A mile southwest of Arnold, we stopped in what had once been a residential cul-de-sac. The houses here were shells— roofs collapsed, walls crumbling, windows long since shattered— but they provided enough cover to serve as a staging point. The purple auroras overhead cast everything in shades of violet and black, making the ruins look like something from a fever dream.
I stood in the center of the street, practicing.
Sona Selectus Prohibere.
The spell felt different than it had back in the settlement, once I started learning it in my own way.
The void had changed how my magic worked and stripped away the rigid framework of wand movements and precise incantations and replaced it with something more instinctive, more alive. Still, the baseline concepts stayed: desire, intent and will. I moved as I cast, my body flowing through several positions— a half-turn, arm extending, fingers splaying as the magic spiraled outward.
The spell coalesced around my ears like a warm membrane, selective and strange. I could still hear the wind whistling through broken windows, the distant creak of settling rubble, but there was a quality to the silence underneath it all that suggested certain frequencies had been filtered out entirely.
I released the spell and tried again.
Sona Selectus Prohibere.
This time I added a slight dip in my stance, letting my weight shift as the magic flowed. Better. The spell settled more naturally, less like forcing my magic into a foreign shape and more like guiding it along a path it was already inclined to follow. Three more repetitions, each one feeling smoother than the last, until I was confident I could cast it under pressure.
Satisfied, I turned my attention to the physical backup plan.
The earmuffs we’d fashioned sat on a broken section of garden wall, bulky and crude but functional. I picked them up, examining the layers of wax-coated cloth, checking for gaps or weak points. Finding a section where the cloth had compressed too much, I reinforced it, adding another layer and sealing it with additional wax I’d softened between my palms.
The work was meditative in its simplicity. I tested the earmuffs by pressing them firmly over my ears. The world went muffled and distant, my own breathing suddenly the loudest sound I could perceive. Good enough. If Draco’s spell failed, this would be our last resort.
I set them back down and retrieved the wrapped deer meat from my pack, tearing off a piece and chewing mechanically. The meat was tough and gamey, smoked just enough to be preserved but not enough to make it pleasant. I didn’t care. Food was fuel, and we’d need energy for what was coming.
As I ate, my mind circled back to the decision that had brought us here.
What the hell are we doing?
The thought came with a mix of resignation and dark amusement. We were about to walk into a nest of corrupted Veela— creatures whose allure could shatter minds, whose presence had already turned an entire settlement into mindless attackers. We had experimental magic, improvised defenses, and absolutely no backup plan if things went wrong.
It was monumentally stupid.
But at the same time…
I looked toward Arnold, hidden beyond the ruins but waiting nonetheless. Somewhere in that town were monsters who would keep spreading their corruption. More survivors would wander too close, drawn by salvage or desperation or simple bad luck. More people would end up like the wizards we’d killed— broken, mindless, suffering until someone put them down or they tore themselves apart.
If we wanted to restore this world to anything resembling its former brightness, threats like this couldn’t be left to fester. Someone had to deal with them. Someone had to make the choice to act rather than walk away.
And apparently, that someone was us.
Noble idiocy. I thought with a mental sigh. The exact kind of thing that gets people killed.
But it was the right move. I knew it was. Even as I chided myself for the risk, I couldn’t argue against the necessity. The world wouldn’t fix itself. It needed people willing to take stupid chances for the slim possibility of making things better.
I was halfway through my second piece of meat when I heard footsteps approaching. Draco emerged from between two collapsed houses, moving with the careful wariness that had become second nature to all of us. He looked no worse for wear— no blood, no torn clothes, no signs of combat.
I tossed him a piece of deer meat without comment. He caught it with a nod of thanks and settled onto the garden wall beside the earmuffs, eating in the same methodical silence I had.
The quiet stretched between us, comfortable in its lack of expectation. We’d spent enough time together that we didn’t need to fill every moment with conversation. Sometimes silence was better.
When the last of the meat was gone, Draco finally spoke.
“Thank you.”
I glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. “For what?”
“For not trying to talk me out of this.” He gestured vaguely toward Arnold. “For letting me make this choice with you instead of trying to protect me from it.”
I considered that for a moment, then shrugged. “You’re not a child anymore. And you’re not fragile. You’ve survived six years of this hell. You’ve earned the right to make your own stupid decisions.”
His mouth quirked in something that might have been a smile. “How generous of you, though by that logic, you’re only really still thirteen, considering you’ve been ‘gone’ all this time.”
“Say that again and I’ll start insulting you.”
The almost-smile widened.
“How did the scouting go?” I asked, getting us back to practical matters.
Draco’s expression shifted to something more serious. “No real danger in the outskirts. At least, nothing that revealed itself. But the layout has changed since the last time anyone from Nottingham came this way. Several buildings are just… gone. Reduced to rubble. Looks like combat damage, possibly magical.”
I nodded, unsurprised. “Makes sense. Anything near the Veela would’ve been affected eventually.”
“That’s what I thought.” He paused, staring toward Arnold’s general direction. “The whole place is deathly quiet. Like nothing lives there anymore. No birds, no scavengers, not even corrupted creatures. Just… emptiness.”
“They probably all went insane.” I said quietly. “Driven mad by the allure, then either wandered away or killed each other in whatever battles caused that rubble.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Draco’s voice carried a grim satisfaction at having his theory confirmed. “There’s a large auditorium on the northern edge of the town center. Old recreational center, looks like. Still mostly intact. If I were a group of Veela looking for a base of operations, that’s where I’d set up.”
“Good sightlines?” I asked.
“Good acoustics.” He corrected me. “If their allure is sound-based— and everything we’ve heard suggests it is— they’d want a space that amplifies and carries their voices as far as possible. An auditorium would be perfect.”
The logic was sound, and deeply unsettling. The Veela weren’t just surviving in Arnold. They’d chosen their location strategically, turning the town into a trap with them at its center.
Silence fell again, heavier this time. We both knew what came next. The scouting was done. The preparations were complete. There was nothing left to do but go.
I stood, brushing dried blood and dirt from my clothes— a futile gesture given how filthy everything was, but the motion felt necessary anyway. Draco rose beside me, collecting the earmuffs and securing them where they could be reached quickly.
“Well.” I said, meeting his eyes. “Good luck. Try not to die.”
“The same to you.” He paused, then added with dry amusement. “This is such an idiotic, Gryffindorish thing we’re about to do.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “The whole house system was silly to begin with. Ambition, knowledge, courage, loyalty— they’re all good qualities. Why we were supposed to pick just one and treat it as our entire identity never made sense to me.”
Draco nodded, something thoughtful crossing his face. “I’ve had similar thoughts. Especially after… everything. The sorting seemed so important at the time. Now it just feels like another way we hamstrung ourselves for no good reason.”
“Exactly.” I started walking toward Arnold, and he fell into step beside me. “But you’re right. This is still monumentally foolhardy and Gryffindor-like.”
“Extraordinarily so.” He agreed.
We shared a chuckle— brief and dark, but genuine— as we left the cul-de-sac behind and moved deeper into the ruins.
