CHAPTER TWO: Trailing After Breadcrumbs
Arriving in Paris, Harry was greeted a landscape covered with the remains of fallen buildings and fallen people. Even in the most horrid of showdowns with Voldemort, Harry had never seen anything so horrible. It was the cries from the barely-living that disturbed him the most. Harry was no murderer, but he almost wished that these poor souls had died in the blast, and wouldn't have to suffer as they were now.
The four of them charmed themselves so that French would sound like English to their ears, and hurried over to where a crowd of wizards was gathered, apparently organizing relief effort. One of them spotted Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, and called out, "Over here! Any help you can give, we need it, please!"
"We're coming! Don't worry!" Hermione called back. As they arrived at the large huddle of wizards, they found themselves in the middle of a flurry of discussion.
"It's all my fault. I didn't take them seriously enough. I never thought anyone could do anything like this!"
"Be reasonable, Counselor. No one could expect you to give into terrorists' demands! Nothing will break European Unity, not with the Great Healer on our side!" Harry didn't recognize the second speaker, but the first he recognized as the former Minister of Magic for France, now a Counselor for the European Congress.
Ron broke in. "Terrorists? What do you mean? You know who was behind this? Why wasn't in the news just now?"
A third person sighed. "Information hasn't gotten out yet, and it didn't seem like anything to take seriously. We figured that with the protection of the Great Healer, we were invulnerable." He started to weep. "How could this have happened! What do these people even want!"
The Counselor, whom Harry remembered as Jean Toloure, said, "We have no idea what they want, except to cause as much destruction as they can, and I heavily doubt that this horrendousness will stop here, I'm sad to say. They call themselves 'The Fists of Wrath,' and they haven't given any indication of what they want, other than for France to break away from the EU. There was a message warning of 'terrible retribution' if we didn't comply, but I never imagined…"
Harry's mind was racing. "Fists of Wrath," he muttered to himself. The cold certainty of the situation hit him like a slab of stone in the face. Not their cause, but their leader. The Sin of Wrath.
Just then, a large black raven swept down from out of the sun and dropped a large piece of black parchment onto the ground. It started to unfold, and it started to cover far more area than it initially appeared to be capable of. It started folding upwards, and then backwards, until a large, black head was staring at them, hovering above the ground. Harry thought the face looked vaguely familiar, but it was very hard to tell, as the parchment only revealed so many details.
It spoke in a deep, booming voice, "This is the price for defying my will! Look about you, and witness the fate of the rest of the world should I be defied again! Take this message to your leaders: If the European Union does not disband, in both muggle and wizarding forms, then it will meet the same fate as Paris! None shall be spared! One by one, you all shall fall into ruin! You have been warned!"
And the parchment folded itself back up until it was no more than a large slab of paper. The raven swept down, picked it up, and started to fly away. While the others were babbling about what to do about the terrorists, or how best to organize relief effort, or any number of other things, Harry shouted out, "Are there any brooms nearby!" Harry intended to follow that raven back to its source, and hopefully find a lead back to Wrath.
Someone said, "I have some here," and he opened a duffel bag and magicked out a long shelf full of broomsticks. "You going to head out and care for the wounded?"
Harry was already mounting a broom, as were Ginny, Ron, and Hermione, taking their cues. "In a sense, we are." It was true, Harry thought. By stopping Wrath before he could carry out his threats (at least Harry thought it was a him, if the parchment-face had indeed been Wrath), then Harry would be saving countless others. "Hermione, you may want to ride double with Ron. You've never been the best flyer." But there was no need to tell her, for she had already climbed onto her husband's broom.
"All right! Don't let that raven out of your sights! If you lose it, just follow me!" Harry told his friends. It was no boast that he was the best flyer amongst them. "Let's go!" And the three brooms sped off the ground in pursuit of the large, black messenger of Wrath.