Chapter 6:
Dorcas unzipped, her stolen African body turning into a Venus flytrap of bone, sinew, and flesh. From this gaping maw, other Africans – men, women, and children alike – poured forth. Each looked to be broken, fading in and out like shadows being exposed to light.
She must have consumed an entire uncontacted tribe, and now she was planning to spend them in this fight? He understood the reasoning. African and other dark-skinned vampires like those of Indonesia or Central America were notoriously resistant to sunlight compared to other vampires. At least at first. They weren't completely immune – melanin only took you so far, especially after years of not getting any sunlight despite the resistance. Then they're just as vulnerable as any other blood-sucker.
But these ones? They were newborns, and in flux. Stored in that horrific void that was once Dorcas Wellbeloved's soul. Untouched by time since she devoured them, and still newborn. Still her thralls.
She unleashed them, and as if sharing a single brain, they began a human rope. Like monkeys in a barrel, they climbed each other, reaching to the sky, towards Voldemort. What little, dim sunlight pierced the fog of vaporized earth, plant, and worse above them singed them as they ascended. And it singed Dorcas, who ran up them like a human stepladder. Her body had not yet restitched itself, and she didn't seem to care.
Voldemort's wings became the limbs of a gargantuan squid. The long, spade-like tendrils shot towards Dorcas like torpedoes, as he himself also plummeted to the ground.
Xavier had no doubt that the large, sea turtle shell wrapping his body would protect him from the impact, so he added an extra impact of his own. He sent two blades of antimagic, one after the other, directly towards his body, only for them to bounce off of it like an arrow shearing off of a knight's breastplate.
Both glanced off at different angles of reflection, but both in the general direction of down and back at him. Neither quite hit him, but they did cut the still-settling crater in half. Twice. There was now an almost perfect cross sliced into the crater like an X-marks-the-spot.
He, himself, was still reeling from the self-annihilation he had performed a few minutes ago, and so couldn't fly up to the fight quite yet. Using his legs would be pointless, both because of the two new canyons in the crater he couldn't possibly leap over, and because even standing in place was agony. He focused on breathing techniques, despite not being corporeal enough to take in and use air.
Voldemort, preoccupied with smashing Dorcas, was swarmed by the thralls. They clawed, and bit, and ripped
what bit of gelatinous calamari they could touch. But Voldemort had nothing to fear from vampirism in a body made entirely of disparate animal parts. There was no human flesh with which to infect.
The tentacled masses retreated back into the holes in the shell where flippers ought to be. They were soon replaced by more bear legs. Dorcas and her thralls were then acquainted with the same ursidaemagic that Xavier had suffered not so long ago. But this time, multiplied by four.
They, all of them, were reduced to paste by the force of the bear claw spell, the mush of blood, bone, and liquefied flesh filled the new footprints left in the already compacted earth.
He then was no longer a turtle, but something resembling a griffon. His top half was now an ostrich, and bottom half a squirrel of some kind. All four of his legs were of different animals now. He was going for diversity of abilities, all of which were unknown to them, over the strategy of raw power and unstoppable defense he had used before.
Xavier rationalized that Voldemort couldn't use any of the abilities repeatedly in quick succession. That, or he had a set amount of times he could use them, correlating to the amount of animals of said type he had consumed. The methods by which his abilities worked were shockingly similar to Dorcas'. A stockpile of bodies and souls of their victims to be burned as fuel.
Should either run out, they would be ended. So far, Dorcas had lost exactly one. That sludge she was currently blended with wasn't dead. It would be a bitch and a half for all of those thralls and her to reconstitute, but it could be done.
Instead of reconstituting it, the mass of blended vampire all melded and formed into a new form at Dorcas' command. Writhing bones and teeth inside of half-formed muscles and tendons flew at Voldemort like vines.
Xavier was one hundred and ten percent done with all of this.
They did not have time for the battle of attrition that any fight between Dorcas and this new Voldemort entailed would be. They had minutes, at most, until all of the top soldiers of both wizarding and Muggle Europe apparated in to join the fray. While he was sure the three of them could handle the hundreds of new opponents, it would be a disaster for all of their long-term plans. Exposing them and having their coming out party be a horror show was not in the cards.
And so he pulled out his trump card.
The last time he had done this, it was in Siberia, against that oddly youthful Baba Yaga and her four horseme. (AN) She had very violently refused their offer of membership, and she died for it.
Now it was Voldemort's turn.
Xavier fought against the phantom pain he was in, and flew over to the pool of meat and other vampire pits where Dorcas was doing her best to reconstitute herself and fight.
He entered her, like a particularly nasty ghost attempting to possess a still-living person. When his form and hers were perfectly overlapped, he let loose.
Fifty percent antimagic to one hundred percent magic.
Harry sat with Hermione, watching the party unfold around them as day approached night.
Seamus had gotten his hands on wizarding fireworks, and the sky above was lit with floral arrangements of light while everyone else danced. Teens and adults alike had turned the pitch into a dance studio, with multiple wizarding wirelesses set up around the area, all tuned to the same station to achieve a stereo effect.
Harry and Hermione weren't joining in for the dancing. Neither were the type to dance, or be the center of attention. Besides, sitting on the grass watching fireworks was plenty romantic for him.
