revelio," she incanted quietly, waving her wand over it. Several specific spell signatures lit up over the (questionable) arm, only a few of which were ones she recognized.

Tonks sighed. Things had just gotten a lot harder.

"What are you doing, Auror Tonks?" Shack asked a second later, his large boots crunching in the snow.

"Er, cataloging evidence, Sir?"

He blinked, his large eyes seemed confused as he looked up at him, "I can see that, Auror. You're one of the only ones not puking their guts out- go interview witnesses. The rest can handle this mess once they get control of themselves. After you finish tagging that one, at least."

"Right, Shack- er, Sir. I'll get right on it. Do we know how many witnesses there- oh, Merlin."

"Yes," Shacklebolt replied dryly to her gasp of shock, "It seems as if half of Hogsmeade came to the Village's defense. I'm sure you'll have your work cut out for you, too. Take Wilkins, Boothe, and Coote with you. I'll send more as they arrive, every third Auror on-scene."

"Yes, Sir," Tonks grinned as she stood up. If she was 'taking them with her', that meant Shack considered her to be the lead investigator, at least as far as the witness reports went. It could mean another promotion in the near-ish future, even though she was already well ahead of the track!

In her excitement, she took a step forward, and tripped over her own piece of evidence, to fall face-first in the red-streaked snow.

Of course.

Shack at least helped her up with an amused smile showing stark contrast with his white teeth against dark skin, "Careful there, Tonksy. Don't want Bones thinking you're tampering with evidence. Get that one done and hurry over, it's gonna be a long day for all of us."

"Sir," Tonks grinned again, uncaring (for once) that about a hundred people had just watched her fall flat on her face.

Yes, there was a gruesome scene all around her and she had just been in the midst of a pitched battle with Death Eaters- but things weren't all that bad.

At least they'd clearly won this time!

The Professors arrived in the nick of time. Sixteen Death Eaters, clearly from a separate group, were casting spells repeatedly at the barrier wards that shimmered from above and around the castle's low wall and the great, Boar-flanked gates of the school. Worse, the wards were already flickering, near to falling.

"Miss Lovegood's warning was most timely," Flitwick huffed, red-faced. His tiny little legs had been forced to work overtime even with several of his more advanced speed-enhancing charms active on himself, Charity Burbage, and Sinistra Vector. Hagrid, of them all, needed no such help. Despite his bulk and size, the half-Giant was as quick as ever, and easily kept pace- in fact, he lead the group down to the gates, and even had a few moments to dash into his hut on the way, returning to the path with his great crossbow and a quiver full of bolts, with Fang the Boarhound chasing after, clearly excited.

That had been two minutes ago. Now, Fang was cowering behind the wall as the Death Eaters jeered and taunted the meager defense of four Professors, one of whom was not even legally allowed to use magic.

Of course, that did not stop the onslaught of magic cascading against the wards, seeking to wear down and destroy them.

Even with a tertiary connection to the wards as Head of Ravenclaw, Filius Flitwick could feel them shake and shudder over the whole area. Breathless or not, his wand came up the moment he was in range, "Protego Totallum! Bombarda Repulsius! Salvio Hexia! Tenebrum Pallais!" His spells kept coming, many that even the experienced, middle-aged witches had never even heard of. Most, outside of the professional dueling circuit, or without Masteries in Defense Against the Dark Arts, would not. Flitwick himself may have been the Charms instructor because that was his subject of choice, but only a fool who knew nothing about him thought the part-Goblin could not fight with the best of them. Even Charity, bless her muggle-adoring heart, was an accomplished spellcaster, and all of the professors could at least hold their own.

Even Sybil Trelawney, if it came to it. Filius himself had certified that one, at Dumbledore's request, a decade ago.

Yes, there were a great many Death Eaters outside the gates.

Yes, they were just four Professors, only three of whom were skilled casters.

But one would have to be an utter fool to disregard Hagrid's skill with his own weapon, or the tenacity and rugged hardiness passed on from his mother, or the kind heart determined to do whatever it took to protect the students in his care. To protect his very home.

Not to mention the wards themselves, "Only an idiot would assault Hogwarts while there is even one Professor left to defend it," Flitwick warned the Death Eaters as he stepped forward, past even Hagrid. His litany of spells had brought renewed life to most of the local wards, though there were a few even he did not know enough about to repair at the moment, "Only a true fool would stand at our gates and expect entry using violence, fear, and intimidation. Did we teach you nothing while you walked these halls as students? Nothing at all?"

