Disclaimer: This world and the characters in it are adapted from the world of Harry Potter by JK Rowling. I do not claim to own any of these characters or places, nor do I claim that this story is a part of the original canon of the Harry Potter series.
(A/N): This is a tale that I've been meaning to write for a long time, so hopefully you guys like it.
A bright crescent moon hung in the sky, casting a pleasant white light down onto the shopping district below. The bright yellowish-white lamps bathed everything with a warm and bright hue.
Crickets chirped and owls hooted, but above all the normal ambient sounds of the night were the squealing whine of police sirens and the furious crunch of gravel and dirt under the boots of a SWAT team. As the swirling red and blue lights swept across the walls of the shops, creating a light effect that hurt the eyes of spectators watching from afar, the team moved in. They surrounded an innocent, manila-walled coffee shop in the middle of a wealthy shopping district in London, careful not to stand in front of the police lights as to not give away their position. They warily eyed the dark alleyways between the buildings that surrounded them, watching for any sign of movement.
"We're in position."
The crackle of radio chatter floated through the earpiece of one Officer Atticus. He perched on the dark roof of a nearby shop, peering down a sniper scope at the windows of shop. The rough shingles scraped against his belly as he shifted his weight, adjusting for the uncomfortable position he was in. A light wind caressed his face.
It's a shame that such a beautiful night has to be ruined by these idiots. What a perfect night to go out with my wife and have a nice dinner.
Crouching low in the bushes that surrounded their target, one of the team members took out a tiny mirror, angling it so it caught sight of the inside of the shop. Inside the warmly lit interior, numerous hostages were being held by several robbers, demanding money and credit cards from the cashiers. Several of them were also hunkered down behind counters and tables that had been overturned in the initial chaos, aiming their guns outside, although the blinding and disorienting lights of the police cars half-blinded them, and kept them in a constant state of wearied anxiety.
Officer Atticus, looking through his scope, saw one of the hostages, a blond young man who looked as if he was still in college, quake in fear. His tormenter, a large and powerfully built man with a nasty looking assault rifle, kicked him aside, aiming the barrel of his gun at him. He was roaring words at the poor blonde man, who was now crying and throwing all his money and his wallet towards the robber.
His fingers tense on the trigger, Officer Atticus growled a few warnings towards the team on the ground: "Be advised: one hostage is getting pretty roughed up by one of our targets. Do I have permission to shoot if he gets violent, sir?" He addressed the last part of the question to his superior officer, Atkins, who was watching the operation with binoculars.
Atkins replied negative.
Atticus' eyebrows furrowed. He didn't like what he was hearing. Was he to just sit by and idle as he watched an innocent victim get killed? It went against every one of his moral fibres. But he knew his Atkins was right. If he shot because one man got killed, the rest of the robbers could just execute the rest of the hostages. As horrible as it sounded, one man was not worth the potential deaths of twenty plus others. He peered through his scope intently as he tried to figure out a good way to efficiently eliminate all the targets.
Perhaps I could shoot that one behind the counter with that submachine gun, he thought. If he gets killed, they won't do as much damage, since none of the rest have automatics…
As he planned out a strategy, a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. It hovered over his eyelashes on his right eye, which he had closed, as he was peering down the scope with this left. Continuing to plan, he raised his hand to wipe off the pesky droplet.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Fifteen cracks echoed throughout the apartments, each one distinct and harsh.
Atticus' heartrate spiked, and he twitched.
His hand, halfway to his eye, slammed back down to the ground to re-steady himself. It knocked against his rifle, which, to compensate for the sudden force, shifted its position and its sights, now pointing up at the starry sky.
Shit.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" exclaimed Officer Atkins over the coms. "I gave you specific orders not to shoot, you could have caused a disas—"
The shop's loudspeakers blared to life.
"Looks like you're making some unwarranted moves out there, officers. I think we'll have to teach you all a lesson."
The person speaking, a man with brown hair and a hawk-like nose, aimed a gun towards one of the hostages, a poor middle-aged woman who immediately started to plea, bursting into tears. A wet stain started to spread between the legs of her jeans, painfully clear through the white fabric.
"No!" burst out Officer Atkins, on the café speakers system that their team had connected to. "Don't shoot! We can still talk this out!"
The man simply sneered as his finger tensed. Officer Atticus, having finally readjusted his scope in the last few heart-pounding seconds, aimed for the kill, his fingers ready to pull the trigger. His superior's warnings, issued what seemed to be a lifetime ago, were barely on his thoughts as he prepared to fire.
