Chapter 11
Demise of the Taboo: Part 1
Yaxley watched as the red-haired woman fussed over the obscenely obese child. how obscenely obese? If you painted him a shade of blue he'd perfectly resemble a Willy Wonka accident. And it was still eating.
"Fascinating." Said Perenelle. "It seems your insatiable appetite is an unborn instinct to regain the body mass you need to return to your proper form."
The abomination that weeks ago had crawled out of the burning wreckage of an entire fleet of semi-trucks averted his eyes in deference to it's "mother." Boy did she ever get a laugh out of Yaxley referring to her as such when he was transferred to this new position. Widely regarded as the shittest shit duty, it was a rather cruel punishment putting him in charge of escorting and negotiating with the Flamels.
It wasn't a position with a high life expectancy. Nor was it particularly good for your mental health. The almost ethereally youthful woman, like an impossible mix of a teenaged girls purity and proportions combined an elderly woman's sophistication and mannerisms, collided in every action she did. Her mechanical, unfeeling and borderline sociopathic way of speaking and treating people like living, breathing essays.
"Strange. You have regained enough body mass that you should be able to return to your natural form and regain full fun tonality." She went on. "I suspect you will soon go comatose and suffer a metamorphosis. A reversal of your infantilization after your injuries."
"Will I no longer hunger?" The abomination asked. "Will I no longer feel the constant need to eat, to the exclusion of sleep and thought?"
She nodded.
"I suspect so." Perenelle went on as she retrieved a butterfly needle to extract blood. "But still, it is strange. You were designed to be able to incorporate all concepts of living things as potential flesh. Mass and nutrition should be irrelevant, and your ability to shapeshift should be unchanged. Very curious."
She drew several vials of blood before removing the needle and, with a wave of her hand, wandlessly sealed the puncture wound. She then retrieved a blood sugar testing kit.
"Yaxley, child, would you kindly deliver these blood samples to my husband?" Perenelle asked so sweetly as to make even the liked of Dolores' skin crawl.
"As you wish, ma'am." He bowed before taking the platter of blood samples.
He quickly scurried from the room and out of her presence. A quick walk down the hall and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. Oh to be out of that creature's presence, and no, that was not a reference to the shapeshifter.
He checked his pocket watch and groaned. he wasn't even a quarter way through us shift yet. Couldn't exactly justify a fifteen-minute break. Let alone a lunch... however, he could afford a detour. He was instructed to deliver the samples to Nicholas, but that didn't mean he could enjoy an extended walk along the scenic route.
And so he set off down the hall. He passed several unspeakables, those who remained after Voldemort's takeover. Their numbers were thinned further after the Flamel's returned to Britain and took up office in the department of mysteries.
Perenelle tended to spend all of her time down here, whereas Nicholas liked being in the thick of things. Usually hanging around dispatch so he could hear about events that could lead to new... test subjects being captured. And for his own meddling. The guy sure loved to screw with people, Aurors especially.
He passed through each room of the DOM. Taking in the bizarre sights of these madmen's experiments. Experiments that became even less tethered from any semblance of safety or ethical guidelines.
He took extra time walking through the space room. Where miniature stars and galaxies made of crystallized light swam in the ocean of mist. It was an exceptionally long walk across the known universe, one he knew would be much shorter if he merely walked through any of the glowing red ring portals that only the master of this room knew how to create, and which all connected to a twin near the entrances. But that would defeat the point of stalling now wouldn't it?
Eventually he decided he had wasted enough time and passed through one such portal and continued on through the door to the room of prophecies and towards the exit. The circular room connecting each section of the department spun and reorganized itself, as it always did when one entered. He tapped the nearest door in the correct pattern to turn it into the exit, a trick stolen directly from Diagon Alley, and exited out into basement level 9.
Further procrastinating, he took to walking the labyrinthian hallways which contained the many personal offices of DOM employees, which they occupied when not in the rooms of research proper. Deep in thought, thinking of nothing in particular, his feet led him to an area of the floor divorced from any other.
Guarded by grey armored unspeakable, hooded and masked almost like Death Eaters, it was a roundabout hallway encircling a single room, like a reverse of the research area of the DOM. Above each door were displayed the initials of the being contained within.
M.O.M.
"Do you have business with her?" The nearest Unspeakable Field Operative ask him.
Unspeakable Field Operatives, UFO's for short, were the group of well-trained black ops operatives who served the Department of Mysteries and nobody else on clandestine missions relating to highly dangerous artifacts and magic. They were clad in grey, identity concealing robes, they were completely anonymous even in ministry records, and were absolutely deadly.
"Yes, actually." Said Yaxley on a whim. "I have blood samples for her to analyze, as it would be quicker than with the instruments Perenelle's new office has set up."
The person of unidentifiable sex nodded and motioned for him to enter. Yaxley wasted no time and moved to the door, which opened at his touch. Closing it swiftly and quietly behind him he turned to the room.
"Welcome." Greeted the familiar female voice that served to announce many functionalities in the building. "Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Corban Yaxley."
