Ellie knocked on the door of her head of house's office at exactly the appropriate time, and settled in to wait. Not that she had long to wait — she'd hardly been standing there for two seconds before a call of, 'Come in, Miss Potter,' came from the other side. She opened the door and stepped inside, closing it softly again behind her.

Of the two offices Severus kept this was the nicer one, the one he used when he didn't want to intimidate or creep out the person he was meeting with. So it was mostly only Slytherins or parents of Slytherins who ever saw the inside, honestly. Dark-but-warm red-tinted woods, comfortable arm chairs, a low fire crackling moodily, bookshelves stacked to bursting with titles in various languages. Not a bad place.

Making her way to the chairs in front of the desk, she glanced to the side with no little curiosity. What the hell was Umbridge doing here? By the slight tension in how Severus was sitting behind his desk, she knew the woman hadn't been invited. The Ministry stooge had shown a bit of interest in her toward the beginning of the year, sure — rather hostile interest. But as Ellie had continued to treat her with nothing more than respectful indifference, hardly reacting to her incessant insults and threats against the Headmaster, she'd quickly gone back to treating her as any other student. Almost better than the average student, to be honest: when, after hitting herself with a calming charm, Ellie had asked her to stop calling Maïa a mudblood, she'd apologised and never said it again. It was bloody weird. Of course, she was mostly nice to Slytherins from Noble Houses, and it was hardly like Ellie was her favourite student, but it was still weird.

She could only assume Umbridge had assumed she'd be standing with the Headmaster in his stubborn little temper tantrum against the Ministry. The woman obviously hadn't done her research.

She'd even been invited to join that idiotic Inquisitorial Squad of hers. Begged off with the excuse she had revising to do for the OWLs — honestly, she didn't understand how people could need to revise for exams — which Umbridge had accepted with as much grace as the woman seemed capable of. Had no idea what Umbridge was trying to do with that nonsense, but honestly she couldn't figure out the point of this little tyranny going on here, and she'd just stopped caring a while ago. Really just ignoring it by now.

After a muttering of 'Professor' with a nod at each Severus and Umbridge, she slung her bag over the back of a chair, and settled in. Oh, right, not just here with Severus. She sighed in her head, careful not to make any actual noise with it, and crossed her legs and sat up all proper and shite. Ergh, stupid bitch.

She knew from the way Severus was watching her that he knew how uncomfortable she was, and was amused by it. She couldn't say exactly how she knew that — it didn't show on his face or nothing — but she knew. His voice conspicuously flat, he said, 'On time yet again, Miss Potter. Continue being so punctual and I may actually grow to expect it of you.' Not addressing Umbridge's presence, then. All right.

Only long practice kept her from rolling her eyes. 'Daphne can be very distracting. I guess I've just gotten better at ignoring her when I have to be somewhere.'

She wasn't looking that direction, but she still didn't miss Umbridge shifting in her seat somewhat. She knew from occasional hints Umbridge dropped that she didn't approve of such things, but the woman hadn't said a word against their relationship specifically, so Ellie had remained tactfully silent herself. No point opening what she knew would be an annoying argument, after all.

By the tightness around his lips as his eyes flicked for only an instant in Umbridge's direction, Severus hadn't missed it either. Oh, don't let him start it... 'On to business, then.' Severus pulled a parchment folder from seemingly nowhere, flipped it open on his desk. 'Since a few months into second year, your marks have been consistently excellent.' She fought not to look sheepish — she hadn't exactly applied herself in class at first, bad habit from her time at the Dursleys, but she'd quickly turned around when Severus had called her into this very office early in second year to verbally eviscerate her for it. Being yelled at by a dark sorcerer can be quite motivating. 'I would be astounded if you did not do well enough in all your OWLs to advance into sixth-year classes in whatever subject you like.'

He continued without leaving any sort of pause for her to respond — not that she'd especially been planning to. 'However, taking everything would be a waste of time. It would make sense to streamline your efforts. Last we discussed the topic, you had no particular thoughts of what you would like to do after Hogwarts, but that was some time ago. Have you had any ideas since?'

'Well...' She glanced at Umbridge again quick. She wasn't sure if saying this in front of Umbridge was a great idea, but, come to think of it, she didn't see how there was anything serious Umbridge could do with the information. Even assuming she would if she could, which Ellie would give even odds. Still not sure how to predict Umbridge half the time. 'I have had some thoughts, actually.' Severus raised an eyebrow slightly. 'Well, I'll be taking my family's seat in the Wizengamot eventually, of course, but I don't think doing it right away is a good idea. By that point I doubt I'd have the experience and knowledge necessary to make a good showing of myself.'

'That is probably an accurate assumption.'

'Right.' She shrugged a little, glanced at Umbridge again. 'You know I've been playing around with enchanting in my free time.'

Umbridge spoke for the first time, her habitually girlish voice somewhat reproachful. 'You are aware unlicensed enchanting is unlawful?'

Severus turned to give her an unimpressed sort of look. 'If she were selling enchanted objects to other people without a license, you would be correct. Conducting experiments in private or enchanting devices for her own use, so long as she breaks no other laws, are both permitted under regulations as they currently stand.' His eyes flicked back to Ellie. 'I assume you haven't been selling anything you've enchanted.' It wasn't really a question.

She still had to think about that for a split second. 'No, I haven't.' It only counted as a sale if she accepted anything in exchange — she was pretty sure giving away custom enchanted objects for free was still perfectly fine, even without a license. Not that she would have admitted to anything illegal in front of Umbridge in any case, but the easy hesitation as she thought about it looked good anyway.

'I didn't mean to accuse you, Miss Potter,' Umbridge said, the reproachfulness replaced with an extra dose of sugariness. 'I was simply hoping to ensure you were aware of legalities involved in such things. We wouldn't want to give anyone the wrong idea, would we?'

A part of her was reluctant to believe Umbridge, but that would be a reasonable thing for someone without ulterior motives to do. So she just nodded.

Severus nudged them back on topic. 'So, you've been considering studying to be an enchantress, then.'

'Artificer, actually.'

Head tilting slightly, the barest look of surprise crossed Severus's face. Not too unusual, she guessed — it is a somewhat rarer and more difficult qualification. Not by a lot, but somewhat. 'Well.' He glanced down at the folder in front of him again. 'If I remember correctly, most master artificers will only accept candidates with advanced background in Charms and Runes, of course, but also Arithmancy and almost always Transfiguration. Most do not require Defence, but they certainly wouldn't look unkindly on it, and any Dark Arts licensure you end up with in the next couple years can only help you.'

Umbridge shifted in her chair slightly again at the reminder that Ellie was in a Dark Arts apprenticeship under Severus at the moment, but she didn't say anything.

'All of those,' Severus said, continuing as though he hadn't noticed, 'I would be surprised to see anything but an O. Your marks in Transfiguration are the weakest of the five, but I would be absolutely shocked if you don't at least get an E, which is all you really need. So far as other classes go, there would be little point to continuing your studies in History, Herbology, or Astronomy. If you're still revising for any of those three at this late date, I would suggest you simply not bother.'

It was entirely impossible to not smile a little at that.

