Disclaimer: I do not own any character's objects or anything else that comes from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.
Warning: This story will contain scenes of violence, bad language, and maybe other themes that some audiences may find unsuitable. You have been advised.
When You Have Nothing Left to Lose
Chapter 4
"Hello, milady. It is great to see you."
"I have to say that is lovely to see you as well. Your teachers have been flooing me every evening, notifying me of your progress… I must say I am impressed." Daphne replied as she and Harry began to walk through the Scotland Mountain Hideaway. "How have you been treated?"
"Almost all had an initial period of resentment, but I am sure you expected that. I sure did. After the first day or two, though, all of them just focused on training me with most respecting me." Harry replied. He was dressed in the same black outfit he had worn when he arrived at the building, but he appeared to have grown taller. He stood straighter, prouder due to his new training.
"Do you feel as if anyone purposefully pushed you too far?" Daphne asked again. Despite the ordinarily caring nature of the words, Daphne spoke them as if bored and talking about the weather.
"No. As far as I can tell, they just pushed me a little past my limit… just what I would do to a trainee. The only one who continues to show resentment toward me is Trynt. Even after teaching him a lesson the first day, he has not learned." Harry answered back.
Daphne nodded, thinking. "We'll deal with him later, but first… I wish to see what you have learned first hand."
A small grin graced Harry's lips. "I was hoping you would say that."
Harry and Daphne then reached the staircase and traveled up two floors.
Unlike any other floor in the building, this one seemed to only have a brick wall with a door when you left the staircase. Harry arrived first at the door so as to open and hold it for Daphne before entering himself.
Inside, there was long stone walkway. On either side of it, there were many large, square sections filled with nothing or wooden dummies either fixed into the floor or onto a track so they could move. Some of the dummies had wands or something of the like such as battle-axes, but most did not have weapons or even arms at all. In between each of these dueling/training areas, the walkway sprouted another one so others could watch the people inside from any one of the four sides. To protect the spectators, a blue shield would automatically surround the area when someone entered. The shield would temporarily lower if another crossed inside. These sections numbered forty-eight in all, two sides, stretching down twelve sections for each.
Harry and Daphne walked up to the sixth section on the left. This one held eight dummies, each holding a wand and positioned on a separate track.
"Show me what you learned." Daphne ordered.
Harry nodded before his right wand dropped out of its holder in his right sleeve. Automatically, Harry caught the magical object at a place where his hand fit perfectly on it.
Harry had received a powerful new wand from Wilbur the day he arrived at the Scotland Mountain Hideaway. It had a mixture of Manzanita and Yew for the wood but had a black handle covering the bottom quarter of it. This made it look much like Draco's old wand besides the redder color of the exposed wood, as the Yew was closer to the cores. Inside the wand, there was hardened Basilisk venom covering a King Shadow Dragon's heartstring. The only thing about this dragon's heartstring was that it had somehow inherited the odd ability of lightning according to Wilbur. He said that he had harvested the heartstring himself decades ago from the dying creature.
Harry entered the section and simply said, "Begin dueling exercise. Difficulty- Maximum." Every spectator close by heard this and rushed over to witness Harry try to achieve something only their teachers' had accomplished on a rare occasion, and they were veterans. The spectators, though, did ensure that they did not block Daphne's view. They already had been taught to show her respect before even coming here.
"Five… Four… Three… Two… One. Begin!" A stray teacher commanded. He was about to start judging two of his students in a duel, but all three of them had stopped to observe this instead.
The eight dummies whirred to life and began casting up shields for the others or shooting spells at Harry while all of them began quickly moving form one piece of cover to another as the boulders appeared in front of them. Harry began running closer towards the dummies in a random, jagged pattern, ducking incoming spells when his randomness failed to be sufficient enough. Before Harry could reach the first of the dummies, though, a large rift separated the two forces.
