Hi there! If you're new to this series, you really, really have to read the previous installments before this one, or else there will be a lot you don't understand and even more you won't be able to appreciate as much. The first book is called Albus Potter and the Global Revelation. Please read them all in order! Hope you enjoy; I've done my best to try and make sure that you will!
As promised to my awesome fans who got me 150 followers AND favorites on Book 4, Albus Potter and the Descent of Dismiusa, I'm uploading Chapter 1 of Book 5 now! The rest won't begin to be uploaded until after Book 4 is finished, but I could upload this chapter now because there are no spoilers for the end of book 4.
The cover art for Book 5 will be coming soon; this book has been uploaded earlier than expected, so Andy hasn't finished it yet.
Happy reading!
ALBUS POTTER AND THE HOURGLASS EMPIRE
CONTENTS
O
CHAPTER ONE
The Raid
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CHAPTER TWO
The Front Lines
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CHAPTER THREE
The First Funeral
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CHAPTER FOUR
Professor Auchland
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CHAPTER FIVE
Losing the Magic
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CHAPTER SIX
A Warm Winter
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CHAPTER SEVEN
The Animal Inside
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Dwelling on Desires
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CHAPTER NINE
The Death of the Dream
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CHAPTER TEN
Silver Smoke
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rose's Happiest Thought
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CHAPTER TWELVE
The Fiendfyre Scar
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Blood of the Innocent
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Master Soul
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In Extremis
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Phoenix Tear
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fables and Facts
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Easter Abroad
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Deserted Pillar
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CHAPTER TWENTY
The Return
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sand and Blood
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Hourglass Empire
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Headquarters
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Vessel Charm
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Doing the Thing Properly
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Aanmar Vioulii
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CHAPTER ONE
THE RAID
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"How close are we?" yelled Ron, the cold air stinging his eyes as their brooms surged forward. "This is ridiculous. We're in the desert, how can it be this cold?"
"Deserts can get pretty cold at night," said Wells, her blond hair streaming behind her. "And the coastal Sahara is more temperate than the center."
"We're close, to answer your first question," said Little Caster. "I think only five or ten minutes from here."
"Thanks, Little Caster," said Ron.
Wells flew up beside Ron. "Why do you call him Little Caster?" she asked. "Sorry…. I've never asked, but now I'm curious."
"We didn't need to distinguish them until Little Caster and his brother joined," said Ron. "We had their oldest brother, Herbert, in the Potions department of the Auror Office for some time, but then his two younger brothers joined. Zachary is the youngest, and Richard is the oldest. So to distinguish them from one another, Herbert is Big Caster, Zach is Little Caster, and Rick is Middle Caster."
"Big Caster, Little Caster, and Middle Caster," repeated Wells, chuckling. "That makes sense. Why haven't I met Rick?"
"You're usually on overseas affairs. He's mainly internal."
"All right."
The wind howled past their ears in the silence. The lack of conversation bred anxiety, and Wells didn't let it last long.
"How's Albus?" she asked.
"He's all right, last I checked," said Ron. "I don't know how he's all right, but he is."
"How will we know when we're there?" asked Wayworth.
"I've got a Geo-Watch," said Little Caster. "Hammond set it to the correct location when she ran across it the first time."
"I heard some pretty awful suggestions about what goes on in here," said Wayworth, scratching his collar. "But I'm pretty sure they were all too crazy to be true."
"The truth is often stranger than fiction," said Ron, "because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't."
"Who said that one? Dumbledore?"
"Mark Twain. A Muggle writer who could charm people better than any wizard."
"By the Sprites, Ron, you're turning into your wife…"
"This is it," said Little Caster. "Watch is going off; we'll be there in about a minute. Wells, I know you hate silence, but we're going to have to be quiet now."
"Tacit," said Wells.
"Anybody need to reapply their Disillusionment Charm?" asked Little Caster.
"We're pretty much good," said Wayworth, giving every Auror a quick look-over. "I think we're pretty set."
"Has anyone ever told you," said Wells, "that you say the word 'pretty' about fifty times more often than most people?"
"That's a pr—that's a fairly absurd exaggeration," said Wayworth, blushing.
"Quiet," said Little Caster.
The Aurors slowly descended and landed softly on the sand. Wells hit the ground catlike, smoothly stepping to a stop, and looked in all directions.
"It's just flat desert," she observed. "No one would ever think to look here."