'As far as Potions goes, that is your choice. It is not your best class—' He only sounded slightly bitter. '—but your work is good enough to earn an O in the OWL. There are a few artificers who also have advanced knowledge of alchemy. Some of the best, in fact. However, that is a lot of work — that would involve all the educational background and qualifications of an enchanter, a spellcrafter, and an alchemist, so it is not a path commonly taken. I would suggest finishing the NEWT Potions course, then decide at a later date if studying alchemy appeals to you. It would be easier to get your NEWT now than to have to go back to intermediate potions should you develop an interest in alchemy later in life.

'So,' he said, flipping the folder closed, 'that is my recommendation. Charms, Runes, Arithmancy, Transfiguration, Defence, Potions. I don't foresee you having any problems in any of those six, but you may like to prioritise Transfiguration and Arithmancy just in case. In the latter half of your seventh year, we can discuss how you should go about pursuing the masteries and licensures necessary, but I don't expect any problems there.' He added, a tinge of humour on his voice, 'There are advantages to fame, after all.'

It was entirely impossible to not roll her eyes at that.

Within a couple minutes she was leaving the room. She checked the time quick, decided the girls would probably still be in the library, so started that way. Somewhat to her surprise, she wasn't even out of the dungeons yet when she caught up with Umbridge, who had left some minutes ahead of Ellie. She was standing off to the side of the hallway, shuffling through that stupid bag of hers, as riotously pink as everything else. God, she dressed like such a psychopath. Ellie watched her for a moment before shrugging it off. It was weird Umbridge was still down here, but whatever. She passed Umbridge to continue on down the hall.

She barely even felt the curse coming.

The world snapped back into existence around her with the familiar adrenaline rush of a revival charm, and Ellie immediately set to berating herself. Cursed in the back with hardly noticing. Severus would be so disappointed. And Marlene, she would never let her forget it. God, so embarrassing...

'Wakey, wakey, Missy Potty.'

Fuck. She let out a long sigh, rubbing at her suddenly aching head. Even though she'd never met the woman the sickly, sing-song voice belonged to, she'd heard enough descriptions of her she could make a very confident guess. 'A second, please, Cousin. Revival charms give me a headache.'

Ellie stretched out as well as she could with her newfound magical sense, trying to pick apart her surroundings, how many people she was dealing with. It wasn't just Lestrange. One Death Eater, two Death Eater, three Death Eater... Eight? It felt like eight. Fuck. She couldn't tell where they were though. Everything was magic, the floors and tall, spindly wooden shelves around her so thoroughly enchanted they were easily detectable, but so thick she couldn't even start at a guess of exactly what was in them. Too complicated.

She did pick out her wand, thank god, and a collection of small, dormant enchantments she knew were some of her practice constructs — yes, she does carry them with her at all times, she's aware that's a bit paranoid. At least her wand was here, in her bag, but her bag was obviously being carried by one of the Death Eaters. That was a problem.

There was a pretty simple way to fix that problem, but it might get a bit tricky pulling it off. She'd have to stall anyway. She knew the Order would be able to find her eventually, but she'd need to stay alive long enough for the hypocrite brigade to show up.

But anyway, Lestrange was cackling, the sound sharp and dripping with blood and madness, echoing in a way that told Ellie that wherever she was was a rather large place. 'Oooh, so polite, little Miss Potter. I'm surprised. I wouldn't think my blood-traitor of a—'

'As much as I enjoy watching you play with your food, Bellatrix, we do have a job to do here. Get up, girl.'

It took some effort to ease the tension from her own jaw, stop herself from grinding her teeth — that smooth, cold voice was all too identifiable as Lucius Malfoy. Just perfect. Being in this fuckhead's presence was bad enough when she could imagine cursing him in the face, did not feel like dealing with him without her wand. She sat up on the hard, stone floor, opened her eyes to look around. Eig–no, nine Death Eaters, in the familiar solid black hoods and solid white masks. So very perfect. Ellie took a moment to pick out the one carrying her bag before looking past them. They were surrounded by rows and rows of shelves, one after another after another disappearing into the distance in all directions, including above their heads, seeming almost like a cavernous library, all lit by soft blue-white light emanating from—

Oh...fuck. She knew where this was. Ellie hadn't actually been here, but Severus had once described it, the same conversation he'd told her about that bloody stupid prophecy. They were in the Department of Mysteries. At a guess, the Death Eaters wanted her to retrieve that copy of the prophecy for them. It seemed things weren't going to stop being perfect any time soon here.

It'd really be nice if the Order would hurry up and get here already.

Tch. Might as well play along. Ellie obediently got up to her feet, trying to make the motion as casual and careless as possible. By the slight tensing she noticed in the posture of two of the Death Eaters around her she'd successfully annoyed them. Ha ha, good. Wait, no, er. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to piss off the dark magic -using terrorists while she was unarmed and outnumbered nine to one. Yeah, that might be a stupid thing to do.

But, oh well. It'd be far more fun. This was only going to end one way no matter what, might as well enjoy herself along the way.

Before anyone got back to giving orders, Ellie took a moment to reach down into herself, a thing she never could quite explain, stretching for the wellspring of fire and light deep within. Good, she could still touch it, they hadn't slipped her a dampening potion or anything while she was out. Which was really a bit stupid of them. Well, okay, to be completely fair, they probably didn't know she'd been working on wandless magic lately, but they should have guessed it. She meant, they did know who her mother was — Lily Evans had been famous for her skill with wandless magic long before she'd been known for any other reason, self-taught even before starting at Hogwarts. Not that she'd be pointing out their mistake for them, of course, sounded like their problem. She drew her power up, not forcing it out to attempt to cast any sort of spell, just leaving it to sit just under her skin, ready to be used at the slightest cue.

Filling herself with magic like this tends to feel a bit odd, a vibrating tingling sensation running across her entire body, an impression of airy lightness, like she needn't walk across the ground, she can just float around if she wants. Well, actually, she can just float around if she wants, she's done that. Kinda tiring, though. But, not that she minded. Really, she was mostly just glad she'd managed to cut off normal feelings, filling her head with warm giddiness and giggling song, before she'd really started getting scared.

Honestly, she uses the same trick to keep herself from getting too angry with people quite a lot. Is that bad? Really sounds like the sort of thing she shouldn't be doing...

'This way, Miss Potter,' Malfoy said, gesturing her toward where he stood just off a shelf. 'There's something here you'll be getting for us.'

Ellie glanced around quick, then shrugged in her head. Playing along was still the best idea. She'd be needing a distraction to swipe her bag successfully, hopefully she could hold out long enough for the Order to show up and provide it. That blood tracker Dumbledore thought she didn't know about could detect her here, right? Warding against blood-based tracking charms was nearly impossible. With how empty it felt here, it was probably after hours, the Order should have had plenty of time to get going. Yeah, shouldn't take them long at all. So she calmly walked over to the shelf, glancing at the ball of spun glass just in front of Malfoy, entirely unsurprised to see the label under it. 'Tom finally making a serious effort to get this thing, huh?'

A piercing shriek of rage, contorted into, 'You dare speak his—!'

'Calm, Bellatrix.'

The urge to shake her head was too strong to hold it in — she had absolutely no idea how he could possibly tolerate followers who were just plain fucking insane. Seemed like more trouble than they were worth, really. 'Why doesn't he just come in here and get it himself? That's the thing I don't get. I wouldn't think the wards here would be up to the challenge of keeping out a sorcerer like him.'

