Title: We Stand Alone Together

Summery: Voldemort's followers were not bound only to England. While the events of Deathly Hallows were taking place, thousands upon thousands of his Death Eaters and magical followers were beginning their world-wide conquest of the globe. Eventually, their lightening war spread to a very important province of the Middle East, where the only thing standing in their way were two hundred soldiers, determined not to give up until the last man was down.

Rated: M for language and heavy war scenes/violence.

Brought to you by: Wesker888, the author behind such works as Just One Dance, For You I Will, and Crawling Under The Surface.

Disclaimer: I own only the characters and the plot. Nothing more, nothing less.

Author's Notes: This was another chapter I had pre-drafted a while ago, along with the previous chapter. This is the first and likely the only time you will ever see a character from the books appear in my story. Go nuts as to where this fits in in the timeline, although it'll all (hopefully) add up come the end, haha.

The Visitor

She came that next morning, when the sun had risen partly above the dunes and the first of the weary soldiers were beginning to awaken from their slumber and prepare what breakfast they had. She appeared on the outskirts of the circle of shacks that they jokingly referred to as a village, not wanting to scare them by teleporting right into their compound. They had had enough surprise visitors in the last month, and the last thing she wanted to give them was another target to shoot out of shock.

French rifleman Cormac Rousseau was the soldier on duty when she arrived. The scraggly-faced twenty-eight-year-old with a lazy eye, six foot four and built like a twig, was in the seventh hour of his twenty-four hour watch, and already he felt dead on his feet. His eyelids would slowly close and then almost immediately snap open, and every once in a while the Enfield he held would slide off his shoulder and hit his foot to snap him fully awake, only for him to slide it back on and repeat the process some time later.

It was during this cycle, as he bent down to retrieve the rifle and wondered when Rene Lestat was bringing him something to eat and keep him energized, when he picked his head up and saw her off on one of the dunes, coming towards him. From a distance, all he could really see was the dark cloak she had enshrouded herself in. That cloak was all he needed; he had lost several good friends to those people, and he recognized it immediately.

Startled, he jumped to his feet and aimed his rifle at the figure. He did not fire immediately; he should have, he thought, let the company know the enemy was here. But so far whoever it was had not struck him down, and that was curious. Within this range, that green light could have easily struck him down, so where was it?

It kept coming, and finally he pulled the bolt back on his rifle to cock it and shouted, "Arrêt! Les mains dans l'air!"

The figure stopped in its tracks and raised a hand.

"J'entre la paix," a woman's voice said in his language. "Je souhaite parler avec votre commandant. J'ai des nouvelles pour lui."

Cormac blinked. Information? For the Scottish captain? What information could this woman have?

He weighed his options, as few as they were. Either kill her or let her in. Killing her was the favorable choice; unless she had a colored spell that could raise the dead, one less cloaked woman would not be missed by him or their lads. True, she had not assaulted him, and by rule, he was not supposed to shoot her if she was surrendering unless she attacked. But really, could anyone blame him for killing one of these people? Of course not; if anything, he'd be credited as a hero for it.

At the same time, again, she had not attacked him. That may have meant she had not come with intent to kill, unlike the last prisoner they had taken. And she had information for them. Well, he thought, what was taking one more prisoner, especially a willing one? The more information they had, the better off they all were.

He was wide awake now, as he lowered his rifle and nudged his head to the side to indicate that she was allowed in. She pressed forward, not wasting any time, and he followed barely five feet behind her, rifle steady, trigger discipline for in case she tried anything funny.

Danny was cracking open a can of tuna and had just happened to glance up by accident to see Cormac bringing the cloaked woman in. He rose to his feet, cocking his Beretta handgun, so abruptly that Marek and Matthews looked up startled from their own meals to see the cause. When they did, they reached for their weapons and rose to stand with them.

All around them, the men were beginning to rise to their new arrival. Staff Sergeant Ryan stepped forward, shotgun in hands. Doc came out of the medical shed, watching with an expressionless face. Stern kept his hand on his holster, but did not remove his sidearm just yet. All of the men either had weapons ready or were about to ready them, and none of them looked ready to trust her.

Sergeant Callard pushed forward as Cormac stopped his prisoner in the center of the slowly forming circle of troops. He took one look at her, then strode forward towards the French soldier with a furious expression.

"Quel est le sens de ceci?" he demanded, the words shooting out of his mouth, making the private cringe. "Vous amenez un d'eux dans notre camp? Vous quels étaient pensant?"

