ACT4CH53 - Fiendfyre

It slithered into view—pale, translucent, just past his waist—an eerie, skeletal parody of a human. Its form swayed in a grotesque, almost mocking rhythm, arms flailing as though unburdened by bones. It exuded no menace, yet it devoured the Fulminata Maxima like a ravenous beast feasting on its favorite treat.

“Harry,” Septima gasped, terror lacing her voice, “what did you do?”

“Nothing!” Harry snarled, his teeth clenched as he battled the rogue conjuration. “I used Binding—shaped it, created a shield of raw energy.”

But the runes, woven together in desperate synchronicity, had birthed something far stranger. Instead of a steadfast shield, Gebo’s energy had been twisted into this nightmarish, humanoid form—a fluid, responsive void that clutched at the residual Death energy, greedily absorbing the bolts of lightning. It was as if the very essence of Death had taken on a will of its own.

The only explanation was that the Death energy hadn’t been entirely spent. Yet logic balked at this impossibility—Harry had barely unleashed enough to dissipate a full Fulminata Maxima, and still this abomination persisted.

Babbling’s frantic eyes met his; she had reached the same dead-end. With a swift, desperate gesture, she sent runes erupting from the wardstones below, hurling lightning bolts that vanished into the maw of the creature faster than Ron’s dinner after Quidditch practice. The thing wobbled like a flimsy curtain in a storm, yet it remained immovable.

And then… the air around it began to lose colour.

“What’s going on?” Septima demanded, her voice quivering with fear.

“Death’s misbehaving,” Harry shot back, frustration boiling over.

“Is that supposed to be funny?” she retorted, raising her wand and casting her patronus. A dazzling white, spectral chimpanzee erupted out of it and whisked out of the room, likely to find Dumbledore.

“Not at all,” he snapped, cutting off the power, though it made no difference. “It’s not drawing any more of my energy. It just… is. And it’s neutering the ambient magic in the air. It will keep guzzling the ambient magic in the air so long as it exists!”

“That makes no sense!” Septima hissed, hastily conjuring a warded conduit to siphon off the cleansed energy into another wardstone. The strained magic pulsed around her like a desperate heartbeat.

“We’re watching Death and Binding tango with a new metastable energy form,” Harry scoffed. “Logic left the building ages ago. Keep throwing spells at it—maybe we can figure out its next move.”

“Can’t you just undo it?” she pleaded.

“I’m fresh out of unreasonable miracles, woman!” he bellowed. Rune-casting with Family Magic was one thing; reversing it was like trying to swim up a cascading waterfall, battling not just the current but gravity itself. And Harry, with all his achievements, was still a freshman in this deadly dance.

All he could say for sure was that this little abomination would suck the magic dry out of Hogwarts and turn it into a world of grayscale. 

“We need to overload it with magic,” he finally said, desperation threading his words. “Feed it more until it disperses.”

“Brilliant, Harry,” Babbling retorted bitterly, her wand trembling in both hands. “Only the wardstone’s already on its last legs!”

“I thought you said the wardstone is full!” Aurora roared.

“I can—just not reverse it!” Babbling snapped back. “Nobody warned this death doll that it was meant to vanish! It’s guzzling magic faster than the wardstone can supply!”

Fleur’s steady presence fought to keep the wardstone from cracking under the strain. 

“But it’s just energy,” Vector wailed. “It should just fade!”

“Well, it bloody isn’t!” Harry yelled back.

His heart pounded as he watched the chaos spiral out of control. The wardstone that had empowered the entire workshop letting out a large crackling sound and shattering was just the first sign of trouble. Fleur’s timely Protego saved both of them from being hurled away, but Bathsheda was down to her knees, her body slack and nearly spent, but her wand remained firmly in her hand, vibrating violently as she kept pouring every bit of her power to dissipate the growing horror.

But the sock puppet was relentless. The aura of grayscale around it continued to swell — monochromatic vines of despair, and pale, unyielding light crawling out like a suffocating shroud over the room. Each passing moment felt like an eternity to Harry, the silent horror of its expansion etching dread into his very soul.

Meanwhile, the grayscale was growing steadily, and his attempts to Bind it less than useful given how effortlessly the deathly abomination was sucking in the ambient magic like a black hole. And Binding, Family Magic or otherwise, was Magic, and thus, vulnerable to Death.

