Chapter 27: The Attack on Amelia Bones

The female phoenix named Nagini turned out very strange. On the outside, it was a perfectly ordinary phoenix. In fact, one would be hard pressed to notice anything unusual without specialized charms. But there were some drastic differences.

Phoenix-Nagini only spoke Parseltongue. She could not sing, though her rhyming hisses were very entertaining. Her tears held no healing power. But the feathers still had the usual magic, and she retained the most important ability: apparating in a flash of flame. Paradoxically, she found it much easier than walking or flying. I was now uncatchable! And could frame Albus… In the meantime, she must stay a top secret from everyone.

In the light of all the advantages, Nagini not inheriting the muscle memory was trivial. A snake learning to fly and walk in a bird's body made an unforgettable sight. Her attempts at eating were by far the funniest: the ex-snake stubbornly tried to unhinge her phoenix beak to swallow small mammals whole. If I or the house elves did not cut them for her, she would have died of starvation. But she was a smart girl and would eventually adapt. She already once broke her neck attempting to fly and rose from the ashes like nothing happened. Her hissing was far more disgruntled when the house elf dyed her feathers into a copy of Dumbledore's phoenix.

January 25th, 1982 went down in history as a momentous day: I felt completely back to normal, and all diagnostic spells confirmed it. Time for another show.

I was again shuffling pictures around my desk. The candidates for Minister of Magic…

Dumbledore. Officially declined the nomination.

Crouch Sr. The front runner. He will soon die, and even if he somehow escapes, politics will be the last thing on his mind.

Yaxley. A Death Eater. I wish we could push him ahead and into the Minister's chair, but the chances were dismal…

A couple of Ministry small fish, heads of secondary departments. None of them mine, all had relatively low odds.

And Amelia Bones. A very gifted DMLE officer. My staunch ideological opponent, especially after I killed most of her relatives. The removal of Crouch would make her a viable candidate, so she will not live to see the election, either.

The Bones family manor was destroyed and condemned- I went a little overboard with area curses. But we recently found her new home, and, as Rowle said, she must be taught a lesson. Of course, I already had mountains of work waiting to be done and would rather not kill her personally. But this was a great opportunity to check whether I truly recovered and field-test some new projects.. Not to mention I was overdue for another public appearance since the Potters and the Longbottoms.

I put on a Death Eater uniform, covered my wand with an illusion of the old one and gathered the Lestranges to discuss the plan of attack. If it weren't for my tests, I would have gladly ordered a five on one fight or went with my favorite strategy of sticking something sharp into the back of a sleeping, bound and poisoned enemy. But this time, it would just be me killing the target while the Lestranges ensure she does not escape or call for help.

We apparated to a small town in Northern Ireland. After a brief flight (I levitated myself, the Lestranges brought brooms), we reached a lone standing muggle house. It emitted absolutely no magic. If I did not know better, I would have walked right past it without noticing anything unusual.

Edward drew the runes and arranged the miniature pyramid artifacts, the other Lestranges and I did all the wand-waving. Nothing happened for several minutes, and then then the ward instantly snapped into place as if someone turned on the light switch. The Lestranges were left outside, and I stood next to house in the center of a two hundred yard wide circle completely cut off from the world.

Almost immediately, a Patronus flew out of the building. I quickly shot down this attempt to call for help.

"Amelia Bones! I, Lord Voldemort, am offering you a chance to surrender. Walk out alone, wandless and without shields."

Frankly, I was beginning to feel like a cardboard villain: offering enemies to change sides, and they, as always, refuse. The only consolation was that I had enough brains not to share my plans or life story.

My words met silence. I cast additional perception charms on myself- the top layer of dirt became semitransparent. Then charms detecting life, blood, magic… And there was my target, creeping towards the ward edge underground. It wouldn't help- the ward was a sphere. Having gathered some extra energy for the opening hit, I put it all into pressurizing the ground around her.

Alas, the target survived and canceled my spell. I repeated it with more power and drew a couple of runes directly above her to increase gravity. She retaliated by trying to pierce me with stalagmites from below. As I was blocking them, the air filled with multiple darting glowing spheres and animal silhouettes. The light filtering charm saved my retinas, but I missed a Patronus…

"The Patronus is destroyed, my Lord," Rodolphus reported over the connection. Good. Albus made for a terrible third wheel.

Transfiguring dirt into lava finally forced Amelia to crawl out of the ground. Other than the obvious shimmering, delluminating charms and the Shadow Cloak, there was something else concealing her. And so, I embarked on my plan to kill her with minimal use of Dark magic. If it did not work, I would at least get some practice.

