Tyrant Rising

by Midgards Ormen

A savage beating by Vernon unleashes Harry's latent magic, transforming him into something not of this world. Over twenty years later, something has begun to stir in Wizarding Britain. Already locked in a seemingly endless war between light and dark, the witches and wizards of Britain now face a threat unlike any they could ever have imagined.

2. That's What Hive Was Going to Say

Review Answers:

ww1990ww: First Tyranids codex was published in 1994 I think so how on Earth in 1988 Harry has Swarmlord figurine? The simple answer is that I adjusted the timeline so Warhammer was released and updated earlier. Given that you're already accepting a world where magic exists and a boy transforms into an alien killing machine before being transported across space by a magical portal, I figured it probably wouldn't be too much to handle. I didn't state it anywhere in the story because it would've distracted from the progression of the narrative and wasn't particularly important. It was important for the story that Harry's transformation occur while he was still very young for reasons that should become clear as the story progresses.

comodo50: Is it [the story] a one shot only? Apparently not. In all seriousness, though, I do plan on completing this story, although I can't promise that it will be finished quickly since I had the brilliant idea to work on two very long and complex stories simultaneously.

Guest who wrote me an essay: (Not a dig, it's just you only reviewed as guest and there are a bunch of other people who have done the same) Your review was too long to quote the questions in full so I'll just bullet point them.

You are aware Tyranids can eat memories?

I know some Tyranids, specifically Lictors, are able to eat memories, but as far as I'm aware it's not something all Tyranids can do. I could be wrong, but, to my knowledge, it's a skill specific to Lictors used for intelligence gathering on new worlds.

Why does Harry not lead the Tyranids to farm suns?

Even if Harry/the Swarmlord was able to consume memories from the adult wizards he ate in the Ministry, I highly doubt any of them knew how to farm a sun. Even if the Tyranids did obtain the knowledge on how to do so, it would be practically impossible for the entire Tyranid Hive to switch their complete genetic make-up to become photosynthetic rather than heterotrophic, and they would have had no interest in learning how to do so because that's not how Tyranids think. Also, even slightly-active animals in real-life that are capable of using photosynthesis still need to eat because the process doesn't produce enough energy quickly enough to sustain an active creature.

General rant (If you don't know much about Tyranids and want to find out what the deal is as part of the story, don't read this part)

Firstly, I think you probably posted this in the wrong place, I would suggest posting your review (minus the stuff pertinent to my story) on a Warhammer 40K fan forum and I'm sure you'll get a good debate on your points. For my penny though, I think of the Tyranids as basically being super-space-locusts. They don't think, "Oh, what would be the most sustainable method for us to continue on," they think, "We're going to consume everything in our way in order to satisfy our unending hunger." I also think there might have been a question buried in there somewhere about why Harry/Swarmlord was just shouting "Feed" and "Kill:" he was an 8-year-old being ruled by a brand new set of alien instincts that he'd had for three days. That's hardly going to produce an eloquent treatise or finely crafted repartee. People don't evacuate because the Tyranid Hive-Mind prevents travel through the Warp and the Tyranid ships are much faster in real-space, which also stops affected planets from calling for help. And each Hive Fleet eliminates all possible resistance before they start eating a planet, so you couldn't have a fleet of ships hanging out waiting for them to land and put all their forces on the planet before blowing it up because the Tyranids would try to kill it before doing so. So, even if they had previously planted bombs and the Tyranids hadn't just eaten them already, there would be no one to set them off.

connorfig: Going to assume the shadow over the town was essentially the Shadow In The Warp thing the Tyranids have? You assume correctly, I felt it was a good way to adapt the Shadow In The Warp into the HP Universe.

Darkscythe Drake: Has Harry completely lost all reason as a Tyranid? You'll find out.

Author's Note: Firstly, I'm not dead! I understand that many people have probably been wondering, and in answer to the few questions I've had on this subject; no, neither of my stories have been abandoned. The next chapter for Lethal Injection should be forthcoming sometime reasonably soon after the publication of this chapter, and I hope to eventually regain a monthly updating schedule. How well that works out with university and life in general remains to be seen, but that's the hope, at least.

I was originally planning on making an announcement about how my mother is dying of brain cancer and I spend almost all of my time taking care of her, but she actually passed away while I was writing this so that's no longer applicable. As a result, once I've had time to get my life back together, this story and Lethal Injection should both be on at least a somewhat regular updating schedule.

Also, special shout-outs to SkylerHollow and gbbz for reviewing both Tyrant Rising, and Lethal Injection, and thank you to everyone who reviewed chapter one. I really appreciate the support.

Finally, I have something important to say about Bellatrix: she is NOT a good example of feminism, in this story or in canon. This is deliberate and is due to her character, beliefs, and background. The views she expresses, particularly about men and women and how the two should interact in society are not supposed to be correct or appropriate. I'm saying this because Bellatrix is going to be an important part of this story (to be honest, if I show you something from an individual's perspective, that individual is going to be a fixture). I know I probably didn't need to go out of my way to explain that Bellatrix Fucking Lestrange is not a good role model, but I thought it'd be best to be safe and hopefully prevent anyone from writing a furious review thinking I'm a chauvinistic misogynist pig because of her portrayal.

If you read my portrayal of a different (non-extremely fucked up) female character and conclude from that that I'm a chauvinistic misogynist pig, then please do write in furiously and tell me because I am trying to make all my characters believable people instead of having a few well-defined male characters and an array of 2-dimensional female cardboard cutouts who are defined only by their interactions with the male characters.

IMPORTANT: I will be posting a poll on my profile regarding the length of chapters. Personally, when I'm reading fanfiction, I enjoy having long chapters to dig into, but my wonderful Beta suggested that chapters would be more digestible if they were shorter. This would also allow me to publish more frequently. Meaning I would post something about a quarter or so the length of the current chapters every other week or so, instead of posting chapters of this size every other month or so. If you have a preference, please vote!

Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor Warhammer.

30 Seconds After Swarmlord Arrival,

7:56 am, 1st November 2011

Lambstead Town Square,

Lancashire

The creature tore across the square, its thundering hooves pulverising the cobblestones beneath them with every step. And it was heading straight for Sirius. The world seemed to slow around him, sounds fading away as a strange sort of calm descended over him, driving away the anger and bitterness that had consumed him for so long. Turning his head, he met Nymphadora's eyes across the square. She still disliked the name, but she accepted it from him, albeit grumpily.

"I love you, and I am so very proud of you." The words were swallowed by the monster's approach, but his Nymphadora was good enough at lip-reading that she'd understand his last words to her. He would fight, of course, and the others would do everything they could to save him, but the creature was already too close. He would be dead before anyone had a chance to act, even if they could've done something to stop it.

Light was already flaring at the tip of his wand as he turned back to face the monster, prepared to at least try and make sure that the surrogate daughter he had been lucky enough to find would have the chance he'd been unable to give his godson.

The creature was bearing down on him, so close he could see his distorted reflection in the crystals embedded in each blade. The spell erupted from his wand, the creature would be heading straight for him and, at this range, there was a chance it wouldn't be able to move its blades fast enough to deflect the spell. He would die too, he had chosen the most powerful explosive spell he knew, but it would be worth it if it saved the others.

He watched in horror as the beast's arm moved, so fast it left an after-image behind. It caught the spell with the flat of the blade before arcing around the creature's body, shifting the trajectory of the spell in a sharp loop before flinging it away. Only, it didn't fling it toward Sirius, the spell flew straight at Voldemort, who was so surprised he paused for a moment before countering the spell, causing it to dissolve into sparks in mid-air.

The monster, meanwhile, charged straight past Sirius, ignoring him as if he wasn't even there and making straight for Dumbledore, who was forced to erect an opaque silver shield that shattered like glass as the creature brought the blades held in its upper two hands down upon it. The shield had bought Dumbledore enough time to gain some distance, however, and the creature was momentarily distracted by a squadron of transfigured stone golems. Unfortunately, Dumbledore was unable to make use of the monster's distraction because he was forced to dodge the green light of a Killing Curse erupting from Voldemort's wand.

"It would seem I have found an ally in my quest to des-" Voldemort was forced to break off his boasting when one of the creature's blades narrowly missed in its attempt to decapitate the distracted Dark Lord. Dumbledore's golems were laying in neatly dismantled heaps strewn across the ground between the monster's starting point and where it had attempted to kill Voldemort, as if it had simply brushed them aside while on the way.

"Indeed," Dumbledore noted wryly as he watched Voldemort struggling to keep the beast at bay with a flurry of spells and a deft use of his Shadow Manipulation. "I'm glad you have finally found someone who shares your views on how allies should be treated, Tom."

"Sirius! DUCK!" Sirius was torn from his spectating on the fight between Voldemort, Dumbledore, and the creature that seemed fixated on dismembering two of the most powerful wizards on Earth by a shout he recognised as Nymphadora. Fortunately, his body started reacting before his brain had fully processed the shouted command. As a result, his brain was not skewered by the outstretched blade of one of the creatures that had first attacked them. Unfortunately, he wasn't quite fast enough to completely avoid the creature's leaping form, and one of its hooves caught him in the side of the head, bowling him over and causing bursting constellations to swim before his eyes.

Dimly, he saw the creature blown to bits by an overpowered Reducto and then his vision was filled by the worried face of Nymphadora, her hair white and face pale as her hands tugged at him, trying desperately to drag him to his feet. Her mouth was moving, but Sirius couldn't hear the words over the ringing in his head. He wished whoever was doing it would stop. Abruptly, he felt the tap of a wand on his head and sound came rushing back to him, along with a sharp throbbing pain in the side of his head.

"OW! FUCK!" He swore loudly, hands flying up to cradle his pounding cranium.

"Deal with it, you big baby!" Despite her words, Sirius could hear the relief in Nymphadora's voice as she continued to drag him into the centre of the ring of aurors which had re-condensed since the arrival of the new monster. Looking over at the creature in question, Sirius saw it was still engaging with Dumbledore and Voldemort. From the looks of things, the two renowned sorcerers had been forced to join together simply to ward the beast off.

Craning his neck to take in the situation in the rest of the square, he realised that things had worsened for both Death Eaters and Order members in more ways than just the arrival of the new beast. The creatures that had originally attacked them, as well as the ones with the strange weapons that had taken out Boot, were now attacking in a much more organised and directed manner. Rather than attacking en masse in an undirected swarm, the creatures had split into smaller squads which were performing focused strikes at specific places in the defensive circles of both the Order and the Death Eaters.

As soon as the attention of the group was focused toward repelling the first attack, another squad would attack from another random angle, outside the line of sight of those defending from the initial strike.

"These fuckers are getting smarter!" Moody grunted, barely managing to shield in time to stop from being shot by one of the ranged creatures.

"Someone cover me!" Weasley shouted over the din of magic and thundering hooves, "I'm going to try and Legilimens one of these things so we can figure out what the fuck is going on!"

"Isn't it obvious?" Bell asked, even as she blew the legs off one of the bladed creatures and flung its corpse into a group of its ranged compatriots. "They're taking orders from the big one!"

"How?" Sirius managed to ask, pushing through the pain still throbbing in his head and forcing himself shakily to his feet, despite Nymphadora's attempts to keep him on the ground. "It's not saying anything!"

"I don't know!" Bell shouted back angrily. "But the things started fighting like this the second that thing arrived, so what else could it be?"

"Only one way to find out," Weasley said, her eyes narrowed in determination as she tried to make eye contact with one of the creatures. A task made significantly easier when Nymphadora gave up her attempts to keep Sirius on the ground and stepped forward to cover the redhead.

