The moment Krum's body hit the ground, the Rot Boss stopped moving.
Its huge form went still. The tendrils hanging limp. The green glow in its eyes dimmed to almost nothing. For one stupid second, Harry thought maybe it was over. Maybe killing Krum had been enough.
The Boss dropped to its knees. Dust exploded upward. And those huge, twisted arms reached out, grabbed both halves of Krum's corpse, and dragged them inward.
Harry's stomach turned.
They were pulled into the Boss's chest, absorbed into the pulsing black mass. Krum's blood, his bones, his flesh, all of it vanished into the corruption. The Boss shuddered. Its entire frame convulsed. Black veins spread outward from its core, thicker than before, brighter, pulsing with a sickly orange charge while the green light at its center burned hotter.
It started growing.
Ten feet became fifteen. Fifteen became twenty. The twisted branches that formed its crown scraped the ceiling. Stone crumbled. The roof began to collapse.
Chunks of stone the size of carts dropped from above. Damien's hands snapped up. Light exploded between his palms and a barrier materialized overhead, translucent and shimmering. The falling debris hit it and shattered into dust. Damien's face went white. Sweat poured down his temples. He was holding the entire ceiling.
Thirty feet.
The Boss's head punched straight through the roof. The remaining structure gave way with a deafening boom. Enormous slabs of stone and timber crashed down in every direction. Damien's barrier buckled. He screamed and dropped to one knee, both hands shaking as he poured everything he had into keeping the shield intact.
Mariel ran to him. Her small hands pressed against his back. Energy flowed from her into him, a thin silver thread that Harry could see even through the chaos. Damien's shield brightened. The falling debris slowed, redirected outward instead of down.
"Get back!" Cedric's voice cut through the noise.
Harry turned. Cedric stood near the entrance, wand raised, his face locked in concentration. Behind him, Fleur stepped forward. Her silver hair whipped around her face. Her wand traced a wide, sweeping arc through the air.
"Incendio!"
Fire erupted from her wand. A wave of flames twenty feet high that roared across the Hall and slammed into the Rot Boss's torso. The heat hit Harry's face even from fifty feet away. The smell of burning wood and rot filled the air.
The Boss staggered backward. Its chest smoked. Black tar oozed from fissures in its body, hissing and bubbling where the fire touched it. But it didn't fall. It roared. The sound shook what was left of the building.
Cedric moved. His wand snapped forward. "Glacius Totalus!"
Ice exploded from the ground beneath the Boss's feet. It climbed its legs in seconds freezing the corrupted limbs in place. The Boss tried to move. The ice groaned but held.
"Again!" Cedric shouted.
Fleur didn't hesitate. "Flagrante!"
Another blast of fire. This one concentrated. A spear of flame that punched straight into the Boss's chest where the black veins pulsed brightest. The impact blew a hole clean through. Burning chunks of corrupted flesh scattered across the stone.
The Boss screamed. Its arms swung wide. A dozen tendrils erupted from its torso, whipping through the air faster than Harry could track.
Damien's shield flared. The tendrils hit it and rebounded, slamming back into the Boss's own body. Damien grunted. Blood ran from his nose.
Mariel pressed harder against his back. Her face was pale. "I'm with you. Keep going."
Cedric's wand moved again. "Deprimo!"
Gravity slammed down on the Boss's upper body. It dropped forward, one huge hand slamming into the ground to catch itself.
Fleur raised her wand. "Confringo! Confringo!"
Two explosions. One after the other. The first hit the Boss's shoulder. The second took out its right arm at the elbow. The limb fell away, burning, and dissolved into black sludge before it even hit the ground.
Harry stood there with his wand hanging useless at his side. Fleur struck. Cedric reinforced. Every opening vanished before Harry could even react. The Fulmino he had been proud of weeks ago wouldn't have scratched this thing.
Fleur's flames didn't just burn because they seemed to swallow everything they touched. The heat coming off her made the air blur, and her wand blazed so bright that Harry had to squint.
The Boss regenerated. Its missing arm regrew in seconds, with black wood and bone twisting together to form a new limb.
Mariel didn't say a word. Her hands stayed pressed to Damien's back, but Harry felt her focus change. A pulse went out from her in all directions. It touched Fleur and Cedric, and Harry saw their shoulders tense as they felt it too.
The Boss moved, its new arm snapping forward in a blur.
Mariel's voice echoed inside Harry's head, sounding more like a thought than a shout. Left tendril. High arc. Three seconds.
