Having the Dark Lord coldly stare him down after two days of painstaking alibi construction in the States, which involved breaking multiple American Portkey laws and appearing in front of Aurors inside the Ministry who were out to get him for murder charges, wasn't great. It was like the return of all his returns was underwhelming, to say the least.
"You. . . you have been an annoyance for some time now," Voldemort's voice seemed colder than his(Quinn's) ice magic. "Stay within your limits— no. . . you have done enough; it's time for you to go."
Quinn shifted his feet and sent body magic to every part of his body, ready to move at a moment's notice. He could feel a pressure emanating from Voldemort that was quite nervewracking— not once in his life had he faced an opponent of this caliber, even his previous encounter with Voldemort couldn't be counted because of the suddenness of the situation.
Voldemort didn't raise his wand; he didn't need to as the wand was a focus, and when appropriately skilled, there was no need to point and shoot.
Quinn heard a crackle. He looked up to find himself staring as a yellow lightning bolt manifested. His eyes blew up behind his mask. The magical lightning jolted down towards Quinn's head as he raised a shield to block it.
"Gah!"
The shield blocked most of the bolt, but some of the lightning ripped through the magical cover and struck Quinn. He felt as if thousands of electric snakes coursed through every muscle fabric in his body. Everything spasmed out of control. He felt his body heat up several degrees in the short span of seconds. Quinn's breathing hitched as his magic retaliated and purged the foreign magic invading his body. His breathing returned to normal when all of Voldemort's magic was purged.
'Shit!' Quinn cursed inside. The curse was dark magic. If he had let it stay inside his body longer, it would've done damage that'd have taken years of treatment from highest-grade doctors to fix. Even now, he could feel pain throughout his body. 'That was just one spell!'
Quinn turned invisible immediately and started to move slowly. But then he saw Voldemort's eyes following him and his heart skipped a beat.
A dark mass of magic bubbled in front of Voldemort and zapped towards Quinn with a shrill whistling sound. Quinn raised another shield many times stronger than the last time, and it worked. . . partially. The black mass collided with the shield spell and bounced off it into the ground, exploding the floor like a full grenade. Quinn felt an intense explosion of heat as the black mass ballooned from a tennis ball to a gym ball in a blink of an eye. It stopped expanding just before it could touch Quinn's shield and shrunk rapidly. The black mass was the only thing in Quinn's eyes as he saw it turn into an angry red explosion— that sent out a force strong enough to shift his organs and doing it while he was behind a shield.
He was sent back flying from the force. Quinn fought through the disorienting impact and cast Arresto Momentum to cut all of his momenta and smoothly twisted to help him land on the ground battle-ready. As his feet touched the ground, he raised his eyes once again locked onto Voldemort. . . and there was a green spell of death zipping towards him.
He felt his entire body do one thing. It was instinct. The instinct to move. The instinct to live.
*Crackle.* Another small explosion burst out. A white plume of smoke/fog spread into the surroundings until it cleared up, leaving behind Quinn with a broke piece of the shield made from a huge block of ice.
The room's temperature dropped as a thin sheen of frosty ice grew on every surface of the room. The high roof of the atrium developed stalagmite-like protrusion. Quinn stared at Voldemort with his eyes glowing in purple. His finger twitched, and a couple hundred ice spears manifested in the air. Another twitch and the clear ice gained a green tinge as Quinn applied a curse on every spike. The final twitch and the spikes shot toward Voldemort with the sole aim of piercing through his body.
Voldemort lazily swept his arm across, and all ice spears slowed down. But before they could completely stop, Voldemort's eyes widened as he hastily moved his wand-wrist and conjured a shield behind himself. A huge spray of fire assaulted Voldemort at his back, and the intensity of the flames only seemed to grow stronger.
"Dumbledore!" Voldemort barked, feeling the heat on his back, and the tongues of fire just separated them. He was about to turn towards Dumbledore when he noticed Quinn wasn't there anymore. He immediately sent out probes, and Voldemort looked around to spot Quinn. Voldemort looked up and saw dozens of glowing red rods with electric current dancing around them.
The moment the rods dropped, Voldermot conjured a protective cover above and turned towards Dumbledore. He pulled down the shield that held back the fire, plunged a sudden and continuous supply of his magic into the flames, and started to fight back.
The rods dropped over his head and tortured the cover over Voldemort's head. It shook and rippled wildly, but not a single rod passed through. Just when Voldemort thought he could concentrate on Dumbledore's flames, his eye shrunk as Quinn became visible in his peripheral vision.
Quinn raised his leg and front-kicked the Dark Lord's side with an intense quantity of body magic. Quinn followed up by sending out Empyrean chains with blades weaved with curses on end after Voldemort, but the Dark Lord's magic thwarted and crushed the chains before they could reach him. But it wasn't over as Dumbledore shot what seemed like an absurdly charged, modified Reducto— even though it wasn't directed towards Quinn, he felt enough danger that he jumped away from Voldemort.
