Blood-Soaked Succession Chapter 32 (Patreon)

Chapter 32:

XXX

Harry never touched the ground between Nurmengard and London.

He Apparated from the mountainside and reappeared nearly two kilometres above the Austrian Alps, and let gravity bring him back down. The ground beneath him shrank into a patchwork of snow, stone and distant forest while the wind screamed against his respirator and tore at his robes. He cast a few cold proofing and wind resistance charms, particularly on his glasses, as he allowed gravity to accelerate him until the air itself seemed determined to rip his clothing away.

Then he Apparated again but this time Harry reappeared rotated ninety degrees.

The momentum from falling remained, save he was "falling" sideways now. But at a staggering two hundred and forty kilometers per hour. He shot sideways through the sky with enough speed to make his stomach lag several feet behind the rest of him. His cloak snapped violently in the wind as mountains raced beneath his boots and the horizon remained almost perfectly level ahead.

It wasn't so much like flying as it was like being fired out of a carnival cannon over and over again.

Gravity gradually pulled his trajectory downward until his sideways flight became a shallow arc. Twenty-five seconds after his last Apparition he had travelled another couple kilometres through the air and was falling mostly straight down again. Harry looked ahead, picked a distant point near the horizon and vanished.

Another hundred kilometers disappeared behind him. He reappeared high above the clouds and repeated the process. Fall. Accelerate. Turn. Rocket sideways. Apparate.

From two kilometres up he could see an enormous portion of Europe stretching towards the horizon, giving him more than enough line of sight to choose each destination. Villages became tiny clusters of lights beneath him while highways looked like rivers of stars between forests of black. Whenever the curvature of the terrain or cloud cover interfered, he simply climbed higher on the next jump and continued.

Harry started doing the arithmetic somewhere over Germany.

A hundred or more kilometers from the Apparition itself, followed by roughly two kilometres of actual flight before gravity ruined his trajectory. Around twenty-five seconds between jumps.

A little over a hundred kilometres every thirty seconds. Two hundred kilometres per minute.

He laughed. Hermione was going to demand calculations the moment she found out. Ron was going to hear only one part of the story.

Five minutes from the Austrian Alps to London. That had to be some sort of record.

Harry continued west.

The countryside beneath him gradually thickened into towns and cities until the Channel appeared on the horizon. He crossed it in a couple jumps before the enormous sprawl of London swallowed everything below.

Only then did he begin bleeding away his speed.

His next Apparition redirected his momentum upward instead of sideways, letting gravity fight against it until he nearly stalled in the air. Another jump brought him closer to St Mungo's at a much more reasonable speed, followed by several shorter Apparitions as he circled above the hospital and searched the windows.

Smoke poured from multiple floors, showing he was, indeed, late for the fight.

One entire section of the fifth storey looked as though somebody had detonated explosives inside it.

Harry disappeared and reappeared above the building, falling slowly enough now to examine the exposed wards as he passed.

There.

Through one of the remaining windows he saw Neville and Luna facing a grey-cloaked figure. Ginny lay against the wall behind them while the Unspeakable calmly patted flames from half his body.

Harry vanished again.

He reappeared higher above St Mungo's and allowed himself to fall. Not far enough to approach terminal velocity. He didn't need anything close to that inside a hospital. He merely waited until the wind became loud enough to tell him he had accumulated the momentum he wanted.

Then he Apparated and the fifth-storey window appeared directly in front of his boots.

Glass exploded inward as Harry crashed through it feet-first. He twisted in midair before either boot touched the floor, caught the Unspeakable's cloaked face in one hand and allowed his remaining momentum to carry both of them across the ward.

Beds and startled faces blurred past his vision and the Unspeakable barely had time to raise his arms before Harry slammed his head through the opposite wall. Stone and plaster erupted around them as they crossed the next room and smashed through another – much softer – wall before finally entering a small office beyond.

Harry released the Unspeakable who continued into a cabinet while Harry struck the floor shoulder-first and rolled across it, breaking his momentum along with a chair, a side table and something expensive-looking made of brass.

He came to a stop against the overturned remains of a desk.

Five minutes. Definitely a world record.

Harry pushed himself upright and brushed plaster from the front of his robes before checking the general protection charms layered across his body. Somehow the cold-proofing had survived several minutes of high-altitude travel, and a quick inspection revealed that none of the splintered furniture he'd just rolled through had managed to drive anything pointy into his flesh.

All things considered, he'd stuck the landing rather well.

He looked across the little office and frowned when he discovered the Unspeakable doing much the same thing or trying to.

The filing cabinet had folded around the man when he'd struck it, leaving his body partially wrapped in twisted metal. He planted one mangled arm against the floor and slowly dragged himself free before collapsing onto his side with a metallic crash. Both legs bent in directions Harry was fairly certain human legs weren't designed to bend, his right arm had twisted almost completely backwards and something had gone terribly wrong with his spine.