'It is not for you to know the Dark Lord's motives,' Malfoy said in a frigid drawl. So, he had no clue either. All right then. 'You will simply obey.'

Ellie turned away from the prophecy to meet Malfoy's eyes through the slits in his mask. Ah, less fun to imagine cursing him in the face if she couldn't actually see his face. Or, she wondered, if she hit him with a blood-boiling curse, would steam trickle out of the eye holes? Hmm. Forcing her voice light and casual, the imagined sound of Malfoy's choking screams joining the song of magic in her head, she said, 'No, I don't think I will.'

'That would not be wise, Miss Potter.'

Crossing her arms over her chest, she let out a sniff. 'I'm not the only person around displaying a lack of wisdom. If your Lord wants my cooperation, he's going about it all wrong. I wouldn't be opposed to giving him this prophecy on the face of it — I mean it, Lord Malfoy,' Ellie added when his eyes narrowed with clear disbelief. 'I don't particularly care one way or the other.' Of course, that was mostly just because Tom would likely come after her no matter what, and it wasn't like there was anything in there that would help him anyway. Whether the idiot got the prophecy or not made exactly zero difference. 'I would have given it to him freely if he asked.

'That's the mistake your Lord has made over and over, you see,' she said, her tone conversational. Not hard to do, really, with her mood buoyed by the magic crackling just under her skin. Okay, slightly difficult to keep her voice level, stop herself from slipping into a slight sing-song tone she just knew would piss them off a bit too much, but she managed. 'He keeps trying to force me to do what he wants. Back when we met in first year, he abducted me and dragged me down to wake me up in front of that stupid mirror, then when the—' fake '—philosopher's stone appeared in my pocket moved to kill me and take it from my corpse.' Arsehole had swiped her out of my bed and everything, one hell of a wakeup call. 'I would have just given it to him — it's not like it meant anything to me, didn't even know what the bloody thing was at the time—' Would have let him have it even if she had, there's no such thing as a fucking philosopher's stone. '—there was absolutely no reason to kill me for it. And if he'd just been a bit more civilised he'd have been resurrected three years earlier, and would be immortal and drowning in gold to boot.' Except not, because the whole thing was fake, fucking idiot, she still couldn't get over this. 'Speaking of resurrections, if he'd wanted my blood for that purpose so badly he could have just. Asked.'

There was a snort of derision from behind her. 'You expect us to believe you would just hand your blood over to the Dark Lord to use in a ritual?'

Hello again, Master Jugson. 'That ritual?' She shrugged. 'Sure, why not? Especially since using my blood like that gives me a layer of protection — since my blood runs in his veins, any spell cast on either of us that can be carried through blood will affect both of us.' She could practically feel the shock thick in the air around her, and Ellie couldn't help smirking a little. 'Didn't think of that, did you? That's really rather sad. It's only the founding principle of all blood magic.'

'I doubt Dumbledore would have dirtied his precious saviour by teaching her any blood magic.'

She glanced quick over her shoulder, frowning a little. Whose voice was that? She didn't think she knew this one. Probably one of the Azkaban escapees, then — she'd met all the free Death Eaters at one point or another the last few years, or all the big names at least. 'Well, you'd be right that Dumbledore hasn't taught me any blood magic. Of course, he hasn't taught me anything else either, so that doesn't exactly mean anything.' A flare of legitimate annoyance pierced the giddiness enveloping her, she didn't even have to fake the derisive snort. 'It baffles me how everyone seems to assume Dumbledore and I have any kind of relationship at all. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've had a conversation with him, and I haven't exactly enjoyed any of them. I rather hate the man, in fact. He's had far too much power over my life thus far, and I don't like it.'

Honestly? She had long been completely tired of Dumbledore's shite. She meant, she hadn't liked him from the very first time she'd met him — she's far from the first Slytherin ever to find his whole eccentric old man act grating, she hated trying to talk to him so fucking much — but he'd done absolutely nothing to change her mind since. The way he insisted on chewing on his foot and trying (and failing) to manipulate her into stupid shite, there was precious little chance of that changing. If it weren't practically guaranteed Tom would come after her anyway, or other people she cared about, she'd have already stepped back to enjoy the show as Dumbledore failed to clean up his own bloody mess.

But, anyway, she was in the middle of a villainous monologue here. Well, not technically a villainous monologue. She guessed from their perspective? Whatever. Melodramatically stalling, anyway. Sort of surprised they were letting her get away with it. 'I don't like being forced, you see. I would have just given Tom this prophecy if he'd asked. But, now that he's tried to force me to get it for him, I'm rather inclined to refuse just on principle. Which Tom really should have realised was a possibility — I bet he'd do the same in my shoes.'

'You think yourself and the Dark Lord so similar? Others have been killed for lesser presumptions.' Malfoy's voice was low and dangerous when he said it, the implied threat clear.

Ellie rolled her eyes at Malfoy, entirely just because she knew how completely his attempt to intimidate her had failed would annoy him. Tee hee. 'Sorcerers born to Noble Houses, but abandoned to be raised in poverty and neglect by muggles who hated us, and once we got to Hogwarts had to deal with the hot-cold nonsense that comes with being both a Parselmouth and a halfblood in Slytherin.' She shook her head to herself. 'No, we have nothing in common, not at all.'

'You filthy little bitch, how dare you—'

'What, did he not tell you?' She glanced over her shoulder, meeting the half-hidden, twitching eyes of her second cousin — it was the messy black hair and visible shaking that gave away which she was. And, were these idiots really going to let her keep talking like this? What's up with that? She meant, it's convenient, don't get her wrong, she just didn't get it. 'Mum was a Gaunt, dad was a muggle. You second-generation slaves should ask your parents, they went to school with him. They'll know your Lord is a halfblood. Or has he actually been telling you he's a pureblood? Cheeky bastard — and I do mean that literally.' Even though they're nowhere around, Ellie could still hear Luna giggle and Daphne groan.

Malfoy let out an aggravated sigh. 'This is a waste of time.' By the time she had turned back around to face him, it was already too late.

Not that it particularly mattered. It was an imperitāns, obviously, she recognised the warm, smooth, seductive feel of the magic. But it couldn't even settle over her properly. The magic she had still waiting just under her skin slowed it down somewhat, but Ellie already had a peculiar resistance to mental magic she'd never quite understood. Legilimens found reading her mind peculiarly difficult, mind-altering charms of all sorts had to be ridiculously overpowered to get the proper effect. Turns out she's even virtually immune to most love potions — that incident led to almost dizzying relief for her and a lifetime of nightmares for Jugson. Not this Jugson, of course, his son, graduated last year. And, after a bit of practice courtesy of Barty Junior, she can shrug off an imperitāns like it's not even there. She considered a moment whether she should play along, pretend the charm was actually working, to maybe buy a little time.

But Malfoy would probably just make her grab the prophecy right away anyway, so that was pointless. Oh well. With a sharp thought, Ellie shattered the spell still futilely attempting to enthrall her, tendrils of magic dissipating to nothing in the air. She shot Malfoy a cold glare, going as Severus with it as she could possibly manage. 'Seriously? Was that sad excuse for an imperitāns the best you can do? Really? I barely even felt that. Pathetic.'

