The air stank of blood and scorched stone. Albus Dumbledore stood at the lip of the forward ward-line, robes singed and streaked with soot, Fawkes perched on his shoulder, wings folded close against the smoke. His wand hung loose at his side, but his eyes never left the churn of fire and shadow across the battlefield.
Beside him, a young wizard barely out of boyhood shifted uneasily, face pale beneath his grime. His hand tightened on his wand until the knuckles blanched.
"Professor…" His voice cracked. "With Herpo gone—he was the strongest fighter we had—what do we do now? Do we stand a chance?"
The question was raw, frightened, almost whispered like a prayer.
Albus turned to him, and for the briefest moment, his expression softened. He laid a hand on the boy's trembling shoulder.
"Do not let your courage falter," he said, voice quiet but carrying, steady as stone. "Herpo fights still, wherever he has gone. And here—we hold. We endure. That is enough."
The boy swallowed hard, nodded shakily, and hurried back to his assigned post.
Albus lifted his wand, silver light blooming at its tip, and whispered. A phoenix-shaped Patronus burst forth, radiant and pure, streaking away across the sky toward Tenzen's sector. He held his wand aloft until the message vanished into the smoke and distance.
Then, for a long moment, he closed his eyes. His shoulders sagged. He exhaled heavily, shaking his head once, the weight of centuries pressing on him. Fawkes trilled low, a mournful note of reassurance.
When Albus opened his eyes again, the battlefield burned brighter. And still, he did not turn away.
⸻
Far beneath Hogsmeade, silence reigned.
The old smugglers' tunnels were damp and narrow, the air heavy with the smell of earth and age. Cassiopeia Black walked at their head, her black robes unblemished, her posture straight as a blade. Her pale face was lit by the steady glow of her wand, every step measured, every breath calm.
Behind her came dozens of figures, cloaked and armed, moving in disciplined silence. Wizards of the Black household, sworn by oath and coin, followed in her shadow. Their faces were hard, their eyes sharp; they had not come for glory, but because Cassiopeia demanded it.
And behind them, smaller forms marched with a different kind of pride—the goblins. Their armor was etched with runes, their axes gleamed in the wandlight. They did not follow Cassiopeia out of servitude but out of alliance. Their kind had shed blood in this war, and they had no intention of watching wizards claim its end alone.
The tunnel stretched on, winding deeper beneath the village above. Not one patrol above heard a sound. Cassiopeia had chosen her path carefully; no one in Hogwarts, nor among the allied commanders, had the faintest notion of her passage.
Her wandlight flared against damp stone as the tunnel opened upward. The distant roar of the battlefield rumbled overhead, like a storm trapped in the earth. Step by step, she led her host closer.
At last, they emerged into the shadows of the back line, slipping seamlessly into the chaos.
Cassiopeia Black had brought her own army to the war and no one had seen her coming.
***
The world reformed around him in a rush of dark air and runic pressure. Herpo staggered into the parlor of Morpheus's manor—one of many, though each bore the same suffocating weight of his brother's wards. At once the walls themselves seemed to hiss, the enchantments rearing up like a host of serpents barring his way.
A faint shimmer crawled across the room, blocking the archway forward.
Herpo sneered. "Do you really think those could stop me, brother?"
With a flick of his wrist, emerald sparks shattered the ward-web. It clattered to the floor like glass and dissipated into nothing. He spat on the stone as he strode across it, contemptuous. "Morpheus you are a fool. A brilliant, damnable fool."
The manor groaned faintly, as though aware of his trespass, but Herpo pressed on. He knew these places. His brother's sanctuaries always had secrets buried deeper. And sure enough, behind the stairwell he found the sigil-carved steps leading down.
The air grew colder as he descended, heavy with damp and magic. Each step echoed in the dark until at last he reached the cavern beneath the manor—a hollowed space cut from living stone. The only light came from ahead, pale and wavering, glinting against slick rock.
Herpo slowed.
There, kneeling at the far end of the cavern, was Morpheus. His brother's form was stark, stripped of his usual robes, his bare skin so pale it nearly glowed against the dark. His hair hung like ink, his posture utterly still. Before him stretched a pit carved into the floor—an impossible wound in the earth brimming with liquid black as pitch. It did not sit still; it seethed, bubbled, rippled like a thing with breath.
Herpo's lip curled. "Always digging deeper into madness…"
Morpheus did not lift his head. His eyes remained closed, lids trembling faintly. But his lips moved, a voice low, hoarse, threaded with exhaustion.
"I thought…" he murmured, "the wards would… at least let you know I do not wish to see you right now, brother."
The bubbling pit gave a loud pop, sending a droplet of shadow hissing onto the cavern floor. The sound echoed like a heartbeat.
Herpo stood a long moment in the cold hush, the manor's stone breathing around them like a held breath. The wards had died back; only the pit's slow, oily pulse answered. He watched Morpheus—the man he had loved and fought and bled beside—kneel in that gutter of shadow, face blanched by the pit's sick light.
For a second Herpo was silent. The green flare of old anger in him cooled into something harder, quieter. When he spoke, his voice was small and steady, not the bark it sometimes could be.
"You realize, following this madness, you will become what you hate most."
Morpheus made no answer. His lips moved, a sound like a moth's wing. The words were more prayer than speech, nothing Herpo could make out.
"Morpheus—listen to me, brother. Do not do this. You will turn yourself into a monster. You will become what you have sworn to rid the world of." Herpo pleaded his brother to answer
That snapped something. Morpheus stopped murmuring. For the first time in the weeks Herpo had watched him, his brother looked up properly—head tilted, neck small against the cavern light. His eyes were red at the rims, the tired, terrible smile of a man who'd already decided to hurt for a purpose.
"So what, he said, softly. So what if I turn into a monster? This is my golden path. Herpo, you must understand—this is the golden path. This is how we achieve victory. This is how we rid the world of those abominations!"
The words landed like a blow. Herpo felt them in his teeth. He stepped forward now, and the cavern seemed smaller, the space between them taut as wire.
"Not like this, he said. I would rather live the rest of my days with you. I would rather fail with you at my side than become the thing that eats the world for a victory that smells of rot. I do not care if we lose. I do not care if we win. Your madness is taking you too far."
Morpheus's laugh was a cracked thing, pulled from some place of old bones. "Lies," he spat. "Lies, You lie! You care! You fight! You bleed! You anguish! You are the same as I on every battlefield. You hate them as much as I do." His voice tapered off into a whisper
For a moment, Herpo could only hear his brother's voice echoing around the stone. He tasted copper on his tongue from the wound in his side, felt the after-shock of poison tugging faintly at his blood. All Herpo's cruelty and bravado and desert-bred bluster narrowed into one unarguable truth: he loved this man. And that love made him weak in ways he had never admitted aloud.
"Perhaps you're right, he said finally, small, the words almost private. But is this truly the only way to victory?"
Morpheus's head tilted, but he did not answer at once. The bubbling in the pit seemed to lean closer to listen.