Harry barely managed to avoid falling in but then surprisingly jumped in, bashing himself against the opposite wall. Quickly, he found footholds and two handholds. Harry used his left arm to hang onto the cliff face while his right foot found a higher foothold, allowing Harry to peek up from below the ground and send out a silent spell. A second later, the piece of magic connected with its target and created a large enough explosion to eliminate the one dummy as well as four of its closest counterparts, obliterating the front half as well as another unlucky one.
Harry dived back into the rift, evading six spells sent out rapidly by the three remaining dummies. As soon as the last one passed, Harry sent out a shield above him on the ground. A few spells impacted it, but it held. Harry sighed before jumping back while still keeping his eyes and wand focused on the shield. Quickly, however, Harry unsheathed his other wand from its holster and cast an explosion below him that did not damage him but did still propel Harry up out of the rift. Using his legs, Harry managed to also go forward. This allowed Harry to land behind his still existent shield.
Automatically, all three of the dummies targeted Harry, sending a dozen spells at the man. Right as the last one started to impact his shield, Harry dived out from his piece of cover and hid behind one of the boulders used previously to protect the dummies.
Outside the section, the spectators were going insane in awe, jealousy, and disbelief. The teachers present, though, managed to keep their heads better than their students, only going as far to grin and whoop at a particularly surprising part. Daphne, though, seemed to remain as cold as she always had since her years at Hogwarts.
Meanwhile, Harry had already ran up to the first of the three's piece of cover and had eliminated the dummy while it rushed to get a clear line of sight on the man. The cutting curse had cleanly swept off its head, revealing the straw inside. Harry then cast a blinding curse towards the other two before coming out beside his latest piece of cover and ran towards the third dummy's boulder. On his way there, he cut off the second's head with another curse and slid behind his last target's cover. Just before Harry's line of sight on the dummy was broken, the man cast an explosive curse at it. Harry was just protected by the boulder.
Harry sheathed each of his wands as he jumped up from the ground. Finally looking outside the area, Harry saw all of the students almost jumping in excitement. His teachers looked the same, but Daphne still was impassive.
The rift then grew back together and each of the dummy's remains or ashes was replaced with a fully functional dummy. Harry nodded his appreciation toward everyone as he walked back to Daphne.
"Please come with me." She said before turning around and starting to walk out of the room, not one glance was spared to check to see if Harry had followed. She knew that he was behind her.
The two walked down a floor and passed many doors, each adorned with a different name that automatically changed as its owner did, until they arrived at an especially extravagant one labeled, "Daphne Greengrass" that rested at the end of the hall. Harry's was just to the right of it. Daphne entered first with Daphne closing the door behind them both.
As Harry walked in, he was slightly surprised at the setup of Daphne's quarters. When a person first entered, he or she would find themselves inside an office with two halls connecting it to the rest of the rooms. The office was fairly plain looking, with a leather chair behind a plain, wooden table being first seen and a larger desk behind the chair and pushed against the wall opposite the doorway. On the walls beside Harry and Daphne, tall shelves held a vast number of books of even greater knowledge.
Daphne swung around her table and sat down in her chair. Harry walked forward and stood between the two, less impressing leather chairs across from Daphne. She beckoned for Harry to sit down. He nodded and rested in the one to his left.
"I must say that I am impressed with your performance in the dueling ring, but why did you not use any of the 'Unforgivables?' Your teachers told me that you were taught and had perfected the three of them." Daphne showed much displeasure at the given name for the three curses.
"The Killing, Imperius, and Cruciatus Curses do not work on the non-living as you well know. I would have just exposed myself unnecessarily, probably killing me in the process." Harry replied.
"Just what I wished to hear. Now that you have been trained, it is time you and I started getting to work." Daphne said.
"What do we have?" Harry asked critically, ready to absorb every detail.
Daphne grinned internally. She had definitely chosen well when she recruited Harry. Then she began to inform Harry of the plan of which he was to lead in the field.
"Now, be warned. Your troops will probably show you little if any respect once you reveal your identity. I would advise that you deal with them before you proceed with anything else." Daphne finished.
"Who said that I would reveal my identity before the mission? As far as my troops will know, I am a shadow." Harry grinned.
