Thank goodness Hermione hadn't gotten a straight look at this person's face.
Kate raised both hands. Her wand had already been confiscated, and she trudged step by step through the snow, turning her head to glance at the thing beside her before looking away in distaste.
If Hermione ever saw that ugly face, she'd scream.
She had no idea how long they'd been walking. Everywhere she looked there was nothing but snowfield — no trace of Hogsmeade village or Hogwarts left in sight.
As the elevation rose, the air around them turned colder and colder. She sneezed, and finally stopped walking, out of patience.
"Any higher and I'm going to catch a cold."
She wasn't about to ruin her own health playing house with a Voodoo Doll. Otherwise Hermione would make an enormous fuss the moment she got back.
Because the "girl" standing in front of her couldn't be called a girl at all.
Peel away that clumsy layer of skin-mask and you'd find the hard, coarse grain of bone hidden underneath.
Voodoo Dolls originated in West Africa. The most primitive ones were woven from animal bone or straw, and different dolls carried different curse effects.
Because of the vile methods used to make them and the effects they produced, in the magical world Voodoo Dolls counted as a branch of dark magic.
The craft was obscure and painfully laborious, though, so in the last few decades hardly anyone in the wizarding world bothered with them, turning instead to simpler, more convenient spells.
Which meant that anyone still using a Voodoo Doll had to be some stubborn old relic.
The "girl" swivelled her neck stiffly, and that carelessly manufactured face twisted into an eerie smile. "You are in no position to bargain, Kate Wynyard."
Kate put her hands on her hips, exasperated. "If you're that keen on me being a Wynyard, why not come out and say it yourself? Why send a shoddy piece of work like this to meet me?"
She stared without a flicker of fear into those bottomless, hollow "eyes."
Earlier, while she and Hermione had been messing about on the streets of Hogsmeade, this "girl" had walked straight up to her.
At first Kate had assumed she was a student from one house or another. It was only when the wand pressed into her side that a close look told her this thing didn't even qualify as human.
It was nothing but a puppet.
If she'd exposed it there in that crowded street, whoever was behind it would only have had to sacrifice this one Voodoo Doll to cause casualties across a wide area.
Without a guaranteed way to handle it, all she could do was follow the thing away from Hogsmeade village and see exactly who it meant to take her to.
The other side hadn't revealed an identity, but she'd already pieced together a few clues.
Calling her by her mother's family name, using a Voodoo Doll so ancient it was practically obsolete — the answer nearly announced itself.
"What's your relationship with Katherine?" she asked, looking straight into the Voodoo Doll's eyes.
Unfortunately, this particular Voodoo Doll didn't seem to have been given the function of relaying a conversation between two parties.
It only held up Kate's wand mechanically, another wand seized from some unlucky wizard clutched in its other hand, and repeated, "If you do not want anyone hurt because of you, come with me."
That startled a laugh of pure irritation out of her.
Just who did the person behind this thing think they were dealing with?
For someone supposedly out to get her, they hadn't even bothered to look up the most basic facts about her.
She tilted her head back and scanned the wind-scoured snow plain. Not a scrap of cover anywhere.
Which meant wherever they wanted her to end up, it was still some distance off.
Sadly for them, she had no interest in being lectured by Hermione when she got home. So this little abduction was going to end right here.
"And what if I said I don't feel like coming with you?"
Her eyes narrowed dangerously, a smile still on her lips as she asked it.
Red light flashed in the doll's hollow sockets. It raised both wands. "If Kate Wynyard refuses the order, commence destruction immediately!"
Ugh. That flat, brainless delivery was worse than a voice assistant.
While Kate was still busy mocking it silently, the doll moved. It tore the ugly leather off its own face, baring a skull that would give an ordinary person three nights of nightmares.
And between those opening and closing jaws, something seemed to be speaking.
Kate had no time to listen. The instant that horrifying bone face was exposed, a red thread shot out of its body, straight at her.
She sidestepped fast, dodging clear — then looked up to see a sky's worth of red threads sweeping down at her.
Damn it. They really did think she was some little kid.
Dragon Flame!
Orange-red fire poured out of her throat and burned the threads in front of her to nothing.
Kate covered her mouth and coughed twice, and caught sight of a red flash firing from the unknown wand in the doll's left hand.
The Cruciatus Curse?
She threw herself into a roll and cast a wandless Levitation Charm at the same time. The packed snow underfoot shuddered, torn wholesale into the air by the sheer weight of her Mana, and took the hit for her.
