Chapter 45 (Part 2)

Earlier…

After separating from Harry, Tonks, Fleur and Luna flew at speed towards the place where scores of Death Eaters were throwing fire on everything.

"There are a lot of them." Fleur commented unnecessarily.

"Enough that we can't let them join the main fight." Tonks added grimly. The defenders were already outnumbered and didn't need this bunch attacking their flank on top of it.

"Will the three of us even be able to stop them?" The veela wondered. Powerful they might be, but a straight up fight against what looked like about a hundred Death Eaters was a bit much.

"We have to." Luna said plainly. She didn't want to lose any more people that she cared about. They were already hurting Marae and would kill her if this kept up, then they'd move on to everyone else.

The wind started picking up rapidly and bolts of lightning began to crack the sky.

"Looks like Harry's finished with the storm." Tonks said with a hint of satisfaction. "That should give them something to worry about."

And it did. The stiff wind combined with the Broom Disruption Field had already been making flying difficult and seeing one of their own get hit with a bolt of lightning was enough for them to decide that solid ground sounded good.

"Now's our chance." Tonks grunted, putting on some more speed. "Fly circles around them and cast area-of-effect spells on their periphery, try to corral them together."

"You two go ahead, I need to put out the fire in the forest." Luna said and flew off.

"Luna!" Tonks shouted after the little blonde and huffed when she was ignored. "She'd better not die on us."

"We had best keep our guests busy then." Fleur said, gripping her wand tightly. All three of them were capable of quite a bit of wandless magic by now, but were still too slow with it to be considered combat viable.

Tonks nodded her agreement and they went on the attack. With the Death Eaters forced to the ground by the wind and the rain and the lightning they now held a distinct aerial advantage and were able to perform strafing assaults without any need to watch anything but the ground. Still, there were so many enemies on the ground that it was a risky proposition nonetheless.

" THIEVES! DEFILERS! HOW DARE YOU STEAL FROM THE DARK LORD?! " A shrieking female voice sounded from below, obviously magically enhanced.

Neither Tonks nor Fleur replied, being too busy trying to force the Death Eaters to bunch up into a group, without much success it had to be said. There were only two of them after all and the Death Eaters' lack of discipline often had them running about like headless chickens.

" TO ME, YOU FOOLS! TO ME! WE WILL NOT FAIL OUR MASTER! " The same female voice screeched again.

In an instant, all the Death Eaters began converging on the shouting woman.

" NOW TAKE THEM OUT OF THE SKY! "

The return fire was far more organised and dangerous this time, forcing Tonks and Fleur to put up defensive spells and land somewhere out of sight. Still, they'd gotten what they wanted, which was to bunch up the Death Eaters.

"Was that your aunt screaming earlier." Fleur asked curiously, knowing of only one notable female Death Eater.

"Sounds just about crazy enough to be Bellatrix alright." Tonks said wryly.

Luna landed next to them, having finished with her self-appointed mission to put out the fires threatening the forest.

"What did we steal from Voldemort though?" She asked in confusion.

"I think she's talking about the flight spell."

"But that's not stealing, that's copying." Luna protested.

"They're almost here." Fleur interrupted, peering at the approaching enemies from the roof of the building they were on. "Are we sticking with the original plan or should we tone it down to make sure Bellatrix survives?"

Tonks pursed her lips, hair briefly shifting to an intense purple as she considered the options they had. Bellatrix was almost guaranteed to have critical information about another of Voldemort's horcruxes, but…

"We can't, there's too many." She said, shaking her head. "We'll just have to, and I can't believe I'm saying this, hope that she survives."

Fleur snorted in amusement, but sobered up quickly. "Let's do this then."

Tonks nodded and began circling her wand above her head in wide, ponderous motions. The wind began coalescing into a distinct tornado shape behind the Death Eaters.

Said Death Eaters halted their advance, unsure of what was going on. The miniature tornado wasn't strong enough to really do any damage after all, so what was the point?

They got their answer when Fleur did her part, channeling a stream of flame into the swirling wind construct and turning it into a twisting tower of fire.

" SCATTER! " The presumed Bellatrix shrieked as the contained firestorm bore down on the group.

They obeyed instantly, but the two witches had chosen their location well. There were only so many places for them to go and they directed the firestorm to cut off the most likely escape route, torching nearly two dozen of the Death Eaters.

