Chapter Seven

1 Getting the patrol car and taking control of the goons inside wasn't going to be easy, but it would be by far the easiest part of the whole enterprise. They didn't exactly have a contingency plan, either. It was kind of a make-things-up-as-they-went-along deal. Hermione positively hated to be forced to do nothing but improvise, but over the years, she had learned to stop being so horribly inflexible. It was difficult, getting over oneself and biting the bullet, but it was most certainly a necessity. Therefore, she took the plunge and set the events into motion. Standing on the beach house's balcony, she raised her wand into the air and gave the world a firework.

Then, they waited.

Timing was of the essence, here. Upon detection of magic, a patrol car would be sent. Inside the car, there'd be two to four goons ready to investigate. If they caught one wizard or witch, they'd apprehend them and take them to London. If they caught several, they'd probably call for backup. The trick was to not get caught. It was one hell of a trick, too, because when Malleus soldiers ventured into a place where magic existed, they were equipped with personal magic suppressors. Otherwise, they would not stand a chance.

Overwhelming a person who headed into a house blindly wasn't the hardest part. It had been done before. Soldiers had been killed by wizarding people who just kicked their heads in or used other forms of conventional, mundane violence. The problem wasn't ambushing a few Muggles. The problem was making the rest of the plan happen. What Hermione and her friends (was she thinking of Malfoy as a friend, here? Curious times, indeed) were planning to do was so ludicrous and suicidal, she didn't think anyone else had even thought of attempting it before. She didn't believe in luck, chance, or anything as intangible as fate, but even so, she hoped that after all the disaster that had been heaped upon her kind, they'd finally be able to catch a break.

It was too late to give in to doubts, now, anyway.

Everyone was in position, inside the house, when the car arrived. Lucky for Hermione and the others, protocol demanded that Muggles should clear the area in a rather big radius when magic was detected. Nox might be a horrible, genocidal monster, but he apparently cared quite a bit about avoiding Muggle casualties. Well, everyone had their own, personal priorities, didn't they? It was something Hermione could grudgingly get behind. She didn't want any civilians getting in the way, either. Most of them were innocent people just trying to get by. They didn't deserve to get caught up in a supernatural war of global proportions.

Since Malfoy had been the one to most dislike the whole scheme, everyone else had caved when he'd made a not-too-pleasant suggestion about how to incapacitate the Malleus soldiers. Hermione herself didn't approve of excessive violence under any circumstances, but she had to agree with Malfoy on one thing: the time for being squeamish had long passed. Now, she and Daphne were standing half-hidden behind the door leading from the corridor to the kitchen. Luna was on the staircase, Rolf in the adjacent garage, Malfoy to the right of the front door, behind the guest bathroom door. They had to time their attack perfectly. Otherwise, their momentum would be gone, and they'd be doomed.

So much could still go wrong at this early stage.

Then, everything just happened so quickly. The front door wasn't locked. Someone cautiously opened it. There were whispers – two people: a man and a woman. The person at the front stepped inside. No-one said another word. Hermione could glimpse them gesturing to each other. They wore thick jackets, gloves, and probably bullet-proof vests, but none of that would help them. For a second, Hermione wanted to call it all off. They didn't deserve to-

It was almost over before it even began. Moving so quickly that it almost seemed as if he'd Apparated there, Malfoy emerged from the guest bathroom, a strange concoction of aerosol can plus wall bracket plus candle in his hands. The soldiers spotted him, turned, guns in their hands, but he was faster. He cracked a vicious little smile, sprayed hairspray from the can onto the burning candle, and bathed both soldiers in bright flames. It was horrible: fire licked at their faces and their hair, at their collars. Screaming, they dropped their guns, beat at their faces with their hands, went on their knees. Still cold and calm and very much in control, Malfoy pushed them down the corridor, shut the front door, and then kicked the handguns out of their reach.

It took the others a moment to shake themselves out of their shock, but then, they acted. Hermione held her breath, skidded down the corridor, and picked up the guns.

Luna jumped down the stairs, makeshift rope in her hands, and knelt down. "We should put them out."

"Not yet. Let me savour this a few more seconds," Malfoy said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. His expression was level. He was still holding his homemade flamethrower in his hands.

The male soldier had blacked out; the female one was writhing and screaming her head off as her hair coiled into charred ruins around her head.

"No!" Hermione grabbed a kitchen towel and dowsed the flames as quickly as possible. She breathed. The stench was unbelievable. Not that it was anything strange and repulsive – no, it smelled like overcooked chicken. Her stomach roiled. She pressed her eyes together.

