Darius and the little girl got to a small clearing in just a couple of minutes and they noticed a single girl fighting against three death eaters. Despite her sweaty and dirtied appearance, as well as wearing slightly tattered and torn clothing, the girl cut a striking figure as she bravely took on all three of them. She was beautiful in an almost unnatural, ephemeral manner and Darius was sure that this was the little girl’s sister. She had a high level of expertise in charms and was making use of them with great ferocity. The three of them probably threatened to molest her or her sister for her to be so enraged. As they watched, the girl shifted into her partial avian form, growing out leathery wings and gaining more bird-like features. She started throwing out fireballs with her left hand, an innate talent of the Veela race while casting spells with the wand in her right at the same time. But the girl was outnumbered, and she knew it. She was already flagging from exhaustion. The avian transformation may have given her a second win, but it wouldn’t last too long. Despite the injuries she had already inflicted on the Death Eaters, they would be able to take her down in a short while if the situation wasn’t turned around quickly.

Luckily, Darius happened to be on the scene. The little girl was already starting to panic on seeing the situation her sister was in and Darius quickly put her to sleep with a wandless somnus. He placed her behind a big tree, still disillusioned and then turned to fight the Death Eaters. The first one was literally squashed to the ground with an overpowered Deprimo. The spell was generally used for blasting obstacles downwards but its use on a human had an interesting effect. The man had been squashed downwards as if he was under 100x normal gravity. Before the other two could even react, Darius sent a bludgeoning hex to the head of one and a strong stunner to knock out the last one. The bludgeoning hex shattered the DE’s skull and caused instant death. The stunned DE was then bound up in ropes with an incarcerous, ready to be presented to Madam Bones for questioning. He was sure the Veelas and their family would like to enact their own justice on at least one of the guilty party on their own terms.

The Veela went completely still for a moment, probably in shock as the opponents she had been battling for a while had just been squashed, bludgeoned and knocked out. She regained her wits quickly looked around, probably searching for him. He still had his disillusionment active though, and she didn’t notice him. He released the disillusion though and almost as a reflex, the silver haired Veela shot a strong stunner at him. He batted it aside with his wand easily but even e was impressed with the reflexes and skill shown by the girl just then. Even the girl calmed down a bit after noticing he was not a Death Eater.

He tried greeting her in French. “Bonjour!”

The girl looked a bit bemused at the sudden French greeting but quickly lost the amused look on her face as she ignored him and started looking around frantically.

“Gabrielle! Gabrielle? Où es-tu?” (Gabrielle! Gabrielle? Where are you?)

And suddenly it struck Darius like a ton of bricks. His sub-conscious mind had been telling him there was something familiar about the two Veela but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. The name made everything clear, they were the Delacour sisters. After all, how many part-veela sisters could there be, with the younger one having the name Gabrielle and ages so close to the canon descriptions.

Frantic with worry for her younger sister, Fleur turned to the only other person in the clearing. He had come and helped her out, maybe he would know something about her whereabouts.

“Avez-vous vu une petite fille quelque part près d'ici?” (Have you seen a little girl anywhere near here?)

“Oui j'ai. Pourrions-nous parler anglais s'il vous plait? Je ne suis pas très bon en français.” (Yes, I have. Could we speak in English please? I am not very good at French.)

“Yes, yes, it eez no problem. Where did you see my leetle sister?”

“Don’t worry about it, miss. I found her some ways away from here. She is the one who requested me to save you and also guided me here. She is lying just behind that large tree. She looked pretty tired and stressed and I didn’t want her to see any of the gore as well, so I just put her to sleep with a spell.”

Fleur wasn’t listening any more and rushed to the large tree to find her sister. Darius silently followed her, releasing Gabrielle from the disillusion charm and waking her up with a wandless and n-vbl enervate.

“Gabi, tu es en securité! Oh mon dieu! J'était tellement inquiète pour toi.” (Gabi, you’re safe! Oh, Thank God! I was so worried about you.)

Gabrielle woke up and the first thing she saw was her sister crying over her body in relief and thanking God. She immediately leapt into her arms and started bawling her own eyes out. They both had expected the worst tonight and come out it with a close shave. The two of them had just been walking around a bit after the party in the Veela tent and had unfortunately caught the sight of those depraved scum. They both started chattering in rapid French and reassured each other of their safety. They spoke so rapidly that Darius could barely make out a couple of words in the middle, but he waited patiently while they calmed down. Fleur finally stopped after a few more minutes and turned to face Darius again.

“I would like to offer my deepest gratitude for your help, Monsieur. Gabrielle has told me everything and I’m very grateful for your selfless debt, we are in your debt. My name is Fleur Delacour and my sister is named Gabrielle. As you can probably see, we are part-veela an we are not treated in the kindest manner by people like them. Though, I am intrigued at your seeming indifference to our allure.”

And boy, she wasn’t kidding about the allure. Especially since she had just come out of a fight and her body was pumping out pheromones as fast as it could. Darius could have easily bet the contents of the entirety of his trust vault at Gringotts that there would be less than one male in a hundred who would be able to stave of the effects of the allure, less so who could completely ignore it. Fortunately, he was one of them and was able to prevent himself from making a fool out of himself in front of the Veela after pulling off such a brilliant rescue.

“Well, I happen to have extremely high mental resistance as well as mastery level Occlumency. You would need to be a Veela chieftain at the very least to even begin to put me under your thrall. But we are wasting time now, we need to move quickly before more of these bastards show up here.”

Veelas generally lived in small secluded covens. They had their own hierarchy based on their power levels, so it was a pure meritocracy. There were the regular Veela, Veela elders and Veela chieftains. A Veela chieftain holding the allegiance of at least twelve covens other than her own could claim the title of Veela Queen. Though there has not been a Veela Queen for over half a millennium.

