Albus's eyes drifted down to the bowl in his hand as the next round of transportation happened, but they snapped back up when he saw a building in the distance. It was a massive castle that could've given Hogwarts a run for her money, with brickwork that seemed to have been burned to a glimmering charcoal and great, pointed spires that looked like obsidian obelisks. He swallowed as the drifting dandelion milk vapour tilted slightly to point more directly at it.

"I think we've found our mark," he said.

Sirius stepped up closer to him, still scowling. Albus wasn't sure why the young man had taken on such a foul mood in the time he'd left him with Hydrus, or why there was a rather tattered looking werewolf sticking to his side, but he was still glad he was there.

"How quaint," Sirius said sarcastically as he stared out at the imposing castle. "What's the plan?"

Albus made to respond, but an unexpected voice cut him off.

"I'll launch a bombardment to deal with any wards."

Albus's head whipped around, and his breath hitched in his chest when he saw Hydrus had followed them. He'd thought the young man was going to be rational and stay behind.

"I'll leave the building standing," Hydrus said. "But it'll be shaking. That's all I can safely do."

That… Was reasonable. Albus swallowed down the reprimand he'd been about to dole out.

"I don't suppose this location is familiar to you?" Albus asked.

Hydrus shook his head. "Never seen it. A lot of this land was… Well, I'm sure you can guess."

'Lost to muggle bombings,' Albus thought, thinking back to the memories that Hydrus had shown him. "I see. Is there anything you can sense from this distance?"

Hydrus's eyes glowed and Albus could feel power radiating off of him. It wasn't quite magic, but it sent shivers of curiosity and awe rolling through him. Then it faded, and Hydrus shook his head.

"Nothing you weren't able to guess," he said. "If Arcturus isn't there then you're about to walk into something just as bad."

"Could it be the…" How should he refer to Dracula? "The 'ally' you made in their camp?"

"No." Hydrus shook his head again. "I'd recognize the city he calls a 'castle' anywhere, and he isn't the type to go visiting friends."

"A small comfort, then."

Hydrus was still gazing at the fortress like it was a person about to drop from the gallows. His eyes weren't glowing anymore but there was still a mire of danger in their depths. This was the man Albus had seen walk down a fleeing Voldemort with half of his own face missing, all without giving the wound so much as a twitch of pain. This was the warlord who'd danced with the devil and burned the world down around him in the process.

"Listen up!" Hydrus shouted. "Wolves! You're with Sirius. Jasiel! Tú y tus hombres siguen a Albus!"

The Spanish went right over Albus's head, but he could guess that he'd just been given command of the Dominican duelists.

"What about us?"

It was a youthful black man, couldn't have been older than twenty-one or twenty-two, and he was wearing expensive looking duelling robes.

"You stay with me and potentially cover the retreat," Hydrus said. "This will become the fallback point. Even if all you can do is fire back to cover the retreating fighters, you will die where you stand before you leave someone behind. Can you do that?"

Albus's stomach rolled over when he saw the smirk on the young wizard's face. He'd seen that look countless times before on people just like this during the Great War. The reckless youth who'd been enthralled by stories and gotten drunk on their own fledgling talents, ready to set out on what they thought was to be a grand adventure of conquest and righteousness.

Unfortunately, it was far too late to try and talk some sense into this one now.

"Yes, sir," the man said, still smirking as he threw up a lop sided salute. "We're your ace up the sleeve."

"Mm," Hydrus 'agreed'. "Anything to say before I begin, Albus?"

He nearly cast a sonorous charm. It had been something Albus had needed to get in the habit of doing as he got older and older when speaking to large crowds. Now that he was young again…

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he bellowed, immediately stealing the eyes of the entire crowd. "We're here today to strike a blow at true evil!

"Stand firm! Stand strong!" He turned to face the castle before saying, under his breath, "Stay alive…"

Now real magic came pouring off Hydrus. It swelled around the time traveller like a cocoon being spun round a caterpillar, growing in layers with each passing second as he built up his working. Once it had grown so dense and terrifying that even Albus felt a chill beginning to seep into his bones, it vanished.

Then it reappeared in the form of a near-visible cannonball of pure, raw magic launching towards the castle.