Forcing himself to steady his breathing, his eyes narrowed in cold calculation as he aimed exactly where he wanted to hit.
Boom.
The windows to the café exploded into a violent cloud of sparkling, sharp slivers. For a moment, everything seemed to stand still, a shimmering cloud of reflective and deadly projectiles scattering red, blue, yellow, and white lights all throughout the area.
Time resumed. The cloud hurtled outwards, spears of glass flying past, and in some cases, into police officers, hostages, and robbers. Immediately, the groans and whimpers of wounded men and women filled the air.
Two more jets of red light arced into the shop, blasting both hostages and robbers off their feet and accidentally setting off many firearms. Screams emanated from the café, now on fire. The alarms wailed, water sprinklers activating and sending a shower of cold water down on the people below.
The SWAT team had been sent keeling from the concussion waves produced by the explosion. The entire police chatter channel was filled with officers yelling in panic and asking for orders from their superiors. Every officer in the vicinity of the shop drew their weapons, ready to burst inside and eliminate any robbers that remained, if any remained living at all.
Atticus, flinching instinctively away from his rifle, spied one of them shakily clambered to his feet, yelling into his coms.
"What the hell happened there?" he screamed. "None of you told us that they had rigged the entire place to explode! I think that's some pretty serious fu—"
Boom. This time, a police car, the orange glow of an expanding fireball lighting the shop like an angry nighttime sun. Atticus ducked as a particularly large chunk of metal whistled past his right ear with only a few feet to spare.
He paused there for a second, eyes wide, breath held.
That. Was close.
Withdrawing his face from the safe little nook between his arms and the roof, he cautiously peered down at the chaotic scene. Eyes wide, he drank in the horrifying scene.
It was like the aftermath of a tiny nuclear explosion.
Everyone within ten feet of the car was either ripped apart, shredded to bits, or reduced to gore. One man was lying face down on the ground, his blood splattered in a five-foot radius circle. A hole in his right ribcage sputtered out the dark red liquid, a tiny Cupid's fountain coming straight from the heart. Only six feet away from him lay Officer Perkins, one of Atticus' good friends. His distinct police badge was turned to a multicolored emblem, painted by the insides of his very own body.
Everyone within thirty feet had been knocked to the ground. Some seemed to be sporting serious concussions, judging by the way they were faintly grasping at the ground in an attempt to get up.
With a start, Atticus realized that the car was the one carrying all the munitions and tactical explosives.
A sudden motion from the very corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned to look. Green light arced out from the alley to the right of the house Atticus was aiming from. It hit a SWAT officer who was screaming into his coms, gazing in horror at the scene, and he dropped like a stone. His voice disappeared immediately from the chatter, the abrupt silence it left behind compounding the ringing in everyone's ears.
Everyone still alive and standing burst into action.
"All forces be advised, hostiles are firing at us from behind! We are being flanked! I repeat, we are being flanked!" Officer Atkins roared into his coms, before he flipped over his car and landed on the other side, aiming through the windows at the alley from which the lights had come from. Other officers had forgone communication, and simply tossed grenades into the alley from whence the hostiles were attacking. Explosions rattled Officer Atticus' perch, and he nearly lost his balance and knocked his rifle from its stand. He managed to steady himself, just in time to hear several more pops and cracks.
He watched in horror as roughly ten black figures in long, dark robes spontaneously appeared on the roof of his adjacent building. He, luckily, was wearing non-reflective gear and was coated in all black, blending in perfectly to the dark roof, so they did not notice him. All ten pointed at the cops on the ground, who were still concentrated on the alley.
Ten arcs of blood-red light reached for their targets.
The earth itself shook as ten explosions simultaneously wreaked havoc on the SWAT forces, outright killing half of the remaining team, and seriously injuring the rest as the rest of cop cars exploded in response to the sudden stresses. Six more roaring fireballs, glowing like the sun and casting so much light that Atticus was afraid he had been seen, erupted from the now blackened and bent vehicles.
The men in black were roaring with laughter, maliciously teleporting back down to the ground to finish off the remaining SWAT forces, and eliminated the rest of the robbers and the moaning hostages.
Shit. Atticus' heart was in his throat now. It was not only that these men had eliminated his entire force. No, it was because he knew who they were.
Death eaters.
His wife, Maggie, had warned him about the war that was going on in the wizarding world, the world from whence she had departed, after the rising power of the Dark Lord had prevented Muggleborns like her from living peaceful, or even safe, lives.