Cedric's wand was already moving before the monster even finished its swing. He shouted "Protego Maxima!" and a shield formed exactly where the tendril was headed. The attack hit the center of the barrier and bounced away. Fleur didn't wait for a signal. She fired a "Bombarda" that tore into the Boss's chest, and Cedric followed up instantly by freezing the wound shut before the monster could heal.
Right side. Low sweep. Now.
The warning rang in Harry's mind again. Cedric dropped flat just as a tendril passed over his head, and Fleur's fire caught it mid-swing, burning it to ash.
Harry watched them work and felt a sinking feeling in his chest. The gap between him and the others felt like a canyon. Fleur raised her wand high.
A column of fire spiraled up and wrapped around the Boss. The heat was so intense that Harry had to step back as the stone floor began to melt. The thing shrieked, its body shaking as the flames ate through the corruption faster than it could grow back. Cedric moved forward at the same time, his wand tracing a complex pattern in the air. "Frigoris Lux!"
A beam of pure cold hit the burning Boss dead center. Fire and ice collided, and a massive cloud of steam exploded outward, filling the entire Hall. When it finally cleared, the Boss was on its knees. Half of its torso was gone, and the rest of it pulsed weakly as it tried to rebuild itself.
Harry's hands clenched. He wanted to help, but what could he even do? A Stunning Spell or a Cutting Charm felt like throwing pebbles at a mountain.
A groan from behind him snapped his attention away from the duel. Harry spun around and saw Damien. It hit Harry all at once that while the others were winning the battle, Damien was the only thing keeping the ceiling from flattening them.
Harry sprinted toward the edge of the shimmering barrier. His eyes darted across the wreckage, searching for the pressure points like he was looking for a Snitch in a storm. He spotted them quickly: two massive, jagged chunks of granite that had fallen at an angle, wedged right under the heaviest part of the ceiling.
Harry knew he couldn't blast the monster and he couldn't hold up a building, but he realized he had one specific tool the others weren't even looking for. He remembered that night by the river, when he had forced a boulder to change shape because he simply had no other choice. He didn't know how he had done it then, but he knew he could do it again.
"Lapidorus lignum!"
He moved the wand in that familiar press-and-twist motion, but he pushed much harder than he ever had in class. He didn't just aim at the stone; he felt for the center of it, imagining the magic sinking deep into the granite and forcing it to his will.
The stone didn't just change color as it transformed. The grey rock rippled and expanded, turning into dense, dark mahogany. Harry's vision blurred for a second as he poured everything he had into the spell, forcing the wood to grow and stretch until the two chunks met in the middle.
He wasn't just changing the material; he was building a brace. He shaped the wood into a thick, arched bridge that locked itself into the floor and the ceiling at the same time.
A rush of pure adrenaline surged through Harry as he watched the dark, knotted wood bite into the cracks between the stone slabs. For a split second, he felt a wave of excitement. This was more than just practicing in an empty classroom or starting a campfire by the river. This was real, high-level magic, and it was working exactly the way he wanted it to. The exhaustion hit him like a physical blow a moment later. It was so sudden and heavy that his knees almost gave out His head pounded, and his hand was shaking so hard he had to let his wand drop to his side.
The wood creaked under the immense pressure, but it held.
Harry ignored the ringing in his ears and scrambled over the uneven floor toward the center of the wreckage.
Damien lay facedown, his chest heaving as he tried to pull himself up. The shield was gone, leaving only the smell of ozone and the terrifying sound of the wooden arch groaning above them. Harry reached him and grabbed his shoulder, helping him roll onto his side.
"Are you okay?" Harry asked "Can you stand?"
Damien didn't answer right away. He just choked out a wet cough and gripped Harry's arm so hard his fingers dug into the fabric of the basilisk outfit. He looked completely hollowed out. The blood from his nose was a dark smear across his mouth, and his eyes were unfocused, darting toward the massive wooden structure Harry had just created.
Mariel was already there, kneeling on Damien's other side. She didn't look at Harry, but he felt her gratitude like a warm pulse through the mental link. She pulled Damien's arm over her shoulder, trying to take some of his weight.
"He's drained," Mariel said, her voice strained. "The shield took everything. We have to get him clear before the Boss recovers."
Harry braced himself and gripped Damien's other side. Together, they started to haul him back toward the safety of the hallway, away from the melting stone and the screaming monster.
A shadow fell over them.
Harry looked back. The Boss was dragging its broken body upward, its remaining limbs clawing at the air. The steam from Cedric's ice was still thick, but through the white clouds, Harry could see the green glow of the core pulsing deep inside the creature's chest. It was bright. Exposed.
Fleur and Cedric were already moving in, their wands leveled like executioners but the Boss locked in place. Its towering frame tensed, the orange charge along its veins guttering as the green core dimmed. For a second, Harry actually thought they'd done it. He thought the thing was finally dead.
