Chapter 82 The Storm Breaks

Since the abortive assault, the enemy had taken to harassing the defenders with barrages of spells launched at random, all hours of the day and night. It had been that way for a week. Legion observers had carefully tracked the movement of the enemy masses, prowling beyond the front gates. Whenever the enemy swept forward to harass, the Legion had stood and delivered a barrage in return.

However, the Death Eaters were crafty bastards, lighting fires to shroud the sky in smoke and ash complicating the task of the defenders. And that made the eerie silence all the eerier. No one had any doubts that this first break in almost three days of continuous harassment signaled an imminent assault on the Walls of Hogwarts.

Under Neville's guidance, Legion had shuffled forces, pulling back the injured and wounded and replacing them with as many fresh bodies as possible. Indeed, many of those now working Control were those too wounded to return to the front lines, but not completely invalidated out of action. The swift redeployment had put together Hufflepuff, Gryffindor Legionnaires together with Ravenclaw reinforcements.

A total of sixty were held in reserve in the Great Hall, ready to mobilize to wherever they were needed, but the major fighting strength of the Legion was deployed to the walls and also to reinforce the defenses as necessary. At Dumbledore's orders, the professors had spread out, doing whatever they could to support the defense. Noticeable by his unexplained absence was one Severus Snape, missing for months. The headmaster believed that Severus's nerve had finally failed and that the man had cut and run. Only a very select few knew otherwise.

Another night passed and the sun rose, its rays barely able to penetrate the fog of smoke clouds. Only silence and smoke drifted beyond the walls. Nerves were stretched taut. While the enemy had been harassing them, even with the Dragons and Dementors in the air, one could say that there was a war, or at least a battle being fought.

Now, on the afternoon of the fifth day, the defenders could hear them: Death Eaters chanting intermixed with the howls of something, the bestial grunting of Trolls and the spurts of flame from the few remaining dragons. Something shook the earth beyond the walls. The noises continued until after Dark and became more frequent through the night. The sixth day passed in silence and by noon, the smoke had begun to clear as the gathered smoke clouds gave way to oily snow and wind. However, there was precious little visible due to the poor light and visibility.

That evening, movement was spotted just inside the boar-winged gates of Hogwarts. Without hesitation, a volley was launched and there was celebration amongst the defenders because they finally had a visible enemy to take a shot at, breaking the taxing drought in the fighting. There was no return fire from the enemy. No sign that the barrage had actually hit anything. There was, however, the same pattern of distant rumbling and thunder that shook the ground.

Harry had made a short but simple speech to everyone who called the castle home. He had learned the arts of the orator well and managed to ease the tension and bolster morale slightly. He had been making regular circuits of the walls and the towers, touring the lines to raise the mood.

He was suitably impressed by the courage, discipline, and resolution of not just the Legion, but also of all those who had been left helpless and destitute by Voldemort's "New World Order." Harry knew many had proved themselves during the precursor assault and its aftermath. Though many were less than capable fighters, they had acted as runners and messengers, seen to the wounded, helped move supplies, and even make sure that there was hot food, coffee, and even tea available. They were not soldiers or fighters, but they continued to play an important role in the defense.

Despite their preparations, no one in the castle could honestly say that they were prepared for the assault when it came. It struck with the fury of a tsunami as over a thousand wands and God alone knows what else pounded the walls, shook the castle and the explosive display lit up the night sky. Precision strikes hammered and cracked the walls and fractured ramparts.

Salvo after salvo hammered them, chipping fragments the size of a human head from the face of their defenses. The fury of the assault stunned the defenders and it took them a few minutes to rally. From the wall tops, spellfire lanced down from individuals as heavier emplaced wall turrets sent beams of searing light, bolts of lighting, and sheets of flames down into the approaching mass of bodies.

The defensive fire was monumental and they fought with a gleeful fury as they addressed the cursed Army of Darkness. It felt good, to each and every defender as they fired in anger. It was with a sense of relief and absolution after all the waiting.