Rolf emerged from the garage, his face ashen and also a bit greenish. He pulled his wand. "The suppressors are-" The rest of the sentence died in his throat as he gagged and pressed his arm against his nose and mouth.

Malfoy sneered at him, looking every bit the Pureblood supremacist he'd been as a teenager. "Grow a spine, Scamander." With as much disdain as he could muster, he kicked the male soldier in the ribs.

There was the tell-tale crunch of breaking bones. The soldier winced.

Hermione glowered up at him. "What's wrong with you?"

"Choke on it and die, Granger. I'll not be lectured by anyone, least of all a hypocrite with a bleeding heart like you. These wankers deserve everything they get." He dropped to his knees, set the flamethrower aside, and searched through the male soldier's pockets. "Ah, here it is." With a triumphant little smirk on his face, he held up a small, round device cased in dark-grey carbon.

"Turn it off, then," Hermione said, fighting a renewed wave of nausea as she looked into the raw, bleeding, and blackened face of the now unconscious female soldier. It wasn't even possible to tell what the colour of her skin had been, anymore.

It was surprisingly easy to switch the damn things off, too. After they'd done so, they all just stayed where they were for a few seconds, unsure of how to proceed.

Rolf, greener in the face than ever, held his wand up again. In a croaky, broken little voice, he said, "Lumos."

When a sphere of pure, white light emanated from the wand, everyone stared in shock and awe.

Hermione was the first to snap out of it. She pulled her wand from her sleeve, held it to the female soldier's face, and said, "Vulnera Sanentur."

Malfoy snorted derisively. "Killjoy."

"We still need them," Luna said, after healing the male soldier. "They probably won't want to help us with their faces burnt off."

"No, but it still feels good to see them writhing in agony," Daphne said from behind Hermione. She spoke in a quiet tone. Her voice was shaking.

It wasn't as if Hermione didn't understand. In the abstract, she too did not feel an ounce of sympathy for the Malleus and agreed that they deserved getting their faces burnt off – in the abstract. Seeing it happen right in front of her eyes, being partly responsible for it…well, that was a different matter entirely. It didn't feel quite right to her, the way part of her had hoped it would. She had lost people, too. As much as she believed revenge to be wrong, she did feel that someone had to pay for all the misery. Now, she couldn't even derive any sort of satisfaction from giving some of these freaks a proper payback. She didn't even know whether that was a good or a bad thing – probably a little bit of both. Things weren't quite as black-and-white as she'd once believed.

"So, what now?" Rolf said, hurrying to open the door leading from the kitchen to the backyard, to get rid of the stink.

"Now, Friendly Neighbourhood Hufflepuff, you step back and watch a professional at work," Malfoy said, rose to his feet, plucked his wand from his jacket pocket, and pointed it at the still knocked-out male soldier. "Rennervate." There was a brief flash of bright, red light.

The soldier stirred, opened his eyes, and gasped. Immediately, he tried to raise his bound hands, groaning when that didn't work. His eyes darted about wildly.

Malfoy held up the suppressor, smiling. "Looking for this?"

The young man's face paled. He tried to sit, but thought otherwise when he saw that five wands were being pointed at his head.

"I believe," Malfoy said, "that the expression you're looking for is 'oh, crap'. It would be appropriate, too. I won't mice words for your benefit. I got to say, you're pretty fucked." It was so, so strange to hear him, of all people, cussing like that.

"You won't get away with this," the soldier said, trying and failing to keep his voice steady. He had an Irish accent, something none of them had heard in quite a while.

"You won't be there to witness it." The smile melted off Malfoy's face. Coldly, he beheld the soldier, before he said, "Imperio."

The soldier closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and sighed. When he looked at Malfoy again, his eyes were a little glazed over, a little absent.

"You're sure this is working?" Rolf said.

Malfoy arched an eyebrow at him. "You do know who you're talking to, right?"

Rolf only raised his hands in a defensive motion. It was obvious that he and Malfoy would never be the best of chums.

That was another thing Hermione could blame neither of them for. Sometimes, people just weren't compatible with each other. It was just a little unfortunate when they were then forced to live together. Wasn't that the plot of some sitcom or other her parents had enjoyed watching? She couldn't quite recall. Not that it mattered. She pocketed the female soldier's suppressor and stood up. "We need to make them call for a backup patrol car. We don't all fit into one."

"It would look suspicious as hell, too," Daphne said.

"All right then," Malfoy said, still pointing his wand at the serenely smiling male soldier. "What was that saying again? There's no time like the present."

