- Joined
- Mar 19, 2017
- Messages
- 12
- Reaction score
- 5
He burned. He turned and twisted in a jet of fire and the moment of death passed between him and that great empty. The jelly in his eyes glowed and caught flame and fury like its petrol cousin. Burn. His hair blackened and thinned and fell in clumps as it burned. Sizzle. His body hunched on itself as his buttons melted, and the thread in his jacket burned and branded itself into his skin. Bake. He fell and shattered, beams of bone and crispened meat molting off his bones, disintegrating and turning into a thick powder o'er the earth. He was a flesh kiln and his passing seasoned the earth. Done.
As he died, all he could think was how disappointing his imagination when weighed against death itself.
Here lie your bones --how's that for butter?
But... he wasn't dead.
Not yet anyhow. The aurors had finally managed to apparate (it certainly took them long enough didn't it?) between the livid beast and the students. A very old wizard and a very small woman were the ringleaders as a squad of the Ministry's Finest raised their wands --whiplike-- in unison and brandished it at the dragon, who gave way little by little.
It would make one circuit and there would come gushing torrents of magics vicious and deadly --the pulsing blue-heat of blasting spells, the sickly green coolness of shriveling curses, purple gelid cutting hexes. Everything and anything short of The Unforgivables whether through proscription or inability (the Killing Curse would make short work of most things, no matter how weakly cast but it was quite common for even a mildly adulterated Avada to bounce off of a sufficient enraged drake.)
They came so fast and heavy that the acrid spell of blasting magic imposed itself over and above the sour tang of twisted metal and the cloying sweetness of burning flesh.
The beast's scales fairly glowed as it absorbed more and more abuse, turning colors as sapphire bled into jade bled into amethyst.
It wasn't dodging though... curious, its movements were no slower. Something like dread settled in him, from head-to-toe.
Who else could it have been but the Department of Magical Law Enforcement? Ten years ago. Dreary, thick wizards with faces so dull they looked as if they had been portrait-spelled (by a hack) interrogated Gideon Greengrass about a dodgy collection of shrunken goblin heads (Italian... or was it Ruthenian?)
Maître Greengrass had never been a particularly cunning man. And yet he had seen off the questions and demands as expertly as he drove those little muggle balls.
And that was not all. How many balls at the Ancient House of Black shadowed with an informal Ministry Inquiry for fear of muggle-baiting or sedition or "seditious muggle-baiting" (presumably one taught the poor wretches about the existence of magic in between bouts of Crucio.)
It wasn't that he didn't know, but it was that he realized that the Ministry of Magic, that crusty hardened loaf of stupidity had sent its finest... by its own lights.
Shite.
The lead-Aurors seemed determined to disabuse him of his prejudicial notions of Ministry imbecility, at least for the nonce. As the beast flew low and over their column, they barked out orders and with sweeping, grand motions, drew a curtain of white-blue abjuring magic over them. A few of the beast's outstretched limbs (and its tail, thick and steel-like) tested the shield, clubbed it for a moment.
And then drew back.
"Alright ye idjits. Protego maxima and hold fast!"
The beast wheeled around dove and pulled up at the last moment, the shield's colors deepening and the Aurors sighing in relief until... it began to spin in mid-air, from nose to caudal-fin, every bit of it shaking like tree branches in gale winds. There was confused silence and then shouts as fat droplets of eldritch energy, like so much galvanized run-off began to drip off, to molt off, to fall and fall and splatter and sizzle on the shields.
Magic met dragon-tempered magic.
The former never had a chance.
A yellow shard of curse-magicks burbled on top of the shield and then melted it way though. Then another droplet punched through here. Then another there. Like a too-old bedsheet caught in blistering rain, tears gave way to tears and soon--
--One caught a sixth-year full in the face and gave him boils... with horns. He screamed. They screamed. The aurors swore.
(Geraint was torn between a silent scream and the cruel, avaricious habit of reaching into his breast-pocket for his notebook.)
The aurors to their credit, regrouped, tried to recast when one of their numbers, another of the square-jawed sort got hit with so much magical backwash. Just a smidge. A drop of a drop of a drop. It hit him on the wrist-remembrall. Something an overconscious wife or a fussing mother might have gotten him.
Its ruby-eye turned a garish neon-red and the strap attached to it tightened like a vise.
