Chương 64: Assault on the Hogwarts Express
*** Hogwarts
For Harry, the seasons seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye.
Along with his schoolwork, his training had also been as intense as ever, mostly under the vigilant eye of Iliad who had been in charge of the training of Harry, Hermione, and Daphne while Albus and Arcturus were busy helping out at the Ministry.
Arcturus' role as Professor of Defence had been taken over by Iliad temporarily while Arcturus was busy honouring other commitments, while McGonagall who had already been doing a bulk of the administration mode just quietly picked up the slack left by Albus, still officially in her role as Deputy Headmistress but for all intents and purposes keeping the school running in Albus' absence.
The war itself had seemed much colder than they had expected, with Voldemort not making a single appearance after his surprise attack on Fudge.
Death Eaters had continued their sporadic attacks on Magical British territories but none of the Inner Circle were ever involved with attacks, sending mostly cannon fodder out to terrorise villages and keep the Death Eater name up, but they didn't really spend any time fighting Amelia's forces, choosing to run away as soon as Aurors arrived on the scene.
With the help of Amelia's policies, pushed through as a wartime Minister, and the competence of Babajide who had basically taken over heading the forces of the Ministry by virtue of Rufus Scrimgeour working in close proximity to him and letting him command the DMLE's forces when necessary, the Aurors' responses to attacks was nearly instantaneous.
As soon as Death Eaters struck, the Aurors were there to fight them off, so the Death Eaters worked fast.
They arrived, sent a few large-scale exploding curses and then high-tailed it.
The Aurors were able to catch a lot of the Death Eaters, but they found that a large amount of them were just random citizens imperiod into doing the bidding of the Death Eaters, sometimes with a small contingent of Death Eaters who had taken the Dark Mark, usually maybe 2 or 3.
Harry himself had only intermittently gotten news on the situation from Arcturus and Albus when they were at Hogwarts, whether for some administrative duty or simply taking a little bit of time off from coordinating the war effort. Other than that, he was largely forced to rely on the news which reported on the raids but not much else.
As May turned to June, Harry found himself feeling more tense.
"Have you noticed," Harry began, as he and Hermione walked from their last class of the day to the Room of Requirement to train with Iliad, "That in first AND second year, Voldemort has always unleashed his 'master plan' in June?"
Hermione frowned, "What kind of crackpot observation is that?"
"It's true though!" Harry protested, "It's like Voldemort follows a school calendar, and look at the situation now, he's done jack squat in the last couple months, maybe he's just been waiting for June!"
"Why would he wait?" Hermione said logically, "You know that he doesn't have to 'bide his time and nurture his power'" she said in air-quotes, "He's already scarily strong and from what Professor Dumbledore has told us, he can brush off injuries easily with the help of The Darkness."
"Yeah, but it's June! Come on, it's like Voldemort primetime!"
Hermione rolled her eyes as Daphne caught up to them from behind.
"Hey" The Slytherin greeted Harry and Hermione.
"Hiya Daphne, what's up?" Hermione asked.
"Not much, what about you?" Daphne responded casually.
"Did you know it's Voldemort Prime Time!"
"...What?"
*** Hogwarts Express
Despite Harry's conviction that something would happen in June, the rest of the year passed quite uneventfully.
Harry, Hermione, and Daphne were on the Hogwarts Express, headed back for the summer. Hermione was going back to her parents' place but would be spending a month of the vacation at Black Manor where Harry was returning to.
After the siege on Greengrass Manor, Iliad had basically lived out of Hogwarts, while his wife had been placed in Black Manor on Dumbledore's word. For the summer, him and Daphne would be joining Harry and Sirius at Black Manor too.
The Manor was a large estate that was more than large enough to easily hold a dozen people and still have room to spare, so hosting all the people that would be coming would not be a problem.
Despite the lack of recent attacks, there was a peacekeeper detail on the train in the case of an attack on what amounted to most of the entirety of Magical Britain's children, led by a Greek man named Cyril Cosmos who had introduced himself to the student body at Hogwarts before they left to be contacted in case of any kind of emergency on the train.
Harry knew Iliad was also on the train if his help was necessary, which is why he was not overly worried when he felt the train lurch awkwardly far to the left before magically righting itself.
Hermione let out an "eep!" of surprise and looked out the window to see two dozen Death Eaters on brooms circling the train, taking potshots at the wards that protected the train.
As they peered out the window, a patronus, some kind of owl, Harry noted, burst into their cabin.
Iliad's voice came out of the patronus, "Harry, Hermione, Daph," it began, "We will take care of this situation, we have a very good squad here and backup is on its way as we speak, I know that you will want to help in some way but we have this under control and putting yourself at risk is only going to increase the chance of the Dark Lord himself coming to take control of this matter, something that we are NOT ready to deal with at this moment, so you will stay put, am I understood?" the Greengrass Lord finished sternly.
The patronus faded to nothingness.
Hermione sighed, "Well, I guess we just have to wait for things to be handled then."
Harry smiled mischievously before pulling a piece of parchment out of his bag and folding it into a paper plane deftly before tapping it with his wand and muttering an animation spell before muttering another one that Hermione didn't quite recognise, "Rem Fenestra" before letting it fly out of the window of the Hogwarts express.