The scale of the slaughter was as incredible as was the rate of defensive fire: The Castle laid down a killing field some twenty meters deep outside their walls obliterating Death Eater, werewolf, vampire, and even Trolls. Hundreds fell, and yet they came forward. Later estimates would indicate at least a thousand dark wizards and beasts had fallen in the first hours of the assault. But the assault continued with overwhelming numbers fearlessly, almost mindlessly advancing over the corpses of their slain to press the attack.

Harry arrived atop the ramparts just to the West of the gates after a particularly accurate salvo of spells had taken out a section of wall. Taking command by sheer presence, he shouted orders to the defenders who relayed his commands the length of their section. He managed to reach Neville at command, and then Fleur who was coordinating the repulse along the Eastern expanse of wall.

"No casualties here," she reported via Patronus messenger, "We're hitting the bastards but they keep coming!"

"Maintain position and maintain fire! The effingus will not break. The only way to stop them is to kill them all!"

"Received!"

It was at that moment, when things shifted, "What the fuck is that?" shouted Luna, coordinating the defence with a single mindedness born of revenge. She grabbed Fluer by the shoulder and pointed down as something big stepped through the smoke as spellfire bounced off it.

It was clad in metal plate, each section covered in protective runes and charms. Strapped to its back was a large metal…something. The creature easily stood heads and shoulders above the top of the wall. "Giants! Get a message Command and Harry!" Luna nodded and did just that as Fleur ducked and ran closer to the slow-moving monstrosity, even as she checked the crystal slate in her hand for a moment, charting the thing's progress before sending a message of her own to Command."

Fleur's swan Patronus arrived and was immediately acted upon, "Senior!" Darrow Summersby was a fourth-year with his left arm strapped tight up against his chest, shattered in three places when he had taken a plummet from the wall during the opening battle, "Support Fire requested! Southern Walls: Giant!"

"Senior" in actuality third year Augustine Trentworthy, fingers danced nimbly across her slate, routing the request to an available artillery team, "Relayed."

Atop a tower, Lindsay O'Carroll digested the order, and spared a look down her omnioculars and sighted the monstrosity still plodding steadily forward, now only a few hundred meters from the wall. "Chart mark five-seven!"

The order echoed to the rest of his team, as they adjusted the positioning of the massive siege weapon, "Team 7 ready to fire!"

"Ease!" she shouted.

There had originally been twelve artillery teams scattered on towers and balconies all over the castle. They were supposed to rain down hell on to the heads of the attackers and while their opening volleys had inflicted incredible casualties at the outset of the first storm, they were running low on munitions and had been tasked only to fire when they were presented with a significant target. The heavily armored giants were just such a target. There was no doubt that if it got into range, it would be able to sweep wide swatches of the battlements clear with the tree sized flail it carried.

Only five teams were left in operation. Three had depleted their munitions stores, taken on a heft resupply, and burned through those as well. What worried them was that four other teams had been roasted apart by dragon fire. No doubt everyone was grateful the remaining winged beasts had not made another appearance even if there were spotters scanning the skies in all directions for them.

Team Seven had a half dozen quaffle bombs, each one mounted with a permanent sticking charm to a long cylinder that was basically infused with a variable number of propulsion charms - depending on how far their projectile needed to fly. So many charms going off at once tended to create a wave of overpressure that could shatter eardrums.

The single word command made sure everyone had their mouth open, to help equalize the pressure so that their eardrums did not pop as three "rockets" leapt from their launch cradle and streaked up high and then fell towards Earth like a meteor.

He watched them arc up and then slam down, smashing the monster in the chest and shoulders carving furrows and gouging the heavy metal armour. All three failed to breach. He lowered his omnioculars with a curse as his team reported that they were ready to fire again, "Ease!"

Too late.