Voldemort again blocked, but his shield was ripped as if it was paper. But Voldemort wasn't just the Dark Lord in name as he countered Dumbledore's offensive spell with an offensive spell of his own. The explosion was so impactful that it sent waves across the atrium.
Quinn observed from the side, thinking of his next move, when a spell suddenly came from his side. He looked towards it with furrowed brows as it fizzled away because of his magic. He looked up and saw a Death Eater with his wand raised towards him. Quinn raised his hand, and the Death Eater's leg bones cracked, making him fall in pain.
He returned back to Voldemort. Two fiery orbs of eerie mustard-colored fire sparked above his palms. He pointed them at Voldemort, who battled against Dumbledore. Quinn's eyes flashed purple as hot rows of flame scorched towards Voldemort's back.
The Dark Lord facing fire from both sides, flicked his wrist of the hand holding his wand, and bought on. . . terror.
Maybe Voldemort had heard of the saying 'fire-with-fire' because, in response, he let out a frightening fire— it looked cold and ghastly, but it was anything but— it was so hot that the marble on the floor melted away into a blob of molten stone.
Quinn's concentration on assaulting Voldemort snapped. He took several steps back away from the fire because he recognized what the fire precisely was. It was not a normal fire; the flames seemed like they were alive, sentient, intent upon killing everything in their path; the fire was mutating, forming a gigantic pack of fiery beasts: Flaming serpents, chimeras, and dragons rose and fell and rose again.
'Fiendfyre! Why the fucking hell would he do that?! We're indoors! Indoors!'
Fiendfyre was one of the magics that Quinn had tread lightly around. There wasn't really a place he could safely practice it without risking the quasi-sentient fire from getting out of control and leaking out to cause a hazard. He only knew one place that could hold the fire from getting out: The Room of Requirements. The room wasn't really on the seventh floor despite the location of its entrance; it was connected to the seventh floor through spatial magic— and just a command of disconnecting the entrance made the room a place perfect for practicing Fiendfyre— bar the fact the caster could die if things got out of control.
And Quinn had at times taken advantage of the fact and practiced Feindfyre. The prevailing supposition around Fiendyre was that seemingly wild flames could only be hoped to be tamed by the most skilled of practitioners, and not every caster could actually control the spell. But in his experimentation with Fiendfyre, he had found out how the fire could be controlled.
The answer was Legilimency. The mind arts were how Fiendfyre could be bent to one's will.
Quinn, even with his Legilimency skills, could only control the flames shabbily— but. . .
'I can make some of them touch Voldemort. . . gently.'
Quinn gently reached out to the flames; he had to be careful as they could backfire and burn his mindscape. He extended his mind to a wisp of mind, and immediately a connection was made as if the flame was eager for the link.
'Ah, I forget this took magic.' Fiendfyre was incredibly magic extensive, and even with the slightest of the links, it sucked magic like a sponge. 'Let's see if you like the taste of your own medicine.'
Quinn roughly targeted the area near Voldemort and caused an explosion, hoping that would hurt Voldemort as that amount of control was all he was capable of.
The fire snake near Voldemort exploded. Voldemort flicked his wand, and the exploding snake returned to its serpentine form as if time had been reversed. Quinn could see Voldemort turn cautious as the quantity of Feindfyre immediately lessened.
'Shit!' Quinn cursed internally as he dodged a Fiendfyre dragon's breath. Thankfully, Voldemort seemed to focus on Dumbledore and was only sending stray fire wisps toward Quinn— maybe it was because Voldemort gave Dumbledore priority, or perhaps it was because he could only maintain one target. Whatever it was, it gave Quinn some room to operate. 'Okay, one more time. . . . If I can just get him a little, it would weaken him for long, maybe then. . . .'
Quinn's eyes turned purple. An absurd amount of magic was fed to the flames. Quinn focused on the fire, and everything other than the flames stopped existing for him. He connected with the Fiendfyre, and he could feel an overwhelming pressure descend on his mind. It was like he was hung upside down, and all the blood was rushing to his head. He could around the entire body of the fire, but it was so violent that Quinn was scared that any wrong move he made could burn through his mind like a dry pile of leaves waiting to be burned in a forest.
'This is going to work,' he thought and chose an area of the fire.
But as Quinn was about to trigger an explosion near Voldemort, he felt something to his side. He distractedly looked to the side just to have a spell hit him. Quinn felt the magic course through his body and an overwhelming force that blew his body up from the floor into the nearest pillar.
When Quinn slid down the pillar and had left behind a crack in the marble because of the force. For a moment, he couldn't see anything but a swarming mess, and all he could hear was a ringing noise.
When his vision and hearing finally cleared up, he saw the source of the spell staring right at him as he thwarted the onslaught of Fiendfyre.
"What do you think you're doing?"
A voice clearly delivered through magic echoed in his ear. He recognized the voice well. He had heard it for seven years.
Dumbledore had attacked him.
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Quinn West - MC - My back hurts!
FictionOnlyReader - Author - I was in the office till 11AM yesterday, so I didn't have any time to write.