As soon as she was sure she wasn't going to be impaled or shot, Weasley waved her wand and cried, "Legilimens!" Within moments, her body started convulsing, eyes rolling madly in her head as she began to foam at the mouth, collapsing backwards as her legs gave way beneath her.

"Weasley!" Sirius yelled, jumping forward to catch the woman before she could crack her skull open on the cobblestone of the square. He tried shaking her, attempting to snap her out of whatever fit had gripped her.

"It's the legilimency!" Moody roared. "Whatever she's seeing in the creature's head is too much for her brain to process, you've got to break the spell before her brain melts." Sirius wasn't sure if Moody meant that literally or figuratively and he didn't want to wait around to find out. Not trusting his addled brain with a spell, he pulled back his hand and slapped Weasley across the face as hard as he could.

The impact snapped her head to the side with a pained cry as she jerked upright, eyes coming back into focus as her body stopped convulsing. Immediately, she turned and vomited onto the ground next to her, still shaking like a leaf.

"Thanks." She muttered once she had finished emptying her guts out. Reaching up, she gingerly massaged the red handprint on her cheek, "I am not looking forward to explaining this to Hermione."

"Sorry, I didn't think you'd want me to risk vanishing your brain trying a spell." Sirius apologised.

"It's OK, if you had, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation."

"Enough chit-chat!" Moody shouted although Sirius could hear the relief in his voice, "Did you manage to get anything, Weasley?"

"Not much," Weasley winced, holding her head as she struggled to remember. "It's like all of these things share a brain, it was as if I tried to invade the minds of all of them at once. The big one is definitely calling the shots though, I think it's called the Swarmlord."

"The Swarmlord?" Moody asked quickly, getting a confused nod from Weasley. "Thank Merlin!" Moody practically sagged in relief, although that didn't stop him from punching a hole in four creatures at once with a spell aimed at one of the ranged creatures that had been pointing its weapon at Weasley.

When he realised the others were looking at him confused, Moody explained, "The Swarmlord means there probably isn't more than one, otherwise it would just be a Swarmlord. And the fewer of those things there are the better."

Weasley nodded in agreement, her face screwed up as she tried to dredge up more details, "The little ones with the blades are called hormagaunts, I think, and the ones with the guns are termagants. Beyond that I couldn't tell you anything, my brain was too busy overloading to really look for intel."

"It'll have to be enough," Moody growled, turning his full attention back to the defence against the onslaught of the -now named- hormagaunts and termagants. "Black!" He snapped, distracting Sirius enough from his struggling attempts to walk over to join the defensive line that he lost his balance and sprawled over onto the cobbles.

"What!?" He demanded angrily, it had been difficult enough standing up the first time, and now he had to try and do it again.

"Stay on the fucking ground until Abbott has Boot stable enough to fix your bloody head for Merlin's sake!" Moody snapped, not turning from his systematic destruction of any hormagaunt squad that came too close. "In your condition, you'll be more likely to blow one of us up than to actually hit any of these things."

Sirius growled, but ceased his attempts to regain his feet, he could see Moody's point. Resigning himself to the fact that he would be out of the fight for at least a little while, Sirius took a moment to take stock of the situation in the square.

The Death Eaters were in more or less the same condition as they had been before, although one of Bellatrix's lieutenants' robes were soaked with blood from a gash across their side in addition to the ragged hole in the area of their chest next to the shoulder -tough bastard that one apparently- and they seemed to have lost one of the plain-masked Death Eaters. Spells were leaving Bellatrix's wand in a continuous stream of multicoloured light, cutting a swathe through the horde of monsters, even as they did their best to avoid the maniacal dark witch. As Sirius watched she even found time to fling a Killing Curse toward the Swarmlord's back as it duelled Voldemort and Dumbledore.

Following the path of the spell, Sirius knew he shouldn't have been surprised when the creature absorbed the supposedly unblockable curse with the crystal embedded in one of its blades before slashing the beam of deadly magic at its opponents. Dumbledore conjured another golem to take the impact while Voldemort disappeared in a column of shadow, reappearing in front of Bellatrix.

"Leave, Bella." He said in his high, cold voice. Bellatrix's face fell, losing all the manic glee it had held mere moments before.

"But, my Lord-" She began, almost desperately, only for Voldemort to cut her off.

"Now. You will only get in the way if you stay. I do not wish to lose someone of your loyalty. Bring the others with you, it is an insult that these simple beasts have managed to eliminate so many of my loyal followers already." Turning away, Voldemort rejoined the fight against the Swarmlord, flinging an oily black spell toward the beast that it easily redirected toward Dumbledore, who was forced to duck hastily out of the way. The spell continued on to hit a hormagaunt that had been creeping up behind the aged wizard. The creature collapsed as it's armoured exoskeleton literally crawled off of its body, leaving the creature's organs and vivid purple blood to spill out and slick the cobblestones.

"Aurors!" Dumbledore thundered, a bolt of magic shooting from his wand with such force it tore a furrow in the ground underneath with its passage. "Retreat! Fawkes will transport you to St. Mungo's for medical attention."

Dumbledore's spell met one of the Swarmlord's blades and was guided onto a new path as easily as Sirius' explosive spell had been, the spell careened off toward Voldemort, who was forced to vanish into his shadow in order to avoid it. He reappeared from the shadow of the statue in the centre of the square, only to disappear again almost instantly as one of the Swarmlord's swords nearly bisected him. The Dark Lord's shadow manipulation was becoming more limited by the second as the sun rose and began to eat away at the darkness required for the technique.

"We can't, Dumbledore!" Abbott yelled back, sounding more like Moody than her usual gentle self. "Whatever happened to Boot, those things managed to infest him with parasites that made a total mess of his internal organs and nervous system! I've got them out and in stasis for study, but he's in no state to move anywhere. Apparition would kill him even if we could manage it, and I don't know if you've noticed, sir, but Fawkes is a little indisposed at the moment!"

Following her gaze, Sirius was just in time to see one of the Swarmlord's swords pull itself from a scorched patch of wall, beneath it a blackened baby bird poked its head out of a pile of ashes. No one would be travelling by phoenix for a while.

As he watched, the sword flew through the air and smacked back into the Swarmlord's outstretched hand where it was used to casually deflect a bolt of vile yellow magic toward Dumbledore, who dodged, leaving the spell to impact with the statue of the eponymous Lamb. Within moments, the formerly proud statue had been reduced to a hissing puddle. In the gap left by the statue's liquefaction, Sirius could see Bellatrix and the other surviving Death Eaters staging a fighting retreat down the high street toward the outskirts of the village.

The hormagaunts and termagants, seeing that their prey was attempting escape, began to focus more and more attention on the retreating group, seemingly recognising that the Order was incapable of a similar move. The Swarmlord, meanwhile, was slowly corralling Dumbledore and Voldemort toward the alleyway both Order members and Death Eaters had initially entered the square from.

Dumbledore attempted to circle around the creature, but the Swarmlord reared its head back, opening its mouth as if to roar a challenge, but what erupted from the creature's mouth wasn't sound. An enormous ball of thrumming green power formed in the creature's mouth before flying across the square towards Dumbledore, who leapt back to avoid the projectile. He was able to avoid the ball itself, but upon impacting with the ground it exploded in a fiery burst of energy that singed the elderly sorcerer's robe.

Recognising that the already difficult battle would become practically unwinnable if the creature was able to restrict their movement, both Dumbledore and Voldemort redoubled their efforts to push the creature back. An enormous serpent of cursed fire formed from thin air, the heat searing Sirius' face even from across the square, but it devolved almost instantly into a wash of untamed, but ordinary, fire as the Swarmlord sliced the serpent's head off with a single swing of a sword, the blow somehow sapping the magic that had been animating the creature and keeping the fire together. The move did succeed, however, in eliminating the last few shadows that had been remaining in the square and adjoining alley, completely negating the advantage of the Dark Lord's shadow manipulation.

It also threw light on one of Weasley's runic array traps on a piece of wall that had somehow avoided being blown to pieces when the Death Eaters made their explosive entrance into the square. Dumbledore was slowly retreating toward the array as the Swarmlord advanced on him, swords flashing and deflecting every spell that left the aged sorcerer's wand. Apparently, now that Voldemort's shadow manipulation had been neutralised, the creature had decided to focus on killing Dumbledore first. If he could draw the creature into the trap Weasley had left, perhaps it would give enough of an opening to finish the beast, even if the trap itself wasn't strong enough to kill the Swarmlord outright.

The only question was: could Dumbledore survive long enough to spring the trap?

Same Time,

8:14 am, 1st November 2011

Outskirts of Lambstead,

Lancashire

A bladed creature fell, letting off a horrible keening screech as its bones grew sharp spikes, tearing it apart from the inside. Nearby, several of its fellows were drawn together and compacted into a tightly packed ball of crushed chitin, broken bone, oozing blood, and stinking organs. A short distance beyond that, a trio of the ranged-weapon wielding beasts were consumed by malevolent flame, eating its way from their extremities inward until nothing was left but ash and a foul smell.

Needless to say, Bellatrix was displeased. And, unfortunately for the creatures, they were the vessel she chose to channel that displeasure into. According to Dumbledore's lackeys, the useless fodder that were currently acting as stress relief were hormagaunts and termagants, but it was the one called the Swarmlord that was the true focus of her rage. The beast not only had the temerity to attempt to kill her master, the great Dark Lord, but it had made her master displeased with her when she had attempted to aid him in his battle.

For now, she would satisfy herself with the Swarmlord's underlings that dared to think they could prevent her from carrying out her Lord's orders. And while she dearly wished she could vent her frustration on something a little more human, for the good of her master's noble purpose she would ensure that her subordinates left Lambstead safely. Afterwards, she would finally take Montague, make him believe he would be getting what he had lusted after for so long, and then torture him until he begged for the sweet mercy of death. The Dark Lord had never said she needed to keep them alive after they returned from the mission after all.

And, perhaps, once she was finished with Montague, she would begin work on Greengrass. It had been quite a while since she worked on a woman, and even longer since she considered letting someone actually get a taste of the delights she could offer. However, Greengrass had given her the chance to kill both her traitorous cousin and her filthy half-blood of a niece, and even though she had not been able to do so personally, the pair were trapped in the centre of a horde of bloodthirsty monsters that would be more than happy to do the work for her.

"Montague!" She snapped, enjoying the fact that the man still jumped at her voice, despite the presence of the hormagaunts and termagants. "How far until we reach the edge of the anti-apparition ward?"

In response to her question, Montague slowed, glancing down at the Divinator strapped to his wrist, which was currently displaying a small map of Lambstead overlaid in warning red to denote the reach of the wards.

"A hundred feet, Lady Lestr-AHH!" The respectfully worded reply devolved into a scream of agony as Montague was hoisted off the ground, skewered like a piece of roasted meat on the bladed arm of a 5-meter-long nightmare. It had a long, serpentine body, six arms, each ending in a sword-like blade, and a set of powerful jaws flanked by mandibles that were currently locking around Montague's weakly thrashing head.

"You filthy piece of pus-encrusted scum!" Bellatrix screeched, wand flashing up to point at the creature. There was no point trying to save Montague, he was as good as dead already, but that wasn't the point. The point was that she had wanted to unwind by killing him, and she had been ordered to get him out of Lambstead alive. This creature would pay for subverting her Lord's will. Even as she prepared to blow the beast to smithereens, however, two more of the foul creatures burst upwards from the ground, arms aiming to skewer Flint and Parkinson just as they had Montague.