Fury clear on his voice, Malfoy snarled, 'Taunting me isn't the best idea, Potter. Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?'

'Do you?' This would probably come back to bite her in the arse later, but why not. She relaxed — not a muscle, not anything physical. It was hard to explain. The tense wall of self holding her magic back eased somewhat, allowing tendrils of thick energy to slip out into the air, grasping blindly at the shelves, the Death Eaters around her. This was the mark of a sorcerer, a constant upwelling of magic, unconsciously channelled through their bodies with natural ease. It had started happening to her last fall, it'd taken her a few days with Severus to learn how to stop it, to hold the magic in. Most mages are sensitive enough to detect it, and whether they are or not it tends to make them uncomfortable, growing terrified, anxious, hyperactive, or aroused, depending on exactly how they feel about the sorcerer or sorceress in question...except Luna, for some reason. It just makes her smile and hum to herself, but she's Luna Lovegood, Ellie expects weird by this point. Generally uncomfortable, anyway. Which was exactly what she was going for this time — she couldn't help a smirk at the muttering and shuffling behind her, the sudden shocked tension in Malfoy's shoulders. 'Do you really?'

For a moment, there was no response. Then, sounding oddly resigned, Malfoy said, 'You're not going to make me use Travers, are you?'

Oh. Shite. Travers was here. Dammit. A number of Death Eaters had made a particular name for themselves from their cruelty, but Travers had earned quite a degree of infamy for brutally raping younger women and girls. No, thanks, they would not be doing that tonight. Ellie realised, even as her accelerating heart started lifting up into her throat, the song of magic in her head turning sharp and eager, that it looked like it was time to make her own distraction. 'Ergh, you Death Eaters are disgusting.' But she moved to the proper shelf anyway, lifting a hand up to the proper prophecy sphere. She touched a single finger to it, feeling the deadly enchantment binding the glass to the shelf rapidly unspool. But she didn't pick it up. Instead, she let her hand fall to the wood just beneath and in front—

She drew the light within up and into her grasp, moulded it with gentle tendrils of thought into the shape she needed, pushed the charm down her arm, her skin tingling as it moved, and into her wrist, her joints burning with it.

—forced into the shelf the most powerful banishing charm she could manage wandlessly. And, this being her, that meant rather fucking powerful. The wood cracked and splintered, the prophecy shooting off through the gap between shelves, the entire structure teetering dangerously. 'Fetch.' With a now-familiar flex of will and magic, she called up shadows, and stepped into icy blackness.

She travelled in total darkness for an infinite instant before the world faded back into existence, the shadow magic trick Severus had taught her depositing her behind the row opposite the one she'd broken. She quick reached for the light again, twisted it into the shape of a silencing charm, one of the earliest she'd taught herself to cast wandlessly, and draped the thing over her whole body. She stepped into shadows again, going another row over, then another, then slipping over to the end of the row. Ninety-four the way she'd come, ninety-three the opposite — the door had to be this way. Alright, then.

The shouting and cursing and occasional sounds of wood and glass shattering was coming closer — these idiots had the subtly of a herd of stampeding rhinoceroses (rhinocera?) — so Ellie again stepped into shadows, this time appearing some metres above the floor. This really was a high-ceilinged room here, how convenient. With ease of practice, with hardly even a thought, she tossed aside her human shell, let her body bubble and shrink, the sensation rather like sinking into a bath filled with warm water, and took up her animal shell instead. Which was just convenient. Not only could she watch from above much easier, not only would her red-on-black colouring make her almost impossible to spot, not only would the silencing charm she'd cast a moment ago cover all sound from her wings, but falcons had far keener eyesight than did humans — the blue light did shift shade slightly, the shadows did seem somewhat deeper, but it was child's play to keep an eye on all of them, their forms easily trackable even with shelves and orbs flicking by between them.

Gliding with slow, light strokes, slipping from one high shelf to another, she trailed the Death Eaters searching for her. She'd spotted the one carrying her bag immediately, but she needed to wait until there wasn't anyone else behind him. Come on, come on, she didn't have all day. These idiots were getting increasingly agitated, judging by how much more frequently they were simply blowing shelves up, she didn't have time to—

There it was. Ellie changed again in mid air, swapping her falcon shell for the human, then immediately fell into shadows. She appeared almost instantly behind the Death Eater carrying her bag, grabbed the soft cloth with both hands, then vanished into shadows before anyone could react. Yes! That had gone perfectly, and now she had all her things!

And, she noticed as she appeared again, the Death Eater's robe. Er. Whoops? Hadn't meant to do that, but shadow magic could be finicky...

Letting the robe fall to the ground, she slung the bag over her shoulder, and prepared to— 'There she is!' Without thinking, she jumped right back into nothingness, appearing a row over and a few metres above the floor, again slipping into her avian form. It was common knowledge that magic couldn't be cast by an animagus when in their animal form. That was, she'd discovered right away, not strictly true. Magic couldn't be cast with a wand, but anything the animagus could do wandlessly was fair game.

Since she could walk through shadows, she was basically an enormous cheater.

But, unfortunately, she couldn't just pop through shadows straight back to Hogwarts. The Ministry, she'd been told, had wards blocking it. She could theoretically go right to the wardline, step across, and then go straight to Hogwarts, but she'd never actually been to the Ministry before, so she had no idea where the wardline was. So she had to do this the slow way. She slipped silently through the air, skipping a dozen metres forward at a time with each dip into shadows, working her way further from her pursuers. Before long, the air behind and below her was screaming and shuddering, pressure waves erupting again and again from powerful area-effect magic. And slowly closing in.

She'd just have to do something about that.

Ellie tipped down a little, alighting on top of one narrow shelf, instantly switching back to her human form — the shelf teetered slightly, but it stayed upright. She snatched her wand out of her bag, didn't hesitate a second before starting the incantation. 'Austre furēns, terram—' She drew out the moment only slightly, savouring the feeling of hot power flowing through her, so intense her body vibrated with it, her entire right arm seared, a light giddiness in her head powerful enough she couldn't help but smile. She loved casting big magic. '—inundā.' An unpleasant shiver ran through her as the spell left, but it didn't strip her of her grin.

She loved this spell. With a heavy crack, a bolt of blue-white lightning shot from the tip of her wand, striking halfway down the shelf in front of her the next instant, the bolt splitting on contact, dividing into three, into nine, into twenty-seven, into eighty-one, and then hundreds, and then more hundreds, and then thousands, and then more. The shelf in front of her was consumed with a writhing, crackling sheath of sharp blue-white, prophecy orbs popping under the onslaught with little poof noises, the wood catching alight at a single touch. The lightning spread down to the ground, then across, dividing again and again and again as it spread, reaching one row of shelves, then another, expanding in an inexorable wave. If anything, the enchantments in shelves and floor only seemed to energise the magic further, pushing it faster and larger than she was used to, the bolts of lightning as thick as her wrist filling the air with the screaming and snapping of electricity so loud it was almost giving her a headache.

Huh. Looked like she was making a bit of a mess. Not that she really cared. In fact, she couldn't help but grin. She'd bet a thousand galleons the Death Eaters hadn't expect that. Fucking idiots.