There was some return fire of course, but that was what Luna was there for. The joint spell consumed all of Tonks' and Fleur's attention, so they needed someone to keep them safe. Her combination of magical shielding and floating debris blocked the sporadic counter attacks aimed at them.

It was only when Bellatrix herself started aiming blasting curses at the building they were perched on that they had to abandon their position and alighting on the next building over. The conjured firestorm lost cohesion almost immediately as a result and sputtered out in an incongruously anti-climactic manner.

" The Dark Lord has bid me to kill you, Niece! " Bellatrix sounded off again, this time not shouting but cackling gleefully. " You and the other two sluts. "

"What a shrill woman." Fleur muttered irritably.

Tonks decided to reply this time, putting a quick Sonorous on her voice. " Old Snakeface must be getting pretty desperate if he's sending a nameless nobody like you after us. " She said, deliberately poking at the fact that Bellatrix had been cast out of the Black family.

" KILL THEM, KILL THEM ALL! " Bellatrix howled furiously.

"Too easy." Tonks muttered.

Once again, the Death Eaters instantly obeyed, hurling spells at the trio of witches. Oddly enough, most of the spells were fairly low level and not exactly something that could be classed as 'dark magic'.

The next fifteen or so minutes were a running battle. Tonks, Fleur and Luna had extreme mobility, power, teamwork and the best armor known to magic on their side while Bellatrix still had a significant numbers advantage despite the losses her side had taken so far.

It was a slow grind where Luna would stay on the defense, Fleur on the offense and Tonks would alternate as needed. In this manner, they whittled down Bellatrix's forces while slowly retreating, much to the detriment of Spellhaven's architecture.

They did find the Death Eaters' fanatical assault a bit strange, as the losses they were taking should have broken the morale of any human force, but they didn't think on it too much given that Bellatrix was a known fanatic.

Similarly, they found the Death Eater's choice of spells a bit odd, as curiously few of them used anything particularly vicious. There was no real time to think on that either though, given that these people were trying to kill them.

As the Death Eater numbers dwindled, Tonks, Fleur and Luna were able to abandon their hit-and-run tactics and engage more directly, which caused the enemy numbers to dwindle even more rapidly. Before long, only Bellatrix and a handful of others were left.

"Looks like you won't be killing anyone today." Tonks mocked when it became abundantly clear who was winning this fight.

"DIE!" Bellatrix screamed shrilly, hurling deadly spells at her niece.

She was too far gone to really take note of the fact that she had barely any support left, and what she did have was being mopped up by Fleur and Luna. Taunts had been exchanged over the course of the battle and now she was completely lost to reason. Added to her fanatical loyalty to Voldemort it meant that retreat wouldn't have entered her mind even if she had a way of achieving it. She'd rather die and take at least one of them with her than return in failure.

Tonks easily either blocked or avoided the spells. So easily that even she was surprised, in fact. Had they really become so powerful already that even Bellatrix was not much of a challenge? She was still dangerous of course, but Tonks was not finding herself particularly hard pressed fighting her.

"Were you always this weak?" She taunted.

Bellatrix was close to screaming in frustration at being treated with such casual condescension by a witch more than twenty years her junior, even if a large portion of those years had been wasted in Azkaban.

Bellatrix was so used to being feared that she'd developed an unrealistically high opinion of her own skills and was now being smacked in the face by reality.

True, she was fast and had good reflexes, her disposition was excellent for the Dark Arts and her killing intent always simmered so close to the surface that she could belt out Killing Curses faster than most people could throw stunners. She was counted as one of Voldemort's most dangerous minions with good reason.

But for all of that, she wasn't as powerful as her reputation would suggest. Her true strength had always been in her speed and viciousness, rather than in raw power or repertoire of spells. Magic required understanding, knowledge and will. Bellatrix could only really claim to have the last of those in any significant amount and even that manifested as a fanatical devotion to another rather than as personal strength.

Voldemort had made a dangerous assumption when he'd sent her to kill Harry's women. It couldn't even be called an assumption, as he'd simply taken it for granted that his nemesis would not help them become powerful in their own right, which was what he would have done in the same situation. After all, what kind of madman gave power freely to those best positioned to betray him? Stringing people along with tempting little morsels he could understand, but the thought of freely sharing powerful knowledge was sheer lunacy to him. Even Dumbledore had never trusted anyone enough to raise them up like that and it seemed only logical to Voldemort that if the old man had been that sensible, then surely Harry Potter would guard his knowledge of magic even more jealously.

