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Hey guys, I'm taking another break. For those who follow this story, I'm sure you've noticed how rarely new chapters have been coming out lately. It's because I'm just mentally exhausted. And it's not because of the fanfic — my day job is draining all the life out of me. I come home and literally force myself to write, but then I don't like what I've written, get upset, and just close the tab. The next day, it's the same thing all over again... In the end, it takes about a week of struggling just to finish and post a single chapter.
Anyway, I have a short vacation coming up sometime in July. Usually, that's when I write the most — it's already happened that way twice before. I really hope I won't drop this fanfic and will keep on writing, because I've already planned out the entire plot to the very end, and I really don't want to give up on it.
Thank you so much to everyone who is still reading and putting up with such an unstable update schedule. After all, I started almost a year ago and have only made it to their second year of school.
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Fenrir and the surviving werewolves trembled with a primal fear, flinching at every rustle and snapping twig from the depths of the forest. The pressure became unbearable. One of them, completely losing his composure, attempted to disapparate, hoping to flee. A dull pop echoed, and the space around him distorted, but the wizard remained rooted to the spot.
— I... I can't leave! Apparition isn't working! — he shrieked, his voice trembling with terror.
— It's all because of the barrier! We need to break that sword! — another yelled, pointing at the katana driven into the earth, from which the shimmering glow of the dome emanated.
When the werewolves turned in unison toward the blade, they froze. Directly behind it, sitting motionlessly on a fallen, moss-covered log, was Adele. She looked as if she were out for a stroll in a garden rather than sitting on a battlefield.
Her serene, almost bored expression drove the werewolves into a frenzy. For a moment, they forgot about the sword and the looming danger. A humiliating realization washed over them: they were merely actors in a bloody theater, and this girl was the sole audience member who had come to enjoy the show.
Losing all control to his fury, the bald wizard whipped up his wand and fired a maiming curse at the girl. However, in that exact second, one of the amulets around Adele's neck flared with a blinding light, enveloping her in an impenetrable shield. Before the wizard could even process that his attack had failed, he felt his own wand violently ripped from his fingers.
Victor, appearing behind him as if out of thin air, intercepted the wand and drove it deep into the bald man's ear canal with crushing force. The wizard let out a choking scream. Without a change in expression, Victor snapped the wand with a sharp jerk, leaving the fragment inside, and began to methodically slash at the wizard's throat with the jagged edge. Crimson blood erupted in a fountain, soaking the grass.
The others reacted instantly, unleashing a barrage of multicolored spells upon Victor. The air boiled with magical flashes. When the radiance faded and the dust settled, only the mangled body of the bald man remained on the ground; Victor was long gone.
Fenrir, letting out a furious roar, unleashed his most powerful curse directly at the hilt of the sword, but the barrier only vibrated imperceptibly—not even a scratch was left on the blade.
— That was number nine. There are thirteen of you left, — Victor's voice echoed again, seemingly coming from all sides at once. — You don't learn from your mistakes at all. Bunching up together again like sheep.
Greyback's eyes widened in realization.
— Scatter! Don't stand together! — he bellowed.
As the panicked werewolves tried to scatter, one of them suddenly froze, raised his wand, and with a manic cry of "*Avada Kedavra!*" shot his companion in the back. The man dropped stone-dead. When the survivors whipped around to face the shooter, they saw the crimson gleam of the Sharingan in his eyes. A hail of retaliatory curses instantly turned the traitor into a bloody pulp.
— Minus another five. Eight left, — Victor continued his icy countdown.
— Liar! There are eleven of us! — one of the werewolves shrieked furiously, glancing around.
— Is that so? Ha-ha-ha! — Victor's mocking laughter reverberated through the forest.
Fenrir scowled, quickly counting his men. There were indeed eight. At that moment, three lifeless bodies crashed down from above, snapping branches as they fell, suspended by tight nooses made of vines. While the pack had been occupied with lynching Victor's puppet, he had silently finished off three more.
Fenrir, completely losing his mind to rage, raised his wand and fired a curse straight at Adele, but the result was the same: the magical shield of the amulets indifferently absorbed the energy. The werewolf bared his teeth in a predatory snarl and growled at the remaining fighters:
— Keep that bastard away from me! — With those words, he lunged toward the girl. If magic was useless, he would take her by brute force and use her as a human shield.
Greyback saw spells flying at him from all angles, but his loyal men, or so it seemed to him, stood like a wall in the path of the magical bolts, taking the hits for him. A sickening, expectant grin spread across his face. Having almost reached the "terrified" little girl, he forcefully grabbed her by the throat, feeling her fragile neck beneath his fingers.
— Come out, you little brat, or I'll end her right here! — the pack leader roared into the emptiness of the forest.
There was no answer. Fenrir looked back at his men in confusion and went cold. Every single one of them lay dead, scattered in unnatural positions. Victor, covered from head to toe in blood, stood in the center of this graveyard like an ancient and merciless god of war. But what shocked Greyback the most was that Adele was still sitting calmly on the fallen trunk—except she was on a completely different side of the clearing.