"Elle a demandé une réunion avec Wallace de Capitaine-"

"Je ne soigne pas si elle a demandé une réunion avec le Pape! Nous ne laissons pas juste des gens dans nous ne savent pas, nous fait?"

"Je ne suis pas venu vous nuire," the woman interrupted, her voice calm and soothing. "Je souhaite parler avec votre commandant. Il y a des choses il a besoin de savoir."

Scott Wallace pushed to the front of the crowd when he heard what sounded like his name come from Cormac's mouth, Lieutenants Port and Hunter at either side. As the woman spoke, her eyes fell upon him as he took another step towards her. She came forward, ignoring the sputtering remarks of the French sergeant and the guns raised at her, as she reached for her hood and pulled it off to reveal her face.

She was a relatively young woman, although her exact age was difficult for any of the men to pinpoint. Her hair was a mousy brown color that fell down and curled just at her slim shoulders. Her eyes were as green and as sharp as diamonds, twinkling over a small but stout nose, and lips that were slightly curved into a faint smile. She was thin, curves not profound but not unnoticed by the men, even with the cloak. She was attractive, not in the way that the younger men had pinned pictures of to the inside doors of the lavatories for "alone time", but the kind of attractive that the older men fell in love with and married, and for those married men, it was an attractive they preferred. She had a face that had shown a great deal of suffering in recent years, and yet there was also a childlike playfulness that seemed impossible for age to rid of.

"Are you Captain Wallace?" she asked, for the first time in her light English tone.

"Who's asking?" came Scott's naturally untrusting reply.

The woman smiled. Her robes were of a midnight blue color, mistaken easily for black at a distance, and easy for any of them to take her for an enemy. Yet her hood was round, not pointed, and she wore no mask, and her face, while pained, did not have the gaunt, sunken look to it that the other girl had. Nor did she show any signs of insanity. The more he examined her, the more Wallace began to believe she was not like the others.

"My name is Nymphadora Tonks," she introduced herself to him. "And I am on your side. I'm here to help you."

"And how do we know you're not trying to trick us?" Hunter, ever the suspicious one, wanted to know.

This woman named Tonks only smiled at him, and then she looked around at the rest of them men. Twice her eyes fell over Danny, who guiltily felt butterflies swarm in his stomach. They finally settled on Sykes, who had hobbled out of the medical shack on his crutch to see the commotion. She looked at the crutch he leaned on, then at the leg bound in its brace.

"How did you break your leg?" she asked.

Every other head turned to the wounded man. Sykes shifted uncomfortably.

"Got crushed by a giant's club," he answered, cringing inwardly at how absurd it sounded.

"How long ago?"

"Three and a half weeks." This came from Doc.

"Would you mind removing your brace? Just for a moment."

Sykes hesitated, looking from Doc to Wallace for the go-ahead. The medic looked uncertain, and he did not want to agree to something that might end up badly. The captain did not take his eyes off the woman. He studied her face, studied her eyes, weighing the decision in his mind. She smiled at them, but not with the fake pretense of innocence that he had been trained to see in prisoners. If she was planning an ill deed at all, she kept it hidden, maybe even from her own thoughts.

"Go ahead, Sykes."

The wounded radioman just stared at him. Wallace tore his gaze away from her to nod to him.

"Go ahead, lad," he repeated.

Slowly, hesitantly, Sykes placed his crutch against the wall of one of the structures and then placed his back against it. He then, with some difficulty, raised his leg high enough to untie the three buckles, one by own, with shaking hands. Someone- Finn, it looked like- stepped forward to help, but Sykes held up a hand to stop him, a silent statement of self-reliance. He pulled the brace off and let it drop to the ground, then got his crutch and used it to stand again, keeping his leg as straight as he could.

"Now, you may feel some discomfort..." As she spoke, Tonks pulled out a long thin stick- one they all immediately recognized- did a swishing motion and pointed it at his leg.

"Episky!" she said.

They all heard a soft snap! sound and then Sykes bellowed in pain and fell onto his back, clutching his leg and rocking from side to side. Hunter pulled out his Glock and raised it, his itchy finger on the trigger and ready to shoot on the spot, but Wallace grabbed his arm and held it in place. The lieutenant gaped at his C.O., but Wallace just shook his head.

"Sssson of a BITCH!"roared Sykes. Angrily, he leapt to his feet and- before God, Satan, and every other flabbergasted soul in between- strode over to her in a fit rage.

"What the fuck are you doing? Huh?!" he demanded, marching right up and yelling into her face. "I oughta shove that twig up your arse, ya bleedin' wench! I oughta...I oughta...I...I..."

