There were twice as many of them as there were the Order, at least. The graveyard itself crackled with ozone as curses, hexes and jinxes of all kinds sung through the air, undoubtedly the closest the residents had come to life in years. Crypts were blasted up from what was once meant as a final resting place, they were systematically eradicating the little cover the Order had been able to take. A dementor brushed silently up to Scorpius, craning for a taste and shooting a rush of frost up his spine. Cleo launched herself into the billowing black folds and sent the thing plummeting into the grass like a bundle of old bed sheets. He stumbled backward still barely in a crouch and only just managed to throw his hands up in front of his face as he was blown backward over a gravestone, his chin meeting the floor first followed closely by the rest of him.
Scor rolled onto his back, gasping while he blinked dazedly, ears ringing. A scream from his left had him diving to save the casting arm of a wix he hadn’t met before from turning completely to stone, his brain still rattled confusedly against the inside of his skull. A probe with his tongue told him that he’d almost bitten clean through his lip. Cleo pushed her wet nose against his cheek in encouragement.
He scrambled for further cover as the next explosion removed the wix he’d tried to aid from his view. Scor gulped in a deep breath, unwanted tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. Across the field a weeping willow went up in a sudden frisson of decimating flames, a deafening crack cutting above even the wandfire, the tree had burst open down the middle from the power of the spell as though struck by lightening. The smoke started to gather against the side of the Church and choke those fighting below but the tree had suddenly lit the night with a wrathful glow, things were even worse than he’d hoped.
The slight cosmetic charms he’d cast before being side-longed to Little Hangleton were starting to fail from the continued magic expenditure and the frazzled ends of both Scor’s focus and patience. He rarely went to the front lines for Malfoy Open Season among the older crowd of the Wraiths was often too exciting of an indulgence for them to deny but the makeshift Hospitals the Order set up at safehouses were all close to unmanned now. Everyone was fighting.
He didn’t hear the footsteps until the last moment, until the hand came down on his arm and curled. An anchor of warmth in the crook of his elbow. He was so cold, his breath poured out of his mouth in fearful clouds to join the fog already pooling around their calves. They were in the coldest few months of the year, the Dementors were dragging the temperature even further below freezing, a pattern of slowly forming ice spiralled out across a nearby gravestone. The Muggle Cross was the last thing his eyes could follow before he was spun to face the new arrival. Al’s hand travelled up to his shoulder and forced him back down into a lower crouch, the sudden realisation had Scor swaying dangerously and he ducked his head into his lap to breathe for a moment. Cleo scrambled into the gap between his legs and butted her soft forehead against his own.
It took him even less time to convince Albus than he’d imagined, perhaps aided by the utter cacophony that engulfed them from all sides. Every base, animal sound he’d ever learned to associate with battle raged from all around and he knew without another look that the Order were being utterly slaughtered. Though he tripped his idea out through a couple of cold tears and a padding of too-many apologies Al’s support choked down the sickened, guilt ridden pit in his stomach that they were calling on school-kids no matter how capable and no matter how far war had removed them from childhood. His near-numb fingers curled around his wand, Al’s stabilising grip moving down to steady him in more ways than just his hands. He focused on the very centre of his friend’s eyes and mustered that hidden well of hope, love and happiness.
“Expecto patronum!”
Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, please Merlin, hurry.