Massive chunks of blackened wood and gross, corrupted flesh peeled off its body in wet slabs. They hit the floor with heavy thuds and turned into black slime.
Thirty feet became twenty. Twenty became fifteen. The crown of branches on its head crumbled and fell away. The legs, which used to look like tree trunks, thinned out into something lean and strong.
Ten feet. Seven.
What was left looked almost human. The chest cavity was still glowing, but the light was shielded behind layers of hardened, black rot. Its face was gone completely. In its place was just a smooth, featureless mask of wood with one hole that happened to be a mouth.
Cedric raised his wand, his voice shaking. "What the hell is it doing?"
The Boss crouched low to the ground. Its shoulders rolled forward and it opened its mouth.
Black smoke poured out. It spread across the floor like spilled ink, crawling in every direction. Mariel's presence vanished from Harry's awareness all at once. The fog didn't feel like emotion or intent. It felt like interference. Whatever Elias had released wasn't something she could read. Within seconds, the whole Hall was full of it. It was a dense, oily fog that seemed to just swallow the light.
Harry couldn't even see his own hand. He raised his wand. "Lumos."
The light didn't do anything. It barely went a foot before the fog ate it up. He tried again, pushing more magic into the spell, but it was the same result. The darkness pressed in from every side.
"Fleur?" Cedric's voice sounded muffled and weirdly far away.
There was no answer.
Harry's heart was hammering against his ribs. He tried to reach out with that empath sense Mariel had talked about, hoping to find the others. Damien and Mariel felt faint, like they were barely holding on.
A scraping sound echoed through the dark. It was close. Way too close.
Harry spun toward it but saw nothing. The sound came again, but from a different spot this time. It sounded like claws dragging on stone. Slow. Like it was mocking him.
Another scrape. Right behind him.
Harry turned fast, swinging his wand in a wide arc. "Incendio!"
Fire burst out, lighting up the fog for a split second. Harry didn't see anything. Just black smoke and shifting shadows.
That was when he heard it. A breath, right next to his ear. Elias moved.
The hit came like a sledgehammer to the chest throwing him ten feet back through the dark. He hit a stone column with a crunch and the world immediately went blurry.
He slumped to the floor, unable to draw a single breath. Every time he tried to inhale, his chest felt like it was being stabbed from the inside. Harry coughed, and taste of blood filled his mouth, spilling over his lips and dripping onto his collar.
His left arm was useless. The elbow bent at a wrong angle, and the pain radiating from it was simply too much.
"Fuck… Ugh…"
He tried to shift his weight, but his ribs ground together, forcing a sharp groan out of him that he couldn't hold back.
"I'm done," Harry thought, his head spinning.
What the fuck… what the fuck was that?
Trying his best not to make a sound as the pain started to surge through his entire body, Harry looked around, but the sheer disorientation and the pitch-black darkness weren't making it any easier. The darkness surrounding him… in some twisted, soothing way, it reminded him of the cupboard under the stairs at the Dursleys'. A place where, paradoxically, he could actually hide from Dudley and the daily "discipline" of his life there…
With the fading scraps of his consciousness, he could feel his wand still gripped in his right hand, but that fact felt distant, like it didn't even matter anymore. Did it not matter..? A strange warmth was spreading through his chest, while an icy chill began to creep into his toes. Harry had no idea what was going on. It had all just happened so fast.
"For some weird reason, you're the only one who can sense me. Even those two damn Empaths can't manage it, even though they try. You're a strange one, Potter…" the voice reached him.
It echoed as if off the walls and vibrated. The sound was intense and spatial and very unpleasant. Sense me? Harry thought.
And then he realized that what he'd "heard" wasn't actually a sound. It was more like a vibration, something he had started to recognize during his lessons with Mariel. She could never quite describe the feeling of using "empath senses." Was this it?
Harry retched up a cough and blood leaked from his mouth. Fuck… Internal bleeding? Am I dying? The thought didn't even phase him. The situation was so hopeless that he didn't really know what to do about it anyway.
Harry wasn't Mariel. He didn't have her years of peace or her natural connection to the forest. All he had was the taste of blood in his mouth and the certainty that he was about to die. He tried to remember that one simple instruction: just let go. And finally, when the pain in his chest got so loud it drowned out everything else, something inside him just snapped. It was a fall. But instead of hitting the bottom, his consciousness expanded through the hall like a shockwave. The pain didn't vanish, but it stopped being his pain. It became just another signal in the space, as distant as the cold of the stone walls.