They could all hear the crunch of bone over his screams. What they did not hear was his hastily uttered spell. What it was and its purpose, few could say (his wand was found later, blackened to bits far beyond the reach of any priori spell) but as it dropped out of his hand some deep magic passed through it and through it.
And found its target. An obscene splurt of magic like red-hot blood from an opened artery lashed out at the very old lead auror.
The old boy to his credit didn't lose his head --in either sense of the word. He twitched and muttered some kind of shielding spell.
Geraint had sense enough to close his eyes.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
He was knocked down. He knew that much. The earth felt strangely cool amidst all the dragon and mage-fire. A few grass-bristles still survived the explosion, the day, the everything. He could have rested here. It would have made a fine end. Poesy in the garden of death. A parterre of one's end.
Some strange Beowulfian impulse opened his eyes.
(From this point of on, readers, it may be our only insight into his psychology.)
He didn't see Rickard. Nor the red-headed girl. It was a shame; there always were girls with hair of flame in these stories.
The aurors though, were down. They looked like a discarded suite of cards, scattered to their four-winds in their ridiculous, absurd robes and enchanted to moan about their own fate at one of those Black family parties (and now he swore to himself that if he passed through wing-shadow and death that he would never return to such a one.)
The dragon was gone. Or at least out of the scene for the moment. Geraint looked up and saw it flying up and up and up, its tail poking in... and then out a fat high clouds. As it completed its long ascension it screamed of triumph. An oddly sad sort of triumph at that.
It would be back and they... they had no more protectors (thick though they might have been.)
Some part of him wondered why more aurors couldn't apparate in. Some part of him wondered if the dragon was hungry and if it ate people truly (he'd read something about dragons actually preferring mutton, all things being equal) and then blanched with a dreadful moment's mania. Determination, destination and--
BZZZZZZ.
RIGHT! None of that.
He blinked as his body vibrated and hit some kind of wall made of Honeyduke's Transfigured Taffy. His abnormally strong stomach saved him from vomit.
Of course! Of course! Not so near to the train... That was why the Aurors had been able to apparate just outside it... but there were wards. How then, did the Ministry gets its Aurors on the Express? He'd counted fewer than their manifested numbers when he'd boarded. And there were only so many carts they could have come from.
There were no floos on the Express. He remembered that in the pamphlet the Ministry had sent to the families back when its new mugglish innovation had become the primary means of Hogwarts ingress. Something about magical interference.
That only left...
Well it's obvious innit? PORTKEY.
And it it was still active...
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOARRR
The hairs on his neck stood up.
If it was active, it was their only hope for getting through this day alive.
As he died, all he could think was how disappointing his imagination when weighed against death itself.
Here lie your bones --how's that for butter?
But... he wasn't dead.
Not yet anyhow. The aurors had finally managed to apparate (it certainly took them long enough didn't it?) between the livid beast and the students. A very old wizard and a very small woman were the ringleaders as a squad of the Ministry's Finest raised their wands --whiplike-- in unison and brandished it at the dragon, who gave way little by little.
It would make one circuit and there would come gushing torrents of magics vicious and deadly --the pulsing blue-heat of blasting spells, the sickly green coolness of shriveling curses, purple gelid cutting hexes. Everything and anything short of The Unforgivables whether through proscription or inability (the Killing Curse would make short work of most things, no matter how weakly cast but it was quite common for even a mildly adulterated Avada to bounce off of a sufficient enraged drake.)
They came so fast and heavy that the acrid spell of blasting magic imposed itself over and above the sour tang of twisted metal and the cloying sweetness of burning flesh.
The beast's scales fairly glowed as it absorbed more and more abuse, turning colors as sapphire bled into jade bled into amethyst.
It wasn't dodging though... curious, its movements were no slower. Something like dread settled in him, from head-to-toe.
Who else could it have been but the Department of Magical Law Enforcement? Ten years ago. Dreary, thick wizards with faces so dull they looked as if they had been portrait-spelled (by a hack) interrogated Gideon Greengrass about a dodgy collection of shrunken goblin heads (Italian... or was it Ruthenian?)
Maître Greengrass had never been a particularly cunning man. And yet he had seen off the questions and demands as expertly as he drove those little muggle balls.
And that was not all. How many balls at the Ancient House of Black shadowed with an informal Ministry Inquiry for fear of muggle-baiting or sedition or "seditious muggle-baiting" (presumably one taught the poor wretches about the existence of magic in between bouts of Crucio.)
