The holographic projection shifted smoothly. New York slid to one side, still playing, and a second feed opened beside it.

London.

The sky above the River Thames had turned an ugly grey. But this was not the usual, damp English grey.

This was the grey of swarms upon swarms of soldiers falling from the sky, riding their metallic gliders down toward the city in disciplined waves. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

Loki leaned forward. This was the second strike. New York had the Avengers. New York had his brother.

London, as far as Loki knew, had absolutely nothing.

But what the God of Mischief never expected was that the resistance waiting for his grand army here was even more overwhelming than the one in Manhattan.

—

The Chitauri descended on London in a screaming tide.

They were met in the sky.

Forty broomstick riders rose from the rooftops of central London in tight V-formations, cloaks streaming, wands drawn. They hit the leading edge of the Chitauri column at full speed, and the first five chariots exploded before the aliens even understood they were under attack.

Spells at broom-speed hit differently. They carried the full momentum of the caster behind them and turned Chitauri chariots into confetti.

The aliens had never fought anything like this. Their chariots were fast, but brooms were faster and could turn on a Knut. Their pilots flew in rigid, disciplined formations.

The wizards flew like Quidditch players: banking, diving, cutting between enemies with the reckless joy of people who had been doing this since they were eleven years old and had dreamed of using it in a real fight ever since.

Harry Potter led the centre.

He flew a Firebolt Supreme, staff strapped across his back, wand in his right hand, left hand on the broom. He banked hard into the Chitauri formation and started casting. Each spell was a single, clean motion. Minimum movement. Maximum effect. A flick of the wrist and a Reductor punched clean through a chariot’s engine. A sharp jab and a Stunning Spell hit a rider so hard the alien tumbled backward off its vehicle and fell three hundred feet to the Thames below.

Harry did not watch it fall. He was already targeting the next one, and the one after that, flowing through the battle the way water flows through rocks.

No wasted motion. No wasted magic.

And on Harry’s left wing, a figure Arthur had not expected.

Draco Malfoy.

Arthur had not heard that name since Sirius had sent Narcissa and Draco to safety years ago. Yet here he was. Taller. Leaner. Flying with the kind of cold precision that suggested someone had spent the intervening years doing nothing but training.

Draco took harder angles than anyone sane would attempt, cutting so close to enemy chariots his cloak brushed the alien metal. His wand work was razor-precise. One spell, one kill, move on. He threaded his broom between two chariots, dropped a Reductor into each as he passed, and came out the other side already lining up the next shot.

"Fourteen," Draco called across the wind.

"Twelve," Harry replied, not looking.

"Falling behind, Potter."

"I’m hitting the ones you’re missing."

"I don’t miss."

Harry banked into a cluster of three chariots and scattered them with a wide-arc Bombarda. The blast wave caught all three. Fragments rained down on the Embankment below. "Fifteen."

Draco’s eye twitched.

Below the aerial battle, Neville Longbottom held the Embankment.

He had not taken a broom. He did not need one. Neville fought the way he did everything: on solid ground, with both feet planted, hitting things until they stopped moving. He stood at the centre of the ground defensive line with his wand in his right hand and nothing else.

A squad of Chitauri landed on the Embankment wall and charged. Neville pointed his wand without any particular hurry. "Confringo."

The Blasting Curse cratered the stonework. The squad ceased to exist.

Another chariot dove at him from the right. Neville sidestepped the energy blast with the calm efficiency of a man who had been dodging hexes since childhood, aimed upward, and cast a Stunning Spell so powerful the rider was ripped clean off the vehicle at two hundred yards. The riderless chariot spiralled into the Thames.

Neville lowered his wand and waited for the next one. There was always a next one.

Draco looked down at him. "Longbottom. How many?"

"I haven’t been counting," Neville said.

Harry and Draco exchanged a glance. They both knew Neville was ahead of them and too polite to say so.

Sirius Black arrived late and loudly.

He came roaring in on a vintage Nimbus 2001 that had no business keeping pace with the younger riders’ brooms and was doing so anyway through sheer bloody-mindedness and what appeared to be several illegal modification charms.