We moved through Arnold’s streets with methodical caution, keeping to the edges of buildings where shadows pooled deepest, our footsteps careful on debris-strewn pavement. The town had the same abandoned quality as every other ruin we’d passed through, but there was something more oppressive about the silence here. It didn’t feel like emptiness— it felt like absence, like something had carved out everything living and left only the hollow shell behind.
Draco led.
I followed three paces back and slightly to his left, positioning myself to cover his blind spots while maintaining enough distance that a single attack couldn’t take us both.
We stopped when we heard the first noise.
A metallic squeal cut through the silence, rhythmic and grating. My power rose instinctively beneath my skin, responding to the spike of adrenaline, ready to burst forth. Draco’s wand was already in his hand, tracking toward the source of the sound.
We waited, muscles tense, watching the street ahead.
The squeal came again. Then again. Regular. Mechanical.
A shop sign, I realized. Hanging by a single chain, swinging in the wind, its metal bracket scraping against the building’s facade with each movement.
I released a slow breath. Draco lowered his wand fractionally but didn’t put it away. We exchanged a glance— acknowledging the false alarm without comment— and continued forward.
It happened twice more in the next fifteen minutes. A door banging somewhere inside a collapsed building. A sheet of corrugated metal shifting in the breeze. Each time we stopped, prepared for violence, only to identify another mundane source of sound in a dead town.
Each time, the tension ratcheted a little higher.
The destruction around us was familiar in the worst way. Collapsed storefronts with their goods long since looted or rotted. Apartments with their windows blown out, interior walls visible through the gaps, personal belongings still scattered in frozen tableaus of interrupted lives. A children’s playground with its equipment twisted and broken, the swing set’s chains tangled around the support beam like a noose.
I’d grown too used to sights like this. That realization settled uncomfortably in my chest, but I didn’t linger on it. Couldn’t afford to. Dwelling on what the world had lost wouldn’t help us survive what it had become.
We passed an overturned car that had been stripped to its frame, its tires and doors and seats all scavenged by survivors who’d needed them more than aesthetic integrity. A pharmacy with its front wall collapsed inward, prescription bottles crunching under our boots as we gave the unstable structure a wide berth. A post office where the mail slots still gaped open, waiting for letters that would never come.
The auditorium grew closer with each block.
And as it did, I began to see things Draco couldn’t.
At first, they were barely perceptible— faint distortions in the air, so subtle I thought I might be imagining them. Wisps of something that wasn’t quite visible but wasn’t quite invisible either, like heat haze given the barest suggestion of color. Purple-tinged, carrying that same wrongness as the auroras overhead but concentrated, deliberate.
Magic. Lingering traces of it, hanging in the air like perfume.
Another block closer, and the wisps grew more substantial. I could track them now, watch them drift and swirl in patterns that suggested intentional creation rather than random dispersal. They clung to doorways and windows, pooled in alcoves, stretched across intersections like tripwires made of energy rather than cord.
Draco noticed my attention shifting, my eyes tracking things he couldn’t see. He made a hand gesture— a quick sequence we’d established during our journey north. What do you see?
I kept my voice low, barely above a whisper. “Wisps. Magic in the air. Getting stronger the closer we get. You were right about the location.”
He nodded once, accepting this without question. His hand tightened fractionally on his wand.
We continued forward.
The wisps thickened until they were nearly tangible, ribbons of violet-tinged energy weaving through the air in complex patterns. I could almost touch them now. Almost, but not quite— they remained just at the edge of physical presence, existing in that liminal space between real and perceived.
Curiosity and caution warred in my chest. I needed to know what we were dealing with, needed to understand the nature of the magic before we walked into its source.
I reached out carefully and let my fingers brush through one of the larger wisps.
Sensation flooded through me.
Music first— not sound exactly, but the memory of sound, the echo of something melodious and achingly beautiful. It resonated in my bones, in the base of my skull, promising something I couldn’t quite name but desperately wanted. Warmth followed, spreading from my fingertips up my arm, carrying with it a strange languor that whispered I should stop moving, should stay here, should listen.
And underneath it all, threading through the music and the warmth, was something else. Something that made my skin prickle with uncomfortable awareness. Sexual energy, raw and primal and completely divorced from any specific target. It simply was— an ambient hunger that saturated the magic itself, that promised pleasure and demanded surrender in the same breath.
I jerked my hand back, severing the connection.
The sensations cut off immediately, leaving only the ghost of their presence and a faint headache building behind my eyes.
“Veela energy.” I said quietly, wiping my hand on my clothes as if I could wipe away the lingering feel of it. “Definitely Veela. The allure is woven into the magic itself. It’s… pervasive.”
Draco’s expression darkened. “How strong?”
“Strong enough.” I flexed my fingers, checking that they still obeyed me completely. “And that was just ambient traces. If this is what they’re putting off passively, the active allure is going to be intense.”
“Then we don’t take chances.” He gestured toward the earmuffs secured at our belts. “First sign that the spell isn’t holding, we use the physical backup. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
We did a final check of our gear. I verified the earmuffs were accessible, tested the flow of my chains one more time, and confirmed my magic was responding smoothly. Draco examined his wand, muttered something under his breath that made the wood gleam briefly with pale light, and adjusted the various pouches at his belt that held components for complex spellwork.
Ready as we’d ever be.
The auditorium loomed ahead now, visible at the end of the street. It was a squat, brutalist structure that looked like it had been built in the seventies— all concrete and sharp angles, with a flat roof and narrow windows set high in the walls. Most of the glass was gone, leaving dark rectangles that stared out like empty eyes. The main entrance was a set of wide double doors, hanging partially open on damaged hinges.
The wisps of magic grew so thick around the building they were almost opaque, creating a violet haze that made my enhanced vision struggle to penetrate. Whatever was inside was the source, the beating heart of all this ambient allure.
We approached the entrance in silence, communicating now entirely through gestures and eye contact. Draco positioned himself on the left door, I took the right. He counted down with his fingers.
Three.
Two.
One.
We pushed through together, wands and chains at the ready, stepping into the auditorium’s interior.
Darkness greeted us first, thick and absolute after the relative brightness outside. My vision adjusted quickly, the enhancement cutting through the gloom to reveal the space beyond.
Empty.
The auditorium was gutted. Rows of seats had been torn out, leaving only floor bolts and stained carpet. The stage at the far end was bare except for debris— chunks of ceiling tile, broken lighting equipment, what might have been pieces of a piano scattered across the boards. The walls showed scorch marks and impact damage, evidence of violence that had happened here long before we arrived.
But no Veela.
We moved deeper into the space, splitting up slightly to cover more ground while maintaining visual contact. I checked the perimeter, looking for alcoves or storage rooms where something might be hiding. Draco investigated the stage, his wand-light casting long shadows across the damaged floor.
Nothing.
We regrouped in the center of the auditorium, both of us tense with confusion and mounting wariness. The magic was strongest here— the wisps so thick they created a visible fog— but there was no source for them to emanate from.
I caught Draco’s eye and gestured a question. Not here?