His senses suddenly unhooked from his physicality. It felt as if his skin had ceased to exist, like his nerves had been stretched out and pinned to the very foundations of the room. Harry could sense Elias ten feet away, but not as a monster, only as a violent disturbance in the room's texture.
Propping himself up with his one good hand, Harry forced himself to stand. On some lower, distant level of his awareness, he was still vaguely aware of his body, his mind though was drifting away. It was like soaring into a wild, infinite expanse. Where there used to be smells, there were only vibrations now. Where there used to be sight, there was a constant, rhythmic pulsing. Even with his eyes shut tight, Harry could see. In the pitch-black void that surrounded him, the only things that truly existed were two points of light. There was Elias, and then there was himself. Or more accurately, his wand, which glowed like a beacon of raw intent in the dark.
"So, you aren't dead yet," Elias said, his voice a jagged rasp that vibrated through the silence. "First I'll get rid of you, and then I'll take care of your friends."
Elias didn't wait for a response. He crouched , his muscles coiling like a predator, and then he launched himself across the space. He raised one hand to strike, but as he moved, the flesh began to warp and tear. A mass of black, oily tendrils erupted from his palm, each one ending in a needle-thin point. They lashed out toward Harry like a swarm of hungry vipers, all aimed to pierce and shred everything in their path.
"Just like back then," Harry thought. That same raw, suffocating desperation he'd felt with Selwyn.
He locked his senses onto Elias, who was closing the gap with blurring, superhuman speed. Harry could make out the individual tendrils now. They were black, oily limbs pulsing with a light that sent rhythmic strobes through the pitch-black void. But he wasn't aiming for the appendages.
Harry drew a ragged breath, shoving the white-hot agony in his ribs to the back of his mind. He reached deep, pushing past the pain and the fear to find his center. If not now, when?
His magical core had to be there. It was a reservoir of raw, untapped power. In a kill-or-be-killed moment like this, there was no room for restraint. It was all or nothing. Now or never.
Harry snapped his head to the left. A tendril hissed past, missing his temple by a fraction of an inch. He didn't wait for a second strike. He thrust his wand forward, leveling it right at the center of Elias's incoming fist.
"INCENDIO!" he roared.
The fire that tore out of Harry's wand was wild and untamed. It slammed into Elias and liquified his hand, turning the black wood into bubbling slush. Elias let out a high, inhuman shriek of agony. Harry was bombarded by the sheer sensory force of it, but he actually groaned with relief as he felt a violent pull from deep in his subconscious. He felt the raw energy flow straight into his wand. It worked. The feeling was fascinating, almost addictive. Despite the pain in his ribs, a wild smile of satisfaction spread across his face. He caught a glimpse of the melted stump and the dark ichor dripping onto the stone, and he couldn't stop himself. He reached inside again. Deeper. Stronger.
Elias stumbled back, clutching his smoking arm. His featureless mask seemed to ripple with genuine terror. "What are you?" he hissed, his voice cracking with a jagged, wet sound. "You're a monster, Potter! You're not even human!"
Harry took a step forward, his eyes glazed with a terrifying hunger. At that exact moment, a cluster of tendrils drove into his ribs, punching through the breaks and grinding bone. Blood sprayed down his side, soaking through the basilisk cloth. He didn't even look at the wound. He just locked his gaze on Elias and raised his wand with a maniacal grin.
"FULMINOOO!" he roared.
Mariel squeezed Damien's arm as they huddled under the groaning wooden bridge. "When will it be done?" she whispered, her voice shaking. Damien didn't look at her. He was staring into the ink-black fog, his hands trembling. "I don't know," he muttered. "I'm trying to find them with my senses, but this fog… it's obstructing everything. It's like trying to see through thick oil."
Suddenly, Damien sat up straight. He felt a massive surge in the air. A split second later, a violent flash of blue light cut through the dark like a blade. The fog tore apart. Not slowly - violently. It shredded like cloth, pulling back into the corners of the Hall and disappearing into cracks in the stone. Fleur and Cedric's voices cut through first.
"Harry?!"
"Potter, are you okay?!"
Mariel swallowed nervously as her eyes locked onto Harry. The shock hit her like a physical blow. Blood was dripping off his chin and soaking his shirt, and his left arm hung at a sickening, broken angle. Across from him, Elias was a mangled husk of scorched wood and black sludge, his featureless mask broken and leaking orange light.
Mariel pushed her senses out, and the emotional whiplash nearly made her sick. She felt Elias's fury, a hot, screaming hatred that filled the room. But Harry was different. He was a vacuum of cold, addicting satisfaction. He was calm, almost peaceful, as he dragged the very last scraps of his energy into his wand.