A smart man might have noticed that, despite his small stature, age, and the weight of numbers against the Professors, none of the four looked particularly frightened, and Flitwick least of all. Vector and Burbage both had steely expressions, and Hagrid was fuming, bristling with barely-controlled fury at the thought someone would try and hurt the people of Hogwarts.

But the Charms Professor, uniformly regarded as among- if not the- kindest, most well-liked Professor of the entire staff- seemed utterly unconcerned, completely unmoved that there were four to one odds arrayed against them. He wasn't even using Albus Dumbledore's frequent tactic of pleasant conversation to disarm hostilities.

No, Filius Flitwick would have none of that, not this day. On this day, his home had been attacked, and precious students had possibly been killed or injured.

On this day, his ancestry demanded satisfaction.

On this day, Death Eaters would pay that price in their own blood.

There would be no surrender. The group in front of him were already dead, they simply did not know it yet. So he spoke to them as one might speak to a gravestone over a mouldering corpse: As if they were objects, a thing in the past, beneath the real and lasting attention of the present, "Only the most deluded would think that any of you will walk away from here, or somehow emerge victorious. You have one chance, and one chance only. Lay down your wands, to a man. Lay down your wands, surrender, and I will consider taking you alive."

His Goblin blood hated the very idea, but he was more human than not. Furthermore, while he honored his grandfather's heritage, Filius Flitwick considered himself a human, and thus part of their society. He would, because of that, give them this one chance. If they were too stupid to take it, well... so much the better. They had already proven just how moronic someone could be, by laughing as they attacked his school.

"Yeah, and what're you lot gonna do about it, eh?" one scruffy-looking man in his forties asked, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his hard jaw, "I remember you right enough, you little soft man. I know you all too well- you got nothin'. Some pretty spells slowin' us down, but it won' last. They never do, once the Dark Lord's followers come t'call."

"I am afraid you are mistaken there," Sinistra growled, her voice sounding strangely catty, as if she too was filled with nothing but derision for the group arrayed against them, "Go on, then. Try it. See what happens if you attack the wards again. You will have made your choice, and we will show you the same mercy you would show us."

"None at all," Hagrid grunted, his crossbow lifting. There was a bolt inside it as long as Flitwick's whole body already. A surreptitious wave of his wand and his own advanced skills in silent casting layered several spells over the crossbow itself, and another charm for piercing power and added inertia to the loaded bolt.

Let Hagrid have the first shot, he would make it count.

Charity and Sinistra could follow up afterward, if there were any left from his own counter-attack.

"Go on then, lads, show these old farts what real wizards can do!"

Flitwick nodded as he finished speaking, his wand as steady as it had ever been as it found the speaker's heart, then aimed toward the person on his right. Hagrid would want that braggart, and was welcome to him.

The first spell of the renewed attack came.

Even at the speed of magic itself, the light from the slow-moving Cannonade Hex was half-way to the wards when Hagrid's thick finger released the bolt.

Like lightning, it streaked and shrieked, as it tore through the air with a typhoon following in its wake. Four Death Eaters were pierced by the single bolt, one through the neck, the braggart, the woman behind him through the forehead, and the shoulder and left arm of the two behind her as it bounced off the scapula of the third. The winds that followed, twisting and howling, bowled over four more, and suddenly there were only eight standing. The ones the wind had struck weren't out of the fight, but it would take them a moment to recover. That was more than he needed.

Filius Flitwick grinned, "Piertotum Locomotor."

The two great, stone boars on their plinths to each side of the gates suddenly flexed and reared, the bristle-like hairs on the backs of their necks standing tall as the smooth marble gained color and definition no sculptor could ever match, "Sick 'em, boys."

Luna Lovegood meandered out one of the doors at the back of the Great Hall, behind the High Table where the Professors and staff of Hogwarts sat for meals. Pansy had already been sent with a House-Elf escort to the Hospital Wing, to assist Madame Pomfrey with the wounded that were starting to come in from Hogsmeade Village, while Daphne and Tracey were helping the Professors organize the sudden flood of information that had come in from the Prefects, Head Boy, and Head Girl. Almost all of the students were accounted for, thankfully.

