The chess pieces had never looked at him with blank faces. Perhaps that had been why he had been so readily able to command them, or perhaps it had been because he could be certain that there were no souls in the heads with no expressions. The horses that represented knights could be said to have faces, so for them perhaps it was just that they were animals.
"There has to be some way this is permissible," Tonks said.
"There isn't," Podmore answered. "We're doing it anyway. We've already got nine of them hitting three different houses; all that's left to do is split up and join them. Flitwick, you can coordinate." The old Charms teacher nodded to the suggestion.
Ron had said nothing more than absolutely necessary and it would be no different as he heaved himself out a window and went after the furthest group. It was a trio of children, which to him did not seem terribly believable, but he had not made the decision himself. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like two rival international factions had inadvertently chosen the same country to battle it out; there was no way of looking at the current conflict as a civil war of Belize; the local Ministry had not taken an official side in any international conflict, though it had stated it would follow with other Central American countries if enough of them went one way or another. It was a justifiably cowardly move to try to get the bulk of the fighting to take place in other lands, and to get on the right ship once they knew which way the wind was blowing, but he supposed he could not blame them any more than he could be blamed for not wanting to fight in either of the prominent factions at Hogwarts. The Order had decided to respect neutrality of all persons and peoples and as a part of it he would have to go along with its designs.
As he reached the three house the children were approaching- they were really only supposed to approach houses and it seemed to be working so far- he could see the Confederados as ideological allies with the Death Eaters, and since the whole state of New Mississippi had been founded on an ideology, there was technically no escape; if one wanted to live there as a civilian, then he or she was an ally of the blood purist ideology. Sighing probably too loudly, he threw a window open above him and changed two of the runes in the old fashioned anti-apparation warding, limiting the range to the interior of the house, allowing him to apparate through the open window.
Finding a witch and a wizard sharing a drink, he stunned them both, the first before she could react, the second before he could get his wand out. The kids rang the doorbell downstairs and found their son and daughter who were also winding down for the evening, playing a magical game of checkers on an enchanted board. He stunned them as well. Never saw me coming. There's no general sense of alarm so far, so everyone's been basically successful at keeping things under control. No one's walked over to the part of the city we've hit so far, or if they have, we got them.
Ron used the Imperius on the kids, primarily to get them out of the way and keep them from threatening the Order by snitching on them and went back upstairs with them, cursing the parents as well, once he woke them back up. Either he was getting better at the unforgivable or the adult victims were so horrified to see their children under his control that they had no ability to resist him themselves. Do they see me as some sort of monster?
He supposed he was basically acting like a werewolf in the sense that he was forcing people to turn on their friends and families and he knew he could remind himself that everyone in the town was ideologically linked and on the same side by default, but it hardly made things any easier. If he saw a group of dissidents, which he did not expect to see, he would have to at least stun them because even the most die-hard opponent of joining with the Death Eaters would not necessarily want the Order to turn everyone in the town against them violently, getting a substantial part of the town killed.
Ron, are you there?
How much of the city do we have? Does Andromeda have an estimate?
She says that she can only see about a part in ten.
That's good for not being discovered so far. If in the same amount of time we can get to a part in five, and then half, we still shouldn't be discovered...
Ron, are we monsters?
We're not using the children to fight. He looked out the window and saw a handful of residences that he could hit. We're only doing this to the adults, and we're trying not to get them killed.
What if you saw someone like you?
A teenager who's got himself involved? Wouldn't have any right to complain. Moving the four people he had under his control to a nearby building, he first hit the one where the original three were just hitting, finding they were successful in knocking out the two people inside, neither of them anywhere near majority. See, this is a pair of kids. We're just stunning them and leaving them where they are.
He had no response from Luna, which was fine as long as she was focusing on her job. She had more than enough to do by herself, what with the coordination issues, and he was happy to move onto the next house. Because he could not apparate the imperiused people around, there had to be some amount of travel time for each of his victims, so if he accounted for that, he could be moving more quickly himself, and it would get to the point where he was never not saying 'Imperio'. About an hour earlier, he heard that Macmillan and McGonagall basically took out a marked Death Eater, the prior distracting him by saying that there was a bad man attacking his family and the other one getting him in the back when he expected the threat to be in front of him. What was important about the trick was that they had presented him with a problem he could resolve himself rather than something much larger for which he would need help.
Ron, there's another Death Eater. Andromeda says you're the closest.
Why do they keep coming over here?
I have no idea. Have you ever had a weird feeling? A hunch, perhaps?
Yeah. They're coming over here because something feels weird? It's too quiet?