2 In order for Pansy's plan to work even remotely, they needed to coordinate their efforts with absolute precision. For the first time in way too long, the general mood at the camp was positive, even hopeful. People were buzzing about, packing up their things and doing what they could to inflict as much damage as possible on the Muggles who'd come snooping. In the meantime, Bill and Fleur were moving his brother to a different location. They didn't want to tell anyone where, and Pansy could understand why: if someone got captured, they'd probably be forced to reveal his hiding place.

Truth be told, Pansy believed that someone this terminally ill shouldn't be forced to suffer like that, but it wasn't her call. She understood why his brother and sister-in-law were so hell-bent on protecting him, because that was what people did: they placed their loved ones above everyone else. In their particular case, however, that meant they weren't going to be there to help the others. It was a bit of a wasted effort, too, wasn't it? Even if Weasley the Younger got caught, he was in no condition to reveal any secrets to the enemy. He probably didn't have a month to live. To keep a dying man from getting killed a few weeks early, Bill and Fleur would recuse themselves from the fight. Their loss would be felt, loath as Pansy was to admit this.

They'd argued that their odds of survival were greater if everyone wasn't together during their little diversion tactic, and maybe they even believed this. Pansy hadn't bothered telling them that she didn't buy any of it, because it wouldn't make a difference. Bill and Fleur would do what they had to; they all would. It wasn't a wrong decision, either – not exactly. It just wasn't one that Pansy would make. At least that was what she believed. She didn't have a dying brother to take care of. In theory, making hard decisions was always much less complicated than in reality.

Pansy was standing by the small waterfall, lifting rocks magically and balancing them above, in the trees. They were charmed to explode like bombs once strangers approached. If the Muggles showed up here with their magic suppressors, the rocks would simply rain down on their heads. It was, as Finnegan had called it before he got shot to pieces, a win-win situation – a fitting description, to be sure.

Someone stepped up next to her.

It was Callidora Selwyn. She said, "You're a clever young woman, you know that? Clever, resourceful, and tenacious. No wonder you got sorted into Slytherin."

After briefly glancing at her, Pansy replied, "Thanks. I just wonder why you got sorted into Ravenclaw – no offence."

"None taken." Callidora sounded somewhat amused. "To be honest, I've often wondered about that, myself. I probably wasn't ambitious enough to be a Slytherin. Who knows? The sorting certainly came as a bit of a surprise to me. It's what makes life interesting, isn't it? The unexpected."

"I suppose. Although I could do with some of the old boring and predictable again." Pansy lowered her wand and turned to face Callidora. "What would you be doing now if the apocalypse hadn't happened?"

Callidora arched her thin, dark eyebrows. "The apocalypse? How very dramatic." She laughed lowly. "Well, dear girl, if the apocalypse hadn't happened, I'd be writing a tell-all autobiography that would shock the wizarding world; believe me, I have many interesting things to say – many. I'd make a small fortune off it and then go on book tour. Critics would spew their hatred, but my fans would be at my feet."

A few seconds passed until Pansy realised that the other woman was joking. She chuckled, wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, and shook her head. "I don't know what I'd be doing, either. I do know, however, what I will do if we by some miracle manage to meet up with my friend Draco and his group."

"What's that?"

Pansy's face felt a little warm. She rolled her eyes at herself and her juvenile silliness. "I'm gonna gather all my courage and finally confess my true feelings to a certain someone." She had no idea how she'd expected Callidora to react to the admission, but she had not expect what actually happened.

Callidora's expression softened. She reached out and briefly touched Pansy's upper arm. "Whoever he or she is, they couldn't be luckier."

For a short moment, they just stood there in silence.

Then, Pansy discreetly cleared her throat and snickered. "Anyone out there you're anxious to meet?"

First, it seemed as if Callidora wouldn't answer at all. She looked past Pansy, a wistful expression on her thin face. Then, she smiled a little; it looked both nostalgic and bitter, somehow. "That's a story for another day. I'm gonna go help the Patil girl." After another arm-pat, she turned around and sauntered off.

As Pansy watched her leave, she couldn't help but feel a little bit melancholic. They all had at least one proverbial skeleton in the closet, didn't they?

3 The male soldier, under the Imperius curse, called the closest outpost in Hastings and requested one further patrol car to transport a set of enemies to the capital. The female soldier, meanwhile, drove the Jeep into the garage and explained to Hermione the mechanics of the magic suppression system. She was sitting behind the steering wheel, Hermione to her left.

"See the little switch here?" She pointed at a square metal apparatus that had been welded onto the dashboard, wedged between the steering wheel and the radio. In the middle of that was a silver-coloured switch.

