A/N: This is the end of the 'Assault on St. Mungo's' Story arc. Thanks for everyone who is still reading this; we're about to get back to some fluff and plot. Trust me when I say this was a needed part for the overall storyline for the rest of the story to work.
*FYI, I posted a special Valentine's Day chapter last friday if you missed it as a wedding present to myself and my fans.*
Knowing when to fight is just as important as knowing how.
Terry Goodkind, Faith of the Fallen
I paused and steeled my nerves as I realized I was on the first floor. I decided to disillusion myself, just in case I was walking into a trap. Okay, I know I probably am, but still... The fire-sprinklers were going off here, too, making a type of waterfall down the concrete steps to the morgue. Din from the fire alarm mixed with the quarantine alarm, and I did everything I could think of to ignore it. I looked around the hallway; near one end were rising stairs, the other end went down. I had no idea where it had gone. It could have double-backed just to lose my trail.
Dammit, I need to find this thing! I couldn't be certain why it seemed to important to stop it, but I'd been right about the coming Dark and the corpses. I'm trusting my... gut. They were just animated corpses, but a kind that the Wizarding World had never seen before. But they could burn, and I had the Elder Wand. If there was a link between Stick and Stone, I might be able to sense it.
I couldn't tell if it was the adrenaline, or just sheer willpower, but it was like a switch went off in my head. I was instantly calm and rational, when I probably should have been freaking out like my wife had. A type of coldness went over me, once I took a moment to consider it, I realized that my mind had gone to a very calm, quiet place. The awareness stretched out in that smallest infinitesimal fraction of time, where all moral qualms were gone. I exist, and because I exist, anything opposed to me existing must die. I knew that thinking like this wasn't normal, but I also knew that I could worry about this later.
I needed to twist the Hominem Revelio spell. It was just like Specialis Revelio, wasn't it?
Sweeping the Elder Wand, I knew what to cast. "Mortuus Revelio." My vision swam with dead bodies all around me, but I was able to filter it all out. I spread my senses out and found the one blip in my senses that scrambled with fear, moved with that unnatural quickness the dead should never have, and knew it was the Inferi I was looking for. It moved too fast, and it was definitely trying to get somewhere. It just seemed... brighter, as if the Goblin took more of an effort to reanimate this one.
I jerked my eyes open, not realizing I had ever closed them. Up, it had gone back up. What's still left for it to attack? If all the floors were swept, we should be fine, right? But If I was wrong, then... I hadn't been to St Mungo's enough times to know the entire layout. Excluding the specialty wings on each floor, all of the Inferi should have been neutralized.
There has to be a special wing on the third floor, though. Could Severus, Harry, and Ginny have missed it? I ran back up the stairs, trainers slipping on the blood-soaked stairwell. There was a woman crumpled upon the steps, lying motionless, but still breathing. She looked like she was only a few years older than me, and something about her lying there screamed 'innocent bystander'. Taking a moment to be merciful, I checked her vitals and found she was losing too much blood too fast. My fingers went to her red neck, and I found the wound that was killing her. Even if I had all the dittany in the world and blood-replenishing potion, she might not make it. The witch had to want to live, yet she looked like she ready to die.
Looking her over, I recognized the robes and the cheerful-looking tag affixed to her robes. Using my fingers, I wiped away the thick, drying blood to read it. Wendy the Welcome Witch. With a name like that, what else was she going to do?
"Wendy, can you hear me?" I asked, my left hand trying to squeeze like a tourniquet around her neck as I summoned a bottle of dittany. A few vials came towards me, but most of them were broken or leaking. Focusing the spell, most of them fell to the ground as one intact vial hovered in front of me. That was useful, though I never could have done that before. I stowed my Elder Wand to pour the dittany over the wound.
She tried to talk, and the movement in her throat told me no sound would come out. The larynx was crushed and she realized parts of her throat were rubbing against each other in ways that should never happen. She tried to make a noise, but the hollow noise was barely even a hollow whistle. The vocal chords where dislodged, rending her mute.
I checked her vitals, and she still seemed like she might or might not make it. I'm no mediwitch, I'm not trained to decide who can be saved and who should be left to... Pulling my hand away from her neck, my skin stuck to hers and pulled away in a grotesque manner. If I had jerked my hand away too fast, I might have torn her flesh off. Dark red blood the consistency of molasses tried to drip from my fingers, and I tried to wipe it off on the floor. My hands were still coated with the thick, viscous blood. Cringing, I cast scourgify at my hand and felt relieved at the sensation of scoured, dry skin. It felt like I exfoliated my hands with pumice, leaving the skin pink and raw, but at least it was clean.
Something got my attention and my eyes met hers. She had been willing me to look, begging to somehow get my attention. Don't do it. Don't enter her mind. I winced as my wand pointed at her. "Legilimens."