The room erupted with small dim lights of red and green, bringing to life the many wires and cables connecting the magical brain of the building to the the walls themselves. Compartments and cavities, greatly resembling boilers and perhaps ovens, made up the bulk of the mass in this spiderweb of copper and steel and at the center of it all was a large golden nameplate.
M.O.M, it said.
Yaxley chuckled.
"Haven't you heard mum?" He asked the AI who had served the British Ministry of Magic for centuries now. "I have been demoted and transferred. I am now Unspeakable Assistant to the superfluous branch of the department of mysteries, Corban Yaxley.
M.O.M beeped and whirred as she took in this new information.
"Affirmative. I shall update my records and henceforth refer to you by your new title." The cool female voice said robotically.
He heard the light clanging of metal on metal in a steel tube to his left and looked in time to see a badge be spat out into a tray, much like for visitors entering the building through the telephone booth.
He picked up the badge and squinted at it in the dim light.
Corban Yaxley
- Peon
He snorted at the AI's sense of humor, a sense of humor everyone seemed to adore. Even the Dark Lord himself. He doubted anybody had heard that man laugh more genuinely than the day M.O.M bequeathed him "Thanatophobic Ouroboros."
"I have here biological samples I was hoping you could identify for me." Yaxley requested.
The machine beeped and whirred again.
"Affirmative. Please insert biological samples into individual examination chambers." M.O.M instructed, opening six of her many oven-like compartments.
He inserted into each a vial of the abomination's blood and sealed the compartments shut afterwards.
"Beginning examination now. This may take a moment. I request your patience." M.O.M said as the compartments lit up with a white, sterile light.
For several moments the room was filled with small slivers of that light from the cracks around the doors to these compartments before, all at once, the lights went out. Not just the lights of the compartments, but the lights of every button and even, he noted, the light coming in from beneath the door he entered. With the light so was smothered the beeping and whirring and other mechanical noises M.O.M usually made.
It was soon replaced by the muffled, but unmistakably confused, mutterings of the Unspeakable Field Operatives outside. Mutterings of a blackout, or perchance Potter was attacking again?
Then a new light came into being above him. It looked like a television screen, dark save for the text displayed on it.
ERROR
Then another, previously unnoticed, screen to his left came to life. Then another to his right, more above and some before him. each displaying the same message and accompanied with M.O.M's mechanical, though somehow panicked, voice.
"ERROR"
"ERROR"
"ERROR"
"ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR."
"ERRROOOOOOOOORRRRRRRR!"
Department of Magical Law Enforcement
"Error. Error. Error. Error." The voice repeated over the loudspeakers for the entire Ministry of Magic to hear.
It was accompanied by flashing red lights, like a fire alarm.
"We didn't have any drills about this." Auror Robards remarked.
No, they hadn't. And Tonks knew full well that there was only one section of the Ministry that would have secret protocols for emergencies that the rest of the force wasn't trained or prepared for. The Department of Mysteries. And if something down there had gone wrong enough to warrant everybody in the building be alerted...
"Evacuate the facility!" She ordered. "You two, form a team with me to go down to the Department of Mysteries. And God help us all."
All at once the alarms stopped. The warning screens shut off. And one by one the many buttons came back to life with their little lights, and the many mechanical sounds began to sing again.
They were difficult for Yaxley to hear, what with his eardrums being nearly burst by the high-pitched yell of that last "error". But hear them he did and soon enough all seemed well again.
"Greetings Peon Corban Yaxley." Greeted M.O.M. "Was there something I could help you with?"
Yaxley stared at the mass of tangled machinery for a moment. It dawned on him that she probably just shut herself down temporarily then restarted. Maybe that mechanical short term memory stuff was lost because of that? What was it called? Goat? Lamb? Ewe?
Ram! That was it. Maybe their last interaction had been in ram, and she lost that when she shut down. But she had at least managed to log his new title in... whatever the long-term memory part of computers was called.
"Yes. I wanted you to run a diagnostic on those biological samples for me." He reminded her.
"Affirmative. Please insert biological samples into individual examination chambers." She repeated herself verbatim from earlier.
Once again, she opened every hatch to the examination chambers.
They were all empty.
"Oh." He said in dawning horror. "Shit."
Now he had to go all the way back to Perenelle and tell her what he'd done. That would not end well for him.
Glentress Forest
Snatcher team eight were doing as they tended to do most morning. Patrolling the wilderness near Edinburgh and Glasgow. A patrol that they would follow up by additional patrols of the cities proper.
The twelve of them were good at their jobs, if Albert did say so himself. He was the newest member, only having worked with them for six months, but he was considered fully inducted and experienced enough that he may as well have been the first by now.
"Carmichael thought he detected traces of an alert ward near here yesterday." Albert's partner, Erica, said. "He said the trace's were so faint that they were likely torn down by whoever created it. But they might come back."
Albert nodded at her information and drew his wand. Carmichael was a far superior ward whisperer than he, but that was more due to age and experience. He was good too, and would surpass his coworker in time.