Harry pulled out another piece of parchment and used another spell, "Ostende Fenestra" before the page rippled to show a moving view, like a video, from the point of view of the paper plane, or at least the bottom of it which Harry had tapped with his wand.
"We can watch some of the fun." Harry grinned.
The view wasn't quite the best but the plane continued to roughly stay with the train as Harry's magic willed it to be in the general area of the action.
They watched the Death Eaters continue their assault until a similarly sized contingent of flying peacekeepers came to take on the Death Eaters.
Unlike previous operations, however, the Death Eaters didn't retreat or back down at all, instead choosing to confront the peacekeepers head on.
While this new contingent continued to battle the forces of the Dark Lord in the air, the peacekeepers began patrolling the train itself.
One of them popped her head into Harry and co's cabin.
"Keep this door shut and locked with the strongest spell that you know." she instructed calmly, "if you aren't aware of any, go for Janua Bene, it isn't penetrable by the Alohomora charm." she said before exiting and continuing on her way.
Hermione performed the spell on their door while Harry and Daphne continued to stare at the piece of parchment.
The Death Eaters seemed to be doing a fairly decent job against the peacekeepers, but they certainly didn't seem to be gaining any ground, and as more peacekeeper forces seemed to appear, it certainly seemed like the Death Eaters would be forced to retreat or be picked off one by one by the greater forces of the light.
As the battle raged on and more Death Eaters joined to inflate the numbers of their comrades, Harry suddenly heard a loud screech before the train lurched once more, this time towards the right.
Unlike the last time, the train didn't immediately right itself, leading to Harry, Hermione, and Daphne all slipping rightwards along with all their baggage, with the Express just about righting itself with a slow groan before an even harder shock hit it.
Harry willed his paper-plane to fly to the other side of the Express, only to find an even larger Death Eater force, all on brooms, along with someone who could only be the Dark Lord himself, floating alongside the train on what seemed to be a pillar of Darkness.
The Dark Lord raised his arm and an arm of Darkness rose and grasped the train, trying to wrench it off its tracks once again, the magic that held the train en route resisting the push of the Dark Lord, the Express glowing a bright blue, as invisible runes lit up, providing power and the wheels screeched as they were detached from the tracks that they were being tied to by magic.
With a large grunt, the Dark Lord redoubled his efforts, pouring what seemed to be all of the Darkness that he had under his control into the effort to uproot the train, the support that kept him flying reducing to the bare minimum as the train stopped abruptly and began to rock violently as its magic tried to keep it at the very least on its tracks.
As soon as the Express stopped, about a third of the Death Eaters peeled off from the fight with the peacekeepers and beelined for the entrances to the Express, while their comrades continued to hold back the peacekeepers at any cost, many of them being torn down as the peacekeeper forces gained an advantage but weren't quite able to push past the Death Eaters, being forced to deal with them before pursuing the ones who were approaching the train.
Harry watched as the Death Eaters who had gone for the train wrenched open the doors, to be met by more peacekeepers who had been strategically placed at entrances to counter the incoming Death Eaters and met them with a heavy barrage of spells that drove them out of the train, taking down a large number of the Dark Lord's combatants.
Harry smiled slightly as Iliad single-handedly dealt with three of the Death Eaters on his own, even as more tremors wracked the train, the Dark Lord too occupied in his task to aid his own Death Eaters.
Harry's smile wavered slightly, as in an awe-inspiring show of power, the Dark Lord pulled the magical train up and off its tracks, as the wards protecting the Hogwarts Express flickered and went out, simply overpowered by the sheer might of the Dark Lord.
Voldemort set the train down about a hundred metres away from its tracks with a heavy thud, peacekeepers and Death Eaters alike swerving on their brooms to get out of the way of the massive train.
Harry, Hermione, and Daphne braced for impact as the train was set down with a thud. Hermione had the foresight to place a cushioning charm so the three of them didn't feel the worst of the impact like some of the other students on the Hogwarts Express undoubtedly had, probably injuring and/or incapacitating a fair number of the school's students, which was undoubtedly something that the Dark Lord was counting on.
Suddenly, Cyril Cosmos' voice reverberated through the train, his voice magically magnified, "The Dark Lord himself has been spotted outside the Hogwarts Express, and as such our priority has been shifted from repelling this attack and keeping on track to evacuating all students, as such members of my team will come around to portkey you out of here cabin by cabin, if there is a knock on your door, members of my team will follow that up with the password which is 'Elephant', if they do not say that, do NOT let anybody into your cabins, stay calm and we shall evacuate in an orderly fashion"
"This got serious real fast." Daphne said grimly.
However, Harry wasn't listening to her, he was looking at his parchment turned screen.
The paper airplane had flown a little close to the Dark Lord.
Voldemort's red eyes looked straight at the little plane before he lifted a single finger and a tendril of Darkness pulled the piece of folded parchment-origami close to him.
He touched the parchment with a single finger and suddenly the image began flickering before Harry saw an image of himself, Hermione, and Daphne reflected up at him, before it returned to an image of the Dark Lord.
Voldemort smiled, "Harry Potter!" he said with mock excitement before crushing the paper airplane.
*** End of Chapter
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