Ellie yanked herself into her falcon guise and again took flight, flitting from shelf to shelf, skipping through shadows again and again instead of flying around or over them. She passed a couple doors out, then decided an instant too late she wanted to take that one, warm orange light flooding through the open doorway. She doubled back through shadows quick, smoothly banked in a graceful turn right through the center of—

In an instant, Ellie's skin turned to fire, her bones turned to glass, and she let out a high scream that tore at her suddenly human-shaped throat as she tumbled to the granite floor, her bag sliding away from her. But it only lasted a moment, the pain quickly vanishing, leaving her breathless on the floor. Okay. Ow. Apparently they had wards against animagi worked into the doorframes. Would not be trying that again. She grabbed her bag, quickly summoning a few blasting discs with a gesture from her wand. She activated them all at once with another charm, scattered them just inside the doorway. The Death Eaters had probably heard her screaming, and her short incapacitation had given them far too much time to catch up. Hopefully, one would lose a leg to one of those.

Somewhat shaky, Ellie pushed herself to her feet, and started stumbling through... What the hell was this place? Why did they have a big bloody aquarium filled with brains? You know what, she didn't want to know. She walked off toward the door directly opposite, her unsteady steps growing gradually more confident as she went. She threw the door open, and recognised the dark, rounded room with a dozen blue torches and wooden doors from Severus's description as the entrance, which was good. She also recognised the five figures standing inside as more Death Eaters, which was bad.

Did managing her really rate fourteen Death Eaters? Huh. The thought left her strangely pleased.

Before they could react, she took aim and snarled out, 'Rḗtte!' The air again filled with a crackling of electricity as a flickering shaft of purple-white brilliance leapt from her wand at the Death Eaters. She turned before the elemental magic hit, meaning to go back the way she'd come, but stuttered to a halt when she heard a second explosion at the same time as the first, screaming rending the air in both directions. Laid out on the ground just inside the doorway on the opposite side of the room with the creepy tentacle brains was one of the Death Eaters from the Hall of Prophecy, clutching his mauled leg, blood already pooling thick on the ground. And behind him, staring in shock, were a few more. But not staring for long. Lestrange snapped off a nasty-looking blasting curse even as the Death Eaters in this room gathered themselves behind her.

Ellie ducked to the side, scrambling for the door one over, a smirk crossing her face as Lestrange's curse hit one of the Death Eaters, setting him screaming. Idiot. She threw the door open, stepped through it even as she cast over her shoulder, throwing as much power into it as she could spare at the moment. 'Pugiūmbrae ningite.' Teetering slightly with the draw of the powerful dark elemental magic, she didn't bother pausing to watch her charm do its work. She slammed the door closed behind her, taking the barest second to breathe.

But only a second. She cast a quick locking and then sealing charm on the door, then summoned four more discs from her bag, slapped one on either side of the frame, stuck to the wall with built-in sticking charms, then activated them with a wave of her wand. The barrier appeared as a barely-visible, green-blue sheen across the entire surface. They'd be able to get the door open just fine, but then they'd need to beat her enchantment before making their way through. Thinking her idea through in her head, she ran down the narrow hall she'd found herself in — offices, looked like. She opened a door at random, finding a cavernous, dark room filled with glowing stars and floating planets. That would do. She reached inside, placing the other two discs, digging her cloak out of her bag with the other hand, activated the enchantment, then snatched her hand back before the barrier could snap into place. She renewed her silencing charm, flung her father's cloak over her shoulders, and continued down the hall.

And not a moment too soon. She felt the tactile snap of stubborn magics cancelling each other out, and a group of angry Death Eaters came pouring around the little corner in the L-shaped hall. 'There!' one in the front called, pointing at the barrier blocking the weird solar system room off. The Death Eaters tumbled in that direction, another touching his wand to the barrier. Drawing runes, she noticed — she stopped slinking away, craning her head around out of curiosity. The runic spell the Death Eater was carving into the barrier meant literally sever from the world. Hmm, clever. With a last flare of power, her barrier winked out, and the Death Eaters filed out of the hall.

Once they were gone, Ellie opened the last door in the hall, slipped inside, and shut it quietly behind her.

The second she saw where she was, and knowing her silencing charm would cover it up anyway, she let out a noisy curse. Of course she just had to end up here. She'd never been here before herself, but she still recognised the old, angular stone benches worked into a squared amphitheatre, at the center the crumbling arch of the Veil of Death. Any of the rooms she could have ended up in and it was this one. Of course.

Ignoring the seductive whispering she heard from the tattered, unnaturally black cloth, Ellie moved around the rim of the room, heading for the next door in line. She tapped her wand against the door, casting a quick charm to look through the wood. It was a possibility the Unspeakables had charmed against it, but they fortunately hadn't — there was that room with the damn creepy brains again. She noticed the Death Eater whose leg she'd blown off was still there, either dead or in stasis. That way could work, but she'd rather open as few doors as possible, just in case. Letting the charm fall, she slipped to the next door, cast the charm again. Hall of Prophecy again.

The next door, the charm showed her the circular entrance chamber, which was good. Evidently, the Death Eaters had managed to end her elemental spell — unsurprising, it wasn't that difficult — but there were still a few shards of oily black ice lying around. As well as what looked like a couple more Death Eater corpses, which was also good. Dumbledore would likely be having words with her for using that spell, but she wasn't apologising. However, the rest of the Death Eaters appeared to have made their way back to this room, which was bad. Even as she watched, one of them twirled his wand in a tight arc she recognised—

She sighed as the magic rose, a warm stickiness clinging to her. A tracking charm. Great. With a few quick flicks of her wand and incantations muttered under her breath, she layered the door and wall with spell-resistant ice three feet thick, then turned to slip deeper into the room, stepping between the benches toward the center. She'd hardly gone a few feet before she came to a sudden halt. She was being targeted by a second tracking charm. This one was a little different though. Instead of coming from outside, the feeling seemed to be coming from inside, warmth flowing through her very blood. She knew what this was.

Ellie let out a smirk. Better late than never.

She shucked off her cloak again, stuffing it back into her bag — it'd only slow her down now. With a swing of her wand, Saepem glaciālem 'profundam,' a tall wall of shimmering, blue-purple ice appeared between her and the door. She hopped a few more benches down, cast the charm again, creating another layer of spell-resistant ice between herself and the Death Eaters. She repeated the process a couple more times, until she was on the bottom level of the chamber, the Veil to her back.

As the sounds of explosions and tinkling ice filled the air, Ellie gave the Veil a slightly wary glance over her shoulder. That thing was rather creepy, all fluttering around like that despite the stillness of the air, seeming a solid black that would be simply impossible without magic, indistinct whispers wafting off the surface. Perhaps most unnervingly, it didn't feel like anything. In her sense of magic, the gap within the archway was a complete and total dead spot. Even more so than air, an absence of anything so absolute it didn't exist, despite the fact that she could see and hear something there. It was creepy.

But she had something more important to deal with. Cumfulmine lacerā. Before the curse could fully leave her wand, she caught it with a quick flourish. Imagining a single line of light splitting into five, she changed one advanced blasting curse into five, then duplicated the five again into twenty-five. She let out a hiss, wincing as tendrils of lightning crawled against skin, her shoulder burning, the bones in her wrist screaming with the force of magic they contained. Okay, maybe she wouldn't be making any more. Twenty-five was good, right? Well, if they were stupid enough not to block or dodge them twenty-five would be plenty to kill all the remaining Death Eaters at once, so she supposed it really was good enough...

