Chapter 140: Chapter 140: All Hallows’ War Part – 4

The wine had gone warm.

Arthur set his glass down with mild annoyance. The grounds below lay empty now; the real storm had moved behind stone walls. From his perch in the tower, he caught only fragments of it — flashes of spellfire staining the windows, the low thunder of explosions rattling old foundations.

They needed this. He’d told himself that a dozen times already. The old guard had to fall for anything new to rise. The corrupt Wizengamot, the pure-blood supremacists, the moderates who looked away until it suited them — decades of prejudice and stagnation had created this night.

Another blast shook Hogwarts. Screams rode the shockwave, curling up the spires like smoke.

Arthur ignored them. He had read enough history to know how revolutions unfolded. They were never clean. Blood watered the roots of change. There were many great examples in the muggle world. Now it was the wizarding world’s turn.

Then he heard it.

A scream that pierced stone and distance, sharp enough to make him flinch. Not a battle cry, not a groan of pain. This was different. Younger. Desperate.

Arthur frowned, but he didn’t move.

Another scream followed. Then another.

“Well,” he murmured, rising and brushing imaginary dust from his robes, “one can’t properly document history while remaining too comfortably seated.”

He told himself he wasn’t going to chase the sound of those desperate cries. He was going to check on the people he’d grown fond of despite himself — Sirius and Harry, certainly. By extension Amelia and Susan. And Madam Pomfrey, one of the rare adults at Hogwarts he actually respected. If something happened to them while he sat here drinking warm wine, what exactly was he building all this power for?

With that thought, Arthur vanished into invisibility and Apparated.

—

He arrived at the main entrance — or what had once been the main entrance.

The massive doors hung from twisted hinges. Rubble littered the flagstones. Two bodies in student robes lay crumpled by the threshold. Arthur didn’t look too closely. They weren’t moving, and he wasn’t here to play healer.

He was just… checking. Making sure the battle wasn’t completely one-sided. Making sure Harry and others were safe. That was all.

He moved through the corridors with clinical detachment, cataloguing the damage. Scorched stone. Blood smeared across the walls. A handful of portraits destroyed — a shame, some had been centuries old.

He pressed on, trying to cling to his rationale. This is necessary, he told himself. Let it burn away the old ways. The survivors will rebuild better.

—

The next corridor shattered that illusion entirely.

A Hufflepuff student — sixth year, maybe seventh — was dragging himself across the floor, his leg twisted at an angle that made Arthur wince. Behind him, a Death Eater followed at leisure, wand raised, laughter echoing.

“Come on, badger,” the man taunted. “Crawl faster. Make it interesting.”

The boy whimpered, clawing at the floor with trembling fingers. His wand was gone, probably lost when his leg snapped.

Arthur watched, jaw tightening. This was part of it, he reminded himself. The cost of change. That boy — Timothy? Thomas? — was just another casualty of a war born from the choices of this society.

The Death Eater grew bored. He flicked his wand. “Crucio!”

The scream that tore free filled the corridor.

Arthur’s wine glass — the one he’d forgotten he was holding — shattered in his hand.

—

The Death Eater never saw what hit him. One moment he was enjoying his victim’s pain; the next, a portal opened beneath his feet. The volcanic heat that claimed him was instant, absolute.

Arthur stood where he had been, hand lowering, not entirely sure why he’d acted.

The boy, too dazed to think, staggered upright on his ruined leg and half-ran, half-hobbled down the hall, glancing back in terror as though expecting his tormentor to reappear.

Arthur watched him vanish, irritation prickling. He’d broken his own rule. Intervened when he swore he wouldn’t.

But that Death Eater hadn’t been fighting. He’d been playing. That wasn’t war. That was sadism.

He turned to leave, to return to his tower and his wine and his comfortable distance.

Another scream echoed from above.

Arthur closed his eyes. “Not my problem.”

The scream came again, followed by sobbing.

“They chose this,” he said to the empty corridor.

A third scream. Cut short.