He frowned, looking around the empty space with clear frustration. Then his expression shifted to something more alert. He pointed toward the back of the auditorium, toward what I’d taken for a simple wall but now realized had a seam in it. A door, or maybe an entrance to backstage areas.
Before we could move to investigate, we heard it.
Laughter.
Melodious, crystalline, beautiful in a way that made my teeth ache. It came from the side of the auditorium, from an entrance I hadn’t noticed before— a doorway partially hidden by fallen ceiling panels.
We froze, weapons ready, as three figures emerged into the dim light.
Three women, each one breathtaking in that uncanny way that suggested beauty had been taken past human limits into something alien. Pale skin that seemed to glow faintly in the darkness. Hair that moved independent of any breeze, floating around their faces in shades of silver. Eyes that caught what little light there was and reflected it back in colors that shifted between blue and violet and green.
Veela.
Behind them, shuffling with the jerky movements of broken puppets, came the others.
Men. Maybe fifteen or twenty of them, ranging in age from teenagers to elderly. All of them had the same glassy-eyed expression, the same vacant stare of people who’d had their minds hollowed out and filled with something else. They moved when the Veela moved, stopped when the Veela stopped, existing as extensions of the creatures’ will rather than as individuals.
I felt Draco tense beside me. My chains coiled tighter beneath my skin, ready to strike.
The lead Veela— the one with hair that floated around her like a living thing— smiled. Her teeth were white and perfect and somehow predatory.
“Oh.” She said, her voice carrying that same musical quality as her laughter. “New pets. How delightful.”
The other two Veela laughed again, the sound echoing through the empty auditorium, making the wisps of magic shiver and dance.
And as they laughed, as they looked at us with eyes that promised pleasure and pain in equal measure, I understood exactly what we were facing.
The lead Veela stepped forward, her movement so fluid it barely seemed like walking. More like gliding, like the air itself parted to make way for her. The enslaved men shuffled in her wake, their expressions never changing, their eyes never focusing on anything real.
“It’s been months since we’ve had fresh ones.” She said, her voice dripping with false warmth. “These old pets are getting so worn out. So boring.”
The Veela on her right nodded, pouting theatrically. “They break so easily now. No fight left in them at all.”
“Well.” Said the third. “We’ll just have to train these new ones properly. Make sure they last longer.”
My skin crawled at the casual way they spoke, the complete lack of recognition that they were discussing human beings. To them, these men weren’t people. They were toys. Possessions. Things to be used and discarded.
The leader tilted her head, studying us with unsettling intensity.
“Such pretty magic you both have. Especially you.” Her gaze fixed on me, and I felt the weight of it like physical pressure against my skin. “There’s something dark in you. Something delicious. We’re going to enjoy you very much.”
“I’m flattered.” I said, my voice flat and cold. “But I’m going to have to decline.”
Her smile widened. “Oh, they always say that at first. Don’t they, my darlings?”
The enslaved men didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. They just stood there, empty vessels waiting for commands.
“Let me show you how well our pets obey.” The silver-haired Veela continued, her tone shifting to something more theatrical. She turned to the eldest of the enslaved men— a wizened figure who must have been in his seventies, his clothes hanging off his skeletal frame, his face gaunt with malnutrition and exhaustion.
“This one’s been with us the longest.” She said conversationally. “Two years now. Such dedication. Such loyalty.”
She reached out and stroked his cheek with false tenderness. “But all things must end eventually.”
She snapped her fingers.
One of the younger enslaved men— a wizard, I realized, seeing the wand in his hand— stepped forward mechanically. His arm rose, wand pointing at the old man’s chest.
“Diffindo.”
The cutting curse hit the old man in the sternum, slicing deep. He collapsed, blood spreading across his chest, his legs folding under him as he crumpled to the floor.
And as he fell, as he lay there dying, his eyes cleared for just a moment. Just long enough to look up at the Veela who’d condemned him, confusion and betrayal and something that might have been love warring in his expression.
“Why?” He whispered, his voice barely audible. Blood bubbled at his lips. “I… I loved you. All of you. I would have done anything…”
The second Veela laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Of course you would have, pet. That’s what makes you so useful.”
She stepped forward, moving to stand directly over the dying man. Her foot— bare, pale, perfect— rose and then came down with deliberate force.
His skull crunched.
Blood and brain matter spread across the floor in a grotesque starburst pattern. The old man’s body twitched once, twice, then went still.
The other enslaved men didn’t react, nor did they flinch.
They simply stood there, waiting for the next command, their minds so thoroughly broken that horror and grief had no purchase.
The Veela who’d killed him lifted her foot, examining the gore coating her heel with mild distaste.
“Messy.” She observed. “But effective.”
I felt something cold and hard settle into my chest. Not rage— rage was too hot, too impulsive. This was colder. More final.
I looked at Draco.
He looked back at me.
We didn’t need words. Didn’t need discussion or planning or moral deliberation. What we’d just witnessed had answered any lingering questions about whether these creatures deserved mercy, whether there might be another way, whether we should try to contain rather than kill.
They died.
That was the end of the story.
The silver-haired Veela must have seen something shift in our expressions, must have recognized the moment when prey stopped running and became predator. Her smile faltered slightly.
“Kill them.” She commanded, her musical voice taking on an edge of steel. “All of you. Kill these two. Now.”
The enslaved men surged forward.
Not running— they moved with the jerky, uncoordinated motions of marionettes, their bodies obeying commands that their minds no longer fully processed. But there were nearly twenty of them, and in the confined space of the auditorium, numbers mattered.
My chains erupted.
They burst from my outstretched hands in a spray of silver-black metal, whipping through the air. The first enslaved man to reach me— a younger guy, maybe mid-twenties, his face slack and empty— took a chain across the chest. The impact lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing into two others behind him. They went down in a tangle of limbs.
Beside me, Draco was already casting.
“Diffindo!” Multiple jets of light shot from his wand in rapid succession, each one finding its target. Two men dropped, cleaved viciously. A third took the spell in the shoulder and lost it, but kept coming, his coordination gone but his compulsion intact.
More chains lashed out. I wasn’t trying to restrain anymore. Wasn’t trying to be gentle or preserve life. These men were already dead— their minds destroyed, their wills erased, their bodies just vehicles for the Veela’s cruelty. Killing them was mercy.
I kept telling myself that as my chains crushed windpipes and shattered skulls.
One of the enslaved wizards— the one who’d killed the old man— raised his wand toward Draco. “Expulso—“
A chain wrapped around his wrist and yanked violently to the side. The spell discharged into the wall, blowing a chunk of concrete into dust. Before he could try again, I jerked the chain back toward me, pulling him off balance, then sent another chain low to sweep his legs. He went down hard, his head cracking against the floor with an audible thud.
He didn’t get up.
“Flipendo!” Draco’s Knockback Jinx caught three men advancing in a cluster, the impact throwing them backward like rag dolls. One didn’t move after landing. The other two tried to rise, their movements increasingly erratic as damaged bodies struggled to obey magical compulsion.
“Diffindo! Diffindo!” Cutting curses from another enslaved wizard, these ones better aimed. I deflected the first with a wall of chains, the curse carving through metal links with a screech of severed iron.
