However, they didn't let me stand, and I wasn't going to either.

"Bitch!!! Avada Kedavra!" ​​

With a careless movement, I deflected my torso a couple of centimeters to the side, dodging the green beam of the deadly curse and immediately aiming my wand at the villain.

"Cumilaris."

A spiral clot snapped off my wand, instantly covering the distance to my enemy, but he almost dodged it - it blew half his torso away. The remaining clot changed direction and crashed into the ground under the feet of the third, who was actively trying to penetrate the Delphine shield with some endless steady ray of blue. Huge lumps of ground blasted by my spell began to pelt the man, knocking his concentration and eventually dropping him to the ground. I wanted to finish him off, but I had to sharply put Protego from the powerful Reducto. The shield turned out to be strong, and the spell didn't penetrate.

"Crush him with speed!" shouted the fifth wizard in the black hood at the fourth, standing up next to him. "Easier, but more often! We'll get through."

One by one, quick dull clots of simple spells aimed at piercing the shield flew at me. That way, they would indeed penetrate, and the speed only increased.

"Calculated. Conjure up Reflecto."

Trusting Rowena, I began to form a concentrated dot of Protego Reflecto on the tip of my wand. A high concentration of energy in a small area allowed to reflect a lot of things.

Leading my wand like a brush, I very quickly received clots of spells at its tip, one after the other, reflecting back to the hooded men, but all missed - I need more practice. Each clash generated a small white wave of magic in the vertical plane. One spell, a second, a fifth, a ninth. Finally, one of the reflected Reducto hit its target, albeit the wrong one - it hit a hooded man who got out from under the ground, and he flew a dozen yards away with multiple crunches of bones.

"The hell with it!" burst out the fourth wizard. "Avada Kedavra!"

What's the difference between a good Avada and a bad Avada? The bad Avada is a clot. The good one is a beam. I dodged the beam with great difficulty, which caught up to me almost instantly - I would have died if I hadn't been faster from the hemomancy. Now all I was getting was Avada's, giving me no room to maneuver.

"Transform," I raised a wall from the ground in front of me.

It gave me a second before the wall was blown apart by a Bombarda Maxima, but I was already rolling behind a tree. Without looking, trusting my senses, I threw another Cumilaris at my opponent, immediately peeking out from the other side and rolling away from the Bombarda that was already flying into the tree. The fourth hooded man decided to shield himself from my spell with Protego, but Cumilaris scattered the shield and the wizard, causing a fireworks display of internal organs. Blood and guts knocked the fifth man to the ground, giving me time to orient myself, and I threw the powerful Reducto at him. The thin and very fast beam was too thin and too fast. The spell's impact worked almost like a large-caliber bullet, and the hooded man who had stood up caught it right in the chest. There was a savage crunch, and the hoodie on the man's back rippled. A second, and the body dropped dead.

"Homenum Revelio!" I made sure no one was around and quickly made my way to Delphine, who was holding Protego.

"Max," Delphine looked at me with an unreadable look, and the girls, in general, looked pale and frightened. Also, Hermione was ready to do anything at any moment, even though she didn't look good. "Thanks for not having to choose."

"To choose?"

"I'm not new to fighting, but I've never before gotten into a situation where I might have to kill... a loved one."

We moved on in a hurry.

"Those wizards weren't here for compliments. If your husband were really there, and the others decided to take advantage of the girls' defenselessness, what would you do?"

"My father wouldn't let..."

"Suppose he had. What's next? Idiocy. Become the enemy - die. It's as simple as that. There is no third way. Or would you..."

"Enough," Delphine said weightily, glancing at me angrily. "I would have done what was necessary. And I was trying to figure out whether or not to kill everyone."

"Mom..."

We walked another few hundred yards through the woods before Delphine pulled a chain out of her mantle.

"Grab the chain."

Everyone took hold of the chain.

"Portus."

A vortex of spatial distortion swirled us in a carousel, and the next moment we were in a spacious but dimly lit hall, standing on a rug. The hall's darkness was dispelled only by the fire in the large and high stone fireplace, but it was not enough to consider the surroundings.

"Will you stay here?" asked Delphine.

Astoria and Daphne, pale as death, moved on stiff legs toward the sofa, whose outlines flickered in the fireplace's flames.

"We had better go home."

"Then the fireplace is at your disposal. And don't worry. They were clearly some rabble from Knockturn. The posture, the movements, the manner of speaking. Too..."

"Trash. Speak as it is."

"Yes, Max. Trash."