But there wasn't a drop of blood anywhere.

Harry lowered his wand slightly and watched with growing curiosity as the Unspeakable grabbed his ruined right arm with the left and swung it violently. Shattered bones crunched somewhere beneath the robes before snapping roughly back into alignment. He repeated the process with the other arm, then planted both hands against his hips and twisted his torso until several loud cracks echoed through the office.

The battle continued outside while Harry patiently waited. Spells flashed through the two holes they'd created in the walls and somebody screamed from the hospital ward beyond, followed by an explosion powerful enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

"Need some help?" Harry offered, only half joking.

"No, no! I've got it. Give me a moment."

Harry politely gave him one.

The Unspeakable sat down and straightened one leg before slamming his palm against the side of his knee. Something snapped back into position. He did the same to the other leg and eventually managed to stand, though the repairs were far from perfect. His right forearm remained visibly bent near the middle while both the thigh and shin of his left leg curved slightly where no joints existed.

Harry tilted his head.

The man hadn't healed himself at all. He'd simply put everything back where it belonged.

"How's your head?"

The Unspeakable reached up and knocked two knuckles against his own skull. The unmistakable ringing of metal answered from beneath the hood.

Harry's eyebrows rose.

Metal skeleton. A very strong metal skeleton, apparently.

Without another word he raised his wand and pointed it directly at the man's chest, and cast Avada Kedavra silently in his mind.

The Killing Curse struck the Unspeakable squarely and disappeared into his robes without so much as making him stumble. He looked down at himself, then slowly back towards Harry before reaching up and brushing some imaginary dust from his shoulder.

"What was the point of that?"

"Just wanted to confirm you aren't alive."

Harry pocketed his wand.

"Confirmation is always good," the Unspeakable agreed pleasantly. "Especially in our line of work. But surely the great Harry Potter must have a spell for this sort of situation."

"Nope."

Harry began unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves.

The Unspeakable watched him roll the first one above his elbow, then the second.

"But I do have a left."

Harry raised his left fist.

"And a right."

He raised the other and started walking towards him.

The Unspeakable stared.

"Surely you must be jok—"

Harry punched him in the throat.

The metallic crunch confirmed that whatever protected the man's skull continued considerably farther down. It also sent him stumbling backwards long enough for Harry to catch one arm, turn beneath it and swing the entire man face-first into the filing cabinet he'd only just escaped.

The metal buckled around his head.

Harry drove one boot into the middle of his back and wrenched the captured arm upwards until the shoulder tore free of its socket. Another twist dislocated the elbow. The Unspeakable attempted to roll beneath him, but Harry released the arm and grabbed his hooded head with both hands instead.

The hood refused to move through all of this. Clearly enchanted to only be removed by its owner. It was fine. It didn't stop Harry from twisting what was beneath it.

The man's head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees with several ugly metallic clicks and cartilaginous pops before his body collapsed limply beneath him.

He was laughing.

Harry stared down at him.

"Oh, you're having fun?"

The laughter only grew louder.

Harry grabbed him by both ankles.

"Good."

He swung the Unspeakable once, twice, then hurled him upwards towards the hole they'd made entering the office. His head punched through the remaining strip of drywall above it, showering the next room in plaster before the rest of his body followed and landed in a mangled heap on the other side.

Harry climbed through after him, rolling his sleeves a little farther above his elbows.

"I'm not the biggest braggart in the world," he admitted, approaching the twitching pile of grey robes. "But 'beating the Head Unspeakable of Death to death with my bare hands' is a medal I'm putting on my lapel today."

XXX

The motorcycle teams scattered across the courtyard as Rookwood and the other two Unspeakables advanced through the mist.

Dudley threw himself behind one of the stone pillars surrounding the courtyard and leaned around it long enough to fire another burst. Rookwood moved before his finger touched the trigger. All three bullets passed through the place his chest had occupied while the Unspeakable beside him raised a shield in time to catch Padma's curse from the opposite direction.

Daphne fired from behind another pillar and the third Unspeakable ducked before her wand finished moving.

It happened again and again.

Piers and Malcolm opened fire together from opposite sides of the courtyard, forcing Rookwood between two streams of bullets. He twisted between them with perfect economy of motion while one of his companions blocked a curse that would have caught him during the dodge. Rookwood returned fire without looking and struck Malcolm's motorcycle beneath the engine, sending him and Padma scrambling away as it exploded behind them.

They never bumped into one another. Never blocked another's line of fire or dodged into the path of a curse intended for somebody else. Every movement complemented the other two perfectly, as though they'd rehearsed this exact battle a hundred times.

Maybe they had.

Dudley watched Dennis take a curse to the shoulder and disappear behind his motorcycle. Susan dragged him the rest of the way into cover while Lavender and Gordon attempted to draw fire from the opposite side.