"TWENTY!" Sirius bellowed, putting a Bombarda through a chariot’s cockpit. The explosion scattered wreckage across half a mile of sky. "TWENTY-ONE!"

He dove after a fleeing chariot, caught it, blew it apart with a casual flick, pulled up hard into a second, blew that apart too, rolled sideways through the debris field, and came level with Harry grinning like a man who had just discovered that forty-three was not, in fact, too old for this.

"Twenty-three. I believe that puts me in the lead."

"Impossible," Draco said. "You arrived five minutes after us."

"I’m better than you. It’s not complicated, cousin."

Harry shook his head. Some things never changed.

—

Below them, London had become a battlefield, and the wizarding world had come alive in a way it had not for decades.

Aurors in dark combat robes held intersections in cells of five, casting overlapping Shield Charms and taking down chariots with disciplined volleys of Reductors. Hit Wizards worked in pairs, one shielding, one striking, leapfrogging through the streets with the coordination of people who had trained together for years.

ICW international volunteers had arrived by Portkey from at least six countries. They fought with the particular enthusiasm of professionals who had been chained to desks for too long and were finally being told to break things.

An Irish wizard hit a Chitauri chariot with a Reductor, spun, and took out a second with a Severing Charm that cut it clean in half.

A French ICW witch cast a mid-battle Transfiguration that turned a Chitauri soldier’s armour into solid stone. The creature toppled and shattered on impact. Her partner hit the fragments with a Banishing Charm that launched them into the next wave like grapeshot.

A group of Japanese wizards worked in seamless synchronisation, casting interlocking Shield Charms that created a moving barrier down the Embankment. Chariots crashed into the invisible wall and crumpled. The wizards advanced behind their shield, casting through the gaps with surgical precision.

A young Auror, no older than twenty, Apparated onto the back of a low-flying chariot. He grabbed the pilot, Stunned it, threw it off, and took control of the vehicle. He flew the stolen chariot into a formation of six others, jumped clear at the last second, and Disapparated as the collision took out the group. His landing on the Embankment was met with applause from the Hit Wizard squad nearby.

A grey-haired witch who had been tending Magical Creatures in Devon that morning stood on Waterloo Bridge, casting with the steady rhythm of a metronome. She took a glancing energy blast to the shoulder. The wizard beside her healed it in three seconds. She was back up and casting before the aliens could press forward.

"That stung," she complained, and destroyed the chariot that had shot her.

All around them, wizards were having the time of their lives.

Generations of power with nowhere to use it. Lifetimes of restraint and secrecy. Every witch and wizard on that battlefield had grown up knowing they could reshape stone, bend light, summon fire from nothing, and make objects fly with a word. And they had spent their adult lives casting household charms and filling out Ministry paperwork.

Now, the sky was full of alien soldiers. And for the very first time in their lives, they could stop holding back entirely.

No Statute of Secrecy. No International Confederation regulations. No Auror oversight committees. No Ministry memos about appropriate use of force. The targets were aliens. Nobody had written a rule about aliens. Every witch and wizard in London had looked at the invasion and arrived at the same joyful, liberating conclusion.

There were absolutely no rules today.

—

On the flanks, Ariadne’s forces held the bridges.

The former Widows moved in pairs, Extremis-enhanced and armed with enchanted blades. Every strike was a kill. A Widow on Waterloo Bridge caught a Chitauri soldier mid-leap, redirected its momentum with a hip throw, and drove an enchanted blade through its neck before it hit the ground. Her partner was already engaging the next one.

Melina Vostokoff commanded the eastern flank from a rooftop, her voice calm and steady over the communication charms. When three chariots broke through the aerial screen and dove for her position, she stood, drew two enchanted pistols, and put a precise shot through each pilot’s visor without moving her feet.

Aurora Thatcher coordinated the mundane side. MI6’s Supernatural Division fed tactical intelligence to the Auror cells through comm units Winky had enchanted to function near concentrated magic. Her teams moved along the edges of the battle, evacuating civilians and locking down streets.

People were filming. Arthur could see them in the upper floors of buildings along the Embankment. Phones pressed against windows. Cameras pointed down at the fighting. The wizards made no effort to hide.

