The sounds of panicking horses filtered through the background roar. John struggled to keep his under control. "What the hell was that?!"
Malfoy struggled over to him and shot him a look of terrified outrage. "You NEVER interfere in a ritual with outside magic! What the hell is wrong with you!?"
Then, suddenly, the wind stopped, not gradually dying down, but instantly halting as though someone had shoved an iron bar into a building-sized magical fan. The five young wizards looked around at each other in the new silence.
"I think—" John began.
Something cracked.
Zach's head snapped around. "What was that?" Something creaked.
"We should go," Neville said.
And a thick branch crashed into the ground not one foot in front of Johns face.
"Shit!" John found himself flung form his horse as it bolted. He landed on the ground and scrabbled back up, ignoring the shooting pain through his side. What he saw caused him to gape. "RUN!" Malfoy screamed right as the dead tree in the middle of the ritual triangle uprooted itself from the ground, took a step that was all roots towards the Malfoy heir, and missed him by a country mile with another branch swing.
"Wait!" John aimed his wand at the sylvan monstrosity. It's eyes — yes, it now had eyes — were glowing ice blue. "We can take it!"
Zach had snatched up his war hammer and now blocked a smaller branch aimed at him. "Stupid Gryffindor!" He ran for it, along with Malfoy and Nott.
John ignored them and cast a diffindo. It glanced off the trunk resulting in a small scratch. Meh. He fired a more powerful cutting curse. Again, almost nothing. He tried a blasting curse. A small chunk of bark chipped off.
The dead tree turned to him.
Bah! John could feel his magic flowing from somewhere deep inside him through his body and down to his arms in an almost continual stream. The words flowed from his mouth just as easily. A cascade of spells, curses, hexes, and jinxes machine gunned their way to the monster in front of him.
"John!" Neville's voice vaguely filtered into his brain. "Get away from it!"
The tree monster took another step towards him.
He could defeat this thing. It was basically just a walking tree, right? Sure, it looked scary, but it wasn't even that fast. It wasn't as though it was Voldemort, right? "For Merlin's sake!" Neville's own stream of magic opened up to his left.
The thing slowly raised it's largest branch. He narrowed his eyes and took several easy steps backwards.
The branch descended… and lengthened.
His eyes widened in horror as the branch plummeted towards him.
"Accio Godson!" a voice roared.
He felt a yank, there was a loud thud by his ear, and mud flew in his face.
Sirius leaped in front of him wearing full Auror gear, complete with huge circular iron shield. "Lord Black!" Neville shouted.
"What the hell was that?" John scrabbled back to his feet again.
Sirius turned to him. "Just stay back!"
John flinched. Sirius looked furious.
The tree raised another branch and brought it down.
Sirius raised his shield and took the blow full on, crouching at impact, slashing his wand and severing the branch in one smooth motion. It fell to the ground with an unremarkable flunk sound.
The tree brought its new stump to its face, looking confused before letting out an ear piercing screech. Sirius made a motion with his arm, flicked the huge iron shield like a coin toss, caught the rim, and launched it, spinning furiously towards the tree, followed less than a moment later by a finite incantatem. The charm hit the in-flight shield and dispelled all its magics. In the last five metres before the shield hit the tree, a two kilo, unbreakable, unsummonable, shield turned into a mere one-hundred kilo, spinning disc of solid iron travelling at a respectable speed for a world-class amateur discuss throw. It smashed into the tree to the sounds of splintering wood and screeching monstrosity, blasted straight through, and disappeared out the other side.
For a moment, the destroyed trunk balanced on itself before tilting and falling to the ground with an almighty crash. The ritual triangle flashed a red light and vanished without a trace.
Sirius slowly got back to both feet.
John stared.
Neville, Malfoy, Nott, and Smith stepped out from behind various trees and bushes.
Sirius turned. "Right," he growled, causing John to flinch again. "What the hell was going on here?"
John hastily launched into an explanation, helped occasionally by Neville and Smith. Malfoy and Nott stood to one side looking uncomfortable.
Sirius calmed down once he understood there was no way that any of them could have actually had anything to do with the ritual. He rubbed his chin and looked towards the shattered dead tree with worry. "Well, I don't know who did it, but I do know this — These are among the darkest magics there are." He turned to Malfoy and Nott. "I suspect even your houses would hesitate to dabble in them, but whoever did this tonight has no such compunctions."
John glanced towards Malfoy and Nott and was surprised to see they weren't even objecting.
Sirius clicked his teeth and looked back to the tree. When he next spoke, his voice was lower, more gravely, the voice of a professional who's seen everything, is seeing something right now, and isn't liking it. "Whoever did this," he tapped on the tree and sighed, "is going to be trouble." Twenty minutes later, John arrived back at Greengrass Manor just in time to hear the results of the hunt.
Greengrass and Hermione had caught Lady Lovegood. Lord Malfoy had caught Robert Parkinson, but Lord Parkinson had gotten away. Rebecca Ogden had also gotten away, despite leading over half the hunt on a wild chase for the better part of an hour. Finally and most annoyingly, Lord Slytherin had caught his Dad.
John tried, in turn, to catch Slytherin while he was chatting to Greengrass for a few moments afterwards, but he looked away for a moment, distracted by Smith waving his damn war hammer far too close for his liking, and when he looked back, Slytherin had vanished.
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