Elias's cracked mask rippled, his eyes burning with pure hate.
"The rot is YOU! Monster!" he shrieked.
Cedric and Fleur started to sprint toward them, their boots thudding against the stone, but they were too far away. They weren't going to make it.
Elias launched himself forward, swinging his remaining arm in a brutal arc aimed right for Harry's head. Harry didn't panic. He moved lazily, his eyes focused and glazed. He didn't even try to dodge. He just twisted his shattered body, leaning his left shoulder directly into the path of the hit.
The sound was horrifying. A loud crunch of bone snapping that made Mariel scream. Blood sprayed across the floor in a bright red arc, but Harry didn't even grunt. In that exact same moment, he jammed his wand forward, pressing the tip into the center of Elias's chest.
Cedric and Fleur gasped, skidding to a halt as they realized what was happening. They saw the green core burning deep inside the cracks of the monster's chest.
Harry's wand blazed with a light so bright it turned the room white.
"FULMINOOO!" he roared.
The explosion was deafening. The green core popped, sending a shockwave that threw Elias's body into a thousand jagged pieces. Harry was tossed backward by the force, hitting the floor with a soft, heavy thud.
Damien lunged for Mariel and pulled her into his chest, shielding her from the violent outburst of energy. He wrapped his arms around her and tucked her head down, using his own body as a barrier against the blast. Mariel could feel him shaking as the white light washed over them. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard him whispering over and over again. "He did that… he did that…"
Cedric and Fleur reached Harry first. They skidded across the stone on their knees, their faces pale with terror.
"Harry! Shit, can you—Harry!" Cedric yelled. He slapped Harry's cheek lightly, trying to get a reaction, but Harry's eyes were unfocused and drifting.
Fleur didn't waste a second. Her wand was out, moving in fast, frantic patterns over Harry's shattered shoulder. She started casting every healing spell she knew, her voice high and desperate as she muttered the incantations. Golden and silver light washed over Harry's skin, knitting some of the smaller cuts and slowing the heavy flow of blood, but it wasn't enough. The damage was too much. His collarbone was a jagged mess and his ribs were grinding with every shallow breath he took. He needed a real hospital, not just field charms.
"It's not working!" Fleur cried, her hands trembling as she pressed her wand against his chest. "He's too far gone! We need more help!"
Cedric started to answer, but he stopped and looked around. The air was beginning to hum. A deep vibration was coming from the spot where Elias had exploded, and waves of pure, white energy were rippling outward across the floor.
Cedric watched in total awe as the waves hit the walls. Everywhere the light touched, the rot simply vanished. The black slime dried up and blew away like dust. The infested stone smoothed over, turning clean and white again. It was like the world was hitting a reset button.
Damien and Mariel walked toward them, moving slowly as they watched the transformation. They looked shocked, staring at the walls as the gross smell of decay was replaced by the scent of fresh rain and clean earth.
"The land," Damien whispered, his voice full of wonder. "It's healing…"
The sound of footsteps echoed from the entrance. The people from the village started to pour into the Hall, stopping dead when they saw the scene. They stood there in total silence, watching as the last of the corruption melted away from their home. They looked at the beautiful, clean stone, and then their eyes dropped to the center of the room.
Harry was lying right in the middle of it.
The healing waves passed right over him leaving his broken body alone. He was the only thing in the room that wasn't being made whole.
A few yards away, the air just ripped open. The portal was there making the same sound they heard back at the start of the task. It was over. The Rot was dead and the way back to Hogwarts was finally open.
Cedric didn't even look at the village or the walls healing themselves. He looked terrified. He pointed his wand at a big chunk of stone near Harry's feet and forced it to flatten out into a rough stretcher. He was breathing hard, his hands shaking as he used a levitation charm to lift Harry off the floor.
His head flopped to the side and more blood leaked out of his soaked shirt, dripping onto the clean stone.
Cedric looked at Damien. "We have to go," he said, his voice sounding thin. "We have to go. Right now. He's dying.."
Damien looked at Harry, then at the village that was finally breathing again. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he just gave a quick, heavy nod.
"Go," Damien said.
Fleur stepped up next to Cedric, using her wand to help steady the floating stone slab. They started moving fast toward the swirling light of the portal. The villagers just stood back, staying quiet as they watched the bloody, broken boy get carried past them.
An old woman near the door whispered something that might have been a prayer. Or an apology.
Mariel stood by her father and watched them go. She caught one last look at Harry's face before they reached the light. Cedric and Fleur stepped into the portal and the stretcher vanished into the light with them. A second later, the hole in the air snapped shut. They were gone.
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