Lepelsfontein was a place north of Cape Town. A silent place in the middle of nowhere. It was also a bad place to die.
There were multiple mansions belonging to one of the loyal conclaves to ICW. It was too far from the sea to hope for fog; nowhere was hidden enough to escape anymore. The last of the ICW had turned it into a bunker with manners. Makeshift barracks filled the gaps between the manors and mansions. Clerks who had once argued over parchment now carried wands like they were part of the fighting force.
Akingbade kept the centre mansion. He had stripped it of comfort and filled it with maps, lists, and a single long table where people stood because sitting and doing nothing felt like surrender.
The remaining Aurors and Hit Wizards rotated in shifts, eyes red from sleeplessness and shame. They watched the perimeter runes pulse and the horizon for any suspicious movement. Some had changed twice already today, slipping into animal forms to scout and run if the new bloc arrives. Animagus feathers, fur, and scales meant nothing now. The new bloc had taught the Magical World a new lesson about hunting. They were implementing ward lines over the conquered lands, spanning large distances, and scanning the magical signatures within. Any unregistered pulses, which means Magicals or dark patches, which translates to places under wards or fidelius, were getting ambushed with no hope of escape within their rule.
Akingbade was aware of the tightening circle around him. He cannot return to South or North America, he cannot run to Asia, ICW had nowhere to hide or run.
Outside the wards, mundane refugees moved in thin streams northward, guided by loudspeakers and fear. Inside the wards, the ICW tried to remember how it felt to command.
It had been over a year since they were mighty.
Akingbade stood at the open window when the first sound arrived.
Not a broom or cracks of apparitions but engines. Loud and fast.
The roar rolled over the place like a wave and pushed at the ward layer. Glass trembled in its frame.
A Hit Wizard on the roof flinched, raised his wand, then froze as if the wand had turned to lead. Akingbade did not blink. He watched the sky with the stillness of a man who had already spent his fear.
The first impact did not hit the mansion.
It hit the wards. Just like how he advised the Muggles.
A white flash punched at the perimeter, and the ward net lit up, every rune flaring at once. The air snapped. A pressure wave slapped across the compound, hard enough to knock men off their feet and turn shouted orders into meaningless mouth shapes.
A second impact landed a heartbeat later. This one bit deeper.
The perimeter runes did not fail. They shuddered. They stretched. Then, for a single cruel second, they lost rhythm.
That was all the new bloc needed.
Apparition cracks burst in a line across the outer yard. Twenty became a hundred. A hundred became a flood. Witches and wizards appeared in tight formation, boots planting with discipline, wands up, rifles already shouldered as if they were born with it.
The ICW defenders fired first.
A volley of curses slammed into the yard, green and red and silver. The first line of Alliance shields held, not a single one of them flinching as they took the force and bled it into the ground. The ground itself did not like it. Dust jumped with every hit.
A new line stepped forward behind the shields. A simple gesture and the yard changed.
Sand rose in a wall.
Not a conjured barrier of light, not a dome that announced itself. Sand, thousands of particles to block sight. It caught curses and swallowed them with a hiss.
ICW voices rose in anger, then in panic as the second line did not stop.
Sniper fire cracked from somewhere beyond the yard.
The sound was wrong in a magical fight. It arrived flat and absolute, without flourish. A defender on the barracks roof jerked, spun, and went over the edge, wand tumbling from his hand.
Another crack.
An animagus trying to shift into a hawk collapsed half-formed, arms twisted wrong, feathers bleeding out of skin like a mistake.
Akingbade turned away from the window and strode to the table.
"Hold the line." The words came out calm. That was his talent, even now. "Collapse inward. Do not scatter. Do not give them corridors."
The clerks who had been forced to act like Hit wizards for months shattered under the threat of real death. Even than wands rose.
Outside, the battle became a machine.
The Alliance moved with an efficiency the ICW had not believed possible. They did not duel. They cleared.
A group of Nestborn witches took the left flank with short, precise motion. Two cast a binding web across the ground, silver threads snapping into place around ankles and wrists. Two more stepped behind them with rifles, firing in controlled pairs. The bullets did not kill every time. The enchantments on the rounds bit nerves, cut movement, and forced bodies to lock. The ICW defenders hit the ground and stayed conscious long enough to understand what had happened.
A healer dragged one of the downed Alliance forward by the collar, pressed a palm to a bleeding shoulder, with the addition of modern medical training, healing magic turned to be 'miraculous' and shoved him back into place with a healthy shoulder.
In the centre, Sirius Black moved like he had been made for this. He was changing with each encounter.
