The secretary, it seems, has already fled.

The person standing between them and the stairs is definitely not a member of the Daily Prophet - nor an Auror.

She does, however, have her wand raised, a powerful shield surrounding her, and she wastes no time sending a blasting curse at the Dark Lady.

She turns it aside, blowing a window into tiny shards.

"Good morning to you too." She essays a binding hex to disguise a wordless shieldbreaker. "Here to protect people from the consequences of their actions?"

She twists to the side, and her shield flexes around her, the two spells skidding off the edge. And as she twists, she flicks her wand, creating a broad slash of fire, and the fingers of her off hand cross, and the floor begins to ripple out from her - 

"There is no such thing," she says, expression flat and intense, "As a righteous war."

- It's a spell, catching the magic woven with her off hand, ripping it into a different tradition's style, and wooden tigers leap from the floor, mid pounce at every single Dawn Bringer who's been foolish enough to enter. 

Bastet ducks and rolls under the two assigned just for her, hitting one with a concussive hex that knocks it back - that should've exploded it into tiny shards, but it ripples and reforms as it twists to land on its feet, snarling, and the one that simply missed her whirls around.

(Crap, that's Fay, and if Bastet says anything Fay will recognize her - shit she doesn't want her Lady to kill Fay, she doesn't want this mission to fail - for some reason she can't decide if she's more panicked about Fay knowing or Fay dying - probably Fay dying, she might lose Fay either way but if Fay just hates her then at least she's alive to do that - )

(She has no idea how to communicate this to her Lady, or how to plan to keep Fay alive without betraying her Lady.)

(She needs to salvage at least some of this mission, too, and the best way to do that involves getting past her angry crush.)

Bastet creates a flickering shield as the tigers attack again - anything that touches it will catch on fire - 

And the tigers swerve to avoid it, neatly pivoting around her shield.

(...Perhaps she should worry slightly less about Fay's ability to survive picking this fight.)

Bastet uses the quasi-Apparition method to flow in a stream of billowing smoke to somewhere not imminently about to be perforated by tigers, sending blasting and burning curses at the two in her wake. 

(If she can get a good angle, she might be able to sprint past Fay and get on the stairs - perhaps a good use for her cat form, which she's now also very glad Fay's never seen - )

(The few other Dawn Bringers already in are doing less well and are being forced back toward the door.)

"I will make a note of that for next time."

She whips her wand around, sending streamers of electricity arcing at the tigers which coalesce into great hissing snakes, sparking and popping as they coil around legs and mouths and necks, hindering and gagging and choking. Another flick, and a pair of live pythons, each sixteen feet long, appear behind Fay and move to attack from either side.

She tilts her head, clenches her right fist - the one not holding her wand - and the pythons begin to suffocate, writhing. Her wooden tigers crouch, and - something about them shifts, a few strips of wood turning to copper pouring down into their claws, digging into the disturbed floor - forcibly grounding the Dark Lady's electric attack. 

Her wand traces out a rune in fire, lightning quick, and everyone without sufficient Occlumentic shields who sees it - most of the Dawn Bringers other than the Dark Lady and Bastet - begin to scream. She whistles, and the tigers turn to focus their attention on the Dark Lady. 

And Bastet, in the same moment the pythons form, darts behind her, shifting mid-leap into cat form. She's not actually in Fay's line of sight, not yet, she and her Lady are on nearly opposite sides -

She hits the first step and begins sprinting up the stairs. 

She's going to have to actually try a little. A counter-rune for the others, a sheet of ice across the floor for the tigers, a quick barrage of spells to hold her opponent's attention away from Bella-

The stairs explode ahead of Bastet, and the ice shatters, the jagged shards flying at the Dark Lady. Her shield or counter spells handle everything thrown at her, but - she's not innovating as much or as cleanly as she had been. The Dark Lady definitely has a significant fraction of her attention. 

She doesn't panic, but her thought processes go crystalline, and she flows straight from Animagus form into the billowing smoke of the quasi-Apparition, sliding past the shards and dust and flicks of fire -

And back to a cat on the other side. There's a turn in front of her, she should be imminently out of Fay's line of effect -

The ice shards turn to blue flames as they reach her and swirl about. She attacks with a rapid series of spellbolts passing through the field of flames. The bolts pulls the flames along with them, and when they hit Fay's shield erupt in a dazzling flash.

Her shield holds, but she's definitely unhappy. She keeps trying to destroy Bastet's path up, and a loud sound like a bell rings out - an alert, obviously, but it creates a small shock wave from her that feels like it's rattling the bones, seizing the muscles - it hurts, even if you can avoid the seizure.

She tries to turn the floor under the Dark Lady's entire half of the room to lava.

She disrupts that spell and collapses the ceiling above her.

She blasts apart the bits of ceiling, creating billowing dust clouds, hiding her from view.

She flies toward the new passage to the upstairs, setting the dust on fire as she passes through it.

Fay appears to have beaten her up, and is delaying Bastet again, though there's a scent of blood on the air already - there's a crack of Apparition nearby, coming or going's unclear, but it seems Bastet's ward is failing even farther.

The visibility is bad up here, too, and Fay seems to be trying to make it worse.

Collateral damage is not as much of a concern at this level, and she and her Bella can tell where the other is. She switches to a broad, sweeping style of attack.

Fay's doing her best to contain them, apparently so far avoiding injury, preventing many - but hardly all - of the Dark Lady's attacks from spreading.

There's more Apparition cracks.

Bastet gets distance again, at least, and from a few sharp screams it sounds like she and her Lady have hit some targets.

She starts targeting the building's structural integrity specifically, and signals the other members of the Dawn to retreat.

- Fay pulls back, shields preventing either woman from following her too easily, and is apparently either trying to retreat herself or grab someone for a last evacuation.

She swirls over to Bella and Apparates them both away.

She takes her mask off once they're safe and alone.

She's shaking a little.

"Did you know her, Bella dear?"

"...That was Fay."