Hermione only nodded. She kept her wand firmly in hand, afraid the Imperius curse might wear off. The odds of that happening were low, but circumstances had taught her to be wary.

The soldier returned the nod. She was a woman of about forty, white, on the short side, and surprisingly muscular. She wore her regrown, light-brown hair pinned up in a braid. From the looks of her, she was probably a good fighter. It was the group's luck that she hadn't counted on being ambushed and taken out by a makeshift flamethrower. "It's what keeps us safe inside our Jeeps and close around them. The radius is about ten square metres."

Going metric, were they? Peculiar. Out loud, Hermione said, "Do you have any idea how it works?"

"No. Only Nox knows how they work."

That was paranoid, but not unexpected. "But what if one breaks down?"

"None ever has."

"Impossible. No, not impossible – improbable. Highly improbable, as a matter of fact."

"It's true, though: none of them has ever broken down – not the portable ones, not the stationary ones."

"Do you know where those are located?"

The soldier said, "Yes and no. I know where the one in Central London is because my brother works there. He's an engineer."

Calling this little titbit 'good news' would be the understatement of the decade. Trying to keep a cool façade, even though it wasn't even necessary, Hermione said, "Can you draw a floor map for us?"

"I can. But you won't be able to get inside."

"We'll see." Hermione plucked the portable suppressor from her jumper's pocket and held it up to scrutinise it. This was a small piece of machinery, identical to hundreds of others. There were also the big ones that covered several square miles in nearly infallible magic suppression fields. At least some of them should, from time to time, experience at least technical hiccups. How likely was it that none of them ever broke down? Not very. That was when a thought occurred to her. Acid sloshed in her stomach. She felt a little dizzy. Could it…no. It couldn't. Could it? There was only one way to find out. With something akin to reverence, she pointed her wand at the thing, and said, "Finite Incantatem."

There was a spark of bright, white light, followed by darkness. After-images bounced before Hermione's eyes. She saw that the female soldier was blinking, too. Had…had this worked? Really? Obviously, she wasn't going to test it here, but it needed to be tested, and soon. Despite lack of confirmation, though, Hermione was fairly convinced that the suppressor was no longer functioning. That was rich, wasn't it? Ironic, in a sense. It had been clear to her that Nox must have some access to magic in order to exert this level of control, yes. But to think that the instruments of domination over the wizarding population were charmed objects, powered by the very thing they were supposed to suppress? It made her want to give in to the temptation of breaking into hysterical laughter.

A moment passed until she managed to gather herself. "If we drive through the checkpoints, will the suppressors they have there affect us?"

"Maybe. I'm not exactly sure, to be perfectly honest with you. It depends on whether the people manning the checkpoints become suspicious or not. Sometimes, they do random sweeps. But the deeper we get into the quarantined zone, the less likely that becomes. Magic suppression is everywhere in there, so extra controls aren't needed."

"We can still do magic inside the Ministry building."

The soldier blinked at her, then frowned. "The Ministry building is ambered."

"Yes, it is. So…how do we get through the checkpoints without getting caught?"

"I don't know that, either. Cross your fingers and hope for the best? Pray? Ward the Jeep?"

The last one was actually not a bad tip.

"That might work." Hermione leaned back and closed her eyes for a few seconds. Her head was aching dully. She then made herself look at the soldier again. "What's your name?"

"Mary Shelley."

Hermione perked up. "Seriously?"

Mary laughed. "Seriously. Though these days, not many people get it anymore. A Yank, of all people, was the first one in forever to get adorably excited about that." Her expression turned soft, pensive. She smiled a little. "Our captain. He's the only one of us field soldiers who actually gets to regularly talk to the man himself. He tries to play it down, but I know that he's one of the few people that Nox actually trusts blindly."

In for a penny, in for a pound. The more they knew about the higher-ups, the better. "What's his name?"

"Josh. Joshua Lucesco, that is. He's a little bit…well, intense, sometimes, but overall a pretty great guy. Treats everyone who deserves it with the outmost respect." She leaned toward Hermione a bit. "He hates you people more than anyone I know – something about how his parents died. I don't know. I tried asking him a number of times, but he kept deflecting, so I gave up. I don't want to come across as nosy."

"Do you, erm…do you perchance know where this person lives?" Hermione's thoughts were racing. Her skin broke up in gooseflesh. If they could get to one of the top officers in the organisation, then they'd have a real shot at finding Nox! Everything depended on it.

Mary looked at her as if she were daft. "Of course I do. We go out sometimes. It's nothing official, but he likes to stay at my place from time to time. Too many ghosts at his mum's house, he says."

