A/N: Thank you, as always, to Aequitas for Betaing :)

Warning: This chapter is somewhat graphic in nature, and is the first reason why this story is rated as it is. It is crucial, however, to show the kind of War these wizards are facing...

Chapter 7:
Devil's Arithmetic

"Wands out, wizards," instructed a gruff voice.

Robes swished as wands were produced, but all else was silent. Slowly, the owner of the voice rounded on his team. There were about twenty of them—witches and wizards of all sizes and ages, with hair varying from the brightest of reds to the steeliest of grays. Identical in all of them though, were the lines of sadness and horror etched into each of their faces. For before them lay a landscape ravaged with devastation and destruction.

"Young'uns, keep up with your mentors. Remember all, this mission is strictly reconnaissance. You are to try to ascertain what happened here and look for survivors. There is to be no funny business beyond thatno sneaking off on rescue missions, etcetera. Get what we came here for, report to me, and get out."

"Alastor, what if there i are /i survivors?" The question came from a weary-looking man in his middling years with muddy brown hair and bottomless eyes.

"There won't be," Alastor Moody said, his voice grim. He turned his haggard face from his team, looking at the haunting site that lay before them. It was, or had been, a small town. It now lay in shambles; grey piles of charred wood, brick and debris lay strewn across the cobbled main street. Skeletons of streetlamps loomed above it, casting dark, ghostly shadows. The crumbling shells of the remaining buildings creaked in the fierce wind, and shattered glass littered the ground. There was blood, too; fresh, red, and gleaming in the pale green glow of the Dark Mark above them.

"But where are the bodies?" a man asked as the group made their way through the devastation. "Every sign of great struggle, but no bodies. . . ."

"Split up," Moody told them. "Report back here. You know who to go with."

A young red-haired man with a long nose followed the wizard who had asked about the survivors into the nearest set of wreckage.

"It's bloody awful," he whispered breathlessly as they stumbled through a hole blown into the wall.

"It's war, Ron."

"But this was just a regular town, with far more Muggles than wizards. They were defenseless!" the young man called Ron exclaimed. His mentor laughed soullessly.

"And now you see first-hand the terrors of Voldemort's regime. Look at this." The older man knelt before what seemed to Ron a baby doll. When Ron knelt as well, though, he found himself staring into a human child's face, wrinkled and ghastly with lifelessness. It was a dead infant. Ron stared in horror at the sight, wanting to leave, to throw up, but unable to look away. The infant's blank eyes stared back at him.

"That's sick, that is."

The brown-haired man grasped Ron's shoulders and guided him away from the atrocity, and towards a narrow stairway that led to nothingness. Ron sat on the third step, numbly. The other man stood nearby, surveying the damage around them. He cast a Levicorpus spell on the child that sent it out through the hole and into the fresh air of the night.

"The wrinkles that covered its body—the Robracious Curse," he said softly as the corpse disappeared.

"Professor Lupin, we have to stop them . . . just a baby . . . helpless . . . ."

"We're doing the best we can, Ron. And you need to stop calling me professor. I'm your mentor now, not your professor. Remus will do just fine."

"Yes, Professor Lupin."

"Ron," Lupin said, shaking him, "you see here only a small fraction of the horrors that the Death Eaters have committed tonight—and in its entirety. If you want to stay on with us, you have to keep a level head. You need to be able to think clearly. I know this"he waved his arms around—"is terrible, but in order to prevent it from happening again, we need to do what we were sent to do."

"Right, sorry . . . Remus."

"Better." He looked around. "Now, you've been taught the Adverto spell, correct? Good. Use it to see through the wreckage. Look for anything that might clue us in to more of what happened here tonight."

They worked silently for long minutes, except for the occasional " i Adverto/i ", but neither found anything that would tell them more. Eventually, they moved on to the next house, which produced very little new information. They worked in this fashion, sometimes seeing others of their team, looking just as forlorn and hollow-eyed. Ron emerged from each dismal ruin more disheartened than from the last.

"Remus!" came the call of another team member at some point. "We've found a survivor!"

It was a girl, Ron saw, grubby and wan from her stringy blonde hair to the tattered clothes that barely covered her skinny legs.

"I was a playin' hide-and-seek with me three brothers, see. Under them stairs." She pointed at a half-disintegrated stoop. "An' then, I heard all this noise, right, bangin' and yellin' and screamin'. So I yell out, 'Tommy what er ya doin' out there?' cause he was hidin' in the garbage bin, see, 'cept he didn' answer. Then I peak out, an' I see all these awful scary people with these ugly mask things. They got Tommy, and little Junior, too, and they is hold'n them and not lettin' em go. And then..." She shopped, and a shudder ran over her scrawny length. "And then this other man came an' he..."

She didn't seem to be able to go on. Ron's father knelt next to her and put a supportive hand on her shoulder. "Take your time." She gulped and nodded.

Finally, she took a rasping breath and continued: "He was all off, like. He walked all hunched over, with this crazy hair and really ugly long fingernails. He went right up to my kin, and put those ugly nails on them faces and said, 'Such pretty children. Will make a nice addition to our collection.' I dunno what collection he talk about, but he said it all sneery, and the masked things let out these awful laughs. It was almost dark then and I was mighty scared, but I kept on watchin'.

"More Masks came then, with all the kids in the neighborhood. The Masks made this weird cage thing o' light – dunno how they did it – and put all the kids inside. Then they brought Johnny, my oldest brother, and I almost screamed out loud right then – 'cept Junior did it first. Then they... oh they... they pointed their stick things at Junior and everythin' went so quiet. 'Cept he kept on screamin', with his mouth anyway. His eyes got all wide, and he opening his mouth so far that you could stick a log inside it. But he was yellin' and yellin' and made no sound. It scared the knickers off me.

"Then the worst o' it all came. It got all dark, like, and the moon came out, and then tha' ugly bloke with the fingernails got all hunched over and started makin' all this racket. An' then he straighten up, and he's all gone. Well no, he wasn' gone, just all hairy and well, look like a character right outa a monster movie. Then the Masks stopped makin' the light for the cage, and all the kids started a runnin'. But the monster followed all of them, caught 'em all. It looked like he was really enjoyin' the chase."

Everyone was silent. No one could think of any words to sooth over such a terrible event, and Ron thought it wouldn't have been right to anyway. He stared at the child, feeling pride and pity for here all at once. He knew for a fact that he could have never watched his friends suffer like that, and still be around to relay the tale.

"What did this monster do when he caught the children?" someone asked the girl.

"He bit them. Blood was a gushin' everywhere. He didn' kill 'em though, just bit 'em enough to knock them silly. The Masks then did somethin' to make 'em float in the air... and then they left..."

"How many children did they take?"

"'A hundred er so."

"Well," said Lupin in a solemn voice, "Now we know what Greyback is up to."