To be completely honest with himself, Adrian wasn't particularly afraid of the Obscurus itself.
What made his heart race with something deeper than fear, what made his stomach turn with disgust more than the raw destruction brought by that dark force, was the horrific process by which such a thing came into being.
Judging from Bellatrix's earlier gleeful reaction, her pride and lack of surprise, the appearance of this particular Obscurus was definitively connected to her. There was no possibility of coincidence.
It was even highly likely, almost certain that this Obscurus had been deliberately born under Bellatrix's manipulation and control.
"You truly deserve to die," Adrian said to Bellatrix, his voice cutting through the chaos.
His tone carried a critical, ice-cold calm that seemed to lower the temperature in the hall.
The twisted triumph that had been plastered across Bellatrix's thin face instantly froze.
A bone-chilling coldness, arising from nowhere she could identify, suddenly shot up from deep between her spine vertebrae. The sensation rapidly crawled across her entire back like spider legs, spreading to her shoulders and neck, making her shudder.
For a moment, genuine fear flickered in her eyes.
But she quickly composed herself, forcibly pushing down the instinctive terror. After all, her goal had already been achieved perfectly.
The Obscurus would indiscriminately annihilate everything around it.
And she... she had her own prepared means of surviving this catastrophe.
At this moment, the Obscurus had fully formed into something almost clear, a mass of living darkness. It rolled continuously in the air above them like a massive predatory beast ready to strike, coiling and uncoiling like a serpent made of shadow.
Vines of darkness reached out experimentally.
Strangely, importantly Amy was not at the physical center of that churning mass of dark energy as one might expect.
She remained curled up defensively in the corner where she'd collapsed, her thin arms were wrapped tightly around herself in a protective ball. Only now there was an additional element: a single black thread, thin as spider silk connecting her small body to that rolling mass of dark energy above and behind her.
This configuration was somewhat different, very unusual from the form Adrian understood and remembered from his previous encounter. According to his knowledge and the accounts he'd read, when a wizard transformed fully into an Obscurus state, their physical body would also typically become an integral part of the dark energy itself, merging completely into it.
Rather than this current state of apparent "separation".
The difference was significant, though he couldn't immediately determine what it meant.
But regardless of the specific mechanics, one thing was certain beyond any doubt—
They were about to face extremely serious trouble.
"Damn it," Sirius muttered. "I never even bought property insurance for this old broken house. The paperwork alone..."
"That's what you're worried about right now?" Remus asked incredulously, his face turning to stare at his friend. "Insurance? We're about to die!"
The absolutely ill-timed, almost absurdly inappropriate exchange between Sirius and Remus had just ended when the Obscurus fully erupted into action.
A blinding flash of pure black light swept across the space with tremendous speed and force.
The wall nearest to the entrance hall bore the brunt of the first strike. The bricks and stones were torn apart like paper, shattered completely, their fragments were clattering down and smashing to pieces on the floor below. Dust exploded out in a choking cloud.
A massive hole opened where solid wall had been seconds before.
And this was merely the beginning of the destruction.
The churning black energy suddenly turned in midair with frightening agility, accompanied by a high-pitched shrieking sound that tore through the air itself.
It charged straight toward Moody and Adrian, who stood closest to its previous position.
"Move! NOW!" Moody roared.
Moody's reaction was remarkably fast despite his age and injuries. He dove sideways and backward in a roll.
Adrian also rolled desperately to the right at the same instant. The destructive black light nearly grazed the edge of his robes. The floor where the two men had been standing just half a second earlier was instantly torn open, gouged through by a massive black chasm that seemed to lead nowhere.
The stone simply ceased to exist where the darkness touched it.
"What spell can possibly deal with this thing?" Sirius asked urgently, scrambling back and looking to Remus desperately. "You're the book expert, Remus! There must be something!"
"You think I would know?" Remus's expression was equally grave, his voice was tense with stress. "This isn't in any textbook I've ever read!"
Having missed with its first strike, the Obscurus didn't turn back to continue pursuing Adrian and Moody. It changed direction in midair seemingly discovering a more attractive or easier target.
It charged straight toward Bellatrix, who was still restrained by Sirius's binding spell.
Without a second's hesitation, Sirius immediately released his grip completely. He left Bellatrix standing alone in the path of destruction while he quickly dodged to the side.
What happened next was utterly incomprehensible to everyone watching.
That dark energy at the very instant it was about to devour Bellatrix, flowed naturally around both sides of her body like water encountering a smooth stone in a streambed.
The powerful airflow generated by its passage tousled and whipped her wild hair violently. Yet she stood there in the eye of destruction, completely unharmed.
Not a scratch was seen on her skin.
Only a trace of lingering shock remained on her pale face, visible just for a moment. But this fear was soon replaced by an even more insane and triumphant expression of pure, maniac glee.
"Why isn't it attacking her?!" Tonks shouted in shock and confusion, her hair was flashing through several colors rapidly. "What's protecting her?"
Adrian quickly rose from the ground where he'd rolled, brushing dust from his robes. His sharp, gaze swept over Bellatrix steadily, looking for the source of her protection.
He had also noticed the earlier anomaly, the strange way the darkness had avoided her.
But this was normal enough when he thought about it logically. After all, this girl was something Bellatrix herself had prepared and deployed. She would have built in protections for herself.