Albus could feel it moving the whole way until it 'struck' an invisible wall nearly a quidditch-field away from the castle. Then it erupted with a boom so loud that it nearly deafened his rejuvenated ears, and sent the earth quaking as the shockwave passed over the crowd. True to Hydrus's words, the entire castle quivered in place, and for a moment Albus worried it was about to topple over.

Thankfully, it held firm.

"Go," Hydrus ordered.

"Move!" Sirius roared, apparating away towards the castle.

"Havoc…" Albus whispered, joining him.

Once it was down to just him and the friends of Jessica Fontaine, Hydrus conjured up a throne and scoffed as he took his seat.

"Havoc," he parroted. "What a melodramatic…"

He trailed off to not make the headmaster look too poor in front of the kids he'd kept in reserve. As far as he knew none of them were particularly important, but since they had connections to the Ilvermoney headmaster's granddaughter they might turn out to be worth something more than their wands. An urge to smoke began to burgeon up inside him, but he pushed it back down. It really was a bad habit that he'd let get too strong a hold on him again.

"How long do you think it'll take?" one of the young women asked him.

Hydrus hummed and didn't answer at first. If he'd been able to join them, if he wasn't more of a liability than an asset in a fight against Arcturus, it wouldn't have taken more than ten minutes to strike hard against him and wipe out anyone inside. He might not have even gone inside, just flew above on a broom and launched an aerial assault like he did to Castle Lestrange.

"I'm not sure," he said. "Just depends on how large the infestation is, and if they're dealing with roaches or something easier to finish off."

Vampires were a pain to kill if you couldn't rip them to the roots, after all.

"You're gonna give us lessons no matter what, right?" the young man who'd spoken up earlier asked. "Even if we don't end up doing anything?"

"Assuming you survive," Hydrus answered clinically. "As I told you, there's a higher chance you'll all die than live."

That reminder seemed to stem the questions. Hydrus knew better than to expect proper stoicism and preparation from such young forces, but that didn't mean he couldn't wish for it. If he'd known ahead of time that Dumbledore was planning this little stunt, he'd have gotten proper soldiers ready. He'd have leaned on Amelia, Octavius, and Headmaster Fontaine himself rather than his granddaughter. They could've had a proper battalion of professionals, soldiers, and hitwizards rather than the ragtag group he could call at the drop of a knut.

'Perhaps its for the best,' he thought. 'Better to keep the best in reserve than—'

A massive explosion forced him to shield his eyes as the wind carried dirt and dust their way. Great plumes of black smoke began to rise from a massive hole in the eastern front of the castle. Hydrus took a deep breath, smelling the tell-tale signs of battle already beginning to reach them.

"Be prepared," he said to the suddenly tenser group of witches and wizards around him. "We might be the reserves, but there is still a battle going on."

Sirius ducked around the crumpling legs of a dying… Something, in his animagus form. It looked like a zombie or an inferi, but moved with far too much speed and agility. The top half of its body had been blown apart by one of the werewolves' spells, giving Sirius the chance to avoid it.

He found it a touch ironic that in a pack of actual werewolves, a human was the only one running around as a canine.

When it hadn't been immediately obvious where Arcturus was, the two groups had split up. Sirius and the werewolves went up and to the left while Albus's group had gone right. Something had shaken the whole place a moment ago so he knew they weren't the only ones facing resistance, but that only drove him to move faster. The side they'd gone on was the one he and the others with him could smell a human on, and that meant there was a chance Grindelwald was still alive.

The last thing he needed was the second most powerful man in the world angry at him for not saving his boyfriend fast enough.

A vampire stepped in his way, and there wasn't enough time to count on one of his allies to do the deed for him. Sirius launched himself forward, his fangs biting down hard on the dark being's wand hand. Bone and wood alike shattered and his mouth was full of the disgusting taste of rotten flesh. His weight kept moving forward, plowing the now-screaming enemy into the ground, and as soon as they landed he continued galloping forward as he spat out the flesh and splinters.

'Where are ya, you fuck,' Sirius thought as he rounded another corner. 'Damn it.'

It was the archnemesis of his animagus form: stairs.

He bounded towards them and leapt, changing back into a human at his apex. His foot hit the bottom stair and he took them three at a time from there. Footsteps in his wake told him at least most of the werewolves were still with him. When he got to the top he fell back into being a grim then continued onwards.

