Unaware that he had consumed north of three thousand Galleons, Luca’s senses exploded, the boy could hear a salvo of gunfire coming from outside, explosions and beastly roars from the dining hall, and sporadic scratches on his barriers nearby. His vision stayed focused not only in the middle of where he looked, it expanded to provide a crystal-clear picture in all corners of his eyes, making it pointless to move pupils around. His muscles felt constricted, ready to spring to action anytime. His sword that previously felt a bit too long for him, perhaps matched by his teacher to predict his growth, was perfectly wieldy after the increase in strength. While physically examining himself, Luca noticed the incomplete get-up of many Wampus’, he realized why they had their skin showing as men and women alike threw off superfluous parts of their costumes and transfigured them into stone and wood barricades under Makris brothers’ supervision, stacking both kinds of magic in form of transparent walls and objects werewolves had no way of getting past.
“Leave a path outside, stop reinforcing with magic!” Luca intervened in their efforts, the boy now ready, assured that his colleagues could protect the rest of the house just fine, he wanted to go on an offensive.
“Leo, guard here, volunteers go to rescue Thunderbirds?!” the triplet who received Luca’s war hammer waved it easily with one hand and in a questioning sentence made a plan that was much to Luca’s liking, the boy was already releasing his magic to accumulate it in order to break his and everyone’s barriers as he was the closest to them, all other students distanced themselves after levitating away the wounded and assumed positions behind their defenses to await the attackers breakthrough.
“Ready for the barriers to fall! Finite Incantatem!” Luca shouted to notify the students around, the boy felt arrogant after an increase in his strength and with weapon ready, those werewolves were way too weak to pose a threat in his opinion, he didn’t want to waste even a second in pointless chatter while other houses could well have already fallen. He tuned out the disrupting reaction of people from behind him and had his overwhelming wave of magic devour clean what remained of barriers, revealing six werewolves who stood upright in a row and waved their arms somehow mechanically and without presumed ferociousness, which didn’t save them from being taken out two at the time by the boy and rest by overwhelming red lights that filled the corridor fired by almost adult wizards. Their bodies acted as shields for a group of five werewolves that leaped back to try and turn a corner they came from, Luca rushed after them while bending down in an attempt to make his body smaller for potential misses from wizards behind him. Temporary safety was all the group gained, submerged in a wave of spells from prepared and ready wizards, the boy contributed one more takedown to his tally of victories on that Halloween night.
“Wait!” somebody tried to stop Luca who stepped on the bodies of unconscious grey-haired werewolves.
“I will scout ahead, follow slowly!” the boy threw without looking back, he chose to run by himself approximately towards the area where Thunderbirds should be, one of the triplets, Alexander in all likelihood, and his team of volunteers carefully trailed him from afar.
“This brat… Wands ready to block at every corner, careful for ambush! Be ready to fall backwards if you spot any hint of green light!” Makris triplet ordered his team to move conservatively, he didn’t want his colleagues to rush into the unknown situation in a group that screamed ‘target me’. Luca followed the main corridor linking outer rooms and house towers of the castle that every student had to cross immediately after going out of their common rooms, the boy decided to follow it and hopefully reach the back of Thunderbird’s queue while fending off werewolves trying to move through it. He got proven right on the first corner as a pair of stragglers turned around to the noise of his steps just to fall down in a flash of red. Luca continued to run in small steps that would facilitate a potential jump out of danger, the technique he read about and found very reasonable to use for himself.
Less than half a minute later, the boy reached an area from where a choir of pained voices and roars of much greater intensity than what his Wampus compatriots produced was coming from. He saw at a glance five unhealthily thin werewolves under sporadic threat from a disorganized crowd of students who were busy fighting each other more than paying attention to monsters constantly jumping from victim to victim after a bite, it seemed that internal problems made the Thunderbird house into a defenseless mob with no leadership in sight. Luca walked and fired, as the last of the werewolves fell, he still couldn’t come up with a solution on how to distinguish sides in the brawl before his eyes, so he opted to run along the wall and take out only the attacking werewolves as they were left to roam free in the crowd due to inexplicable civil war, at least the students weren’t killing each other quite yet from what he could gather. A great many Thunderbirds’ lay on the ground, he had no choice but to step on them or their flowing blood while taking out whoever pointed their wands vaguely in his direction with any sort of violent expression on their faces.
