Magical Hogwarts

caerphilly catapaults pitch, nelson, wales | saturday 30 july 2005, 10:05:00

“Sometimes, the only way to heal our wounds is to make peace with the demons who created them.”
-- Sherrilyn Kenyon

In the bright morning light, the Quidditch stadium of the Caerphilly Catapaults stood seemingly quiet and empty, blissfully unaware of the impending storm. Cameryn, Polyjuiced and Disillusioned, knew that today was - for better or worse - the day she had been building towards for almost the past year. She stood alone at the head of the vast Catapaults Quidditch pitch, her unseen auburn hair catching the gentle breeze, her eyes focused on the horizon.

The past eleven months had seen a series of magical strikes and confrontations with the Ministry of Magic, her relentless campaign to challenge the International Statute of Secrecy. Her actions had left a trail of chaos and uncertainty throughout the Brittania and Eire.  It was supposed to have gone on longer, ideally until 2008 to properly hit up every ley line intersection under favorable celestial spreads; at least she'd closed one circuit last week during her all-too-brief hit-and-run last week at the Cannons Stadium. But this was the climax of her efforts. The Ministry was closing in, their responses more calculated, but Cameryn thrived on the thrill of the chase. She was a brilliant tactician, a master of the dark arts, and today could mark her final stand and her greatest triumph.

And she was not alone in this endeavor. Her Orphans, her loyal disciples, would soon POP! into existence, Apparating onto the Quidditch pitch with a sense of purpose that mirrored her own. She'd told them a later time than she herself had come, because she wanted a moment of peaceful contemplation and reflection on her campaign. Cameryn knew the risks, but she also knew the rewards. Her actions had garnered the attention of the wizarding world, and she had become a symbol of defiance, a spark of change in a world that had grown complacent. The sun climbed higher, casting its warm glow over the stadium, and Cameryn's fingers caressed her quaking aspen and thestral hair wand, her chosen instrument of power.

Minutes passed, with Cameryn eyeballing the spots where she believed Ministry agents were lying in wait. Once upon a time she could sense them with haematomancy, but someone at headquarters with a brain had finally figured out that trick and blocked themselves from that. Then her eyes popped down to the lower level seats as she heard the faint, almost simultaneous POPs! of her Orphans arriving on the scene. They too were Polyjuiced and Disillusioned, but as they arrived they began casting Mass Petrification spells and turning everything in the stadium to aged stone, and the effects began to spread and become visible quickly.

Immediately she put her wand to her neck and wordlessly cast Sonorus, then aimed at the absolute center of the pitch and yelled out in a voice that echoed across the entire venue, "Viriduro!" The faceoff circle erupted with a small volcano of emerald flames -- @Harry Potter @Tock Neilson @Rhys Pritchard @Phillip Donnelly @Ares Awning @Theoren Odell @Roslyn Hayes

Given what they all knew was about to go down, Harry and his team had opted to enjoy a little luxury before the showdown -- they were sitting, already Disillusioned and further concealed behind layers and layers of protective enchantments that the experts had insisted were necessary, in the cushy top boxes at the Ellis Moor pitch, keeping a sharp eye out for movement down on the pitch (as Harry had told everybody, there was almost no chance that the Dark Widow was going to attack a professional Quidditch stadium and not centre-stage herself) and producing nervous, feeble chatter as they waited.

There had been a lot of restless milling about earlier, but -- as they'd all been Disillusioned -- they'd kept walking into each other, so now most of them were sitting around in the emerald green, plush velvet seats, speaking only to their seatmates. Aurors and Hit Wizards in the front row of the box, and Accidents & Catastrophes in wait behind them. Harry was sitting next to Proudfoot, one boot propped against the mahogany ledge that looked over the pitch, getting distracted every few seconds by the rippling air where Roberts was pacing, pressing his glasses up his nose every few seconds.

Suddenly, disconcertingly, his seat grew cold and hard beneath him. Amid the low, urgent murmur of alarm that broke out around him, Harry stood, gripping his wand tightly. "She's here," he announced unnecessarily -- all around him he could hear people shuffling around, obviously clued into the same thing he was. "Apparate to the vantage points we picked out earlier, I'll --"

This was drowned out by a booming, echoing call, and then -- like clockwork -- the Widow's emerald flame signature erupting in the centre of the pitch. Harry stopped giving orders to complain in an undertone to Proudfoot beside him: "I told you! Bloody dramatic."