A slash of my wand sent over a hundred conjured arrows at the target. Amelia swished hers, and every single one them bounced off her glowing shield. In return, I faced a spray of acid. My shields got wrapped in transfigured spikes, and the dirt tried to pull me underground.

I levitated myself above the ground, transfigured the spikes into sand, deflected the acid and attacked her with the blindness hex followed by ball lightnings. The hex did not work at all, and her grounding charms neutralized the electricity… I tried water-boiling and trash-incinerating spells, but they were deflected with careless ease. A flood of light and microwave radiation produced no results, either.

Our fight was heating up. Literally: a jet of fire, a fireball, flares… Let's add some oxygen to make it all burn better… A marvelous explosion, but it could use some more charmed fire. And the Thousand Razors charm…

I kept Amelia under a constant barrage of fire and air blades. She was holding up very well, defending and even counterattacking. Maybe Tom could have defeated her with the speed of the non-human body alone, but I did not have that advantage. At this rate, we would exchange fire until she fell from magical exhaustion.

In a way, magical defenses were similar to house walls: one could simply break the key support beams to make the whole structure crumble. I've already cast an inordinate amount of scanning charms, and not all of them burned up before reaching her…

Weakness one: she was vulnerable during her own attacks. While casting offensive charms, she could not cast new shields and struggled to shuffle her existing layers. Just as she sent a cutting net flying at me, I threw the Dragonhunter's Spear. Before the projectile reached her, I added a punch of raw power- simply a greenish ray of energy.

Her cutter did not survive my shield. Amelia started to say the counter-spell for the spear but obviously did not have enough time. I was hoping to see her scatter into bloody chunks. But incredibly enough, she stayed unscathed after a direct hit of the Dragonhunter's spear, though much of her shields vanished. An artifact? Universal shield? How much did it drain out of her, a half?

The woman barely came back to her senses when she got hit with raw magic and did not have much choice but to answer with the same. Two rays, my green and her yellow, were pushing against each other, their point of contact rapidly moving towards her. When it touches her, not even dust would remain…

But she again refused to die on my terms. My ray of energy dissolved, and hers spread out in an ocean of fire over the entire warded area. Everything burned: the house, my transfigured spikes, the top layer of earth with my half-completed runes… Amelia should have, too- that spell was considered suicidal. Yet she stood there untouched… Another artifact?

I decided to change strategies. Second weakness: her passive defenses clearly didn't measure up… Feint a powerful hit in one spot, and while the shields gather to deflect it, attack another. But these tricks required very high speed and precision. And she could block the attacks herself on top. The Unforgivables worked so much better…

While she was busy attacking, I spread the simultaneous force of crushing and vacuum charms evenly around her. Then a wandless shield penetrator… And immediately follow all that with an overpowered ramming charm. Her defenses had no time to react, so the ramming charm went through them like paper. I looked forward to seeing the outcome of a watermelon meeting a truck..

Everything went wrong again. With wandless self-transfiguration, she momentarily made a hole in her body, and my ramming charm flew right through it, hitting the dirt behind her. How interesting. I'll have to remember this to defend against killing curses. I should have sent a fireball with controlled explosion at her instead- transfiguration wouldn't have saved her then. The energy I already spent on her would be enough to waste two Auror squads…

"I see you are a worthy witch. Join my ranks!" I offered.

Instead of an answer, she shot out a lightning bolt. I didn't react in time, and my charm against electricity had to block it.

Why was she not using any Dark Magic? I could understand avoiding the cursed fire or convoluted blood spells that were potentially deadly for an inexperienced author, but the Cruciatus was simply a matter of will to cause pain!

I was flying over the battlefield, pelting my opponent with elemental attacks and stunners, all the while remotely drawing runes of paralysis, neutralization, aging, and the like. The woman switched to attacking my artwork but still admirably held her own.

"My Lord, is everything all right there?" Rodolphus asked. "Bellatrix is itching to help you."

"Yes, everything is fine. I am testing new spells. No need to help me," the fight already lasted for several minutes, time to hurry. Back to Dark Magic, then.

I covered her with the Fragilitas curse followed by multiple frost and life-draining spells. The target went on complete defensive. She then faced a shower of stunners with some killing curses mixed among them. Too busy avoiding all, she did not notice a nonverbal wandless Imperius.