The words died in his throat as his rage melted into shock. He blinked twice, and then looked down at his legs. He raised his right leg- the one that had been broken in a brace for over three weeks- and lifted his knee to his chest without a problem, then brought it back down nice and sturdy onto his foot.

"Bloody hell." His head shot back up. "You fixed me."

She smiled at him. He then raised his unbroken left leg and held his arms out at his sides, so that all his support was on his right leg. Doc stepped forward, ready to hold him up if needed, but the radioman shook his head slightly. There was no pain on his face, only concentration; his leg held as if it had never been broken.

Smiling in glee, he returned to his normal position and turned to the men. "She fixed me! She fixed me! Look at this, lads, I'm all set again!"

He then did something so uncharacteristically Sykes, jumping in the air and clicking his heels together like a 1940s American movie star. And then he was off, jogging around the huts, running like the runner he had always been. The men began to cheer as he took off; some even jogged behind him, cheering him on. He ran with ease, as he had always ran, and his face was that of a boy who had been grounded and then was finally allowed to go out and play again.

Doc's mouth was frozen into a large "O" of surprise at seeing his patient fully recovered from a bad break months before he should have recovered. While he had never been a religious man, this right here was nothing short of a miracle.

Wallace stiffled a chuckle at the medic's dumbfounded face and then turned his attention back to the visitor with new found appreciation.

"You've convinced me, Miss Nympe...Nympha..."

"Just Tonks, please," she corrected. "And I'm a Mrs."

She was already married. Danny could not help feeling just a tad disappointed.

"Very well, Mrs. Tonks," Wallace complied. "What can I do for you?"

"For a start, have your men please lower their weapons."

He looked at his remaining men who still had weapons trained on her and nodded. They lowered, some quickly and easily, some more slow and tense. Hunter did not take his resentful eyes off her as he holstered.

"Now," she continued, "please take me to your headquarters. We can talk there."

The captain nodded. "If it's alright, I would like my officers and N.C.O.s to listen."

"Whatever you wish. But we need to hurry, I don't have much time."

"Going to report our location to your friends?" spat Hunter, ignoring his C.O.'s glare.

"No," Tonks answered, "I need to feed my son when he wakes up."

Married AND with a kid. Danny cursed as she was lead off with the officers. He had really struck out here; not that it was anything new, with his track record.

Well, he thought as he headed for the headquarters, might as well sit in on the debriefing. Maybe get a clue on what is going on.

Maybe even learn why all this was going on.

He was the youngest rank in the room, he realized with a smug sense of pride. The three surviving officers- Wallace, Port, and Hunter- were at the head of the room like judges on a trial, and the surviving noncoms- Price, Grimes, Ryan, Carter, Pratt, and Keaney- were alongside the left-and-right-hand walls like a jury. Lieutenant Hirko, Commander Bakunin, and Sergeant Weber held their own spot near the bottom right exit. Even Stern and Charlie, who were not sergeant or higher, still outranked him, if only by a little. Danny, being a private, probably was not privileged to this meeting, but no one was kicking him out, so he nestled into his chair to listen.

"Alright," Wallace began. "Please begin. Tell us what you know."

Tonks brought her hand to her forehead, thinking. She turned to look around at all of them, and as she did, Danny thought he saw her eyes change color, from green to a sky blue. He blinked and leaned forward, but her eyes were then green again, so he settled back and dismissed the thought to lack of sleep.

"Where do I start..." she lowered her hand and looked up at the officers. "How much do you already know?"

"Virtually nothing," was the captain's answer. "What we know came from the prisoner we took, and the information she gave us was hazy at best."

"What did she tell you?"

"Well," Charlie piped up, "she went on a great deal about magic and a dark lord and something about doomsday, but, I mean...lunatic ramblings, really."

"Anything else?"

"Um...called us 'dirty Mudbloods' a lot-"

At this, Tonks flinched as though she had just been slapped in the face.

"Don't use that word," she said. "It is a horribly derogatory term for what you are."

"And what are we, exactly?" asked Port defensively.

"Non-magical people. Regular human beings. The proper term is 'Muggle.'"

"Still sounds like herpes," Danny muttered. Sitting two spaces away, Price smiled.

"'Non-magical people...'" Wallace repeated slowly, eying her cautiously. "What exactly do you mean by that? Are you going to try and convince me magic exists, like she did?"

"How can a man die from green light and some words?" Tonks asked in return, a knowing smile dancing on her face. "How can an entire base's power fail for no reason? I just healed a broken leg that still had weeks to heal with one word. The question should not be if magic exists, but instead, after all you've seen, how can you magic does not exist?"

