The Other Side of the Fire
EVENT: The Leaked List LOCATION: Burns Farm, Wiltshire DATE: June 24th, 1984 @dirkcresswcll
Fiendfyre. Alice’s blood ran cold despite the blistering heat billowing over her skin from the ever-encroaching flames. And fiendfyre burning on its own, with no caster’s wand nearby to wrangle it. Fiendfyre somehow unleashed, but bent to an absent will and trained—or forced—into this shape, this pattern. None of this made sense, not by anything that Alice knew of the spell. The whole nature of fiendfyre was uncontrolled destruction, so dangerous and so powerful that only the strongest of wills could wrangle it. How was it here with no wand commanding it, and yet forced into a neat track like this rather than raging rampant over the fields in all directions?
While she knew she was hardly an expert on it, she was an Auror; they trained to face threats like this, Dark Magic like this. Even in her career fighting the forces of darkness, fiendfyre had been an uncommon threat, but it was still something she knew the basics of. And those basics were being violated now right in front of her eyes, and she had no idea what to do next.
She had told Emma and Dorcas to run to the other side of the house, to try and keep the flames at bay—but partly she had just been hoping that there would be an opening in the circle of fire over there. A spot where it wasn’t as tall, wasn’t as strong. A chance that they might escape. Because Alice only knew one way to stop fiendfyre, and that was by stopping the person who held its leash.
Alice’s strongest Shield Charms and defensive spells and water-spouts were doing very little to slow this blaze. Every spell she threw at it was broken and devoured, just more fuel for the ravenous fire, and while pausing to eat the magic she threw against it delayed the fire’s advance by increments, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough. She should have sent Dorcas and Emma into the house instead, told them to try and get the Muggles out—but how? Apparating while surrounded by such powerful Dark Magic would be risky in the best of times; Apparating with Muggles was hard to begin with, due to their own non-magical nature; Side-Along Apparition with any passengers, even magical ones, was tricky. Add all of those factors together, and...well, the fiendfyre would eventually kill them all, but being burned to death might be a less painful way to go.
Where were Sirius and Fletcher? Maybe if they were on the other side of the narrowing ring of fire, they might be able to levitate the Muggle family out to them over the flames. Climb to the second story of the house, or the roof, and try to go over it before it reached them; pass everyone out, one by one, to the others above the flames. It wasn’t a good plan—wasn’t even a plan so much as a desperate hope—but short of a miracle suddenly dropping into the fields, it was all Alice had.
