It was almost anticlimactic now that it was over.
Crouch's house elf had reported all of the aurors were falling asleep, and the troops were getting ready.
It did make Lucius feel wary about the food and drink his own House elves served him. Perhaps a ring that lit up when it was near poison? He wasn't sure it was possible, but the things he'd heard from Draco about Hebert's spell research groups made him think that anything would be possible if you wanted it badly enough.
Poisoning the drinks in the middle of the night while the other House Elves were sleeping had been a stroke of genius. Wizards tended to trust House Elves, treating them as intelligent furniture.
Lucius couldn't believe that he'd doubted the Dark Lord. The planning this had required had been years in the making.
Gaining the support of foreign governments, with easily deniable mercenary assets had required long hours. Keeping anyone outside the organization having any idea it was happening had been the true masterstroke.
Lucius himself had not had any idea it was happening.
Apparently the Dark Lord had compartmentalized information so that he'd know who betrayed him if anything leaked.
The Hebert girl had pushed him to it, granted. They would have taken over the Ministry a year ago if she hadn't lead to reforms and likely assassinated the last Minister.
The deaths among the rank and file had damaged the organization, and any lesser dark lord would have given up. Instead, the Dark Lord had gotten creative.
Lucius had felt a strange sense of sympathy for the girl. Despite her unfortunate birth, she was Slytherin down to her bones. Despite her prejudices against purebloods, she'd chosen to take Draco under her wing, and had given him advice that would serve him well in the coming years.
More importantly, she'd frightened him badly enough that he'd listened.
Draco was becoming the kind of person Lucius could respect. Before he'd come to Hogwarts, he'd been almost insufferable. Lucius had always blamed Narcissa for coddling the boy.
The boy had always had a clear view of his place in the hierarchy, but he hadn't understood that it was a place that had to be earned. Other families had fell by the wayside as their heirs chose to fritter away all the goodwill and wealth that was their birthright.
The Malfoys had worked for their place in the world; not through labor like a peasant, but through knowing which way the winds blew and through having backup plans when things did not go as expected.
Draco was becoming the kind of person Lucius would feel comfortable in leaving the family legacy, someone who would lead the family to new levels of greatness.
That he had to thank a muggleborn of all things for this change was galling and fascinating at the same time.
The girl lacked the diplomatic skills of a true Slytherin. However, she was amazingly good at intimidation, and of managing her reputation, and in using power to achieve her own goals.
She'd gathered a coterie around her; followers and sycophants. It would be amusing how closely she followed the Dark Lord's path if she hadn't done it four years faster.
Hebert didn't have the Dark Lord's diplomatic skills, but she had her own sort of raw, animalistic charisma.
In another situation, Lucius would have enjoyed seeing how far she could reach, especially because she had an informal alliance with his son.
However, she'd set herself against the Dark Lord, and there was only one way that could go.
"Are the troops ready?" he asked Crabbe.
The man looked down at his list.
"The Bulgarians and the Norwegians look like they're ready. I think some of the Russians are drunk."
Lucius scowled.
"I'd have thought they'd have more discipline."
"Mercenaries are scum," Crabbe said. He sneered. "Working for coin?"
Anyone who had anything had ancestors who'd fought for coin; either by stealing it or killing someone for it. Crabbe was foolish for looking down on mercenaries. Today's mercenaries were tomorrow's noble house.
The loss of being nobles had been one of the Malfoy families greatest regrets about the Statute of Secrecy. Malfoys had had generations of dealing with muggle nobles.
Even now, the Malfoys were landlords for muggle families all over Great Britain, with that money being funneled into food from muggle farms, food that got sold to Wizarding families for an inflated price.
It wasn't technically illegal, but there were purebloods who would be horrified to know that they were eating food that had been produced by muggle hands.
Most wizards assumed that the Malfoys had farms somewhere...as though Malfoys had ever been farmers. However, it was part of what kept the Malfoys the wealthiest family in the British isles.
The money received from foods were invested in legitimate Wizarding businesses. Even the Dark Lord had no idea how wealthy the Malfoys really were, and with any luck he never would.