The Statute of Secrecy was dying on these bridges. Not with a boring, debated political announcement in a courtroom. With thousands of glowing wands raised proudly against an alien sky.

—

The battle turned from combat into a rout.

The Chitauri kept coming, but they were landing in a city full of people who could teleport, turn invisible, conjure barriers from thin air, and throw spells that hit harder than artillery. The aliens’ energy weapons were dangerous, but shields blocked them. Their chariots were fast, but brooms were faster. Their numbers were vast, but the wizards were fighting with the accumulated frustration of centuries, and every spell carried the savage, joyful energy of people who had been told they could stop pretending to be ordinary.

Then, a massive Leviathan broke through the dark clouds directly above the Thames.

The creature was enormous. Its armoured hide shrugged off the first volley of spells like rain off stone. It banked low over the river, its shadow swallowing the Embankment, and opened its maw to release a fresh stream of Chitauri soldiers.

Harry hit it with a full-power Reducto. The heavy spell punched a small dent in the thick armor plating. A dent. Nothing more.

"That is a problem," Harry stated calmly, hovering on his broom.

Draco hit it with three consecutive Reductor Curses. Black scorch marks. No actual penetration. His expression shifted instantly from competitive joy to cold, serious focus.

"I do not like this one," Draco said.

"Nobody likes this one," Neville agreed, casting a Bombardment Hex that barely cracked the armour.

The Leviathan turned for a second pass. Its mouth opened wider. Inside, rows of teeth the size of cars gleamed with alien saliva.

Harry pulled his broom into a hover above the creature. He holstered his wand. He reached back and gripped the staff with both hands.

Ash wood. Phoenix feather and Thestral hair core. It was not built for precision or subtlety. It was built for throughput. Raw magical force channelled through a frame designed to handle the kind of power that would crack a wand to splinters.

Harry cast.

The lightning came from everywhere. It gathered from the ambient charge of the storm clouds, pulled from the atmosphere itself, focused through the staff’s twin cores into a single, devastating bolt.

A column of blue-white fire ten feet wide struck the Leviathan in the centre of its skull.

The creature stopped. Its body convulsed. Cracks of light ran through its armour like fault lines. The soldiers clinging to its hide were thrown clear, tumbling through the sky.

Harry held the spell for three seconds. The Leviathan hung motionless for one impossible instant.

Then its head came apart.

A shower of armour fragments and alien tissue rained down on the Thames. The headless body ploughed into the river in a wall of water and sank. The shockwave rocked boats for half a mile.

Harry lowered the staff. The air around him crackled. His hair was standing on end. He did not notice.

Draco pulled his broom alongside and stared at Harry. Then at the staff. Then at the smoking gap in the sky where a space whale had been.

"Where," Draco said carefully, his eyes wide, "do I get one of those?"

Harry almost smiled. "Talk to Ollivander."

"I am talking to Ollivander tomorrow. First thing in the morning."

"There’s a waiting list."

"I do not care about waiting lists, Potter. I have money."

From somewhere in the distance, Sirius’s incredibly loud, proud voice carried faintly across the London skyline. "THAT’S MY GODSON!"

Down below, Neville squinted up toward the river. "There’s another one coming."

"Good," Harry said, raising the humming staff again. "I wasn’t finished."

But before Harry could aim, a massive bolt of crackling black lightning struck the second Leviathan violently from below.

On a nearby rooftop, a tall, dark figure smoothly lowered a staff of polished black wood, turned with a swirl of black robes, and vanished quietly through the stairwell door.

Draco went very still on his broom. "That was Snape."

Harry said nothing for a long moment, staring at the empty roof. "Yes. It was."

"He got a staff before me." Draco’s voice was flat with jealousy.

Below them, Neville had gone slightly pale. Fifteen years out of Hogwarts and the sight of Severus Snape still made something in his stomach clench.

"Was that Snape?" Neville called up to them.

"Yes," Harry confirmed.

Neville watched the empty rooftop for a long moment. Then he shook his head and turned back to the battle. "He always did like making an entrance."

"He also liked making an exit," Harry observed dryly. "Notice he’s already gone."

"Of course he’s gone." Draco sounded almost fond. "He came, he killed a Leviathan in one spell, and he left. Very him."