It was clear enough that they had no response from the Death Eater they managed to stun and at some length curse into staying put, and if it was weird for him to just disappear off the map, like if they needed him for something, then it was a matter of time before they would send someone after him. Damn. Damn. Spread out like this, we can't deal with two at once, not even if they're like to assume the problem's solved if they've sent two.
When he reached a street where he could see the solitary dark wizard, he seemed to be casting detection spells, which was the last thing they wanted. If he got an idea of what was going on, there was no way he would not immediately notify everyone else, and it was entirely too early to have that happen. We should've left a kid in each house. Might not've looked normal, but it wouldn't have raised an alarm right away.
"Avada Kedavra. Flippendo."
Forcing the dark wizard to dodge a curse he could feel coming into a much faster jinx that he could not even see coming, he essentially forced the enemy into getting knocked of his feet. The damn Death Eater knew better than to get straight up if he was dealing with someone who could place him with a killing curse, so the stunner passed over him harmlessly, but right as he was responding he was hit in the back with another. Looking across the way, it was Podmore, having circled back, probably after a thoughtful instruction from the Andromeda-Luna team.
"Better send this one back with the one we've already got. Can't show our hands yet," he said as he closed enough of the distance.
The older wizard only nodded without saying anything.
Luna, can we get someone on moving the kids around? If there's one kid per house, it might raise less of an alarm.
While the human detection charm was useful, in his experience you had to use it multiple times to gain any meaningful information about position and quantity, even with the sort of lazy tricks he had dreamed up. As long as some feedback was generated, most people would accept it and move on. Death Eaters were not generally 'most people', but it was better than having a ton of houses completely empty.
Ron went back to his work, finding that the patrols had already hit another house. The five he possessed had been more than enough to overwhelm two houses without his help, and he managed to put their victims under the curse. It was a concern at the back of his mind that he would become more controlling after all the times he had successfully used it, or there would be some other damage to his soul as a result, but that was only if he survived the battle, and it seemed doubtful that all the Order members would. He was pretty sure that the Africa base would be fine, but almost all the other members were relocated to Belize for the battle and in his understanding they had already taken massive casualties. It was not unrealistic that the twelve of them were the last in all of Central America.
As he controlled another three people, he moved them out in another direction. By his estimation, there was virtually no chance that the others were not starting to lose track of their own victims and he could afford to move his own without watching them. There would be no sounding of trumpets to announce that the Death Eaters had returned from chasing the water horse, but he was sure Andromeda would take notice
Ronald, it seems our enemies have returned.
That's- well, that's not good, but it's what we expected. We'll have to stay quiet.
What made trying to just mobilize their victims against the Death Eaters so difficult was the fact that they would need basically the entire city for the numbers advantage to take effect, because the rest of the city would join in; the general population was substantially more capable of combative magic than back home, and there was no way they could be tricked into thinking that their own countrymen were fighting against the dark wizards of their own choosing.
"We need a way to get more of them out of the city again," he muttered aloud as he reached another house. He had every expectation that the Order was moving more quickly now if the rest of them were cutting corners like he was, but if so they were more at risk of the plan being discovered than ever before. There was basically no way the Death Eaters would not discover them without more time.
Luna, it's time. Get a ton of them out of the city. You know their names.
Theoretically, it was less risky than what he had initially envisioned, but there was still an enormous chance he was sending her to her death. Could he do that, now that he had used a combination of the Imperius Curse and other dark curses? Had he sent people to their deaths before? This is a war. Death is part of the job.
More than anything else he wondered if that was what the Death Eaters meant when they went on about how they nobly took the death and dark magic upon themselves in service to the wizarding world; he had always scoffed at the idea that they were choosing to sacrifice their humanity; he had always thought that it was all just an excuse, it was all just a way of dressing up their own malice against those without their sacred blood purity. Ron was familiar with sacrificing, and to his friends' regular horror he was perhaps most familiar with sacrificing himself, but never before had he done so by using dark magic. Never before had he worried that he would lose who he was to stay alive. Could some part of him remain in control, or was it already too late?
All around there was a voice that filled the air.
I have for the first time come to the Americas. If you are loyal to me, you must come to La Habana without question.
Ron had every expectation there would be confusion, and every expectation that the Legilimens among them would be trying to verify the source of the voice in their heads, and at the moment, Lovegood was doing precisely as he had advised and she was battening down the hatches with Occlumency. By using the dark marks of the two Death Eaters they had captured, she would be able to amplify the pain in everyone's arm even more than what they would feel if only one mark were pressed, hopefully giving them the false idea that he was close. If they moved, truly without questioning it, then it would get rid of a lot of them for the time being, and the Order would be able to afford picking up the pace.