The second got through, scoring a line of fire across my shoulder. Pain bloomed, but I barely registered it. Adrenaline and focus pushed it aside.
The enslaved wizards were good. Better than I’d expected from minds that had been compromised by Veela allure. But the Veela’s control had apparently preserved their combat instincts while erasing everything else.
We fought through the mundane men around them, chains and spells clearing paths, until the space had thinned enough to focus. I sent three chains simultaneously toward the nearer wizard, forcing him into a defensive crouch, disrupting his rhythm.
And that was when they did something I hadn’t anticipated.
The two enslaved wizards stopped attacking.
They turned to face each other instead, wands raised, and began casting something in perfect synchronization. Their voices blended together in a harsh, rhythmic incantation I didn’t recognize. The magic they were building wasn’t combat magic—it didn’t have that aggressive, kinetic quality. It was something more precise. More surgical.
Frequency magic.
I realized what they were doing a half-second before it was too late.
“Draco—”
The counter-spell hit our sound enchantments like a hammer through glass.
I felt it shatter. Not erode, not weaken—shatter, the protective membrane around my hearing simply ceasing to exist between one heartbeat and the next. The absence was immediate and absolute, like stepping from a soundproofed room into open air.
And the Veela allure and song came flooding in.
It hit me like warm water— suffusing, enveloping, carrying with it that same musical energy and sexual warmth I’d felt when I’d touched the wisps outside. But amplified a hundredfold. This wasn’t ambient traces. This was the full force of three corrupted Veela, their allure turned up to its absolute limit, designed to overwhelm and possess.
It washed over me.
And then it slid off.
Like water off stone. Like wind around something too solid to be moved.
I stood there, blinking, experiencing the allure the way you might experience music played in a language you don’t speak— I could perceive its beauty, understand intellectually that it was designed to be irresistible, but feel absolutely none of its pull. My mind remained my own. My thoughts stayed clear.
I didn’t understand it. Didn’t have time to understand it. But I filed it away with the detached calm of someone who’d survived too many impossible things to waste time on confusion.
Beside me, Draco was not faring the same.
He’d made a sound— quiet, involuntary, the kind of sound you make when something you weren’t expecting hits you at full force. His wand arm had dropped, the spell he’d been casting dissolving before it could form. His eyes had gone slightly unfocused, his expression slack in a way that looked deeply wrong on a face I’d come to associate with sharp, controlled awareness.
He was fighting it. I could see the effort— his jaw tightening, his free hand clenching into a fist at his side, his head turning slightly as if trying to pull his gaze away from the Veela. Six years of Occlumency training, six years of building mental walls against a world that wanted to break him, all of it pressed into service against the allure.
But the walls were cracking. I could see them cracking in real time.
His wand hand rose slightly, not aimed at the Veela but not quite under his control either, moving with the tentative quality of someone whose body was beginning to answer to someone else’s will.
I crossed the distance between us in two strides, covering us with a barrier.
“Draco.” My hand found his shoulder, gripped hard. “Earmuffs. Now.”
The word seemed to reach him through the fog. His eyes found mine—unfocused, struggling—and I watched him use that point of contact to anchor himself. With movements that were visibly effortful, like someone fighting their own nervous system, he reached for the earmuffs at his belt with his free hand.
He got them on.
The change was immediate. The slack expression sharpened. His eyes cleared, the unfocused quality replaced by something harder and more present. He staggered backward a half-step, caught himself, and stood there breathing through his nose with controlled deliberateness.
The Veela’s laughter cut through the auditorium, cruel and delighted. “Oh, look at that. The pretty blond one is weak. How disappointing.”
“What happened?” Draco demanded, his voice shaking.
“The wizards broke our enchantment,” I said, already raising my wand. “Counter-spell, frequency-based. Hold still.”
I cast Sona Selectus Prohibere directly onto him, adding it as a second layer beneath the physical barrier of the earmuffs. Better redundancy. If the earmuffs shifted or came loose, the spell would catch him. If the spell was broken again, the earmuffs would hold.
I felt the spell settle into place, felt it anchor itself to his magical signature.
He reached up and pulled the earmuffs off, testing. His expression remained clear—the doubled defense holding. He gave me a single sharp nod.
“Good?” I asked.
“Good.” He raised his wand again, his grip steady, his eyes sharp and cold. “Now let’s return the favor.”
We turned back to the battle together.
The barrier fell.
“Confringo!” Draco roared. The Blasting Curse broke through one of the wizards’ shields and struck him center mass. He simply came apart, the explosion too violent for a human body to withstand.
No more prisoners.
We pressed forward through the wave of enslaved men, cutting them down with systematic ruthlessness. My chains wove patterns of death in the air— striking, wrapping, crushing. Draco’s wand was a blur of motion, spell after spell flying from its tip with barely a breath between them.
The second enslaved wizard, the other one who’d been actively helping the Veela, proved more challenging. He was better trained, his spells more powerful, his defense more practiced. An Auror, we realized. His shield charm deflected my first chain strike. A Blasting Curse made my second lash back at me.
“Protego!” His shield flared to life just as Draco sent a cutting curse his way. The spell splashed against the barrier, dissipating in sparks of silver light.
But shields required concentration. Required focus to maintain.
And he was still enslaved, still operating under the Veela’s compulsion rather than his own tactical judgment.
I sent a dozen chains at him simultaneously, forcing him to strengthen his shield to accommodate the assault. Metal clanged against the magical barrier, each impact making the shield shimmer and flex. He poured more power into it, his face straining with effort.
Which meant he wasn’t watching Draco circle to his flank.
“Confringo.“
The blasting curse hit him from the side, where his shield was weakest. The explosion threw him across the auditorium. He hit the wall with bone-breaking force and slid down, leaving a smear of blood on the concrete.
He didn’t get up.
The remaining mundane enslaved men were no longer a coordinated threat. We’d cut their numbers down, disrupted whatever semblance of tactics the Veela’s control had provided. Now they were just individuals, stumbling forward with single-minded compulsion, easy targets for chains or spells.
I made it quick. Each kill was as clean as I could manage given the circumstances. A chain through the heart. Another crushing the base of the skull. Precision over brutality, even as my stomach churned at what I was doing.
Draco finished the last two with cutting curses, his face set in grim lines, his movements mechanical.
And then it was done.
Bodies littered the auditorium floor. Blood pooled and ran in rivulets between broken seats. The air stank of death and voided bowels and the acrid smell of discharged magic.
We stood in the center of the carnage, breathing hard, covered in blood that wasn’t entirely ours.
And the Veela watched from the far side of the auditorium, their beautiful faces twisted with rage.
“You killed them!” The golden-haired one shrieked, her musical voice taking on a strident, awful quality. “Our pets! You killed our pets!”
“They were people.” I said, my voice hoarse. “And you destroyed them. We just finished what you started.”
The silver-haired Veela’s expression went cold. Calculated. The rage bled away, replaced by something far more dangerous.
“You think you’ve won?” She asked softly. “You think killing our broken toys makes you victorious?”
Her form began to shift.