It reached the walls and swept its massive flail from right to left and back again. From his vantage point, he could only curse loudly as over a dozen were killed or smashed from the wall top.

"Get down! Get down!" Quentin bellowed as the massive weapon literally drenched the top of wall in flailing metal strands, each as thick as a human and swiveling back and forth. Another three Legionnaires were swept to their death. Several more were crushed or filleted by the metal wire.

The Giant gripped the wall with one hand and suddenly its purpose became terrifyingly clear: It was not going to break down the wall: It was a living, breathing siege tower. The metal cube upon its back opened up like a flower, deploying ladders that reached the ground and formed a platform along the back of its shoulder, so that the arm gripping the wall formed a bridge.

Taking the initiative, Quentin vowed that no other Legionnaire in his section would perish, "Devastator Crystals!" he barked. With half a dozen of the spheres in a small bag, he primed one, dropped it in to the bag, charmed the bag and with a mighty heavy hurled it upwards. "Banisheo!"

The bag sailed through the air, and smashed the Giant a little lower than anticipated, lodging and stick fast to the juncture of its neck and outstretched arm. The Death Eaters and Effingus were streaming up the ladder and across the platform, and down its arm towards the defenders who already cut the few leading the charge to ribbons with a variety of curses. The jaw of the beast vaporized as its head snapped backwards, its arms blown apart at the shoulder as it collapsed backwards amidst the screaming, shrieking mass of Death Eaters and Trolls still hanging on to the ladders. The few that had managed to stay on the arm, found themselves swinging on a pendulum as the massive fingers refused to release the wall before they themselves took a short but fatal drop to the corpse-strewn ground.

The defenders cheered wildly at the destruction of the siege tower, "Move back in! Cover the Wall!" urged Quentin, "Legion!" His voice echoed up and down the wall courtesy of a sonorous charm, "Make the bastards bleed for every step they take!"

In the time it had taken them to repulse the single tower, six more of the living engines had crawled forward towards the walls. Unrelenting artillery fire from Teams 3, 6, and 9 had managed to cripple one, sending it crashing to the ground where it crushed at least a few dozen of the enemy horde beneath its bulk. Another had positioned itself directly in front of one of the defensive hardpoints. The creature's head was vaporized at point-blank range and also slumped lifeless to the ground.

A third reached the Gates and deployed successfully, after clearing a twenty-meter swatch of the wall of all defenders giving the Effingus and Trolls plenty of room to mount their assault. The Legionnaires of Hufflepuff stood their ground to the last but were ultimately annihilated, only to have reinforcements smash in from farther along the wall scissor in to meet them. It was a curse to hex and hand to hand, Tobias Jeffries held them with brute determination and brutality, leaving the walls choked thick with corpses of the effingus. They successfully removed the beast as a mortally wounded Tobias smashed his wand and arm through the eye of the beast to unleash a blasting hex which destroyed the creature's brain and part of its skull. The broken bone shards perforated him and he died, still clinging to the ruins of the skull. Sheena Hauke, Italian British muggle-born, slaughtered everything not wearing Legion colors atop the wall top in vengeance for the death of her boyfriend.

The fourth siege engine reached the walls east of the Gates where they had watched the fight against the other engines. The defenders banished dozens of sticking charm-coated devastator crystals at the beast. It was stopped some fifteen meters from the wall, with its arm outstretched towards the wall. In a bizarre act of physics, it would remain standing there for the remainder of the war.

The remaining two trundled forward, slow and inexorably towards Harry. Under his careful eye, the artillery teams expended every last rocket in their arsenal, gutting one completely, the spray of blood and internal organ erupting from its back.

The last, however, successfully latched on to the wall, extended its ladders and ramp and the Death Eaters howled the name of their Dark Lord and master as they surged forward. Harry had wisely ordered the battlements abandoned. And now he waited for the Death Eaters to reach the wall. "Legionnaires!" his voice a shout that echoed above the ferocity of combat, one that reached the length and breadth of the wall, into the heart, and guts of every Legionnaire, of every single person defending the Castle, "We fight against oppression! Against Tyranny! Against Darkness! Today! We show these sonsofbitches who, we. Are! We are the Light! We are Legion!"

