Son of Magic

Chapter 8

So, no, he was definitely not worried about Harry.

Death decided to pointedly ignore the sudden drop in temperature around him.

What was today? Today. Today. Today was... well, it was a Hogsmeade weekend, wasn't it?

Bugger.

If Death remembers correctly—and he was quite certain that he did—the little witches and wizards residing in Hogwarts were probably going to be wandering around Hogsmeade today.

Not really the best of signs, to say the least.

He could see it now; a blundering mass of nitwits trapped in the village with no hope of survival, burning and destruction all around them, and death, of course. A lot of dead—no longer blundering—students. Oh, and villagers, too, he supposed.

Bugger. No time to waste.

A few moments later the humbling icy mountains Death had been admiring were gone, replaced by the mundane sight of the old wizarding village.

As his eyes swept over Hogsmeade, that nagging feeling he'd been feeling all morning increased tenfold in its intensity. Fun stuff, that.

If there was ever any doubt that something was about to happen, it was now gone.

Obviously, the village was going to be attacked, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it was going to be Grindelwald's men that attack the unassuming village.

What he did not understand was how this was happening.

Grindelwald was not the kind of Dark Lord that strikes on a whim. Each and every one of his attacks were planned weeks in advance, and as far as Death knew from his visit two days ago, his next attack was planned to take place in a small village in the south of France, targeting some Unspeakables in hiding, and definitely not Hogsmeade village or any other location in Britain.

Then there was also the fact that Grindelwald hadn't planned on attacking on British soil anytime soon, as he was quite adamant on avoiding his ex-lover for as long as possible.

This, whatever was going to happen, was a drastic change in plans. Something must have happened in the past two days that changed Grindelwald's mind—something urgent enough to warrant an emergency attack...

Harry. He's been informed about Harry, and it seems like he didn't much care for the news he received, as evident by the five surprise attacks that were underway.

Bugger.

This was not going how Harry had wanted it to go—at all.

Sure, they had chosen the name Peverell on purpose, knowing that it would provoke a reaction from the current reigning Dark Lord. Harry had wanted to speed up the process of Grindelwald's fall from power to avoid some of the larger massacres that had happened—would happen—but this escalated much quicker than either one of them had anticipated.

The plan had been for Death to let Harry know when Grindelwald finally got the news so that they could get everything rolling. The Dark Lord was to fall by August next year. Harry was going to subtly push Dumbledore to face him, but if he didn't bite, Harry would do it himself. Whether he would do so anonymously or not was still up for debate.

Death had been diligently checking every evening, making sure the Dark Lord was still in the dark. Alright, so maybe he'd skipped going a few times this past week because he'd been a little bit distracted, but he'd gone two nights ago and everything had been perfectly fine!

One night. One night was all it took.

Bugger. Harry was going to be so furious with him.

You'd think that after all his millennia of service as Death he'd have earned himself some seer abilities, but alas, that was unfortunately not a gift of his. Sure, if he went to one of the veils he could look into different time periods, but everything was always so shifty. It gave him a right headache, it did. Not that seer abilities were all that reliable, what with all the different possibilities and split-second change-of-hearts humans tend to have.