The beauty melted away like wax, revealing what lay beneath. Her face elongated, bones cracking and reforming. Her mouth stretched, lips pulling back to reveal rows of sharp teeth. Her nose hooked and hardened into a cruel beak. Her hands twisted into talons, fingers lengthening into scythe-like claws.
The other two Veela transformed alongside her, their true Veela forms emerging in a symphony of breaking bones and tearing flesh.
And as they changed, fire began to gather in their hands.
Not normal fire. Not even magical fire like Incendio or other combat spells.
This was something older. Darker. More primal.
The flames burned purple-black at the edges, shot through with veins of sickly green. They writhed with malevolent intelligence, casting shadows that moved wrong, that seemed to reach out with grasping fingers.
“We’ll show you what happens.” The silver-haired Veela hissed, her voice now a rasping screech. “To those who destroy our things.”
She thrust her taloned hand forward, and a gout of cursed fire erupted toward us.
We scattered, diving in opposite directions as the flames hit where we’d been standing. The concrete floor blackened and cracked from the heat, the fire eating into the stone itself rather than simply burning across it.
The cursed fire spread across the floor in defiance of physics, flowing upward against gravity, pooling in corners where it had no fuel to sustain it. This wasn’t fire behaving like fire. This was fire given will and hunger, and it wanted to consume.
I rolled to my feet, chains already moving to intercept another gout of flame. The metal glowed red where it contacted the fire, links beginning to warp from heat that should have been impossible to generate. I yanked the chains back before they could melt completely, reforming them into fresh configurations.
Draco’s shield charm shimmered into existence just in time to deflect a third blast, this one from the third Veela who’d circled to flank us. The purple-black flames splashed against the magical barrier and slid off like liquid, pooling on the floor where they continued to burn with patient malevolence.
“Separate them!” Draco shouted, already moving, his wand tracing complex patterns in the air.
“Ventus!” A powerful wind erupted from his wand, not strong enough to extinguish the cursed fire but enough to push it back, creating a temporary corridor through the flames.
I didn’t need to be told twice. My chains lashed out toward the closest Veela, forcing her to leap back, her wings— tattered, feathery things that had emerged during the transformation— beating once to carry her out of reach. The movement separated her from her sisters by several yards.
Good. Divide and conquer.
The lead Veela screeched something in a language that hurt to hear, all harsh consonants and vowels that bent wrong in the air. Fire erupted from both her hands simultaneously, twin streams that converged and twisted around each other, forming a spiral of flame that shot toward me.
I threw myself sideways, felt the heat wash over my back as the fire passed close enough to singe. The spiral hit the wall behind me and exploded outward, chunks of concrete cracking and falling as the cursed flames ate into the structure itself.
My chains whipped back around, catching her across the wing. She shrieked— this time in pain rather than rage— and stumbled in her flight, dropping several feet before recovering. Black blood dripped from the torn membrane, smoking where it hit the floor.
“Diffindo!” Draco’s multiple cutting curses flew in rapid succession, forcing his opponent to dodge rather than attack. She was fast— faster than anything human— but Draco had six years of combat experience. He led his targets perfectly, forcing her into an increasingly smaller area of safe ground.
Until she simply flew upward, her wings carrying her to the auditorium’s ceiling where she perched on an exposed beam, talons gripping the metal with screeching protests.
From above, she had the advantage. From above, she could rain fire down on us without worrying about positioning or cover.
She proved this immediately by vomiting a torrent of cursed fire straight down.
“Protego Maxima!” Draco’s shield expanded into a dome above us, the purple-black flames washing over it in a waterfall of heat and malice. The shield held, but I could see it straining, the magic flickering at the edges as the cursed fire ate away at its integrity.
We couldn’t stay defensive. Couldn’t just block and dodge indefinitely. The Veela were too strong, too coordinated, and their fire too persistent. Eventually they’d wear us down, and then we’d burn.
I sent chains shooting upward toward the copper-haired Veela. She launched herself from her perch, wings carrying her in a tight spiral that avoided the metal. But the movement brought her lower, back into range of Draco’s spells.
“Confringo!“
The blasting curse caught her in the side. She tumbled from the air with a shriek of agony, black blood spraying from the wound. She hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up already casting fire from her hands despite the crater in her torso.
These things didn’t stop. Didn’t slow down from injuries that should have been crippling. They just kept coming, kept attacking, driven by rage and cruelty that transcended pain.
The second Veela dove at me from the side, talons extended, fire wreathing her entire body like a cloak. I barely got my chains up in time, forming a barrier of metal between us. Her talons raked across the links, screeching like nails on slate, searching for gaps. Fire dripped from her wings, each drop burning through the floor like acid.
I pushed power into the chains, forcing them to expand, to wrap around her instead of just blocking. Metal links coiled around her legs, her torso, beginning to constrict.
She screeched and erupted with fire from every inch of her body.
The chains superheated instantly. I felt it through the magical connection— agony transmitted through the link between caster and spell. I released them before they could melt completely, the metal clattering to the floor in glowing-hot pieces.
The Veela broke free and lunged again.
This time I was ready with a different approach. No chains— they couldn’t handle the heat. Instead I simply dove under her attack, rolling across blood-slick floor, coming up behind her as her momentum carried her past.
My hand found a piece of broken chair leg. Not much of a weapon, but I’d learned in the void that anything could be lethal with enough force behind it.
I drove it into the base of her skull with everything I had.
She staggered, wings spasming, fire guttering out as her nervous system misfired. Black blood poured from the wound. She reached back with one taloned hand, trying to grab the makeshift stake, her movements uncoordinated.
I didn’t give her the chance to recover. My chains— fresh ones, not the molten ruins of the previous set— erupted and wrapped around her throat. One violent jerk, and I heard vertebrae crack.
She collapsed, twitching, fire dying to embers.
One down.
“Adam!” Draco’s shout carried urgent warning.
I spun to see the lead Veela gathering fire between her hands, the flames building to a size and intensity that far exceeded her previous attacks.
This was different from her usual spells— worse, somehow.
The air around her hands shimmered and distorted. Reality itself seemed to bend away from the gathering flames, as if the world recognized what was being created and wanted no part of it.
And then I felt it. A sensation that drove ice through my veins.
The Drake essence inside me— that predatory, patient hunger I’d been carefully controlling— suddenly surged with something I’d only felt from it when we’d seen the corrupted giant.
Fear.
Raw, instinctive, and almost overwhelming.
“Draco.” I said, my voice tight. “We need to move. Now.”
But even as I said it, I knew we wouldn’t be fast enough.
She screamed a word of power and released the spell.
“Ignis Imperia!”
The cursed fire— Fiendfyre— exploded outward from her hands, but this wasn’t the wild, uncontrolled conflagration I’d expected.
Only the likes of Dumbledore, Voldemort and Grindelwald can control this!
And yet, there she was, proving me wrong, for her Fiendfyre was shaped. Directed. The flames coalesced and twisted, taking form with horrifying intent, sculpting themselves into something that moved with predatory grace.
An eagle.
Massive beyond reason, its wingspan easily forty feet across, its body formed from purple-black flames shot through with veins of sickly green. It screamed with the voice of burning souls, the sound so terrible it made my ears ring and my teeth ache.
