The Assault Continued

*** Present

Swiping his opponents aside, Voldemort sent a large blade of Darkness that tore straight through the train.

After the split second it took for them to finish off his previous attack, Voldemort's opponents were on him with renewed vigour, keeping him tied up in the battle versus them.

The students inside the train found themselves in a variety of differing situations.

Some of the students on the far ends of the Express simply found themselves shook slightly as the blade of Darkness tore the train in two. Others closer to the middle felt the shock far more clearly.

The most unfortunate were those in the middle of the Express. Thankfully there were no casualties of the strike, but there were now over a dozen Hogwarts students in the open, falling out of the carriages on either side of the strike, as half the carriage was obliterated.

Voldemort looked at the results of his strike, and his eyes fixed on one target.

Harry Potter.

*** With Harry, On the Express

Inside the Express, the concern of the trio was growing, they no longer had a vantage point on the fighting, and Harry was too worried of Voldemort tracing him again to attempt the same spell another time, so they sat there, attempting to extrapolate the goings on outside the Express from the loud noises of destruction and rattling that seemed to be taking place.

The walls of the train itself seemed to be heavily damaged by the magic beating down on it, the vestiges of the train's magic doing its level best to try and keep the students inside it safe.

Harry, however, knew it was simply a matter of time till the Dark Lord managed to muscle his way into the train.

It had however been announced to the entire train that they were being evacuated and Harry hoped that the peacekeepers could get all the students off before the train was hijacked.

His hopes were to no avail, however, as a large shudder shook the train before the entire carriage rolled over onto its side, one wall being ripped right off in a blur of Darkness which cut straight through their carriage.

Harry had managed to sustain no injuries in the tumble but he looked over to see Hermione nursing her head which had been knocked against one of the suitcase racks.

Seeing that Daphne was mostly okay, Harry cast a quick pain-numbing spell on Hermione's head, before dragging the bushy-haired girl out of the broken remains of their train carriage, Daphne following suit, not trusting the train cabin to not fall in on itself after the beating it had taken.

Harry immediately regretted his decision as he finally saw the Dark Lord for the first time since the graveyard. Voldemort was far more terrifying than he had been the last time the two had met, it was clear that the Darkness had vastly increased his level of power.

Despite the large distance between the two wizards, Harry immediately had his wand out to defend himself, he knew the Dark Lord could cover the hundred or so metres between them in less than a second if he so wished.

As shadows gathered around Voldemort, ready to spring him at Harry, the boy-who-lived said his final prayers, knowing that he was nowhere near ready to take Voldemort on.

Voldemort sprang, spells already coming out of Harry's wand in his defense. Just before Voldemort hit his enemy straight on, he was sent off course by a large gargoyle made out of rubble slamming into him and crashing him into the ground.

Harry breathed a heavy sigh of relief as his Headmaster limped out of the crater in the ground that Voldemort's last strike had created.

Nevertheless, the Dark Lord sprung back up, speeding at Dumbledore, only to run right into a serpent of fire which enveloped him.

The fiery snake burst apart as the Darkness extruded from the body of Voldemort to obliterate the fire threatening to burn Voldemort's body to a crisp.

Arcturus and Babajide also emerged from the crater, seconds after Dumbledore himself, and Harry watched with barely concealed awe as two of his mentors took on Voldemort himself along with the help of Babajide.

The three of them together seemed to be able to hold Voldemort at bay, even with the powers of The Darkness which seemed to make him nigh invincible.

The Darkness offensive, consisting mostly of shards of Darkness, as well as knives and other creative tools of destruction was held off by Babajide, who used his considerable might mostly defensively, fighting the Darkness with fire for the most part.

Arcturus and Dumbledore, meanwhile, attacked Voldemort with all that they had. Dumbledore's decades of experience came into play as he put his all into defeating his enemy, Arcturus no less vicious as he too went at it as hard as he could.

Harry was pulled out of his stupor at the intensity of the battle by Hermione screaming his name.

Harry looked up just in time to see the last of a dozen or so peacekeepers be murdered in cold blood by a golden-masked Death Eater.

Despite feeling sick to his stomach, Harry couldn't take the brutality of the Death Eater's actions and despite his intuition screaming at him to escape, Harry engaged the Death Eater, sending spells rocketing at his opponent at astonishing speeds.

Harry immediately realized that fighting the Death Eater who had taken down a dozen peacekeepers all on his own was probably not a good idea, this only being highlighted by the Death Eater casually flicking away all of Harry's spells before doing something Harry had never seen be done before.

The Golden-Masked Death Eater waved his wand in an arc around his body and electricity crackled into being around the tip of his wand.

The Death Eater directed his wand at Harry and what could only be described as lightning came from Harry's opponent's wand.

Unsure of the best way to counter this, Harry simply sprung out of the way, sending a strong push of air at the Death Eater, continuing his barrage of spells, backed up by Hermione and Daphne, both of whom also began firing at Harry's opponent to increase the volume of spells that he had to contend with.

Despite this as well as Harry's elemental attacks, the third-year found himself immediately on the back foot.

Other peacekeepers who tried to come to Harry's aid were held off by other Death Eaters, and Dumbledore who had noticed Harry's plight had paid for his moment of distraction with a long cut across his chest, the Dark Lord not letting him escape the fight to go to Harry's aid.

The Golden-Masked Death Eater had Harry on the ropes, and was just about to pin Harry down, but was blocked just in time by a peacekeeper who managed to break through the Death Eaters who had been blocking the peacekeepers from interfering with the takedown of Harry so far.

