Blood-Soaked Succession Chapter 31 (Patreon)

Chapter 31:

XXX

Hermione brought the Unspeakable down with a pair of rapid cutting curses to his legs while Lucius finished the job with a killing curse. The woman collapsed moments later.

"Move!" Hermione shouted.

They had neither the time nor need to confirm the kill. Their teams had been split up by the unexpected counterattack and they needed to regroup or retreat.

The battle had dissolved into dozens of smaller engagements scattered across Azkaban's shattered island. Inferi fought Unspeakables in the prison yards while possessed corpses traded spells across the collapsed walls. Steam still rose from the immense trench carved moments earlier through the island, the exposed rock glowing faintly where chronomancy had reduced centuries of stone to nothing.

Lucius followed close behind as Hermione searched for the next threat.

A flash of red light caught her attention.

"Sirius."

He stood alone near the old administration building, laughing like a madman as he dueled ten Unspeakables at once.

Or so it appeared.

Several already bore deep rents through their grey robes. One limped badly while another clutched a bleeding shoulder. Sirius himself had suffered little more than torn clothing and several shallow cuts despite facing impossible odds.

Something wasn't right. Why would ten unspeakables be devoted to one target?

Hermione reached into her robes and withdrew her Sneakoscope. The little glass instrument spun wildly before settling upon the battle. She peered through it while Lucius broke into a run to reinforce Sirius.

Only Hermione could have identified the problem so quickly. Every one of the Unspeakables wore an identical necklace. Not merely similar. Identical.

Hermione knew enough about Time-Turners to recognize individual craftsmanship. Every surviving device possessed completely different designs. Squared or triangular casings, different hourglass shapes, different colors and a unique engraving upon the frame. Sure, she couldn't tell from so far away that they were identical to the last detail, but to be indistinguishable from each other at a glance? Same color, shape and everything?

They were the same Time-Turner. Worn by the same man.

Sirius wasn't fighting ten opponents. He was fighting one Unspeakable deliberately violating every known rule governing temporal travel by returning repeatedly to the same place and moment to reinforce himself. Each future version remained until reaching the instant he activated the device again, creating an ever-growing circle of copies all destined to disappear once their particular moment arrived.

Hermione felt her stomach knot.

"No..."

If Sirius killed the wrong duplicate. If any version died before reaching the moment it was fated to travel back, the loop would collapse. Time would be forced to reconcile mutually exclusive outcomes.

"LUCIUS! DON'T LET HIM—"

The world became white as a sphere of blinding light swallowed the battlefield before erupting outward with a deafening roar. Reality itself seemed to buckle as an immense shockwave tore across the island.

When Hermione's vision finally cleared, it was to see a crater nearly forty metres across. The old post office had ceased to exist along with everything surrounding it. Stone, rubble, bodies and the dueling wizards had all vanished into a perfectly circular wound carved into Azkaban.

Lucius and Sirius were now without bodies and their shades stood in the crater looking confused as to what just hit them.

Hermione spotted another knot of fighting near the shattered eastern wall where several Inferi had cornered a handful of grey-robed Unspeakables among the rubble. She recognized them as James and Lily by the shades being larger than the bodies.

One of the Unspeakables noticed her and disengaged from the others, stepping forward with his wand already raised. The embroidered clock upon his robes told her everything she needed to know before the duel had even begun.

The first curse weathered a section of collapsed stone into dust before her shield intercepted the remainder. One that went wide accelerated the rust spreading across an abandoned iron gate until the hinges failed altogether.

They were dangerous spells, undeniably so, but the man himself handled his wand with all the confidence of somebody who had spent a lifetime inside laboratories rather than duelling halls. His stance shifted too much between casts. His shield charms opened far wider than necessary. Every major curse telegraphed itself through exaggerated wand movements that would have embarrassed even a fifth-year duellist.

Hermione had dueled Death Eaters, Snatchers, Aurors, Bellatrix Lestrange, Voldemort himself by proxy and, more recently, Harry Potter on a near weekly basis. Compared to that, this man was merely an academic holding a dangerous stick.

Unfortunately, he also happened to be wearing a Time-Turner.

A second version of him appeared several yards away. A split second later there were ten of him, nine appearing out of thin air and at different positions, most winded and all with ridiculous patterns on their robes to varying degrees.

Hermione already saw the trick to winning, telegraphed to herself through time.

She abandoned every thought of winning quickly and settled into a purely defensive rhythm. Shields intercepted the deadlier spells while simple counter-charms unraveled the rest. Whenever one of the copies overextended himself or another momentarily lost sight of her behind the rubble, she answered not with curses intended to wound but with the most harmless magic she could think of.

A tiny red heart appeared across one man's shoulder. A blue square settled neatly upon another sleeve. A yellow circle decorated a third's hood.

They either didn't notice or ignored the charms completely. Of course they did. Cosmetic magic held no place upon a battlefield.

Hermione quietly smiled to herself as she continued retreating through the broken courtyard. Every harmless mark became another piece of information. The Unspeakable wearing only a heart hadn't travelled backwards once. The one bearing both heart and square had done so exactly once. Each additional recursion accumulated another little symbol until the oldest version gradually distinguished himself from all the younger copies surrounding him.