Raveners. A voice whispered their name in her mind. She paid it no heed, instead, she whipped her wand around in a circle, conjuring a wave of concussive force that blew the two new raveners away from her remaining lieutenants and sent them smashing into walls. Then she levelled her wand at Montague's still weakly struggling form. With a savage grin, she fired a piercing curse straight through Montague's skull, pulping the brains of the ravener that had been holding him along with those of her former lieutenant. After all, the Dark Lord had said he had lost too many followers to these simple beasts, this way he hadn't lost any more to them.

Meanwhile, Flint and Parkinson had managed to dispose of one of the raveners she had blown away, and the other was bleeding out having been impaled with its own bladed limbs courtesy of Greengrass.

Looks like I've found my new lieutenant. Bellatrix thought approvingly, Cruel and efficient. She didn't verbalise her thoughts, instead, she growled, "Let's keep moving, before more raveners show up."

"Raveners?" She heard Flint mutter to Parkinson as the group followed their leader toward the outskirts of the town. At this point they were more or less wading through a sea of hormagaunts and termagants, having to keep up a constant stream of spells just to clear enough space to continue moving forward.

The creatures seemed to possess no sense of self-preservation, wave after wave flung themselves against the knot of Death Eaters. Scores of the beasts died with every second, but that meant little when there were hundreds of the monsters bearing down on them from all directions.

Parkinson let out a choked shriek of pain, staggering back as one of the hormagaunts came close enough to slice her mask in two, the halves clattering to the ground as blood streamed down her face from the shallow cut the beast had made. The creature would have continued on to drive its blade through her skull, but Flint stepped forward and blasted the creature away. It crashed into the wall of a cottage with such force it's entire body compressed into a boneless puddle.

Flint paid for his moment of distraction, however, as another hormagaunt took the opportunity to stab him through the shoulder, eliciting a roar of pain from the large man as his wand arm fell limp at his side. Bellatrix dissolved the beast before it could tear its blade out of Flint and transform the injury into a fatal wound, but nearly lost her head as one of the termagants fired a barrage directly at her skull. Only a hastily erected shield by Greengrass prevented the projectile creatures from turning her brain into a finely puréed pulp.

"ENOUGH!" Bellatrix snarled, a blast of raw magic erupting from her, throwing the massed creatures away to slam into walls or skid along the surrounding cobblestones. The force wasn't great enough to kill the creatures, however, and within moments they were back on their feet and preparing to charge the Death Eaters again.

A deafening roar split the air, causing every hormagaunt and termagant to freeze in place as if petrified. Turning, Bellatrix saw a blaze of blue-white light erupting from the square, followed by a massive BOOM that shook the earth and sent up a plume of dust and pulverised stone. All around, the creatures spasmed. It was as if the beasts were having some sort of unified seizure as their bodies jerked wildly, some sprawling to the ground as if their brains had ceased directing their limbs.

The Death Eaters paused, disconcerted by the fits that seemed to have consumed their formerly implacable opponents. Bellatrix kept her wand raised, the light of a half-formed spell flaring at the tip. She hesitated in unleashing it, however, worried an attack would jolt the beasts out of whatever episode had seized them and prompt them to resume their relentless assault.

"Is this some kind of trick?" Greengrass asked hesitantly, her wand poised to resume firing on the creatures should they attempt to spring a surprise attack. Bellatrix had no answer, whatever method of silent unseen coordination the creatures had been using since they first appeared, it now seemed to be incapacitating them all.

"Whatever the case, we cannot allow that chance to delay us." She snapped, deciding that waiting to see what happened would do them no good. As one, the Death Eaters began to push their way through the crowd of spasming hormagaunts, careful not to allow themselves to be separated as they made their way through the press. They had only made it a half-dozen steps, however, before the creatures' twitching suddenly ceased, and every single creature fixed its gaze on the Death Eaters who had obligingly waded even further into their midst.

"KILL THEM!" Bellatrix screeched, quickly taking her own advice by conjuring a ring of hungry violet flames around the group and allowing it to expand outwards, incinerating dozens of the creature before the sheer number of monsters surrounding them expended the magic of the spell.

All around her, her lieutenants followed her lead, lashing out with the most powerful spells they could muster in a desperate attempt to recreate the small buffer they had previously managed to impose between their group and the swarming beasts.

It was all to no avail.

Where before there had been hundreds of the creatures swarming them, there were now thousands. The alley they were retreating down had filled as far as they could see with the creatures, as had all the alleys branching off of it. More were climbing onto the rooftops, lunging from the buildings on either side, filling every conceivable inch of space in an attempt to annihilate the Death Eaters.

Bellatrix stumbled slightly, almost losing her head and several other extremities before she was able to clear some space with another blast of wild magic, an extremely draining technique the Dark Lord had taught her personally. At first, she thought she had merely slipped on blood or viscera, as there was plenty running down the street now, but then she realised the truth: the ground was moving. Beneath her feet, the cobblestones had begun to shift and groan, vibrating and warping as if something was trying to force its way up from beneath.

Something big.

Desperately, Bellatrix cast her gaze toward the end of the alley, the edge of the wards beyond which they could activate their emergency portkeys and escape the beasts that were beginning to overwhelm even her with the sheer weight of their numbers. Before whatever else that was coming could reach them to help.

The edge of town was tantalisingly close, perhaps three-dozen feet from their current position. She could normally cross that distance in seconds, but with every inch of that space taken up by ravenous beasts slavering to slaughter her and her underlings, and something even worse on its way somehow from underneath them? The distance may as well have been miles for all the chance they had of making it. She watched with a futile kind of fury as one of the hormagaunts drew its blade back, preparing to drive it through the back of Greengrasses skull as she struggled to regain her footing after losing her balance.

Just before the creature thrust its blade forward, it paused. As did every other creature around them. The ground stopped shaking.

For a moment, nothing moved.

Then, inexplicably, the creatures broke.

Every single creature fled as if suddenly seized with some awful terror. Or, more likely, as if they had somehow been ordered to retreat. The beasts streamed away down alleyways in every direction, vanishing into the empty buildings, clambering over roofs to drop down the opposite side, taking every possible avenue away from the Death Eaters and seemingly vanishing into thin air as suddenly as they had appeared.

Within moments, the Death Eaters were alone with the dead.

"Lady Lestrange?" Greengrass asked hesitantly, "What do we do?"

Bellatrix wanted to return to the square, to ensure her master was unharmed. His victory was unquestionable, but that he had emerged unscathed was a different matter entirely. However, she had her orders, and she was the Dark Lord's most loyal servant, "We follow our Lord's orders." She hissed, turning to continue leading the group out of Lambstead.

Pausing, she gestured to Greengrass, Parkinson, and the one surviving plain-masked Death Eater whose name she hadn't bothered to learn, "Each of you, levitate the corpse of one of these beasts, the Dark Lord may wish for them to be studied so we can learn more about these creatures."

The three nodded, before gingerly stepping closer to some of the more intact corpses, as if worried they might suddenly spring back to life and strike. Greengrass levitated the remains of the ravener she had dispatched earlier, Parkinson settled on two halves of a termagant -although whether they came from the same individual was anyone's guess-, and the plain-masked Death Eater collected a hormagaunt that had been dispatched by a killing curse. Their grisly prizes secured, the group followed Bellatrix out of the ruined town.

Moments Earlier,

8:33 am, 1st November 2011

Lambstead Town Square,

Lancashire

A bolt of brilliant blue-white energy lanced from Ginny's wand, blazing across the square and sailing directly through the leftmost of the three hormagaunts swimming before her eyes. Ginny swore. Not only had she been aiming for the rightmost hormagaunt, but the leftmost had been her second guess as to which of the three was real.

With difficulty, she steadied her shaking wand and fired off another bolt of magic. Again, she missed her target, but the spell impacted with the central hormagaunt, blowing it and the two doppelgängers her addled mind had conjured to smithereens.

Oh, Ginny's dazed mind thought, that's lucky.

Her train of thought, such that it was, was derailed by the cool glass of a potion vial being pressed into her hand. Turning, she came face-to-face with Hannah, the healer's wand a blur as she protected the distracted and disorientated auror from the tide of creatures surrounding them.

"Drink it, Ginny, it'll help with the delirium and the shaking." Ginny frowned, uncomprehending. She could hear the words clearly, they just refused to slot into her mind in a way that made sense. She felt like a toddler trying to force a square block through a triangular hole.

Absently, another spell flew from her wand, transfiguring the front half of the hormagaunt that had been about to impale the distracted healer into a rather fetching double-pleated curtain. The creature collapsed, body going limp as the brain and vital organs located in its chest stopped existing.

"Fuck, Ginny!" Hannah exclaimed, looking as if she couldn't decide whether she was impressed or horrified. "If you can still do that when you're half out of your head, I'd hate to see what you do to guys who try to hit on you when you've had a few." Ginny giggled at that, Hermione had said much the same several times. Usually, after some poor sod had seen exactly what she did under those circumstances.

That was a nice thought: Hermione. Before she could continue in that vein, her mouth opened with an indignantly-surprised squawk as her nose was clamped shut. She was prevented from protesting when the glass of the vial was pressed against her lips, a foul-tasting liquid flowing out to fill her mouth.

She coughed, choked, then swallowed, gagging at the awful taste as her eyes watered from almost drowning in the stuff. Her stomach spasmed as the vile liquid slithered its way into her gut, but the vague detachment that had been colouring her perception since she attempted to legilimens the creatures had finally vanished.

Nodding her thanks to Hannah, who had already turned and started heading toward the prone form of Black, Ginny surveyed the carnage surrounding her with fresh eyes. The Death Eaters had vanished, she vaguely remembered Voldemort ordering their retreat shortly after she had almost fried her brain. She doubted the creatures had simply allowed them to leave, but the number of beasts in the square didn't seem to have diminished at all, even if you didn't count the almost innumerable corpses.

The big one, the Swarmlord, was bearing down on Dumbledore, swords batting away spells, eviscerating transfigured simulacra, and carving through obstacles as the creature continued its inexorable march toward the aged sorcerer. Despite his power and skill, it seemed as if nothing Dumbledore threw at the creature was enough to cause even a moment of hesitation.

The ground cracked open, attempting to swallow the creature, but the beast merely leapt forward, forcing Dumbledore to hop backwards hastily to avoid being impaled on an outstretched blade. A squadron of knights formed around the creature, leaping forward to try and hold its arms in place long enough to provide their master with an opening. They fell in pieces before they had managed a single step, pieces that were then batted toward the former Headmaster like bludgers, only to bounce off a solid silver shield.

Despite not being the focus of the monster's attention, Voldemort was far from idle. It would seem the Dark Lord was more concerned with the prospect of facing the Swarmlord without Dumbledore than he was with assuring the demise of the leader of the light. Voldemort's wand was practically invisible, curses so dark she could feel bile rising in her throat flowing from its tip in a ceaseless torrent of sickly light.

Not a single one connected. Most were sent straight back at Voldemort, only to fizzle into sparks in mid-air as the Dark Lord was somehow able to counter his redirected spells without breaking his offensive barrage. The rest were sent toward Dumbledore, forcing the ancient wizard back toward the wall behind him, where he would no longer be able to avoid the Swarmlord's blades.

Recognising that his assault was not working, Voldemort ceased his direct attack. Instead, he began weaving his wand in a series of intricate patterns, one spidery hand thrusting up toward the suddenly darkening sky. Thunder boomed, first far away, then rapidly coming closer as ominous clouds began swirling in the sky above Lambstead, bright flashes of lightning illuminating their ebony depths.