He flicked his wand once. The air in front of him hardened into a sheet that caught three curses and snapped them back into the dirt. His other hand brought up a compact pistol, and he put two rounds into a defender's thigh and shoulder with the same calm he used to sign his name.
The defender tried to crawl.
A second later, a chain curse wrapped around his wrists and yanked him flat.
Sirius did not look back. His unit flowed around him, twenty witches and wizards and ten Hit Wizards, moving as if they shared the same mind. They fought as one body.
On the right, Bellatrix did the same with a flare of Black Madness.
She stepped into a curse as if it was a dance invitation, twisted her torso just enough for it to miss, then drove a shredding curse into the caster's face from two paces away. The man crumpled in screams.
Her laugh cut through the noise. It was sharp, pleased, and almost offended that anyone had thought this would go differently.
A defender shifted into a leopard and lunged.
Bellatrix snapped her wand up. The leopard's forelegs turned to stone mid-leap, and it hit the ground with a sound like breaking pottery. It tried to shift back.
Bellatrix drew her sidearm and fired into the stone joint, and the recoil made her smile wider.
"Transfigured stone can bleed," she stated, with a surprise in her lavender eyes. "I wonder if Corvus knew."
Another defender tried to run. Bellatrix flicked her wand, and the ground under his feet turned to slick mud. He hit it face-first.
Her pistol came up again, not to kill, but to maim. Their healers will fix the damage before sending them to Corvus.
The shot took his hand.
Blood sprayed in a quick arc. It looked almost neat against the dust.
He screamed.
Bellatrix tilted her head, listening like she was judging a choir.
"Better," she decided.
The ICW line buckled.
They had five hundred bodies, but they were not a coherent five hundred. They were remnants. They were people who had believed the badge would protect them from consequence.
The new bloc had brought over a thousand battle-ready witches and wizards, and most of them had been born and trained in the Nest. Their faces were younger than the ICW veterans, their shoulders broader, their posture cleaner. Even their fear looked different. It came and went without wasting time.
Animagus forms surged across the yard as the remaining ICW forces tried to salvage escape routes. Wolves, birds, and even a crocodile that made no sense this far from water.
The Alliance answered in kind.
A Nestborn wizard shifted into a raven and hit the air. He did not flap like a panicked animal. He cut through the space, shadow sliding over shadow, and struck a pigeon mid-flight. Feathers exploded. The pigeon dropped. A second later, it hit the ground as a man, lungs full of blood, eyes wide with disbelief.
On the far edge, Grigori and Sigibert moved with Arcturus like old knives.
Arcturus did not waste motion. He raised his wand.
A line of defenders in front of him froze where they stood as if time had been nailed to their bones. Sigibert stepped in, pressed his wand to each forehead, and nodded towards Arcturus. They followed silently and on high alert.
Grigori looked at Arcturus, lips twitching.
"Remember when they told us we were finished?"
Arcturus gave him a mocking glance.
"They were always poor judges."
A cluster of ICW Aurors tried to break the stasis with brute force. Grigori transfigured the earth around them and turned it into packs of wolves. He followed it with a short burst from a rifle slung across his chest, three controlled shots, three bodies dropping hard.
He was one of the first protesters when Corvus implemented the enchanted Muggle guns. Now, though, he was nearly sleeping with her. Yes, his AK74M was a 'her' according to him, and neither Corvus nor the rest has the patience to argue with him.
Vinda moved through the centre line with Grindelwald at her shoulder.
They did not mirror each other.
Vinda worked clean and cold. Her spells carried the signature of a master. She cut mobility, stole breath, forced surrender. Grindelwald worked like a man who had waited too long for permission.
He did not throw curses to trade. He threw them to the end.
A wave of blue fire rolled across the yard, controlled flame shaped into a barrier that boxed the ICW forces inward. The heat forced defenders to retreat, and the retreat forced them into nets and into rifle sights.
Akingbade's people died in pieces.
Some fell under spells. Some fell under bullets. Some fell because their own bodies betrayed them when they tried to shift into their animal forms, and were hunted by the Animagi of the new bloc or shot down.
By the time the dust started to settle, the fight had moved to the mansions.
The last refuge became a trap.
Akingbade retreated through a corridor lined with portraits that had been ripped from other homes and brought here for comfort. The portraits watched him with painted eyes full of judgment.
He reached the main hall.
He found the exit blocked.
Grindelwald stood in the doorway, hands loose at his sides, face bright with a calm that did not contain an ounce of mercy. Arcturus was two steps to his left, still as stone. Vinda stood slightly behind, not because she needed protection, but because she was the only one here who did not feel the need to perform.