"killme kill me please merlin if you have any mercy don't let me slowly die and rise into one of them i have a daughter at home don't let me become one of them and go home and hurt her killme kill me kill me please..."
My eyes were dead and plain at the horror of her request. I knew I could do this, I promised Cissy as much if she were laid up like the Longbottoms. She tried to talk again, fresh blood pouring out of her neck and mouth. Damn it! I lifted my wand to her. I idly wondered if it would hurt. Any lingering emotions were chased away again as the static calm took over. Avada Kedavra... unforgivable spell. Avada Kedavra... give everyone hell. It is so easy, I can do it real well. Go on and kill for free. The Deathstick's Plea...
"Avada Kedavra..." I mumbled to myself, watching green light strike the body and it fell limp. The blood that was pooling out of its neck changed direction, as if the neck were an absorbent sponge. It's reanimating, really fast...
"Incendio." I cast the spell, watching the body burn to ash before my eyes. Something felt sluggish in my mind, like something had broken inside me. Snap out of it, Granger.
I looked around in a daze, taking in my surroundings. The special wing on the third floor was the nursery. As my mind focused on that detail, I realized I had been standing here for far too long. Was I ever going to be normal again? Stick to the mission. Kill the undead. Protect the innocent people upstairs.
I flew up the stairs, not certain if my feet were touching the ground anymore. I got to the entry of the wing as a mediwitch in garish set of pink robes rushed out and ran into me. Screaming, she jerked back, protective of the babies in either arm. Flecks of blood were on the baby blue knit hat on its head. It was odd to see that there.
The special wing is the Nursery. The Inferi was going to where all the babies were.
The noise of the alarms and the sprinklers overhead all seemed to hit me at once, destroying the silence. Adrenaline flooded through me. Stick to the mission. Kill the bad thing. Protect the innocent.
The mediwitch looked at me in horror, worried I was there to slay them. She seemed unable or afraid to talk... or maybe it was the fact that I was covered in the blood of everything I had been killing tonight. Even the babies were screaming in terror at me.
"Is it in there?" I asked. She trembled in place, and the acrid smell of urine told me exactly how scared she had been. "Get to the fifth floor. There is help there." I kept staring at her, waiting for her to move. She didn't.
"GET. TO. THE. TOP." I raised my wand at her, and she scrambled away, shrieking. At least she'll be fine... I hope.
I entered the nursery, scanning down the length of the hallway with my wand. Nothing's moving. The corridor seemed too long and empty with all of the closed doors before me. The alarms were still scraping the inside of my skull, making my ears ring with the noise. But even over the blaring nose, I could hear the babies screaming.
Only once had I heard a sound tug on my heart strings as much. Crookshanks had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his tail caught under my mum's rocking chair. He had shrieked, and the noise was eerily human. The level of distress was heart rending as I finally knew where the goblins had to be. The dammed Inferi ran to protect its Master.
Pulling the pistol out into my left hand, I started checking and clearing the various rooms. The speakers overhead cradled to life as the Public Address system was switched on.
"Hermione?" It was Fleur, her voice losing that edge of French accent. "You still among the living?"
I thought hard about Narcissa, and her standing up for me to my friends. The Patronus seemed harder to produce this time.
"I'm in the maternity ward. I believe the thing is in the nursery, possibly with Goblins." I was at the end of the corridor, but didn't really stop to suss out the threat beyond. I knew to be more cautious, but the crying noises were becoming more real, more piteous. A detached part of my mind was glad that this still affected me. The rest of me wanted it to go away for now.
"I'm on my way," Fleur replied.
Past the door, I saw a long expanse of window. I didn't have to inside to know it was the nursery; I could hear the crying newborns. The very sound triggered a hard-wired response that I never even knew I had as I raised my wand towards the door. I still had the pistol in my left, and whatever adrenaline I had was starting to wear off. The bite on my left hand began to ache, and I wasn't sure if it would affect my shooting.
I cast alohamora and let the door swing open, but for some reason it stopped with a sudden jerk. Looking down at the floor, I realized there was a body, adult sized. Since it couldn't get up and was essentially a door stop, I knew that it was nothing more than a torso and head. Feral eyes looked towards me as the jaw snapped at the air menacingly. I backed off and slammed the door open with my shoulder, budging it a few painful inches. I heard a woman screaming now, not just the babies. I couldn't open the door soon enough, dammit!
I rammed the door open again as I remembered I had a wand in my hand, and cast a banishing charm on the dismembered body, freeing up the door. Behind it must have been a goblin since it was flung back towards me like some sort of tennis match. Shielding myself, I heard the window shattering as the body crashed through it. The body landed on the ground with an un-ceremonial thump as I realized the severed limbs were still unaccounted for.