“WHAT IS THAT THING?” Septima screamed. Harry could vaguely hear Fleur’s desperate breaths as she attempted to push back. Babbling was groaning, and spasming, the horror bleeding her dry, while Aurora Sinistra was trapped and cornered by the pale tendrils, as she relentlessly and vainly kept casting kinetic spells, vying for escape.

And Harry was locked there, in the heart of it.

Unable to get out.

Unable to Bind the horror.

Unable to protect anyone.

This was it. This was the end. A sight began to form before his eyes, something from a half-remembered dream. 

Shattered ruins marring the hillside, an arid wasteland overlooking a ghost town, broken and husky and rotten to shreds, lying forgotten for eons…

Sounds of people screaming, places exploding, decomposing, anguish and despair echoing across the lands…

A rotten, decrepit Hogwarts, collapsing under its own weight, with dead bodies sprawled all over the floor, the stench of stale body odour mixed with the languid, arrhythmic pulsing of corpses filled with maggots…

A pair of blue eyes, a body rotting and filled with maggots, her intestines carved out and ribcage on open display….

A mess of dirty golden hair, half-torn, with a marred face, with insects crawling in the empty eyeballs….

“You killed me, Harry Potter. You killed us all!”

“‘E is too obstinate! A fraud, who’s neither of Death, nor of La Magique!”

No, Harry gritted his teeth, the memory of the future Ignotus had shown him. I won’t let that happen!

Desperation clawed at him. His eyes darted frantically at the advancing horror and everyone else. Every instinct screamed that the odd resilience of this eldritch conjuration lay not in some invisible, unexplainable power source, but in something simple. He could drop his pathetic attempts to bind it, and instead, attempt to dissolve it with the might of Summer, and the result would be just as pathetic. No, there was something else going on.

Think, he told himself. Use that conniving brain that everyone fears. Use it and for once, figure things out before it’s too late.

The Death runes had gone vacant, so there was no energy influx, and yet, the conjuration looked nowhere ready to dissipate. It was almost like something had rendered the Death spell immune to magic, as if it would stay there permanently until some condition….

The realisation hit him like a ton of bricks. 

Permanence.

He remembered, how, in a desperate bid to counter the godlike Ekrizdis, he had imbued the Peverell thestral with a complex schematic, casting it into a state of Permanence — a state that didn’t just resist change, but refused to acknowledge the concept of change at all. It couldn’t be broken, transfigured, enchanted, or even decayed. It could not manipulate anything, and nothing could manipulate it.

…at least so long as the normal rules were holding.

Unable to understand the concept of progression, the Death sock-puppet was a permanent fixture in reality and would remain as such until they were no longer ‘permanent’ or until a magical existence of some sort disrupted the magic that held them up in the first place. Even the ambient natural energy could not dispel it, or even if it could, the rate of such degeneration would be so low that it didn’t even matter.

At least, that was the theory. But reality barely ever adjusted itself perfectly to theoretical equations. Scale was always a factor, as was the degree of opposition faced by the Permanence involved. Ekrizdis had been locked into permanent stasis by Binding him to the Peverell thestral, to Death itself, so undoing his permanence would mean to go against Death itself. It was a scale far, far greater than dealing with just a single speck of Death energy conjured by a group of runes.

Something that surpassed the might of that energy would definitely be able to shatter past those limits. In which case…

“Bathsheda! Professor Vector! We need a Diabolis spell!”

“What?” asked Septima Vector. “Are you crazy, Harry? It just ate through multiple —”

“Fulminata Maxima, I know. It wouldn’t matter if they were Fulminata Horribilis, We need a Diabolis spell. Only the raw power of the Anima can shatter the permanence this thing is imbued with.”

“Permanence…” Vector trailed off, the light in her eyes quickly catching up to the implications. “But, Harry, I can’t! I’ve never managed a Diabolis spell.”

“Nor have I!” Aurora lamented. “I’ve steered clear of anything to do with the Abstract!”

Babbling just groaned on the floor.

“What iz it?” Fleur demanded, voice trembling with urgency. “How do we cast it?”

“Forget it!” Septima roared, frustration and fear colliding. “If she’s never cast it before, she cannot cast it now of all times! We’ve got to think of another way! Dumbledore! Someone summon him!”

Aurora, undeterred by the chaos, unleashed her fiercest Reducto at the growing tendrils. The spell vanished into its ravenous core, swallowed whole, as she fired off another after another. Yet nothing seemed to faze the abomination—only its eerie, ceaseless dance continued, a macabre performance against the backdrop of their crumbling defenses.

