CHAPTER 13:

DENOUEMENT

"But don't you see, James? We need to capture them. They're sick, they need treatment."

James Potter rolled his eyes. He was getting sick and tired of Dumbledore preaching at them in the living room at 12 Grimmauld Place. He'd been doing so for hours now, since word of the attack on Malfoy Manor got out. "Tell me, Dumbledore, what do you do with mad dogs? You kill them. These two are little more than mad dogs. About the only good thing they've done is dealing with the Death Eaters, and frankly, all that's going to get them is a quicker death than I originally intended. They threatened my death. Killing them is self-defence, not to mention common sense. You let those damned Death Eaters go with claims of mercy, and look where that got us. You're old, tired, and frankly, senile, you geriatric goat."

Dumbledore's expression became thunderous. "Old I may be, and tired as well…but I intend to choose my successor very carefully. I know for a fact that neither you nor Sirius will be that person. Disturbing developments have come to light about the pair of you. Like the redirection spell you placed on Miss Granger's phone lines, for example. Or the Horcruxes you attempted to create with the deaths of Harry and Hydra." On their shocked looks, Dumbledore nodded grimly. "So, their allegations were true…I wished it weren't, but now everything makes a lot more sense. Your looks, your worsening attitude to everything…you have started down a dark path."

"Oh, don't get started, you sanctimonious hypocrite!" Sirius Black sneered. "You're the one who was sucking Grindlewald's cock and spitting out his crap about the Greater Good! We are the future of Magical Britain, not you!"

"I see. You are beyond all reason," Dumbledore said. "Then I shall have to detain you and bring you to Amelia, where you will await justice for your crimes. And I will seek penance for my mistakes. I have given you too long a leash, it seems, when in truth, I should have kept you muzzled."

James and Sirius grinned viciously, getting their wands out as Dumbledore did the same. "That's the thing, you old wether," James said. "We do what we want. The Potters and the Blacks are Magical Britain. Not the Malfoys or Bones or Riddles…or Dumbledores."

"Do you think you can beat me?" Dumbledore said. "I have forgotten more about magic than you two will ever learn between the pair of you."

"We're young and we have nothing left to lose," Sirius said, all reason gone from his eyes. "Plus, when those monsters get here, they'll be a handy scapegoat. You were tragically killed when they came here to murder us…"

Before the three of them could do anything, however, they heard, distantly, the roar of a chainsaw being revved up. Then, the front door was cut into, before they heard the distinctive buzzing monotone of Frederica Sawyer announce, "HEEEERE'S JOHNNY!" And that's when those present knew that, one way or another, the denouement had come…

There was no time for stealth. The wards prevented Apparition into the property, and the Floo was closed. So the direct approach was needed. Hence using the chainsaw. They hadn't warded the door against more mundane attack.

Hal and Rica had anticipated this moment for a long time. They had intended to take their revenge sooner or later. The Death Eaters attacking and their former guardians putting prices on their heads only gave them the incentive to do so. Shenhua came along because she was their friend.

The Sawyer Twins were not normal people, nor were they nice people. They were monsters, pure and simple, twisted out of shape by circumstances. They had killed the Death Eaters not because it was making the world a better place, though that was a nice side effect. They were killing the Death Eaters because it was removing a threat to them…and because they enjoyed it. They were sadistic monsters, but they wouldn't go out of their way to kill someone not delivered to them…unless they were provoked.

And now, their final target lay waiting. After cutting the hole in the door, though, they didn't barge in straight away. Instead, they took one of the last presents they had from the Rip-Off Church. They didn't get rid of all the grenades. A couple of them were tear gas grenades…and Hal and Rica cast Bubble-Head Charms on themselves and Shenhua. They moved in…and then, they heard Black yell, "Come get some, you monsters!" A door blew open, but nobody went through.

Instead, Hal and Rica pulled the pin on the tear gas grenades, and threw them in after letting them 'cook' for a moment. Instantly, there was coughing and spluttering. Hal barged in, only to be slammed into the wall by a Stunner…cast by Dumbledore, an outline around his head in the cloud of tear gas showing that he had used a Bubble-Head Charm himself.

"No more!" Dumbledore roared, as he sent an Expelliarmus at Rica, sending her and her chainsaw flying. "There will be no more deaths today! I forbid it! You two are sick, and I will cure you!"