Incapable of forming emotional attachments, Voldemort did not and could not understand why anyone would act in such a way that was entirely to the benefit of another rather than themselves.

So he had been sure that Bellatrix and those with her would easily be a match for Tonks, Fleur and Luna. He had even considered it overkill, but had assigned her so much backup just in case they had some of their own.

But she wasn't a match for any of them, much less all three. The power disparity was simply too great and much of her reputation came from her cruelty rather than her skill. Added to that, while her sadistic disposition might have been great for throwing out spells filled with malice, it also made her aggressive and reckless and ill-suited for fightning against someone that could force her on the defensive.

"Is that all, Aunt ?" Tonks sneered after throwing the half-mad witch into a wall.

The metamorphmagus was not normally inclined to this kind verbal 'kicking them while they're down', but the battle had left her feeling more than a bit drunk on her own power.

"I really did expect more from her after all that talk." Fleur added faux sorrowfully, but her eyes were black and gleaming with the same kind of interest that a cat might have for a cornered mouse. She was in much the same boat as Tonks, if not worse. Her own veela nature was even more given to passion of all kinds, including battle lust, than a regular human.

Luna merely nibbled on her bottom lip, much less aggressive than the other two because she'd been playing defense the entire time, but it had also left her jumpy and constantly expecting another threat to manifest.

No amount of intellectual preparation could ever really prepare a person for their first pitched battle. War might be objectively horrible, but it was easy to forget that with the blood rushing in your ears, your heart thundering in your chest and your perception distorted into hyper focus. Worse still was the sense of invincibility and sheer righteousness that came along with it when you were winning against an enemy that wasn't even morally ambiguous, but outright evil. All three of them were still running on a battle high.

Bellatrix painfully picked herself off the ground, then she started cackling again. Hitting the wall had knocked her out of the unthinking rage she'd been in and now she could plan again. Escape was unlikely and direct attack had already proven fruitless, but she might yet get a partial success out of her mission. She could do this one last thing for the Dark Lord.

"She really is crazy." Fleur shook her head in disgust as the woman continued to cackle.

"Little girls, so blind." Bellatrix giggled in an unhinged manner. "You think you've won something here?"

"All your fellow Death Munchers are either dead or out for the count and you're about to be taken prisoner, I'd say that counts as a win." Tonks retorted.

"Fellow Death Eaters? These?" Bellatrix giggled again. "These weren't Death Eaters, just fodder brought here under the Imperius, and you've killed all of these poor, innocent people."

Tonks felt like someone had hit her in the gut with a hammer. It didn't for a moment occur to her that Bellatrix might have been lying, because the odd lack of impact their losses had on morale, the strangely low amount of dark curses and even the instant obedience finally made sense. No wonder they'd been able to carve through them like they were nothing, it had just been ordinary people in Death Eater regalia.

And it was perfectly plausible too. The average person simply did not have the strength of will to resist the effects of the Imperius. All it would take was sending out loyal Death Eaters and have each of them put a few people under it and you've instantly quadrupled your force. Most people would have trouble holding that many under the curse for an extended length of time, but if it only had to last for a day or so…

Fleur and Luna were similarly shocked and all three dropped their guard as the gravity of what they'd done sank in.

Bellatrix seized the opportunity without hesitation.

" AVADA KEDAVRA! " She roared, putting all of her hatred into the curse.

Tonks had just enough time to realise her aunt's game before the Killing Curse struck her dead center and sent her flying backwards.

"NO!" Both Fleur and Luna yelled, blasting Bellatrix back into the wall with enough raw magic to crack it, along with her skeleton.

Paying the now unconscious and severely injured Death Eater no more mind, they ran towards their fallen lover.

"Nymmie?" Fleur asked hesitantly, cupping the metamorphmagus' face.

Tonks coughed and cracked open her eyes.

"Nymphadora!" Luna squealed and hugged her.

"Ow."

"Are you hurt?" Fleur asked worriedly, backing off a bit.

"Just my pride, I could swear I heard Moody screaming 'CONSTANT VIGILANCE' in my head when I got hit." Tonks groaned and sat up, taking a look at her chest, which now sported a distinct circular discoloration. "Basilisk hide saved my arse, but that was fucking scary! I think I actually pissed myself a little."