The Death Eaters, if he could recall, were the Dark Lord's personal henchmen, and they loved to terrorize non-magical people like him. They were extremely dangerous. His wife's words to him echoed in his mind.
Never, and I mean never, engage them. They will find you, and if they do … Maggie's warning had trailed off, and she looked distinctly brooding. "I don't care what happens to anyone else. I don't want you to get hurt," she had said. "If you don't care, then do it for me. If they know you've seen me, they might come after me too." Of course, he could not ever risk his wife's life, not if he could do anything about it. So, despite his aching heart and his building fury, he remained silent and watched the proceedings.
One of the Death Eaters had gone into the shop and was eliminating the rest of the hostages, when his eye caught something that he rather liked.
"Let's have a little fun, shall we?" He sneered, dragging out a late-teenage woman from the café shop who was fighting desperately to get free of her new assailants. "She's rather pretty isn't she … I think a dirty Muggle like her would love to spread her legs for real, powerful men like us. She would probably –"
He was cut off by a final crack that announced a final arrival to the scene.
Atticus' rage at their actions vanished immediately, his fear completely inundating him. He couldn't tell if the wet patch between his legs was real or just imagined.
It was the Dark Lord himself.
By this time, Atticus' heart was thumping against his chest furiously. His blood threatening to burst out of his temples, he waited in tense agony as he realized just how much trouble he was in. If they saw him, Atticus was sure they would make him wish he had just shot himself right then and there.
He did his best to calm himself down. Taking numerous deep breaths, he formulated a contingency plan. Just to be sure, Atticus aimed his sniper at the head honcho himself. If they spotted him and tried to kill him – well, he would make damned sure that he would at least try to take that bastard with him. He held his breath and waited. Every single second seemed like a small eternity.
"My friends," Lord Voldemort smirked. "What a fine night it is."
"Yes, my lord," replied all the Death Eaters dutifully.
The one who had captured the girl, a man with long blonde hair, bowed dutifully to his Lord. "My Lord, I have captured this girl. We were about to have some fun with her. My Lord, if you wish, I would be happy –"
"Silence, Lucius," barked Voldemort. Lucius halted immediately, quaking with surprise and a little fear. "Are you, perhaps, giving me permission to do what I want? Hmmm, Lucius?" he ended threateningly.
"N- No, my Lord," Lucius whimpered. "I'm sorry, my Lord. I beg you to forgive this offense. It shall never happen again, my Lord."
Lord Voldemort sneered at his henchman. "It had better not. If it does, Lucius, need I remind you that your wife and son …" he trailed off. "Nevertheless, this creature of yours does seem quite pleasing. Take her back to the Manor, Lucius. We can keep her as a little pet, meant to service us when we desire it. I think that –"
"My lord," another Death Eater interrupted. Lord Voldemort snarled in rage at the man's sheer audacity and turned upon the wizard, the killing curse forming upon his lips. The man continued hurriedly, aware that he was moments away from death. "There is someone watching us."
Officer Atticus nearly fainted then and there. He flickered his eyes away from the scope and looked at the Death Eater who spoke, who, sure enough, was looking right at him.
His heart blood pressure skyrocketed, and the world spun slightly. He was fairly sure he was suffering a stroke right then and there.
Voldemort narrowed his eyes, turned, and immediately spotted him, smirking. "Thought you could stay hidden, hm? Enjoy your last moments on earth, Muggle." He chuckled, a raspy sound that reminded Atticus of a snake. The Death Eaters behind him processed the sound, and then heartily added their own villain-laughs. "Avada Kedavra," the Dark Lord drawled, pointing his bone-white wand at Atticus.
Atticus knew he was dead, but he had one final job to complete before he left this world. He had to protect not only his wife and child, but that poor girl on the ground. As the green light grew ever larger in his field of view, Atticus mentally sneered at his smug and arrogant pasty white face. This is for my wife and for everyone you've killed and hurt, you sonuvabich, he thought.
He pulled the trigger.
Just before the green light overtook him and washed away his vision, he viewed the glorious result of his work. A shocked expression appeared on Lord Voldemort's reptilian face as a hole spontaneously appeared in his skull. Amidst screams of shock and roars of rage, the Dark Lord dropped, felled by a single Muggle weapon.
Take that, you bastard. Atticus smirked as he felt the green spell impact him and immediately drain his life force.
Darkness claimed him.
(A/N): Make sure to read and Review! Next chapter will be the true start of the story and will be uploaded soon.