The limbs weren't there.
I tried to take it all in, but I didn't so much see see the room as much as mentally take pictures of isolated things.
Streaks of blood on the floor told me something strange. The arms moved away on their own volition.
The severed legs were discarded a bit further away, twitching on the ground and unable to gain any purchase. I could incinerate it.
The screaming woman's voice went silent, yet I heard something happen. I have yet another Inferi to burn now.
There were broken, overturned cribs. A tiny body was lying on the floor like a broken doll; an arm was missing as bright red splashed the ground round it. The broken baby was moving.
It crawled, and I realized that it shouldn't have been able to do that yet. I wasn't sure I was up to cleansing this room with fire as well, no matter how horrific it was.
I had to keep going, burn the monster that did this, and kill the Goblins that caused all this to happen.
I still heard a shrieking baby, but it finally hit me that it wasn't in this room. I looked to the door at the other end and blasted it open, the door revealing the waxy-pallored corpse. In its arms, it held a tightly swaddled baby. I only knew it was alive because it was making as much noise as it could.
The corpse was holding the baby up like a human shield. My first spell took hit it straight in the forehead, the next one through the face as it rocked back from the force of the first spell. It raised the protesting baby in front of its head, huddling behind it as our eyes locked in an unspoken challenge. It was creepy; I could see through the narrow blasting curse I used, through the skull and grey matter, all the way to the light on the other side. I could see straight through the head and it didn't even flinch.
"You will stop or the infant will die." The words rasped out of its neck, the vocal cords conveying the sense of rot and decay within. It can talk. It has a hive mind, therefore the Goblin must be talking through it.
"Who are you, Goblin?! How many of you are here!" I shouted at it, my mind focused on the body language and securing the area.
"I am Ragnok, and you are Hermione Granger. You killed one of my fellow Goblins, but the other one will keep your little chicken-girl from interrupting us." Was all this possible by only three Goblins?
"Why did you attack Saint Mungo's?! There were innocent people here!" His name seemed familiar, but I couldn't seem to place it. Where did I see Ragnok's name before?
"They were Wizards, and it was Wizards who forced the decree in 1631 banning us from the use of wands! Their deaths were necessary to ensure our freedom." Without even thinking, my mind spat out the knowledge I learned from History of Magic.
"That's because you Goblins attempted a bloody revolution in Hogsmeade back in 1612! You slaughtered a dozen Witches and Wizards in cold blood because you thought the Ministry would be weaker than the Wizards' Council!"
"We have the right to survive!" The Inferi spat viciously, rattling the baby as it spoke. Ragnok the Pigeon-Toed wrote the book Little People, Big Plans. It was the Goblin's version of Mein Kampf, and this would be their rallying point. He planned on this massacre to unite all Goblins under his command to purge the world of Wizard-kind.
"NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO COMMIT GENOCIDE!" I yelled back, firing the Sectumsempra curse to hack off one of its legs. The monster threw the baby at me; I couldn't believe it as I hit it with a levitation charm and looked around, looking for a crib to lay it down in. Dammit! All of the cribs were destroyed or had slowly-moving infant body parts in them. I held the baby close to me in my left hand, tucking the pistol into my waistband as I took in the undead thing running into me at full speed. Carve deeper next time! An arm shot out with lethal speed and strength, and I barely missed the swing. The other arm darted out at it lunged forward, mouth open to bite whatever it could reach.
It was trying to attack me and to eat the baby. Kill it, burn it now.
I fired blasting hexes at the other leg, hoping to break the leg at the knee. It buckled and bent with a horrifying crack, and by the angle of the leg, I could tell the joint was ruined. I could use some help here, Fleur!
Even with the broken leg, the Inferi smashed hard into me. We landed on the ground, my head clacking hard as it bounced off of the ground. I could feel small bits of broken glass had littered the floor and cut the back of my head. The undead thing was too close and ready to tear into me as I cast the strongest banishing charm I could think of. It flew off of me, giving me enough time to switch over to the Aduromenti charm and to cover it in hot lava. Burn, motherfucker, burn.
I covered its chest and face first, eyes glinting with triumph as it screamed in pain. It fell to the floor, finally dead. I walked up to it and crushed the skull under my foot, casting another Incendio charm to ensure it was fully dead. "We're going to be okay, baby." I muttered, feeling relief as sounds of the fire alarm and the quarantine seemed to die down around me. I sat on the floor, exhaustion flooding me as a strange warmth ran down the back of my head and neck. I feel sleepy. My eyes surrendered to the Darkness around me.