Daphne nodded. "Report back here to me after it is done. Do not share any details of what you accomplish or do not on your mission with anyone besides those involved until you talk to me."
"Understood." Harry said before rising from his seat. "I will see you when we return."
"Make sure Magical Britain knows your name."
Harry nodded and then turned and walked out of Daphne's quarters and entered his own. Quickly, he went straight to his wardrobe and traded his casual outfit for Death Eater robes and mask. He then exited his rooms and dived down into the depths of the building to prepare everything for his upcoming mission.
"What the bloody fucking hell just happened?" Susan yelled, slamming down the preliminary report of the incident that had just occurred an hour ago.
"Nobody is exactly sure, ma'am. I know that that report right there is not very helpful, but we are still scrambling to find out more. Right now that is the best we have. All aurors that were sent during the event were killed or are in such a delirious state that the healers are certain that we will not get anything from them, though they did seem more concerned about trying to save their lives if their rush was any indicator." Neville Longbottom replied.
"Any witnesses?" Susan sighed.
"A few people observed from their homes atop their shops. An auror that arrived after the event took place marked down their names so as to question them later, though he did say that they all agreed that Death Eaters were responsible for the attack." Neville answered again.
"At least we have that. Are aurors still on the scene trying to repair the damage?" Susan asked.
"There are still a few, but none are being used for that. The senior auror on scene ordered them to just secure the scene before clean-up crews arrived." Megan read from a page on her notepad.
"Make sure that aurors are sent to catalog any evidence that they can find and a few to round up the witnesses and bring them back here." Megan nodded and walked out of the office. "Everyone else is dismissed, except for you Neville. I need to speak with you for a moment." The other aurors in the room obeyed Susan's words and exited her office, leaving the former Gryffindor and the former Hufflepuff alone.
Susan sighed and picked up a bottle of Firewhiskey and pouring herself a shot. She looked up at Neville, the bottle hovering over a second shot glass. He shook his head.
"I'm going to need a clear head."
Susan nodded before corking the bottle and putting it along with the empty glass back into one of the drawers in her desk. She then quickly downed the liquid in the glass but did not swallow, allowing the alcoholic beverage to flow back into the glass. She then set it down and sighed. Finally, she looked back up to the still standing Neville.
"I don't like this. First, Harry is captured, and now this… event. It was brutal, even for the Death Eaters… and from this report," Susan stopped to tap the preliminary data scrounged together by some of the aurors, "it is like someone new has entered the picture. Corner will probably bitch us out and not do a thing about it except throw more money at us, not giving a shite about how to solve the problem, only caring about making it go away. Like usual, we'll try to use it to bring a stop to these attacks, but it just seems to disappear on us, affecting nothing." Susan sighed again, and Neville joined her this time.
"We are in a tight situation for certain, Susan. I would have given you my resignation a while ago and become a teacher if I didn't think that you still needed all the help you could get."
Susan looked up at Neville in disbelief. "Really?"
"Hannah and I have talked it over many times. She knows that I really don't like being here and doesn't like me being in danger, but she understands that it isn't a question of whether I want to or not or even safety, yet." Neville said the last word almost silently to himself. "We both know that as long as I can and am needed that I will be here for the good of everyone in Great Britain, magical or not."
Susan nodded. "I am glad to hear it. Hopefully, we'll soon give you a good reason to resign. We just need to find out who leads the Death Eaters and who this new person is."
Miles away in an empty warehouse, Susan's curiosity would have been solved as Harry had just taken off his mask in front of the men and women he had just fought with. They thought that they had forced him to do so through peer pressure after all of them had done so.
"You are fucking kidding me." A woman said, piercing the silence.
All at once, the others began sprouting obvious questions and insults, excluding a few who remained silent out of respect for the one who had just led them through a casualty-less win.