"I ran the wrong way..." a panicked thought flashed through his mind. Lowering his eyes, he realized with horror that the entire time, he had been squeezing the throat of one of his own werewolves. Fenrir's hands went limp, and the lifeless body of his comrade slumped like a sack into the mud.
— But how?.. I... I saw them protecting me! When?! — his voice cracked into a rasp.
Victor merely shook his head wearily, looking down at him:
— No one was protecting you, Fenrir. To them, you were just a coward who suddenly abandoned his pack in the heat of battle and, with a maniacal scream, rushed off to strangle his own fighter, leaving the rest to be torn apart by me.
Greyback began to shake, consumed by a panicked, animalistic rage.
— A-A-A-A-A! — he roared, frantically firing spell after spell at Victor, but each one passed harmlessly through him.
Suddenly, the werewolf's instincts flared. Sensing a real threat, Greyback spun around sharply and leveled his wand toward what appeared to be empty space.
Victor had indeed been calmly walking toward Fenrir, planning to finish him off while he was trapped in the genjutsu. The wolf's unexpected reaction forced Victor to act with lightning speed; he intercepted Greyback's hand, redirecting it to the side—the bolt of the curse merely singed the air an inch from his shoulder. Without giving him a moment to recover, Victor jabbed a finger into the werewolf's chest. A concentrated magical impulse launched Fenrir into the air; he flew back several yards, dropping his wand.
— Well, look at that, you broke out of the genjutsu? — Victor mused, tilting his head to the side in genuine surprise.
Coughing and spitting blood, Greyback scrambled to the side and unexpectedly pulled out a second wand. But Victor was already upon him. With a precise kick, he knocked it out of the alpha's hands, and vines instantly coiled around Fenrir's body, pinning him immovably to the ground.
— Seriously? A second wand? — Victor chuckled, inspecting the trophy. — Well, that's actually quite clever.
He turned to Adele. The girl slowly stood up from the fallen tree, brushed off her robes, and walked over to her brother.
— Adele, you know, we should probably buy you a backup wand too, — Victor noted, looking at his sister. — You can hide it in your ring, just in case.
Adele nodded in agreement, then frowned as she shifted her gaze to the defeated Fenrir:
— What's wrong with him?
The werewolf stared wildly at them, then squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, looking around at the dead bodies of his comrades. He repeated this over and over, as if trying to wake up from a prolonged nightmare.
— Ho, now this is truly interesting, — Victor crossed his arms, thoughtfully tapping his fingers against his chin. — He somehow managed to break out of my illusion, but his mind is still stuck somewhere between realities. Strong wizards are incredibly difficult to keep under total control. I only managed to make him see you and flashes of magic. Well, it seems I'll need a lot more practice with the Sharingan.
Adele didn't understand a word of his reasoning, but looking around at the once-quiet forest—which was now literally littered with mutilated corpses—she tugged at the sleeve of her brother's robes:
— Can we get out of here? It's a bit... gloomy.
— Yeah, of course, just a second, — Victor agreed.
He stepped over to the wheezing Greyback, roughly grabbed him by the crown of his head with his fingers, and forced the pack leader's face up. Fenrir instantly shut his eyes in terror. The skin beneath Victor's fingers glowed with a pure white light, probing directly into his mind. Greyback shrieked instantly—a cry filled with pure agony. A moment later, his head limply rolled back, his eyes rolling into his head. Victor held him like that for a few more seconds, filtering through the stolen memories, before yanking his hand back in disgust.
— You are a truly vile creature, Fenrir Greyback, — he said in a frigid tone.
He extended his palm to the side, and the katana driven into the ground obediently ripped itself from the soil, whistling straight into his grip. The agonizing pain finally caused Greyback to snap back to consciousness. Looking up at Victor standing before him, he began to shake violently, thrashing desperately in an attempt to break free from the vines.
— Kid... No, Victor! Please, let me go! — he begged, choking on his own tears. — I... I will serve you! I'll be useful, I swear! I have an army of werewolves, a whole pack, they'll follow you! Please!
Not a trace remained of the proud Wolf who had held all of magical Britain in terror. Now, a pathetic, beaten puppy whimpered and groveled before Victor.
— I know you have an army. And I saw perfectly well exactly how you turned children to build that pack, — Victor swung the blade, flicking the dust off it. — Therefore, today, I, Victor the Just, sentence you to death.
Fenrir didn't even have time to make a sound. A silver flash of steel cleaved through the twilight of the thicket, and the head of the century's most dangerous werewolf rolled onto the damp grass with a dull thud.
— "Victor the Just"? — Adele raised an eyebrow in amusement.