And it was completely, impossibly, under their control.
The three Veela, the two still standing and the wounded one dragging herself upright despite the broken neck— “Do they ever go down!?”— moved in synchronization, their hands raised, their screeching voices chanting in that awful language. The eagle responded to their commands like a trained hawk, its fiery gaze fixing on us with intelligence that shouldn’t exist in simple conjured flame.
“That’s not possible.” Draco breathed, and I heard the edge of panic in his voice. “Fiendfyre can’t be—”
“I know.” I cut him off. “But clearly they missed that part of the spell.”
The eagle dove.
We scattered again, the massive construct slamming into the floor where we’d been standing with enough force to crack concrete. Fire splashed outward like water, each droplet igniting whatever it touched, spreading the cursed flames further across the auditorium.
Draco was already casting, his wand moving through defensive sequences with desperate intensity.
“Aqua Eructo!” A jet of water erupted toward the eagle, but the Fiendfyre simply consumed it, the water evaporating before it could make contact, steam hissing and adding to the smoke beginning to fill the space.
My chains struck at the eagle’s talons as it lifted back into the air, metal links wrapping around the limb made of fire. For a moment I thought it might work— the chains didn’t immediately melt, the void-magic in them offering some resistance to the cursed flames.
Then the eagle simply absorbed the chains.
I felt them dissolve, the metal transmuting into more fire, adding to the construct’s mass. The magical connection severed with a sensation like having a tooth pulled, sudden and wrong.
“Physical attacks won’t work!” I shouted to Draco. “It’s just feeding it!”
“Then what— ” He cut himself off as the eagle dove again, this time from a different angle. He threw up another shield, and the construct hit it like a battering ram. The magical barrier held for perhaps two seconds before shattering like glass.
Draco went flying, his body ragdolling across the floor before slamming into the remains of a row of seats. He didn’t move.
Terror spiked through me. “Draco!”
The eagle was already turning for another pass, the Veela guiding it with glee. They wanted to burn us slowly, wanted to watch us struggle and fail, wanted to make our deaths as entertaining as possible.
I couldn’t let it reach him.
I threw everything I had into manifesting chains— dozens of them, a forest of metal erupting from my outstretched hands. They formed a barrier between Draco’s prone form and the diving eagle, links interlocking into a wall of iron.
The Fiendfyre hit the wall and exploded through it like tissue paper.
But it bought seconds. Precious seconds for Draco to roll to his feet, blood streaming from a cut on his forehead, his robes scorched but his wand still in hand.
“Glacius Maxima!” He roared, and a wave of freezing air erupted from his wand, ice spreading across the floor in crystalline patterns.
The Fiendfyre eagle passed through it without slowing. The ice simply sublimated, water to steam without ever reaching liquid state.
But the temperature drop affected the Veela themselves. They stumbled, their chanting faltering for just an instant as the cold washed over them. The eagle’s movement stuttered, its trajectory wobbling slightly before they reasserted control.
A weakness. Not much of one, but something.
“Keep them off balance!” I shouted. “Disrupt their concentration!”
Draco understood immediately.
“Ventus! Reducto! Bombarda!” Not targeted at the eagle itself, but at the space around the Veela. Wind spells to buffet them. Blasting curses to kick up debris and smoke. Anything to make maintaining their synchronized control harder.
I added my own contribution, chains lashing out not to strike them directly but to hit near them, to force them to dodge or shield, to divide their attention between maintaining the Fiendfyre and defending themselves.
It worked, but only partially. The eagle’s movements became more erratic, its dives less precise. But it was still fundamentally under their control, still responding to their will even if that will was being tested.
And we were running out of room. The Fiendfyre was spreading across every surface it touched, consuming the auditorium from the inside out. The smoke was getting thicker, the heat becoming oppressive. Soon we’d be trapped in a box of cursed fire with nowhere left to run.
Then they made their next move.
The lead Veela shrieked another command, and the eagle… split.
The massive construct fragmented, its body breaking apart into smaller forms. Hawks— half a dozen of them, each one perhaps six feet across— separated from the main mass and began to circle overhead like vultures. Their screams filled the air, a chorus of burning agony.
And on the ground, rising from pools of purple-black flame, came something worse.
Shapes that walked on two legs, that moved with reptilian grace, that had long snouts filled with serrated teeth and claws that sparked against concrete. Velociraptors. Made entirely of Fiendfyre, but moving with the hunting intelligence of the real creatures.
Four of them, spreading out to surround us, while overhead the hawks circled and dove in coordinated attacks.
We were facing a small army of cursed fire given form and purpose.
And the Veela laughed, their screeching voices filled with cruel triumph.
This was it. The moment where our plan stopped working. Where simple combat and clever tactics wouldn’t be enough.
We needed something else.
Something desperate.
I looked at Draco across the flame-lit auditorium. His face was set in grim determination, blood still dripping from his forehead, his robes torn and burnt. But his eyes were clear. Focused.
He met my gaze and gave a tiny nod.
He had an idea.
I just had to keep him alive long enough to execute it.
The closest velociraptor lunged at me, its movements eerily fluid for something that shouldn’t exist. I threw myself sideways, feeling the heat wash over me as it passed close enough that my skin blistered. Its claws raked across the concrete where I’d been standing, leaving molten furrows in the stone.
Two more were already closing from different angles, coordinating like real pack hunters. Hawks dove from above, their flaming talons extended, forcing me to dodge in multiple directions simultaneously.
My chains erupted in a defensive perimeter, not trying to strike anymore— that just fed the flames— but creating barriers, walls of metal that forced the constructs to go around or through, buying me fractional seconds to reposition.
A hawk got through, its talons raking across my shoulder. Pain exploded white-hot and immediate. The smell of my own burning flesh hit my nostrils, making my stomach lurch. I gritted my teeth and kept moving, couldn’t afford to stop, couldn’t afford to acknowledge the injury.
Across the auditorium, Draco was fighting his own desperate battle. Three raptors had him cornered against the wall, their jaws snapping, fire dripping from their teeth. He was cycling through spells, each one designed not to destroy but to deflect, to redirect, to buy himself space.
“Protego! Ventus! Repello!” Shield, wind, repulsion. A rhythm he was surviving with. His movements were economical, precise, wasting no energy on flourishes or unnecessary casting.
But I could see the strain in his face. See the way his shield flickered more with each impact. See how the smoke was affecting his breathing, making each spell slightly weaker than the last.
He was running out of time.
We both were.
Another raptor lunged. I met it with a wall of chains, the metal glowing cherry-red as the Fiendfyre passed through and around them. The construct’s momentum carried it past me, and I used those precious seconds to assess the battlefield.
We were losing. Slowly but inevitably. The Veela no longer had the numbers, yet they had a weapon that couldn’t be destroyed by conventional means. Every moment we spent fighting the constructs was a moment we weren’t attacking the Veela themselves, and every moment they maintained control was a moment the cursed fire spread further.
The walls were burning now. The ceiling. The floor beneath our feet was starting to crack from the heat, chunks of concrete breaking free to reveal the structural supports underneath. Soon the entire building would be an inferno, and then it would collapse.