When he came to another door, the smell of a human was overwhelming but slightly… off. He straightened up and took stock of the people falling in behind him. A lot of the fighting had quieted down once they got to this level, and it seemed to have died out entirely now. That was either a good thing or a sign of worse things to come.

"Ready?" he hollered. Nods and grunts were the response he got, so he turned and drew his wand. "Diffindo!"

The spell split the thick wooden door in two and Sirius slammed his heel against the gap. One half swung open while the other fell to the ground. Inside the room, a massive dining hall, was just one seated man.

Arcturus Black.

'Fuck me.'

"Sirius," Arcturus said, his voice hard to hear with how deafening the battle had been thus far. "You've come."

"Eviscerato!" Sirius snapped.

The gut ripper tore towards Arcturus, but the man who looked just like him waved his hand and the spell careened to the side and hit the wall instead. Black family magic began to flood the space as Arcturus stood and wiped his mouth with a napkin, showing no more concern for the slowly encroaching force than he would for expected guests.

"I suppose I could call this vengeance, though it does pain me." Arcturus drew his wand and stabbed it at him. "Confringo."

There was no choice but to dodge. Sirius leapt to the side and more heard than saw the horror the spell wreaked on the werewolves who weren't quick enough to do the same behind him. The massively overpowered spell tore through them and exploded into the hallway wall they'd entered in from, rocking the castle once more. Gore continued to rain down as bits dripped off the ceiling.

In that one moment, that one attack, Sirius had lost more men that he was responsible for than he had throughout his entire auror career.

"Motherfucker!" he roared. "Avada Kedavra!"

The unforgivable tore through the air before he even knew what he'd done. It wasn't until it splashed into Arcturus's chest that he even considered how horrifying what he'd done under the influence of the overwhelming madness was. The horror only doubled over when he saw nothing happen to his 'grandfather'.

"How futile." Arcturus sneered at him. "I no longer fear the trappings of mortality, boy. I am—"

"Black hole."

Sirius gasped as the spell he'd copied from Hydrus tore nearly half his magic away in one cast. He stumbled back even as it ate away at everything within a three-metre radius of where his grandfather had stood.

'What a horror,' he thought as he turned to face the slowly recovering werewolves. "Everyone! Fall back! Get Dumbledore!"

Hydrus had warned them that Death's earlier chosen had been able to revive on a whim, so he knew Arcturus wouldn't—

"Avada Kedavra!"

Sirius spun to the side just in time to dodge a bolt of green energy that crashed into the stone wall behind him. Arcturus had reappeared exactly where he'd stood before, and the calm facade he'd worn before was gone. In its place was a snarling, madness-fuelled expression that almost made Sirius want to join the fleeing werewolves.

"You ungrateful wretch!" Arcturus roared, rearing back his wand. "I made you!"

Sirius had thought he was ready for this. His training bouts with Albus had never gone in his favour, but it had seemed like he was improving and even holding his own sometimes. Either the old man had been holding back, or they were all doomed, because he wasn't able to do anything besides dance around like a garden gnome avoiding a flinger spell.

'Fuck this.'

"Diffindo!" he cast. "Diffindo!"

The spells Sirius launched probably didn't hurt anything besides the walls, but he needed to get them off lest his rage bubble over into madness again. It felt like he was trying to keep an actively boiling cauldron in his hands as he crossed a room. Arcturus had already gone past the pale and was deep in the throes of it, but that wasn't how Sirius could win. He hadn't lived long enough in the despair of such insanity to use it effectively.

After another near-pirouette to avoid an eye-popping curse, Sirius went on the attack proper. He had never shied away from the darker side of the Black family's tutelage when he was younger and now it was paying off as his curses and jinxes spread destruction in their wake. It felt like dumping out a pile of waste after a lifetime building it up. It was almost a surprise when Arcturus had to dodge one. Sirius grinned as his workings turned darker and darker, further reflecting his education under his family. The bastards had spent so much of his life trying to beat unfounded lessons into his flesh, and now it was finally time for him to pay it back ten-fold.

Fuck the 'mission' or whatever they were doing. Fuck Albus and his pacifistic motives. Fuck Hydrus himself for trying to hold this all back. He was Sirius Black! He was the head of House Black! He was strong and powerful and deadly and—

"Crucio."