It wasn't that he didn't know, but it was that he realized that the Ministry of Magic, that crusty hardened loaf of stupidity had sent its finest... by its own lights.
Shite.
The lead-Aurors seemed determined to disabuse him of his prejudicial notions of Ministry imbecility, at least for the nonce. As the beast flew low and over their column, they barked out orders and with sweeping, grand motions, drew a curtain of white-blue abjuring magic over them. A few of the beast's outstretched limbs (and its tail, thick and steel-like) tested the shield, clubbed it for a moment.
And then drew back.
"Alright ye idjits. Protego maxima and hold fast!"
The beast wheeled around dove and pulled up at the last moment, the shield's colors deepening and the Aurors sighing in relief until... it began to spin in mid-air, from nose to caudal-fin, every bit of it shaking like tree branches in gale winds. There was confused silence and then shouts as fat droplets of eldritch energy, like so much galvanized run-off began to drip off, to molt off, to fall and fall and splatter and sizzle on the shields.
Magic met dragon-tempered magic.
The former never had a chance.
A yellow shard of curse-magicks burbled on top of the shield and then melted it way though. Then another droplet punched through here. Then another there. Like a too-old bedsheet caught in blistering rain, tears gave way to tears and soon--
--One caught a sixth-year full in the face and gave him boils... with horns. He screamed. They screamed. The aurors swore.
(Geraint was torn between a silent scream and the cruel, avaricious habit of reaching into his breast-pocket for his notebook.)
The aurors to their credit, regrouped, tried to recast when one of their numbers, another of the square-jawed sort got hit with so much magical backwash. Just a smidge. A drop of a drop of a drop. It hit him on the wrist-remembrall. Something an overconscious wife or a fussing mother might have gotten him.
Its ruby-eye turned a garish neon-red and the strap attached to it tightened like a vise.
They could all hear the crunch of bone over his screams. What they did not hear was his hastily uttered spell. What it was and its purpose, few could say (his wand was found later, blackened to bits far beyond the reach of any priori spell) but as it dropped out of his hand some deep magic passed through it and through it.
And found its target. An obscene splurt of magic like red-hot blood from an opened artery lashed out at the very old lead auror.
The old boy to his credit didn't lose his head --in either sense of the word. He twitched and muttered some kind of shielding spell.
Geraint had sense enough to close his eyes.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
He was knocked down. He knew that much. The earth felt strangely cool amidst all the dragon and mage-fire. A few grass-bristles still survived the explosion, the day, the everything. He could have rested here. It would have made a fine end. Poesy in the garden of death. A parterre of one's end.
Some strange Beowulfian impulse opened his eyes.
(From this point of on, readers, it may be our only insight into his psychology.)
He didn't see Rickard. Nor the red-headed girl. It was a shame; there always were girls with hair of flame in these stories.
The aurors though, were down. They looked like a discarded suite of cards, scattered to their four-winds in their ridiculous, absurd robes and enchanted to moan about their own fate at one of those Black family parties (and now he swore to himself that if he passed through wing-shadow and death that he would never return to such a one.)
The dragon was gone. Or at least out of the scene for the moment. Geraint looked up and saw it flying up and up and up, its tail poking in... and then out a fat high clouds. As it completed its long ascension it screamed of triumph. An oddly sad sort of triumph at that.
It would be back and they... they had no more protectors (thick though they might have been.)
Some part of him wondered why more aurors couldn't apparate in. Some part of him wondered if the dragon was hungry and if it ate people truly (he'd read something about dragons actually preferring mutton, all things being equal) and then blanched with a dreadful moment's mania. Determination, destination and--
BZZZZZZ.
RIGHT! None of that.
He blinked as his body vibrated and hit some kind of wall made of Honeyduke's Transfigured Taffy. His abnormally strong stomach saved him from vomit.
Of course! Of course! Not so near to the train... That was why the Aurors had been able to apparate just outside it... but there were wards. How then, did the Ministry gets its Aurors on the Express? He'd counted fewer than their manifested numbers when he'd boarded. And there were only so many carts they could have come from.
There were no floos on the Express. He remembered that in the pamphlet the Ministry had sent to the families back when its new mugglish innovation had become the primary means of Hogwarts ingress. Something about magical interference.
That only left...
Well it's obvious innit? PORTKEY.
And it it was still active...
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOARRR
The hairs on his neck stood up.
If it was active, it was their only hope for getting through this day alive.
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