Tyrant Rising

Chapter 1: The Approaching Swarm (Part 5)

"Do you hear that?" It was Bell, first word she'd spoken since warning them the Death Eaters were coming down the street toward the pub. Sirius stopped, listening hard, debating transforming into the grim to make use of his animagus form's superior hearing. It would be able to tell definitively if there was anything there, but it would waste precious seconds they could use to prepare.

"No time for that now, focus on transfiguring as much cover and as many traps as you can, Bell, Thomas, if you haven't reloaded your Grangers yet do it now, everyone else, high explosive rounds, aimed at the mouth of the alley. Whatever this shadow is that's hiding the town, it's stopping apparition, so at least we don't have to worry about them coming at us from all sides." Moody's gruff orders made the decision for him, the older man was right, immediate survival was more important.

Despite this, he couldn't help asking, even as he transfigured a series of staggered barricades opposite the mouth of the alleyway, "What did you hear?"

"I don't know, it sounded like... horses." Bell shrugged helplessly, "Ponies maybe? I'm not sure. It doesn't make sense, whatever it was."

"Unless Bellatrix's fetishes have gotten even more fucked up since Azkaban," Weasley muttered, busy vanishing her runic arrays into the stonework on the walls surrounding the alley, the Death Eaters would be watching where they put their feet now after all.

"Jesus, Ginny." Thomas muttered, shaking his head as he focused on transfiguring a pack of dogs with too-large teeth, "You're certainly a lot less innocent than you were when we dated in Hogwarts."

"You know what they say," Weasley quipped back, "always the quiet ones."

That got a scoff out of Bell, "When the fuck were you ever quiet, Ginny? Certainly not when you were on the Quidditch team that's for damn sure."

"Whoever said I was talking about me, Katie?" Sirius and Nymphadora both wolf-whistled in unison while Bell grinned and Thomas just shook his head, Sirius knew he liked Weasley for a reason.

"I was unaware we were hosting a Merlin-damned ice cream social!" Moody barked, his concentration on layering a series of proximity triggered curses onto the front of the foremost barricade, designed to take out anyone who tried to leap over it. Or anyone who got too close to any shrapnel that might come from it.

Sirius was about to make a sardonic, and possibly borderline insubordinate, remark, when the Death Eaters arrived. Unfortunately, it would seem Bellatrix had had enough of walking her troops into ambushes. The walls of the cottages to both sides of the alleyway exploded, showering the courtyard with shrapnel, mostly chunks of shattered masonry, although Sirius had to duck as a Wizarding Wireless almost took his head off before his shield charm had time to snap into place. Behind him, he heard a snatch of the aged witch who had been hosting the Magi-Muggle Classics Station since he'd been in Hogwarts. She must be almost as old as Dumbledore by this point, if not older.

"And now, for all those lost loves-" He didn't hear the rest as Death Eaters were now pouring into the square from both ruined cottages, spell-fire flaring from their wands and crashing against the hastily erected barricades he and his comrades had managed to erect. They came on like a wave of darkness, an indistinct mass of white masks, black cloaks, and blacker intentions, vomiting forth an orgy of death and dismemberment in a sickeningly sweet rainbow of colours.

The Order hunkered down, weathering the storm and returning fire with their own, less grisly, but equally effective tools of death. Cutting Curses and Bombardas mingled with magical bullets and the eerie green of the Killing Curse.

Sirius grinned in savage satisfaction as another Death Eater went down, his skin scorched from his bones by a particularly nasty fire curse his Great-Grandfather had been rather fond of. Nearby, he saw two more Death Eaters falling with their throats a crimson mess from the teeth of Thomas' dogs, even as they turned to find new victims. But then both dogs collapsed back into stone. Turning, he saw Thomas falling, blood gurgling in his throat, his eyes wide and white against his dark skin in shock at the suddenness of his demise. Continuing his turn, Sirius prepared to bring vicious death upon the Death Eater scum who had killed such a talented young man, only to freeze.