"Quiet!" Harry barked, silencing the ones who dared disrespect him by questioning or insulting him after what he had just done. "I cannot believe most of you are so stupid as to ask obvious questions that I was just about to explain. I thought most if not all of you were Slytherins?" Harry demanded. Those he had correctly accused looked down in shame. Every single one of them had been in Slytherin House. "As for those of you who dare insult me, I want, no, demand that you think about something. Who just led all of you through a successful mission with not even a single casualty? Who just tore through trained, battle-hardened aurors as if they were children with toys? Who just struck a great blow of terror into the hearts of those inside the DMLE and likely the rest of the Ministry?" Harry's voice grew louder with each question until he was shouting his last one. Harry paused, though, and lowered his voice. "I did, so do not dare disrespect me after what I just did."
"Now, let me inform all of you of how I came to be here… if that pleases all of you." Harry sneered the last part of his sentence. He mentally noted who flinched and those who had not performed any transgressions against him. He needed his own closer circle inside his troops.
"As many of you may know, the DMLE planned an attack on what they thought to be the last of the Death Eaters in a small, abandoned town. Your leader, though, was informed of this and sent only a few Ministry officials' family members to pose as resting Death Eaters. I was part of the force that eliminated them. Once we reached the center of the town, we were ambushed from all sides. I snapped and tore away from the group eliminating the ambush force while my former colleagues were killed. Reinforcements then arrived, and I continued to fight a losing battle. Daphne managed to finally stop me at the edge of the ward line around the town and actually captured me. I woke up a couple days later, and Daphne convinced me to join you in arms against the vile Ministry. I was trained in the Scottish mountains. If you ever visited that area as a Death Eater, you will know what I am talking about. After I finished my training, Daphne gave me this mission to lead. I am her head Lieutenant and am actually in charge of all of our fighting forces. You will show me as much respect as you do our leader. Understood?" Harry shouted his question.
The Death Eaters nodded.
"No, do you understand? I want to hear an answer!" Harry yelled.
"Understood, sir!" Harry's troops roared.
Harry nodded his approval. "Now, go back to your bases for a debriefing! The commanding officer at your base will give you further orders!"
Everyone nodded and disappeared to obey Harry's orders despite the fact that each would first go through a string of places before arriving back at their base.
Harry was about to adorn his mask again and apparate away as well but noticed that the people that had been respectful to him had stayed behind. He only raised an eyebrow in question.
"Sir, we stayed behind to give you our thanks. If anyone else had been leading us, I doubt as many of us would have made us." One answered.
"Also, I wished to volunteer myself for a position as one of your lieutenants if the position is available." Another added.
"Would all of you wish to hold this position?" Harry asked.
All eight of them nodded.
"Hmm. Very well. I will talk with Daphne to see if I can open up the position for at least one of you."
"Thank you so much, sir. None of us would ever let you down, especially not me." One who had not already spoken replied, bowing.
"I said I would talk with our leader about it. That does not mean she will approve, and I will stick by her decision either way. Leave your name with me, though, in case Daphne approves and I wish to contact you so as to notify you of your new position." Harry said. After memorizing each of the eight's names. He spoke again. "Good. Now, go!"
The eight nodded and apparated away in puffs of black smoke.
Harry then put his mask back on and apparated to various buildings until apparating back to the Scotland Mountain Hideaway. As soon as he exited the floo, Harry turned and walked down the hall and onto the staircase, going down three floors. He then exited the staircase and went straight up to Daphne's door. He gave a quick knock before waiting fifteen seconds for the door to be answered.
Daphne opened it and quickly beckoned Harry inside, allowing him to close the door again. She went back to sit behind her desk while Harry took the liberty to sit down across from her in the left chair.
"I hear that your mission was a full success. There is already much chatter and confusion over what happened in Diagon Alley a little over an hour ago." Daphne said.
"Yes. We accomplished every part of it. Barely any aurors survived while we were there and the ones that did will not be talking or doing much of anything for a long time. My only regret is that the damage will eventually be covered up." Harry replied.
"You will have many more chances to put it up, Harry. Do not worry. Plus, you will soon be dealing more physically damaging blows than just psychological warfare." Daphne said.
"That is good to hear."