"What were you thinking!" the peacekeeper snapped, and Harry realized that it was the same peacekeeper who had come to tell them to lock their cabin doors on the Express, just several minutes prior.

"Thank you, Ms, uh, Ms Peacekeeper." Harry stammered out.

Said peacekeeper rolled her eyes, "Kaira Wilder." She introduced herself briefly before throwing herself into the battle against the Golden-Masked Death Eater. She didn't seem to be remarkably stronger than Harry himself but seemed to be faring far better in the battle.

While she battled the Golden-Mask, the other peacekeepers surrounded Harry, Hermione and Daphne and made to escort them back inside the safe part of the train, as was being done with all the students who had fallen out of the train.

"A man named Pierre Moreau is the only one who is able to apparate in and out of here." One of the peacekeepers briefed the trio, "He is taking students in groups of three and apparating them out of the danger zone into a safe location.

Harry nodded his understanding, already having been told by the Headmaster that Pierre was simply a guise for Nicholas Flamel, who Harry was quite familiar with, it frankly not surprising him that the famed alchemist could apparate through the wards which inhibited virtually the rest of all wizardkind.

The Dark Lord quickly noticed that his prey was escaping and he stuck his three opponents in place by sticking their feet into the ground which some niftily transfigured magical quicksand.

The Dark Lord magicked himself into existence in front of the peacekeepers and all five of the men surrounding Harry had been murdered in a variety of gruesome ways in less than a second.

The Dark Lord sent a weak (by his standards) cutting curse at Harry, which the younger combatant just about managed to absorb the impact of into his wand, struggling to keep a hold of it and return fire.

Tendrils of Darkness fought the other three opponents of the Dark Lord, keeping most of the Darkness occupied, Voldemort taking Harry without its help and still toying with the gifted boy.

Despite his great talent, the boy-who-lived couldn't even hold a candle to the Dark Lord.

It didn't take much time for Voldemort to get bored of his plaything, and he raised his wand to finish Harry off once and for all.

In a display of courage, the peacekeeper Kaira Wilder jumped at the Dark Lord, having just managed to take down the Golden-Masked Death Eater after an intense duel that left her with several scrapes and cuts.

Unable to help any other way, she jumped on the Dark Lord, managing to wrestle his wand from his hand and pointing her own wand in the Dark Lord's chest.

Just as she fired off a non-verbal spell, Voldemort called all of the Darkness back to himself to protect him from Kaira's assault.

The Darkness took the brunt of the assault from Kaira before Voldemort simply blew her off his torso.

He looked ready to kill Kaira for daring to attack him, but one look at the despair on Harry's face made Voldemort reconsider his decision.

With a sick smile on his face, Voldemort cast the imperius curse on the peacekeeper, taking control of her body, just as Albus, Arcturus, and Babajide, no longer hindered by the Darkness, all struck him with their own attacks, driving him into the ground.

Harry tried to shout a warning about Kaira and the Imperius curse to his mentors but he was unable to as Kaira began fighting him, clearly not much stronger but her sheer skill being enough to give her the upper hand versus Harry.

With Hermione and Daphne, however, Harry managed to get a decent blow in in the form of a gash on the shoulder of the peacekeeper.

Kaira shrieked, the pain numbed only to an extent by the imperius curse.

The pain caused the curse to flicker as Kaira's eyes showed the horror she held at her own actions for a second before she attacked the trio once again, this time with a heavily injured shoulder.

After getting that shot in, Kaira was obviously impaired and couldn't fight at her fullest ability, but Harry refused to injure her anymore, drawing out the fight despite knowing that he should do what he had to do and do his worst to the peacekeeper who had saved his life twice over and escape, hell, that was probably what Wilder herself would have wanted him to do.

Just then, Voldemort was crushed by a large elephant courtesy of Dumbledore, and his connection to the Imperius became tenuous enough that, combined with Kaira's willpower, was enough for the female peacekeeper to overcome the unforgivable curse.

Kaira put her horror at her own actions at the back of her head and turned to protect the three children, despite her injured shoulder clearly playing havoc on her combative capability.

She hung in there doggedly, managing to sloppily catch a Death Eater with a well-placed piercing curse.

Harry rushed to support her as she staggered but Wilder waved him off, "Get inside, the other peacekeepers will take you to Moreau and he will get you out of here, you're students, do NOT go against my orders!"

Despite feeling horrible about it, Harry and co tried to follow her orders, only to be blocked by more Death Eaters.

Harry, Hermione, and Daphne engaged them, doing pretty decently considering that their opponents were only relatively low-level lackeys who had power in numbers but numbers that were being slowly overcome by Harry and co.

Kaira stepped in with a few useful spells that finished the battle easily.

"Get inside!" she barked, just as Voldemort stepped out of the Darkness next to her, looking bored as Albus, Arcturus, and Babajide were all flung in different directions by a shockwave of Darkness.

"You pesky rat," he said to Kaira, as if scolding a child who had been bad, "You threw off my Imperius when I was having so much FUN controlling you!" he continued, "Now you have outlived your usefulness"

With a flick of his wand, Kaira was under the Cruciatus curse, shrieking and screaming as unimaginable pain racked her body.

Harry kept running as he heard the valiant peacekeeper's screams become steadily weaker until they tapered off altogether.

Nicholas was waiting inside the door of the Express, looking extremely weak and holding onto a risk with a ruby embedded in it, drawing some kind of power from it. He held out a hand which the trio grabbed.

Just before they left, Harry heard Voldemort incant the dreaded syllables.

"Avada Kedavra!"

He didn't need to turn to see Kaira's body hit the ground to know she had passed.

*** End of Chapter