Ginny tugged on her familiar bond with Fawkes urgently as shouts and the sound of spells sounded out from where the death eater had fled. Lucius Malfoy was rooted in place, looking shocked as he stood there staring after where Barty Crouch Junior had gone. The Minister was still surrounded by a group of Aurors protecting him. The Bulgarian Minister had disappeared somehow, backing up into a shadowy corner and disappearing as soon as the commotion began.

Ginny only barely caught him leaving by using her magic to locate him. But even then it was difficult, he was using a charm to distract other people from seeing him. He met her gaze for a brief moment before putting a finger to his lips and smiled, revealing a set of fangs in his mouth before stepping backwards and disappearing into a shadow that rested in the corner.

The Minister of Magic for Bulgaria was a vampire? What?

The shouts and sound of spells grew closer and everyone crouched down. Ginny and Eric both deployed their own clouds of magic tendrils ready for whatever was happening as all their friends and family gathered together with their wands waiting in anticipation for whatever was happening out there near the exit to the arena.

Ginny shared a glance with Eric, who looked surprised at Ginny’s fifteen tendrils that floated around her waiting to strike. It was nothing compared to Eric’s hundreds, but it was still a vast improvement from how she had been able to do last year.

Finally, the form of Barty Crouch Junior appeared through the exit to the mostly empty arena, his chest rising and falling with a light sheen of sweat on his brow. Everyone was shocked as he flicked his wand out and cast five simultaneous stunners into the waiting Aurors preparing to cast their spells at him, knocking them all out at once with pinpoint strikes.

Ginny’s eyes widened as she saw that his eyes were glowing golden. He was being controlled by Fate! She quickly felt her magic and checked that she was wearing her necklace. She should still be invisible. She looked around her. Her family though… who knew what Fate would do to them?

Fawkes’ side of the bond twitched hard. He was coming. But he was in mainland Europe. He could travel far with each apparition, but not everywhere. It would probably take him at least six or seven apparitions to reach her, with him resting for a bit inbetween to make sure he was apparating in the right direction. He might not be here for ten minutes at least, far too late if Fate was about to attack her family.

Ginny stepped forward in front of her family who looked scared as the death eater below began to effortlessly cast a dozen stunners at a time to fight off a whole crowd of Aurors at once, mowing them down like a scythe working its way through grass and leaving dozens of unconscious bodies in his wake.

The death eater below finally had almost reached half way back towards the top box where they all remained behind. His eyes glowing with golden light scanned the box before fixating on Eric.

The death eater raised its free hand to point it at Eric even as its wand hand kept moving and cast a bubble protego shield charm to ward off the attacks of the dozen remaining Aurors fighting him on the ground level. Despite only a few of them being left, these Aurors were the most skilled, able to block the death eater’s original assault and the best duelists of the lot.

“BEEEEYYYYYOOOOOONNNNNNNDDDDDEEEERRRRRRRRRR!!!!!” Fate howled through the body of the death eater, the voice pulsing with magic as it reverberated throughout the stadium. The bodies of everyone around Ginny slumped to the floor unconscious as a wave of magic drilled into their forms and golden strings in their bodies pulsed once in sync with the magic.

The pulse of magic avoided Ginny entirely, washing right over her like she wasn’t even there.

Ginny saw Eric stumbling as the golden chains flashed inside of him.

He almost slumped, but then he let out a savage grin as his magic pulsed and twisted within him as all the magic tendrils floating around him dissolved.

“Found you finally, you little shits!” Eric shouted before with a groan a portion of his magic… ripped out of him! The golden threads of fate were gathered in a tight ball in the portion of Eric’s magic that he had violently ripped out of himself. Eric reached out and gathered the ball with the golden strings squirming inside of it like a ball of golden worms.

“No one! Controls! Me!” Eric shouted as the ball of magic in front of him burst into reddish flames. The golden threads thrashed and whipped about inside the ball of flames, but after a second of struggle, they began to soften and dissolve into nothing.

The flame grew ever more powerful and hotter, as each chain that was dissolved stoked the fires hotter and hotter. The flames were so hot now that Ginny could feel the ends of her hair all over her body singe and curl up as the air grew hot around them.

Ginny quickly used her magic tendrils to reach out and frantically lift the unconscious bodies of everyone and pile them in the corner of the room away from where Eric held his growing ball of red hot flame.

The death eater below had paused, appearing to be frozen and twitching slightly as he stood there as the golden chains in the ball of flame dissolved into nothing.

