Roachmort reached the outer door into the bathroom by flying straight up the pipe. ‘Open,’ he hissed and the door slid to the side to allow him to rush through. He cast a quick spell on his bleeding shoulder to stop the bleeding. The bone plate was still gone, revealing his leathery black skin beneath.
He started flying at full speed through the hallways. If Nidhogg was going to chase him then he knew what was coming next. The wall in the corridor in front of him warped and twisted until there was a tunnel made of dark stone there.
Nidhogg slithered out and turned its head towards Roachmorts direction. He immediately darted to the side into an adjoining hallway while looking down on the floor. He couldn’t meet the basilisk’s gaze and survive. Roachmort heard some crashes behind him as the snake gave chase, but Roachmort and his cloud were far more maneuverable, making the tight turns in the hallways. He could hear it slowing down its destructive pace as Roachmort flew over the heads of small groups of students wandering the hallways.
The crashes stopped behind him and Roachmort prepared himself. He found a somewhat empty corridor with a window to the outside and waited patiently for a moment. He had to disable or kill Nidhogg before it could chase him to the open space of the Hogwarts lawn where it was more likely to manage to catch his gaze and win.
Sure enough, the wall in front of him twisted into the dark passageway. Roachmort stared the floor even as he summoned more and more silver needles into a cloud hovering around himself. Silver was damaging and corrosive to all dark creatures, including the Basilisk to a lesser extent. Nothing much in this case, only enough to impede the healing process a little. But better than nothing.
Roachmort heard Nidhogg emerging from the tunnel and its scales scraped the floor as it turned its head towards him. Roachmort launched the cloud of silver needles forward towards where he estimated its head should be. The basilisk launched forward towards him jaws open even while hissing in pain. Roachmort darted to the side, shattering the glass window next to him and flying up in the air. He started raining spells down on Nidhogg from above, his spells sending stone flying and destroying the walls that would allow Nidhogg to use one of the Chamber’s tunnels to escape.
The snake thrashed in the cloud, but Roachmort kept blasting it with spells, focusing on its head. He had to disable its eyes before it could regain its bearings and realize that he was outside and no longer in the Hogwarts hallway.
— — —
Dumbledore apparated onto the Hogwarts lawn to see the Insect man floating in his black cloud in the air, raining spells into a Hogwarts hallway from outside. Shattered glass and smoldering stone lay strewn around as something thrashed around inside, something hard to see through all the smoke.
The attacker floated back and began to fly away as the thing in the building revealed itself. It was a massive basilisk. Dumbledore instinctively looked away, but it was too late. He noticed that both of its eyes were empty sockets and its scales were scuffed and scorched. The person had clearly focused on its head with their spells. The massive snake flicked out its tongue and a second later its head twisted towards where the insect man was fleeing. It hissed and began slithering forward faster than some muggle cars in quick pursuit as the wizard began retreating.
Dumbledore wasn’t sure if this was the rumored monster of the Chamber of Secrets or if the basilisk's presence had anything to do with the insect man’s arrival. But Dumbledore would not waste this opportunity. He held out the elder wand in front of him pointed where the insect man flew away. He finished his spell a second later.
A massive ball of white light shot rapidly in front of the flying man and detonated in a massive explosion of bright light. As Dumbledore had expected, the man inside the cloud was revealed for a moment and the flight spell dissipated as it entered the glowing region of Dumbledore’s spell. But the creature simply let itself fall out of the bottom of the region before reapplying the spell to itself and continuing onwards. The basilisk launched itself upwards and snapped at the insect man, missing him by ten meters or so in its blind attack.
Dumbledore focused for a few seconds before apparating to the place on the border of Hogwarts grounds and blocking the insect man’s path to retreat. Dumbledore immediately began launching more light bursts to dissipate the dark smoke. He tried to aim high to force his opponent downwards where the basilisk would have the ability to attack him. Dumbledore could not allow someone this dangerous to escape into the world to wreak any more havoc.
He launched a massive smokescreen of bright light to form an almost solid wall and hide Dumbledore from his opponents vision. He quickly reached to his side into his space expanding pouch and pulled out the newest Firebolt broom. One of the fastest ever made, and while Dumbledore wasn’t the best flier in the world, he was acceptable. He needed to be more even footing for a spell battle with an aerial opponent like this.
He mounted the broom with haste and flew upward to fly up the top of his wall of light that was already fading away. Dumbledore rounded over the top and looking down saw the intruder launching spells at the Basilisk with wild abandon. Before Dumbledore could intervene, the intruder managed to land a blasting curse straight into the snakes shattered eye socket as it went for another attack. The Basilisk went limp and fell to the ground in a heap.
Dumbledore cast a massive web of glowing ropes below himself and propelled it downward quickly, hoping to catch his opponent off guard. The creature continued to eye the basilisk, looking for any further movement from the snake, not looking up. The creature noticed the glowing net a second later, and dived downwards until he was barely above the ground.
The creature skimmed just above the grass towards the border of the grounds, as Dumbledore started diving down with his own broom to intercept. Dumbledore flicked his wand and the net diverted course to land almost in front of his opponent. An opponent that stopped on a dime so the net landed in front of him on the ground before darting forward again to fly over it.
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Dumbledore jerked his wand upward and the glowing net lifted off the ground to fold inwards, but the insect man had already flown past it and away from the trap. He was nearly to the border of the grounds now. Dumbledore refused to allow the villain to escape again to commit any more atrocities.