And if we killed even one of the Veela before we dealt with all the constructs, their control would break. The Fiendfyre would go wild, uncontained, spreading across Arnold and beyond. Nottingham. The settlements. Bob and his people who’d trusted us to solve this problem.
All of them would burn.
The realization crystallized into a terrible, necessary decision.
I couldn’t fight the constructs and the Veela simultaneously. Couldn’t divide my attention and survive. One of us needed to focus entirely on the Fiendfyre while the other found a way to end all three Veela at once.
I caught Draco’s eye across the smoke and flame. Held his gaze for a single heartbeat.
He understood. I saw it in the way his expression shifted, the way his jaw set with grim determination. He gave me the tiniest nod, then deliberately turned his back on the raptors attacking him, focusing instead on the Veela themselves.
Trusting me to keep the constructs off him while he worked.
Trusting me completely.
No pressure.
A raptor lunged at Draco’s exposed back. I sent chains low, sweeping its legs out from under it. The construct tumbled, lost cohesion for a moment, then reformed. But that moment was enough. Draco gained another few seconds.
Three more constructs converged on my position— two raptors and a hawk. I abandoned defense entirely, throwing myself into pure offense, chains whipping out in patterns I’d learned in the void. Strike, redirect, create openings, exploit them. Don’t think, just move. Let instinct and training take over.
A raptor’s jaw snapped shut inches from my leg. My chain caught it across the snout, disrupting its form enough to make it hesitate. Another chain hit it from a different angle. Then another. Overwhelming it with impacts faster than it could reform.
But there were so many of them.
A hawk raked across my back. Another across my thigh. Burns layered on burns, pain becoming a constant white noise that I shoved into a box in my mind and locked away. Deal with it later. Survive first.
I was dimly aware of Draco moving through the chaos, positioning himself, his wand tracing patterns in the air that left glowing afterimages. Whatever he was planning, it required preparation.
A raptor got inside my defensive perimeter, too close for chains to intercept. Its jaws opened, revealing a furnace of purple-black fire in its throat.
I made a choice and reached down into myself, past the surface magic, past the careful control I’d maintained since the last battle.
Straight for the Drake essence.
The predatory hunger surged up to meet me like a drowning man grasping for air. I felt it flood through my chains, changing them, darkening them from silver-black to something deeper. Void-black. The color of emptiness given form.
The chains moved differently now. Faster. More viciously. With an intelligence that wasn’t quite mine but wasn’t quite other either. The Drake’s hunting instincts merged with my own, and suddenly I could see the patterns in the constructs’ movements, could predict where they’d strike before they moved, and position my chains to intercept with perfect precision.
The raptor that had gotten too close found its throat wrapped in chains before it could release its fire. I squeezed, and the construct simply came apart, its cohesion shattered by force amplified by void-touched magic.
More chains lashed out, each one now capable of actually damaging the Fiendfyre rather than just redirecting it. I tore into the nearest hawk, ripped through a raptor’s torso, drove back the others with a wall of writhing metal that radiated the same wrongness as the fire itself.
The Veela noticed. I saw their heads turn, saw them recognize something in my magic that troubled them. The silver-haired Veela screeched something, and half the constructs peeled away from Draco to focus on me instead.
Good. That was the point. Keep their attention. Keep them focused on the immediate threat instead of what Draco was doing.
Six constructs hit me simultaneously.
I met them with everything I had, chains erupting in all directions, forming a sphere of deadly metal around me. The Drake essence made them stronger, faster, more lethal. But it also made them hungry. I could feel it through the connection— that predatory desire to consume, to feed, to add the constructs’ power to my own.
A dangerous temptation. The Drake had scared me for a reason. This power came with a price.
But I didn’t have a choice. Not if I wanted to keep Draco alive long enough to finish whatever he was preparing.
So I let the hunger guide me. Let the chains feed on the constructs they destroyed, drinking in fragments of cursed fire and converting them into more metal, more weapons, more death. Growing stronger with each kill even as something cold and alien settled deeper into my chest.
A hawk dissolved into my chains. Then another. A raptor came apart like tissue, its fire absorbed and transformed.
I was winning against the constructs.
But I was losing against myself.
The Drake essence wasn’t just power; it also possessed a certain will. Consciousness. And the more I used it, the more space it occupied in my mind, the harder it became to remember where I ended and it began.
Just a little longer, I told myself. Just hold on until Draco finishes.
I destroyed another raptor. Then another hawk. The constructs were thinning now, their numbers reduced by my void-touched chains. But the Veela were compensating, pouring more power into the remaining ones, making them larger, stronger, more aggressive.
The largest raptor— twice the size of the others— lunged at me with speed that shouldn’t have been possible. I barely got my chains up in time, metal meeting fire in a shower of sparks and heat that made my skin blister even through my already-scorched clothes.
We grappled, my chains wrapped around its jaws, holding them shut as it thrashed and fought with animal desperation. The Drake essence surged, wanting to consume this one too, to add its power to the growing arsenal.
And then I felt it.
Magic, gathering behind me. Draco’s magic, building to a crescendo that made the air itself vibrate.
He was ready.
I snagged the large raptor and moved to the size, casting the sound filter over my ears even as I did so.
“Sona Selectus Prohibere.“
Just in time, as it happened; the world exploded with noise.
Draco’s spell— the one he’d been preparing this entire time— unleashed in a keening wail that transcended normal audio. The few remaining windows in the auditorium shattered instantly, glass exploding outward in a rain of glittering shards. The metal support beams began to vibrate, singing in resonance with the wail. Concrete cracked.
And the Veela screamed.
Not in rage or triumph this time. In agony.
I watched through the chaos of my battle with the raptor as all three Veela dropped to their knees, their hands clamped over their heads, their beaked mouths open in silent screams I couldn’t hear through Draco’s protective spell. Blood streamed from their ears, from their eyes, from their nostrils. The sound was destroying them from the inside, vibrating their bodies apart at the cellular level.
And most importantly, their concentration shattered.
The Fiendfyre constructs immediately began to jitter and hesitate, their movements losing cohesion as the controlling will behind them faltered. The giant raptor I was fighting stopped mid-lunge, its form wavering, uncertainty replacing predatory focus.
This was my moment.
I released the Drake essence completely, letting it flood through my chains without restraint. The metal turned darker than black, became something that existed in defiance of light itself. I drove every chain I had into the wavering raptor, tore it apart viciously, then immediately pivoted to the next construct.
Hawk after hawk fell. Raptors came apart under coordinated strikes. I moved through them like death itself, the Drake’s hunting instincts making me faster than thought, more efficient than mercy.
The last hawk tried to flee, to escape back into formless flame. My chains caught it mid-flight and ripped it to pieces, absorbing its fire and converting it to more metal, more weapons, more power.
Then there was only silence.
Well, not silence exactly. Draco’s keening wail still filled the air, still vibrated through stone and metal and flesh. But the constructs were gone. All of them. Destroyed or dissolved back into nothingness.
I turned toward the Veela.