A few others were refraining from the dancing, including the Veela girl. Although she didn't seem pleased by the lack of dance partners. Not even Dudley was fool enough to think he could keep his composure dancing with her, so with none of the boys interested in making fools of themselves, they kept their distance.
"Burgers will be done in a second!" Dudley yelled out from the tailgate barbecue in the parking lot.
The hot dogs had already gone down pretty smooth, but Harry could go for a second helping.
He stood up and offered a hand to his girlfriend, lifting her up to her feet too. Before they could take a single step towards the barbecues, all of the music ceased at once, replaced with static. That static too was soon replaced by a nervous voice.
"Um. This is an emergency broadcast," they heard the frightened voice of Minister Cornelius Fudge say. "An attack was just carried out on the Albanian Snidget Sanctuary. Reports are coming in claiming..."
He paused to clear his throat.
"Claiming that it was a nuclear explosion."
The gasps and startled screams were immediate, and several people fell to the ground boneless. Harry and Hermione both among them.
Many were looking skyward, as if expecting intercontinental missiles flying through the sky to fill the horizon with glowing red mushroom clouds. But the apocalypse did not come.
"No retaliatory missiles have been launched, and it has only been minutes since the incident, but the UN and ICW are doing everything they can to contain and investigate the situation. Even casualty numbers in the nearby city of Tirana and surrounding areas is a complete unknown, but the winds and sound waves from the blast seem to have flattened a quarter of the city," the Minister finished.
"As yet, nobody has taken responsibility for the attack. All radio stations are to cease normal operation for the next twenty-four hours. Should any retaliatory strikes or other similarly... world-ending events happen, all stations will report it immediately," he finished.
With that, the message ended, and the radios returned to silence.
Everybody was silent for a few minutes, until the first of many families made to leave for shelter in a panicked hurry. Everybody followed their example.
Percy Weasley walked down Diagon Alley in an uplifted mood even as night set in.
It was such a beautiful evening, made all the more beautiful by the hushed whispers and panicked shuddering of several shops along the street.
People hadn't been this spooked since Voldemort's reign, and seeing everybody so cagey again was making him nostalgic for his earliest memories with his parents.
He made his way to Flourish and Blotts. In the outdoor seating area, he saw the man he was there to visit. An old, curmudgeonly goblin by the name of Griphook. For all the world, he looked to be sitting alone, reading a newspaper.
Percy approached the table and knocked on the top of it. Griphook looked up to see him and smiled, showing off all those razor-sharp teeth.
"Welcome, Mister Weasley. I take it you heard the news?" Griphook asked, reaching for the golden goblet he carried everywhere to take a drink from it.
"I have, but only by word of mouth. Are there any photos of this supposed nuke in there?" Percy asked.
Griphook handed it to him, and sure enough, a moving photo of a mushroom cloud so large as to cast the city from which the photo was taken into darkness appeared on the front page.
He pulled out his own diary and cast a quick copy spell onto the front page of the Prophet. The ink and image lifted off of the page, only to settle into his diary. It was important information for later use, and the photo of the mushroom cloud towering over the city of Tirana made for such a striking image.
"Will our third wheel be joining us?" Percy asked.
"I've been here the whole time, actually," came the growl of their favorite house elf.
Kreacher appeared out of thin air. The elf magic of his being so subtle that even Percy, who was more sensitive than most to concealment charms, hadn't felt him.
"Will our lady friend be joining us?" asked Kreacher.
"No. She's busy at Hogwarts, as usual," said Percy. "So it'll just be the three of us."
They all hummed, before Griphook grasped his diary and pulled it over to himself to get another look at the Prophet page.
"It seems our eldest fragment has forced the Ascendants into exposing themselves," said Percy.
"It will take time for the brilliant minds of the world to realize exactly what kind of threat they are dealing with," said Griphook. "Thus, I wouldn't go so far as to say he exposed them so much as forced their hand early. Whatever plans they've concocted have certainly had their timeframe shifted. We will have to wait and see if it's forwards or back."
Percy and Kreacher both hummed.
"And now we have a lead as to where the eldest is, and through him we can find the remaining three, if all six were made in the first place," Kreacher added.
"And then we'll be well on our way to having our full team for confronting those lunatics," said Percy.
"Are you sure we shouldn't bring along the fourth?" Griphook asked.
"Positive. Her continued spying is vital for now. And having all three of us in one place is already a huge risk," Percy explained. "Best to keep her hidden."
"Four of us. Assuming we find him," said Griphook.
"Well then, let us go hunt him down," said the Elf Voldemort to the goblin and human ones.
He reached out both hands for them to take.
"You make it sound like a seek and destroy mission," Griphook said, taking Kreacher's left hand into his own.
"Should he refuse, it shall be," said Tom, taking Kreacher's right hand.
They were whisked away in a flash of elf magic. Damned useful, that elvish apparition. And far more comfortable than the usual kind. Then again, goblin magic had its uses too.
Notes:
(AN) Why yes, that was a reference to Jbern.
Thanks as always to my patrons whose continued support allows me to keep writing. And of course to readers like you, whose continued feedback keeps me motivated.
This chapter was edited by chatGPT.