Chapter 38.5- Doom Days

The sand smothered the fire but Voldemort was not done. He fired a killing curse at Dumbledore when the man should not have been playing attention, but the old man willed the sand to his defence and it blocked the killing curse, stopping it in its tracks by smothering it just the way it had smothered the flames.

The Dark Lord, irritated and allowing it to visibly show on his face began a spell chain that even I struggled to recognise. Curse after curse flowed from his wand, each one sizzling as it tore through the air. Three cures passed before I recognised an Egyptian necrosis curse from the Black library, and another four passed before the Peruvian blindness curse I’d come across a few days ago showed itself. He unleashed close to two dozen curses, and I only recognised three of them.

For Dumbledore on the other hand, it was like he was taking a stroll down memory lane. Every spell Voldemort sent was matched with a perfect counter curse. Both men were solent as the grave letting their magic speak for them as a hush built around the alley, only broken by the hisses, clatters, and clacks the spells made contact with each other. Curse against counter curse as Dumbledore matched his Dark other with all ease of a teacher schooling a student.

With a growl, Voldemort wrenched his wand, breaking the stream of curses and creating a fire whip he sent at the headmaster. The old man with a wave of his own wand, sent sand that wrapped around the whip as it came for him. Voldemort flicked the wand of Yew to return the fire whip to his side where it coiled around him for a second before turning into a cobra that sprang at the headmaster in a flicker of motion, so fast it was. Faster even, the headmaster’s reflexes were as he turned the serpent to dust in the time it took to cross the distance. Both men watched each other. Voldemort must have been doing his best to hie it, but even I could see the wariness on his face. Dumbledore, in contrast, was unflappable.

Voldemort had fired some of his best at the old man and the old man had simply borne them without complaint. And then the dynamic changed once more with the headmaster springing into the attack. His sand, somehow made even more plentiful in the time since the fiendfyre was put down rose like a tsunami and swept down upon the Dark Lord.

Not, just him however, it went for all the death eaters and people behind him. At least it tried to, as they all disappeared in a whirl of space that marked a tandem portkey’s activation. That was the end of the memory, I noticed as I found myself returned to the Room of Requirements.