Harry, Ron, Ginny, Lyra, and Professor Black were the only ones she knew of that were missing.

Missing, of course, being a relative term, the girl mused as she let the door close softly behind her and started crossing the small chamber where Harry Potter had once been asked several pointed questions about how, precisely, his name had entered the Goblet of Fire two and a half years earlier.

"That was a fun year," Luna pronounced to herself, "It would have been more fun if I had my friends then, I think, but at least I met Alra that year, and Ginny was talking to me again."

After she had made her way across the room and to the other entrance, which in turn lead to a smaller passage between the staff meeting rooms, a couple of supply closets, and the stairway that would eventually terminate behind a portrait across the hall from Headmaster Dumbledore's office, Luna started skipping along at a brisk pace. Her destination was none of those rooms, but another side passage she would access from the third floor. Her skipping was not designed to be enjoyable, but merely a way to keep herself distracted from the renewed fear that had taken hold of her in the last two minutes.

Something was about to go dreadfully wrong.

She believed in her friends, in Harry most of all, so she could not imagine how it might be him. No matter what foe he faced, Luna believed Harry would win out in the end.

She believed in the Professors, so the group Professor McGonagall had sent to hold the gates would do so, and reinforcements to Hogsmeade would follow once that was secure.

She had faith that her other friends, who included a couple of Prefects now, would keep their Houses safe. She did not necessarily trust all of the four Houses' Prefects to keep their cohorts safe, but that was perhaps a sign of her past rearing an ugly, trauma-filled head. That was a different life now, though, Luna reminded herself.

Hopefully, one lost, estranged student would not be kept out of their House's common rooms during a crisis like this. Not again, anyway.

That was not why Luna was wandering the lesser-used passages of the school during said crisis, however. Of course, if she saw such a student she would do her best to see them to safety, but that was not why she was walking around.

No, her feeling of dread was from something more amorphous.

There was more to the attack than even she had been able to predict thus far.

Something strange.

One attack had gone after Harry in particular- she suspected that was where Sirius Black aka Stubby Boardman, Harry himself were at. Harry, after all, was not one to run from a fight. Not anymore.

One had been at Hogsmeade, she was sure, and one at the Gates of Hogwarts.

Three was a powerful magical number, yes, and she could see Voldemort and his flunkies (she found the term 'followers' far too generous from the rank and file Death Eaters) using such a subtle message. But there was something still niggling at her.

Something close.

She saw it a moment too late, opposite the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy, forever attempting (and failing) to teach several Trolls how to tap-dance.

A gray figure, womanlike, carrying a silvery crown in one hand, with a triumphant grin on her blood-stained lips.

That silver crown called to her. It was so achingly familiar, yet it still took precious seconds for her to identify the item itself. Luna did so, hands outstretched in desperate, profound need, as if her ancestry itself was begging her to get it back. Unfortunately, she figured out precisely what item that was, recognized it by its shape as much as anything else, at the precise moment shadows and pink mist started to swirl around the vampire.

The tiara was the lost Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw. She had seen it every day, every school day at least, for nearly five full years on the great statue of their House's Founder in the Ravenclaw common room.

And it was in the hands of a vampire.

It had been here the whole time, and then, with a flash of darkness and mist, it was gone.

Luna's eyes filled with tears as her soul wept.

Beside her, a gray, misty form appeared from the floor, no doubt called by the same beckoning, longing yearning that had called to Luna herself.

The Gray Lady, Helena Ravenclaw, had been one of Luna's first friends in Hogwarts. Now, she was weeping along side the young witch even while her form faded from the world, "Goodbye, Luna," the ghost almost hiccupped properly, as her sad, sad eyes grew ever more translucent and see-through.

The bindings holding her to the world were gone at last, yet all Helena Ravenclaw could do was mourn the loss of it, of her mother's greatest work, of the last remnants of her own ill-gotten, childish greed, and all the evil it had wrought.

Some distance down the hall, another of Hogwarts' ghosts was fading too, silently weeping in the shadows. Without Helena there, the Bloody Baron had no reason to linger either. His love may never be requited, he had long since grown accustomed to that sorrowful idea. But now, there was nothing left to wait for anyway. So he, too, began to fade as he wept.

When solar fire ignited a particular chamber in a manor house in Wiltshire, only one direct descendant of the Ravenclaw line was left in Hogwarts, still silently weeping.