"No one but the perpetrators themselves," whispered Ron. "It's funny… I was beginning to think we might not get any more information at all from that bug Al planted in the Sandblood base a little over year ago."
"What do you mean?" asked Wells in a hushed voice.
"Well," said Ron quietly as they started to walk, "shortly after Al planted the bug, we were able to capture Coral Envix, and then her husband. We knew their plans from the start, and we countered them perfectly… but almost too perfectly. We began to worry that they knew we'd been spying on them, so that they would stop talking about their plans out loud."
"Why wouldn't they just search for the bug and destroy it? Why go through all that trouble to prevent us from eavesdropping when they could just take out our device?"
"Because as long as they left it there, untouched and apparently unnoticed, we would think they were in the dark," said Ron. "Then we don't assume that we need to redo our efforts."
"I don't follow."
"It's like this," said Ron. "Imagine we were in their position. We suddenly realize they might be listening in on us. We wouldn't want to destroy their device—"
"Wait, why not?"
"Because then they might try again, but we wouldn't know when or how their new attempt would be made," said Ron. "If we destroyed their device, then they would try to plant another one, but we wouldn't know where it was. On the other hand, if we left their device there, and just made a point not to give anything away in its presence, they would be lured into a false sense of thinking their device was effective, and they might not think another opportunity was necessary."
"I sort of get it now."
"We let them think that their ineffective device is effective, so that they don't try to replace it with one that might actually start being effective," said Ron.
"And that's what they're doing to us."
"We think so, yeah."
"What did we do about it?"
"We've done nothing yet," said Ron. "There's been very little we can do. But we did pick up faintly that this was the general location of a secondary base, and Hammond's fly-over confirmed it. So she set her Geo-Watch to navigate us to the area in question, and now here we are."
"Could this have been an intentional leak, to set a trap?"
"It could have been, yes," said Ron. "But we've accounted for that possibility. We're not even going to storm the place unless there's a high-ranking official in the vicinity at the time of our observations."
"Who's highest on the hierarchy now?"
"After Malseth died last year, he left Viller in charge. The big three are currently Palmer Viller, Marsilia Scadjair, and Mella Ligmia. Tawder Brune is a problem, too."
"So how are we changing the plan if we think it's a set-up?"
"We're only capturing the highest-ranked person here. We're not going to take everyone into custody—we don't want to be there for too long in case it's a trap. We'll just seal the area and return later. We'll be quick; five seconds should be all it takes to take one Squib into custody."
"What if they've got those magic-proof suits on?"
"Then we take a page out of their book," said Ron, holding up a small Muggle device. "Tasers. Metal suits may repel magic, but not—er—electrically. Is that the right word?"
"It's 'Electricity,'" corrected Wayworth. "And never mind, Ron, you're turning into your father, not your wife!"
"Okay, everyone seriously has to be dead silent now," said Little Caster, a vein popping out in his forehead as it often did when he was stressed. The Aurors knew by now that when the vein popped, they'd better listen to him.
"Tacit," said Ron, and no one spoke another word.
They crested a small hill. There was a valley which they needed to cross, and peeking over the side of the next hill, they could see the top of some facility.
Quietly and nimbly, they skidded down the hill. Charms were placed on their shoes; not a grain of sand was disturbed by their footsteps down the dune.
They crept up the next hill slowly. Ron waved them all to the side, and before they hit the top of the hill, they circled around the facility. They couldn't risk being seen before they arrived. Fourteen cold and sweaty hands gripped seven broomsticks in case a quick escape was needed.
Wayworth and Wells were up ahead, peeking around the dune before they took any steps. Harding and Seign were behind them, on either side of Ron, holding wands high in case an attack was needed; Little Caster and Brickface brought up the rear, checking behind them and to the sides to make sure there was no sneak attack, though their Supersensory Charms would also alert them to any unwanted activity. But they weren't taking any precautions—evidenced by the fact that they were moving about a tenth of a mile per hour.
The facility first came into view in the form of a brick wall. They pressed themselves up against the wall to wait for everyone. Brickface's scarred face twisted into a frown; she didn't like brick walls. Three times already in her life on Auror missions, a house had exploded and sent a brick flying into her face, earning her the nickname. Harding and Seign turned to Ron and nodded, and slowly Seign started carving a hole in the side of the facility, using Sabera to form a jet of light from her wand that she carved into the brick like a hot knife through butter. Their Supersensory Charms told them there was no one waiting on the other side… yet.