He apparated to just outside of the wards and began to prepare to cast an apparition ward to continue the battle even off Hogwarts grounds. He was forced to let the creature gain some ground to the border, but managed to cast an anti-apparition ward to hold the creature for five kilometers in all directions. Enough room to collect himself and force them back through into Hogwarts grounds.
The Insect man appeared flying directly towards Dumbledore, him noticing for the first time that its plating looked battered and one of the plates near its shoulders was missing entirely. Dumbledore kept casting his light spells to try to cut off its escape, but it was too agile and was adjusting now that it was no longer surprised. Dumbledore had a light sheen of sweat on his face as he continued casting. He only had just recovered the exhaustion of his last battle, and those light bursts were magically powerful, if necessary to limit the Insect man’s movements.
Dumbledore apparated backwards to prepare the defenses further, only to frown as the Insect man started making a series of complicated wand movements. Suddenly scattered stones that Dumbledore had believed to be natural lit up with runes, forming a massive network filling the entire area of over a kilometer. He tried to apparate again only to grit his teeth as it failed, whatever formation this was also activating its own anti-apparition ward on top of Dumbledore's own.
Something slammed into his mind and Dumbledore immediately activated the memory consumption occulumency shield. The two artifacts the Insect man was wearing that he had nearly forgotten about by now had launched a massive blitz attack now that Dumbledore was inside the activating formation of stones and ritual.
A wind began swirling around Dumbledore like a burgeoning tornado as the ritual grew brighter and brighter below him. He tried to control his broom and fly out of the growing storm, but the swirling winds pushed him strongly towards their center. Part of the function of the ritual, no doubt.
Things were growing desperate, Dumbledore was panting now from the exertion, and while he could break out of this, he would be weakened and easy prey when he did so. He could sense that this ritual was not applying a curse or anything similar to him, it was likely meant as a trap to delay him while his opponent fled to safety. But just in case, Dumbledore started pumping his remaining magic into his wand and layering his various spells on top of each other, especially light oriented spells and blasting curses that would explode and do damage in a wide area. It would give him a higher chance to hit his nimble opponent.
He remained at the center of the growing tornado, keeping a careful eye out for any sign of the Insect man taking an opportunistic strike on him even as he was violently spun around by the tornado. The two artifacts were still pushing hard on Dumbledore’s mind, but his memory consumption occulemency shield was holding them back. He couldn’t even remember what memories he was losing.
The whipping winds rose up in a crescendo and Dumbledore started spinning around despite his best efforts, his wand glowing as he maintained his spells.
Then, it happened. Time seemed to slow down as Dumbledore rotated to see the Insect man floating there with his wand pointed at Dumbledore. It seems the creature had entered the tornado on the fringes and was flying along in the directions of its wind in order to attack him.
Dumbledore pointed his glowing wand at him and released the massive spell he’d been preparing. It blasted towards the surprised creature and it… missed. His beam of light shot past it and scored a long furrow in the earth in the distance with its power, cutting through the growing tornado around him.
Dumbledore barely managed to dodge the bolt of green light that came back in response. The Insect man kept whipping around the edge of the tornado, using his black cloud spell to keep himself stable as he fired green beam after green killing curse at Dumbledore. The curses came from all angles as the insect man flew rapidly along with the winds of the tornado looking like it was being whirled around by the end of a string with Dumbledore at the center.
The creature continued its barrage of killing curses as Dumbledore tried to dodge the curses while sending the occasional light spell in retaliation which all missed due to the winds throwing off his aim. Then suddenly, it spoke to him.
‘I am Voldemort’s Horcrux, gained sentience,’ The creature said telepathically, ‘Risen to carry on his ideals after death, all our minds clones of the original Voldemort. I am only the first of many you will have to defeat.’
Dumbledore froze in shock at the revelation. It all made so much sense now! This was a greater threat to…
He didn’t dodge fast enough and a green beam hit Dumbledore directly on the chest. His limp body slipped off the side of the broom and fell downward to the ground. The broom quickly spun out of control and a minute later hit the ground at full speed where it exploded into wooden splinters.
Dumbledore was dead.
— — —
‘And so ends the legend of the great Dumbledore,’ Roachmort said almost pensively to no one as he flew out of the still spinning tornado. It was hard to imagine that the man who loomed so large over the world was truly dead.
But the killing curse had landed squarely against him, and even Dumbledore didn’t share Harry Potter’s sacrificial protection against him to ward off the killing curse. Or whatever powers Harry Potter's imposter had as well. No one survived a direct killing curse without such ancient magic protecting them. Something Roachmort was certain that Dumbledore hadn’t had.
That sacrificial protection must of been what had saved the boy when Voldemort's servant Quirrell had cast the killing curse on him in the boy’s first year. Well, on the original Harry Potter wherever he went. The imposter must have replaced him at some point during his supposed coma sometime after that incident while Voldemort had been recovering his strength.
Roachmort flew back through the Hogwarts wards rapidly to return to the site of Nidhogg’s death. He had to verify that he was dead before he left and possibly harvest some ingredients. The venom alone could prove very useful in the future, so it was worth taking the risk of some pitiful Ministry Auror getting lucky and hitting him with some spell. But this far out from the castle he should still have some time before they arrived, enough time to harvest some of the fangs of the Basilisk at least.
He reached the site of the dead snake and after casting a few more blasting charms into its brain to ensure its death, and flew down towards its mouth. He started harvesting the fangs and putting it in a large bag that he had summoned. He stopped when he felt something in the air changed. Roachmort looked up and there was a strange translucent shield around the Hogwarts castle.
He turned around and there was a similar one on the exterior boundary of the wards, and the ground began rumbling beneath him. Roachmort didn’t have a good feeling about this…