Ginny kept moving the people, sweating as the air felt like a sauna now, her eyes dry from the heat around her. Her family were closest and were already there and safer to the side, the rest of the Aurors and the Minister’s unconscious bodies closely following behind. Only the Malfoy’s were left. They were on the other side of Eric, so Ginny was forced to move them in a circular movement to move them around the ball of flame. Even then, she could see their skin turning red and peeling as if from a sunburn as they moved too close to the magical flames.

Ginny managed to move them to the pile of unconscious bodies in the corner spread in a big pile.

Eric’s flame stopped growing in heat and strength as the last chain of Fate was consumed from within it. Ginny could see that removing that chunk of Eric’s magic hadn’t come without cost. He had a big hole in his body that was constantly releasing a stream of magic from his body even now even as he injected more of his remaining supply into the fireball hovering in front of him.

Barty Crouch Junior’s body suddenly came alive again down below, and his face twisted in apoplectic rage.

“YOU DARE!” Fate shouted, “I’LL GIVE YOU A SLOW DEATH, BEYONDER SCUM!”

Fate floated the death eater’s body into the air with her magic and started preparing a spell so complicated that Ginny could barely even understand what she was doing.

“You think a pitiful flame could harm me?” Fate said conversationally, “There will be no escape for you this time Beyonder. With magic at my fingertips there will be no victory for you.”

“Yeah?” Eric said, “Or maybe you’ll roast again like that stupid dog from last time! Die!”

He extended his hands and the ball of flame shot off towards the floating body of Fate. Fate jerked the body in the air to dodge the flame even as she continued preparing her complex spell. Eric grunted and extended his hands and heaved as if dragging a rope. The ball of flame twisted and turned around to strike at Fate for another pass. Fate dodged again, the ball of flame now coming straight towards them.

Eric grunted again and diverted the ball of flame straight downward toward the base of the stands.

Ginny’s eyes widened. “NO, ERIC! THE AURORS!” She shouted. He glanced at her and grimaced, but dozens of magic tendrils shot out of his form and speared down into the unconscious forms of the Aurors below simultaneously. With a flick, all of their unconscious bodies went flying through the air without care as if tossed from the center of an explosion. They slammed into walls, into chairs, and hit the ground hard… Thrown to the side without care by Eric as the ball of flame slammed into the ground and released a massive explosion that shook the stands. But none of the Aurors were in the radius of the explosion of fire by the time it landed.

Fate finished her spell and grinned crookedly as she launched the invisible construct at Eric. It rippled through the air towards Eric at high speed. Eric jumped in the air and with the magic tendrils looping out of him grabbed his clothing he shot out of the viewing box into open air, flying through the air by lifting his clothes with his tendrils.

The invisible spell diverted course to track him. Eric let himself fall to the ground, the invisible spell following him down at high speed. Ginny went to the edge of the railing and peered over to see Eric floating over the circular field of roaring magical flames below him. He was using the same strategy as before, using the field of flames as a resource to create more attacks. Ginny saw half the tendrils sprouting from Eric’s back sink into the field of roaring flames around him. They emerged and sprouted from the flames a second later, the red flames snaking up the tendrils of magic even as they reached upwards like a dozen fiery worms tunneling through the air.

All the flaming tendrils of Eric’s magic struck the invisible spell. The spell resisted for a moment, continuing down towards Eric as he struck it with more and more flaming tendrils.

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Finally, something seemed to give, and the invisible spell stopped in place a dozen feet above where Eric floated.

Ginny thought that Eric had destroyed the spell for a moment, but she was wrong. The spell started to compress, becoming smaller and smaller and more and more magically dense in an instant. Ginny braced herself for an explosion as the spell reached critical mass. Eric sank into the field of flames raging below and disappeared in Ginny’s magic sense amongst the red magical flames.

The spell didn’t explode. Instead a… black dot appeared. A massive roar of wind immediately filled the world around Ginny. Everything suddenly tilted, with the black point being the new down as its massive gravity pulled her towards it.

The wooden supports of the stands began to groan and creak as everything in the area began to be drawn in by the black ball.

The field of flames was instantly turned into a stream that swirled and entered the black ball in a fiery cone swirling around it like an upside down tornado.

The bodies that Ginny had piled in the corner of the viewing box began to slide and roll towards the edge of the box as the new gravity pulled them towards the black ball below.