Sigibert and Grigori flanked the group.
Around Akingbade, nine witches and wizards tightened their circle. A mixture of African conclave veterans and the last true believers. They raised their wands and stood ready.
Akingbade held his own wand at chest height.
Grindelwald looked at him for a long moment, then clapped once, slowly.
"Well." His voice carried without effort. "Supreme Mugwump. What a title, it always sounded like something a child would invent to win an argument."
Akingbade's jaw tightened.
Grindelwald glanced sideways, as if remembering manners.
"Allow me to introduce myself and my esteemed companions." He lifted a hand toward Arcturus. "Lord Arcturus Black, Minister for Magic of Magical Britain, Ancient and Most Noble, and a man who has run out of patience for organisations that pretend their paperwork makes them righteous."
He tilted his hand toward Vinda. "Lady Vinda Rosier, Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She has been hunting your people longer than you have been pretending to lead them."
He shifted his fingers toward Sigibert and Grigori. "Sigibert Krafft, Minister for Magic of Magical Germany. Grigori Volkov, Minister for Magic of Magical Russia. They insisted on having the honour of meeting a supreme Mugwump."
A dry pause.
A crack rang out. The whizz of the bullet was heard by some of the wizards next to the one who got shot.
One of Akingbade's jerked and collapsed, a neat hole blooming high on his chest. The spell he had been holding died with him.
Akingbade did not look toward the source. The sound had already told him what it was.
Grindelwald's smile widened.
"And I am Lord Gellert Grindelwald." He let the name hang. "Father of six," he leaned towards Akingbade as if he was going to give a secret and whispered soundly. "For now."
Gellert paused, as if recalling something insignificant, then added. "I am also the last known Dark Lord. I emphasise last known, for there is another. One not yet known to you."
The colour drained from one of Akingbade's women. Her wand trembled.
Grindelwald leaned forward slightly, voice dropping into something intimate.
"Corvus Black sends his apologies for not attending. He is busy. War makes demands. He asked me to pass along his regards to the legendary Supreme Mugwump, the son of a whore who betrayed Mother Magic and called it governance."
A second crack.
Another one dropped, this time with blood spraying across the tiles and painting a line that led directly to Akingbade's boots.
Grindelwald did not glance down.
"He also asked me to convey a message."
Akingbade's nostrils flared.
Grindelwald's tone stayed light; he cleared his throat. "Because I already had the displeasure of meeting the former shitstain who sat in your chair. I took him down personally. It was a tidy little moment. I would have been disappointed if your ending was more dramatic."
Another crack.
A third body hit the floor. The remaining forces tightened their circle by instinct, and that only made the snipers' job easier.
Grindelwald's eyes flicked toward the high windows as if listening to a joke only he could hear.
"Do you know what I enjoy most?"
Akingbade's mouth opened.
Grindelwald talked over him. "You spent decades hunting my people. You wrote rules about it. You called it protection. And now you are standing in a hallway, watching your guard die one by one, because you insisted on being important."
A crack.
A fourth dropped.
Only five remained, plus Akingbade.
Akingbade's wand hand shifted.
Bellatrix stepped from the side corridor like she had been waiting for her cue. Her pistol was already raised.
Akingbade's lips formed the first sound of Fiendfyre.
The pistol barked.
His hand exploded in pain and blood, wand clattering across the tiles. He screamed and stumbled, clutching the ruined wrist as if he could hold the bones together by force.
Bellatrix's smile was bright and pleased.
"It is like a piercing and blasting curse," she said, voice almost fond, "but much louder."
Grindelwald watched Akingbade sway, then nodded once.
"Bind him."
Chains snapped out of the air, cold and heavy. They wrapped Akingbade's arms, his legs, his throat. They pinned him to the floor without ceremony.
Arcturus stepped forward and looked down at the man, or rather what remained of him.
"You wanted a final stand," he murmured. The words were quiet, and that made them worse. "You received one."
Grindelwald crouched, close enough that Akingbade could smell the smoke on his robes, close enough that Akingbade could see the amusement in his mismatched eyes.
"Tell your people," Grindelwald said. "If any of them still believe there is a corner left to hide in, they can try it. We will come anyway."
He rose, brushed imaginary dust from his sleeve, and glanced toward the doorway where more Alliance units were filing in, ropes and shackles ready.
"Take him to the Nest," he added, voice turning lazy. "Corvus asked for him."
Akingbade tried to spit. The chains tightened and cut the attempt short.
Bellatrix gave a small, delighted hum.
Outside, the last of the ICW wards died with a sound like a sigh.