When the Order arrived there were already a small knot of muggles gasping for air on the sidewalk. A thin tongue of flame was struck through the thinning smoke, dying down from what they could tell was a hole in the roof. Dorcas couldn't make a speaking corporeal patronus. She had never even seen hers up close so while the others landed on what might have been the roof shielded from potential watchers from below in the cover of smoke billowing from the top she flew instead through the open window of an office building hoping against hope that it was empty. The man at the desk was stunned into silence and then by spell as Dorcas dialed one of the only working telephones in the ministry. The one at the front security entrance rang until someone picked up confused. She could hear them speaking asking what to do and how to do it to whoever but Dorcas couldn't wait long enough to hold onto the line. She hung up and dialed another number. Years later, Rufus Scrimgeour would have a phone installed in the auror offices but that was years away. Lydia picked up uncertain. She had to fill out reams of parchment to get that phone installed and had had to thread some of it herself to her floating office but she felt it something necessary for an office. Only a few people had the number. Her parents, Dorcas, her future husband, his sister and Heidi who didn't completely understand the necessity of remembering a set of numbers when she could just tell an owl in plain english who to get to. She always thought that if her parents would call, she'd hang up but no one ever called her and she almost knocked the phone over when it rang.

She heard Dorcas rattle off directions. That was a heavily trafficked muggle area, Lydia thought. Dorcas hesitated what she would say nearly made Lydia rip the chords out of the wall,

"Send the phantoms."

Dorcas placed two fingers on the man's throat to check for a pulse but mostly as a distraction. She hated flying. This was for her supposed to be a fifteen minute loop around as a kind gesture, something of an olive branch to Emmeline who she considered rude, pompous and oblivious to her own hypocrisy but she was flying out of an office building stunning people trying to get through their workday. Emmeline had already closed the distance while Dorcas was in the office building and Dorcas barely made out the branches of her broom flying at a gut dropping angle through the space in the roof where the fire had been. Dorcas flew higher casting spells in the air as she circled the building muttering chanting a loose perimeter into existence. The people coughing just outside the building would not be able to leave. She landed gingerly on the ground not trusting her broom or her weight on the roof. This was risky but they couldn't be both effective and secretive about it. She gave herself a shake as some of the muggles were temporarily scared out of their coughing fits.

It appeared to be a bank. The muggles outside if the perimeter looked at the bank where somebody swore there were a group of people sitting outside of it, injured or in need of help but now it was just a building, parts of which looked like it was fluttering in the wind, as if painted on a gauze. They couldn't make her out they would only see what had been there. These people gasping for air she moved closer together and set them gliding on air to sit against the wall. Anyone caught in between that loose boundary wandered dazed in both places. A temporary reflective shielding charm. The muggles crouched along the walls could only perceive a foggy apparition of what was going on outside the charm. When the phantoms arrived after the Death Eaters, they would enter a space where the outside of the building remained only in memory cast by the charm. The outside reflected an interior that no longer reflected what was happening in that containment. It's tall ceilings and roof that Dorcas had not wanted to land on for the vertigo had collapsed inward and a cloud if grey smoke reflecting a reddish glow on everything seemed to originate from nowhere from the outside of it.

Dorcas motioned for the muggles to stay there and they complied out of obvious necessity. Dorcas waved her wand.

"Hooverum," a young spell but she didn't wait to find out how well it worked. The muggles' ribcages felt like they shrank and then with an exhale, their lungs were cleared of the smoke and small bits of debris. The one person who wasn't left gasping for the feeling looked out from the blurry edge of the sidewalks edge through the blurred sheet of air obscuring the muffled voices beyond it. Someone brave on the other side pressed a hand against the charm and felt it move against something there and not there. Weighted but weightless. The muggle on the other side leaned against the wall closed their eyes and willed all of this to be a dream.

Dorcas entered against the wall with her wand at the ready. A spell whizzed over her head as she hit a stunning spell in that direction and ran for cover on the opposite side of the enormous vestibule. She heard Emmeline barking directions and felt an arm pull her behind a pedestal. Alastor rattled off the details.

"Us," he said. "Five to eight of them. Twenty to fifty muggles."

The man with the grey bowler was raising a glass to the woman in a slim, cherry red skirt suit. He felt a tap on his left shoulder and turned to find no one. The woman still had her glass in the air smiling blankly. She set it down gently and started eating after the man faced her again. He felt the tap on his shoulder again. Ah. He nodded at the woman.

"Pardon me, darling." he said absently as he stood to follow the direction the tap had come from. He turned left when he got to the end of the street and then left again into nook where there appeared to be no one. He followed a glowing blue light until he was close enough to see it was coming from a fox. Kingsley Shacklebolt's patronus told him what Dorcas had told Lydia who had told him. Another auror had sent the messenger tapping at his shoulder.

"He practically lives at that cafe with that woman.", the auror had said. Another auror shuddered.

"It's so dangerous being out in the open like that with that routine." Another had chimed in.

