Young Celestial Wizard [Celestial Grimoire, Harry Potter]

The new Voldemort looked different. Its face showed fear, anger, even confusion - emotions that made it seem more human somehow. But that just made it scarier.

"That's not possible," Charlotte whispered, her eyes wide. "Boggarts can't-"

The figure slashed its wand through the air. Charlotte barely managed to dive away as a sickly purple spell blasted a chunk out of the wall behind her.

"Those are real spells!" she shouted, scrambling behind a pillar. "Harry, be careful! This isn't normal Boggart behavior!"

Another spell - deep red this time - shattered the stone where Charlotte had been standing. She rolled out from behind the pillar, her wand moving in complex patterns. "Bombarda! Expelliarmus! Incarcerous!"

The spells bounced harmlessly off a transparent shield. The Boggart-Voldemort's lips curved into a cruel smile.

"We need to move faster," Charlotte muttered. Then, to Harry's amazement, she shrank and twisted until a black and white cat stood in her place. The cat darted between pillars as more spells crashed around it.

"You're an Animagus too?" Harry yelped, then had to transform himself as a jet of orange light nearly hit him. His eagle form took to the air, wings spread wide as he circled overhead.

The cat that was Charlotte paused just long enough to transform back and fire more spells before becoming feline again. "Learned it last month... trying to find... my brother!" she called between transformations.

For a few moments, they seemed to have the advantage. Charlotte was incredibly quick, switching forms to attack and dodge while Harry distracted their opponent from above. But then a cutting curse caught Charlotte mid-transformation. She crashed to the ground with a cry of pain, blood seeping through her robes.

Harry transformed back to human form and spun, kicking out to send a ring of orange fire at the Boggart. But it just raised its wand lazily. "Protego."

The flames washed harmlessly over the magical barrier. Harry frowned and took to the air again, searching for an opening. Below him, Charlotte was getting desperate...

The battle grew more intense. Charlotte transfigured chunks of fallen stone into wolves, but they shattered like glass against the Boggart's spells. She conjured a wall of steel that lasted barely seconds before being blasted apart.

"Nothing's working right!" she yelled, blood dripping from cuts on her arms and legs.

Harry saw his chance when the Boggart blocked Charlotte's Confringo with another shield charm. He transformed mid-dive, landing behind the creature, and unleashed a continuous stream of flames from both palms. The Boggart-Voldemort screamed as fire consumed its robes, revealing blackened flesh underneath.

But then it raised its wand. "Flamma Glacius!"

Harry's flames still poured out, but they no longer seemed to hurt the creature at all. A large hole in its robes showed burned skin, but the Flame-Freezing Charm had stopped any further damage.

"No fair!" Harry shouted. His fire had worked on the cursed ice, but one simple charm made it useless? That wasn't right!

Charlotte tried to take advantage of the distraction. "Expelliarmus!"

The Boggart simply leaned aside, the spell missing by inches. Then it spun, wand flashing, and Charlotte flew backwards into a pillar with a sickening thud.

"Charlotte!" Harry tried to run to her, but steel chains burst from the Boggart's wand, wrapping around him. He tried to transform into his eagle form, but the chains just shrank with him, squeezing tighter.

Forced to change back, Harry could only watch helplessly as Charlotte struggled to stand. Blood ran down her face now too. She kept fighting, but her spells were getting weaker. The Boggart was toying with her, letting her fire off spells before hitting her with new cutting curses.

"Crucio!"

Charlotte's scream echoed through the chamber as she collapsed, thrashing on the ground. Harry had never heard anyone make sounds like that before. It was worse than when Draco got hit by that dark curse in the Ministry. Somehow worse than anything he'd ever heard, even the Boggart from last time.

"Stop it!" Harry shouted, struggling against the chains. "Leave her alone!"

The Boggart-Voldemort just laughed - a high, cold sound that made Harry's skin crawl. It lifted the curse for a moment, letting Charlotte gasp for air, then cast it again. Her back arched as she screamed even louder than before.

Harry felt something inside him snap. Charlotte's screams echoed in his head, making his chest hurt and his eyes burn. He'd promised not to use his mist on Boggarts, but promises didn't matter anymore. Not when his friend was being hurt like that.

The mist poured out of him in waves, darker than he'd ever made it before. His body felt heavy and cold as more and more of his magic turned into the thick black fog. It rolled across the floor like storm clouds, reaching for the Boggart who had finally stopped hurting Charlotte.

The moment his mist touched it, Harry knew this was different somehow from the other Boggart. This Boggart, which was greatly more powerful than it was supposed to be, was now being shown its own fears. The mist seeped into it like water into a sponge.

The feedback started with tiny things. The Boggart became a worm, scared of birds. Then it turned into a mouse, terrified of cats. But each new shape brought new fears, making it change faster and faster. Fish scared of sharks. Deer scared of wolves. Dragons scared of wizards.

Harry's head started hurting as his mist got darker and thicker still. The Boggart's screams sounded wrong, like hundreds of different animals all crying out at once. It kept changing - becoming bigger things, scarier things. Giants afraid of mountains falling. Demons afraid of angels. Gods afraid of other gods.

