Battle Weary

The heavy rain covered the sounds of distant screaming, for those lightened periods where the torrent did and the screaming didn't. The air was heavy with the ionic disturbances of the lightning-stabbed air and the hairs on everyone's neck stood on end from that and the malevolent discharges of magic that was anything but light. There was something that had to be done but the perceptions of the Aurors were all being screwed up by... something. It was obvious that there was something going on, something not good for someone. Maybe someones. The rain pounded down on roofs, heads, hats, cloaks, boots. Anything in the way of the natural progression of up to down, in the way of the inexorable pull of that thing known as gravity. Everyone was straining their ears to pinpoint a location, but somehow it seemed that it was coming from more than one place.

Senior Auror Freddie 'Skip' Murphy was chewing on a rather thick toothpick as he thought furiously. The usual routine of using spells to locate their targeted area had failed miserably. There was nothing that their wands could point to – the Point Me spell itself just spun wands around like the needle on a malfunctioning steam gauge – and there was plenty of frustration to go around because of it.

"Go old-school! Use your ears and eyes!" he had shouted, twice.

Twice, and possibly a third time, thanks to all the thunder.

"We're trying, Skip!"

He didn't answer. He knew his team was doing just that, even as he was following his own orders.

Buildings were in the way, distorted the sound and messed up the sense of direction as it bounced off the walls. A butcher's shop, a greengrocer, a... was that a hobby shop? He didn't remember it being here the last time he'd been here. It didn't matter. Things all blended together after a while and besides there was something more important and more pressing than whoever had set up shop here.

"Skip! Look!"

The bullfrog-deep voice of his second cut through the storm easily and not for the first time, he wondered what Maria had done to herself. He and everyone else knew better than to ask. Skip looked up to see faint sparks of some kind in the distance, smaller siblings of the vicious lightning bolts that shot too close for his comfort. There was a miasma of color there, the rain not helping one bit to differentiate what was being done and the apparent distance wasn't aiding them either. Had this happened during the daytime, whatever was going on, then maybe it would have helped even with the raging storm. Unfortunately for them and what they were trying to do, it was night time.

Suddenly everyone could clearly hear more screaming, the warbling wails screeching up and down the octaves. There was no beauty in the panicked voice or voices, but there was sickening power in the fear that spread out to reach the ears of the responding Aurors.

Skip heard, and his blood ran colder than he'd ever known it to. The screams suddenly sounded familiar to him. He whipped around and stabbed the pointer finger of his off hand toward the sound. The tip of his wand sparked into a glow that promised pain for whoever dared to cross him. His hyperfocused brain cataloged every syllable they could all hear, the pleading and begging, the sick sounds of violence... and the even more sickening sounds of laughter. Everyone could hear Skip's voice rasp out the harsh command.

"There! Move!"

Simultaneously, his wand weaved a pattern they knew without looking, even as they barely heard the Affigere Scopum that zeroed in on what he had perceived and fed that information to their own Auror wands. It was something that they didn't use often, as the spell was had demands that could just as easily be met with the use of trained eyes and ears, or indeed every natural sense they had. As the training for this was extensive and tiring, it wasn't as tiring as using the spell. It was reserved for certain cases and situations.

Like now, with a raging thunderstorm drenching everyone and making it hard to come to the rescue of someone clearly in desperate need. There was no way they could use normal hearing or sight for this. Not at all.

Skip had to wait for the others to pop out of existence before he could recover enough stamina to follow them. He trusted Maria to know what to do when they got to wherever they went – he just hated the effects of that spell. He took another couple of deep breaths and focused himself before turning on the spot and following his team. There was no telling what he'd find but he was going anyway.

Screams and flying spells greeted his arrival and he dropped to the ground without any analysis. Maria was already there croaking out movement orders in the battle shorthand that had recently come into use. Everyone was fairly proficient in it and it did save time, although to someone not in the Auror Corps it sounded like gibberish. Deep-throated gibberish, in Maria's case, but still gibberish. Skip took a moment to look around and saw that she'd already prepositioned the heavy wands of the Auror unit right where he would have. The Senior Auror nodded to himself in approval and then looked at the focus of all the excitement.

Immediately, he wished he hadn't.

A young woman lay in the street, convulsing from what could have been Cruciatus exposure. Or, it could have been any number of Dark curses that the bastards came up with. She was too far away for him to see if there had been any other indignities and anyway, he was too busy fending off curses to be able to see much. She had her back arched as she screamed her pain. He could see that much. Skip silently swore to the unknown woman that they'd put down the animals then do their best to get her some relief. The poor woman deserved that, at the very least.

"Skip! Move!" He felt a tug on his right boot and rolled without hesitation.

It was a good thing that he did, as something that he hadn't ever seen before ripped up the ground that had just been supporting his body. It was close enough to singe most of the hairs on his left arm – somehow – and made him feel like he had a couple of the Hogwarts Great Hall floating candles focused on his arm.

"Motherfu..."

"Language, Skip!" he heard from somewhere. The team was always twitting him about his language, but the fact that he was getting it now, in the middle of battle, actually helped. He was able to ignore the pain and get his attention on the poor woman screaming her throat raw.