His rather impressive, if self-righteous and moralistic tirade was cut off when Shenhua, having spotted the Bubble-Head Charm over Dumbledore's head, threw one of her feidao knives. She had been told of the weakness of the Bubble-Head Charm, that it could easily be ruptured. Dumbledore turned to Shenhua, and gave her a look of pity. "You missed, my dear girl."

"I don't miss, Gandalf," she sneered. "Having trouble breathing?"

Dumbledore's eyes widened, as he doubled over, coughing. He swiftly reapplied the Bubble-Head Charm, but the delay cost him. Shenhua, however, wasn't the one who took advantage of it. A Stunner slammed into his back, causing him to somersault into a wall, where he slid down, upside down. And Potter and Black came through, having Bubble-Head Charms of their own.

Immediately, she threw her feidao knives, sending four at them. The first two were sent at their hands, the other two at their heads, intending to burst the Bubble-Head Charms. Potter had gotten hit by the knives sent his way, losing his wand and having his nose grazed by the knives, but Black had dodged the others, and sent a Cutting Curse her way. She tried to dodge, but it hit her in the guts, and with a snarl of pain, she collapsed. It probably felt like getting shot in the guts would, and she wasn't a fan.

Black immediately turned back to Potter, and re-cast the Bubble-Head Charm, only to be swept off his feet by Rica, who had recovered. She got to her own feet and kicked him in the head, knocking him out, only for Potter to grab her by the throat and slam her against the wall. "You crazy bitch! Like mother, like daughter!" he roared.

Rica was being choked, but she was far from helpless, kicking out hard into his groin. However, that only caused Potter to increase the pressure. "I'm going to make him watch as I take you both," he snarled. "You and the Chinese whore."

Shenhua laughed in pain as she struggled to stand, pushing herself up against the wood-panelled wall, and leaving a smear of blood as she did so. "I'm Taiwanese, you stupid Limey." She threw a knife at him, which he dodged, and bringing Rica in front of him as a human shield, though the mute girl promptly elbowed him hard in the stomach. She then twisted in his loosened grip as he gagged and retched, before bearing her quarry down to the floor with a silent scream of fury, throttling the very man who had tried to throttle her.

Potter gagged and thrashed for a moment, before he managed to kick out, sending Rica flying off him, and as he got to his feet, he sent an Expelliarmus at Shenhua, sending her knives flying everywhere, along with her. Potter then strode over to Rica, and stomped down onto her chest, hard. She screamed silently in pain, though the crack of what had to be a few ribs was certainly audible. "Yes…make him watch as I fuck you both…and then, I'll slit your throats when I'm done, make another Horcrux, make him watch as your blood runs…"

Suddenly, he stiffened, convulsing as actinic worms of electrical discharge crawled over his body. He collapsed, his bowels loosening as they did so, to reveal Hal propped against the wall, Mjolnir in hand. He didn't have his electrolarynx in hand, so he settled for rasping out in the loudest whisper he could, "You talk too much."

With that, he cast strong sleeping spells on the three wizards present, before whispering into Rica's ear, "Can you heal yourself?"

Rica nodded, knowing Shenhua needed help more urgently. Grimacing as she held her hand to her ribs, healing them, she watched as Hal went over to Shenhua, and began healing her stomach wounds. "Uhh," Shenhua groaned in pain as her wounds healed over. Then, as he finished, she looked down at her healed body through the hole in her qipao. "Thanks. But just so you know, I'm sending you the bill for this dress. These things are expensive, you know."

The joke caused the Sawyer Twins to laugh, Rica a little more painfully than Hal, due to her healing ribs. Then, Hal went over to first Potter, then Black. He opened their eyes and used Legilimency on them. He nodded grimly, before he fished his electrolarynx out and said, "Their Horcruxes are here in this house..."

"They made two Horcruxes each?" Shenhua asked.

Rica and Hal nodded. They were back in their hideout, having brought home Potter and Black…along with the Horcruxes. Black had turned his enchanted motorbike into one, while the other was put, rather predictably, onto a very lurid painting of two witches and a wizard having it off in his own bedroom. Potter, on the other hand, had made one of his rings a Horcrux, and the other was a simple pebble, buried under the small garden of 12 Grimmauld Place. At least he tried to keep them separate, living as he did away from 12 Grimmauld Place normally.

Still, they found, thanks to Hal's pilfered memories, another Horcrux, presumably Voldemort's, in the form of a rather gaudy locket. That, they had promptly sent to the Goblins to destroy, leaving a note with Dumbledore. These, however, they were going to destroy themselves.