Ginny couldn't help but be a little impressed, and more than a little horrified, at the sheer power Voldemort was displaying. Weather manipulation was some of the most draining and complicated magic in existence. It normally took at least seven warlocks to conjure even the weakest storm, let alone the tempest the serpentine Dark Lord had summoned. What's more, he hadn't so much as whispered an incantation.

With the clouds, came the return of the shadows Voldemort had used at the beginning of the confrontation, and he took full advantage. Shadowy tendrils sprung from the ground, wrapping around the Swarmlord's legs and seizing hold of it's lower two arms. Unfortunately, the upper two were more than equal to the task of diverting Dumbledore's attacks and pressing the Swarmlord's own offensive.

Dumbledore took another step backwards, his back almost touching the wall as he desperately attempted to avoid disembowelment at the beast's hand. The wall and, Ginny now realised, the runic array she had vanished into it. She opened her mouth to shout a warning, but she was too late.

It happened in an instant. The Swarmlord let out a roar of awful triumph as it brought it's blade slashing toward it's cornered prey, only to miss by a hair's breadth when Dumbledore ducked, losing several strands of flowing white hair in the process. Despite having missed its intended target, the sword continued on to slice deep into the wall behind Dumbledore, triggering the runic trap.

The creature roared again, this time in agony, as the entire square was lit with the blinding light of a million volts of electricity coursing into its body. Even with the electricity surging into it, the Swarmlord was able to wrench its legs and lower arms free of Voldemort's shadows, preparing to tear its blade from the wall and break the connection with the rune.

Then, an enormous pillar of energy, easily two metres in diameter, blasted from the clouds. The Swarmlord almost disappeared within the massive lightning bolt as Dumbledore dove out of range of the blast. He landed on his side, already rolling over to face back toward the creature and aiming his wand at the beast that was, somehow, impossibly, still moving. A bolt of golden energy soared from Dumbledore's wand, careening straight for the Swarmlord's head.

A sword moved, it's speed blinding in defiance of the fact that the creature's muscles should've been locked by the over-a-billion volts being forced into its body. The sword's speed may have been blinding, however, but Dumbledore's spell was all but invisible.

The beam of golden power caught the very edge of the blade as it passed, diverting course a fraction of a degree before grazing the side of the Swarmlord's head with a BOOM that dwarfed even the crack of Voldemort's lightning bolt. The impact, grazing though it may have been, lifted the creature off its feet and sent it spinning away, crashing through the wall with the runic array and into the depths of the ruined cottage beyond. This was too much for the poor building, despite the spells imbued into the bricks, and it collapsed inward, burying the creature in a deluge of shattered masonry.

Everything in the square stopped.

Dumbledore lay on the ground, his chest heaving, face pale from the strain of the battle. Voldemort's normally immaculate black robes were torn, and his unnaturally white skin was streaked red with blood from a dozen shallow cuts. His normally glowing crimson eyes were dull, fogged with the telltale mist of magical exhaustion. The group of aurors were frozen in place, scarcely able to believe that the monster, the seemingly unstoppable beast that had almost broken the Ministry over twenty years ago, had really been vanquished.

The creatures stood immobile, several had crashed to the ground, having seemingly shut down mid-leap. Even more had simply collapsed, as lifeless as if they had been struck down by the Killing Curse. Every pair of eyes stared directly at the place the Swarmlord had disappeared.

Ginny scarcely dared to breathe, as if the very act of inhaling oxygen might somehow cause the creature to burst out from beneath the rubble, ready to slaughter the exhausted witches and wizards where they stood. But nothing happened. The pile of rubble remained immobile.

Then the frozen moment ended as the hormagaunts and termagants still filling the square exploded into action. The creatures rushed in every possible direction, completely lacking the seemingly preternatural coordination they had displayed since their initial appearance. Hormagaunts collapsed as they were accidentally struck by the projectiles from wildly firing termagants, others careened off their intended course after colliding with their fellows.

Despite their sudden confusion, the beasts were still focused upon their quarry, and Ginny was forced to duck as a hormagaunt attempted to disembowel her with one of its blades. She was saved from having to retaliate, however, when another hormagaunt's wild attack severed the first's head. A geyser of vile purple gore erupted from the stump of the creature's neck, drenching her robes and stinging her exposed flesh like an acid rain before flowing down to join the veritable ocean of blood already slicking the cobbles.

A swift Reducto dispatched the second hormagaunt, giving her enough time to take hasty stock of her surroundings. For the most part, the Order members were faring well against the now-disorganised beasts, but her heart plummeted when her eyes fell upon Dumbledore. The aged sorcerer was struggling back to his feet, desperately fending off a horde of hormagaunts and a barrage of projectiles from nearby termagants as he did so. While this wasn't exactly encouraging, she had faith in the aged sorcerer's ability to hold his own against the creatures, even while off balance.

What was currently filling her with dread wasn't the frantic assault of the creatures thronging around Dumbledore, it was the sickly green light flaring at the tip of the long, bone-white wand Voldemort was pointing toward his distracted nemesis.

"Avada-" the Dark Lord began, triumph lighting his inhuman features with horrifying glee, only to break off his spell and step back as a trio of spells nearly blew his head off. Hissing like an angry serpent, Voldemort turned to see who had dared interrupt his final victory over Dumbledore, only to pause when he saw Moody, Bones, and Tonks all aiming their wands at him.

Voldemort's crimson eyes swept over the square, taking in the enormous number of creatures still present, as well as the assembled aurors and Dumbledore, who had finally managed to regain his footing and was now on guard once more. His slit-nostrils flared angrily as his eyes flicked to-and-fro, taking a quick mental tally of his opponents and measuring them against his depleted strength, evidently not coming to a favourable conclusion regarding his odds of victory.

"Until next time, Minister." He sneered, before vanishing in a column of shadow, leaving the Order alone with the horde of hormagaunts and termagants.

Although the creatures' cohesion had all but collapsed, their numbers seemed to have only grown since the Swarmlord's defeat. Hundreds of the monsters poured from every conceivable entrance to the square, still more leaping from rooftops and bursting through windows having travelled over or through the buildings surrounding them. Even the creatures' coordination was beginning to reform, although still nowhere near the seemingly supernatural fluidity they had exhibited under the Swarmlord's leadership, they were rapidly regaining the effectiveness they had possessed at the beginning of the confrontation.

Their focus, however, had shifted. No longer were the creatures trying to eviscerate the Order to the exclusion of all else, now the monsters seemed desperate to reach the spot where the Swarmlord had disappeared.

"Aurors!" Dumbledore boomed, prepared to take command of his forces now that the immediate threat of Voldemort had been removed. "We must form a defensive perimeter around the house," He gestured toward the remains of the formerly grand cottage the Swarmlord had been blown into, although calling it a house was a tad generous given its current -demolished- condition.

"Why? You're not saying you think that Thing is still alive in there, are you?" Abbott sounded equal-parts incredulous and horrified by the suggestion.

"The creature's fellows certainly seem to believe as much," Dumbledore answered calmly, although his voice still carried easily over the chaos in the square. "It would be in our best interests to prevent them from reaching it and providing aid if that were the case."

Ginny spared a moment to give the remains of the house a proper inspection. The front and side walls had all but collapsed, only a few jagged fingers of splintered brick and cracked mortar thrusting upward from the ruin. Fortunately, however, the rear wall had been mostly spared, although the roof had collapsed and pulled the very top of the back wall with it, the rest remained standing. Whoever had built the house, probably someone close to Lamb given its central location, they had for some reason neglected to install a back door, or any windows in the rear of their home.

The decision was an odd one, but Ginny was grateful nonetheless, it would save them the trouble of attempting to encircle the house to prevent one of the creatures from entering through the back. Unfortunately, that was the only thing about the house's creator she felt grateful for. Whoever they had been, witch or wizard, they had clearly been talented and powerful, the wreckage of the house shimmered and warped constantly, seeming to expand and contract before her eyes. The constant movement stirred the wreckage ceaselessly, filling the air with a cacophony of groans, creaks, and crunches as wood, brick, and whatever else had been within the building were stretched and crushed by the distortion.

The phenomenon was rare, but unmistakable, "Everyone!" She called, "Stay out of the wreckage! Whoever built that place had space-expansion charms on it and the magic was too tightly woven to break completely when the house was smashed!" The ring of aurors that had been slowly retreating back toward the ruins halted immediately at her warning. Space-expansion charms may be incredibly useful, but no one wanted to go anywhere near a portion of space that was engaging in a death-throes conflict with the fabric of space-time. The best-case scenario was either imploding or exploding as the rapidly fluctuating changes in between exactly how much space could be and actually was in a certain area dragged your body along with it.

No one really knew what the worst-case scenario was, as there was no definitive conclusion on where the extra space the space-expansion charm created actually came from, but everyone agreed that it was not somewhere anyone could survive.

Their inability to continue closing their defensive ring had its own problems, however. Without being able to approach closer to the house, they were forced to leave gaps in their line wide enough that the creatures could attempt to dive between them. Now the defenders not only needed to ward off attacks aimed toward them, but they also had to prevent any of the creatures from slipping past in the confusion. So far, they were managing, but only barely. Ginny could feel her muscles beginning to burn with the dull ache of over-exertion and she was finding it more and more difficult to force her magic into shape for her spells.

The creatures swarmed over them like a plague of locusts, the entire square choked with the beasts as they surged forward, attempting to overwhelm the fragile ring of defenders separating them from their goal. The bodies of the fallen creatures began to pile up swiftly as the onslaught continued, forming a macabre makeshift barricade between the aurors and their assailants. This barrier was more of a hindrance than a help, unfortunately, as it quickly grew high enough to block their view of the advancing creatures, but not so high that the unnaturally agile beasts couldn't leap over it.

With a demonic shriek, another hormagaunt launched itself over the bloody wall blades flashing in the early morning sun as it attempted to leap past her and carry on into the wreckage. Her wand flashed up, taking quick but precise aim, "Reduct- Ah!" she was forced to break off her incantation with a gasp, causing the half-formed spell to fade from the tip of her wand, as the ground heaved beneath her with a deep rumbling groan. It sounded almost as if a thunderstorm had formed beneath the ground to match the vestiges of the one Voldemort had summoned in the skies above.

The sudden shift of the ground beneath her disrupted Ginny's balance badly, she attempted to adjust, but her fatigued legs simply wouldn't respond fast enough. She stumbled, landing hard on one knee, before frantically pushing herself back to her feet. It was too late, however, the hormagaunt was past the line and darted forward into the ruins of the house, making directly for the spot where the Swarmlord had disappeared.

"No!" Ginny cried, trying desperately to clamber to her feet and give chase. The ground had not ceased its rumbling upheaval, however, and the constant shifting and heaving turned her attempt at pursuit into a stumbling crawl. In an instant, a flash of black tore across the cobblestones before her, Black in his animagus form, the dog's four legs making it much more stable as it gave chase to the hormagaunt.

Behind the dog came a termagant, having seemingly made it past the defenders just like the hormagaunt moments earlier, probably through the hole either she or Black had left attempting to stop the first creature. Diving forward onto her belly to steady herself, Ginny let loose a powerful piercing hex, aiming for the creature's torso in the hopes of crippling it so she could deliver a killing blow.

As the burgundy light tore from her wand, it was mirrored by a flare of crimson light from within the ruined house.

At almost the same moment, the termagant halted.