Her last barrier of ice was blown apart, and she didn't even wait for the steam to clear before releasing the twenty-five curses in her grasp, the sudden dimming of the light within her forcing her gasping to her knees. The brilliant purple charms shot into the crowd of approaching figures, exploding with flashes of blue and yellow light and a deafening chorus of lightning. She thought a few of them might have been hit, it was hard to tell, but she wasn't going to wait to find out.

Ellie reached again for the weakened light within her, drawing it up and out, coaxing it back to full life. After only a second it was again a brilliant fire roaring within her, filling her with light and life, bringing a wide grin to her face. She popped back to her feet even as curses started to rain down on her. She dodged the first couple that would have actually hit her, then deflected a couple more with neat twitches of her wand, contorting the last into the movement for a piercing curse, mildly disappointed as she watched the Death Eater she'd aimed it at deflect it easily, then conjured and ducked behind a stone barrier when killing curses from three different wands converged on her all at once. Then she stepped through shadows again, moving only a couple metres to reappear with another, 'Rḗtte,' the brilliant lightning bolt taking one unfortunate Death Eater straight in the chest, before she again had to go on the defensive, deflecting and shielding curses in turn, the ones that couldn't be blocked either dodged or stopped with conjured debris.

Where the hell are they? she thought as a minor cutting curse slipped by, carving a thin line across her hip. She didn't think she'd be able to hold out against this many people at once for much—

There was a low boom, the explosion so forceful the ground teetered under her, unbalancing her just as she'd been deflecting a bone-shattering curse — she just managed to twist the failed deflection into a barely-adequate shield instead, the thing shattering on contact. Even despite the near miss, she couldn't help her lips twisting into a smirk.

If any of the Death Eaters saw and were wondering what was so funny they didn't have long to worry about it: curses started raining on them from behind only seconds later.

But Ellie wasn't one to lay back and leave it to everyone else. Even as the room descended into chaos, Order and Death Eater skipping back and forth in a dizzying dance of curse and countercurse, Ellie switched from defensive magic to offensive. She sniped at Death Eaters wherever she had a good shot, firing with blasting curses, and severing curses, and piercing curses, anything she could think of that had a narrow field of effect, unlikely to accidentally hit someone on her team, but quite likely to actually do some good. Dumbledore's bootlickers had a nasty habit of not putting people down permanently when they really should. She saw Severus with them, that limp he'd had for near on a year now quite distinctive — Ellie was still trying not to feel too guilty about that — so at least one other person around would be thinking with their head instead of their heart.

'Ellie!' The sharp shout of her name startled her for a second, but she felt the incoming magic she instantly recognised as her godfather's the second before he appeared at her side. Sirius wrapped an arm tight around her shoulders even as he raised a shield with the other, the gleaming, multicoloured barrier bowing under the pressure from a powerful blasting curse. 'Don't you scare me like that ever again!'

'Yes, I'll make sure not to get stunned in the back and abducted next time. How silly of me.' Despite the situation they were in, despite the sharp sarcasm on her voice, she was still smiling.

Sirius dropped his shield charm, cast a shockingly powerful piercing curse at the Death Eater who'd just tried to kill them. They managed to dodge in time, but the curse cut a crater in the stands a foot wide and several deep. Damn. Okay, scratch that, maybe there were two others here. He was a Black though, not surprising. 'Let's not let Marlie know you let someone hex you in the back,' he said, chuckling a little under his breath.

Ellie rolled her eyes. Yeah, she'd just be insufferable after that, wouldn't she.

'Was that your work we found in that bloody spinning room?'

'It spins? I mean, yes. Pugiūmbrae ningentēs.'

She felt Sirius wince. 'Yeah, let's not let Dumbledore know about that one, either.'

'Probably a good—' Sirius's arm loosened its grip around her a bit, but only to drag her with him to the ground, the two of them barely ducking under two killing curses simultaneously crossing through where they'd been standing a second ago. 'Okay,' she said, pushing herself to her feet again. 'Talk later, kill Death Eaters now.'

'Try to hold back on the dark curses.' Sirius casually deflected a blasting curse headed for his chest, sending it barrelling down just in front of the Veil, carving a gaping fissure into the stone and blowing little chunks of rock everywhere. He fired back with an overpowered cutting curse, the Death Eater narrowly avoiding the arc of blue-purple light. 'Dumbledore always comes complaining to me when you do that.'

With a deft twist of her wand, Ellie conjured a bit of ice encasing the foot and ankle of the Death Eater Sirius had just missed. While the idiot stumbled, Ellie shot off a variant of a piercing curse she knew was all but unblockable. It slipped right through the basic shield charm the Death Eater reflexively cast, carving deep into his chest with a thick splatter of blood. 'Does that one count?'

Sirius just snorted.

That was about when things got weird.

This incident was already an enormous embarrassment. Fourteen Death Eaters, and they hadn't even been able to catch her before reinforcements arrived. She was positive she'd even killed at least one or two, by herself. That was pretty pathetic. Once the Order showed up, there was really no point in them staying. So the Death Eaters were sounding the retreat. Though they had someone making a distraction.

Some time ago, explaining the natural variation in raw power present in mages, Severus had listed off who he believed to be the ten most powerful currently in Britain. He'd given Tom the number one spot, Dumbledore a very close second. Dumbledore still matched or even edged out Tom in a fight due to greater experience, greater theoretical knowledge. He'd rated himself...sixth or seventh? Ellie couldn't remember exactly.

Number three was Bellatrix Lestrange. Were she not so irrationally devoted to Tom, she could be a Dark Lady in her own right. Easily.

The air shook as dark magic thrummed across it, filling Ellie with an odd sense of falling, as though the ground were tilting, dropping out from under her. The air around Lestrange, about a third the way around the room from Ellie, turned thick and dark, tendrils of sickening blackness extending out into the air around her, spinning and grasping around the room. Severus had told her about this spell: it was essentially a rotting curse that could be used on an entire room full of people at once, but was designed to pass over anyone Marked with no effect. Very few people were powerful enough to cast it, and it was blockable, so it was usually only used as a distraction, for the most part to cover retreats. She assumed that was why Lestrange was using it now, since she already noticed Death Eaters break away from their opponents, flooding for the exits.

She had no time to pursue them — just because it was blockable didn't mean it was easily blockable. With a flourish, she summoned all the Order members within a dozen metres of her, yanking Sirius, Dora, Vance, and Shacklebolt over to sprawl at her feet. She drew up a sense of defiance within herself, reaching for the most unambiguously defensive feelings she could find, absolutely refusing to let the people under her protection be harmed, the incantation falling over her lips as fast as she could possibly speak it. 'Lūx-abluēns ad-fidēlēs-tuōs-dēscendās et-hanc-noctem-suffōcantem-ablēgēs!'