Several cracks of apparation rang out within the next few minutes; he estimated that it took some time for them to get to the edge of the warding, and as long as Luna survived, he was content for the moment. They were effectively blind as long as she was not linking their minds with Andromeda, but once they reached the point of being a runaway train, they no longer needed to see. As the message was delivered, he took the opportunity to hit more of the houses his victims had hit, making more victims of them and sending them in different directions. If they moved faster than he could realistically use the Imperius, that was fine; what worried him was if they failed to overwhelm one house; he had already had to deal with it a couple of times when their intended victims already had their wands out or were particularly well-versed in defensive magic and could perform a shield reflexively, even when no attack had been remotely expected.
Suffice to say and suffice to say again, where he had expected it to be more like back home, where it was apparently a rare thing to cast a shield properly, he was finding there were more people who were plenty capable of that, but even if he were trying to take over a city back home, he could still reasonably expect to find a handful of people who were actually skilled and should account for them. Hermione, having started to prepare for her Ordinary Wizarding Levels a year early, said that it was a mark of exceptional skill to properly cast a shield charm according to what the examiners were marking, and for the marks to mean anything, it had to be about as uncommon as his general perception indicated, though basically all of his brothers, assuming Fred and George were trying, were above average in Charms and Defense every year; there was really nothing stopping the average witch or wizard from learning if he or she were so inclined, at least not when Hogwarts still stood. It was a long way of saying, or rather, a long way of realizing, that his inclination to generalize could spell disaster for a plan that required every single step to work perfectly.
Moving as quickly as he could, he caught up with a local wizard who was running through the streets and killed him right as he raised a shield. Damn you. Can't practically be persuaded to fight for us if we can't beat him with the minions; can't practically be beaten by Order members long as I can't just summon everyone to my side with a snap of the fingers. As long as the Luna-Andromeda team was only at half-capacity, they would be getting no updates about anyone who managed to resist the hordes of minions they were getting to do their bidding. Soon as the Death Eaters who are still here realize what's going on, they're going to press their marks and warn the others. Have to hope the trap waiting for them is enough to slow them down.
There appeared to be a witch who had fought her way through some of the minions and she seemed to assume that he, a wizard who seemed to have his wits about him, was trying to help, which made him feel bad for putting her down like a dog. Damn. She didn't even realize I was an enemy. Damn. What are we doing? Would she've reacted in time if I'd only tried to stun her? Did I really need to bring out an unblockable curse?
He could move the bodies out of the streets, but it would take him more time than it was worth. At the current stage of the plan it was a matter of trusting Flitwick and Hannah to keep the other Death Eaters from rejoining them and just beating everyone else in the city with superior numbers. Doing the figures in his head, his time was best spent waking up the minions that the skilled civilians had mercifully stunned or petrified. They were quick to get back to their duties and he went to find more unconscious people that his minions had put down and put them under the Imperius. Even if they were not skilled, they still had wands and they still had their magic, and with enough of them together, they were going to win.
There's not going to be a point where it's safe for Luna to connect us again; she'll just get floored by two or three adult Legilimens if she doesn't keep herself cut off. She's better off joining Andromeda on the broom so she can hit people from above. The Imperius Curse was a close range spell, but there were things they could do from up there that would make serious problems for the Death Eaters below without giving them a clue as to their position. They could use human detection charms, but they would have to be pointing their wands up to find the two witches like that, and if he knew the older witch at all, they would be the first people she cut down.
Ron was running now, either raising minions that had been put down or forcing those who had not yet risen to rise in his service, reminded of a time he was talking with Terry, years ago, about how when in ancient times a city was conquered the survivors were tortured and sold as slaves as a warning to the next city that army would meet. He had to fight harder, move faster- a broom, he wanted a broom like he had during the siege of Hogwarts, even an old school broom would do. Where's a damn broom closet when you need one?
As he killed a pair of witches who looked like sisters who were in the middle of trying to mollify a crowd of minions- in short their orders eventually failed because there were too many variables and they were reduced to trying to just knock out anyone they could find- he only wished he could have gotten there sooner, again cursing his lack of a broom. Mad afterthoughts of the Order having mandatory broom issuance or at least a broom per four wand squad, for whatever reason they decided to start splitting up into squads of that number, raced through his mind as he raised the minions the sisters had put down, and he thought of something Hermione told him about King Lear, in that mocking, didactic tone that she took whenever she mistook his urgency for being stupid.
A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!
His ability to process it all collapsed and all he felt was rage.