The moment they stepped outside the protective ward, Rey and Helena clasped hands tightly and charged forward.
The tide of elves hadn't completely closed back in yet. If they didn't cover some distance now, they would be swallowed by the swarm and separated.
Most adult wizards could fly, either by broom or spell, but taking to the air here meant immediate exposure.
A flying target against a clear night sky would attract concentrated fire. Once that happened, survival would become nearly impossible.
Their immediate goal was simple: punch through the encirclement and locate the summoning circles from the perimeter.
The five team members all had their own agendas. Aside from Rey and Helena, the concept of "cooperation" didn't exist for the others.
To prevent being torn apart by the converging mob, Rey and Helena held each other close, moving rapidly. As for the rest of the "team," Rey trusted they would find their own ways to survive.
The crowd of elves was like a tidal wave. Before the scorched earth from Madam Hooch's firestorm could even cool, the chattering, screeching creatures had reclaimed it.
Under Disillusionment Charms, the five wizards were invisible, but physically colliding with the dense crowd revealed their positions immediately. However, adding five invisible bodies to a chaotic swarm of fifty thousand barely registered.
A few elves nearby looked confused when they bumped into something unseen, but in the crush of bodies, the confusion was quickly forgotten.
The elves were like ants, and the Black Prison Wizards commanding them were like soldier ants interspersed among the workers. Hogwarts, meanwhile, was a golden cicada that had lost its wings.
Ants are small, but their numbers are endless. The cicada is large, but trapped on the ground, it would eventually be overwhelmed and devoured.
Rey's team was the external reinforcement—the force meant to plug the anthill.
Their role was critical.
---
Apparition!
The moment Rey and Helena were squeezed out of the densest part of the crowd, they wanted to use Apparition to escape quickly.
But the constant, massive explosions of magical energy destabilized the local space. Apparating under these conditions was suicide.
Apparition requires a relatively stable environment. Otherwise, the risk of splinching—or worse, being torn apart by spatial turbulence—is astronomically high. If one could just blink away at the first sign of danger in a battlefield, magical warfare as they knew it wouldn't exist.
The wards inside Hogwarts restricted Apparition. Helena's ability to teleport back from the Vatican earlier was due to a specialized potion brewed by Salazar Slytherin.
That potion was a one-time-use item. Using it consecutively caused permanent physical damage and increased the failure rate exponentially.
This was why the team hadn't just teleported to a safe distance from inside the castle before circling back.
Left arm shielding Helena, right hand gripping his wand.
Rey pushed and shoved, using bursts of non-verbal magic to create a force field that gently deflected the elves blocking their path or threatening to crash into them.
These elves were ugly, but unlike Dobby in the future movies, they had no redeemable qualities.
There was no kindness in them. Only malice, cursing, and the rhythmic hurling of spells at the towering wards of Hogwarts.
Rage fueled them. Viciousness was their nature. Apart from their appearance, they bore no resemblance to the subservient creatures of the future.
" Nubes Obscura! "
Waving his wand while Helena handled the physical defense, Rey cast a spell that had absolutely no offensive capability.
Pointing his wand at the sky, a streak of black magical energy shot upward with a soft whoosh.
Using pure dark magic to cast a black spell at night was effectively like using invisible ink. No one could see black energy against a black sky. Even if someone sensed a magical disturbance, it was just a vague feeling.
In this chaotic, noisy environment, even the Four Founders wouldn't be able to track every spell cast.
Every ten meters of difficult progress, Rey would point his wand at the sky and cast Nubes Obscura—"Dark Clouds." He had learned this weather charm from Raphael during his boredom in the Sixth Circle of Hell. He'd had a theory about it back then, but he never expected to use it so soon.
Before long, thick clusters of unnatural storm clouds began to gather in the sky, blotting out the cold moonlight completely.
One hour later.
Rey was still deep within the sea of elves. They had only made it halfway through the encirclement.
Too slow. Too difficult. And far too draining on their stamina.
---
The night grew darker. Between the flashes of spellfire, the darkness seemed heavier, more oppressive.
Rey took several deep breaths, steadying himself amidst the press of bodies. The critical moment had arrived.
Ready.
As a fresh wave of elf magic hammered the Hogwarts wards, Rey pointed his wand straight up. With a roar, he channeled 120% of his magical power into a single spell:
" Avada Kedavra! "
A thick bolt of ink-green lightning erupted from the crowd, shooting straight into the heavens.
The bolt was massive. As it connected with the clouds above, it looked less like a spell and more like a punishment from the gods.
BOOM!
The thunderclap was deafening. By the time anyone looked, it was impossible to tell if the green lightning had shot up from the ground or struck down from the sky.
The curse slammed into the magically induced storm clouds. The impact destabilized the charged atmosphere. Real lightning, branching like roots of a great tree, instantly spread through the cloud layer.
The sky was already thick with dark clouds. When one cluster ignited into a thunderstorm under the magical impact, the others followed suit in a chain reaction.
A dense, terrifying web of lightning formed directly overhead.
The rolling thunder drowned out the screeching of the elves and the explosions of their spells.
Earlier, while moving through the crowd, Rey had used Transfiguration to create dozens of iron rods, scattering them discreetly among the enemy ranks.
The magical impact triggered real lightning, and the iron rods on the ground acted as lightning rods.
The thunder grew more intense. Even the frenzied elves stopped their attacks, looking up in fear.
The sky was too bright, the lightning too aggressive.
And just as they looked up, the storm broke.
Lightning began to hammer the ground like artillery fire.
Crack! Boom!
Explosions rang out endlessly, accompanied by the sound of earth and rock being blasted into the air.
---
There were only a few dozen iron rods, but the lightning strikes numbered in the hundreds.
Bolts of electricity rained down. Screams of agony filled the air. The smell of ozone mixed with the sickening scent of burnt flesh.
The storm was so intense it looked as if Thor himself was standing on the clouds, raining judgment down to aid Hogwarts.
Elves wailed as they were incinerated or blasted apart. Even the Black Prison Wizards commanding them weren't spared; many were struck down in the chaos.
Standing on a distant hilltop, Cardinal Alofman's eyes went wide. He watched the devastation unfold, struggling to believe what he was seeing.
Only now did his arrogance crack. He began to re-evaluate his opponents: the Four Founders of Hogwarts.
After enduring a relentless siege for hours, their first counterattack was this sharp, this devastating.
However, even a counterattack this powerful couldn't shake the foundation of an army numbering in the tens of thousands.
The lightning killed many, but against the endless tide of elves, it was a drop in the bucket.
There were too many of them. Unimaginably many. And despite the carnage, their numbers were still growing.
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