The piercing hex that had been intended for the creature's chest instead pierced its skull as the creature's forward motion ceased. Beneath her stomach, the ground stilled, the groaning roar that had been growing louder with every moment dying away. The sound of spellfire also stopped, and she could no longer hear the wet thuds of dead hormagaunts and termagants slamming to the ground.

Scrambling to her feet, she exchanged cautious glances with her fellow aurors. The group waited, wands clutched tightly as they prepared for the creatures to resume their assault. The sounds of hooves clattering against cobblestone continued to reverberate from all around, but rapidly dwindling, Within moments, it had disappeared completely.

"Are they gone?" Katie Bell asked, sounding as if she hardly dared to believe it. With a wave of his wand, Dumbledore vanished the bodies that had piled up around the beleaguered group, revealing the square.

Empty. But for the bodies of fallen hormagaunts and termagants scattered all around. After the deafening roar of the creatures' ceaseless assault, the sudden silence was somehow even more oppressive. Then it was shattered. By laughter. Wild, almost insane, laughter.

Turning, Ginny saw Black bounding from the ruins of the house, his face split into a grin so wide she could scarcely believe it fit on the man's face. His eyes were streaming with tears, although whether with mirth or some sort of crazed sadness she couldn't say. Then she noticed what was in his arms. It was a body, dressed in torn, colourless rags, with long unkempt black hair, even worse than Black himself had possessed when he escaped from Azkaban.

Not a body, she realised abruptly, a living man. His chest was rising and falling steadily, although the hair on one side of his head was matted with blood from a nasty gash across his cheek. The motion of Black's run caused the man's hair to shift across his forehead, revealing a jagged lightning-bolt scar.

Distantly, she heard Moody growl, "Black! What in the name of Merlin's balls has got into you!?"

She already knew, even before the man shouted his jubilant response, "It's Harry! He's alive!"

Beside her, Dumbledore's legs gave out, the ancient sorcerer collapsing to his knees with one hand covering his mouth and the other stretched out toward the unconscious man in Black's arms.

"He's alive." Dumbledore half-sobbed, "Alive!"

5 Minutes Earlier,

23rd Solar Cycle,

Everywhere,

The Hive

The central edges flickered, faded, firmed, formed, fractured, froze. Is is not but yet is and is and is. The Hive continued pausing moving charging fleeing apart together in unique singularity of identical multiplicity as it halted without pause never stopping. Some and some but all and none seamless fractures in perfect jagged smoothness.

Something was wrong.

The Hive was confused in clear-headed certain uncertainty of clouded clarity. One was gone, but all were One, and One remained. It found answered questioning searching, testing not trying in confident doubt. All were One, but One was many and some were One and others another but also One, yet One and One was two not One, but none were two because all was One. If One was some and some were One then none were One, but all was One, so all was some. All were some and some were One so One and One must be One not two or none were One.

One joined One each whole complete together part of a piece of incomplete. Many became some and some became One until none were some and all was One and One was many. Yet even when all was once again One, One was still not all. There was a voidless void at the core of its cognition. The Hive tested, examining the edges of the void that had no edges because there was no void. Something wasn't where it should've been was, but the wasn't was such that there were no traces of what should be was. Only the fact that the was wasn't remained. Then it understood.

There was a hole in the Hive.

A ragged tear in its psyche.

The Hive was wounded.

The Hive began to seek in earnest, finding all that was to determine that which wasn't. After a few moments of concerted searching, it found its answer. It was the Swarmlord, the Swarmlord was gone. The only one among the many that were One that was truly singular, irreplaceable. Unique. The one who was one among all. The Hive prepared to act. No threat capable of harming the Hive could be tolerated, that which expunged the Swarmlord must be eliminated immediately before anything else could be lost from the One. But then the Swarmlord was found. It was not gone but had been separated from the One. It had been changed, but not altered. The Swarmlord remained all it had ever been, but the Hive suddenly realised it had never been it's all. This was not something new that had been created, but something old that had been remembered.

The Swarmlord could be returned, could become part of the One once more, this time as more than it had ever been. But not yet. The Swarmlord was lost, confused. To draw it back now would sacrifice the potential for growth, it would never become all it could be. The Swarmlord needed to grow as one, so the One could grow as many when one became One with all once more. The Hive began shifting, moving its many bodies in myriad ways. Preparations needed to be made for when the time came to welcome the Swarmlord back into the One. And if one could grow without the One, what was to say the One could not grow as many?

The Hive peered through all its many eyes until one of the many who worked as one as well as of the One drew a facet of its all-encompassing attention. This one had found something special, a similar dissimilarity that could be made a kindred to the one who was one among all.

The Hive considered. This was a new possibility. A unique opportunity. Perhaps this one who could become kindred and the one who was one could be used to draw each other into the One? The Hive instructed this one to act as one and execute this new approach while acting as one of the One, and the rest of the many who worked as one as well as of the One were sent to search for others who could become kindred. If the one who could become kindred was as singular as the one who was one among all, it did not matter, the Hive would still benefit immeasurably if those two could be made One.

A chill raced up many spines as the One grew concerned as many. The one who was one among all bore similarities to the many prey who were only one among one with none as One. Prey were not eternal like the One. Could the one who was one among all someday become none forever, lost to the One instead of simply divided? The chill was replaced with a thrill that sang inside many hearts, the One delighting as all. The prey could come together as two and the two could become many beyond the two. If the kindred and the one who was one among all could become two among the One then the Hive would grow as the two became many!

The Hive worked, the old was still to be done even as the new was begun, the many could grow as One even as the one grew as one. Some among the ones who were one among one had value that could be spread to many or all who were One. More so than any others in the Hive's experience. Perhaps the Hive would grow many among new ones who would join the many as One. The many who the some that had been discovered were among could begin to be moved with less caution. Prey were always less suspicious when they saw what they thought to be all among the some that they knew.

However, the ones watching the ones who were one among one yet served the One would need to exert even greater caution. Now that the prey knew there were some, at least a few would begin to wonder if there were any beyond the some they knew. The suspicion of prey was another tool for the Hive, but it was too early for it to be anything but a hindrance to the many who were One.

For now, the Hive would watch and wait and work and make. All would come in time. All would be One and the Hive would feast.

Soon.

Same Time,

8:45 am, 1st November 2011

Lambstead Town Square,

Lancashire

Watching Dumbledore cry was possibly the most uncomfortable thing Amelia had ever experienced. It wasn't that the elderly wizard was a particularly ugly crier. He didn't pull in great heaving gasps of air and sob, nor did snot stream from his crooked nose. He merely closed his piercing blue eyes as his shoulders shook softly and tears streamed down into his silver beard.

It wasn't his appearance that made it so uncomfortable, she decided distantly, it was the expression of such an ordinary human emotion. At times, it seemed that Dumbledore possessed some sort of otherworldly calm and fortitude, as if he was immune to the sadness and pain of normal people. As infuriating as it could be at times, the impression was comforting, and having it so shattered was equally discomforting.

Fortunately, he regained his composure quickly and stood once more. Moving forward, he joined Abbot in carefully examining the unconscious body. Harry's body. Harry Potter.

Harry. Fucking. Potter.

She should've felt more with regard to the revelation that the supposed saviour of the Wizarding World, the Boy-Who-Lived, was not, in fact, dead, and had been found at long last. All she could muster was a numb sort of disbelief.

The monster was alive. It was alive and it was here. After all these years she had finally allowed herself to start hoping it might truly be gone for good. She should've known better. She had looked into the creature's burning emerald eyes twenty-three years ago and seen her death. It hadn't come then, and it hadn't come today, but it would. There hadn't been a Seer in the Bones family in over two-hundred-years, and they had never been of the normal variety, but she had Seen her fate.

The Bones Seers had a particular gift, one that had given rise to their name. When a Bones gave a prophecy, it was always one of death. Even seeing a Grim was better than having a Bones Prophecy about you, at least with the Grim you didn't know exactly how your gruesome end would come.

Amelia knew. It had been haunting her dreams since she first faced the beast all those years ago in the Ministry.

"Amelia!" Moody's rough growl snapped her from her daze. Looking around, she realised the others were making a swift retreat toward the outskirts of Lambstead. Black still had Harry cradled in his arms, Abbot was levitating Boot's helpless form, and Dumbledore held the infant form of his Phoenix cradled in the palm of one hand as he led the way out of the square. Tonks and Bell were each levitating one of the creatures that had been attacking them, both taking great care to keep the corpses far away from the bedraggled Ministry forces.

"We're just leaving the beast here?" Amelia asked, disbelievingly. She didn't think for a moment the creature might be dead. If the Veil of Death hadn't done it, nothing would.

Moody's omnipresent scowl deepened, "Weren't you listening? Black said it's gone, no sign of it anywhere in the ruins." That was even worse than she had been expecting, surviving was one thing, but managing to extract itself from the wreckage without any of them noticing was quite another.

"So, what are we doing now?" That they were pulling back from Lambstead was obvious, the town had been emptied long before their arrival, and she had little hope for those who had inhabited it.

"St. Mungo's," Moody grunted unnecessarily, there wasn't a person there who wasn't injured, and, skilled as Abbot was, she couldn't tend to ten people at once. Especially given the severity of Boot's condition.

"I meant: what're we doing about this?" She flicked her wand, indicating the surrounding carnage and levitating one of the corpses out of her path at the same time. At least a few of the monsters had collapsed without anyone touching them, she wasn't going to take the risk none of them were playing dead.

Moody was even less sanguine. With a violent jab, a body in their path disintegrated in a blast of blue-black light, staining the cobblestones a dirty black in the process.

"That," he growled, limping over the blackened ground, "seems to be up in the air. Dumbledore thinks the creatures are still here even if they're not trying to kill us right now. I suggested we bring in Finnegan and his demolition-warlocks and blow the place to tiny pieces, but that plan's on hold until we can be sure they won't get massacred the second they arrive."

The tone of Moody's growl made it abundantly clear what he thought of that decision. Amelia merely grunted in response, largely because she couldn't quite decide which side of the issue she was on. On the one hand, she could understand and approve of the decision to not put her people in danger when there was no guarantee they would even achieve anything. On the other, they hadn't stomped on the Death Eaters fast enough when Voldemort first started making his grab for power a decade ago, and she couldn't help wondering if they were making the same mistake now.

Same Time,

11:50 am, 1st November 2011

Romanian Dragon Reserve,

Carpathian Mountains

Sunlight glinted off gold, piercing through the veil of frosted air billowing from flared nostrils. Dark green wings rose, mantling threateningly as muscles slowly coiled beneath armoured scales. Large indigo eyes narrowed, slit pupils dilating as they fixated upon the creature who dared to encroach upon its lair.

"Easy, handsome, easy" Charlie did his best to keep his voice calm and level, holding out his empty hands to show the increasingly hostile dragon he meant no harm. The nearly two-year-old Romanian Longhorn had entered his first rut three days ago and had since attempted to gore any creature who came near him. Particularly anything male.

Normally, dragons in their first mating season were given a wide berth by the keepers, but this particular dragon was wounded. Badly. As young dragons were wont to do, he had challenged an older and, as it turned out, stronger male for his cave and lost. Given the endangered status of his species, it was vital he survive - which was unlikely unless he received medical attention, and soon.

Charlie took another slow step forward, his heavy dragonhide boot crunching through the thin layer of frost covering the entrance to the cavern. A low, rumbling growl presaged the emergence of rows of gleaming white fangs as the Longhorn's lips drew back to bare his formidable teeth. Charlie froze, keeping his eyes locked on the Longhorn's through the intermittent mist caused by its frosting breath.

