CHAPTER FIVE: PATRONUS

The world came back in flashes of pain and dust-choked air. Harry coughed, his ribs screaming as he pushed himself up from the rubble. Dinah

The world came back in flashes of pain and dust-choked air.

Harry coughed, his ribs screaming as he pushed himself up from the rubble. Dinah lay beside him, unconscious but breathing, her small frame shielded by his body when the ceiling had caved in. Around them, Coil’s base was a tomb of twisted metal and shattered concrete, the air thick with the scent of blood and ozone.

Somewhere in the wreckage, something moved.

Noelle.

Harry’s breath hitched. His stamina was drained, his wand still gone, but he had one last trick.

He closed his eyes and reached for the memory, not of victory, not of power, but of the Burrow at dawn, the smell of Molly’s cooking, and the warmth of the hearth after a long night. The kind of safety he’d once offered, without words, to a girl he carried out of the Chamber of Secrets.

The spell burst from him without thought, raw, overcharged, and wild.

“Expecto Patronum!”

The silver stag erupted from his palms, its light searing through the dust like a flare in darkness. It shimmered with instability, but it thankfully held.

“Help,” Harry rasped. “Underground. Coil’s base. They have a child here.”

The Patronus surged upward, vanishing through the cracks in the ruined ceiling with his message.

. . . . .

Dragon’s systems pinged first.

“Alert: Unclassified energy spike detected: Brockton Bay Docks, Sublevel 3. Signature does not match known parahuman abilities.”

Armsmaster’s HUD lit up before the report finished transmitting. He was already moving, halberd locking into place with a mechanical click as he activated comms.

“Unknown hostile, possible Case-53 or tinker construct. Mobilize containment and recovery teams immediately.”

PRT vans screamed onto the scene minutes later, troopers in full gear fanning out with containment foam sprayers at the ready. The ruins of what had once been a hidden facility gaped open like a wound in the earth, dust still swirling in the air.

Armsmaster’s sensors pinged two life signs buried deep in the wreckage. One adult, and one child.

. . . . .

Harry heard them before he saw them: shouted orders, boots crunching on stone, the scrape of wreckage being pulled back one layer at a time.

“PRT! Identify yourself!”

He coughed, raising a trembling hand as figures in armored suits moved through the last of the cleared rubble. “Here!” he managed to shout. “We’re here!”

They moved quickly; one trooper pulling Dinah free from underneath him, another dragging Harry upright. His head swam, but he forced the words out.

“She needs a hospital now!”

One figure gave a clipped nod, waving at someone in a different armored suit: white with a red cross, so a medic maybe. “Got a kid here! Unconscious but alive. Critical condition. Evac now!”

Harry barely had time to register the foam teams forming a defensive perimeter before, with a groan, the ground exploded upward.

Noelle erupted from below in a storm of concrete and steel, her twisted form larger than ever, becoming a writhing mass of mouths and half-formed limbs. The air instantly stank of bile and blood, her flesh still bubbling with the forms of those she’d consumed.

The PRT troopers recoiled, containment sprayers snapping up into position, but it was already too late.

She screamed a sound of pure hunger made manifest, and then she charged.