Suddenly, an idea fought its way into Harry’s mind like a spark in a maelstrom. He stole a glance at Fleur—watching the way her wand trembled uncontrollably as the voracious vacuum of power tugged at her very soul. Her magic, so raw and unrefined, was merging with Babbling’s desperate efforts, devouring their will in a frenzy of uncontrolled energy. In that chaotic moment, he remembered the odd sensation he’d felt the first time he saw her after returning to Hogwarts from Azkaban. There was something uncanny in the veela’s magical constitution—a secret darkness that even Fleur had once confided to him after his birthday party.

A crushing sense of shame seized him. He knew exactly what he was about to do, and it was a deed that would forever scar his conscience—a betrayal of every principle he’d ever held dear.

“It’s dark magic,” he declared, voice raw and unsteady. “It feeds on your most primal desires—lust, envy, wrath, greed. It dredges up that forbidden darkness inside you and lures you in. Most can’t stomach it, they recoil from its touch. But some… those that have brushed against true darkness, have the strength to absorb it.”

In that moment, as he met Fleur’s gaze, an unspoken understanding passed between them. In her eyes, he saw the flicker of terrible memories and the glint of forbidden power, both horror and ecstasy intermingling in a dangerous dance.

Maybe it was her flaring Allure that was throwing her emotions at him, or maybe he was accidentally Listening to her, but he could visualize the memory, recall the words she had once whispered—a confession of torment and pleasure intertwined.

“...his mind was shattering, he was screaming in agony, and yet he kept on thrusting. His mind was wrought with the horror of being unmade, his soul was screaming as I drank upon its despair. I didn't even know when his body had stopped moving in helpless acquiescence to his desires, when his lifeforce had flickered like a candle…” 

And with the words came the real memory. Harry saw it, saw Fleur as the monster she always feared she would eventually become, saw her slowly drag the very fabric of that unsuspecting student who didn’t even know what fate was about to befall him.

“....it. Was. Orgasmic. I had never felt such pleasure. That last scream of pure horror, that realisation that his life was getting crushed, the terror of drowning in ecstasy. It was sweeter than honey. It burned me, like firewhiskey, made me feel euphoric!"

The veela went still.

“How do you cast it?” she asked coldly. It was not a yell or cry, but everyone could still hear it despite everything going on.

Harry choked, knowing what she was going through, what he had just done to her. “Your choice of elemental spell, followed by the Diabolica suffix. No wand movement. The mindset… is all that matters.”

She looked up right then, and something in that gaze froze Harry in his tracks. At first, there was a subtle tremor in the air, a barely perceptible shiver that rippled over her skin. Then, as if some dark, internal trigger had been unleashed, her features contorted in a raw, brutal dance of transformation. 

Her limbs elongated. Her skin shimmered, giving away with a cascade of iridescent feathers. The human Fleur he had known vanished, replaced by something wild and ancient — a veela in avian form.

Every detail was visceral. Her eyes, once warm and inviting, now burned with a feral amber glow, as if lit from within by an untamable inferno. It was beautiful, it was terrifying, it was alluring and repulsive at the same time — a savage reweaving of flesh and spirit that defied all the order he thought he understood. It was as though she was tearing apart the very fabric of her humanity, exposing the raw, predatory power that lurked beneath.

His breath caught as he sensed the surge of memories, the dark emotions that haunted her, the echoes of the terrible, ecstasy-laced consumption that he had forced her to remember. He could almost hear her silent screams, feel the intense agony and pleasure that had seared her soul. It was a power that should have broken her, but instead, it fueled her, transforming that monstrous memory into something potent, and destructive.

Then it happened.

“INCENDIO DIABOLICA!”

And with that, Fleur unleashed Flame. 

Despite his own choices, Harry still held Fire as the all-time best of the elements. It had pure destructive power, as well as the ability to purify dark magic. 

Emotion was fire. Passion was fire. And it was alive. It ate, it breathed, it hated. It was dramatic, hot, dangerous and most importantly, deadly easy to summon. Plus, there was something primal about it, something evolution put deep in us that made living beings unconsciously fear fire, to flinch from it knowing that if we went too close, we would be burned. 

Quite naturally, Harry couldn’t help but step back, flinching as torrents of searing heat exploded forth, a living, demonic inferno that carved through the air with a roar that seemed to shake the very ground beneath them. The raw, hellish blaze twisted and surged with an intelligence of its own, clashing with the chaotic Death spell. 

