Harry Potter : Chapter 64: Courting Danger III

It happened on the fifth day.

The travel across Europe had taken the better part of a week despite Hagrid doing the bulk of the work when it came to dragging forward his two companions.

As each shack had to be checked over and occasionally repaired for them to be comfortable resting in there, that meant that they moved from dawn until dusk, pacing themselves so that the bodies of the two normal-sized mages could keep up.

Courtesy of Rubeus, as soon as they were in Greece they set up a new shack, of obviously bigger dimensions at only one apparition away from one of the few regions that were still wild despite the local community of wizards and the ever-expanding muggles. Minerva had been the one to research and find where they were meant to go.

The excuse about researching Lycanthropy had never been thinner as they didn't even try to look out the magical district of Athens: the reasoning was that if something relevant was present among the known tomes or legends of the locals, it would have been mentioned, even offhandedly, somewhere in the Hogwarts Library, which Rubeus had positively scoured for every bit of information that could be useful for his research.

Seeking out in the wilderness a chimera was excused three times over: once by Rubeus' interest in cross-breeding, which was again a topic that he had already read everything about in the school's library.

Once by Tom, who had taken to the idea of utilizing the creature's blood to turn his latest discovery into something truly unmatched in the world, and once by Minerva, that for all of her reluctance, was a Gryffindor at heart and couldn't resist the proposed adventure when her two companions had made it so real with so few words.

...

The three wizards moved among the small trees that stood several meters one from the other, their feet flattening the little underbrush that managed to thrive in Greece despite the heat and the few showers of rain of that year, while their ears were peeled to pick up anything of notice above the distant white noise of the wilderness.

They had spotted the odd magical creature here and there, creatures that Minerva hadn't managed to identify before Hagrid dismissed them as unimportant, but that still observed with beady eyes from places they deemed safe. Truly, that this section of the wilderness hosted magical creatures was the only thing that kept them going.

Five days: for five days had the Gryffindor witch accepted to wear the far more practical long trousers tucked into her boots in order to avoid the random branch from scratching her skin.

During each of those excursions, Hagrid kept up a low murmur that was an uninterrupted commentary that attempted to teach the two of them how to move quietly, how to spot tracks, and so on.

For some reason, he wasn't worried that his voice could scare away the imaginary prey that they spent each day looking for.

Even if Tom had looked smug when she mentioned it, forcing her to clamp her mouth shut in order to hold back from insulting him: away from school, Riddle showed just a little of the maverick-like attitude that Slughorn enjoyed so much in their tallest friend.

They were still moving in a precise direction, following Hagrid that crossed the irregular ground with insulting ease as Minerva had to complete two to three steps for each of his, when it happened: out of nowhere, a tree groaned ominously, causing everyone to whip their head in that direction, only for something to sweep her legs out from under her.

In a flurry of movement, Hagrid cast his wand upward, and a wave of force passed by the still falling Minerva without touching her, flattening everything else in the immediate surroundings instead while Riddle slashed horizontally with his length of yew, a dark glee one his features as he reacted to a perceived menace.

Still falling, Minerva changed, her limbs retracting and bending oddly as a tail whipped out from the end of her spine and twirled powerfully, making the cat she became land on its paws only to jump forward, just in time to avoid the return sweep of what her eyes now could see was an impressive grith of a snake's tail.

She landed on her feet as a human once more, the instincts of her Animagus form still thrumming in her while she pointed her wand at the ground: with no incantation, a small wall of stone put itself in place between her and the direction that the shoulder-high tail had just gone into, anticipating another possible attack while she moved to stand by the side of Hagrid and Riddle.

Rubeus pushed slashed with his wand, teeth bared in an approximation of a snarl while his powerful frame took a step forward as if he was wielding a sword: "Sectumsepra!"

The tree between him and his target was bisected like it was made of air, and a small waterfall of murky green blood fell on the ground, immediately followed by a wet gurgle. Minerva heard him curse while Riddle smacked his elbow with his free hand, receiving only a grunt of confirmation.

Everything had taken place in less than twenty seconds, and now that their enemy had lost the element of surprise, it revealed itself in all of its primal power: it left the deficient cover given by the irregular ground with a cacophony of threatening hisses.

Parts of the environment that had looked like some fallen trunks covered by foliage and whatnot revealed themselves as sinuous, mighty necks, each carrying yet another serpentine head.

"How many did you cut?" Hagrid's voice rumbled low against her back while Minerva tried to understand what they were dealing with.

"Three before I realized what was going on." was Riddle's curt reply.

The tallest among them grunted again: "I cut one."

"It means it had only four at the start, doesn't it?"

"And now it has nine." Rubeus replied, but his eyes were already darting around.

