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PART ONE
UPRISING

Chapter One
Taking What is Rightfully Mine

"You shall eat the flesh of your sons, you shall eat the flesh of your daughters, you shall eat the flesh of your brothers and sisters..."

The harrowing voice, filled with ice, echoed through the dark, murky cavern. Each of the two dozen people gathered in the cave shivered with excitement and anticipation, grinning maniacally behind their masks, as every word sliced into them like cutting wire into a soft cheese.

Ahead of them, sitting on a throne that appeared to crafted entirely from human skulls, a woman resided. Unlike her black-clad comrades, she was swathed in a long, white, cotton dress with short puffy sleeves and a wide ribbon around the waist. It was almost childlike, the way she perched daintily on the horrifying throne—but there was nothing childish and innocent about this dark creature.

Her face was covered with a large mask, obscuring her face entirely; it was made from the skull of a large ram. Huge, curling horns sprouted from the skull, giving her an demonic appearance, and her pale white limbs were covered in dirt and blood. She clutched a jewelled knife in one hand and a large silver goblet in the other.

She held out the knife and the goblet to a female comrade who was kneeling at her feet. The follower was wearing a similar skull mask, but hers only covered her eyes, leaving a sharp jawline exposed. "My Lady Ophite," the woman breathed, bowing her head as she took the knife and the goblet from the Lady.

"Take for me what is mine."

As soon as the words left the Lady's mouth, the girl stood up straight, and turned to face her comrades, holding the knife above her head. After a moment of silence, she used the knife to slit open the neck of her robes, exposing her breasts. Without even a moment's hesitation for what she was about to do, she took the knife to the space between her breasts and began to carve a shape deep into her skin.

She whimpered and moaned in pain as she worked, but she quelled her expressions and focused on the task in hand, completing the grotesque art. When she pulled the knife away, the image of a bloody, upturned pentagram was left on her breastbone.

Blood began to seep slowly down to her stomach, and she quickly held the lip of the goblet to the stream, collecting as much of the thick red liquid as she could. As she did this, the people around her began to tear open their own robes, men and women alike exposing their chests.

The woman walked around the group, carving the dark symbol above the hearts of everyone gathered, collecting as much blood as she could in the jewelled goblet. She then walked back to the Lady, who took the goblet and the knife eagerly, and pushed her mask aside slightly—not enough to uncover her face—just exposing her lips. "I take you into me," she whispered, her voice sounding as sharp as ever. She took the goblet to her face and tipped a substantial amount of the blood into her mouth. When she drew the goblet away, the blood of her comrades stained her lips, and she smiled.

"And now you take me into you," she continued, before lifting the knife. She ripped open her own dress, where the scarred skin showed a pentagram that had previously been carved. Instead of reopening the horrifying scars, she plunged it deep into her inner forearm, not making a single exclamation of anguish despite the nature of the wound.

She turned her arm over the goblet so that her blood flowed sluggishly into the cup before removing it, allowing her arm to bleed freely over her white skirts. She handed the goblet out to the woman, who immediately took a long, greedy drink.

As the cult began to eagerly drink from the goblet, the Lady in white leaned back on her throne of bones.

"You are ready."

oOo

Draco sighed deeply as he hurried through the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic, combing his long fingers through his hair absently. He was late for his meeting with Harry Potter.

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he stepped into the lift. It had been a last minute decision to withdraw from working at Gringotts and start training as an Auror, so he was a little behind others of his age who'd joined the Auror Team straight from Hogwarts. However, he had completed three full years of relatively mundane missions, and Harry had told him on Friday that he had a new job for him—if he thought he could handle it.

It had taken every ounce of strength within Draco not to punch Harry straight in the face. He hated that Harry, recently promoted to Head Auror, was his superior, and he hated even more that Harry seemed to thrive on the power—though, whether Harry admitted it or not was a different matter.

It wasn't long before he was strolling down the corridor of the department, towards Harry's office right at the end. He rapped his knuckles loudly on the door but entered before Harry could tell him to come in.

Harry was sitting at his desk surrounded by various stacks of paperwork. He was still wearing his travelling cloak, as though he had virtually thrown himself into work the moment he had stepped into the office, and he was trying to take a drink of a strong looking coffee as he scribbled something on a sheaf of parchment.

Unfortunately for Harry, it was a well known fact that men couldn't multitask. He looked up at Draco as soon as the door opened, and missed his mouth completely, causing coffee to slosh down his neck and all over the parchment that he was writing on. "Oh—for—Merlin's—sake—" he hissed, dabbing at the patches of reddening skin on his neck.

This time, Draco allowed himself to roll his eyes. He smartly removed his wand from his pocket and aimed it at Harry and his desk silently. Before their eyes, the spilled coffee leapt from the desk and Harry's robes, leaving everything as dry as it had been just moments before, and poured itself back into the mug.

"Thanks," muttered Harry, rubbing his temples and sitting back in his seat. "This week isn't starting out well for me. "Albus is letting us have no sleep, not to mention Ginny is in her second trimester, now...then James is running riot all the time—"

"—I'm here about the job," Draco drawled, having absolutely no interest in hearing about the Potter family's current dilemmas. It wasn't his problem that Harry and Ginny Potter were wasting no time in producing as many little Potters as possible, and in such a short space of time.

He was utterly happy that Scorpius, who had only recently celebrated his first birthday, was such a complacent child. However, he did have his moments—and it was those moments that caused both Draco and Astoria to formally agree not to procreate any further. The future of the Malfoy bloodline had been procured since they had birthed a son, and that was all that mattered.

"Of course," Harry muttered, and gestured for Draco to sit down. "Okay, so I'll get it out of the way quickly," he continued, searching through his piles of paperwork until he found a brown file, which he kept firmly in his own grip. "I'm sure you've heard of the Witches of Endor?"