His ears were popping and protesting against the violent pressure as the two spells collided, and hurt to keep his eyes open in the madness.

Quite naturally, he accepted it as the price of this miracle.

With every bit of his being, he crafted a net of Binding all around the erratic spell, struggling to encase it along with Fleur’s Fiendfyre. It was an insanely stupid and risky thing to do, for just like Death was the great devourer of everything, Fiendfyre was a tyrant of an energy spell. There was no hope of trying to put the genie back into the bottle once released. And even less hope of trying to tame it in the first place. It would surge and keep on surging until the object it had been summoned to destroy was utterly eradicated, and even then, it was extremely difficult to tame it afterwards. The best option was to either create a vacuum to kill off the flame and ensure it held against its demonic wrath, or create another Diabolis of the opposing element to counter it.

Back against Sue Li’s conjuration, Harry had unleashed a Glacias Diabolis, which had taken the form of an ice-drake. Sue Li had been an amateur, and the only reason she had been able to cast it was due to the Diadem’s influence. But Fleur was different. Fleur was a creature of Flame. Her affinity for the fire element was titanic enough to cast a shadow on the best wizard pyromancer out there. Between the recent Anima outburst, Fleur’s transformation, and the dark emotions Harry had forced her to feel, it was unlikely she would be stopping anytime soon.

The paper-thin gray tendrils kept wobbling, its arms flailing madly like a hung shirt flapping in a gale, refusing to vanish.

“I 'AVE 'AD ENOUGH OF YOU!”

Fleur’s Fiendfyre roared alongside her, its demonic conflagration morphing further, shaping into chimeras, basilisks, serpents, phoenixes — all of them screeching and making sounds that no human should ever hear, and struck at the insane horror.

In that unholy brilliance, even Death burned.

Harry stood at the edge of the collision, his heart still hammering from the chaos moments before. Through the smoke and the lingering tang of burnt magic, he could feel the remnants of the Death puppet, its malignance now little more than a charred scar upon the stone floor, burnt by the relentless fury of Fleur’s fiendfyre. The flames, now spet, glowed with a dull light, its once-fiery vigor reduced to smouldering embers reflecting the scorched walls of the room.

But Harry only had eyes for one person.

“Fleur,” he whispered, moving towards the veela that was down on the floor on all fours, her avian form contorted and spent, her wings drooping as the last vestiges of her fury died within her. She was silent now, her ferality now replaced by a hollow stillness that spoke of exhaustion and lingering pain. Her eyes were closed, as if reluctant slumber, a reminder of the terrible price she had to pay to summon that force of destruction. He tried to help her up, but she pulled away.

“Don’t!”

His hand froze.

Fleur slowly lifted her face, her eyes never meeting his. “Zat spell… it should be unforgivable.”

“Yeah well, it does have a few useful uses and you don’t need to be a psychopath to cast it,” said Harry blandly, masking the awe he had felt at Fleur’s power. He was remarkably certain he could have countered it with his own Glacius, but he was a special case drawing power from the Family Magic. For a first-time user, Fleur’s use of Fiendfyre was good, too good, in fact.

“But I guess you won’t care about that bit of Dark Arts trivia right now, what matters is that the Death spell is gone and….” He trailed off, looking at the site of impact. “Ah, I guess I should’ve seen that coming.”

“Aren’t zose—” Fleur began.

“Yes.”

‘But aren’t they born from —”

“Yes.”

“But of that size?”

“At the risk of repeating myself, also yes,” said Harry, staring at the three glowing monstrosities on the floor. Easily ten feet in length, their forms sculpted out of swirlish ash and lingering amber, the ashwinders rose like dark phantoms. Each was immense, their bodies broad and sinuous, their slow, undulating motions mimicking a strange, fluid dance with the smoke. 

“Ashwinders,” Harry recognized. “Weird. The last time, it produced fire and frost salamanders, so why Ashwinders this time?”

“Because,” came a voice on the doorway. “It was a clash between opposing elements of fire and ice, and both managed to overwhelm each other. This time, the flames likely burned their target and perished, and ashwinders were born in its wake.”

Harry spun around, and found Newton Scamander standing at the doorway, next to Albus Dumbledore. 

“Professor Dumbledore, and Professor Scamander,” said Harry, standing up. “You—”

“Why is it, Harry Potter, that every single time I am away from the castle, you end up facing a unique, magical battle? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you actually plan this ahead,” said Dumbledore with a straight face. His eyes, though, twinkled merrily.