The blades made short work of the brick, and Harding Vanished the piece that was cut out. The seven Aurors piled through into the facility as quietly as possible.
Phanteriga, thought Ron, his wand aimed at the broken wall.
An illusion of the wall replaced the missing piece. Unlike most spells of illusion, only Ron could see the difference between the original wall and the new wall; this way, if a quick escape was needed, Ron could lead the Aurors out through the broken wall, and the Sandbloods wouldn't be able to see that there was even a way out. Ron had invented this variation of the spell on his own by studying the spell used on the barrier to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and artifacts like the one from Borgin and Burkes that gave light only to the holder. The spell was his pride and joy as an Auror, and not many people knew it, so it added an excellent element of surprise.
Ron gave them another wave to go to the left; they'd previously mapped the place out like they had done for the base in Tunisia, and they knew where the most important people were located.
The Disillusionment Charms were working better than ever. Each Auror in the force had received a new wand crafted with Luna Scamander's method of wand maturation, and the results were plain to see. …Well, in this case, the results were actually damn near invisible. The technique of wand maturation—subjecting a wand to enchanted fire, water, earth, lightning, ice, Frostflame, or pressure—was creating wands more powerful than ever, and the Disillusionment Charms were dazing Ron's eyes even when he knew exactly where everyone was because of the Supersensory Charm.
Brickface flicked a quick Connectivity Charm at Ron so that they could silently communicate.
You said there's no wizards under MM in here? she asked inside their heads.
There's very few, if any, replied Ron in thought.
How do we know, again?
The Loch Stock Liner couldn't find this place. The Sandbloods don't like keeping a lot of wizards in one place because then we can track it more easily due to the concentration of magic.
If there are wizards here, and if they have Supersensory Charms, they'll notice us.
But we're stronger, noted Ron. We'll notice them first.
They stopped against a wall near a corner; Wells and Wayworth looked around the corner first, and then they waved everyone else over.
As they traveled further down the hallway, still without any Sandbloods nearby, Ron sensed two people in the room three doors down to the right. He held up a hand, and everyone stopped.
He cast a Downside-Up Charm; the Aurors softly leapt up and landed on the ceiling. A Subtling Charm from Harding ensured that no one would notice them—the Disillusionment Charm was scarily effective, but not one hundred percent so, and they couldn't afford to take any risks at all. The Subtling Charm simply made sure any passersby wouldn't notice anything strange about the ceiling. So the only people who could possibly notice them up there would have to have previously known, and even if somebody noticed, all seven Aurors were prepared to fight.
They waited silently and patiently for forty-five minutes. Several Sandbloods passed under them during that time, and Ron still couldn't get used to the fear that they would be noticed. He checked each person to make sure they weren't someone important whom they could grab quickly and leave, but he knew that the most important person was probably in the office ahead with someone else.
Finally, someone exited that room. Unmistakably, it was Tawder Brune; the man was seven feet tall, so he was somewhat hard to miss. He turned towards them and was about to pass directly under them.
Get him? asked Brickface.
No, said Ron. Not him.
Why not?
If Brune was the most important person here, he would be in an office, and other people would be visiting him. He's taking the effort to pay a visit to someone else—whoever it is must be his superior. Someone more important.
You're just terrified of Brune because he's a head and a half taller than you.
Well, there's that, too.
Ron ground his teeth together impatiently, waiting for Brune to leave the hallway so that they could find out who was left inside that room. It had to be someone really important. If that was Brune's office, he wouldn't have left someone else alone in it. If it wasn't his office, he wouldn't have visited an office of his superiors. And it definitely was an office—from their earlier mappings, which Ron had memorized, there was always someone inside this room.
He released the Downside-Up Charm; the Aurors knew by the fact that he'd released it that they would now start moving. They followed him all the way up to the steel door of the office from which Brune had just emerged.
Ron gave the steel door a quick look-over. It didn't look like the same steel of the cage in which he had been trapped after their failed raid on the first Sandblood base in Tunisia; it wasn't one of the magic-repelling doors. This was a bit discouraging, though, because he assumed that if the room housed someone very important, there would have been a lot more protection.
OWW? asked Brickface inside Ron's head.
Yes, said Ron, lifting his wand and casting the One-Way Window Charm, known by Aurors as the OWW.
The Aurors looked in through the door. Sitting at a desk inside, unaware that his door had become see-through on the other side, was Palmer Viller.