The question was what those protections were, and whether they could be removed and exploited by them to subdue the girl.
"What should we do?" Sirius asked Adrian and Moody urgently while vigilantly watching the Obscurus rise up again for another strike, reforming itself in the air. "I honestly don't think this creature is afraid of spells at all. Nothing we have can touch it."
Without hesitation, speaking extremely quickly in urgent brief words, Adrian said, "If you don't care about preserving this house, the wisest choice is to run. Evacuate immediately. Apparition should still work within the wards—I don't sense any anti-Apparition jinxes that would stop us."
"No! Absolutely not!" Remus immediately objected sharply, his voice was rising almost to a shout. His face had gone even paler than before, looking nearly white. "Look around! Think about where we are! This is Grimmauld Place, there's a densely populated Muggle residential area directly outside these walls!"
He gestured desperately toward the destroyed wall, where lamplight from neighboring houses was now visible through the gap.
"If we let this thing escape into the street, if we just abandon it here... it will be a disaster beyond our imagination. A massacre. The exposure of the entire wizarding world!"
His words made everyone's hearts sink like stones.
Once the Obscurus broke free into the defenseless Muggle world outside these walls, the indiscriminate slaughter it would cause and the catastrophic risk of exposing the entire wizarding world to Muggle knowledge would be thousands, perhaps millions of times more serious than simply allowing it to destroy this one house.
They couldn't run. They were trapped here by duty.
"How troublesome," Adrian sighed softly, his mind was racing through options. "This complicates things."
"So, what will you do then?" Bellatrix asked playfully from her safe position to the side, her voice was resounding with mocking amusement.
Even though she was still technically bound by ropes and magic, even though she was their prisoner, she appeared completely fearless and almost relaxed now.
"You'd better offer some useful advice," Adrian said to her directly, his voice was flat. "Tell us how to stop it, how to contain it."
At this moment, the Obscurus had already begun destroying the surrounding walls again, widening its area of destruction. Perhaps in just a little while longer, this entire house would begin to collapse on top of them.
"Advice?" Upon hearing Adrian's demand, Bellatrix began laughing again in that same high, mad laugh. "You want my help? Oh, that's precious! Maybe you could kneel on the ground before me and beg me properly? Grovel like the inferior creature you are?"
Her eyes glittered with malicious delight.
"Oh, then you're completely useless to us," Adrian said calmly.
He had never been willing to accept threats from others.
Expressionlessly, almost casually, he waved his wand in a sharp, decisive motion.
An invisible yet extremely brutal magical force precisely grabbed Bellatrix's collar at the back of her neck. Like an invisible giant hand closing around a ragdoll, it lifted her entire body clean off the ground. Without any warning, without any further explanation or hesitation, the force hurled her violently through the air toward the churning mass of the Obscurus.
"You—!" Bellatrix's scream was cut off.
The maniacal laughter froze completely on Bellatrix's face, transforming instantly into extreme bewilderment and disbelief.
For the first time since she'd arrived here, her eyes clearly flashed with panic as she struggled frantically in midair grasping at nothing.
"Noooooo!!" she shrieked.
But it was all too late for second thoughts or desperate pleas.
This time, the Obscurus didn't gracefully avoid her or flow around her. Instead, it swelled suddenly, expanding like an abyss opening its massive maw wide. It instantly swallowed the screaming Bellatrix whole in one second.
Her figure disappeared completely into the churning dark energy,. She left behind only an extremely brief, high-pitched shrill scream that cut off abruptly, as if someone had slammed a door on sound itself.
Adrian, still holding his wand raised, couldn't help but pause in genuine surprise at this outcome.
He had honestly thought that Bellatrix's earlier arrogance and complete fearlessness meant she had some kind of reliable backup plan to restrain or even control the Obscurus completely.
It seemed now, watching the darkness that had consumed her, that this supposed backup plan wasn't nearly so reliable or foolproof after all.
Perhaps she'd miscalculated.
But... it didn't matter anymore.
This woman deserved to die anyway.
"You shouldn't have killed her," Remus said in a heavy voice. "She might have had information, might have—"
"I didn't specifically mean to kill her..." Adrian began, then stopped. "Actually, never mind."
Before Adrian could explain further, the attack from the Obscurus came again.
The creature that had just devoured Bellatrix seemed to have become even more violent than before, even more aggressive and destructive. Feeding had somehow enraged it further rather than sating it.
The darkness lunged directly at Adrian.
"Protego!" He instinctively waved his wand with hurry, and a translucent magical barrier instantly unfolded and materialized before him, shimmering in the air.
However, the Shield Charm normally capable of blocking most dark curses, hexes, and even some physical projectiles proved to be useless here. It was like tissue paper against a blowtorch.
The moment the concentrated black light of the Obscurus struck the barrier, the shield didn't hold for even a full second before shattering completely into dissipating sparkles.
Adrian only had time to twist his body sideways desperately. But he wasn't fast enough.
The edge of the black light viciously grazed his left shoulder, tearing through his robes and into flesh beneath.
"Hiss—" Adrian sucked in a sharp breath through clenched teeth.
An indescribable coldness and sharp, burning pain instantly arrived at the point of contact. It felt as if even his soul itself was about to be frozen solid from that single touch.
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