Hanging over the railing, Ginny was sent flipping over it and only just managed to grip the railing in a white knuckle grip to prevent her from being flung downwards into the still growing floating black orb below. The bodies of the Aurors below began to shift and slide, lifting off the ground slightly as the gravity grew stronger and stronger and began to draw them in.

Ginny felt her arms trembling as she screamed silently through the roar of wind rushing past her and down into the black ball.

The bodies of her family began to slide towards her as the gravity grew stronger and stronger. She flung out her fifteen magic tendrils and sank them into the floor of the viewing box. With a grunt, Ginny ripped a massive chunk of the wood straight out of the floor and shifted it ninety degrees to float vertically and hold back the press of bodies from sliding any farther.

The gravity grew stronger and stronger, the last of the flames below starting to sputter as they were sucked into the black orb that was now a foot across. Ginny strained as her arms trembled as her body flapped up and down like a flag attached to railing of the viewing box railing as her shoes came flying off of her feet to enter the black orb below at high speed.

Her fifteen magic tendrils pushed and strained at the section of wood that held back the press of unconscious bodies. She was breathing heavily and it was only growing harder to hold on by the moment. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t give up. She had to save all of them…

The first limp body of an Auror in the stands left the ground as the gravity reached a tipping point. The Auror’s body flew through the air and fell straight towards the black orb as if falling downwards even as the body flew up from below.

Ginny strained to peel off a single magic tendril to save the Auror, to catch them… but then the piece of wood holding back the bodies of her family shifted slightly closer to the edge and she refocused. She… she had to put family first. She pushed harder on the board and in a supreme effort of will managed to push the board another inch back upwards towards the back wall of the viewing box, which was now her ceiling with the gravity of the black orb below changing what was down and what was up.

Ginny could only watch as the body of the Auror flew towards the black orb. Their body was only a single foot away from the thing… when Fate waved her hand above and the black orb vanished with a resounding boom that shook the area like the loudest thunder that Ginny had ever heard.

Her body dropped to normal gravity again and the plank of wood that her tendrils were holding suddenly pushed forward without the force of the black orb fighting against it. Ginny quickly stopped it, but the bodies of the people were pushed against the wall again. Ginny quickly tucked in her legs and swung herself back into the viewing box, her hands white and in pain from her holding the wooden top of the rail in a death grip.

It took a few seconds for her hands to comply when her brain ordered them to release from the railing, but eventually like cracking ice, her hands started twitching and her hands uncurled so she could pull them away from the railing. She sat on the floor of the viewing box, panting heavily and cradling her numb hands that were sputtering back to life as she looked back to where Fate floated in the death eater’s body. The Auror that had almost fallen into the black orb was still flying through the air.

“It is not your place to die just yet,” Fate said and waved her wand at the Auror. The body halted in mid air and began to slowly float down to the ground as if it was light as a feather. An advanced levitation charm of some kind, most likely.

“Hahaha!” Eric’s voice laughed from below and Fate’s head snapped downwards.

Ginny looked down and saw that Eric had carved a hole in the floor of the stadium and looked rather smug as he emerged from it, the whole area around him devastated and scorched from his snuffed flame.

“It’ll take more than that to kill Eric, you golden eyed craven!” The boy shouted.

“I see,” Fate said, her face flashing with intense anger and a strange flash of sadness at Eric's insult, “I see you protect your adopted family even as you fight me. I suppose you will have to split your attention defending them. With you gone, there is no need for them in my grand designs.”

“Ha! Screw those guys,” Eric said, “You’ll just be making it easier for me, splitting your attention!”

Ginny tensed and leapt to her feet. And brought her magic tendrils to bear around her at Fate’s threat. Just because Fate couldn’t see Ginny didn’t mean she wouldn’t kill all of them to get rid of Eric. Fate had already let Lupin die to Eric just for a chance to kill him once she figured out that he was a Beyonder.

Fate remained floating in the air and magic swirled around her. Her death eater host was huffing and puffing, his face red as he kept using his magic to the limit.

“Hm. This body is running out of magic,” Fate observed, “I’ll have to switch over to lifeforce.”

Her magic pulsed and instantly the death eater started paling even as his magic grew massively.

With that done, Fate raised her wand and summoned dozens of sharp icicles a foot long into the air around her, which sorted themselves into two groups. Over three quarters of them rotated to face point down towards Eric, while the remainder shifted to face towards Ginny and her family.

Without another word, Fate sent the icicles spearing towards the both of them simultaneously.