Sirius gasped and fell to his knees. The madness that had taken hold of him faded away like dust motes in the wind, and they were replaced with screams and nothing else. It felt like his flesh was burning, his bones were breaking, his nerves were being prodded at by acidic needles. Every last inch of his body suddenly locked up as pain took over anything and everything else. It felt like he was being twisted, torn, tortured, and incinerated with every second that passed. Pain was the only thing that filled his consciousness, and that left plenty of room for sanity to shove away the madness.

'Fucking idiot,' he thought.

"Avada Kedavra!" Sirius cast through gritted teeth, this time much more aware of his spell choice. Again the spell did nothing.

"Not today, not ever," Arcturus said as the pain faded. "Don't you understand, boy? Everything you're doing is completely and utterly futile. You have no chance."

"Doesn't matter," Sirius panted, almost desperate to keep a conversation going so that he could have a moment to rest after the torture. "I'm still gonna rip your fucking bollocks out through the back of your throat."

Arcturus heaved a sigh, rolling his eyes so high that harsh red veins showed on his eyes. The madness was so evident in every inch of his person that it nearly made Sirius gag.

"Where did I go so wrong with you, Sirius? Why must you be such a waste?" Now the man's eyes reminded him of Bella's, almost-wet and full of wild and undeserved emotions. "You could've been like me. You could've been a god in all but name…"

Before Sirius could respond, Arcturus lackadaisical flicked his wand. A purple crescent of energy that would've fused Sirius's skin to his bones while burning everything in between narrowly missed him as he staggered to the side.

Maybe resting had been a bad idea, because now his body was moving like he had a dragon tied to his back. He dodged out of the way of another purple blast of magic, but tripped and fell to the ground. He pointed his wand at Arcturus but nearly had his jaw smashed into the stone floor when the dark lord cast an Expelliarmus. He held on to the wand as long as he could, but his grandfather was just too damn strong.

"Pathetic," Arcturus growled. "All these years and you're still a waste of my time."

Sirius snapped.

'Banjo' watched, unseen to all, as the battle between the two humans carried on. He had to give it to the spunky little fella; Sirius was giving it his A-game. Neither one of the two combatants were paying much attention to their surroundings, so right now the only thing holding the whole castle together was Banjo himself.

'Silly boys,' Banjo thought as he stuck a pebble's worth of debris back into the brick it came from. 'No sense for propriety.'

It was rare he got to act like the dignified one at a party, so he was going to live it up.

The air was growing colder as the younger human went even more insane, as this lovely pair was want to do. It was fascinating to watch how they were swapping back and forth between rationality and the much more fun other side. He couldn't stop a smile from cracking his face open when the little one managed to knick the foot off the elder.

'How fun,' Banjo thought, having already moved on from his proper persona. 'I guess I'll have to give little brother a pass for making me keep an eye on—'

Something changed. Banjo snapped his eyes onto Arcturus as deific power began to pour out of the mortal. Unlike his own subtle workings, the energy was as blatantly obvious as flipping off the sun.

All eyes on them, it seemed…

'Ah well,' Banjo thought as he began to gather up a bit of trickery. 'It was fun while it lasted.'

"Hey!" he shouted. Arcturus whipped around to face him as he stretched his hand. "Wanna see a magic trick?"

"Filthy—!"

"Now you see him!" He snapped his fingers, initiating the instantaneous working. "Now you don't."

Sirius vanished, and in his place was a horrified looking old man.

Albus wandered through the burning castle. The stones and mortar and iron that made up most of his surroundings protested being used as fuel for the fires he was spawning, but it wasn't hard to convince them to change their minds. The oxygen that fire needed was harder to come by whenever he entered into a new space, the entire property was poorly ventilated, but that was easily fixed by blowing a hole in the wall. His first time renovating the castle had nearly demolished the entire wing, but it was simple enough to adjust the airway procurement spells from there.

That meant the only thing left for him to provide was heat, and that he had in near-infinite spades thanks to his family magic. He was so tense and twitchy that the Dominican duellists who'd come with him had already split off to explore the upper levels of the castle while he went deeper in search of a proper dungeon his Gellert could be kept in. As nervous as he was, his magic had never been stronger and more wild as he continued on down passage after passage, leaving burning foundations and immolated corpses in his wake.

Eventually he stumbled upon a door that wouldn't budge. No matter what perfectly logical conclusions he offered it, it refused to burn away. Albus sighed as he finally drew on the wand he'd retrieved from his sister's grave.