"Not for him," Kingsley had muttered under his breath. The man in the bowler walked briskly back to the table.
"You can make your way back home. I'll get the bill," he told her. She nodded. He left muggle money on the table. He went into the cafe nodding at the chef and wait staff and opened the door to an office. He threw a pinch of something onto the fireplace spoke into it and then threw a handful of another powder which caused the fireplace to fill with green flames that he stepped into and disappeared.

Dorcas and Gideon pulled many people out of the bank as they could. She ran into the back of the building where the sound dropped. Calling out that they were there to help, trying to get anyone at. Gideon blasted the doors of the vaults off the hinges peering inside which didn't endear the muggles who saw him to them but a bank attendant scrambled out calling other to him.

On the way, they came they found more people hiding under desks. They followed the growing number of people and found the way blocked. It would take to much time for someone to explain the path. They could lift all of it but then what might be behind it. They had to go out the front.

They snaked back the way they had gone with Gideon leading the charge with another set of bankers showing him another way. Dorcas walked back and forth on the side of the line looking at the offices and memorizing what she could. Checking behind her shoulder. She couldn't tell from where she was that they were back n the atrium except for the sound and the change in light. She jogged ahead. The distance to the door wasn't so far away but with all of these people on this day and this time, it would be a task. Gideon caught Alastor's eye from the shadows and nodded. Edgar was blocking another group of muggles from spells on several sides. His wand flashed like a sword on fire. Gideon nodded to Dorcas who could make out a woman with a sheet of black hair dueling Emmeline. Her eyes shining with joy. It appeared that they might have a small window of time. Dorcas looked at the group of muggles and dropped her shoulders and they all understood what it meant. They'd have to run for it.

They were making their way across the atrium. Gideon swiping shields of color and Alastor running alongside having met them part way. They heard another explosion and the muggle bankers scattered in fear. They were now amongst the people who had just been there to complete a transaction and throughout the room. Some were crouched under the wooden tables where they would write banking slips. Some were tucked into the corners. Some had made it all the way to the walls where all they could do was crouch with their arms over their heads. Gideon Dorcas and Alastor instinctively made to cover groups of them casting errant spells. Dorcas path crossed with Edgar and there was a booming vibration that sent two wizards teeth clattering. It gave Edgar enough time to take his small group of muggles to the door. He lifted the black haired with in the air and Gideon lasso'ed Emmeline away to safety.

"Follow him." Dorcas called to another group and they ran trembling. They weren't doing it fast enough for Gideon. Gideon waved his wand and they were pushed in a tangled knot as if they were being swept across the floor and into the dust bin of the exit. They tumbled out bruised and rubbing their joints and heads. Dorcas heard a woman's bright and twinkling laugh. Dorcas saw a woman with long shining black hair walking slowly towards a crouched woman shielding herself with her arm begging. She could tell the woman with black hair was smiling but she hadn't waited long enough to find out for what reason. The crouched woman was already sliding across the floor with her hands clasped towards Dorcas as if pulled by a rope.

Edgar had separated the tiles from the floor and built a set if steps midair and was casting spells from his vantage point. The woman was trembling under Dorcas' arm and they slipped on what she hoped was water. They had to get everyone together. They could be protected easier. They were part of the way to Alastor who was sweating in his great old, olive green colored coat against what looked to be a very young man. All Dorcas thought was to get behind Alastor , help him fend of this attack and then move the muggles out. She heard a clattering of something fall to the floor, Emmeline scream Edgar's name, her own name and then the sensation of falling and then splashing into water when she aimed her wand towards wherever the floor might be when they landed. She expected something like a trampoline but didn't not bounce back up.

Someone had blown a hole into the floor and it was filling with water so rapidly that she had lost the woman. She gasped looking around in desperation at the line where the floor should have been. She saw the woman flailing and swam over grabbing her by the waist. She tried to pull against the trashing.

"Your wand!" she heard Emmeline bellow. Dorcas pointed at the woman's head who went slack and pulled her through the water. Ah, that's not what she had meant.

"Borbuhan!" and bubbles shot out through the water, her wand speeding them to the edge of the pit now spilling over with water her wand towards the end of the floor. She flung the woman with a flick so that she was on the shoreline of the tiled floor and the sinkhole that was now obscured part of the way of the muggles. They would have to go against the wall. Edgar picked the woman up and flung her like a sack over his shoulder all of them slipping in the water.

"Against the wall." Dorcas gasped and she made out of the corner of her eye Edgar and Gideon out of nowhere shepherding people out. From where she stood, she could make out Alastor running toward another group. Emmeline was flinging people out of the way holding her ground and making her way toward another. Dorcas could create a temporary distraction and apparate to get closer. She was hidden just enough that everyone else seemed distracted. She caught the eye of a group of people and held up five fingers counting down. They nodded and she pointed her wand at the bank of high windows. The muggles started making a run for the doors but the windows did nothing. She cast the spell again and nothing. Again.