The quick back and forth left Minerva floudering for an instant, until she put together what she was seeing: each of the serpentine heads that emerged around her was identical, with hungry reptilian eyes that glinted red under the sun and an open maw of needle-like teeth that were positively oozing venom of a burning yellow.

"A Hydra." she hissed while her heart kept hammering in her chest, "You cut off heads from a Hydra!"

"I don't think we can apparate before one of them lunges." Riddle spoke as if he hadn't heard her, "And splinching will be the last of our problems if one of those manages to bite."

"Minerva, you're on defense, keep the heads from us." Hagrid spoke loudly, and something in his stern tone made her resort, a bit belatedly, to what Occlumency she had managed to put together with Professor Dumbledore: immediately the world became much more simple to observe.

The mindset of the hunting cat with the clarity of the human defined the rival predator and the allies by her side in a split second.

"I cut, you burn." Riddle's voice was distant to Minerva's ears: she had been told what her task was, and she'd trust the two Slytherin wizards at her back. She'd throttle the both of them once they were safe.

She thrust her wand of fir and dragon heartstring forth, and the world around started to change into something she favoured: animated trees swung branches with tips that began to turn into steel, puncturing a few wounds in the surprised creature while a cloud of dust whirled with metallic glints around the heads that looked ready to lunge.

Still, with her heightened perception, she observed how delicate-looking ribbons spun from Riddle's wand: ribbons that cut impossibly deeply with a pang of hunger and cold rage that was focused on their edge.

The obviously dark piece of magic moved at the speed of thought, tearing through some of trees that she had been animating without a care, while instead Rubeus simply brought the tip of his wand to his lips.

Neither of the two had spoken an incantation, so the only noise that reached her ears was the cacophonous hiss of the Hydra coupled with the spellfire that was devastating the surroundings. Until Hagrid completed his spell, that is.

While Minerva was raising once more a series of stone walls to stop the magical creature from clobbering them with its massive tail, fire blossomed from Rubeus' breath: a massive wave of angry red flames fanned out only to roll back while the tallest of her friends made a whipping motion.

A wolf's head took shape at the head of the firebolts that followed: and the flames howled with something not of this earth while they consumed the air that separated them from their targets. Where Riddle's ribbon cut, the snarling wolf's head made of flames clamped down with its fiery fangs.

The outraged cacophony of hisses of the Hydra carried an undercurrent of agony while the blood from which new heads should have been sprouting boiled and seared, leaving behind a lucid cover of molten flash that slowly stopped being on fire.

Under Tom's gleeful assault, the heads fell to the ground one after another, flames stopping the Hydra's infamous regeneration from kicking in while Minerva turned the stone walls into pack of wolves and murders of crows: the latter aim for the magical creature's eyes while the first attempted to harass the body where all those necks sprouted from.

Of course, it was then that everything went to hell in a handbasket.

The Hydra's tail whipped sideways across the now wall-free ground, destroying the conjured wolves with insulting ease and reaching the three before Minerva could stop it.

"Tail!" the shout left her while she was already jumping: with impossible grace and timing, all the power of her human legs propelled her upwards just as her body shrunk into the familiar form of a cat.

Her jump was more than enough, and she saw the massive tail pass more than half a meter beneath her while one of the few remaining heads darted forward, its maw open and its needle-like teeth ready to destroy her diminutive form.

The tail slammed against Tom's shield and flung him off his feet and... stopped cold against Hagrid.

A meaty thump resonated against the ground as the massive tail that would have crushed any normal human crashed against the braced form of their three-meters tall friend: it reached just above his waist, and with a baring of teeth, Hagrid simply cast a weak banishing charm at her diminutive form, effectively pushing her away from the Hydra's head that was about to bit on her.

Then, in a display that was truly spectacular, the flicker of flame that never stopped surging from her friend lengthened in a whip of cold light-blue fire: where before the air wavered because of the heat of the wolf-heads he had been cast in, it now misted over while infinitely small flakes of snow began to fall.

The freezing cold flames surged forth in an arch that carried both the cruel edge of the winter and the purifying, searing cruelty of the fire.

The flesh of the Hydra parted under the weakness that Tom had exploited up until that moment, and while the head fell, the exposed innards of the neck cracked and steamed, as if frostbitten.

Minerva returned human and landed on her feet in time to see Riddle fall with his back against a tree stump that had been made during the battle, the last head of the Hydra a few meters from him while the neck that had been carrying it swayed and thumped against the ground.

He was keeping one clearly broken arm against his side, his face was pale with mind-numbing terror, and there was a bloody gash on one of his thighs. A wound that was marred with the burning yellow venom of the nine-headed monster.

The creature that attacked them had been defeated, but with the last attack that had broken the formation the three mages had assumed flawlessly, Tom had been on his own, just long enough to kill the last head. Just long enough to be wounded by a creature with one of the most deadly venoms in the known world.

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