"Incendio."

Incendio. What an awful spell. No grace to it, no subtleties. It simply told something to burn, and it had no choice but to do exactly that. He watched impassively as the barrier fell away, then cloaked himself in phoenix fire to make sure nothing caught on to a more explosive and deadly fire as he stepped through the now open passage.

"And they shall come in peace…" a quiet voice mumbled, almost too far away to hear over the crackling of flame. "They shall be your saviours…"

"Gellert!" Albus called. "Gellert, I'm here!"

"They shall smite the wicked!" what was now obviously his love's voice shrieked. "They shall pave the way to glory!"

Old verses from a drunkenly written 'bible' they'd made to someday try and pacify muggles continued to ring out as Albus hurried down the corridor. He slid to a stop in front of the cell that the shouting was coming from. Inside a nightmare blossomed.

Gellert was almost entirely nude aside from a tattered and blood-stained strip of cloth that hung loosely off his chest. He was bald with harsh scabs dotting his scalp and a red tenderness present across all of his skin. There was a puddle of waste and blood that had stained the undersides of his legs and most of his lower torso beneath him.

"Gellert," Albus breathed. "What have they—"

"Now you don't!"

Gellert vanished, and in his place was Sirius Black.

No.

The man before him was wearing a foul-looking set of fanciful robes that Sirius wouldn't spend a second on, let alone the hour it must've taken to put them on. The quiet rage that had been burning alongside his panic and despair took hold of Albus as he stared at the monster that was responsible for what happened to Gellert.

"What is this?!" Arcturus roared. "Die, you coward!"

A bolt of green energy shot towards Albus.

He blocked it by transfiguring the air in front of it into a sheet of ice that immediately evaporated afterwards.

"I think not." A fleeting, arrogant moment from Hydrus's memories occurred to him. "And I should hope you have the mettle to not do so as well."

He conjured up a throne like he'd seen his protege do countless times. Unlike Hydrus, he didn't summon it up from somewhere else. Instead he transfigured the particles of air itself into a proper seat for him to rest in while he dealt with the pest who had haunted his nightmares for far too long.

It was made of damp and tortured driftwood. More knots than wood, it was a bumpy seat to rest upon but that only served to keep him on edge as he leaned back into it. Despite how inhospitable to flame he'd made the material, it still burned along the edges from the sheer pressure of his magic. A perfect mockery of the sort of pompous pageantry that his opponent spouted.

"Oh I will enjoy this," the mad Black snarled. "Eviscerato!"

Albus burned the gut-ripper away by overwhelming the space with his own magic, then cast, "Ferrumundus."

The air surrounding Arcturus began to transfigure into motes of iron. The particles whipped around him like a tornado, tearing and eroding the ground like it was nothing. Arcturus paid it no mind.

"Ceraballista!" the dark lord roared, sending an orb of malevolent brown energy towards Albus. "Eviscerato! Cruci—"

Albus interrupted the last spell by flicking his wand and shredding Arcturus's body with the iron flakes. Next he used the heat from his magic to begin melting down the iron, waiting for the dark lord's return.

He still couldn't get the image of Gellert's emaciated and dehumanized form out of his mind. The bright, red veins in his eyes like rivers of blood across fields of brackish snow. His pallid skin clinging to his bones like shrink wrapped butcher's wares. The way he didn't even recognise his oldest, most trusted—

"Avada Kedavra!"

He sent the molten metal to shield his back, and the battle resumed.

Sirius blinked and looked around. Where the hell was he?

"From the mortals, scorn!" a voice suddenly screeched. "From the righteous, freedom!"

He turned around and saw a vampire chained to the wall by his wrists. It looked like it had been down there for years, though Sirius's only real measuring stick for that was the loonies that occasionally got wheeled out of Azkaban for one reason or another. If he didn't know any better, he'd say it looked like…

"Shit," he muttered. "Grindelwald."

"Oh good, you figured it out already." Sirius jumped and turned to see Banjo had arrived beside him. "I swapped you and the young-old man. This is the guy we're here for, right?"

"I, uh, yeah." Sirius returned his attention to Grindelwald who was still shouting some anti-muggle nonsense. "Why the fuck is he a vampire?"

Banjo shrugged and gave a noncommittal grunt. "You don't pay me to do reverse divination."

"I don't pay you at all."

