Chapter 43

"Necromancer! There is a necromancer attacking the tower! Countless skeleton soldiers are advancing at us! We're all gonna die!" Completely distraught, one of the werewolves from Lupin's group came running into the tower.

The werewolf immediately ran to the corner furthest from the entrance, cowered there, back to the wall, and held his old wand in front of him with both hands terribly shaking.

Swiftly, Lupin ran to the front door to see for himself.

The first thing that caught his eye in the darkness were many unholy flickering lights.

Only by looking closer did he realize those lights were coming from inside a human skull.

So what the werewolf had said was true, there was a skeleton army advancing on them, or at least the vanguard of one.

These skeletons looked really intimidating.

Lupin would've thought this was part of the application test...

But who would use illegal death magic as part of an application test for a legitimate business?

Not even someone called Black or Malfoy would come up with such an idea...

So the attack had to be genuine.

No wonder they wanted to hire guards if there was a necromancer, or necromancers, after them or their business.

But a warning would've been nice.

Keeping his eye out for the rest of the patrol team, Lupin soon spotted three of the four who should still be outside.

Three wandless werewolves had been surrounded by eight menacing-looking skeletons, not two stone throws away from the tower.

The skeletons were beating on them with bone clubs.

For a second, Lupin wondered why they were so far away, but he quickly left the thought behind as he ran forward to help.

He prayed the three would hold on until he arrived.

Two of the three werewolves were cowering behind the third, who took on the most bone club hits, shielding his fellows courageously with his strong body.

Sadly, no matter how hard he tried to protect them, he couldn't.

It was like the more he tried, the more the skeletons targeted these two.

And because the courageous werewolf couldn't shield every side at the same time, the skeletons soon pulled one of the cowering werewolves away in the direction where even more skeletons were walking.

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The unfortunate werewolf was quickly pulled into the heart of the vanguard, never to be seen again. (at least the remaining applicants never saw him again until the test was over)

"NO!" "Noo!"

The courageous werewolf and Lupin cried out in lamentation at the same time, sad that they couldn't save the unfortunate one.

The other cowering werewolf had better luck.

The courageous one narrowly managed to prevent him from falling to the skeletons until Lupin arrived as reinforcement.

As he came close enough to attack, Lupin began with a Lumos Maxima.

Even though the light spell would blind his allies too, the spell had a wide area of effect, and even if it was only weak light magic, it's still the greatest weakness of the undead.

Strangely, after Lupin could see things clearly again, the skeletons didn't seem to have suffered a setback.

Instead, the second cowering werewolf was missing, and the courageous one was barely holding on.

The only reason he hadn't been taken down yet was that he had managed to grab one of the surprisingly light bone clubs from the skeletons and use it to defend himself.

Alarmed, embarrassed, and puzzled that the Lumos Maxima had only made things worse, Lupin switched to blunt force trauma.

He would've used the Bombarda, but Lupin didn't want to affect the courageous werewolf again, so he opted for the milder Knockback Jinx, targeting the skeletons around the werewolf.

With Lupin's help, the courageous werewolf managed to break out of the encirclement.

Covering for each other, they retreated in the direction of the tower together.

Now that the courageous werewolf wasn't in their midst anymore, Lupin really switched to using the Bombarda.

Directly with the first Exploding Charm, Lupin managed to blast apart two skeletons in one fell swoop.

If the skeletons were being controlled actively, they should've spread out as a counter now.

But since the skeletons still advanced at them grouped together, Lupin concluded that the necromancer wasn't watching their skirmish at this moment.

But before Lupin could make further use of the skeletons' tactical blunder and blast apart a bunch of them, an interference suddenly appeared in the form of the fifth member of the patrol team.

It was one of the two remaining wizards who weren't werewolves.

He ran as if a horde of Dementors were on his heels.

But it didn't seem like it was the skeletons who frightened him this much, because he swiftly knocked some of them out of his way and then ran through the slow skeleton crowd without much hesitation.

The wizard didn't stop as he reached Lupin's and the other werewolf's positions at all, he just ran past them straight into the tower.

When he reached the doors, he immediately started to close them, with the other two still outside.

"Hey!" Lupin called out, half warning, half pleading.

Luckily for the two, there were other applicants gathered at the door, too, and they prevented the egotistical wizard from locking them out.

How could he even think of doing something this despicable?

Even at the height of the last war, the Order of the Phoenix had never sunk so low, even in their most desperate times.

With the exception of Peter, as Lupin now knew.

But Peter was just a vile rat, so…

So, how could this ratty wizard want to leave them out here now?

Why?

Then Lupin heard a 'whooshing' sound, and eight big, dark figures were suddenly hovering above the skeletons.

What kind of undead were those?

Even though Lupin couldn't see them very well, their outlines didn't fit any undead he had ever heard of.

But their size alone, together with the fact that they could fly, was very concerning.

Now he knew what that wizard had been running from.

Instead of attacking directly, the undead monsters (because what else could they be?) first landed between the skeletons and then joined them in their steady advance on the tower.

That gave Lupin and the courageous werewolf plenty of time to retreat to the tower.

But that didn't mean that they retreated leisurely or calmly, they imitated the egotistical wizard and ran as if they had a dragon hungry for their wolf asses in pursuit.

As soon as they were inside, the others closed the heavy wooden doors behind them.

The egoistical wizard took the lead in layering the door with unbreakable charms.

Afterwards, he started applying frost-proofing and fire-proofing charms, sweat from the exertion and fear was running down his rugged face in drops.