Well, Harry said to himself, That worked a LOT better than I thought it would.

  Not to say it had solved all their problems, but it certainly helped level the playing field. The globe of concentrated ambient magic converted, almost entirely, to ropes and cords, flailing inward toward the opposition. Three of the robed flyers were snared completely, bound tightly to their brooms. Said brooms went into shallow dives under the controlling influence of the Auror spell variant. They began a wide spiral toward the distant ground.

  The effect of the spell varied inversely with distance from the converted magic globe. Two of the captured were right up against it, one of them being the man with the accent. The third should have been the man with the clipped voice. But a display of reflexes and acrobatics followed that Harry could only admire, reluctantly. The rider had obviously began moving the moment Harry first spoke. He rolled off, grabbing the shaft of his broom with both hands. Treating it like the bar of a trapeze, he swung under the man beside him. Coming up on the other side of the man, he swung up and over his broom. He then kicked off, both legs, from the small of the man's back. This propelled Fake Posh Man, as it turned out, into the mass of ropes. The man and his magpie both squawked again, but the magpie managed to escape.

  The first man shot down and away with a twirl, remounting his broom on the fly, heading toward the structure at the center of the space. Harry, who had already started in that direction, sped up to try and cut him off.

  Around them, the air was filled with the shouting of spells and their signature trails of light. Diffindo seemed to be preferred by the defenders, while Stupefy was on Wizarding Wireless Network's Number One Hit Parade for the attacking Aurors. Protego was a close second for both groups.

  Harry used Depulso to clear ropes and cords from his path. Being from an Auror's spell, they wouldn't try to capture him or any of the others. They were still in the way.

  As he and the other swooped in, Harry saw three cowled flyers working frantically at the outer dodecahedron, avoiding the lights that were poised three feet out from each vertex of the geometric shape, They were holding a tubular length of what looked like carved wood, the size and shape of a two-meter long cut log. One end was poked inside the outer frame, spreading but not breaking the webwork of rope in the space.

  "LEAVE IT!" the man with the clipped voice roared. "Scatter! Apparate out!"

  "We don't have all the...!"

  Snarling, the man swiped his wand viciously. "Sectumsempra!"

  Harry drew in a breath, but the spell had not been aimed at a person. The destructive white flash was drawn across the side of the dodecahedron, severing cords, splitting carved wood, and exploding several of the floating lights.

  In less than a heartbeat, the entire outer frame and the remaining lights were drawn into the end of the tube, a whirl of distortion and morphing shapes. All that was left was the small central piece, which quietly dropped into the surrounding clouds and out of sight.

  Cowled figures were popping, cracking, and squeaking into Between. One such was struggling in the grip of two Aurors, having lost their broom.

  The unknown man's wand slashed again. "AVADA KEDAVRA!" The shout pitched up into a scream that must have torn the man's throat raw.

  Harry looked in horror as the flash of green light darted at the group of three struggling people, with the distinctive rushing sound he heard in his nightmares.

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  The figure in the center arched in a terrible spasm.

  And went still.

  ***

  The killer nosed over into a vertical dive, Harry following him almost automatically, with the reflexes of a trained Seeker. Both flyers were accelerating straight down, Harry once again standing on his footrests. The Firebolt was gaining, of course, faster than it had on Nienna's Comet.

  Ahead, a shape resolved out of the clouds ahead. It was the central piece of the array, tumbling as it fell. The killer gathered it in like a Quaffle, it being much the same size. He immediately went into a skew turn that must have had his tendons crackling against his bones.

  Harry stayed on his tail. They were still headed mostly down, but at a steep angle. The robed man started pulling out of the dive, rolling off to one side or the other, trying to shake Harry off his tail. As their dives approached the zenith of their arcs, they burst out of the overcast...

  ...directly above the ongoing battle. At a glance, Harry could tell that it was almost over. His Aurors were closing in on the defenders' last redoubt, thrown up right against the walls of the giant Niffler cage. And, standing atop the cage, well, kneeling, really. One knee down, being hit by spells from all sides...

  ...was Hagrid. Still holding the Gubraithian Fire. Moody's wooden leg was clutched against his chest with both hands. His head was down, and blood was running freely from his beard and hair in multiple streams.

  Harry's shock had led to a slackening of his focus on his broom, and his speed had fallen off. The man ahead took advantage to pull his wand and cast a spell on himself. The wind in his ears made it inaudible, but the effect was obvious.

  "YOU CAN APPARATE! GET OUT! LEAVE NONE BEHIND!"

  Harry, focus restored, was gaining rapidly. They were still thousands of feet in the air. The man glanced back, then looked down at the object cradled in the crook of one elbow. He stashed his wand, grabbed the thing... and threw it at Harry.

  Harry's Chaser reflexes weren't on a par with his Seeker ones, but he gathered the wooden shape in.

  And he was SMOTHERING, AFRAID AND ALONE. SOMETHING WAS GONE AND HE NEEDED IT...

  ...and he was falling, he realized dimly. His magic, the Firebolt's magic, were being drained away into..., into the thing he was holding.

  He pushed it away weakly. Being lighter than him, the windstream snatched it up and away. Once it was a couple of meters off, the horror eased and his magic returned. But there was apparently a lag time on recovery, and Harry was still enervated. The killer swooped over and gathered the thing in, seemingly suffering no ill effects. Following Harry down through the air, he drew his wand slowly, as if he was gloating. He raised it over his shoulder, preparing to cast a spell. And Harry knew what spell it would be...

  And his assailant was knocked clean off his broom by the most beautiful barrel-roll body-block he had ever seen. As he wasn't saying that just because it saved his life.

  Well, mostly.

  Nienna recovered perfectly from the block, and swooped off after the dodecahedron, which she had knocked loose.

  "No!" Harry husked, voice lost in the rush of wind. He was getting his broom under control. He saw the robed man falling away, already stabilized in the air, wand back in hand. It was like Harry could see the lightning-fast thoughts flashing through his brain. The wand pointed... and the abandoned broom exploded in all-consuming flame. The wizard dis-Apparated, much too far away for Harry to hear his signature hiss.

  Nienna screamed, a thin, reedy sound that tore at Harry's heart. He looked to see her yawing through the air. falling, the damned thing convulsively gripped in her hand.

  Harry desperately cast Sonorous. "LEAVE IT, NIENNA! DROP IT! GET RID OF IT!" He urged the Firebolt toward her, hoping to knock the thing loose before they both hit the ground.

  Before he had covered a quarter of the distance, a small tawny blur streaked down from the cloud cover, impacting the dodecahedral block squarely. It went one way, a limp Ath?na fluttered another way, and Nienna stopped screaming, and slowly began to shake off the effects of the anomaly. Faster than Harry had, that was for certain.

  Harry was close enough to gather Ath?na up, and swooped on in to throw a supporting arm around a still groggy Nienna's waist.

  Looking down, he saw Aurors looking up at them, and the falling object.

  "LEAVE IT ALONE! DON'T TRY TO CATCH IT! IT EATS MAGIC!"

  Circling down to the ground, Harry saw the Aurors moving back from the line of the falling object.

  Except one. Hermione, (of course), was standing off to one side, casting up into the air. She was casting Protego, over and over. The dodecahedron would hit a shield, slowing very slightly as it ate a hole in the magic, then dropping on to impact the next.

  "Damn," said Nienna, easing herself and her broom away from Harry's supporting arm. "She really is just that freakin' good!"