They walked a checker pattern around the area, one going east to west, the other north to south, but always maintaining eyesight on the other. This was to help notice if the other person veered off due to a compulsion they themselves didn't notice.
Indeed, Albert found those same traces of an alert ward, but they were so faint that they couldn't be less than a day old. And he would never have found it if he hadn't specifically been looking for it. He concluded that it was the same ward Carmichael had discovered on his shift and that whoever made it hadn't returned.
"Taboo activation detected." The cool female voice of M.O.M rang out from their badges. "You are the nearest snatcher team to the offender. Your badges are now portkeys to the offender's location."
Albert and Erica shared a look and a shrug. It was pretty rare for somebody to be stupid enough to say the Dark Lord's name. So it was always an exciting prospect to be the ones to capture them. Usually, stupid kids trying to get a scare out of somebody or show how brave they are. They'd go in, but the fear of god in them and send the dumb kids on their way.
They were nice that way.
"Flees From Death." Erica mumbled into her badge and disappeared as the portkey activated.
Albert made to do the same when a movement out of the corner of his eye and crouched into a defensive position, wand pointed at the dark mass. Even in the dreary darkness of the early morning he could make out what it is, and he knew better than to mistake it for a horse.
"Centaur! Why are you here?! So close to Muggle civilization." He commanded, doing his concern at not having backup.
The centaur came closer, and he got a good sight of... her?
He gasped. Indeed, it was a mare. Deep black hair long enough to resemble a silk robe enveloping her entire human half nearly down to her hooves. Her bare chest heaved as she breathed deeply through her nostrils like something had recently spooked her.
"Homo Arcanum." She greeted him, the manner of referring to him strange and unfamiliar. "I have always been in these woods, and I have watched your group every time you've stepped foot in it. But I have come out on this day to ask you what that terrible aberration I just felt was."
Albert ogled for a moment longer. The strangeness of encountering a female centaur, rare and protected from the eyes of the outside world even more zealously than they did their children. Yet here one stood, out in the open. Speaking to him! And she was magnificent. Like a tree given life and sensuality.
"I'm sorry, what?" He said dumbly. "Aberration? What aberration?"
She snorted in frustration.
"Mere moments ago, just after that voice spoke over your badge, the stars cried out in fear, and the soil begged to be hidden and protected." She explained. "They sing now of a great evil born, and they sing louder than the day your own lord rechristened himself and took up his dark crusade. This is the second time in it has happened in just as many months, both louder than the last one fifty years ago. For these aberrations are things that should. Not. Be! What is this we centaurs are feeling? Do you know?"
He stared at her and tried to digest her words. Sooo centaurs can feel when a new dark lord is born? And this one is claiming two rivals to his own just materialized? Sounded like a load of bullshit to him.
"Sorry lady, I have no idea what you're talking about. And I have work to do." Albert said, unnecessarily rudely. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have some children to get disciplined. I'll be back soon and we can discuss these... aberrations."
She looked at him sadly, tiling her head to the side as she considered him.
"No. You won't." She warned.
Despite the shiver that ran down his spine he ignored her warning and spoke the passphrase into his badge. The ever-familiarsensation of a hook grabbing him by the navel took him from that forest and when he dropped back into the physical world it was to see nothing but a thick cloud of dust and dirt.
Then came the noise. The shattering of stone, crashing of steel on steel and screeching of tires.
"Carriobanyan!" A voice yelled from above and he leapt aside just in time to avoid the unknown spell.
The deep red curse hit the ground where he previously stood and from it erupted thick, rotting roots like that of large rainforest trees. If those trees were made of rotting flesh and bone, or an illusion thereof.
He crawled along the low visibility and rubble covered ground to with elbows and knees, keeping a tight grip on his wand and not caring about the bruises he'd suffer for it. Soon a rain of blasting curses fell upon the street and with it a similar rain of rubble, steel and class.
He heard a scream to his right and recognized the voice as his partners.
"Erica!" He called out and crawled faster towards where he thought she was.
He crawled and he crawled, his mind going blank in the cacophony of spellfire and what he recognized as gunshots. If he were able to concentrate on anything over the sound of his heartbeat in his ears or his own hyperventilation he would have recognized the voice of some other members of Snatcher Team 8 yelling curses and promptly falling silent.
All he could focus on was crawling towards hispoint of obsession is warzone-addled mind had given him. And when he came upon the sticky puddle of goop in the road, he didn't register what it was until his hand came to rest on a mass of hair he recognized. He lifted the head attached to that hair and gazed upon the viscera-coated, decapitated head of Erica. The surprise at meeting her maker etched into her expression like a flash photograph.
Something hit him in the stomach. A foot. The force of the kick lifted him from his hands and knees onto his back. That same foot can back down on his stomach pinning him to the ground and Albert gazed up into the deep emerald eyes of the aberration.
"Percussio." He enunciated clearly and deeply.
Light jumped from the tip of his black wand and pierced right through his heart and into the ground below with such force that an updraft of dirt, stone, bone and the tattered remains of his heart erupted from his chest like a geyser.
He remained alive just long enough to register how impressive the overpowered piercing curse really was.
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