Well, mused Danny, I was hoping she'd bullshit that answer. Get the idea of magic out of our heads. That got shot in the ass.

As juvenile as he was a good portion of the time, Danny had never been one to buy into the idea of magic. He had watched Disney movies as a child- who had not?- but even at age four he had a bit of a grasp of the difference between cartoon and reality. The reality was that magic, REAL magic, did not exist, and while it was fun to wish for a magic wand to solve the world's problems, every sane human knew it was not realistic to search for one.

This woman, coming into their camp and spewing all of this mythical knowledge, was threatening that line between fantasy and reality, and Danny was not comfortable with that. He, as did the rest of the company, liked having the knowledge that everything had a rational explanation- or at least, that could be explained without dragging the hand of God into the conversation. Bringing a concept like magic into the mix only messed that up for them. If magic was real, then what ELSE was real?

He looked around at the others and was pleased to see the same doubtful expressions. Even after the attacks on their unit, even after watching a man's leg heal right in front of them, none of them wanted to admit magic was real.

Then Stern spoke, and there was a general feeling of relief from the others at the physicist putting in his two cents.

"Pardon me, ma'am," he said, holding up a hand, "but what you're insinuating simply isn't possible."

"Why not?" Tonks turned her argument towards him. "You just saw it with your own eyes. Why don't you believe it?"

"Because we live in a world where science explains how everything works. We know why an apple falls from a tree, we know what is happening when we flip a switch and turn on a light bulb, and we know how a telephone works. We know why it rains, we know why it gets windy, why there are tsunamis. We know all this because science and math and cultured minds have found the answers. Is there magic involved? If electricity and the elements of nature are to be considered magic, then possibly, but we have answers for them too, so they're not. So forgive me, but with all the knowledge we have, how can we take a silly concept like magic seriously?"

There was a general murmur of approval from the senior noncoms. Tonks sighed.

"I'm not here to argue this," she said, "but I will ask you this: in the weeks you've been traveling, there has been nothing to convince you otherwise? Nothing you've seen that made you think, made you question things?"

Stern opened his mouth to retort, then closed it. They all knew they had; skeletal winged horses, men with the lower halves of horses, giants, men dying without appearing to be wounded. All of which none of them could explain logically.

Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the glass top they had found at their base. He held it up to Tonks, who crossed over upon seeing it.

"We found this in Weber's tent," he explained, placing it in her palm. "The day of the base attack. It freaked out when Danny tried to open it."

Wallace frowned. "Why wasn't I informed of this?"

"At the time, we weren't sure if it was a bomb or not, sir." It was Price who spoke up this time. "We didn't want to cause panic."

"So you decided to keep it among yourselves instead of bringing a potential bomb threat to my attention?"

The sergeant was silent. Danny was trying to sink into his seat, to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. Stern suddenly found his boots more interesting, and was staring at them, unwilling to look up at the C.O.

Wallace shook his head and looked to Weber. "Is this true?"

"Ja, Herr Captain." Weber nodded. "It was among my treasures, but it was not one I had acquired myself."

"I would think not," said Tonks. She held it up for the room to see. "This is a Pocket Sneakoscope. We discovered they planted it at the other bases they attacked as well."

"Pocket what?" Carter questioned.

"Sneakoscope. It's a magic detector. It goes off whenever someone is doing something untrustworthy near-by."

"So it's like a burglar alarm," noted Grimes.

"In a way, yes. We learned that they plant it in the camps and wait for someone to notice it. We don't know what the purpose of it is, aside from maybe making the targets jumpy before they attack."

"You keep saying 'they.'" Wallace pointed out. "Who are 'they?'"

The woman paused in her speech for a moment. She handed the top back to Stern, who carefully placed it in his pocket, and looked around at all of them. Danny saw her expression change to a more sullen, grave one as she turned back to the captain.

""The Death Eaters," she answered finally.

"Death Eaters?" Pratt wondered, as Danny felt a chill go down his spine. It was such a simple term, yet it had such a sinister feeling behind it.

"What you have to understand is that the majority of the wizarding world thinks that Muggles deserve to be respected. There is some age-old prejudice, yes, from those who consider themselves 'superior,' but it's mostly banter. We believe that wizards and Muggles can co-exist, provide we don't flaunt our magic."

That was simple enough for them to understand, the wizarding stuff notwithstanding. Prejudice was no stranger; it was something the human race had dealt with for centuries.