The growl ceased, and Charlie allowed his tensed muscles to relax infinitesimally. The Longhorn's indigo eyes remained narrowed, the pupils so dilated he could see a faint image of himself reflected in the blackness.

The Longhorn huffed out another breath, it's head drawing back slightly, as if to avoid the inevitable cloud of frosted breath. Only, there was no cloud.

"Whoops," Charlie muttered, unable to keep a grin from twisting his features despite the imminent danger before diving sideways and yanking his wand from the pocket of his robes just in time to avoid the column of roiling orange flames that jetted from the Longhorn's mouth to scorch the stone where he had been standing.

He hit the stone floor of the cave hard, a grunt forcing itself from his lips as he rolled with the impact, coming back up to his feet and sprinting back toward the entrance and out of the Longhorn's line of fire.

A sharp screeching of talons raking across stone was his only warning as he hurled himself to the left, the very tip of one of the Longhorn's gleaming golden horns tearing through the trailing fabric of his robe as the enraged and injured beast missed its goring charge. Beating his wings furiously to arrest his forward momentum, the dragon skidded out onto the frost-covered grass outside the cave. Wheeling around he aimed his open maw toward the prone human interloper, a bright spark of fire igniting deep in his throat as he prepared to immolate him.

"You know I love horsing around with the lads, Jog, but any time now!" Charlie yelled, even as he desperately brought his wand up to try and shield against the coming inferno. Before he had the chance to cast anything, however, a jet of pale, lilac-coloured liquid blasted into the Longhorn's mouth.

The dragon swayed, eyes unfocusing as it's innate magic resistance fought against the powerful alchemical concoction. It broke into a staggering charge toward Charlie, attempting to crush or gore its foe in a final act of vengeance before collapsing into a snoring, smoke-spewing heap.

Charlie rolled onto his back, half-hysterical chuckles erupting from his chest until he finally mastered himself enough to speak, "Hey, JOG, think he had the HOTS for me?" He couldn't help the grin that broke across his features at the answering groan.

"Are you never going to let dat go?" Even with his thick Romanian accent, Jog Manson's long-suffering was evident. "It waz only da one day!"

"Nope." Charlie half-snarked, half-groaned as he levered himself up to his feet, nursing his aching shoulder as he did so. "I don't care if it was only a day, it was fucking hilarious."

"I would dink you would have more sympathy for bad experience with Longhorn now." Jog grumped, gesturing toward the catatonic dragon whose heated breath was slowly blackening the grass next to its snout.

"Except I wasn't dumb enough to get myself deafened on my first day and go around introducing myself to everyone by yelling 'I'M JOG MANSON' at the top of my lungs" Charlie snickered, it would forever be a treasured memory, particularly given Jog's normally quiet disposition.

"For dat, you can be da bait when we go see about da brooding Horndail." The dour Romanian's disposition became even more disgruntled when this failed to elicit the horror any sane individual would react with.

"You're too good to me, JOG, what did I ever do to deserve a dance with the beauty of the reserve?" Charlie wasn't quite rubbing his hands together with glee at the idea of getting up close and personal with the inarguably magnificent - but incredibly hostile - dragon, but it was a close-run thing.

"Beauty of the reserve? Should I dell Elena she has been replaced?" Despite his words, Jog's voice held no hint of a real threat. Not least because he knew neither Charlie nor Elena would care if he did actually relay the statement.

"Elena knows a good-looking dragon when she sees one, JOG," Charlie shrugged, tapping his shoulder with his wand and casting a simple numbing charm before rotating it to test his range of movement. Satisfied with the result, he nodded and turned to head back toward the clearing where they had left their brooms, "Now, let's go see why our resident natural wonder hasn't been supervising her little bundles of joy on their excursions out of the den."

Fortunately, it was only a short flight from the clearing to the designated safe-landing point near the Horntail's den. So, within twenty minutes, the pair were trudging up the snow clad mountainside toward the large cave the Horntail had claimed for herself and her young brood. This time, however, there was no levity between the pair.

The first sign was the smell; overpowering even from a distance and heavy with the sickly stench of rotting flesh. Unlike other large predators, dragon dens did not usually possess a strong odour, due to the draconic tendency to both roast their meals before eating, and pick carcasses clean to the bone. Occasionally, dragons would leave the bodies of attempted egg thieves or challengers as a warning to others, but Charlie had little hope of that being the case here.

When the cave came into sight, even that flickering ember of hope was extinguished. Several of the Horntail chicks were wandering around the exterior of the cave, giving off shrill plaintiff cries and alternating between gazing up into the sky and sniffing around as if in search for food. At four months old, these chicks were still several months off from their first flame, and even further from being able to fly on their own. More importantly, they were much too young for the mother to ever allow out of the den unsupervised. That they were wandering around alone could only mean one of two things: either the mother had found a new mate strong enough that she had decided to abandon the old young. Highly unlikely. Or, the mother wasn't around to take care of her chicks any more.

"Wands out, you reckon?" Charlie muttered, already drawing his own from the pocket of his robes.

"Da." Jog whispered back, drawing his own wand from the holster on his thigh.

Together, the two dragon keepers stole up the mountainside with stealth and coordination not ordinarily expected of animal handlers, carefully avoiding the chicks who, although young, still had enough bite to take off a limb. As they approached the mouth of the cave, the scent of rotting flesh grew stronger until they had to pause to cast a variant of the bubblehead charm to shield their nose and mouth. With clean air secured, the pair took up positions flanking the entrance to the horntail's lair. The lack of any opposition to the presence of two humans so close to the dragon's home was all the proof Charlie needed to confirm the death of the horntail. Glancing at Jog, he noticed the tension in the man's clenched jaw and nodded, no words were necessary.

As one, the dragon keepers charged into the cave, a brilliant nimbus of light flaring from the tip of each wand before soaring into the depths of the cavern and exploding into a searing luminance that hurt even their light-adjusted eyes. For anyone used to the darkness of the cavern interior, or even worse, using a spell to improve their night-vision, the effect would be blinding. Glancing around, it became apparent they needn't have bothered. The cave was empty.

Empty, apart from the rotting corpse of the horntail.

"Futu-i!" Jog swore with feeling, "Dead for few days, at least." Charlie nodded in agreement, stepping over to examine the body for any clues as to how she died.

"I'll check out the cave, you go track down the chicks so we can bring them back to the lodge until they're old enough to fend for themselves." Jog merely grunted in response, his boots scuffing the fire-smoothed stone of the lair as he turned and exited the cave. He would sedate the chicks and prepare a transport for them, as well as sending a message back to the lodge, so the other keepers could begin checking on any other dragons that hadn't been seen recently. Charlie, meanwhile, needed to see if they could discover anything about the bastard who'd killed such a magnificent creature.

A proper inspection of the area for traces of the perpetrators would have to wait until the reservation's security force could arrive to perform a proper investigation.

In years past, it would've been the job of the Romanian Auror Department to deal with poaching or other trouble on the reserve.

But that was before Voldemort had taken over the country and the reserve cut ties with the Romanian magical government.

Nowadays, the government and the reserve largely pretended the other didn't exist. Voldemort had never cared for any magical creatures that couldn't be persuaded or coerced to fight in his army, and no one wished to risk earning the ire of a horde of territorial dragons. The reserve, meanwhile, lacked the strength to resist Voldemort and his forces directly, and no one wanted the dragons running wild without anyone to help keep them hidden from the muggles.

Shaking his bitter musings from his mind, Charlie resumed his examination of the corpse, moving to the mouth in order to cast his diagnostic spells without the magic being nullified by the creature's spell resistant hide. The results manifested as a floating series of arcane symbols and images of the body, all of which were pulsing with a dull white light.

Charlie frowned, Negative? That's strange, I don't think I've ever heard of someone killing a dragon without even using magic. Apart from in myths at least. Flourishing his wand again, Charlie tried a different battery of diagnostic charms. In response, a new array of symbols and diagrams shimmered into existence, this time flickering between an unhealthy violet, poisonous yellow, and an angry red. Three different types of poison? Charlie stared at the results in confusion, he'd never seen a reading like this before. Whatever poison the poachers had used, it was nasty: dermonecrotic, neurotoxic, and cardiotoxic all at once, and potent enough to kill a dragon to boot. Clearly, they had been prepared for things to go south. Too prepared. The body is intact apart from decomposition, so they can't have been after wand or potion components, but if their goal was to capture the dragon, why bring poison and not a sedative? Unless… Charlie's thoughts trailed off as a new possibility occurred to him, turning to leave the cave he saw Jog jogging to the entrance, his expression even grimmer than when they had first discovered the body.

"One of the chicks is missing, right?" Charlie asked before the other man could open his mouth.

"Yes," Jog replied slowly, brow furrowed in confusion. "How did you know?"

"The dragon was killed with poison, potent stuff, definitely not something you'd bring along unless it was the plan to use it. They didn't harvest anything from the body, so the only explanation is they weren't after the mother." Jog frowned, digesting the Englishman's line of reasoning.

"But why would dey want a chick and not an adult?" Which was the million-galleon question, of course. Why would someone want a dragon chick in particular?

"Some kind of private collector making an exotic and eventually fatal zoo?" Charlie suggested half-heartedly, he didn't need to suggest the other likely culprit, they were both already thinking it.

"I have heard a few of de oder reserves are missing chicks too." Jog mused, rubbing the back of his neck contemplatively.

"So it's a pattern, someone's taking the chicks for something." Charlie considered the situation, "Do we know if they're all the same species?"

"Not off de dop of my head," Jog shook his head, "dey were just rumours."

"Let's find out, once we know more we can take the information to Dumbledore, and everyone else who's fighting You-Know-Who. Even if he's not involved, they should know that something is going on." Jog's shoulders slumped slightly as Charlie finally acknowledged the likely perpetrator before he shook himself and straightened.

"I have cousin at Swedish Dragon Reserve, I'll ask her."

"I'll ask my brother to check in on the reserves in Britain, hopefully, that'll get us enough of a pattern to bring some meaningful intel." Charlie sighed, rubbing his suddenly very tired eyes, "Come on, Jog, we need to get those chicks to the lodge." Clapping the other man on the shoulder, he walked from the cave.

Same Time,

9:26 am, 1st November 2011

St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries,

London

Ginny gagged, trying desperately to prevent the vile potion she had just swallowed from coming straight back up again. She'd only have to drink another one if it did.

"Come on, it can't taste that bad," despite her concern, Hermione still managed to sound like a disapproving teacher.

"It really does, it's worse than your Mum's casserole." A low blow, Ginny knew, but she felt it was deserved.

"Are you ever going to stop bringing that up?" Hermione asked exasperatedly, despite the hint of a smile tugging at her lips. "Dad said she's improved a lot last time I spoke to him."

"Doesn't take much," Ginny grumbled, flopping back against the sumptuous cushions of her hospital bed and glaring at the comfortingly-pastel wall. "Can't you pull some strings and get them to release me already? I feel fine, and we should both be with Dumbledore for when he wakes up." Hermione frowned, with feeling this time.

"You know I can't do that," reaching forward, she took the redhead's hand in her own and stroked it softly with her thumb. "The mediwitch said you were about thirty seconds from permanent brain damage, and if you don't take the time to rest and drink your potions-" she glanced meaningfully at the small tray of potions still waiting to be drunk "it will end up being permanent." Ginny huffed, unwilling to concede the point.

"Did Dumbledore say anything to you about him?" She asked, hoping to distract Hermione from her insistence on downing the revolting concoctions.