Ginny extended out her magic tendrils and latched each of them onto an approaching icicle. She pushed with her tendrils and diverted the paths of the projectiles so they slammed into the walls and ceiling around her and missed her and the unconscious bodies behind her. She looked down and saw that Eric was scraped and bleeding as he dodged wildly, icicles just barely missing him and nailing themselves into the floor around him with loud cracks of wood.

Ginny felt another tug on her familiar bond and with a cry, Fawkes appeared in front of her just as Fate unleashed another wave of icicles at the both of them, sending even more of them towards Ginny this time.

Fawkes took a second to assess the situation then let out a burst of flame that melted the icicles out of the air just before they were about to pass by him.

Fate glanced at Fawkes, the face of the death eater becoming more sallow and gaunt the more she cast.

Eric below looked worn out, the ice spikes having hit him and creating long thin cuts all over his body where he had only just dodged being impaled by several of them. His tendrils of magic were faltering and dissolving even as he created more, the hole in his magic still leaking as he fought and draining him of more and more magic by the moment.

Fawkes remained hovering in front of Ginny and with a frustrated huff, Fate turned her attention solely on Eric, ignoring the Phoenix for now. She extended her arms wide and summoned hundreds of ice spikes all around her. At the same time, her host became alarmingly pale and the fat practically melted off of his bones until he looked like he had been starved for weeks.

“A good… fight,” Fate rasped, “But this is… the end, Beyonder.”

With one final death rattle, Fate pointed her wand at Eric and the death eater’s eyes became lifeless, the golden glow of Fate leaving them as he began to fall limply to the ground. Already dead even before he started falling.

Ginny hesitated for longer than she would have liked as the waves of icicles fell towards Eric from all sides. Eric’s tendrils flashed out, but she could see in his eyes that he knew that he wouldn’t make it out. There were just too many attacks closing in on him at once.

“Fawkes, go save him!” Ginny said. Fawkes gave her a look that said… really? But in a burst of flame he disappeared and reappeared in front of Eric. The icicles approached even closer as Fawkes flapped his wings and surrounded himself in flame to transport himself and Eric back up to the viewing box where Ginny stood. With a loud crash and the cracking of ice, all the icicles slammed into the ground and violently tore up the whole area where Eric had been standing with icicles spearing through every available space and reducing the wooden stands underneath into a cloud of wooden splinters.

Ginny saw that Fawkes wasn’t looking good and appeared exhausted, all the quick apparitions in a row taking a heavy toll on him, especially those last two that were back to back.

Eric looked at Ginny for a moment and opened his mouth for a moment before closing it again.

“I guess I’m in your debt then,” he said, “I shouldn’t have cashed in on your debt to me so early, it seems. Would you like to do the honors, or should I?”

“Honors, what do you mean?”

Eric gestured to the unconscious pile of people in a pile next to the ripped out section of floor. Ginny quickly used her magic tendrils to lift everyone and spread them out a bit so they wouldn’t be stacked on top of each other anymore.

“Well,” Eric said and gestured to the devastation around them and to the unconscious people again, “Wouldn’t it be a little suspicious if we were the only ones awake after all this happened? We’ve got to cast stunners at each other so we’ll look like we got knocked out with the rest. So, do you want to use the stunner on me, then yourself? Or should I do you then me?”

“I… I’ll do it,” Ginny said, not wanting to leave Eric awake near her unconscious body in any scenario.

Eric walked over to where Ron and Hermione were laid out and laid down on the ground next to them.

“Alright, I’m ready,” he said.

“Stupify!” Ginny said, casting the red spell at Eric. The boy didn’t defend himself, and he slumped over unconscious as the spell washed over him. Ginny walked over to her parents and laid down next to them and Sirius. She held her wand up and pointed towards her chest as she lay there on her back. Fawkes chirped and hopped up to stare at her.

“I’ll be fine, Fawkes,” Ginny said, “I’ll just be sleeping for a bit. Eric’s right, it would be too suspicious for me to still be awake. See you soon.”

Chirp.

“I know Fawkes, you are awesome,” Ginny agreed absently as she prepared to cast the spell. With a deep breath she finally steeled herself and did it.

“Stupify!” She cast and the red bolt shot out of her wand and directly into her chest. As soon as the red spell touched her, she was out like a light. The last thing she saw before everything went dark was Fawkes’ head peering down at her from above. He was going to complain so much that his hunt had to be interrupted by this ‘life and death’ business, wasn’t he…