Arthur’s fists clenched. “Damn it.”

—

The second floor was worse.

Three Ravenclaws had barricaded themselves inside a classroom, desks and chairs piled high against the door. Outside, Death Eaters amused themselves by blasting it apart piece by piece.

“Little ravens hiding in their nest!” one jeered. “Come out and play!”

“We’ll make it quick,” another lied. “Mostly quick.”

From inside came muffled crying. These weren’t fighters. Just students who hadn’t evacuated when they should have. Curiosity or bravado had chained them to the castle — and now regret kept them frozen.

He should leave them to it. Natural selection at work. The weak and the foolish paying for their choices.

One of the Death Eaters succeeded in blasting through the barricade. “Got it! Oh, look at them cowering. This’ll be fun—”

Arthur opened a portal beneath him mid-sentence.

The other Death Eaters spun around, confused. “Where’d Greg go?”

“I don’t—”

Two more portals. Two more Death Eaters discovering what lava felt like.

Arthur stood in the hallway, still invisible, listening to the Ravenclaws sob with relief. They’d never know who saved them. That was fine. He wasn’t doing this for gratitude.

He wasn’t sure why he was doing it at all.

—

By the time he reached the third floor, Arthur had stopped pretending he was only passing through.

Two Hufflepuff boys lay bleeding out, crimson spreading fast across the stones. Their attacker, a wild-eyed witch branded with Grindelwald’s mark, circled like a cat, wand humming with dark energy.

“Does it hurt?” she purred, etching her wand across one boy’s chest. “It’s meant to hurt. Pain purifies. Pain teaches. Pain—”

She vanished mid-sentence, swallowed by fire before she could scream.

Arthur hadn’t even realized he’d opened the portal. Reflex, not choice.

He layered Stasis Charms over the two boys, freezing them in the moment before death could claim them, then shifted their bodies directly to the Hospital Wing.

Then he kept moving.

—

The pattern established itself without Arthur consciously deciding on it.

He’d enter an area intending just to observe. He’d see something that crossed a line—torture, execution of the defenseless, cruelty for its own sake. He’d act. Then he’d tell himself he was done, that was the last time.

Until he heard the next scream.

Ironically, the people he’d come to protect needed no protection at all.

Sirius dueled five Death Eaters at once with only Amelia for backup, and he was winning. Years of training had made him lethal.

A few corridors away, Harry moved through dark wizards and acromantulas with the fluid grace of someone born to battle. Every spell was economical, every movement calculated. Susan shadowed him, her shield work keeping stray curses from finding lucky marks.

Since his chosen few were thriving, Arthur roamed. He became a phantom stalking Hogwarts’ halls, swift and invisible, sending the cruelest Death Eaters to volcanic graves.

To the defenders it must have seemed divine intervention. One moment they were locked in deadly combat; the next, their opponent vanished mid-curse. No one questioned it. They couldn’t afford to.

The wounded he stabilized with Stasis, portaling them away to safety.

And then he moved on, silent as ever.

—

In the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey had long stopped being surprised by yet another body materializing out of thin air.

“Another one,” she called to her helpers without looking up from a chest wound she was sealing. “Stasis Charm, well done. Same as the others.”

“Who’s doing this?” a volunteer healer asked, wrestling with a particularly stubborn curse on a student’s arm.

Pomfrey allowed a small, tired smile despite the chaos. “Someone with a warmer heart than he’ll admit.”

She recognized the magic and knew exactly who it belonged to. Her most brilliant student, trying so desperately to be cold, to care about nothing… but unable to watch innocents die.

“Whoever it is,” she said louder, certain he’d somehow hear her, “tell them we’re grateful. And that we’re running out of beds.”

—

An hour passed like a nightmare on fast-forward.

Arthur lost count of how many Death Eaters he’d sent to volcanic ends — dozens, perhaps more. The Hospital Wing overflowed with injured defenders he’d pulled from the brink.