"Apart from the initial patronus about the Lambstead Expedition and the fact that you found Harry Fucking Potter in the wreckage, I haven't spoken to him yet." Hermione sounded as disbelieving as Ginny felt, but that wasn't what struck her.

"You haven't spoken to him yet? But you're his chief advisor, and intelligence officer, and researcher! He needs all of those things right now!" Ginny tried to clamber out of bed in order to shoo Hermione out of the hospital room but was stopped by the soft touch of Hermione's hand against her shoulder.

"Yes, I am, and yes, he does." Hermione agreed evenly, "But my wife is currently in hospital with brain damage that could become permanent if she refuses to take care of herself like she usually does. Dumbledore can handle himself for a bit." Ginny subsided into her bed, chastened, but pleased in spite of herself.

"Why'd I have to marry someone who's always bloody right?" She groused half-heartedly.

"Because you made the mistake of falling in love with her and wouldn't take no for an answer?" Hermione rebutted playfully. "Now drink those potions and we can get you out of bed and back into the thick of things." Leaning forward, she gave Ginny a quick peck on the lips before handing her the next potion in the Healer's regimen.

Sighing, Ginny took the potion and lifted it to her lips, bracing herself for the foul liquid. Glancing at Hermione, a wicked notion seized her. As quickly as she could, Ginny downed the potion, her face contorting involuntarily at the flavour even as she reached for the last two potions. Taking one in each hand, Ginny forced them down, one after the other, employing skills developed in post-mission bar-crawls with her Auror compatriots. The instant the last drop of foul fluid had disappeared down her throat, she reached forward, tangling her fingers in her wife's bushy brown hair and dragging her in for a kiss.

Hermione released a small squeak of surprise at the unexpected gesture, before releasing a small moan as Ginny's soft lips moved against her own, the redhead's tongue lapping at her lips and begging for entrance. Eagerly, Hermione opened her mouth and reciprocated with her own tongue, only to break off in a sudden fit of spluttering gags.

"EWW! That is revolting!" She gasped, the vile flavour of the potions clinging to her wife's tongue made even worse by the jarring departure from the pleasure of the kiss.

"Come on," Ginny smirked, slinging her legs over the side of the bed and standing, "it can't taste that bad." She indulged herself in a luxurious stretch, celebrating her victory.

"You are pure evil." Hermione fumed, although there was no real heat behind her words.

"And you love it," Ginny replied in a singsong voice, taking the opportunity to administer a loving slap to her wife's rump. "Now, where'd they put my clothes?"

"They had to be incinerated, something about the blood from those creatures you fought didn't react well to cleaning charms. I brought you some from home." Hermione handed over a set of folded clothes, taking a moment to admire the view as Ginny stripped off her hospital gown and donned the fresh clothes. "You do know that you could've just used a switching spell?" She asked, wryly.

"Yes, but then I wouldn't have caught you checking out my rack as I got changed." Ginny winked.

"I make no apologies." Hermione sniffed primly, "Now, let's find Dumbledore." Raising a hand to forestall Ginny's objection, she continued, "You can report to Madam Bones tomorrow, she's ordered 24 hours mandatory leave for everyone from the expedition."

"Has anyone else made a report yet?" Ginny asked as they wound their way through the halls, heading toward the all-too-familiar department reserved for military casualties.

"Nothing formal, but I'm sure Black has given Dumbledore at least the broad points of what happened, and Moody said he'd have his report in tomorrow morning, damn the mandatory leave." Ginny nodded, that sounded like Moody.

"Do you know what's been done with the bodies we brought back?" As much as Ginny never wanted to see any of the monsters they'd fought in Lambstead again, it was vital they learn as much about the beasts as possible.

"As far as I know, they've been deposited in my lab with Project Hephaestus." Hermione glanced around reflexively, making sure there was no one within earshot. Ginny had already completed her own check, but Hermione's unease made her scan their surroundings again.

"Did you see something?" She asked, noting the look of concern marring Hermione's normally implacable focus.

"No," Hermione replied slowly, "I just keep getting the feeling I'm being watched."

Now that she mentioned it, Ginny could sense it too. At first, she'd dismissed it as post-mission paranoia, but if Hermione was feeling it too, perhaps it was something more. For a moment, the apparently empty hallway seemed to darken, as if with some sinister presence.

Then Hermione shook herself, "It's nothing, just nerves. With the war stalemated for so long, we've all got jumpy." Ginny relaxed, Hermione was right, they'd all got so used to looking over their shoulder they'd started imagining there was actually something there.

"Speaking of Hephaestus," Ginny began, as the pair resumed their journey. "Any progress?"

Hermione sighed, "Not really, the problem is fundamental to the function of the enchantment. So far as I can tell, I'd have to create an entirely new enchantment that functioned via a completely different mechanism to solve it."

Ginny grimaced, "Which would take how long?"

"Years, at least." Hermione's teeth worried her lower lip as she considered the problem, "honestly, I think we're better off going with Bill's suggestion of trying to adapt the enchantment for some kind of magic draining restraints. The main challenge there would be finding a way to manage the drain so it didn't actually kill whoever we put them on."

Ginny reached out to grip her wife's hand and squeezed, "You'll figure it out, love, in the meantime, we need to find out where Dumbledore is." The pair had just entered the military department of the hospital, receiving respectful nods from the pair of crimson robed aurors flanking the doors. Ginny returned the nods, she knew the pair by sight but had never spoken to them. Meanwhile, Hermione stopped a passing Healer, getting directions for the room where Dumbledore was waiting. Harry's room. It was only a short journey, although they passed at least a dozen aurors along the way, all with wands drawn and Grangers slung over their shoulders. Upon arriving at the door to the ward, the pair had to wait while the lead auror, Neville, went inside to check with Dumbledore to ensure they were allowed inside.

"You can go in." He confirmed, after only a moment. "Sorry," he smiled apologetically, resembling the boy they'd known in their early years at Hogwarts for a moment, "procedure, you know how it is."

"No worries, Nev." Ginny waved away his concerns. Before they could enter, however, the door opened once more and both Black and Lupin filed out, both wearing expressions of mingled anxiety and joy.

"Ah, Hermione, Ginny." Lupin smiled at them both, tiredly as always. "A pleasure to see you both."

"Likewise, Remus." Hermione smiled back, she had always liked their former professor.

"You alright, Black?" Ginny asked, eyeing the matted blood in the man's normally immaculate hair.

"I'm fine, Weasley," Sirius waved away her concern, "takes more than a kick in the head to keep this dog down." Although they'd never been close, Ginny respected the man for his skills and had always felt for the exonerated ex-con.

"How is he?" Hermione inquired, eyeing both men.

"According to the Healers, he's fine. Nothing more than a mild case of magical exhaustion and a very slight vitamin D deficiency. Apparently, he can't have seen more than a few hours of sunlight in years. Although his magic's done it's best to make up for it." Remus sounded relieved, although Sirius almost growled at the latter part of his friend's statement.

"They say he should be waking up soon," Sirius added, still frowning. "They've given him a potion to try and help his skin adjust to sunlight so he won't burn the second he goes outside. We're going to prepare a room for him now." He gave both of them a fierce look as if daring them to disagree with the decision to let Harry stay with the men.

"Good, if anyone deserves to spend some time with their family, it's you three." Both men beamed at Ginny's words, before excusing themselves and allowing her to follow Hermione into the room.

The room, like Ginny's had been, was dominated by a large hospital bed, although this one had a myriad array of magical readings floating in the air above it. Hannah Abbot was hovering next to the bed, keeping a close watch on the displayed information between furtive glances at the figure lying in the bed. Next to her, Dumbledore sat straight-backed in an uncomfortable hospital chair, somehow managing to make the cheap plastic seat appear as regal as a royal throne. His robes were still singed and cut from his battle with Voldemort and the Swarmlord, but his piercing blue eyes were bright behind his half-moon spectacles, and his voice was strong as he addressed them.

"Excellent, Hermione, Ginny, you're both here." He gestured for them both to take the seats across from him, "Please, sit."

The pair sat, and Ginny finally allowed herself time to study the figure lying in the bed. His hair had been washed and cut since she had seen Sirius carry him out of Lambstead, and his body was concealed beneath a warm hospital blanket. His face, though still pale, had coloured from the unnatural pallor it had previously possessed, likely as a result of the potion Sirius had mentioned. His features were handsome, a strong chin and sharply defined jawline complimenting his aristocratic cheekbones. The darkness of his messy ebony locks contrasted sharply with his pale skin, although the effect was far from unattractive, and, while slim, his face bore no traces of malnutrition. On his forehead, half-covered by the hastily cut fringe of his hair, she could just make out a lightning-shaped scar.

"The goblins have confirmed Sirius' and the Healer's findings: he is Harry Potter." Dumbledore sounded almost overwhelmed. For several long moments, silence reigned.

Eventually, Hermione asked the question that occupied that silence, "Where has he been all this time?"

"And why now? He disappeared within days of the Swarmlord's first appearance, and now he's reappeared just when it and all those other monsters have." Ginny added, voicing the concern that had been eating away at her since Lambstead.

For the first time in Ginny's experience, Dumbledore removed his half-moon spectacles taking a moment to massage the bridge of his long crooked nose.

"I do not know," he admitted, once he had replaced his spectacles. "However, I have a theory. I believe the creatures we faced today, including the Swarmlord, are the product of powerful transfiguration, beyond anything I've encountered before." Dumbledore's expression darkened, "The use of transfiguration to create new life is among the blackest of the Dark Arts, and a monster as terrible as the Swarmlord could only be a product of the most depraved and powerful of dark wizards."

"You think You-Know-Who made them?" Hannah asked, sounding horrified at the mere idea.

"As terrible as it would be for Voldemort," Dumbledore placed a gentle emphasis on the name, ignoring Hannah's wince, "to have achieved such mastery of yet another black magic, I fear the answer is much worse."

Hermione and Ginny exchanged a worried look, before the former spoke up, "Worse than Voldemort?" The notion was so terrible Hannah didn't even realise Voldemort's name had been spoken again.

"I believe there is another Dark Lord in Britain. One who has been biding his time and building his power for decades." Dumbledore paused for a moment to allow the gravity of his assertion to sink in before continuing, "I have spent many years trying to discover what happened the day Harry disappeared, but until tonight I lacked the clues necessary to resolve the mystery." Pushing himself from the chair, Dumbledore began pacing the room, his movements showing no sign of the fatigue he must surely be feeling.

"Twenty years ago," Dumbledore began, "our world was vulnerable. Still recovering from the First War, we had convinced ourselves the need for vigilance and security was gone. The perfect time for a Dark Lord to make his move. Only one thing stood between our mystery opponent and victory, something which had, through means unknown, vanquished the previous Dark Lord while only a baby."

All eyes turned to the sleeping figure in the centre of the room, "Harry." Ginny could understand the logic behind Dumbledore's theory. "So, like any Dark Lord, he decided to remove that obstacle?"

"Precisely," Dumbledore nodded.

"But then why wasn't this new Dark Lord defeated, like Voldemort was?" Hermione asked, identifying a hole in the aged sorcerer's argument.

"Because they learned from Voldemort's mistake," Dumbledore answered. "Voldemort's power was broken when he attempted to kill Harry."

Ginny's head snapped up in sudden understanding, "So the Dark Lord didn't try to kill him." She looked at the sleeping figure with dawning horror, "You mean he's been the prisoner of a Dark Lord all this time?" Hermione gasped, and Hannah swiftly performed another suite of diagnostic charms to confirm Harry's well-being.