They had drained the fuel and oil from the motorbike, just in case, using magic to vanish every last drop of petroleum product from it. Then, in the warehouse, they set it alight with Fiendfyre. And now, they were about to do the same to these three last Horcruxes.

Fiendfyre was not something to be taken lightly: the cursed fire was notoriously difficult to control, somewhere between the fires of napalm and the fury of a nuclear blast. But the Sawyer Twins had been born in the flames of Fiendfyre, the fire that ravaged the cellar of 12 Grimmauld Place when Potter and Black's attempt at killing them backfired. They rarely used it, but they knew it.

So, in a specially warded room, with Potter and Black strapped to gurneys that were tilted almost vertically, they prepared to finish this. "Wake them, Shenhua," rasped Rica.

Shenhua grinned viciously, and began slapping them awake. "Wakey-wakey, hands off snakey…is that what you British say?" Shenhua cheerfully asked. "Wake up, and smell the ashes…"

Potter and Black had just enough time to wake up when they saw the Sawyer Twins unleash Fiendfyre on the three Horcruxes. Judging by their expressions, they thought they had gone into a nightmare that they wanted to wake up from…but they wouldn't. Screams erupted from their throats, of fury and despair, screams echoed by plumes of smoke that escaped from the Horcruxes…their soul fragments. It was a pyroclastic dirge, a funeral pyre for men who weren't dead yet, if only by dint of the fact they were still breathing. But their end was inevitable now.

Soon, all that was left were twisted, blackened remains. Meeting Black's eyes, Hal smirked, and showed the twisted remains of the handlebars from the motorbike, before throwing it onto the ashes. "Your Horcruxes are gone," he rasped through his electrolarynx. "You will follow them, sooner than we'd like, but sooner than you thought."

"You can't do this to us!" James Potter yelled. "It wasn't meant to be this way! You two should have died! Why couldn't you have just died, and left us to have the life we wanted?!"

"If you hadn't put a price on our heads," Rica buzzed, "we may not have bothered coming over here for revenge. But you made a mistake."

"Yes…" Black said. "I should have drowned you the moment you were left with me."

"And I should've throttled you in the crib!" Potter said. "Werewolf sons always turn out to be monsters!"

Hal shook his head. "We were not born monsters. We were made into monsters. By you."

"And it is a truism that monsters turn on their makers," Rica said. "Yes, we are monsters…but we also kill worse monsters."

"Including you…" Hal concluded.

What followed was nothing short of catharsis. Years of ill-will and bad feelings culminating in an orgy of violence that lasted for hours. For Potter and Black, it felt like an eternity.

For the Sawyer Twins, it felt like mere minutes.

It didn't quite satisfy them. Perhaps nothing they could do to Potter and Black would ever satisfy them. They had over a decade's worth of rancour to vent.

Yes, they were monsters. They would always be monsters now. But here, they had gone after the worst monsters, the ones who thought nothing of killing children for their own power, or for killing others because their blood wasn't pure enough.

In the end, covered in blood and viscera, Hal and Rica looked at each other (Shenhua going to bed, deciding she didn't want to watch this prolonged torture), and they knew they felt empty inside, just like the hollowed out carcasses of Potter and Black. Justice had been served, true, but they didn't feel as happy as they had hoped. Then again, much of the anger, the hatred, that was now gone too.

Let's have a shower, Hal, Rica sent to him over their link. Let's just clean up, sleep, and go home. It's over.

Hal didn't reply, save for a nod. And the two twisted, distorted souls made their way out of the bloodstained chamber. The door shut on this chapter of their lives, hopefully forever…

CHAPTER 13 ANNOTATIONS:

So, it's all over bar the shouting. All that's left is the final chapter. It's been something of a ride, but this story is finally over. I may do a short sequel based on the 'Greenback Jane' arc, and maybe a slightly longer one based on the 'Roberta's Blood Trail' arc, but Disquiet will end with the next chapter. It's about time, I really do need more completed fics under my belt.

Review-answering time! Fez8745: Malcolm named those units after Professor Bernard Quatermass, a character from a series of science fiction serials from the 50s, and the source of my username. While Quatermass' creator Nigel Kneale hated Doctor Who (I think it was a major case of sour grapes for the most part, IMO), Quatermass himself may actually exist in the Whoniverse. In Remembrance of the Daleks, oblique references are made to 'Bernard' and the British Rocket Group, and the British Rocket Group is behind the Mars probe in The Christmas Invasion.

No numbered annotations this time.