Fleur could hear her own heart pounding in her head as she used her wings to fly through the building. Her hands were lobbing fireballs at every corpse's head she passed by, hoping that would be enough to ensure nothing would rise again. A mediwitch cowered at the sight of the Veela, but Fleur pressed on as she made her way to the stairwell down to the Nursery. Looks like we have some survivors. She landed on her feet and ran down the stairs, grabbing the railing to help fling her around the hairpin turn.
She ran out onto the new floor, not expecting to be hit with a blinding hex. Fleur's wings shot out in shock as she fell face-first to the ground. Her hearing and nose told her that an Inferi was nearby, but she knew Inferi couldn't cast spells.
Fucking Goblins. She felt the dead fingers claw into her and flip her onto her back. She shivered in fear as she took on the undead assailant. Fleur knew how to grapple, but as her hands landed on what must have been an arm, she realized that it was slippery as her fingers slid over slick fluids. She clenched harder only to feel the flesh rip on the forearm as the skin sloughed off, making the Veela let go of the detatched epidermis in horror.
I need to see! She thought, setting her hands aflame and doing her best to sense where the Inferi would attack from. Spellfire erupted, and Fleur instinctively threw a fireball in that direction. She hoped to hit the Goblin, but she knew she might have just as easily set a wall on fire.
The creature picked Fleur up by her shirt, another hand clawing into a thigh, and lifted her up like a barbell, only to throw her across the room. Fleur tried to use her wings to right herself, but without her vision she slammed into the wall and fell in a heap. That was too fast and strong for a normal undead.
Fleur tried to stand up, but her inner ears were injured and left her disoriented, leaving her to lean against a wall only to slide slowly towards the ground. She could smell the rotten flesh and she gagged on it, opting to hold her breath as her mind raced to map out the room. The Goblin seems to want to watch the Inferi kill me.
She lowered her head and had her back to the wall, reassuring her that she could only be attacked from the 180 degrees in front of her. Setting her hands aflame, she shot fireballs outward to make a semicircular perimeter. That might buy me enough time... she patted herself down and found her wand, remembering the counter-curse.
"Oh no you don't!" Came a goblins' voice, "Expelliarmus!"
"Finite Incantatem!" She said, wand pointed at her own face as it was jerked out of her hand. The spell started to take effect as the Veela blinked away the darkness only to see movement rush at her with inhuman speed. Forcing herself up, she strained as the muscles on her left side screamed as she took flight, and threw down a half-dozen fireballs to where the undead creature was trying to kill her. The sound and smell of sizzling flesh let her know that she hit her target as bleary colors returned to her sight. Her eyes shot around the room, looking for the Goblin that had hexed her.
A blasting hex hit her right wing, dropping her directly onto the fiery undead. Burning fingers grazed and began to burn the clothing off of the Veela, making Fleur grateful that she is immune to her own fire. Too bad my clothes aren't. Fleur rolled off of the creature, only to find bony fingers clutching her fanatically. Rotten lips split to expose teeth in an almost loving fashion.
"I... hun... ger..."
Fleur screamed as she tried to wriggle out of its grip, using her flaming fingers to scratch and carve her way through the Inferi that was moving to kiss or feed on her. Swallowing her revulsion, she shoved her fingers into the dead creature's mouth, gripped the lower jaw with all of her strength, and prayed to Merlin as she ripped its mouth apart. Okay, it cannot bite me anymore. It cannot eat me alive.
It stumbled back, flaming hands flailing where its jaw once was. Flames spread to its head and it finally collapsed and the animating magic dissipated from it. The goblin ran away, throwing hexes to destroy the area and leave more obstacles between the Veela and itself. It kept throwing spells and Fleur heard shrieks of pain, and she realized that the Goblins had come to simply kill as many Wizards as possible.
All they wanted was utter and complete genocide. She felt sore, her wing was probably broken again, but a strange sense of conviction filled her. They wouldn't stop until every last Wizard and Witch lay dead at their feet. And Fleur would no longer show any mercy to them in kind.
"GOBLIN! Your undead horde lays ruined, and there is nothing that will stop me from claiming your head." Fleur shouted as she scrambled over the rubble left in its wake. The spells died down, as if he were going to make a last stand. So much the better to see the life drain from his eyes.
"I have many corpses to serve me, Veela. That you stopped this one means nothing to me. Know that this here today was the work of only three Goblins. Wizard kind will die in vain."
Fleur mustered as much revulsion as she could to spit back at him. "Fuck you."
She caught up to him, both of her hands ready to lob fireballs as he had two wands trained at her. The pair of them faced off and locked eyes, as if this moment could last forever.
Spells flew towards her as she pitched herself for a tight roll to her right, throwing her fireballs at the Goblin as she felt her right wing take the impact and finally snap.
He missed.
She didn't.
And she laughed darkly at her victory.