That's him, thought Ron. He walked around, giving each of the Aurors one tap on the nose to let them know that this was the one they were taking.
Seign and Harding cast the Saber Charm again, turning their wands into swords of light energy. There was no time to hesitate, no time to mentally prepare themselves; they had to go while no one else was around.
Seign and Harding each swiped their wands in two quick motions, and Ron Vanished the square they'd cut out in the door.
Viller leapt to his feet in shock when most of his door disappeared, and when seven Aurors poured through the new opening, he made a dash for the suit of armor that was hanging in the corner. Ron, Harding, and Seign fired Incarcerous, Stupefy, and Petrificus Totalus simultaneously, and Viller dropped like a stone, encased in ropes and not struggling in the slightest.
Wells cast a spell that slung Viller onto Wayworth's broom. The Aurors backed out of the room again, and mounting their brooms, they soared straight down the hallway, turned towards the entrance they'd made earlier, and Ron led them out into the cold desert night once more.
"Secured," said Wayworth, dangling Viller beneath his broom.
"Pretty secure?" teased Wells.
"Shut up."
Wells chuckled and nonverbally cast two Patronuses, which sailed in front of them at a much faster pace. One was headed to the Ministry to inform them that they were headed back with a prisoner in tow—the prisoner they wanted—and the other was headed for the next team of Aurors, informing them to prepare for their task.
"Prisoner in tow," said Ron. "And a one hundred percent efficient operation. Excellent. Now special forces will shut down the location, and even if they notice Viller is missing, they won't be able to escape the base or contact the outside."
"Good work, everyone," said Harding. "That was the best operation we as a team have pulled yet."
"This is the first operation we've worked together as a team," said Seign, cocking an eyebrow at Harding.
"Yes, so clearly it was the best," said Harding.
"Let's not congratulate ourselves until it's over," warned Little Caster.
"He's bound with two separate spells, and tied up to boot," said Brickface. "I think we've got this one."
"If he wrests himself free of the spells, he might take a poison pill," said Little Caster. "They tend to do that, and that would ruin a lot."
"Even if he did, he'd at least be out of the way," said Seign. "Not that I don't want information out of him… but the bastard deserves to die."
"Ethics are hazy for Aurors, but we've got to have them," said Ron. "If we don't, then how can anyone else?"
"Is that another Patronus?" asked Brickface, looking back.
A meerkat Patronus sailed into their midst. It shook in the air as it hovered in front of them, traveling at their speed but facing backwards to speak.
"Th-Th-There's n-no one at the b-b-base," stammered the meerkat with Parock Sysmal's voice. "Th-They've all f-f-fled! They m-must h-have known!"
"Balderdash," said Brickface, looking back and forth between a horrified Ron and the Patronus in front of them. "They must have found out afterwards and known we would be coming back, and they all got out quickly, but there's no way they could have known we were coming. Besides, if they knew, then why would they have allowed us to grab… Viller?"
"Atticus, do you have him?" asked Wells, glancing under Wayworth's broom with concern. "He's moving!"
Wayworth looked down as the meerkat Patronus flickered out.
Viller was indeed moving—but not on his own. His body was twisting, transforming—it was Polyjuice Potion wearing off. It was an imposter, a Sandblood pretending to be Viller or a hostage mind-controlled into looking and acting like him.
"Polyjuiced," said Ron. "Damnit! But at least it's either a capture or a rescue. We'll take as many decoys as are necessary to find him."
"What the bloody hell is wrong with his skin?" choked Little Caster, sounding revolted.
"And what is that mysterious ticking noise?" asked Brickface, looking around.
Ron peered closer at the imposter. There were grotesque rectangular distortions bulging from the body in several places, and the skin stretched over it seemed diseased or dead. There was a strange ticking sound in the air, slowly getting faster.
Ron's brain worked to process all of the cues. The ticking sound—it was reminiscent of Muggle bombs. The bulges under the skin—were they bombs? Someone had implanted bombs under the prisoner's skin, and sewn the skin shut over the implants, but they hadn't been able to see it, because the Polyjuice Potion had masked the effects.