"Harry!" Charlotte's voice barely reached him over the noise. "The shadows are moving!"

The darkness on the walls was being pulled toward the center where his mist spun around the Boggart like a tornado. The Boggart stretched and twisted, trying to become everything it was afraid of all at once. Then it turned into something that made Harry's stomach feel funny - a huge dark circle that pulled at everything around it. Not like regular pulling, but like it was hungry for fear itself.

BOOM!

The explosion knocked Harry into the wall. When he could see again, the room was different. The ceiling and half of the walls were just... gone. He could see the night sky and half a moon above them. They weren't in a room anymore - they were on the side of a mountain!

Harry could see Hogwarts nearby, but something was wrong. Dark shapes were being pulled out of the castle, flying through the air toward the black circle that used to be the Boggart. More shadows were coming from everywhere, all of them getting sucked in.

"Jacob says we have to finish this," Charlotte mumbled, crawling toward what was left of the middle pillar on which was inscribed "THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE MUST BE MADE" on a dull plaque. "We have to die..."

Harry tore his eyes away from the growing black circle. "No!" He grabbed Charlotte's wand hand before she could do anything silly. "That's not what it means!"

Charlotte blinked a few times, looking confused. "My wand... why was I...?" She shook her head and pulled out her brother's broken wand. When she touched it to the pillar, it opened up like a door. She quickly grabbed something from inside - looked like a map and an arrow - and stuffed them in her bag.

"Harry!" She pointed at the black circle. "It's getting bigger!"

Harry saw she was right - the hungry circle was growing, pulling in more and more shadows from everywhere. "Quick! Turn into a cat! I'll carry you!"

Charlotte nodded and changed shape. Harry transformed too, carefully grabbing her cat form with his eagle talons before flapping hard to get them both in the air and far away.

From up high, Harry could see everything with his sharp eagle eyes. The sky was full of dark shapes racing toward the circle like leaves in the wind. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.

Then suddenly, Harry felt the last bit of his mist fade away. The connection broke like a snapped string, and the hungry circle made a sound that shouldn't exist - like a scream going backwards. The dark shadows stopped flowing into it, hanging in the air for just a moment before the circle collapsed.

Harry almost dropped Charlotte as the circle crushed itself smaller and smaller, becoming a tiny dot of pure black. Then it exploded upward into a beam of darkness wider than Hogwarts itself. The beam shot into the night sky, pushing aside clouds and making the stars disappear where it touched them.

It was the biggest, scariest thing Harry had ever seen. Like someone had taken all the shadows in the world and turned them into a giant pillar reaching up forever. He could feel it pulling at him even from far away, not like regular pulling but like it wanted to eat his fear the same way he needed to eat food.

The beam stayed there for only a few seconds. Harry's wings were getting tired from fighting against its pull, and Charlotte's cat form was very still in his claws. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the beam started breaking apart. It dissolved into wisps of shadow that faded away into nothing, leaving behind a mountain that looked like something huge had taken a bite out of it.

Where the vault had been was now just a giant hole. The stone was smooth and black, like it had been melted by something incredibly hot. Parts of the mountainside had collapsed, sending rocks tumbling down toward the forest below.

Harry glided down to a nearby hill, carefully setting Charlotte down before changing back himself. His whole body felt very heavy and cold, like he'd used up too much magic. But more than that, he felt scared. Not of anything specific - just scared of how big and dangerous that beam had been. Of what might have happened if it hadn't gone away. How close he was to dying.

"We should probably tell Grandpa Dumbledore about this," he said quietly, watching more of the mountain fall into the new crater.

Charlotte changed back to human form, clutching her bag with the map and arrow inside. She looked as tired and scared as Harry felt. "Yeah," she agreed. "We really should."

"Can you walk?" Harry asked, noticing how Charlotte winced when she moved. The cuts from the Boggart's spells were still bleeding.

Charlotte nodded but stumbled when she tried to stand. "Just... give me a minute."

Harry sat down next to her, his legs feeling wobbly too. The moon was bright enough to see the damage clearly now. The crater in the mountain was huge, way way bigger than the Quidditch pitch. Parts of it were still falling in, making rumbling sounds that reminded Harry of thunder.

"I shouldn't have used my mist on the Boggart," Harry said, pulling his knees up to his chest. "I promised not to, but it was hurting you really bad. I couldn't just sit there and do nothing."

Charlotte gave him a weak smile. "I think this was different. That wasn't a normal Boggart. Did you see how it could cast spells? And..." She shivered. "And use the Cruciatus Curse?"

Harry didn't know what that curse was called, but he remembered her screams. His chest felt tight thinking about it. "Is that what it felt like? When You-Know-Who did those things to people?"

"I don't know. My parents never..." Charlotte trailed off, looking at the castle. "We should go. Headmaster Dumbledore needs to know about this."

They helped each other stand up. Harry was about to suggest flying them both back when a quiet voice behind them made them both jump.

"I believe I already do."

They spun around to find Dumbledore standing there, his blue eyes not twinkling at all as he looked from them to the destroyed mountainside.

"Now then," he said calmly, "perhaps you two can explain exactly what happened to the mountain?"