Right, well, everyone knew their orders anyway; as soon as the booming, echoing voice died out, Harry clapped once and said, "Vantage point, Incarcerous, then move. Remember, our top priority is capture, our second priority is to make them visible again. Those of you going down to the pitch, soon as you see one down, Apparate straight there and take them in. Good hunting."

And with that, he turned on his heel.

The Ministry officials on the scene -- the Aurors, Hit Wizards, and MLEP at first, as A&C were waiting for a more emergent emergency to arise -- had been instructed to station themselves at random spots around the stadium, some in the stands with the high ground and some around the perimeter of the pitch itself to rush into the fray. Even as Harry materialised in the visitors' stands he could already see ropes lashing down into the pitch from the stands, most of them falling unused to the grass but one or two of them ensnaring invisible prey. Harry's first spell caught nothing -- he Apparated again, several metres to his left, and tried again, watching as one of the wriggling loops of rope disappeared when either its captive freed themself or was brought swiftly to the Ministry.

Harry was not particularly interested in parleying with the Widow yet; he was confident she would seek him out herself. Instead, he focussed on his work -- Apparate, Incarcerous, Disapparate.

--and unexpectedly, ropes shot out toward her (well, at least toward the pitch) from different places throughout the stands above.

With a quick invocation to Macha, Cameryn turned on her heel, hoping to just miss one of the few Incarcerous ropes that actually was aimed at her, but upon "reappearing" against the wall at the outside of the pitch, she found that her ankles were tied together. She found this by falling over, naturally. But the also-Disillusioned source of some other hexes didn't seem to have noticed that she had landed near him/her, as they were casting some rather loud battle magic and hadn't heard the reapparition crack or seen the invisible cylinder wrapped in loose rope.

"Confringo," she cast astonishingly loud, and even as the explosive force left her wand and before the Disillusioned target even registered they were about to be blown into the wall, she thought Shit, I'm still Amplified. She'd have to cut the rope and also SIlence herself; she made the split-second decision to mutter "Diffindo" under the cover of her previous spell's explosion and cut the rope first, so that she could stand up quickly. Halfway up she managed to murmur "Quietus" with her wand at her throat. Then she turned on her heel once more and returned to the exact spot she'd been at previously, near the center of the pitch.

Once she'd Reapparated the second time, Cameryn felt a little dizzy from so much rapid Apparition and had to take a full two seconds to get her bearings and see what the status of the battle was. It wasn't super for her Orphans, but it was tolerable. Some of her children had been captured, she could see -- visible ropes around invisible bodies like she'd experienced, except they also appeared to be Apparating away without standing up. Meaning Potter's minions were taking them away from the battlefield themselves, for actual incarceration most likely. But there were also scorch marks and explosion residue around the pitch and in two places in the stands. And her green flames were still burning bright, moving outward from the pitch center in tree-branch fractal spirals; one branch far away from her looked like it was trying to be extinguished, so clearly not someone who worked under Potter directly. He'd figured out ages ago that the Widow's Flames Curse resisted traditional extinguishing spells, and just to let it burn up.

Another rope flew past her ass and she turned to see where it was coming from, but her ears could detect consistent, repeated POP!s of multiple Apparitions, so they weren't staying in the same spots. A smart move on both sides' parts, but it certainly made true combat difficult for every single person under the Orphans or the Aurors.

Well if he's taking prisoners, so am I, Cameryn decided. "Agronā le glaodhan blàir, stain an talamh le fuil! Revelio Inimicos!" The spell she'd used in the Battle of Griff's Cliffs did what it had before, a blue watery-looking mist washing across the field, filling up the space of any humanoids in its path and "washing away" their Disillusionment. Some were her Orphans, and some were Potter's Aurors. She stepped into the mist herself to remove her own Disillusionment and cast two laser-targeted Stinging Hexes at two of the Ministry's lackeys, her eyes darting across the field to watch other opponents being revealed, while two of our Orphans took up positions behind her with Shield Charms.