"Apart from the blow to his head, he doesn't show any signs of trauma," the Healer reported after a moment. "There aren't any signs of injuries that have healed naturally, and there aren't any traces of healing magic apart from our own spells." The news was a relief, but it also raised questions.

"Why would a Dark Lord keep him prisoner for twenty years and not do anything to him? I understand not trying to kill him directly, given what happened to Voldemort, but not even any torture?" The concept was at odds with everything she had ever learned about the Dark Arts. Black magic was addictive, and once a witch had fallen far enough into its embrace she would be pushed to perform acts of sadism and cruelty just to get her fix.

"It is possible this Dark Lord simply lacks the sadistic tendencies that Voldemort is so fond of indulging in," Dumbledore offered, "or that they feared performing dark magic of any kind on Harry would elicit some form of reaction."

"So the Dark Lord just locked him up somewhere?" Ginny was appalled, she couldn't imagine spending two decades alone in a cage without losing her mind.

"It would seem so," Dumbledore confirmed, looking sadly at the sleeping figure.

"But why not just leave him to starve?" Hermione interjected again, "I can understand not wanting to use magic against Harry, but surely it would have been much simpler to allow the problem to take care of itself?" Dumbledore nodded, acknowledging the point.

"For that, I have no definite answer," he admitted. "I can only theorise that the Dark Lord was attempting to discover the mechanism by which Voldemort was defeated, either to avoid meeting the same fate or to make use of it themselves."

"But how does this connect to the Swarmlord?" Hermione questioned, surprising Ginny, who had almost forgotten about that aspect of the mystery.

"For that, I must return to my narrative of twenty years ago." Ginny resisted the urge to roll her eyes, she may respect the man, but he did have a somewhat infuriating flair for the dramatic. "Creating life with transfiguration is forbidden for many reasons, foremost among which is that in order to create a life, one must be sacrificed. Or, if the aberration being created is exceptionally powerful, more than one."

"Harry's Aunt and Uncle," Hermione stated sadly, garnering an equally subdued nod from Dumbledore.

"You mean the Dark Lord used Harry's family as sacrifices to create the Swarmlord?" Ginny was horrified, "And they did that in front of him?"

"The 28th of October 1988 was an auspicious day for black magic," Dumbledore explained. "The barrier between this world and the next is always thinnest around Halloween, part of the reason why it has become associated with monsters and ghosts among muggles. In 1988, it coincided with an alignment of Mars, Saturn, and Pluto, the three planets most associated with the Dark Arts. A triple planetary alignment, coupled with a triple sacrifice, drawing upon the power of a magically gifted child's despair would've been enough to create a beast of almost unimaginable evil and power."

"And then Moody and Bones sent the fucker straight into the Veil," Ginny couldn't help a kind of vicious triumph from colouring her voice, despite the losses that had been incurred to achieve that victory.

"Indeed, the Dark Lord had lost their most powerful weapon, and the circumstances they used to create it wouldn't appear again within their lifetime." Dumbledore seemed grimly satisfied at the unknown Dark Lord's misfortune, "So they returned to biding their time, creating an army of lesser minions and gathering strength. Until a week ago."

It wasn't difficult to discern what the former Headmaster was referring to, "Lambstead." Ginny breathed, the concept too awful for her to fully accept, even as it occurred to her.

Hermione was equally astute, and appalled, "You mean this monster sacrificed an entire town just to recreate his pet abomination?" Dumbledore merely nodded, mere words insufficient in the face of this atrocity.

"But now he's lost it and Harry!" Ginny declared fiercely, jumping to her feet unable to remain seated any longer. "I bet he thought today was his lucky day, all his main rivals collected in one place just waiting for his aberrations to slaughter them. But now he's lost his trump card, revealed himself to the world, his prisoner's escaped, and both we and Voldemort will be looking for him."

"Indeed, a most inauspicious beginning to his efforts," Dumbledore agreed, the faintest hint of satisfaction gleaming behind his half-moon spectacles.

Hermione rose to her feet, taking her wife's hand in her own, "We'll get him, Ginny, we'll get them all."

The show of solidarity was interrupted by an insistent chiming, coming from the bed dominating the centre of the room.

"That's the monitoring charm!" Hannah burst out, rushing over to the hospital bed, quickly followed by the others. "He's waking up."

?,

?,

?

The One emerged from darkness into another, softer, darkness, this one tinged with a hint of reddish light. It seemed - lonely. There was something warm and smothering covering the One, something physical. The sensation was unfamiliar and unwelcome.

Desperately, the One reached out, searching for its eyes to see and ears to hear, to discover its surroundings. In an instant, the One was standing in a long white passageway, a strange cacophony of background noise distracting it as it took in its surroundings. Its body felt wrong, it was too small, too soft, the balance felt wrong, and as it whipped its head around to inspect the area there came a stabbing pain in its neck. As it looked around, examining the colourfully clad beings surrounding it, the One realised that not only did the body feel wrong, but having only a single body felt wrong. Reaching out once more, it found another, but as soon as it grasped this new body, it lost its hold on the first, suddenly finding itself in a pastel-coloured room, gazing down at a pale figure laying on a soft bed in its centre.

This body also felt wrong, there was an unfamiliar weight hanging from its chest, and the strange background noise from the previous body persisted, albeit with a different flavour. Still, it was better than nothing, keeping a firm grasp on its current body, the One reached out for the one closest. The figure in the bed. The instant it shifted its attention to claiming the figure, however, its grasp slipped on the other body, and the One was suddenly back in the red-tinted darkness.

The figure in the bed was its body? The One was confounded, having a single body simply felt wrong. But the longer it spent in the red-tinted darkness, the more it seemed right. Unwilling to accept this, the One reached out again, this time choosing a mind that felt different from the others. There was some form of resistance, almost negligible at first, before abruptly sharpening into an obstacle that actually required a small measure of exertion to sweep aside.

Immediately upon banishing the resistance, however, the One found itself again transported whole to the new body instead of merely adding it to its collection. This body was again looking at the figure in the bed, at the One, and the background noise was louder, more insistent.

What is this? A legilimens attack? But who!? Abruptly, the One realised the background noise was actually the thoughts of its present body. Armed with this new information, the One dove into the body's mind, searching for deeper understanding. The body made feeble attempts to prevent the One's investigation, but they were swept aside with barely a thought. According to this body, the one in the bed, the One, was a he.

He am he, he tested it out in his mind. It seemed wrong somehow, but also more correct than the One. After another quick examination of his new body, he tried again, I am he. That felt right. The only problem was that it was becoming increasingly difficult to remain in this body. Not because of the body itself, although it was still attempting to eject him, it felt as if he was being drawn back into his own body. Still unwilling to accept this completely, he selected another body, claiming it and accepting the transfer from the resisting one.

This time, he had chosen another body in the room. The body's thoughts were moving with incredible speed, and it took only a moment before it began attempting to eject him as well. However, the attempts of this body were even more negligible than the one he had just vacated. Ignoring them, he searched the body's mind for information about his body. She -Hermione she thought of herself as- called him Harry Potter. She seemed to know little about him, although she appeared to be surprised he was alive. Even more frustratingly, her eyes were stinging, feeling uncomfortably dry. After a moment, the body acted on its own, eyelids closing to cover and moisten the eyes and, for a moment, plunging him into a familiar red-tinted darkness.

My eyes are closed, he realised, idly acknowledging that the revelation seemed like something that shouldn't be as surprising as it was. The pull of his own body, momentarily ameliorated by the switch to Hermione's body, was growing stronger again. With little left to learn in his current host, Harry extended his awareness, preparing to select another. Upon doing so, he realised that, so long as he didn't attempt to fully usurp control of another body, he could listen in on the thoughts.

Deciding to test the limits of this new form of exertion, he ordered the closest body to his own, a she called Hannah, to turn and place herself between it and the other occupants of the room. Hannah obeyed, but the loss of focus in creating the command proved too much for his failing hold on Hermione's body. Despite his flailing attempts to reassert his grip on Hermione, or even jump to one of the other bodies nearby, Harry was dragged back into the increasingly familiar confines of his own body.

Deciding to accept his residency this time, Harry made a quick scan of the others in the room, determining that none of them seemed to mean him any harm, before opening his eyes. He immediately regretted his decision as twin daggers of agony lanced through his optic nerves.

A chorus of strange sounds echoed around him as the others shouted, He's awake! Harry cringed, slamming his eyes shut as the burning light of the room seared his retinas, only compounded by the other's loud exclamations.

It's the light! It's too bright for his eyes! We need to turn it down until he can adjust, Hermione said, very loudly. "Dim the lights! He needs time for his eyes to adjust," the series of strange noises came from her direction, even before she had finished speaking.

Of course! He's been locked in a dark room for who knows how long! Hannah shouted.

I have? Thought Harry, that seemed like something he should remember. Thankfully, the red-tinged darkness of his closed eyelids grew even darker, and Harry decided it was worth trying to open his eyes again.

Slowly, tentatively, he allowed his eyelids to lift a fraction. The light was still uncomfortable, but it was no longer agonising, and as he opened his eyes further, even the discomfort began to fade. Immediately, he was bombarded by another series of intrusive exclamations.

He may be the spitting image of James, but those eyes are like looking back into Lily's! Albus exclaimed, albeit somewhat quieter than the others.

I've never seen a green that rich in a person before, Hannah marvelled, some unidentifiable sentiment colouring her words, it's incredible!

He looks just like I imagined, Ginny said.

He doesn't look at all like I expected, Hermione noted.

Albus began making strange noises, "Hello, Harry." Best not to overtax the poor man, this must all be quite a shock. "My name is Albus Dumbledore, do you know who I am?" We'll see if he's strong enough to answer some questions about what's happened to him over the past twenty years. Harry frowned, it wasn't phrased as a question, but it would be very odd for Dumbledore to simply be talking to himself.

In the end, he decided to answer regardless, I don't remember anything before waking up here. Dumbledore froze, his piercing blue eyes widening dramatically behind his half-moon spectacles.

It was him!? He almost shouted, Harry performed the legilimency attacks before he'd even opened his eyes?

Why are you talking about me as if I'm not here? It was beginning to grate on Harry's nerves.

He can still hear me? Even with my Occlumency shields up? Dumbledore sounded stunned. "I'm sorry, Harry, but you must know it's very rude to enter another's mind without permission." The strange sounds Dumbledore kept making were also starting to irritate Harry, not to mention the fact that he was still talking as if Harry wasn't there.

Yes, I can still hear you, he said, a little testily. How would you talk to me if I couldn't hear you?

Wait, Dumbledore paused, a look of sudden understanding smoothing his furrowed brow. "You don't understand that I'm speaking, do you Harry?"

End AN: To any of you who may be wondering: despite what Bellatrix may have made you think, there are no noble titles or Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Bollocks, or whatever, in this story. Bellatrix is very concerned with the antiquity of your family and the purity of your blood, but there are no actual legal distinctions between Bellatrix or Lucius Malfoy, and any random Muggleborn you might pull off the street. Apart from Bellatrix and Lucius both being wanted as Death Eaters and mass-murdering terrorists, of course.

Finally, if you're an astronomy buff, you'll probably notice I took a few liberties with the actual conditions on the 31st of October 1988. It's a very minor point, but as this is the internet I'm sure there would be someone pedantic enough to make an issue of it were I not to address it. So yes, I'm aware there wasn't a triple conjunction of Mars, Saturn, and Pluto in 1988, but for my purposes in this fictional world, there was. Deal with it.

If you enjoyed my work and want to read more — or just to support me — please consider checking out my P a treon: p a treon . com (slash) MidgardsOrmen.