By the end of the first minute one man wore a heart, square, circle, triangle, diamond, club, spade, cross, pi symbol and star scattered untidily across his robes.

"There you are." she purred to herself like she would after solving a crossword puzzle.

It was just a matter of taking him out.

Ten wands hurled chronomancy across the battlefield with increasing desperation. One curse struck the ground before Hermione and transformed solid rock into loose sand beneath her feet. Another passed so close overhead that the ruined tower behind her visibly weathered, each block aging decades in seconds before collapsing into gravel. A third missed her by several metres altogether, carving an enormous furrow through the prison yard instead.

The oldest copy stumbled while repositioning around a collapsed wall and Hermione took advantage of the opening.

"Decollare."

The curse lived up to its wonderfully literal name.

His head separated cleanly from his shoulders before either half of him understood what had happened. The body collapsed where it stood.

Nothing else happened. No blinding flash. No paradox. No temporal singularity. Exactly as she'd planned.

Around the battlefield the remaining copies visibly faltered. Had they not worn those concealing hoods, Hermione suspected she would have watched the realization spread across every face simultaneously. They had just witnessed their own deaths. And it was inevitable. They even knew in their heads exactly how much time they had left.

Their attacks became more frantic as one of them vanished. Mr Heart went back in time to become mister heart with a square. Thirty seconds later he disappeared too

The pattern repeated itself with almost depressing predictability. Every few moments another copy blinked from existence as his younger self reached the predetermined moment to travel backwards through time.

Nearly two minutes after the duel began only one remained.

He looked from Hermione to the Time-Turner hanging around his neck, then towards the empty spaces where his future selves had stood only moments earlier. Hermione found herself genuinely surprised by what happened next.

Nothing. He simply continued fighting. The thought never even crossed his mind that he could end this immediately. A single curse turned upon himself before activating the Time-Turner would collapse the entire loop and trigger another singularity. He would die regardless, but so would she.

A heartbeat later his body flickered before disappearing altogether, leaving only the original corpse she'd created minutes earlier lying upon the broken stones.

Hermione approached it cautiously and removed the Time-Turner from around its neck.

It was completely different from the one she had, completely lacking the spinning hourglass. Three tiny dials occupied one side of the brass casing like the tumblers of a combination lock. Each bore its own engraved label.

Minutes.

Recursions.

Delay.

Repeated delays.

The first two went from zero to nine and the third and fourth only went up to three. A letters beneath those last two said "x 1 min" and "x 10 sec" respectively.

She turned the mechanism slowly while reading the accompanying markings. It could only travel backwards nine minutes at most. It permitted up to nine recursive jumps, each occurring automatically after a predetermined interval that returned the wearer to the exact instant the device had first been activated. And the maximum delay between jumps was thirty seconds, starting after the one to three minute mark. He had selected one.

"What an unbelievably irresponsible thing to invent," Hermione muttered.

Her wand rose instinctively. Destroying it would probably be the wisest course of action.

Then Harry came to mind. And then the image of ten Harrys fighting Voldemort occupied her imagination. Only to be replaced by ten resurected Dumbledores.

Or, failing everything else, a deliberately induced paradox powerful enough to remove Voldemort's current body even if it consumed Harry as well. Which would solve the problem of Voldemort having his mothers protection and him being able to make a new body.

Hermione lowered her wand.

The Time-Turner slipped over her neck beside the enchanted Galleon before she hurried over to help James and Lily, only to find the battle ended and that they had continued inside.

XXX

Dudley guided his motorcycle between the shattered pines lining the approach to Durmstrang, keeping low beneath the canopy as Viktor's flying fortress continued its assault overhead.

The battle had already begun.

The Hogwarts Express, invisible save its opened belly, circled above the mountains while enchanted motorcycles, jeeps and armored trucks swept past its flanks. Their riders poured spells, gunfire and explosives towards the battered fortress below. Bright flashes erupted continuously along the walls as Aurors answered from hastily repaired battlements. The entire castle looked as though it had only just begun recovering from Viktor's escape months earlier. Fresh stone stood beside blackened ruins. Scaffolding clung to half-rebuilt towers while entire sections remained open to the freezing Norwegian air.

Dudley, Seamus and the other motorcycle teams had peeled away from the main force minutes earlier, weaving through the surrounding forest while Viktor drew the defenders' attention from above. Piers rode at the front of the column with Daphne seated side-saddle behind him, her wand already resting across one shoulder. Malcolm and Padma followed close behind while Gordon carried Lavender and Dennis rode with Susan. Seamus remained in Dudley's sidecar, crouched low enough that only the top of his helmet remained visible above its armour plating.

The trees abruptly gave way to open ground and Durmstrang's main entrance stood less than a hundred meters ahead, carved directly into the mountainside beneath a broad gatehouse tower. Much of the outer wall still bore the scars of Voldemort's previous assault. Fresh stone surrounded older blackened masonry while replacement battlements remained conspicuously lighter than the centuries-old fortress around them.