She had no idea where the doll drew its Mana from, but that scarlet bolt, blocked by the wall of snow, veered off on its own and streaked away toward the distant plain.
Kate had been about to finish the thing off, take it apart and carry the pieces back for study — and then a shattering roar erupted from the far-off snowfield where the spell had struck.
Before she could work out what had happened, the ground beneath her began to shake, the snowpack cracking toward them from far away at terrifying speed.
No — that deflected attack had triggered an avalanche.
Her pupils shrank. Adrenaline surged the way it does in any human facing imminent catastrophe, dragging her focus outward, hunting frantically for the point where the collapse had begun.
But within the space of a few breaths, the fracturing snowfield came thundering down from the distance like a beast bellowing, carrying enough force to flatten the world.
Kate held her breath. Whatever mood she'd had for trading probing blows with a puppet was gone.
Survival instinct had her cast the Levitation Charm at once to lift herself clear — except the doll's red threads came coiling after her, relentless.
She struggled on reflex, and the more she struggled the tighter the threads bound her.
The doll had no human awareness at all. Even with an avalanche bearing down on it, it went on faithfully executing the task its maker had set.
"Destroy Kate Wynyard!"
It tried to brandish Kate's pure white wand. It waved and waved, and nothing happened at all.
A wand bonded that deeply to its owner would only work in its true owner's hand.
Kate ground her teeth and shouted, with no politeness whatsoever, "Expelliarmus!"
Against that overwhelming field of white, the pure white wand traced an arc through the air and dropped into the snow.
The doll clearly froze for a beat. Then it swung the other wand. "Cruci—"
"Go to hell!" Kate swore at it and spat out another roaring gout of Dragon Flame, the fire racing along the red threads all the way back to the doll.
In a matter of seconds the puppet, forged from straw and animal bone, buckled completely, reduced to a heap of charred remains scattered across the splitting snow.
The threads vanished and Kate dropped to the ground. She rolled with the fall, snatched up her wand, and shouted the incantation at the wave of snow already almost on top of her.
The fire-dragon born of the Searing Flame Curse roared into that all-consuming white terror.
By rights, after years of practice, Kate's Searing Flame Curse now stood at Level 8 — enough to rival the version Voldemort himself had mastered.
Even so, faced with a disaster on that scale, the fearless fire-dragon simply drowned in the white.
All it accomplished was adding a great deal of meltwater to the mass, which mixed straight back in with the rest of the snow. Useless.
Instinct told her to use the Levitation Charm and get above it. She was already halfway into the air when a thought she'd been ignoring hit her.
Halfway down the mountainside lay Hogsmeade village.
If she got out of the way, the avalanche would bury Hogsmeade.
There were countless wizards down there. Hermione was down there.
Her rising body stopped dead. She watched the churning mixture of snow and water collapse and pour downward, all of it rolling toward the slope below.
She had to think of something.
The Searing Flame Curse wouldn't do it — so, the Transfiguration Spell.
The stone wall she wrenched up out of the ground held for a few seconds before the vast weight of snow smashed straight through it and kept on driving downhill with the force of a thunderclap.
Kate turned her head, and in that world-ending roar she felt as though she could hear her own blood freezing solid inch by inch, as though the ice and snow had already stiffened her past moving.
Below her was an avalanche she couldn't stop. Beyond it were the people she had to protect.
There was no time now to go back and warn anyone to evacuate. The only way out was to intercept the whole thing here — snow, meltwater, all of it.
A mad idea took root in her mind, sprouted, and broke through.
She turned to face the collapsing wall of white about to reach her feet, and a wild smile spread across her face.
"System, put every last Wand Attribute Point in. Use all four Emotion Points too. And don't hold back the stored Wand Stacked Damage either."
The words had barely left her mouth before Kate felt the Mana in her body swell until it was nearly spilling over, her whole form taking on a faint, unreal shimmer.
She tightened her grip on her wand, watched the snow-wave rushing headlong into her face, and swept the wand through the air, easy and slow, an intricate, near-incomprehensible incantation spilling from her lips.
It sounded like a god murmuring from the edge of the sky.
The spell finished in the very instant the wave was about to swallow her.
"Chongli Divine Fire — burn this entire snowfield away!"
In that heartbeat, Mana amplified to its absolute limit burst forth, carrying a power beyond measure, turning to flame and devouring the wave of snow whole.
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