"Who hasn't?" Draco replied monotonously. The Witches of Endor were a group of both witches and wizards who had recently come out into the public as some kind of religious movement. From the start, they had seemed harmless enough—preaching in public; trying to lure people into their way of life; making their beliefs and scriptures known. These kind of movements weren't unusual in either the Muggle or Wizarding Worlds, and after a few months of being ignored, they usually fell out of society—which is what everyone expected the Witches of Endor to do.

Instead, they took a sudden dark turn. People of all ages began to go missing, and bodies showed up just days later. Sometimes no evidence of murder would be visible, but other times were a lot worse—heads and limbs would be decapitated, their bodies riddled with the use of dark magic, and worryingly—symbols such as the pentagram would be carved upon their skin. It was after things started to head in this direction that the Ministry decided to take action.

"Well, I'm dispatching you out of the Auror Team. I want you to lead a smaller team of about four or five Aurors who are going to get to the core of this...cult...and take them apart. I want this wiping out before it goes any further...the things they're doing are worse than..." Harry's eyes flickered to Draco's left arm as he spoke, and Draco felt his throat constrict.

"Worse than the Death Eaters, I know."

"We can't have another uprising like Voldemort, Malfoy."

Draco swallowed, but didn't comment on Harry's use of the Dark Lord's name. Even though it was so long since he had been killed, it still gave Draco and many other witches and wizards a slight twinge of fear at hearing the name.

"Who are these other Aurors, then?" he replied.

"I'm naming your group the Patronage," Harry continued. "Because you are aiding the future of the Wizarding World by protecting us from this cult. You'll meet your new comrades soon, but first of all, I just want to go through some of the missing persons reports with you."

Draco nodded and watched as Harry opened the file and pushed it towards him. "You may notice some familiar faces," he said slowly. "So please don't be alarmed. The witches and wizards in this file are people who are missing, but haven't been confirmed dead as of yet."

Draco flipped slowly through the pages in the file, trying to put together some similarities between the missing persons. However, he soon realised that there were no patterns that could be formed—all of the missing people seemed to be chosen completely at random.

They were aged from younger than two to as old as one hundred, of all races and blood types, some even Muggles. Draco's heart lurched as his eyes fell on those of Pansy Parkinson—the picture that Harry had used on her report was one she had taken not long after her graduation from Hogwarts.

"I only spoke to her about three weeks ago," Draco muttered, trying to keep his voice steady. "She came over with her fiancée to visit Scorpius."

Harry said nothing, allowing Draco to continue to flip through the pages. A child, aged about eighteen months, was on the second page, a boy with a shock of blonde hair and pale eyes—the boy looked so much like his own son that Draco had to double take.

He noticed Harry bite his lip as he turned to the next page. A familiar pair of wide, silvery eyes gazed up at him beguilingly. Her face was framed with her long, straggly blonde hair, and she was wearing a crown of flowers upon her head as well as a matching flower wreath around her neck.

"Luna Lovegood?" Draco commented, raising his eyebrows at Harry. "I didn't even know. Wasn't she running the Quibbler?"

"We think that's why she might have been taken," Harry replied, his voice thick with worry. "She had published an article about the Witches of Endor just a week after her father's funeral, and it's safe to say that the things she wrote weren't exactly pro-cultist."

"When did she go missing?"

"Three weeks ago. She was taking a trip abroad with her boyfriend, Rolf Scamander. He's a magizoologist, and they were searching for that fucking Crumple Horned Snorckack," Harry dropped his head into his hands, apparently frustrated. "I just can't believe she would be so ridiculous...I mean, it is Luna, but I thought she would have more sense. Especially after what happened to her when her father wrote articles against Voldemort back during the war."

Draco remembered all too well what had happened to Luna. She had ended up trapped in his basement for several weeks, subject to starvation and dehydration and continuous taunting from his late Aunt Bellatrix. Harry seemed to have forgotten that one of the perpetrators of that event was standing in front of him, due to his immense worry of Luna.

"I'm sorry. I know this is unprofessional," Harry finally spoke, and Draco noticed that his glasses had steamed up considerably.

"You're worried about your friend. It's natural," Draco replied slowly, a little unsure how to react. This was his old arch enemy, and now it was as though he was expected to comfort him.

Harry seemed to be experiencing the same awkwardness, as he quickly composed himself. "Well. You should take that file to the other members of Patronage. Hermione has emptied an office for you in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, so if you head over there she'll let you know which office they're in."

Draco nodded, and hurriedly left the office, trying not to bask too much in the discomfort that followed this awkward meeting with Harry.

It was time to meet his new teammates.

Coming Up Next:

"What are you doing, Ginny?" he asked quietly, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. The dramatic scene of Ginny packing her bags angrily wasn't a first, either, but he knew better than to challenge his emotional wife, particularly when she was raging with pregnancy hormones.

"Are you thick? I'm going home! I'm going to take James and Albus and go to the Burrow—then you can have the whole house to yourself for your stupid little naps—" but Ginny didn't make it to the end of her sentence.

A sudden, ear-splitting scream had ripped through Godric's Hollow, silencing everyone in earshot. Immediately, Harry and Ginny lunged for the door, various items of clothing dropping to the floor as Ginny stopped her summoning charm.

A.N:I hope you liked this first chapter! It's definitely something new that I haven't really attempted before, so any thoughts that you might have will certainly be welcomed with open arms in the review box!

Many thanks to Sable Supernova & The Halfblood Raven for excellent Beta-ing!

If you want to ask any questions, don't hesitate to pop into my ask box on my tumblr (screaming-fae)