‘It’s like Professor McGonagall would put it: sheer, dumb luck,” said Harry. “I’m not sure if it classifies as good or bad luck though.”

“I don’t know about you, but it’s definitely good for me,” said Newt with a laugh. “First those salamanders, and now ashwinders. You’re a reservoir for unique magical creatures, Potter. Maybe I should set you up with some apothecaries?”

Harry rolled his eyes. After the news of the fire and frost-dwelling salamanders went public, he had been harangued by several students, whose families were invested in apothecaries or in the business of trading magical ingredients. Apparently, Salamander blood had powerful restorative and healing abilities, and the more unique and powerful the flame, the more potent its effects.

These ashwinders, born from the clash of Fleur’s Fiendfyre and Death, would likely be no different.

The Headmaster and the Care-Of-Magical-Creatures professor stepped into the half-scorched room, casting quick Reparos, and helping the other professors get up. The two wardstones from earlier had completely fractured, and would need replacing, but the sink was still intact. He’d have to check in later about the energy they had ended up draining away. Between the lightning spells and the Fiendfyre, the cleansed energy should have been significant.

“Really, Potter, if you ever get tired from your endless adventures, you could use your powers to conjure elemental creatures and make a killing on them. It’s good business.”

Harry gave him a lopsided grin. “I do hope that day comes soon. I’m overdue for a holiday.”

“You might need to hold strong for a little more, dear boy,” said Albus Dumbledore. “There are still a couple of trials ahead. In fact, I was at the Ministry just for that, when I received Professor Vectors’ patronus. “The Wizengamot has declared an emergency session just to sort things where you are concerned.”

“I thought I already made my position clear in the ICW meeting,” said Harry, frowning.

“You have, and more,” said Dumbledore. “While that might have quelled some of them, there are others that still have their doubts about you. And those that don’t, want to use you. Unfortunately, our Wizengamot does not lack in either faction.”

“Great, more politics!” Harry groaned. He really should stop voicing his desire for a stress-free holiday. The universe was seemingly taking that as a literal challenge. 

“Sheep fear wolves,” said Fleur. “Zat is what Maman would say.”

Harry gave her an expression that lay between amusement and exasperation. “She would, wouldn’t she? What else would she say?”

“Zat it is appropriate they do so,” came the blunt reply. “L’Angleterre has acquired a lion’s share of annoyance from ze the ICW for what happened at Azkaban. Yet you ‘ave claimed a powerful position for yourself, ‘Arry. Ze Gatekeeper of Azkaban Gate.”

“I didn’t ask for it,” Harry retorted.

“But you still ‘ave it. Tell me you don’t zink zat the safest hands to ‘andle zis power are yours?”

This time Harry had no refutal, so he settled for glaring.

“Zere are many zat think you are ‘iding something powerful at Azkaban Gate. Zat is why you don’t want ze ICW there. Because you want to claim it for yourself.”

“Really? That’s what you think?”

“Doesn’t matter. I might ask ze question, but everyone zere is already thinking about it. Go on, Professor Dumbledore, tell me I am wrong!”

Dumbledore settled for a grim expression.

“Let’s face it, ‘Arry,” said Fleur, who looked like she wasn’t backing down any time soon. “Zey are afraid of you. It is more favorable to you than if they actually knew whether you had something hidden away at Azkaban.”

“Armour myself with their doubts, then?”

“Yes. Zey are pressing for zis meeting means zey are desperate. So don’t step back, and throw your own demands, and see how they react.”

“I’m beginning to see why your mother made you her heir, Miss Delacour,” said Dumbledore. “Despite your obvious differences, you’re remarkably alike.”

Fleur looked like she didn’t know whether to feel complimented or insulted.

She… settled for being insulted.

“But she is right,” continued Dumbledore, turning to Harry. “Regardless of your wishes, Harry, you are a powerful and polarising figure. You can either use this to dictate actions for this nation, become a glorified slave, or turn into the nation’s Enemy Number One.”

Harry didn’t have a response for that either.

Silence fell.

Sirius wasn’t there anymore.

Not until he found a way to bring him back.

Joshua, Andi, and the others would be there. But at the end of the day, it would really come down to just him.

Against the Wizengamot, and by proxy, against the ICW.

That was intimidating.

“Alright,” he said. “When is this Merlin-damned meeting?”

“Tomorrow.”