“I have the grey ribbon, are you blind?!” as Luca proceeded to execute his idea and plunged into chaos, a werewolf that led the five he knocked down rampaged on his side, the monster emerged before Luca as the people who hid him from the boy’s sight parted, the shout of a girl the werewolf assaulted pierced his ears. Luca noticed the inconspicuous strip of material that served as a bracelet or a watchstrap on her wrist, the boy figured the trait of traitors out finally, he immediately recognized the true perpetrators of chaos and started taking them down after rescuing the girl from a wolf’s fangs an inch from reaching her skin, doubts whether she was worthy of his aid left for later.
“Grey ribbon, stupefy, stop the panic, stupefy, check for grey bracelets before, stupefy, attacking anyone!” Luca shouted between his spells and dodged counterattacks from people wearing the ribbons who even before he arrived united against anyone yelling about their mark. The boy’s opening of the situation enabled students who managed to remain standing to gather and confirm their allies and foes, Luca became a spontaneous example of what to do as the sane crowd pushed the riot in front of them flat and absorbed numbers rapidly, they soon reached a spot where another group of werewolves was busy infecting wizards with their condition as Luca realized their goal to be, the boy stopped that despicable behaviour in several glows of red as his companions turned out to be useless against double resistant wolves.
The same occurrence of older students walking in front made it so the corridor ahead was utterly unrecognizable from the gentle in comparison fight between young wizards, fire and water raged together, bunkers transfigured from stone abound, conjured owls, birds, snakes, and dogs tore at each other regardless of life or death of students already knocked down at first spells traitors fired. Later, Luca learned the exact process of the complete rout students of the house usually clad in purple experienced, ‘greys’ were still a vast minority of Thunderbirds that only gained an advantage because of inexperienced kids under pressure confused and seeing traitors everywhere, the initial surprise assault, and many casts of Imperio or other hypnotic tricks to produce ‘dull turncoats’ seen among the Wampus house who took the blame upfront, some ‘greys’ gathered roughly at the front beforehand and cooperated with werewolves to push through the walls and barriers the rest of the house adults put on their way at the crucial moment to let the monsters in and cause a rapid loss of conscious combatants.
“Don’t go any further, it’s too dangerous!” Luca’s arrival wasn’t appreciated as he led a visibly shorter in height team, somebody crouching inside a transparent bubble of his own making made of stacked barriers warned them with good intentions.
“Everyone stay and wait for Wampus reinforcements!” Luca confirmed the coward’s wrists were clear before stopping the team.
“You’re younger than me, Granger! I’m going in!” a Thunderbird equal in height to the boy who recognized him long ago didn’t want to stop, echoed by the rest of the people who were worth something since they had the skills to survive the chaos. Luca didn’t find it necessary to argue, he simply jumped forward and cast a couple of white walls behind him while observing in detail the sea of magic released so far by the warring wizards in front. He waved his sword to sever a thick, black snake’s head before it had a chance to deplete a charge off his ring and extinguished an ignited robe off someone’s back with a barrel of water that came out of his tentacle. Luca maneuvered gingerly to a little stone refuge sticking out of a wall that hid four alert people.
“He wears bronze, let him in…?” hushed voices sounded in Luca’s ears, he judged the group to be harmless and quickly passed their lair to spot an ongoing duel ahead, one of the participants ‘grey’, he greeted him with a stun that hit the man busy parrying a beam from his opponent.
“Thanks…” a man in a plague doctor’s mask and robe gasped to him before taking off his guise, which indicated he didn’t have even a second of respite so far. Luca split in two a dog loitering around, only for it to turn into a piece of cloth, and nodded to the man. A tongue of fire spewed along the ceiling while the boy once again revealed the thing about bracelets and ran forward to hunt for more ‘greys’ and eliminate runaway manifestations of magic, flowing between motionless bodies water made his boots splash with each step, a brief concern of students drowning crossed his mind. A group fight ahead, he saw two women defending themselves desperately against five mixed-gender and affiliation wizards, four of them weren’t ribboned, and one was.
“Keep it up, I saw with my own eyes how they stunned Liam and Ethan, bitches!” the ‘grey’ waved his wand to send spell after spell into the barriers women erected, other four didn’t have as much fervor as he which made it possible for the innocents to keep up somehow.
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“Don’t believe this shithead, he attacked Amanda!” one of the girls argued back.
“Nonsense! She’s here, isn’t she? Am I so incompetent to miss on somebody unprepared?!” gloomy eyes of the ‘grey’ revealed him to really be a failure of epic proportions.