The Unspeakables weren't even breathing hard.

Dudley wasn't a genius, but it didn't take one to figure this out.

They could see the future.

He knew Divination existed. He didn't understand much about it beyond fortune telling, crystal balls and whatever other nonsense wizards did in that class, but three highly trained wizards seeing several seconds ahead? After everything else he'd witnessed over the past year, that barely registered as strange anymore.

And it had started after the enormous glass sphere shattered. The mist still rolled around their legs.

Rookwood turned towards Piers before the other man emerged from cover forcing him back behind his pillar to avoid a flash of green

The question was how far ahead they could see? Then a better question occurred to him. Did that actually matter if they saw something they couldn't avoid?

Dudley reached towards the grenades hanging from his equipment belt only for his fingers to find empty loops.

He looked down.

"What the..."

A movement behind his motorcycle caught his attention.

Seamus crouched beside the sidecar, fiddling intently with thin air. His fingers moved as though tying together invisible strings, occasionally pinching something Dudley couldn't see before moving onto another equally nonexistent object.

Dudley stared at him.

Seamus looked up, grinned and gave one final tug. Then he stood and hurled absolutely nothing over the motorcycle with considerable effort.

Dudley watched nothing sail towards the centre of the courtyard.

Seamus ducked back down and winked at him.

"Got anything in that magic gun with a wide area of effect?" he asked. "Or distracting?"

Dudley smiled.

He could do distracting.

He twisted the first cylinder of Harry's composite gun until the ammunition selector clicked onto buckshot, then rotated the second until the spell chamber settled upon the thunderclap enchantment that had knocked him flat on his arse the first time he'd tested it.

Seamus pointed his wand at Dudley's head and cast something. The battlefield became muffled. Dudley could still hear the distant fighting and explosions, but everything sounded as though several pillows had been wrapped around his skull.

Good thinking.

He rose over the motorcycle and pulled the trigger.

Ten shells and ten thunderclap enchantments disappeared in three seconds.

Even through Seamus's charm the noise was obscene. Dudley's arms went numb while the motorcycle rattled beneath him as though somebody had dropped it into a blender. Buckshot filled half the courtyard and repeated bursts of artificial thunder rolled between the fortress walls while arcs of lightning flashed through the blue-white mist.

For the first time, the Unspeakables couldn't keep up.

Rookwood twisted away from one spread only to find another already filling the space he'd chosen. His shield caught most of it, but the thunderclap detonated against the charm and drove him backwards. One of the other Unspeakables attempted to duck and took the edge of the next blast across his side before a bolt of electricity caught him through the mist.

He collapsed onto his arse and began seizing.

The third raised both arms across his hood as another thunderclap exploded against his shield.

Dudley's rifle clicked empty so he dropped back behind the motorcycle beside Seamus as feeling slowly returned to his fingers.

The muffling charm faded.

Seamus raised a hand above cover and swished his wand.

"Accio, pins."

His free hand jerked once. Then again. Again and again his fingers recoiled as invisible objects struck them. Nothing appeared in his grasp at first, but the concealment charms began failing one after another until small metal pins materialized between his fingers.

Dudley counted four on each finger.

He looked at Seamus.

Seamus looked at him.

Both men plugged their ears just before the courtyard disappeared.

Even with his fingers buried against his ears, Dudley felt the explosion more than heard it. The motorcycle jumped beside him while the pillar behind his back trembled hard enough to crack. A pressure wave punched through the courtyard and showered them with fragments of stone, glass and pieces of Durmstrang's newly repaired architecture.

Something wet landed on Dudley's helmet. He decided not to check what.

Dust and rubble continued raining around them for several seconds before the last echoes rolled away into the mountains.

Dudley tentatively removed his fingers from his ears after Seamus did the same.

They stood together and admired their handiwork.

The blue-white mist had vanished from most of the courtyard, blown away by twenty overlapping explosions. Craters covered the ground where the grenades had landed, some overlapping into larger holes. Stone pillars had been reduced to broken stumps while fragments of the gatehouse decorated everything within fifty yards.

So did considerably more organic debris.

A leg lay near the entrance. Dudley spotted an arm hanging from what remained of one pillar. The three Unspeakables had apparently seen every grenade coming. They simply hadn't found anywhere to go.

Seamus climbed over the wreckage and stopped beside something half buried beneath a collapsed section of stone. He kicked several chunks away before bending down and retrieving Rookwood's polished Death Eater mask.

The head remained inside it.

Piers, Malcolm, Gordon and the others gradually emerged from cover behind him. Eight battered figures limped back into the courtyard, covered in plaster, dust and varying amounts of blood.

Seamus held the severed head up by its hood and looked around at them.

"Was that really so bloody difficult?"