She grit her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut, at the nauseating flare of light magic rising within her, clawing at her chest and her throat. It was so sickening it was making her dizzy, and she was rather glad she'd never made it to dinner, since it lessened the chance she'd vomit all over the place somewhat. Ugh, she hated casting light magic. But despite her stomach, head, and the joints of her wand hand viciously protesting, her magic obeyed her, twisting into a crystalline hemisphere of rainbow light surrounding herself and the four Order members she'd rescued slowly teetering to their feet, the magic singing and dancing on the air around them.

Well, Dora and Shacklebolt probably would have been able to save themselves, they'd just gotten caught in her summoning charm as well. Sirius might have managed it, but she'd almost certainly just saved Vance's life. Maybe she'd stop muttering about her being a rising Dark Lady now. Doubtful, but she could hope.

The tendrils of blackness on the air struck against her shield, one after another, light flaring white-gold with each strike. She'd barely gotten the shield up in time, damn stupid incantation, and now she only stared, squinting to see past the blinding light, the storm of darkness, a few more glowing defenses here and there. Severus was Marked, he was the only one who didn't need to defend himself, she knew he had to be moving in on Lestrange any second—

At the center of the black a hole suddenly opened, reality reasserting itself, as Lestrange dodged a spell of some kind. By the lines scored into the ground a short distance away, probably that dark slicing curse Severus liked so much. Ellie tried not to be too impatient as the tendrils of black slowly dissipated, watching Severus and Lestrange skip back and forth across the room, the air flaring and crashing with curse after curse. She hated having to wait.

There, that would do. She dropped the shield, ducked under the hand Sirius was halfway through putting on her shoulder, probably intending to hold her back. Wouldn't be having any of that. She stepped into shadows, reappearing on the other side of the room. Only to find a torrent of purple and black inches from crashing over her head, her skin already itching from standing so close to such powerful dark magic. Whoops. She disappeared back into shadows before the spell could hit her, barely, appearing again a short distance away.

Damn, Severus and Lestrange were moving so fast. They were skipping back and forth across the room, standing in one spot only long enough to shoot off a curse, release a flood of elemental magic, deflect or shield where appropriate, before vanishing again, appearing half across the room, back and forth and all around, a dizzying dance of deadly magic. She thought she'd been getting pretty good by now, but she couldn't even follow this shite. No idea how they were doing that.

But, then, she didn't really need to follow it. A quick thought and a flick of her wand was all she needed to cover the entire floor in a few inches of ice. Severus and Lestrange were immediately locked in place — along with anyone else still stupid enough to be in the room, but they were only in the way by this point. She paused only long enough to check where everyone was quick before stepping through shadows again, reappearing somewhere she had an angle so there was no one behind Lestrange.

She drew as much of her power as would obey her out from her centre, down her arm, mixing it with all the hatred she could summon. She fueled it with every memory she had of the Dursleys, every memory of the worst arseholes in Slytherin, every memory of the self-righteous, incompetent fucks who had the shameless gall to criticise her for acting when they did nothing. Focusing that power and that fury on Lestrange, wishing with absolutely everything she had that Lestrange would just die, that she would cease to exist, that nobody would ever have to see the insane, evil bitch again.

And, for the third time in her life, Ellie cast the Killing Curse.

Most Dark Arts, she honestly couldn't understand why they were illegal. There was no real justification for it. Some of them were dangerous, sure, but anyone with a drop of creativity could kill people easily with second-year charms. Far as she could tell, the whole "dark magic corruption" thing people talked about was a myth, it didn't really happen. There was no rational reason for most illegal magics to be banned.

At the least, though, she could understand why people had chosen to ban the Killing Curse. But for one simple reason, one people usually didn't talk about. As the familiar spell sprung from her wand, moving as something between fire and lightning, glowing a sharp, brilliant green, Ellie felt good. There was no other word for it. It felt amazing. All that rage, all that hatred, vanished in an instant, replaced with relief, with almost ecstatic joy. She'd successfully hit someone with it once before — it was possible she didn't take betrayal well — and the few moments after she'd felt simply the very best she ever, ever had. Fierce, wild pleasure crashing over her in an inexorable wave, almost like an intense orgasm but a hundred times better. (Not that she'd make that particular comparison with Daphne, she had some tact.) Nothing compared, nothing at all.

So, she could understand why people would want to get rid of the thing. That didn't mean it wasn't just plain useful sometimes.

Unfortunately, Lestrange saw it coming soon enough, and leaned out of the way, the emerald fire falling against the floor some distance behind her, instantly sublimating the ice into hissing steam, charring a line of black into the stone. The next instant she released herself, popped away again.

Dammit.

And Severus and Lestrange were off again, popping around, the whole room vibrating with explosion after explosion, ice trailing up the walls before being blasted away again, the air filled with lightning and shadow and fire. Ellie tried to contribute, and she thought she did a little bit, maybe. Lestrange was just so fast! Clearly, she had a lot of work to do if she wanted to have any chance at all against Tom in the near future. At the very least, she didn't think she was making it harder on Severus at all. She could defend herself just fine, even if she wasn't doing any damage, good enough with shadow-walking or deflecting or shielding that she never got tagged, and she managed to stay out of the way. She just didn't feel she was helping very much.

And she wouldn't be able to not-help for very much longer. She was getting rather tired. And her wand arm was really starting to hurt.

It took maybe two seconds.

A long, thick strand of black and red was trailing from Lestrange's wand, whipping through the air all around her, lashing out at Severus and herself — mostly Severus, honestly. She knew this spell: on contact, it forced a large amount of kinetic energy into whatever it hit, crushing and cracking that which wouldn't move, sending unbound objects or people flying. A ring about three metres out from Lestrange was dense with cracks, shattered from intermittent strikes from the whip, the bench immediately next to her reduced to rubble and dust. This was rather easy to dodge, it moved slow enough it wasn't a problem, but the bitch kept dodging out of the way of anything she and Severus sent back at her, in a few cases slapping curses away with her bare hand. God, couldn't this bitch just d—

And Lestrange suddenly vanished. Ellie had magical sensitivity enough to spot where she was almost immediately, a few metres behind her now. But the whip of dark magic was still there, floating in the air. A sustained spell, she knew it was. The moment Lestrange reappeared from shadows, the whip snapped into motion, racing with startling speed to rejoin her wand. There was just one problem with that.

Both she and Severus were in the way.

It happened far too fast, too unexpected for Ellie to react. Even as rock shook and shattered and screamed around her, a clash of discordant magic and a shout from Severus's direction, Ellie reflexively ducked away from the incoming magic, threw up an instinctive shield charm. The whip crashed down on the shield, pushing against it.

And the world around her was moving, the room sliding sideways in an incomprehensible blur, and then her leg was exploding with agony and as her knee hit something, her vision going white and useless as she felt the scream clawing at her own throat, and the indistinct shapes she could see through the whiteness were tilting and spinning dizzily, she couldn't make any sense of it—

For a moment, an infinite moment that passed in a single breath, all was blackness, a blackness so dark the white pain was dimmed away, blackness pressing against her eyes, against every inch of her skin, clenching her damaged knee hard enough she wanted to scream, but the air wouldn't come, she couldn't move, all was tightness and nothingness and an indescribable sense of falling through everything, an occasional jolt vibrating against the steel holding her in place, as though striking against something in the blackness, one impact, another, another.