— Yeah, I know, it sounds a bit corny, — Victor grimaced with dissatisfaction, shearing the katana back into his cane. — I need to come up with something cooler. How about "Victor the Splendid"? No, not it... "I, Victor Uchiha, acknowledge you as the strongest shinobi!"... Damn, no, that went way off track.
Glancing at his soiled robes, he sighed and casually snapped his fingers. A thick crimson smoke enveloped his figure for a moment, and when it cleared, Victor's clothes and skin were absolutely spotless, without a single trace of the recent slaughter.
— On your cheeks... there's still some left, — Adele noted quietly, peering closely at his face.
— Hmm, what? — Victor touched his skin with his fingers and suddenly let out a cheerful chuckle. — Silly, that's not blood. I'm just blushing.
He finally deactivated the Sharingan. The blood-red pattern vanished, giving way to his normal eyes, though his pupils were still dilated and visibly pulsing. His cheeks were indeed burning with a bright flush.
— It's from overstimulation, — he admitted, drawing in a deep breath of the forest air. — Damn, how could I deny myself this for so long? I mean, sure, I definitely overdid it with the killing in the past, but sometimes... sometimes, I think, it's fine to let yourself have some fun like this.
Gradually, Victor began to calm down. His heart stopped pounding wildly in his chest, and the feverish flush slowly began to recede.
— Master... master... master... — suddenly, a faint, insinuating, and clearly offended voice echoed in his mind.
Victor looked down at his snake-shaped bracelet.
— Well, what is it?
— A-a-ah, master! Finally! — the basilisk practically cheered. — You promised to feed me!
Victor froze. He slowly scanned the clearing, which was littered with corpses that were already beginning to grow cold.
— Listen, couldn't you have told me a bit sooner? I would have left at least someone alive for you.
— I called! I was calling the whole time! — the snake replied, practically weeping with frustration. — You just completely ignored me!
Victor paused to think. And indeed—somewhere in the background during the fight, he had heard something, but he had been so intoxicated by the battle and the adrenaline that he simply didn't give a damn.
— Alright, stop whining, I already know a place where you can eat your fill. Just hold on for a couple more days. — Quieting the snake, he smiled at his sister, taking her by the hand. — Well then, Adele, shall we?
Adele nodded, but looking around, she realized they were in a completely unfamiliar place. The forest around them seemed endless and identically bleak in every direction.
— Do you happen to have anything on you that can get us back home?
Victor merely shook his head.
— No, sweetie, sorry. I didn't exactly plan on getting lost in the woods. We'll have to fly on brooms, but the question is: where to?
— D... Dobby can help! — a high-pitched voice piped up, and a house-elf appeared beside them with a sharp pop.
Victor and Adele jumped from the surprise. The girl, upon seeing the elf, turned away with clear distaste, burying her face in her brother's chest. Victor, on the contrary, just stared at him in astonishment.
— Dobby? What the hell are you doing here?
The elf was shaking all over, gazing at the slaughterhouse with absolute horror. In his years of service to the Malfoys, he had seen plenty of cruelty, but he had never encountered a bloodbath of this scale.
— Hey, do you hear me? — Victor snapped his fingers in front of the house-elf's dinner-plate eyes. — How did you get here?
Dobby finally snapped out of it, though a tremor still lingered in his voice.
— When Dobby became free, he didn't know where to go. He decided to stay at Hogwarts, closer to the good wizards. And there Dobby heard that Mr. Moss was in danger, so he decided to help. Dobby remembers how kind Mr. Moss was to him. Since then, Dobby has always been secretly following you.
— Wow, well, thanks, I guess, — Victor smiled involuntarily. — Can I ask you one more question then?
— Of course! Dobby will answer everything!
— Since you're a free elf now, why the hell are you still wearing that pillowcase? You could have at least put on some underpants.
Due to a sudden gust of wind, the edges of the pillowcase parted, flashing a bit more than was appropriate. Victor gently patted Adele's back.
— Because of you, you little exhibitionist, my sister might be traumatized for life!
Dobby looked down in confusion, not understanding what exactly his fault was—he was just an elf, after all. But noticing Adele's state, he hurriedly pinned the edges of the fabric together with his hands.
— Forgive Dobby, Miss Moss, for Dobby's improper appearance! Dobby didn't mean to embarrass... usually humans don't care about our...
— Enough! — Victor cut him off, raising a hand. — Say no more. Help us get out of this forest, and I will personally clothe you from head to toe.
— Of course! Dobby will gladly help Mr. Moss! Where should Dobby send you?
— To France. Close to the Flamel estate.
Dobby nodded and raised his hand to snap his fingers, but suddenly froze.
— Er... Forgive Dobby, but Dobby has never been to the Flamel estate and doesn't know where it is at all.
Victor paused, nodding understandingly. He waved his hand, and Fenrir's severed head, which had been lying nearby, instantly vanished into his spatial ring.
— Knockturn Alley then. You definitely know the way there.
Dobby snapped his long fingers. In that exact second, the trio vanished into thin air.