“Hey! That guy is one of the attackers, grey wristband!” Luca yelled at them from some distance, unwilling to provoke a fight as he saw the wary glances all seven threw at him. The six Thunderbirds’ looked at the man whose face turned pale and ugly, his wand turned to stun one of his group, trading one for one before three spells that hit him synchronously lifted his body in the air and slammed on the wall far away. Now the adult team Luca led grew enough for him to safely accumulate his counter-curses and clear the corridor, any werewolves in it knocked down as even the ‘greys’ didn’t seem to be on good terms with their supposed partners, or did it in order to hide themselves among normal Thunderbirds. At the end of the sweep, they gathered before an intersection separated from the dining hall by three corridors, one hundred feet away. Nobody blocked them, it seemed that foreign wizards concentrated there as Luca still overheard the same sounds, barely five minutes passed since he rushed to the rescue.
“We go together, rest stay and heal the kids! It seems attackers don’t plan to come to us.” Alexander caught up to the boy alone and explained his arrival and intention, Thunderbird students had their work cut out for them as merely around ten percent of them still stood, Wampus’ team left behind to guard and save. Luca this time didn’t refuse a companion, the boy and Makris triplet went forward, rubble all over the floors soon hindered their advances. Luca put his head out a corner to check, it appeared that they reached the position of blockade that made Themistocles decide to stay put and first take care of potential attacks from wizards. Spells flew in Luca’s direction, the boy hastily jumped back and witnessed the wall of a classroom burst inward.
“How was it written, avoid strengths and attack weakness? Bro was right.” Alexander complimented either Sun Tzu or his biological brother, Luca for a second didn’t know how to proceed either as he saw a heavily barricaded station with at least four wizards barring the passage.
“What spell they use, can you do it?” Luca asked his companion, recalling the maxim of shaping the enemy and preparing the battlefield.
“Bombarda, yeah.” Alexander replied and looked where in straight line the dining hall ought to be. “There are so many rooms, load-bearing walls can’t be so brittle as that one… Well, bombarda!” he grabbed Luca’s shoulder and pulled him back before firing his spell, it did make a passage into a bathroom, a toilet seat unfortunate enough to be right where he aimed, it got damaged and a jet of water under pressure shot up to half a man’s height.
“Bombarda!” Luca learned from observation, his enhanced senses played a role in the first effort’s success, the boy’s bucket-wide white beam hit the wall hung with mirrors and bathroom sinks and went off in an exaggerated bang that completely obliterated twenty feet of a wall, floors, and ceilings, a hole to both basement and second floor emerged in the middle of the breach.
“I will go bring people, keep at it.” Alexander saw that his help was superfluous and cast five barriers on Luca’s left where the intersection that led to the enemy wizards was, he ran back to rally the Wampus members now that they knew nobody was coming for them, empty corridors a testament to that. Luca went inside the bathroom and continued his demolition, answered by an ambush from dark wizards who entered a classroom on his path. Luca avoided their spells and went out into the empty corridor instead through a door he opened by a push on the handle that broke its lock. He anticipated a wizard’s return to the outside because of the sound of his steps clear in the boy’s focused state and blasted right at him, shattering a man into uncountable pieces. The dark wizards now inside, he jumped over the chest-high obstacles to get hit mid-air by stones flying his way from wizards using the nth explosion spell in this fight. Luca cast his protego that blocked the shards and one additional spell that wouldn’t hit him anyway before disappearing, charges in his ring down as some pieces consumed them before the barrier unfolded. Luca and his four remaining enemies could see each other through dust that hovered where walls were a moment ago, dark wizards seemed to have no intention of underestimating the boy, perhaps because of his sword or black fur that covered his delicate face, and hid behind overturned desks while firing their spells.
“Avada Kedavra!” two green beams flew at the boy while two clouds of transfiguration magic formed and moved to the front and back of him, opposing team seemed to have experience, the member killed by Luca wasn’t their leader, nor the smartest.
“Finite!” Luca neutralized the transfiguration that was aimed in front and threw himself there as soon as his leg touched the ground, leaving the exposed area in the nick of time, green made two craters inches behind him. The boy pushed himself to stand while securing a white wall to fence him off the enemies, broken by stones a moment after he cast another one. Spikes much like what his teacher showed him as a demonstration of combat transfiguration burst out of the floor and went in his general direction, the man operating transfiguration had to aim blindly, yet one of the spears shaved another charge off Luca’s ring. Part of the boy’s brain prayed in thanks to Jesus for it, part left the gratitude for Mrs. Lopez as the person who gave it to him. No more castle walls to destroy and tempo of casting protego vastly superior to the Unforgivable Curse, Luca’s magic created a deadlock in action, sides separated. Luca had a split second to admonish himself for stupidly jumping over the obstacles, his instinct took over in a rush and he abandoned strategy needed in fights between wizards as so far smooth interventions made him think it to be a point-and-done kind of deal. Steadying his breath, Luca used his continuous cast of protego as a veil to go back a few steps and ready his sword to move closer to his enemies from an angle of forty-five degrees divergent from where their visual contact ceased, he sensed them operating under the command of a woman on the leftmost whose transfiguration he neutralized to completely abandon the corridor and stay where they were, interference with people attempting to aid the dining hall still possible from their spot now that walls were no more.