I ordered her to surrender, but the curse got thrown off. My mistake, again. I should have used the Cruciatus first and checked her susceptibility to the Imperius when she was wandless on the ground.

I sent forth my new project: a snake made of condensed darkness. The snake met a Spear of Light and exploded in a firework of black sparks.

My opponent was clearly getting tired. I targeted her with Perimortem Paralysis- a potentially lethal stunner based on organ failure, unlike its non-Dark schoolyard counterpart. And alongside it, the force of legilimency and a Waking Nightmare seasoned with wandless Crucios… She dodged and deflected, but her luck has run out: I used fragments of my stunner and nightmare curse gestures to surreptitiously add a slow-acting escalating torture curse. Few could fight under the pain she would feel for the next few hours.

She slowed and began swaying like a drunk sailor. A shield penetrator coupled with a disarmer left her wandless. Before she could try something wandlessly, she sunk waist-deep into transfigured ground and got hit with a Crucio.

Ordinary stunners were still bouncing off her body. Must be artifacts. I crushed her with surrounding air and ripped off everything that could act as an amulet. All jewelry flew to the side. The only thing left was packing her up for transport and interrogation. Still holding the curse, I wandlessly restrained her. If bribes or threats did not work, she would make a great lich.

The body unexpectedly stopped thrashing. The Cruciatus failed?! No, she was just dead… The body slowly dissolving from the inside, how? It looked nothing like blood magic.

Everything turned out much simpler than I thought. Despite being wandless and under torture, she somehow transfigured part of her body into acid. A gruesome way to commit suicide… Unless she botched some other spell? Casting under the Cruciatus was never a bright idea.

Whatever happened, it cost me a captive and a body. I set the now worthless remains on fire and turned to investigate her house. It showed no signs of human life or house elves… She should have a niece. Was the little girl hidden elsewhere? I renewed the illusion on my wand - using a wand dispelled all charms applied to it. After thinking a bit, I put it away and pulled out the copy of Albus's Elder Wand. Unlikely anyone would see me, but still…

"Edward, I am finished. She is dead. Come check the grounds for anyone still living."

The ward shifted colors, letting in Edward. He waved his wand, then cut his arm and repeated the pattern.

"There is no one here, my Lord. Looks like the battle was intense."

"I was offering her a chance to join us. She declined. Erase the traces and leave."

In a few minutes, I was surrounded by pristine ambient magic. Apparating and portkeys created traces. The only method to leave quickly and completely undetected required a disposable wizard who would clean everything and commit suicide. I wanted to try getting around this and called Nagini. Let's see if the enemy could detect phoenix movement.

A chain of phoenix apparitions brought me home. I let Nagini go and went to thank the Lestranges for their service. While there, I gathered a disposable team (ten new recruits without talents, connections or money) and took them to a secluded base. Nagini's soul perfectly settled in the new body. Maybe one of my many magical snakes will find a forever home in Ariana?

Barty Crouch Sr.

What could the Head of the DMLE possibly do at home at two in the morning? That's right, work. Crouch was reading reports at his desk. Why must he suffer so many idiot informants? Take, for instance, these latest rumors: Albus had the Elder Wand, Albus was a pedophile, Albus was a Dark wizard, Albus killed his own sister… Hard to decide which was more ridiculous. Crouch was already up to his neck in paperwork, and these fools bombarded him with disinformation!

Amelia Bones has become the latest victim of the war. The experts concluded she caught a Crucio after a long battle, then was partially transfigured into acid and burned. You-Know-Who was completely sick in the head, did he suddenly forget how to cast the Killing Curse?

People whispered many things about Barty Crouch. Almost everyone was satisfied with his results but almost no one approved of his methods. Thirst for power, they said. But no, he was not like that. What difference did it make whether they killed criminals who resisted arrest with Avadas or Reductos? They may not use the most popular methods, but they didn't lower themselves to human sacrifice! Even if one really wanted to, even if it was the only chance to save one's wife…

Obviously, throwing everyone in prison without charge or trial would not improve the situation. That was why Barty only imprisoned the guilty. Without charge or trial. How was their guilt determined, then? He decided it. No, Bartemius Crouch was not insane. He just had a huge secret. The key to his success was incredibly tricky yet at the same time incredibly simple. Barty read fresh reports of Death Eater crimes to learn the time and the place, then picked up his time-turner and went to the past.