But Hogwarts was vast. Even invisible, even merciless, he was only one man. He couldn’t be everywhere. Some fell before he arrived. Some killers slipped through. The balance tipped, but never cleanly.

Still, the tide was turning. Death Eaters bled numbers, their cruelty punished with sudden, inexplicable disappearances. But the defenders were far from whole—the injured outnumbered the dead, yet exhaustion was setting in.

The fighting showed no sign of ending when the shout cut through it all.

“DUMBLEDORE’S TOMB!”

The cry sliced the chaos. Heads turned to the windows where green fire raged — magical flames eating through marble, consuming wards that should have been untouchable.

“No.” McGonagall’s whisper was a broken thing, horror-struck as she watched the tomb burn.

Arthur understood in an instant why Voldemort had been absent. While the battle raged, Tom had been grave-robbing.

Was he after the Elder Wand? Did he know its nature? Or was this nothing but an attempt to burn Dumbledore’s legacy and crush morale?

Arthur doubted the wand was his goal — Voldemort’s was still intact, since the canonical break had never happened in this world. Still, perhaps it didn’t work for him as well since the graveyard duel with Harry.

Either way, it didn’t matter. Voldemort wouldn’t find anything — the Elder Wand had long since become part of Arthur when he became Master of Death.

However, the defenders saw only sacrilege. Exhaustion burned away, replaced by incandescent fury.

—

Before they could channel it, Voldemort’s voice filled the air — everywhere and nowhere at once.

“You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery.”

Arthur could hear the smirk in his tone.

“Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss… and a waste.”

“Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Tend to your injured.”

Already, Death Eaters were pulling back in tight, efficient formations, leaving their dead where they lay.

“I speak now to you, Harry Potter. Your resistance has been… amusing. But you have allowed your friends to die for you rather than face me. I would have preferred your surrender, but I offer you another option. Duel me — one on one. Let us finish what began in Godric’s Hollow all those years ago.”

Somewhere in the castle, Harry went rigid; Susan’s hand tightened on his.

“If you do not come,” the voice purred, steel beneath silk, “I will kill them all. Every student. Every teacher. Every fool who stands between us. Their blood will water the grounds until Hogwarts drowns in crimson.”

“Don’t listen to him!” someone shouted, but Arthur wasn’t close enough to see Harry’s reaction.

“One hour,” Voldemort concluded. “The Quidditch pitch. Come alone, or bring your sheep — it matters not. One hour, Harry Potter… and we end this properly.”

The voice snapped off like a severed thread.

Arthur didn’t linger to watch the aftermath. He’d learned the hard lesson of watching too closely — every corpse a weight on his conscience, every dead face a future visitor to his dreams. Better to avoid everything and check on Harry to see how the boy would handle this seemingly impossible choice.

He Apparated to Harry’s location.

—

Minutes passed while Arthur stood invisible in the corner, watching Harry process the ultimatum.

The boy was surrounded by a ring of people who loved him: Sirius, Susan, the Weasleys, what remained of the DA. Voices overlapped, frantic: negotiations, plans, pleas for another way, anything that didn’t end with Harry facing Voldemort alone.

But Harry wasn’t listening. He stood perfectly still, and in his eyes Arthur saw something he recognized — the expression of someone who’d already made an impossible choice and accepted its weight. The same look Arthur had worn when he decided to face Ronan’s fleet, knowing it might kill him.

The look of a man who’d stopped counting odds and started accepting destiny.

“I’m going,” Harry said simply; his voice cut through the chaos.

Arguments erupted: Sirius practically roaring, Susan crying, everyone trying to stitch words into walls to keep him safe.

But Harry just stood there, a fixed point in a universe of panic, and repeated with quiet certainty:

“I’ve been training for this. I need to do this. Too many people have died.” His voice cracked slightly on the last word. “I need to end this before any more do.”

Arthur watched the boy—no, the young man—who’d been shaped by loss and war into something harder than anyone his age should have to be.

He genuinely didn’t know how this would end.

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