"Trust me, son," Banjo said, grinning ever so slightly. "You and yours have given me and mine more than I alone can ever repay.

"Now, let's get this bag of bones and vitriol on a stretcher and get him gone."

'Whatever.' Sirius pointed his wand at the vampire, then began to cast a series of spells. "Stupefy. Alohomora. Diffindo. Wingardium Leviosa."

In rapid succession Grindelwald was knocked into silent unconsciousness, the door to the cell was unlocked, the chains were sliced apart, and the vampire was floating in the air. That caused a whiff of its odor to hit Sirius's nose like a sucker punch and his eyes almost rolled into the back of his head in disgust.

"Ugh, excourgify," he cast. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

"Go on ahead," Banjo said. "I'm gonna go tell the kids upstairs its time to…" He paused. "Vamanos!"

"Oka—"

The werewolf was gone before he finished. Sirius just rolled his eyes and began to try and find his way out of the dungeon. The corridor he wandered down was ever so slightly crooked, no doubt something that would've made his grandfather even more insane than he already was. He couldn't remember what the piece of shit called old architecture like this, the kind that spoke to old money but poor craftsmanship. That almost made him like the place more. The rotten fuck deserved to be unhappy.

After several wrong turns, a brief encounter with some sort of undead crocodile, and once accidentally letting the levitation charm wear off, he found a set of stairs that carried him up and into the ground floor. From there it was more of a maze than a castle; the place really was old. It didn't match up with any castle he'd ever been to before, and he'd been dragged to far too many in his life.

Grindelwald suddenly gasped and started thrashing about. Sirius swore and tried to cast another stunner, but he'd never practiced the combination of that and the levitation charm before and wound up accidentally tossing the ancient dark lord a few meters ahead and onto the ground.

"Shit," he muttered. "Stupe—"

"What is the meaning of this?!" Grindelwald suddenly roared, trying to sit up and head snapping back and forth. "Why are you… You…" He looked Sirius up and down. "You're not Arcturus."

"And thank Merlin for that," Sirius muttered. "I'm here to rescue you, come on."

"Where is the mad bastard?" Grindelwald demanded. "What's going on? Who the bloody—"

"Listen, the sooner we get out of here the sooner Albus can stop stalling him, come on!" That seemed to still the vampire's tongue, and Sirius pointed his wand at it. "Wingardium Leviosa."

It was shameful to think but he felt a bit better now that Grindelwald was conscious. It meant the next time he rounded a blind corner he'd get some sort of warning if something was on the other side, even if it was just the monster's screams as he was torn into first. This was by far and away the sloppiest shit show of an 'op' he'd ever been a part of, and he'd gone through the absolute worst the Ministry had to offer back in the department.

"Why aren't you just blowing a hole in the walls and making a beeline?" Grindelwald said. "This is going to take forever if you just bumble about like a drunk tourist."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "You want to risk bringing this whole bloody castle down on your boyfriend?"

"Albus is more than capable enough of making an escape in such a situation," the vampire snapped. "His familiar—"

"It's not just him, I don't know how many others are still here." Why was he even explaining himself to the rotten former human? "Now shut up and keep playing threat detector."

The vampire craned its head back and glared at him, sending a shiver down Sirius's spine. It was almost impressive how terrifying the frail and broken former man could still be. Maybe it was only because of how many 'bedtime stories' he got from the man they were trying to escape from that it could still terrif—

Grindelwald snapped his hand out just before they turned yet another corner and Sirius nearly dropped him to try and shield himself. Luckily he held off and was rewarded with a horrifying screech from the blind side of the turn as some dark creature was destroyed, all without the vampire even using a wand.

'Definitely not just the bedtime stories.'

Hydrus slowly tapped his finger against his arm rest, making the only sound in the clearing besides the wind occasionally kicking up some of the dry and desiccated ground around him. None of the Americans he'd brought were saying anything, all frozen stiff and silent since the return of the bruised and bloodied werewolves who all left immediately after reporting to Hydrus. Even within the confines of his own mind there was nothing. He'd stilled his thoughts the moment he'd heard Sirius was engaging with Arcturus, and he hadn't let any in since.

When someone else appeared in the blown-open doorway of the castle, his finger came to a stop. He stared hard into the distance to try and make out whether they were friend or foe as they sprinted towards the group. Someone behind him fired a spell, but he rebuked it with a silent and motionless shield that caught the attack before it even made it half a dozen meters forward.