And wasn't it just Hermione's luck to have caught this woman, who wasn't only rather chatty whilst being under the Imperius curse, but also the sort-of girlfriend of a higher-up? Of one of the people in Nox's inner circle? This just had to be their luck turning around. It had to be. It had to. She clutched the suppressor in one hand, her wand in the other, and said, "Tell me all about him."

4 The other patrol car arrived shortly afterwards, and with the help of the cursed soldiers, getting them to walk blindly into the ambush was no trouble at all. Malfoy had wanted to fry them, too, but there was no need for that, and everyone else except for Daphne voted against it. Now, they were all in the kitchen, talking about how to proceed. The soldiers were all cursed and sitting meekly at the table, watching their captors in disinterested silence.

"So these magic suppressors are charmed objects designed to suppress every single bit of magic except the kind they're charmed to do?" Luna said, after Hermione had confirmed her theory in the backyard: once the suppressor's charm was disabled, it stopped working altogether.

Hermione nodded. She was leaning against the oversized fridge that stood right next to the door. "I tried switching it back on in the backyard, but it won't work anymore at all. As long as it's running, you can't use Finite Incantatem on them, though. The spell only does what it's supposed to when the device is shut off."

"How in the hell does a Muggle know how to charm a machine?" Daphne said. She pressed her fingertips against her temples and sighed. "This is so weird."

"At least there is a way to shut those things down – the portable ones. No idea how the stationary suppressors work, but they should follow the same principle," Hermione said. "That's good news for us."

"As far as good news go, yeah," Rolf said, looking doubtful. "Kind of, at least."

"Maybe he's not a Muggle," Luna said. She was sitting on the threshold that lead to the backyard. Everyone looked at her. She smiled faintly. "Nox. Maybe he isn't a Muggle at all."

"I don't think so," Hermione said, shaking her head. "Why would a wizard cover the Earth in machines that make his own powers useless? That seems counterproductive to me."

"He does use magic to suppress magic, though. That means he knows what he's doing," Rolf objected.

Daphne gave him a pained look. "Have you forgotten about the droves of wizarding folk who just disappeared? How hard can it be to get at least some of them to help him out? Someone who managed to overtake basically the entire planet probably won't be very squeamish about exploiting his enemies' strengths. I don't think he's a wizard, either. He hates magic too much and does everything to wipe it off the face of the Earth."

Hermione briefly raised her hands. "Let's leave this debate for another time. We need to hurry up a little. What I think we really should be talking about right now is what Mary told us regarding the man she's dating. He's high up in the Malleus's food chain. We need to exploit that."

"Agreed," Daphne said, after casting the uncharacteristically silent Malfoy a nervous little look.

"We should definitely drive to the guy's house, first, and get the lay of the land," Rolf said.

Malfoy, who'd clearly been mulling things over, arms crossed and frowning, looked up. "This is way too convenient to be coincidental. We randomly catch the girlfriend of someone who answers only to Nox? What are the odds?"

"You're saying they were sent here on purpose," Luna said. It wasn't a question. She exchanged a look with her husband. "Well, Hermione was shot on that bridge, so they know she's here. It makes sense to assume they want to lure her out."

"They probably put two and two together and are waiting for us," Malfoy said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "This is a trap."

"Not necessarily. We aren't the only witches and wizards still at large," Daphne said, then made a face. "At least I hope that's true."

"It doesn't even matter," Hermione said, drawing all attention to herself. She shrugged. "We don't have a better plan. This is it. Do I think that the enemy is planning an ambush? I have no idea. Maybe they are. But that doesn't mean we'll fail. We can still use the information we've got from Mary to our advantage."

"I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but Granger has a point." It was Malfoy's turn to get stared at by the others. He gave each of them an irritated look. "What? We literally have no contingency plan. This is it. We can't even run to hide in Wales anymore. Hogsmeade is a death trap. Who knows what's going on inside Hogwarts. We'd never get anywhere near any of those places, and in Pansy's camp, all hell's about to break loose. We have to move forward, trap or no trap."

Grateful for the support, Hermione said, "Exactly. All we have to do is outwit them."

"Out-trap them," Daphne added.

"If it even is a trap," Luna said. "It could still be a coincidence, you know."

"Let's presume it isn't." Hermione covered her hot face with her chilly hands for a moment. "I think I have an idea, but you're not going to like it." She looked squarely at Malfoy.

He only waved off. "Don't hold back. I promise I won't get the vapours. Besides, I'm used to bowing to the interminable wisdom of Granger the Messiah by this point."