She was pretty, for all he could see in the admittedly terrible situation. There was a huge amount of very fresh bruises that marred her skin, imprints of fingers and fists in many places. Not for the first time, a part of his mind wondered, "who would do that?" Another part of his mind answered, "The kind of mutts you swore to catch and bring to justice." As that part of his mind finished the thought, his face hardened and he rolled to his knees to start flinging his own curses.

There were mutts to put down. They all bore down on whoever had holed up in the shack across the way, and gained ground toward the victim inch by inch and foot by foot. She didn't stop her pain-filled announcements of her torturous existence on that dusty ground. If nothing else, it gave the team a beacon in the terrible rain to head toward to try to save her.

His team saw it happen at the same time he did.

An evil shade of virulent green swooped out from somewhere they hadn't even seen yet and slammed into her. There was a chilling skreigh from her and then... nothing. The young woman flopped to the ground not unlike a discarded sock, limp now and without animation of any kind. They hadn't heard the Avada Kedavra being incanted, but in the ruckus from her screaming, the storm, the spellfire, and the mad cackles now rolling from the shack, there could have been any number of those terrible curses thrown and they wouldn't have been any the wiser.

"Later, suckers!"

From inside the shack came the taunting voice of who knew what and then there was a distinct sound of one of the loudest Apparitions they'd ever heard. They didn't have any way to tell if it was a particularly bad attempt or the combination of multiple Apparitions at the same moment, but it was not to be ignored.

For the next few minutes the only sound was the storm overhead, the raindrops slinging mud into their faces and down their armors to find a path between skin, Auror robes, and body armor, and the heavy breathing they all did to try to calm themselves.

"Hello the shack!" Skip shouted a couple of times, to no answer. He looked at Maria and nodded his head.

She squelched her way over to one of the team members, using every bit of cover that she could find and whispered in his ear. He nodded and transformed into his Animagus form of a black racer. It didn't take long for the extremely speedy snake to zip to the back of the shack. No one could see him go, the black scales blending into the night and the slithering sounds more than completely covered by the raging storm. He avoided the dead woman as he went by, not wanting to disturb the crime scene at her resting place with his magic.

Skip waited. His Auror was the stealthiest one of the group, and this was a situation that called for it. They had been too busy on defense to make use of the man's talents before the young woman had been killed and he felt his jaw clench in anger as he thought about his unspoken promise to her. Well, there would be another promise made to her memory once they got out of here and all the parchmentwork was done.

"Homenum Revelio!"

Strangely, he could hear the whisper of his Auror as the lull of the storm and the others' reticence worked together to allow his hearing to help out. There was a second cast of the spell, although a rumble of thunder cut off the second part. They all waited for several more minutes. A moment later, Skip could see a black racer zip around the dead woman's body again in a widened arc and past his foot. He waited for the report.

"Skip, I think they're all gone. No Revelio signs at all, no heat sources, no talking or breathing. I found a door cracked open and slithered in. Totally dark in there except for a lamp turned very low. Almost out and with hardly any fuel. No one's in there at all, well," here the man grimaced, "not alive anyway."

"You're sure?"

It was a dumb question, but he had to say it for the record and the inevitable Pensieve memories.

"Positive. There's plenty of spell residue. Some of it looked like it was focused on the bodies, but without more examination I couldn't tell you if they were alive at the time or not."

"Okay. Everyone, don't lose your concentration. There could be someone hidden out here somewhere. Let's check the area as best we can."

Twenty minutes later, they were sure that the attackers had left. They left the woman in the street for later, since they'd all seen the Avada Kedavra made solid contact and had also seen the light jerked out of her eyes. They didn't have a sheet to cover her with, but a bit of field transfiguration handled that. It wouldn't last for more than an hour, but by then they would be finished with the first part of their investigation.

Another auror paused as he started spreading the soaked transfigured sheet and paled. Skip could see it and felt his heart drop.

"Wayne?"

"Boss, we... um, we need to alert the Director, right away."

Skip looked where the man's shaking finger was pointed and gasped.

"Oh, no."

He turned away from the body, knowing that this would change the way the whole Blood War was prosecuted now, and wondered how he was going to do this. No matter how he presented the news, there would be a savage response from many. In fact, right now he felt quite vicious himself. There was more than one turbulent spot in his mind now that he'd seen the frozen look on her stilled face. That face, familiar to many in the Auror Corps.

"Merlin damn this fucking war," he said, to no one in particular. It could have been to the trees shaking in the winds of the storm.

There were no comments from anyone on the team about his language this time.

Author's Note:

So I wanted to bang this one out, as I'm in a mood tonight and I've gotten tired of Halloween-themed stuff already. Not a funny mood as I like to be to put Harry and company into embarrassing situations (like I've done more than a few times.) In this story, I wanted to focus a bit on the unnamed Aurors that took the fight to those in the Dark on the orders of the people in the offices at the Ministry. The big names get the attention in canon and in fanfiction (mostly,) but what about those poor guys and girls working the shifts apart from those big names? So, this is in the HP universe but not using the main or supporting characters.

Who is the murdered woman? I'll let you, the reader, decide that.