With a whispered spell, the air crackled around him, and wings of fire sprouted from behind his shoulder blades, growing wider, larger, expanding until the entire front rank of the Legion was enveloped in their warm embrace. With suddenness, the wings flapped, the stone beneath their feet turned a bright orange-red. A phoenix rose from the stone, an axe clutched in one claw, a wand in the other. It radiated hues of red and gold, beaming down upon the defenders, an artificial sun, one that radiated a sense of righteous justice. A roaring wave of approval burst from the surrounding wizards and witches, and loud cracks burst into the air as they brandished their wands.

Harry looked around, at the thronging mass of firm, resolute, determined, and unafraid free men and women who stood by his side. A smile graced his lips for the first time in days and he turned his back on his shoulders and adopted a two-handed grip with his wand.

It was the subtlest of signals and one that every member of the Legion recognized: The coming fight was going to be as bad as it ever gets.

Virtually every Legionnaire shifted their grip to match their Commanders, and he looked around, "Well, someone has been giving away my secrets," he said with a laugh, "If you cannot maintain it, switchback, I want heroics, not stupidity."

There was some laughter, a few dry chuckles. And he looked over his shoulders at the young men and women gathered around him, then across at the battlements where the Death Eaters were now getting their feet onto the wall.

Almost in unison, over a dozen sharp snap hisses were heard as Harry himself led the charge, the flowing meter-long blade of magical energy emerging from the tip of his wand. Another episode that would go down in the history of the so-called "First Storm of Hogwarts" was about to begin.

Harry met the tide of Death Eaters and Trolls spilling from the siege engine in the narrow defiles of the battlements and ramparts of Hogwarts in a determined close combat brawl. Dozens fell to the blades of magical energy wielded like swords by the front rank of the defenders. Together, they cut a punishing line of death towards the siege Engine alongside almost forty others who flew and slew like avenging angels.

Forty against a near unending tide of the enemy, but Harry could see that they seemed to be killing the enemy as fast as they could stream across their living siege engine. He heard a yell and looked up and across the battlements to see Neville Longbottom leading a charge of some thirty or so from the far side of the battlements, effectively encircling and pinning the Death Eaters in place.

The two forces met in the middle, just shy of the reach of the giant's club. "Explosives!" hissed Harry as he deliberately stepped into the path of the Giant's club and sheared it in half, taking off several of the monsters' fingers as well. Harry led a group of four forwards, cutting off the arm of the giant. It still stood, trying desperately to swat them with the still bleeding stump of its arm. "Under the Imperius Curse," thought Harry, "That's quite a feat."

They closed with the boarding arm of the creature and Harry advanced through the enemy, his blade carving through limbs and shields as he hacked off limbs wholesale, cutting a space at the base of the offending limb. A curse penetrated the mass of bodies and struck the Legionnaire carrying the explosives full in the face. Neville managed to catch him and together with Harry they primed a single crystal, stuffed it back into the bulging bomb pouch, and tossed the corpse onto the bridge, "May his family forgive me, thought Harry as they retreated into the cover of the wall.

The first crystal detonated seconds later and a fraction of a second later, the rest of the munitions detonated as well. The beast shuddered and collapsed sideways and down, falling into the enemy gathered at its feet.

The battle had raged since dusk and now, with the snow falling with unrepentant force, and a gusting wind ripping across the battlefield, the Dark Army of Lord Voldemort retreated, leaving hundreds dead. Despite the loss of their wards, the complete exhaustion of all their fire support assets, the walls were scarred and wounded, in more than one place it had been significantly weakened and in others, fractured to the point of collapse. None of it mattered as the defenders cut down the last of the fleeing attackers.

The First Storm had been resisted.