Harry Potter And Bellatrix Lestrange

Travelling by Portkey or Floo was usually a disconcerting experience on its own, but having to dive out of a fireplace and straight into the middle of a firefight was a whole different thing. Harry felt the familiar lurch as he left the fireplace, and the first thing that hit him was the acrid stench of burning flesh. Rolling to the side to make room for the rest of his troops, he came up in a crouch, wand poised and spitting disarming hexes at the few Death Eaters that remained in the room. The two men that had been left behind to guard the place as the fighting moved deeper into the mansion fell quickly, even before the dozen ice soldiers had managed to assemble.

Harry gestured towards the soldiers, and they filed out of the room quietly, sweeping through the empty hallways. The young lord of Polairix suppressed the nauseous feeling that assaulted him as they passed countless dead bodies as they made their way through the mansion. Most of them were unfamiliar to him, but what struck him was that many of the dead Order members were old - likely veterans of the first war with Voldemort, or even the conflict with Grindelwald. They had given as good as they had got though, and dozens of men wearing the black robes and skull masks of the Death Eaters were scattered throughout the building, dead or dying.

It took them a while to reach the other team, led by Count Hiscophney, that had portkeyed into the building's front lawn and made its way in from the front door. The Count shook his head when they met up. "No survivors," he muttered quietly, causing Harry's heart to sink.

It was only after they made their way deeper into the building that they found out the battle wasn't yet over. Screams and shouts of anger echoed through the halls as they passed by the storage area that was adjacent to the kitchen. Hiscophney waved off Harry's attempt to approach directly, and gestured towards his own squad of sorcerers. The light in the hallway dimmed with a wave of his hand, and in the already dark hallway, the sorcerers almost perfectly blended with the shadows as they crept around the corner, only to unload a withering barrage of magical fire into the unsuspecting Death Eaters' backs.

Harry swung himself around the corner the instant the sorcerers called out their spells, the company of ice soldiers and Snape right behind him as they tore into the remaining Death Eaters. The battle was over quickly - pinned down between the defenders, who had barricaded themselves behind magical shields and upturned tables, and the experienced troops of the Ice People and Trazkaban sorcerers, the men went down quickly and painfully.

"Don't shoot! We're friendlies!" Harry shouted before either side could get it into their heads to shoot at anyone else, especially the sorcerers, who looked rather close to Death Eaters, themselves, with their long black cloaks.

"Potter?"

"Moody? That you?" Harry asked as he made sure all of his people had stood down.

"Damn straight." The grizzled old Auror stood from behind one of the blackened and charred tables, his wand raised into the air above his head in a non-threatening gesture. "Glad to see you, Potter. That was one ugly furball we were in."

Harry breathed out a sigh of relief. At least someone was still alive. One by one, the wizards and witches that Moody had barricaded himself with stood, all of them raising their wands into the air first. The tension between the two groups was still there, especially after the British wizards recognized Harry, but he ignored it in favor of looking over his friend. Moody was a little worse for wear, with blood dripping down his left sleeve and a deep gash in his right shoulder that was only partially mended, but he was steady on his feet and undeterred.

"There's more of us holed up in places somewhere down here," the old auror told Harry, "a lot of them made it down into the cellars. We posted up barricades like these at all the entrances, trying to hold those filthy Death Eaters back, but it was looking pretty bad for a while. Voldemort is here."

"Voldemort?" Harry's eyes widened. "Why are you even here? I thought you'd all be at the Ministry, setting up for the big attack?"

"We were," Moody said. "Then one of our missing aurors from Miss Bones's team was found early this morning in front of the Ministry. Voldemort got to him and carved a message in blood. He accepts your challenge, and will attack in two days. Dumbledore called up all the retirees and reserves the Order ever had to rally them for the final battle, but Voldemort somehow must have found out about this place. They came only minutes after we'd all assembled and started pushing us back."

"How'd he even know about this place? I thought it was under the Fidelius charm?"

"So did we," Moody growled. "There's only one possibility. We've got a traitor in our midst."

Harry turned to Hiscophney. "We've got to get the other survivors out of here."

The Count nodded. "We can assemble them and use our emergency portkeys to take them back to the castle in groups."

"I'll take you downstairs. There's some nasty surprises we found when we cleaned the place out," Moody offered.

"All right." Hiscophney signaled his men, and the sorcerers and ice soldiers spread out. While Moody led a number of them down the stairs to retrieve the surviving Order members, Hiscophney, Harry, and Snape split the remaining eighteen soldiers between them to clear out any remaining Death Eaters. It didn't take them long, between the skill of Harry's forces and the element of surprise, the Death Eaters that remained were rounded up and either killed or captures. There was no trace of Voldemort, though, and Snape suspected that the dark lord had left after the main body of resistance had been crushed - he had a battle to prepare for, after all.

All in all, they found forty-six survivors, out of what Moody had claimed had been at least a hundred people. Harry was relieved to find Tonks among the uninjured. Thirty-eight Death Eaters were counted as either dead or captured, according to Hiscophney's report, though Harry found it only a small consolation as they collected the bodies of the dead.

"Milord?" one of the ice soldiers spoke up tentatively as he approached Harry.

"Yes?"

...

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