—and then her eyes were dazzled with blue sky and white clouds, her ears drowned with the sound of roaring wind, yanking almost painfully at her hair, very painfully at her left leg. And then green. And then blue.

Thoughts turned sluggish by the continuing throb in her leg, Ellie slowly realised she was outside, very high above the ground.

There was no way that was good.

With careful movements, trying to use her left leg as little as possible, Ellie slowly reoriented. She couldn't even say how she managed that, she didn't really think about it. Avian animaga instincts? She didn't know. But somehow, bit by bit, she stopped her dizzying tumble, ending with her body angled perpendicular to the ground, head tilted straight downward. Oh, good, she was still rather high up, the wash of green below still distant enough to be indistinct, mottled colours, the shapes of individual trees unnoticeable. Alright.

She took a short moment, wind pulling at her hair, roaring in her ears, stinging her watering eyes, to regather her breath, regather herself. This wasn't going to be easy.

Holding her arms tight against her body, Ellie cast off her human shell, traded hair and skin for feather and scale. She squeezed her eyes shut and grit her teeth as the transformation first touched her injured leg, her probable bone fracture turning the usually painless process agonising. But it only lasted as long as the transformation itself, going back to the dull throb from before, tucking her legs close to her body even ending the previous jerks and yanks. Ellie let the pressure in her beak ease, opened her eyes again, third eyelid immediately slamming closed against the wind.

Okay. Good. The deep green under her had turned a deeper green, a few places slightly more toward blueish-green, but she was used to that. And she could actually make out individual trees now — even individual leaves, if she really looked closely — but she thought she still had plenty of time. Bird eyes were just weird like that.

The problem was speed. It only took a bit over ten seconds to reach more or less terminal velocity, by the time she'd been ready to change she'd already been falling seriously fucking fast. She'd noticed before opening her wings after high dives would pull at her shoulders like a bitch. But she'd never tried at these kinds of speeds, and she really didn't want to accidentally dislocate anything.

Changing would have helped already: birds are rather less dense than humans, she had a lower terminal velocity like this, she should already be slowing down. But not enough. Carefully, moving only the slightest bit, she twitched at her tail — and if that hadn't been weird getting used to, didn't originally have useable muscles there — tilting the feathers somewhat above her head. She let the tearing wind pull her tail back straight, compensating with another push downward, the pressure slowing her slightly. And she did it again, and again, pushing a little further each time, nudging her speed down more and more.

When she thought that would do, she pushed up, and this time held steady against the wind yanking at her. The ground under her immediately tilted, her body canting around until she was held at roughly a forty-five degree angle to the ground. Which was good — she had a larger effective surface area this way, it'd slow her down further. The wind was tugging at her feathers a bit harder than before, fingers clawing painfully at her leg and yanking on her wings, she had to strain to keep them tight against her body. Over the next few seconds, the clawing weakened noticeably as she slowed. The wind still felt hard and violent against her, but...it didn't seem that much worse than she'd had before. Maybe this would do.

It would have to do pretty soon. Those trees were starting to get worryingly close.

She tried to do it gradually, first loosening up her wrists, for lack of a better term, allowing the wind to meet the edges of her wings. Which was very nearly a stupid idea — the uneven force against her almost sent her spinning, that could have ended very badly. She barely managed to balance again, and once she was stable decided, fuck it, and threw caution to the winds.

Ha. Sort of made her feel corny, but she found that almost funny.

She threw her arms wide, letting her wings take the full brunt of the wind pushing against her. And oh, fuck, that seriously hurt, dull, constant pressure pulling at her arms so hard she thought they might pop out of their sockets, she could almost hear the muscles and tendons tear and strain against the force. But she just clenched her beak again, narrowed her eyes, and ignored it.

It might fucking hurt, but it wasn't going to kill her. Not doing it, on the other hand, most likely would.

It didn't take too long before she'd slowed down completely. Well, not completely — she was still flying rather fast, the trees and bushes and grass below her flicking by with impressive speed, but it was a normal I'm-flying-like-fucking-crazy fast, not a holy-fucking-shite-this-is-bad-I'm-gonna-die fast. Almost moving entirely forward now, and not straight down, which was perfect.

And not even a sarcastic perfect. It was starting to occur to her just how close she'd come to dying just then, which was not a thought she was comfortable entertaining.

She brought her speed down gradually, mostly just letting herself glide the energy off, searching for a convenient break in the trees. She didn't want to try landing on a branch with a broken leg, no thanks. Finally she found a gap in the branches, tilted her wings to send herself arcing into it, spiralling down toward the ground, hard dirt interspersed with patches of grass and bushes. There, that spot would do, clear enough she wouldn't fall on anything.

Coming low to the ground, she backflapped a few times, and Ellie cast off her avian shell, grasping for the human one again. She grit her teeth as the change swept over her broken leg, somehow managing to hold the scream inside, even as her head filled with nauseating whiteness. One foot came to the ground, and she bled off the rest of her speed with a couple more hops. Doing her best not to jostle her leg too much, but still wincing every second or so as incandescent agony crawled up her spine, Ellie bent toward the ground, after far too long finally managing to lay herself out on the dirt.

And she simply lay there, trying to catch her breath.

What the fuck just happened?

[there's no such thing as a fucking philosopher's stone] — True. People do think there is, but there isn't. Long story.

Imperitāns — Latin participle of a verb meaning "command/rule", which is obviously imperius in canon. This isn't an incantation, by the way, just the name.

Austre furēns, terram inundā — Latin, something like "Raging Auster, drown the earth," Auster being the Roman god of the southerly wind. Rather powerful area-effect lightning magic. If it seems familiar, the same spell appeared in chapter 13 of TRW, though Ellie shortened the incantation significantly here.

Rḗtte (Ancient Greek: ῥῆττε) — Imperative of verb meaning to tear, shatter, or break.

Pugiūmbrae ningite — Latin, spliced together from "dagger", "shadow", and the second-person plural imperative of "to snow". The ningentēs later on is the name of the spell, as a noun, instead of the incantation.

Saepem glaciālem profundam — Latin, something like "thick icy fence" in the accusative, object of a dropped verb. I meant to put the quotation mark where I did, Ellie only said the last word out loud.

Cumfulmine lacerā — Latin, something like "tear apart / destroy with lightning"

Severus's limp and Ellie's guilt — Don't know if this will ever come up again, might as well explain. Ellie's time at Hogwarts is somewhat different than canon!Harry. After Ellie and Severus avoiding each other in first year, they actually started talking in second year, and by third year were using each other's given names. By fourth year, it was common knowledge Ellie was Severus's favourite student, and he her favourite professor. Common enough Voldemort knew. Soon after his resurrection, he ordered Severus to bring Ellie to him at the earliest opportunity. He refused. He barely escaped with his life, and now has a permanent limp from a dark curse he was hit with. Had Ellie not fallen into the Veil, they would have eventually lost the war anyway — losing their spy in the Inner Circle would prove fatal. This is the same background of the Ellie in my time-travel fic, in fact, where they did lose.

[Lūx abluēns, ad fidēlēs tuōs dēscendās, et hanc suffōcantem noctem ablēgēs!] — Latin, supposed to be "cleansing light, descend upon your faithful, and banish this suffocating night."

Originally posted in "Back Burner" some time ago. For more notes, see chapter 2.