'Some things never change,' Hydrus thought, breaking his internal silence. "Hold steady till we know who or what they are."

Hopefully this was the beginning of the end. It was one thing to deal with inexperienced troops, another to not have someone to deal with them on his behalf. That used to be Ron or Neville's job, or sometimes Remus if the other two men were busy. Merlin, he missed having a proper fighting force.

More people were emerging from the castle now, and he was recognizing them as the Dominican duellists. The men and women looked as battered and bruised as the werewolves had, though they didn't seem to have suffered as many casualties. When one finally reached them Hydrus stood.

"What's going on?" he asked in Spanish. "Was the mission a success?"

"I don't know, the dog-man came and told us to get out of there," the unfamiliar Dominican said. "We had to split up with Dumbledore early on, too dangerous around him."

Hydrus's nose wrinkled into a frustrated, half-snarling expression. If that Coyote bastard had fucked everything up…

"Not to worry, not to worry," a voice said directly behind Hydrus. He turned to see 'Banjo' had appeared. "The two you actually care about are both safe. For now. Your father was escorting the one we came for, and the young old man was fending off your grandfather." The 'werewolf' clapped him on the shoulder. "It's a fucked up family you got there, you know that, right?"

"I see," Hydrus said, ignoring the last part of the god's statement. "E.T.A.?"

"Not my… Oh there's your pops."

Hydrus glanced back towards the main door and saw what looked like an oddly shaped animal. After it took a few more paces towards them he realised the odd silhouette stemmed from the fact that Sirius was levitating Grindelwald ahead of himself like they used to do in the war with magically-enhanced magnets to make sure they didn't get hit with any shrapnel mines. It felt like he made eye contact with his father for just a second, and that feeling redoubled when the man immediately doubled his pace after.

"Hydrus!" Sirius called. "I got 'im!"

Hydrus nearly shouted back, but restrained himself. He had to maintain decorum now, even at the end. Before long Sirius was within a much more comfortable earshot.

"Take him somewhere safe, nowhere warded by Giannis," Hydrus ordered. "After that report back here."

Sirius opened his mouth but didn't say anything for a second, then nodded. "On it."

"Fawkes!" Hydrus called to nowhere. "Faaawkes!"

After a moment or two the phoenix appeared on his shoulder in a tepid pop of flame. It looked at him with a cocked head and concerned eyes.

"Go keep an eye on Albus, bring him out as soon as it feels dangerous," Hydrus said. "Don't pull him out too early, let him get as good a grasp on Arcturus as poss—"

The phoenix burst away, and a few seconds later reappeared with a haggard looking Albus. The warlock didn't look up from the ground, refusing to meet Hydrus's eyes, and had a nasty looking gash across his shoulder that didn't seem like it'd be too difficult to heal. In fact, it didn't even look like a curse wound.

"I guess that's all," Hydrus muttered. "Everyone! Retreat!"

That was all it took to begin the series of pops, cracks, and portkey passphrases. Hydrus waited until he was alone to lower his guard. He kept his eyes on the castle, tempted beyond anything to launch some sort of attack and damn any survivors who just hadn't made it out yet. It would also risk bringing Arcturus down on him and starting up a fight he couldn't win. How tempting it was to just go out in a blaze of glory and be done with all the nonsense…

"Come on, Harry," his long-lost daughter's voice whispered in his ear. "Let's go home."

"Fine," he said. "You mind doing the honours, Fate?"

With a swirl of deific power, he faded away from the battlefield and into his own bedroom, where an awaiting Bella pounced on him.

BBaRtS

Chapter 87, the first of three parts for the end of the Arcturus finale. I was originally planning to write up all three parts and release them as one massive chapter but then life's own drama hit a climax so I'm just throwing this up now that things have settled to give a minor update. I had to do a three day, 3500km/2200mile move back into my mother's home. I'm still settling in and adjusting, sleeping on an air mattress and getting used to being around people again, but for now things are stable at the least. I'm still going to be focusing on wrapping this fic up, no dawdling with side plots and keeping things trim (as you can see here in this chapter with the lack of indepth fight scenes) so I'm sorry it's not super long, but again I wanted to put something out to at least give an update and say that I'm not dead yet lol.