Despite her words, she was a little bit hurt. The Killing Curse didn't normally have any kinetic energy to it, but hitting basilisk hide had caused some kind of reaction that generated it and her ribs weren't happy about it. Not to mention that she'd smacked her head when she hit the ground.

Both Fleur and Luna laughed, more in relief than in actual humor.

The levity abandoned them quickly as they caught sight of the battlefield and the many bodies scattered across it. Bodies of people that had been brought here against their will by the Imperius Curse if Bellatrix was to be believed.

And no matter how much they would have liked to, they couldn't bring themselves to disbelieve it. Sure, it had been kill or be killed, but these deaths would have sat a lot easier on the conscience if they were actual Death Eaters.

"We should go help Harry." Luna said calmly, choosing to not think about it for now.

The other two were glad for the new direction and quickly agreed, stopping only long enough to tie up Bellatrix and have Kreacher collect her before they flew off.

While his girls were discovering just how strong they'd become over the past few years, Harry was having the opposite experience.

Ever since coming to Hogwarts, he'd been ahead of the curve. Born into a privileged social class, the public giving him credit for his mother's final act, already having years of magical experimentation under his belt before his formal education started, possessing an innate talent for magic, performing rituals that should have by all rights killed him or worse but instead surviving due to a set of truly ridiculous extenuating circumstances and coming out of it with incredible benefits…

Harry had enjoyed almost every conceivable advantage from the start and had not been at all shy about using them. It had been mostly smooth sailing for him, with only a few incidents where he found himself in over his head.

Until now, because Voldemort was strong. And old and experienced.

Oh, Harry was quite sure that he was already better than him at actually being a wizard despite the age disparity, but the current contest was about who was the better killer and he was coming up short.

Granted, they'd only exchanged probing attacks so far, but it was already setting the tone of the fight.

"You are slow, Harry Potter." Voldemort noted with a distinct gloating tone as he landed on the roof of a building.

That wasn't true. Harry wasn't slow by any means, but his rejection of a wand did mean that it took him a few extra moments to gather his power for each spell. Against lesser foes it wouldn't have mattered, but against Voldemort it was a serious disadvantage.

Harry landed on another building on the other side of the street and retorted snippily. "I prefer to do things properly rather than quickly these days. I've had some… mishaps with unintended consequences in the past when I rushed things."

Voldemort's red eyes flickered towards his right hand, the one that had been burned when his spell backfired on him.

"You seem to have had quite the exciting life already, for one so young." He commented.

Harry had to smile in a twisted sort of amusement at this ridiculous conversation. "Yes, well… the alternative was to end up as one of the sheep and that would be a fate worse than death."

"There is nothing worse than death." Voldemort argued, sounding as if he truly believed that.

Harry's smile acquired a mocking edge. "Really? What about passive submission to meaningless rules? Would you have been content to live out your life as 'Tom Riddle, Senior Clerk for the Improper Use of Magic Office' or something similar like a good little slave?"

Voldemort's eyes narrowed in response. "The greatness of Lord Voldemort could never be constrained to such mediocrity."

"Then you admit that you'd rather die than be mediocre?"

"I will never die." The older wizard hissed, clearly unwilling to concede that he couldn't have lived that way.

"Even the stars must die." Harry said, looking upwards with another smile. He couldn't see the stars behind the clouds, but he could always feel them. Them, and the infinite darkness between them. "There is no path beyond the scope of Light, beyond the reach of Dark. Is there even any purpose to your actions, Tom Riddle, or are you just an empty shell of flesh and blood, a simmering cauldron of fear and hatred, shackled by falsehood and yearning for something you don't understand?"

Voldemort predictably didn't like that and responded by slashing his wand with an hiss, sending a scything ribbon of malice lashing towards him.

It missed as Harry took to the air, causing the roof he'd been standing on to crumble. He paid no attention to that though, focused instead on releasing the spell he'd formed during their conversation. A blue-purple flame that burned with a wrongness that hurt the eyes to look at roared towards Voldemort, who also took to the air to dodge it.

The Indigo Flame of Change hit the building and burst apart, crawling over the roof ravenously and leaving behind a mass of scaly purple flesh instead of tile.

A great eye opened and blinked up at Voldemort, its lid lined with twisted fangs. Then tentacles shot upwards from around it, one of them managing to snatch the Dark Lord's ankle.

To Voldemort's credit, he reacted with inhuman reflexes in spite of his surprise and quickly cut off the tentacle before it could yank him down. Just in time too. Any later and he wouldn't have been able to deflect Harry's follow-up spell, a whip of more conventional fire.

