The battlefield of Hogsmeade was a ruin of smoke and blood. Fires burned along the half-collapsed streets, and the once-picturesque village was now little more than shattered stone and mud caked with ash. Albus stood amidst the storm, his robes torn and scorched, Fawkes perched on his shoulder like a beacon of defiance. Every breath came ragged, every flick of his wand a deadly stroke of transfiguration—broken walls became serpents of stone that coiled around shrieking demons, shattered timber hardened into a storm of spears that pierced wings and scaled hides alike.
Beside him, the air warped with sudden heat as another wizard joined the front. Tenzin, Supreme Mugwump of the ICW, strode forward with his staff in one hand and his wand in the other. He was not content to hide behind treaties or councils now. Lightning carved the sky as his staff struck the ground, a storm of raw power erupting outward that blasted back a cluster of angels who had broken the lines. His face, weathered with age, was lit by sheer, unrelenting determination. "Fight on!" he roared, his voice carrying across the battlefield like a rallying cry. "For every one that falls, ten more of us will rise!"
The clash raged around them. To the north, goblins stood with locked shields, their enchanted steel gleaming as they held back the charge of armored demons. Centaurs loosed volley after volley of flaming arrows into the sky, their hooves pounding against blood-soaked earth as they swept the flanks. Wizards and witches worked in brutal tandem, transfiguring the ground beneath angelic legions into pits of acid and spikes, only for demons to surge through in their place. The air was a storm of magic, each explosion rocking the fragile remains of the town.
And through it all, the children of Hogwarts worked tirelessly. They were not on the frontlines, but they were no less crucial. In hastily erected tents and makeshift wards behind the defenses, they poured everything they had into healing, restoring, and holding the barricades. Some brewed potions with shaking hands, their cauldrons bubbling over the cracked stones of old Hogsmeade alleys. Others cast repelling charms again and again, forcing back the lesser demons that slipped through. Young healers, no older than sixteen, pressed trembling palms against wounds and whispered incantations through tears, stitching flesh and bone while screams echoed just beyond the canvas walls. Their eyes were wide with fear, but their spines were straight—they knew there was no one else left to step into that role.
Albus felt it with every glance toward them: their courage, their stubborn refusal to retreat. Fawkes trilled on his shoulder, the sound cutting through the chaos like sunlight piercing storm clouds. It was a reminder, even as the battlefield roared and death pressed in from every side, that the youngest of their kind had chosen to stand.
With a flick of his wand, Albus transfigured a collapsed house into a living colossus of ironwood that swept through a cluster of demons. He turned to Tenzin, voice hoarse. "We must push them back. If the line here collapses, Hogwarts is next."
Tenzin nodded grimly, raising his staff high. Power hummed at its tip, bright enough to turn the smoke silver. "I know but, there is just too many. Where is Herpo!?"
Tenzin was a storm given flesh. Where Albus wove beauty and terror out of transfiguration, the Supreme Mugwump was raw power channeled with precision. His staff cracked against the earth, and a shockwave of golden wards erupted in a widening ring, shattering the charge of demons like glass. He thrust forward with his wand in the same motion, conjuring a thousand chains of light that lashed around the wings of descending angels, dragging them down into the mud where waiting centaurs trampled them under hooves.
He moved like one who had fought a hundred wars. Every gesture was layered—shielding the lines, striking at the enemy, and reinforcing the faltering wards at the same time. Even Albus, master of his craft, spared a glance in grim admiration.
"Your reputation was never exaggerated," Albus muttered as obsidian spikes jutted from his wand and pierced through the chest of a horned demon.
"And yours," Tenzin replied without looking, his voice carrying steady over the din. "But this day does not belong to reputations. It belongs to survival." He snapped his staff upward, and lightning cascaded from the sky, carving through an entire flight of shrieking angels, their bodies tumbling like burning comets to the ruined streets below.
The momentum shifted, but never for long. For every demon or angel cut down, another seemed to emerge from the smoke and flame.
At the back lines, chaos suddenly ripped through the fragile calm. A hulking demon—its skin gray and flayed as if it had crawled from a pit of knives—slipped past the wards. Its claws dug furrows into the earth as it barreled straight toward the healers' tents, toward the children bent over bleeding bodies. Screams erupted from the wounded too weak to flee.
The students froze, their courage faltering at the sight of the beast tearing toward them. A girl dropped her wand, her hands trembling too violently to move. Another clutched a patient's arm as if she could shield him with her own body.
But two figures moved before the panic could take root.
Evan Rosier's face was pale but steady, his wand raised high, sickly green light coalescing at its tip. Beside him, Severus Snape's eyes narrowed with razor focus, black hair plastered to his sweat-dampened forehead. They stepped forward in unison, cutting across the cries.
"Avada Kedavra!" Rosier's voice cracked but carried, the green bolt streaking across the air. It hit the demon square in the face, halting its charge with a hideous snap of bone and fire.
Snape's wand flicked in the same heartbeat, black cursed flame bursting from the tip like a living serpent. The cursed fire crawled up the demon's chest and arms, wrapping it in shrieking agony as it collapsed before the children, its massive frame collapsing into ash and silence.
"Bloody hell."
No one was sure who said it but the silence was broken and the healers turned to give the two students a ghastly look. One used the worst spell known to wizard kind and the other a cursed flame.
And yet no one was going to reprimand them.
Because this was war, and you bloody well use the worst spells in wizard kind to win a war.