"How did your troops react to your identity?" Daphne asked.
"Most asked stupid questions or insulted me, but eight remained silent. Those eight actually stayed behind to offer up their willingness to serve as my lieutenant." Harry answered.
"Hmm… very interesting. Who were these eight?"
Harry quickly gave Daphne each of their names.
"Two of those always try to be respectful and kiss arse just so they could achieve a higher rank. Thankfully, it has only worked for each of them once and not for long. The others, though, could be valuable assets. A few have done some great things for us but have chosen to remain in the lower ranks. You must have impressed them." Daphne informed.
Harry nodded. "Do I have your permission to hire them then?"
"You want to recruit all of them?" Daphne asked.
Harry nodded. "I am going to need friends like them. You being our leader cannot always get involved with disputes in the lower ranks. I can do that easier with lieutenants of my own."
"Good. Notify them, but you will be the one responsible for their actions. I am glad that you are stepping up in your role as my second-in-command, but I must still maintain my own seat of power." Daphne replied.
"I understand, Daphne. I will ensure that they know so and will not do anything unbecoming of people in their position. Thank you for this. Is there anything else you need of me for the time being?" Harry asked.
"No, but I would like to comment on your outfit. It suits you and your new position well. How do you like your mark?" Daphne allowed herself to be slightly friendlier to her second-in-command. He had great promise to one day maybe be more, and she knew that she would need to be by his side if she wished to maintain her power.
Harry had already stood up. He gave her a wide grin.
"I love it, especially etched into the side of Diagon Alley."
Harry then turned and walked out of Daphne's quarters to head to the owlery on the second highest floor. There he sent out six owls, each holding a letter accepting the receiver as one of his lieutenants as well as a request for each of them to meet Harry at a safe house in a few days to discuss the details. There was a desk with plenty of parchment, ink, and quills to last a week, more than enough for Harry. The house-elves restocked it at the end of each week.
Harry watched the six barn owls depart and shook his head with a smile on his face, thinking the same thought as Daphne was at that same moment unbeknownst to either.
"I am going to places I never thought I would go."
Only to one of them was this a surprise as the other had observed Harry on occasion, giving in slightly to her affection towards the boy who grew to become a man but never fully. Daphne could never afford to let her emotions slip inside Hogwarts. Another Slytherin would eventually find out if she did, and Daphne would lose almost all of her power inside the school. With Harry automatically dating Ginerva once more after the Battle of Hogwarts and eventually marrying her, Daphne's heart had gone cold and hard to stop any pain she felt, making her icy persona real and making her one of the best Death Eaters around when she decided to join. When Harry and her had met for the first time, she did not know that her oldest crush was also a great threat at that same time, eliminating many of her troops all at once. She had convinced herself and everyone else that she captured Harry for interrogation purposes but part of her did so, hoping he would turn. That part knew that it was nearly impossible so it didn't back itself much. Still, another part of Daphne captured the man for revenge against him never noticing her over seven years. When Harry had told Daphne, though, about his hatred for the miserable Ministry and his family's betrayal, the second came to life once more and fueled the fake reason that allowed Harry to be close to her for the first time.
Daphne knew that Harry did not love her, and she was not so sure that she loved him. This plan, this partnership, though, would be the best way to find out. Even if they didn't, Daphne still obtained a strong lieutenant, and if they did… Daphne did not want to get her hopes up and risk her heart breaking. To Daphne, having a heart of stone was better than a soft, broken one. At least you could live with stone.
AN: Thought I would delve into the past a bit more with this chapter but not give away everything yet, just fill in a few spots to also build up the characters. Hope you didn't find it too boring, but in my opinion, a mystery chapter in a book is always great if written right. If you found a section of this particularly good or you have thoughts about this chapter, another one, or the entire story overall, feel free to leave your thoughts in a review. If you have a question, feel free to comment in a review. The reason for this is that I think that if one person is asking, then there must be others with the same question as well. I'll try to get back to you, though, as soon as I can. Occidere Prima Vel Occidi.