Harry was already on the move when the counter-attack came, far faster than he could hope to cast. He managed to release a volley of Magic Missiles before having to focus on defending himself from the deluge of flesh-rotting, blood-boiling, organ-rupturing and other nasty curses.

Voldemort was stupidly fast with his wand, throwing out an almost unbroken chain of spells that kept his enemies on the defensive. Harry simply wasn't fast enough to really turn the tables, nor was he so powerful that he could simply overwhelm him. Even the previously cast Magic Missiles didn't keep the Dark Lord's attention for more than an instant.

Fortunately, Harry wasn't fighting alone. Etal had laid low and kept out of sight for now, but he saw the perfect moment to strike while Voldemort was busy hurling a torrent of spells at Harry. The quetzalcoatl knew better than to try coiling around the powerful wizard, but he could certainly break his focus.

With that in mind, he whizzed through the air just behind Voldemort's head, causing the man to flinch and as he sensed the threat pass him by.

Harry took the opportunity to go back on the offensive, freezing the rain around him into sharp icicles and propelling them at Voldemort.

To no avail, unfortunately. Voldemort reacted easily fast enough to defend himself.

The battle once more fell into a lull as the two powerful wizards reassessed each other. It was clear to both of them that the fight was going to be long and drawn out if things continued in this vein.

Both were equally mobile. Harry's senses were more attuned and gave him an almost precognitive idea of his opponent's next action, but Voldemort was no slouch in that department either. Both had too much skill in the Mind Arts to gain any advantage there. Voldemort was faster at casting spells, but Harry had his armor and Etal to help him out.

Still, Harry conceded that he probably couldn't win this one. Sooner or later, Voldemort would manage to score a hit on the speedy quetzalcoatl and then he would have a firm advantage. It was almost enough to make him regret disdaining a wand, almost.

All in all, it was a good thing that he didn't have to win, merely stall until backup arrived. Truthfully, Harry would like nothing better than to fly across the distance and grab Voldemort by the neck, depriving both of them of the ability to cast spells. Unfortunately, that would include flight and would probably earn him a deadly spell to the face before he got even halfway there anyway.

"I've been wondering if you'd mind answering a little curiousity of mine." Harry inquired politely, as if they hadn't just been trying to horribly kill each other.

"It would depend on what has you curious." Voldemort replied reasonably.

"Let's say you succeed at everything. Kill me, kill Dumbledore, kill everyone that opposes you and take over the world." Harry began. "What are you going to do after that?"

"I will rule of course." Voldemort said as if it was obvious.

"Yeah, but have you considered what that actually means in practice? Sure, I expect there's going to be plenty of bowing and scraping, but surely even an egomaniac like you has to get bored of that eventually."

Voldemort scowled at him. "Harry Potter, you are beginning to try my patience."

"Well, prophecy aside, I wouldn't be your enemy if we got along, now would I?" Harry asked sardonically.

"You know the prophecy?" Voldemort jumped on the information.

"Of course I do, Dumbledore told it to me at the end of my first year in Hogwarts. Troublesome thing."

"What does it say?" The Dark Lord asked.

"Not telling." Harry said in his most petulant tone of voice, getting a scowl out of the other wizard. "Anyway, back to the topic at hand. You've conquered the world, everyone is either your loyal follower, dead or a slave too beaten down to resist. What does Lord Voldemort, God-Emperor of Earth, do now that he and he alone is in control of mankind's destiny?"

"God-Emperor of Earth…..I like it." Voldemort said, pleased.

"I thought you might." Harry drolled. "So, what would you do? You've broken humanity's will, there's no governments left to overthrow or even a resistance to fight."

He glossed over the inconvenient fact that the mundanes would sooner glass the entire planet with nuclear fire than let that happen. Voldemort wouldn't listen anyway.

The silence stretched on uncomfortably.

"You have no idea, do you?" Harry finally said, his words a flat statement more than a question.

"My plans are no concern of yours, seeing as you will be dead by then." Voldemort snapped.

"Uh huh." Harry replied skeptically. He knew a deflection when he heard one.

"And what about you?" Voldemort counter-attacked. "You say you have plans for the world. What are they? Expose us to the muggles? Breed with them? Become their servants?"