"It's a b—"
Ron's shout, and his attempt to sever the rope, were interrupted when the bomb reached the end of its countdown. There was a violent explosion; Wayworth's broom, which had been carrying the imposter, was blown into shards, and so was Wayworth. There was a pulse of some horrible black aura at the same time; the Sandbloods had spared no expense, and their bomb was magical as well as physical. The Aurors were all knocked clean off their brooms; a shard of the bomb sliced its way directly through Wells's heart, and her eyes dimmed instantly as she fell. Brickface and Little Caster, in the back, were able to react the fastest, and shielded themselves from the blast, but Ron, Seign, and Harding were singed badly and lost control of their limbs as they fell; Ron's eyes closed on their own and he blacked out. Seign and Harding were screaming at first, but passed out during the plunge.
"Bolstra!" cried Little Caster.
The Cushioning Charm, combined with the sand on which they landed, saved them from the worst damage, but Wayworth and Wells were lying dead in front of Brickface and Little Caster, and Ron, Harding, and Seign were passed out. Some sort of strange violet tinge was working its way across their skin from the wounds they'd received in the explosion; they were being cursed. Ron was fading fastest.
Brickface ran and grabbed Harding and Seign, and twisted on the spot; all she did was spray sand on the faces of her unconscious friends.
"Someone's cast an Anti-Disapparition Jinx," she said with dread.
A dozen wizards suddenly descended upon them from the surrounding hills, firing spell after spell at the Aurors. They were either mind-controlled or evil; either way, they didn't look like they were taking prisoners. Brickface threw on a quick defensive perimeter, but it was cracking fast under the pressure.
"We've got to get them out of here!" she yelled back to Little Caster.
"How?!" cried Little Caster. "How can we get all of them—there's no way out!"
Brickface cast a spell causing a whirlwind of sand to whip up all around them, but she knew that the smokescreen couldn't last long.
"We've got to blast apart a Portkey," she said as she trembled. "Juxtaportation!"
"What?!" bellowed Little Caster. "That's so unreliable—and it hasn't been attempted since the incident at Parliament almost twenty years ago—"
"Make a Portkey! You have the authority! It's our only shot—we can't run, we can't Disapparate, and we are NOT dying here!"
"Portus!"
A nearby rock began glowing faintly blue. It had become a Portkey—but Portkeys could only take a maximum number of people equal to the number of people who had cast the spell on the same object. They wouldn't be able to carry the injured out with them… unless they took the entire region with them.
"Insplexter!" yelled Brickface, whirling around and directing her wand at the rock just as the whirlwind subsided and her defenses shattered.
The rock exploded with a sound that shook the sands around them; it was so forceful that some of the dunes flattened out around them. Brickface released the spell, praying her timing was accurate; this had only ever been attempted a few dozen times in human history.
The exploding rock sent out a shockwave; all people within the range of that shockwave—which, at the point where Brickface released the spell, was only the five living Aurors—and the entire region, sand and cacti included, was sent spiraling through unknown space until they spilled onto the floor of the waiting room at St. Mungo's.
Little Caster leapt to his feet at the same time that Brickface collapsed off of hers in relief.
"Curse unit, now!" he roared. "We need the curse unit down here as soon as possible! Hurry—they're dying!"
"Hang in there," whispered Brickface, staring at Ron as a purple tinge slowly crept from his cheeks into his closed eyelids.
Her eyes filled with tears as her mind filled with memories of Ron, Seign, and Harding, and their service together. Those memories couldn't die out now… there were so many battles to be won, so many brick walls to explode in her face…
A Healer, appearing swiftly, levitated Ron onto a stretcher; someone else was murmuring words under their breath, a hand placed on Ron's forehead. Two others were working on Harding and Seign. Brickface was next to be lifted onto a stretcher, and she looked into the Healer's eyes.
"Be honest with me," she whispered. "Will they live?"
"Yes," said the Healer, and the smile stretching easily across her face told Brickface that she was telling the truth. "All of them."
Brickface dissolved into joyful sobs.
"We made it," said Little Caster, walking by her side as the Aurors were transferred to a special ward. "We're okay."
"And not a single brick to my face," whispered Brickface, smiling.
She couldn't bear to think about the ones they had lost; it was too hard. She had to focus on the friends they had been able to save.
They rolled into a private ward. She looked over to the stretcher next to her. The purple tinge was slowly receding out of Ron's neck, and his eyes were slowly opening.
I was very close to leaving you hanging as to whether or not Ron would live... but I do too many cliffhangers already, and you wouldn't have found out what happens until two months from now when I'm done with Book 4! I couldn't do that to you guys.
Next upload in Book 4 coming sometime this weekend!