"Almost there," Dudley muttered as they entered the courtyard.

Then something enormous fell from above. At first he thought someone had dropped an oversized Christmas ornament. A great sphere of thick glass, easily ten metres across and filled with swirling blue and white mist, plummeted from the battlements and struck the courtyard before the entrance with an earth-shaking crash.

They all skidded to a stop as the globe exploded into thousands of glittering fragments. Dense white and blue mist poured from the broken shell in impossible quantities. It rolled across the ground like floodwater, spreading through the courtyard until it reached nearly waist height before continuing outward.

"What the hell is that?" Piers shouted.

The mist continued thickening until Dudley could barely see the fortress gates beyond it.

Then the front doors opened and three hooded figures emerged through the fog with almost leisurely confidence. They were garbed in pale grey robes.

Were these the Unspeakables Harry had warned about?

The approaching group stopped just beyond the doorway as though expecting visitors. One of them reached up calmly and lowered his hood. Instead of a face, Dudley found himself staring into the blank grin of a polished skull mask.

A Death Eater.

The masked wizard spread his arms in theatrical welcome.

"Good afternoon," he called pleasantly, his voice carrying across the courtyard despite the battle raging elsewhere. "Allow me to welcome you to Durmstrang. I am head Unspeakable of the Department of Prophecy, my name is Augustus Rook..."

Dudley didn't let him finish. He raised his rifle as soon as he spread out his arms and the rifle cracked three times in rapid succession.

The first round crossed the courtyard exactly where the wizard's head had been an instant earlier. But Augustus Rookwood leaned casually aside as though he'd watched the bullet coming for several seconds before it arrived. The second passed through the space his chest had occupied. He shifted half a step without seeming hurried in the slightest. The third round missed by less than an inch before disappearing into the fortress wall behind him.

Even for a wizard, that was impossible. Right?

He looked to Seamus, who had turned to him with an equally gobsmocked expression on his face.

XXX

Neville skidded around the ruined corner of the hospital wing with Ginny slung awkwardly beneath one arm. He lowered her carefully against the shattered wall before immediately stepping back in front of her, wand raised once more towards the lone Unspeakable waiting farther down the corridor.

The ward no longer resembled a hospital. Collapsed ceilings exposed the floors above while broken beds, overturned cabinets and shattered healing equipment littered the hall. Every window had blown outward during the fighting.

Bodies lay everywhere. Aurors in blue robes sprawled across blood-soaked tiles beside shattered stone and twisted metal, the aftermath of a battle that had reached every room before finally concentrating here.

Neville wiped the blood running into his right eye with the back of one sleeve before straightening once again.

Luna stepped quietly into place beside him.

Across the corridor, the Unspeakable regarded the devastation with open disappointment rather than concern.

"We only just finished renovating this ward," he sighed, sounding more inconvenienced than angry.

Neville stared.

The left half of the man's body remained engulfed in dragon bile fire.

The enchanted flames crawled steadily across charred robes and blackened flesh, eating through both without ever diminishing. His entire left sleeve had burned away. Skin beneath had blistered and split until muscle showed through in places, yet the man stood as though enduring little more than an unpleasant sunburn.

Neville couldn't begin to understand it. A, where ginny had gotten the little grenade, B, why she thought to use it, and C, and how this man was still standing.

"Where are they?" Neville demanded.

The Unspeakable looked up from the fire still consuming his shoulder.

"I'm sorry?"

"My parents."

For the first time since the duel began, something resembling confusion crossed the man's gesture.

He casually brushed several persistent flames from his robes with one gloved hand before patting the remaining fire against the wall. When the last tongues of crimson finally died, they revealed charred skin with melted grey fabric fused permanently to the flesh beneath.

"I don't know who you are," he said almost apologetically. "How, then, should I know who your parents are let alone where they happen to be?"

Neville tightened his grip upon his wand.

Right. The ward was emptied for renovation. The patients must have been moved to another ward. They could still be around here somewhere.

The sound of hurried footsteps echoed from the far end of the corridor and a moment later a pair of double doors burst open. Two more Unspeakables hurried inside with four Aurors close behind them, each taking in the destruction before raising their wands.

The burning man glanced over one shoulder before looking back towards Neville and Luna.

"Excellent. Now, if you children would kindly—"

He was cut off by the sound of exploding glass. The fifth-storey window beside the Unspeakable disintegrated inward as something black crashed through it at impossible speed. Neville barely had time to register that it was a man before the newcomer crossed the entire length of the ward in the space of a heartbeat, carrying the Unspeakable with him.

Harry. His black cloak snapped violently behind him as one hand seized the speaking Unspeakable by the face and took him on a short flight.

The Unspeakable's head struck the stone wall beside the corridor with a sound like cannon fire before Harry drove him clean through it without losing momentum. Stone, timber and reinforced brickwork erupted outward in an avalanche of dust and shattered masonry as both men vanished into the next ward beyond, the impact shaking the entire floor beneath Neville's feet.

Instead of gawking like the Aurors and Unspeakables opposite them, Neville and Luna fired at them.