All three had collapsed completely now, their Veela forms sprawled on the blood-and-fire-stained floor. The lead one’s skull had cracked, bone visible through torn flesh. Another was convulsing, her body destroying itself from the inside. The one I’d stabbed earlier had simply stopped moving, the combination of her existing injuries and Draco’s spell too much for even her inhuman constitution.
The wail cut off abruptly.
Draco lowered his wand, swaying slightly, his face gray with exhaustion. Blood was running freely from his nose now, the backlash of casting something that powerful taking its toll.
But he was alive.
We were both alive.
And the Veela were dead.
For a long moment, neither of us moved. We just stood there in the ruined auditorium, breathing hard, surrounded by bodies and blood and the slowly dissipating remnants of cursed fire. The smoke hung thick in the air, creating a haze that made everything look dreamlike and unreal.
Draco was the first to break the stillness. He took one step forward, then another, his movements mechanical and unsteady. He made it perhaps five paces before his legs gave out and he dropped to one knee, catching himself with his free hand against the scorched floor.
I crossed the distance between us quickly, my own body protesting every movement. Burns covered my arms and back, my clothes were more char than fabric, and I was pretty sure I’d cracked at least two ribs at some point during the fight. But I was mobile, which was more than could be said for Draco right now.
“Hey.” I said, crouching beside him. “You still with me?”
He looked up, his eyes slightly unfocused but aware. Blood was still trickling from his nose, and I could see broken capillaries in his eyes from the strain of the spell he’d cast.
“Did it work?” His voice was hoarse, barely more than a rasp.
“Yeah.” I said. “It worked. They’re dead. All of them.”
He nodded slowly, then his gaze shifted past me to the three Veela corpses. “And the Fiendfyre?”
I looked around the auditorium. The cursed flames were still burning in patches across the walls and floor, but they were dying now, consuming themselves without the Veela’s will to guide them. Already I could see the purple-black color fading to more normal orange and red as the curse bled out of them.
“Fading.” I confirmed. “Without them controlling it, it’s just fire now. Dangerous, but not apocalyptic.”
Draco made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a sob. “Good. That’s… good.”
He swayed, and I caught his shoulder to steady him. “Easy. Don’t pass out on me yet. We need to get out of here before the building comes down.”
“Right. Yes. Yes.” He blinked several times, clearly trying to force his brain back into working order. “Just need a moment.”
“Take your time.” I kept my hand on his shoulder, partly to support him and partly because I needed the physical contact to ground myself. The Drake essence was still surging through my chains, still hungry, still wanting more. Touching something real, something human, helped push it back down.
As we sat there catching our breath, I became aware of just how much damage we’d done. The auditorium was a warzone. Bodies of the enslaved men littered the floor— at least fifteen of them, their deaths necessary but no less horrifying for that necessity. The Veela corpses were already starting to smoke and char, their unnatural flesh breaking down now that the magic sustaining them was gone. Scorch marks covered every surface. Chunks of the ceiling had fallen, exposing twisted metal support beams. The floor was cracked in multiple places, some of the fissures deep enough that I could see darkness beneath.
We’d won, but the victory looked like devastation.
“We should probably move.” Draco said after another minute, his voice slightly stronger. “Before something else decides to show up.”
He was right. We were both injured, exhausted, and sitting in the middle of a burning building that could collapse at any moment. This was exactly the kind of situation that attracted scavengers or worse.
I helped him to his feet, taking more of his weight than I probably should have given my own injuries. Together we stumbled toward the entrance we’d come through, moving slowly through the smoke and debris.
We’d made it perhaps halfway when the laughter started.
It bubbled up from somewhere deep in my chest, entirely inappropriate and completely irresistible. A laugh that started small and then grew, shaking my shoulders, making my cracked ribs scream in protest but I couldn’t stop.
Draco looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “What— “
Then he started laughing too.
It was absurd. Ridiculous. Two wizards, beaten half to death, covered in blood and burns and smoke, standing in a ruined building surrounded by corpses, laughing like madmen.
But we’d done it. Against all odds, against three corrupted Veela and their army of Fiendfyre constructs, against a threat that should have killed us a dozen times over— we’d survived. More than survived.
We’d won.
The laughter echoed through the auditorium, bouncing off smoke-stained walls, mixing with the crackle of dying fires and the groan of settling rubble.
“That should not have worked.”
“But it did.”
“It really shouldn’t have.”
“I know.”
We looked at each other, and another wave of slightly hysterical laughter overtook us both. It hurt— everything hurt— but the pain felt distant and unimportant compared to the sheer absurd triumph of still being capable of feeling pain at all.
Eventually the laughter faded, leaving us standing in the smoke-filled auditorium, breathing hard, grins still plastered across our faces despite the horror surrounding us.
“Come on.” I said, getting my arm back under Draco’s shoulder. “Let’s get out of here before our luck really runs out. We’re pushing it, already.”
We made it outside into the purple-lit streets of Arnold, putting distance between ourselves and the burning auditorium. Behind us, I heard a deep groan of stressed metal, followed by a crash as part of the roof finally gave way. Smoke billowed out from the building, rising into the aurora-stained sky.
We kept walking until we found a relatively intact building to collapse against. Draco slid down the wall to sit on the ground, his head tilted back, eyes closed. I joined him, my own exhaustion finally catching up with me now that the adrenaline was fading.
For a while we just sat there in silence, breathing, existing, processing what had just happened.
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking slightly, covered in burns and blood— some mine, some from the enslaved men we’d killed, some from the Veela. The Drake essence had settled back into dormancy within my chains, but I could still feel it there, coiled and patient, waiting for the next time I needed its power.
I’d used it deliberately this time. Not in a moment of panic or desperation, but as a calculated choice. I’d opened that door knowing what lay on the other side, and I’d let it in.
And it felt natural. Easy. Right.
That should have terrified me more than it did.
“Your magic changed again.” Draco said, his eyes still closed.
I didn’t bother denying it. “Yeah. I guess there’s no hiding it, huh?”
“How bad was it?”
I considered the question. How to explain the sensation of sharing headspace with a predator, of feeling its hunger merge with my own, of the way it had wanted to consume everything in sight and how close I’d come to letting it?
“Manageable.” I said finally. “This time.”
Draco opened his eyes and looked at me. “All right.”
That was it. He trusted me implicitly.
I smiled and my head back against the wall, staring up at the writhing auroras. “That spell, by the way— the sound weapon. That was incredible. Brutal, but incredible.”
A small, tired smile crossed his face. “It came to me midfight; they fight with sound. Why shouldn’t we?”
“It definitely worked.”
“Almost too well. I wasn’t sure I could maintain it long enough without the backlash killing me.” He touched his nose gingerly, wincing at the dried blood. “Still not sure I didn’t do some permanent damage.”
“We’ll get Bob’s medic to look at you when we get back. They’ll sort you out.”
“If we get back.” He corrected, but there was no real pessimism in it. Just acknowledgement of reality.
“We’ll get back.” I insisted, my white eyes shining.
Draco stared into them, and nodded, a glint of something awakening in his own.
“Maybe, Clarke. Maybe…”
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