"But there is a portion, growing in power in recent years," Tonks continued, "that believe that Muggleborns are a disease; something unclean that needs to be exterminated. These are the Death Eaters. And their leader is the worst of them all."

"That would be their 'Dark Lord,' then," said Ryan. "Who is he?"

She answered him, but not in the way they had expected. Instead of speaking it, she crossed over to Captain Wallace, pulled a piece of paper out of her robes, and pressed it into his palm. He unfolded it and read what was written upon it, then frowned.

"Volde-?"

"Shh!" Tonks put her finger to her lips. "Don't say the name out loud. The Death Eaters will be on us in seconds if you do."

She stepped back to the center of the room as Scott passed the slip to Port to pass around the room. Each man, upon receiving it, took a look and either frowned in confusion or snorted in amusement before passing it on.

When the note made its way to Danny, he took one look at the name and immediately burst into laughter.

"What the fuck kind of name is that?" he blurted out. "I know evil lords have to have the most ridiculous names ever, but come on. He should have just called himself 'Lord I-didn't-think-this-part-through.' It explains it fine enough."

He shook his head and passed it along for the remainder of the circle to read, until it eventually made its way back to the captain. Wallace crumpled it up and threw it into the wastebasket.

"Okay," he returned his focus to Tonks. "So this Lord...Person...Thing, I don't know, he wants to rule the world?"

"He wants to rule a perfect world," she corrected.

"And how does he expect to create this perfect world?"

"By removing those he views as inferior. By eliminating what he believes to be the filth that infects the magic blood. She looked at all of them, one after the other, before her eyes fell slowly and strongly on Scott.

"In short, he wants to wipe out all Muggleborns."

Sykes sat on the edge of the camp, stretching his legs, wearing his PT running gear. It had been a month since he had last had a good jog, and now he was ready to test his legs out again.

"Care for some company?"

He looked up as Doc approached him, wearing the same attire but with a headband under his roots and a water bottle in each hand. He looked slightly ridiculous, but Sykes said nothing.

"'Course," he replied, standing up. "Should warn you, though, I'm a bit out of shape from being laid up."

"Well, that's fine. You should take it easy anyway, you were still laid up this morning.

"Aye, but it feels loads better, seriously. It's like brand new now."

"All the same, go easy on it."

Sykes smirked and nodded. Then as Doc lifted his leg back to stretch it out, his face turned sheepish.

"Hey, listen, mate," he said. "I, uh...I know I've been a right bastard patient-"

"Spencer, Doc warned, now stretching out his other leg. "Given your situation, it was perfectly reasonable for you to act out. You don't need to-"

"I just wanted to say thanks...you know, for putting up with my shit and all. Not giving up."

The medic finished his stretch and patted the runner on the back.

"Happy to assist," he said.

They finished stretching out their limbs and prepared to go. Sykes said they would only do a mile; four times around the shacks, he estimated. That seemed easy enough.

They both got into starting position. Doc opened his mouth to sound the three-two-one countdown when Sykes shouted, "Ready, GO!"

They took off, and Sykes pushed ahead, and the grace and speed in which he ran was so much so that Doc stopped for a moment to admire it. He ran like a gazelle, his feet slapping the sand with each landing, his legs leaping forward one after the other, his arms pulling him forward as it he were swinging on jungle vines. He ran with all the skill that years of running had given him, as though the accident had never happened, as though he had never gone a month without running.

Doc allowed himself a smile and a head shake before he took off after him.

As a medic, the wounded men took priority over everything else. You treated them, you nursed them, you did everything you could for them. Overtime, you eventually developed a bond, a connection, because any road they went down you as their physician had to go with them. Sometimes, the patients never fully healed. Sometimes, the patients died. And sometimes, either through your actions or some other miracle, the patients made a full recovery.

And if that happened, be sure you were good to them, because they may just ask you to run with them.

French translations for this chapter:

Cormac 1: Halt! Hands in the air!

Tonks 1: I come in peace. I wish to speak to your commander. I have information for him.

Callard 1: What is the meaning of this? You bring one of them into our camp? What were you thinking?

Cormac 2: She requested a meeting with Captain Wallace-

Callard 2: I don't care if she requested a meeting with the Pope! We do not let people in whom we do not know, do we?

Tonks 2: I did not come here to harm you. I wish to speak with your commander. There are things he needs to know.

Rough translations this time, I didn't really have time to get them properly translated. I use the Free Translations website and I'm fairly certain they're not very accurate, but they're close enough.

Lemme know what you think, and I'll see you next time. Peasoup.