The past could not be changed. Or more precisely, it changed with unpredictable results, most of them involving the traveler getting stuck in a time loop and erased from existence. So, Barty never changed anything. He merely observed the crime from a safe spot, unnoticed. Sure, the Death Eaters wore masks and used voice-modifying charms. But the few he identified by wands or snippets of conversations got shipped off to Azkaban soon after. Barty was the eyewitness, and the little detail of being there with the help of a time-turner did not need to make it to the reports.

He could not always make it in time. Some failures were truly tragic. The Potters, the Longbottoms… When the killer was You-Know-Who himself, Barty had to watch from extreme distance, lest he would be spotted.

The hardest part was not interfering… Watching people brutally tortured and murdered and doing nothing except memorizing every little detail to analyze later. People called him cruel. It wasn't true. They all deserved it. Yes, he occasionally made mistakes. But very, very rarely.

Barty broke the rule to never change the past only once: on the 25th of December of last year, when a routine operation in Diagon ended in a bloodbath. The perpetrator was believed to be dead by her own spell. Dumbledore came to examine the scene… And in a blink of an eye, Diagon Alley was razed by a nuclear explosion. The experts later called it "58 megaton of TNT equivalent." Whatever that meant, the explosion was monstrous. Hundreds of wizards died, the goblins declared war in response to the destruction of the London Gringotts branch, London itself was gone, no one was even paying attention to muggle casualties, the Statute was bursting at the seams. A mushroom cloud followed by radioactive contamination, then all isotopes abruptly vanishing two hours later… How were they supposed to explain transfiguration to muggles? Dumbledore, who by some miracle survived the epicenter, looked white as death and refused to speak to him. Barty's own son lost his mind from the horror of the tragedy and was admitted to St. Mungo's mental ward…

After soberly assessing the situation, Barty decided that nothing could possibly make it any worse and went to the past to prevent it. He sent Moody away and convinced Dumbledore his presence was not needed. The criminal escaped, but they avoided a global catastrophe. Barty saved countless lives, and no one will ever know… But that was probably for the best.

And now he was again off to the past, by the maximum four hours. Stealing a non-standard time-turner from the Department of Mysteries to go farther back did not seem feasible. But it was all right. He will soon request it legally as the Minister.

An hour before the crime, Barty took his position 19 miles away. Covered with a mountain of concealment charms and wrapped in an invisibility cloak, he watched the site through his telescope with Lencener's glass… It cost him a fortune, but its capabilities were unparalleled.

He soon noticed four figures flying on brooms. Their concealment charms stood no chance against his precious artifact.

The figures landed, and a fifth one appeared. Logically, it was You-Know-Who. But why was he dressed in a full Death Eater uniform? And had an illusion over his wand?

They began raising wards. Barty was too far and did not attempt to eavesdrop. Visual surveillance only. You-Know-Who took off his mask. Illusion on his wand and face? Bizarre… And then You-Know-Who went under the dome alone. Since when did Dark wizards fight fairly?

Amelia's Patronus flew through the ward but was halted with some net and destroyed with Spears of Darkness.

The minutes dragged by. What was taking so long? Amelia was one of the best, but You-Know-Who should have killed her in seconds.

Barty's anxious mind was going off on stupid tangents. For instance, how great that he had the forethought not to tell anyone about the time-turner. His son was probably enough of a moron to use it for group sex and vanish in a time loop… Where did he go wrong in raising him? Worked too much? Everyone jockeyed for power but few were willing to do the work. Barty found a more elegant solution: paying for power with time instead of people's lives… His son will understand when he grows older. And his wife will get better, he will make sure of it…

Just as Barty calmed himself down, one of the wizards entered the ward dome. It started to crumble. The area beneath looked like it suffered a meteorite shower. The wizards cast Astral Cacophony and left. No, one stayed behind. You-Know-Who. Barty's eyes were glued to the Dark wizard's wand. It looked just like Dumbledore's. And Barty should know: the reports on this "Elder Wand" had been an eyesore on his desk for the past three weeks. He would fire the fools if they could be replaced… Were they really hoping for this cheap trick to fool anyone?

There was a sudden bright flash of flame next to the man, revealing a phoenix. He grabbed the bird's foot an disappeared in another flash.

And Barty Crouch Sr. started thinking. It would be easy to make a phoenix replica. But a phoenix replica with a familiar bond that fooled Lencener's glass? Nothing other than phoenixes apparated with a flame. And phoenixes couldn't stand Dark wizards… Barty could not have been under legilimency. But really, a phoenix? Could it be true? He must investigate. Request Dumbledore's wand for testing. Very carefully and politely. And just in case, edit his will to include a very valuable memory…