The white wall created by Luca withstood their spells, repeated chunks of stone falling on it previously used up magic with much higher efficiency, only one of the four - leader - was left on the task of breaking it, and she didn’t use Killing Curses. Luca bent forward and anticipated the moment of his barrier’s depletion, he wanted to get close and personal with weaponless dark wizards while dodging their spells, almost getting hit due to a misstep didn’t diminish his confidence in his enhanced, agile body. Before that, the boy’s ears picked up on a soft sound of ‘tap, tap, tap…’ made hundreds of times in extremely short intervals from his right side, view blocked by his own magic, he didn’t know what could it be until a scream reached him.
“Cats! Incendio!” Luca’s barriers fell at the perfect time for him to witness a horde of cats with Ringo leading them across the breach he made in the wall and run towards dark wizards, three of them focused on the direction where they thought Luca was, one noticed the crisis and mounted a hasty defense as a stream of fire spewed out of his wand. Felines it would hit jumped aside bar one right in the middle of the spell that turned into a meowing ball of fire. Luca who vowed never to allow himself to be surprised again earlier that night, managed to stun the dark wizard before the man had a chance to adjust his wand. Ringo meanwhile made a series of jumps that ended on the arm of the second wizard from the right side and bit a mouthful of flesh out of it, which made the man drop his wand and wail with a hideous expression, soon besieged by a dozen more cats who seemed eager to bring meat back on the menu. Luca easily dodged two green beams of light the obsessed with him leader managed to put out while he stunned the completely panicking because of the swarm of cats right at his feet last of the subordinate dark wizards, the female leader with an expression of hatred endured the offense of cats by the virtue of her protection ring as she repeated the deadly chant in a vain struggle to kill the black-furred weirdo wearing an unbuttoned school uniform who turned her decades-long confidant into a bloody mist in front of her eyes, it didn’t last long as Luca’s red beam hit her after the depletion of magic infused into the runes on her inferior piece of equipment.
“Ah…” Luca groaned. In the aftermath, he first approached the motionless, burned beyond saving corpse of the cat who got hit while valiantly trying to defend the castle. “Thank you.” Luca solemnly said and bowed deeply, his back went straight again, and the boy saw a coming crowd of Wampus members careful to bypass rubble and holes in the ground on their way through the path bulldozed by the boy.
“Let us go ahead, tiger-wannabe puss-kittens! Follow my orders, I know you can understand!” the whole ordeal took less than a minute, furious Alexander again came too late if his aim was to steal Luca’s show. “Themistocles ordered us all to go and disrupt the situation, attackers had to fear the numbers of young wizards in the castle to try so hard to occupy us!” he explained the reasoning of his triplet who remained alone to block Wampus' house behind him in case of a delayed second wave of werewolves or other trouble coming.
“Continue in a normal way, okay?” Luca counted two dozen Wampus members as reinforcements and decided to stop blasting walls, he wanted to attack the corridor that led from the main entrance to the dining hall, where he could hear a lot of voices chanting spells.
“Fine, this time we have numbers to push a similar blockade forcefully, so stop going alone.” Alexander admonished Luca’s wilfulness, Ringo at the boy’s feet meowed, and the cats he led receded like a tide behind Wampus students while Luca’s pet went ahead in a lowered posture along the wall. The rest of the group tried to be sneaky too, following the example of Luca and Alexander, who readied their wands and weapons and went to meet the next group of Ilvermorny’s invaders.
“I could handle it…” Luca whispered, ashamed that his barely above-a-year-old cat felt the need to dispatch a whole gang to his aid. Ringo waved his lowered tail up and down as if to taunt the boy who went after him, none of the Wampus members questioned or tried to stop their pets in a common understanding that they wouldn’t listen. Merely fifty feet ahead, the group reached a corner again while ignoring the pieces of advice and useless information the men and women hopping erratically in and out of painting frames provided in hushed voices, the well-meaning portraits couldn’t procure any insight on how to deal with the rapidly changing but also rather static situation of the castle, the victory ultimately hinged on the central battlefield where hopefully teachers had an advantage.