"Do I really come off as that kind of guy to you?" Harry asked incredulously before shaking his head. "Just because I'm your enemy doesn't mean that my views are diametrically opposed to yours."

"You agree with me then that the muggles are inferior to us?"

Harry nodded easily. "I do. It's obvious enough when you think about it. We have everything that they do and magic on top of it. That being said, this objective superiority only applies on an individual basis and even then only in a general sense. Magicals have more potential, but that often just makes them all the more contemptible for wasting it. As a society, mundanes have achieved more than us, at least in the developed parts of the world. I have no desire to subjugate or destroy them and disrupt the flow of knowledge they are uncovering."

" Muggle knowledge." Voldemort sneered. "What good is that?"

"Knowledge is knowledge." Harry riposted.

"So… what, your 'plan' is to simply let things go on as they are?" Voldemort scoffed.

"For the most part." Harry agreed. "As for what I would change…..well, I'm afraid I can't talk about that just yet. A lot of people would be quite upset with my plans and I'd rather not blab them out until it was too late to do anything about them."

"I've always hated optimists." Voldemort said, his body language regaining its previous hostility.

"What a coincidence, so have I."

And the battle was resumed, the two powerful wizards once more resorting to lethal spells as a means of conflict resolution.

Harry stayed largely on the defensive, only letting loose the occasional bit of offensive magic when Etal gave him an opening. He knew that the girls should be arriving soon and it wouldn't do him any good to take unnecessary risks.

The battle raged from building to building and across the sky, leaving ruin in its wake everywhere. Direct spells gave way to wide area ones, delayed effect ones, traps, unblockables, obscure or self-invented ones.

Harry quickly discovered that he just wasn't ready for this level of magical combat. He could sit on the defensive, but not attack and that was a surefire way to getting beaten down eventually. Although he could see that the blistering pace was draining on Voldemort as well.

In a distant corner of his mind that wasn't fully devoted to survival, he noted that he needed to do something to ameliorate the speed disadvantage of disdaining a wand.

And then another trio of spells shot towards Voldemort and forced him to backpedal in a hurry.

" Bonjour, gentlemen." Came Fleur's silky tones.

"Is this a boys only event, or can us girls throw in too?" Dora added.

"Hello, Harry!" Luna beamed, sounding entirely too cheerful for the situation.

"Girls." Harry greeted, amused by their entrance and grateful to see them unhurt… although that circular mark on Dora's chest looked like the result of a powerful curse. "Finished with your end?"

"Yep, we even bagged my crazy aunt." Dora nodded.

Harry grinned. "Excellent."

"So, Bellatrix has failed me." Voldemort hissed coldly.

"Now that's not fair." Harry chided. "It's not Bella's fault that she's trash compared to my girls."

Voldemort glowered.

The battle exploded again practically without warning as the Dark Lord tried to get in a cheap shot. To no avail, as none of them had let their guard down.

With it now being four on one, plus Etal, it was Voldemort who found himself on the defensive. Being bombarded with spells from so many sides was too much even for him, no matter how strong and fast he was.

"This isn't over, Harry Potter." He hissed when he managed to get a little breathing room and rocketed into the distance.

"Thank you so much for that keen observation, Captain Obvious." Harry snarked at the retreating Dark Lord's back.

"Harry, we've got something we need to tell you." Dora said with a grim sobriety that set off alarm bells in his head.

Harry looked at the three girls and noticed that they all had a distinctly guilty mien about them.

"What is it?" He asked apprehensively. What the hell had Voldemort pulled that he hadn't noticed?

Later.

Harry watched as the bodies of the dead were dragged off and the wounded recovered.

Spellhaven was severely damaged and there were bodies lying in the mud all over the place, ranging from silver-haired veela to tawny sphinxes. The vast majority of the bodies were dressed in Death Eater garb however.

Fleur was off talking to her grandmother, who he noticed now had her arm in a sling. Dora and Luna were sorting out the prisoners, trying to separate Imperius victims from actual Death Eaters.

He didn't have to hear what they were saying to notice the defeated set of their shoulders. The real Death Eaters had mostly bugged out when the battle started going against them, using their Imperiused fodder to cover their retreat.

A Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one.

"You cheeky motherfucker." Harry swore to himself. This was going to put such a stain on their reputation that it was unlikely to wash off anytime soon. He could already imagine the politicians gleefully rubbing their palms together, plotting all the ways they could feign outrage and milk this shitstorm for all it was worth.