“Yes, you’re right, we need to move now. But I’m not sure where we could find our father. Apparating out of here is possible for me as gained my license just last summer but I refuse to leave my sister behind and neither do I want to leave our saviour in the lurch, it would be most ungrateful on my part. But I’m not yet proficient enough to attempt side-along apparition and do not wish to take a chance with your lives. I fear we may end up in an even worse situation if my attempt gets botched up.”

“And you’re absolutely right in your thinking, better safe than sorry. We will keep that plan as a last resort in case we happen across some great danger. Meanwhile, why don’t the two of you come with me and stay with my group till this incident blows over. I’m sure we can track down your father after this incident is over.”

“Thank you for the offer. I believe we shall take it. I am too tired to hold off even one more of these DEs and moving together in a group makes sense. Gabrielle was really lucky to run into you, I was losing ground against those DE when you made your move.”

“I’ll set off red and green sparks here so that the Aurors can come over and take these two bodies into custody. We will take the stunned one with us to our group. Madam Bones of the British DMLE is with us and I’m sure she would like to get a hold of at least one of these bastards. I suppose she will be having a long talk with him.”

And Darius gave a wicked grin that signified just how much trouble the guy was going to be in with Amelia. The DEs attacking this event made the DMLE look like fools and the Aurors were going to be furious at them. Aside from the fact that they were effectively a terrorist force no matter how Voldemort tried to paint them as an insurrectionist one, their attack could have major implications on International relations. There were visitors and guests from several other countries present today and they were going to be out for blood over this incident. Fleur and Gabrielle were daughters of a French diplomat and breaking things of with France, one of the most magically progressive nations was just not in Britain’s interests. If it came out in the open, this incident could be a major blow to Britain’s international image, which was already not that great to start with.

Before leaving, Darius decided to check the Death Eaters. The squashed one could not be recognised at all because of his current physical condition and the bludgeoned one turned out to be an unfamiliar face, possibly one of the junior members. The last captured one was an inner circle member though, it was Victor Crabbe, father of Vincent Crabbe, the fool who got killed by his own Fiendfyre.

Though it was nothing that he could bandy about in public without grave repercussions, it was indeed a great feat that Darius had already taken out six Death Eaters, four of whom were inner circle members, one unidentified and the last a new member. He would suffer for it when he got home and let his occlumency reinforced emotional blocks down and feel the full effects of what he had done. But he was still glad he had done it. Even if he destroyed all the Horcruxes and put Voldemort down, the DEs would still make a lot of problems if they weren’t taken care of as soon as possible. Because of Dumbledore’s stupid non-lethal approach and his influence in Magical Britain, most of the Aurors and Hit-wizards are handicapped from using their more powerful spells while the DEs fire of killing curses with impunity. This has caused a major imbalance in the death toll on both sides with the DEs coming out ahead. Well, Darius wasn’t having that crap. He was sure his actions today would be condemned by the Wizrengamot and Dumbledore but that didn’t matter one whit to him. And they wouldn’t know who did it anyway.

He had also captured Caracticus Nott, Avery Jr and Victor Crabbe for the Aurors. It might not be a permanent solution as all of them were Pure-bloods and it would be quite hard to get them convicted but he could at least give it a try.

He spelled them invisible and they started walking again. He was also levitating the stunned Victor Crabbe along with him. Darius took a second to figure out their heading.

“Point me! Mione!”

The wand on his palm smoothly rotated around to indicate the direction to be just a bit off from their original heading and they continued to walk on actual route, with Darius occasionally confirming their heading with the spell. He could feel they were very near when the wand started vibrating and they suddenly came out into a small clearing very close t the edge of the forest. They were about to move on when Darius realized they were exactly where they needed to be. The other students as well as Remus were somewhere within this very clearing. Darius figured they must be under some sort of wards or protections. Remus must have quickly set them up to protect the children.

"Expecto Patronum! Nuntium"

"I am in a clearing in the forest where I suppose you are hidden. Please release the wards so that I may come in."

The Patronus messenger variant is a pure energy projection and can get through most protections unless they are specifically warded against. Sending a message via one was much simpler than just waiting for them to come out. And they came out just shortly after.

First Remus, bearing his wand in hand, followed by the other children, all still on high alert. Remus spoke up first.

"Hermione, please confirm if that is Darius with any security question."

"Sure! Darius, what is the name of our training spot at Hogwarts?"

"RoR!"

"Yep, that's him!" And she leaped into his arms to give him a bone-crushing hug.

"Never worry me like that again, you hear me? I was shaking in worry the whole time."

"But Mione, what use is our training if we can't use it at times like this. Any way, I played it safe the entire time and don't have a single injury on me."

The others had gathered around by this time and were giving their congratulations when Remus chose to speak up again.

"Alright, enough! I am sure everyone is beyond happy to see Darius back again an safe but we must get back under cover quickly. And who are those girls behind you as well as that levitating man."

"The man is a Death Eater I captured. He is stunned and bound with ropes now, so it should be safe. The girls were rescued by me from a group of Death Eaters. They are-"

Just as Darius was going to introduce them, a beam of sickly greenish light launched into the sky and formed into the ominous snake and skull shaped Dark Mark. Everybody got silent and saw the dreaded symbol in silent horror as it glowed against the dark night sky.

Darius leaped into action first. Judging by the ray of light, the caster of the Dark Mark was less than 20 meters from their location and he was definitely going to catch that guy. After all, he knew exactly who it was, Barty Crouch Jr.