The problem with working with Dark Lords was that there was almost always a death toll. As long as their were enough family members who kept themselves out of the shadier side of the business, the family would prosper.
However, Malfoy numbers had been decreasing over the generations, to the point where Draco was the last hope of the family line to continue.
Lucius had no particular loyalty to Voldemort. The man was a pompous, dangerous ass.
He'd become more dangerous and less insane once Lucius had given him back his book though. There were rumors that the man had used soul magic to make himself immortal. He himself didn't deny it.
That was part of the reason Lucius was here instead of on the Hebert girl's side. She liked Lucius well enough to only kill him, and odds were that she'd make sure that Draco survived.
The Dark Lord would torture Lucius's entire family. He'd kill Draco in front of Lucius's eyes, and then he'd geld Lucius while making him watch as he killed every other member of his family.
He'd use curses to geld him too, so that there would be no healing.
"A pity we couldn't use the giants or the trolls," Lucius said.
"They wouldn't fit through the cabinet," Crabbe said, as though Lucius didn't already know that.
"You think Snape will follow through on getting the Granger girl?" Crabbe asked.
"If he doesn't, he'll show just which side he's actually on," Lucius said. "Finally."
The task had been just as much to keep the man occupied while all of this was happening. The Dark Lord couldn't have a potential spy giving away this, his greatest plan.
Getting Draco to smuggle a shrunken cabinet into the school had made Lucius anxious, but he'd been unable to refuse.
He'd at least told Draco to set the cabinet up somewhere far from his rooms, so that if everything went wrong, Draco wouldn't be a suspect.
He'd obliviated the boy afterwards, himself., of course.
While the boy hadn't known why he was being asked to do what he was doing, the chances that he would warn the Hebert girl had been too great. Even if he hadn't warned her, the chances that he might give the game away by acting guilty was almost as bad.
They'd even managed to have the Cabinet delivered to the boy while Hebert was giving some kind of demonstration to the aurors. He'd picked it up in Hogsmeade and smuggled it in.
The Dark Lord himself stepped into the room, a great hall. The murmuring in the crowd stilled. Even those who didn't really know their employer had to be struck by his inhuman features.
"We stand on the brink of greatness," he called out to the assorted throng assembled before him. "Men of multiple nations ready to stand forth and defend the truth that some men are created better."
That was self evident, Lucius thought, but many of the mercenaries seemed bored. They had no ideology other than their own advancement, a viewpoint he could understand. However, they should be smart enough to avoid showing their boredom in front of their employer.
"We have been beneath their noses this entire time," the Dark Lord said. "And the fools have never even found us."
Truthfully, an accident in an Unspeakable experiment had wiped an entire level of the Ministry out of human memory. It had been more than just a Fidelius charm; with one of those, people could remember a place existed, they simply couldn't find it.
This had wiped out all references to that level. They still existed, but no human could read them or remember what they had just read. Only the Unspeakables who had been there before the experiment could help others remember, and the Dark Lord had killed all of them who were not loyal.
Keeping this as their headquarters had been inspired. They'd kept satellite bases everywhere, of course, because the rank and file weren't allowed to know about it.
"And now they will reap what they have sown," the Dark Lord said. "Our opposition likes to call itself the Order of the Phoenix, but it is we who have risen from the ashes!"
There were cheers from the Death Eaters; Bellatrix was the loudest of them all. She'd always had an unhealthy obsession with the Dark Lord.
"The Ministry has grown corrupt. They have put the rights of subhumans over those of real men of pure blood. Tonight they will learn the folly of their ways. Tonight we will show the world that our way is the right way!"
More of the crowd picked up on the Death Eater enthusiasm. While the mercenaries didn't generally care, some of them actually did share pureblood sympathies.
It was the vision of a pureblood homeland that had convinced some select people in some of the governments to lend their aid. The Dark Lord had promised them a paradise, and Lucius had no idea whether he intended to deliver.
"Enter the cabinet, and go forth and create a new, better world on the blood of the old!"
Two hundred wizards, most of them mercenaries, could have likely taken the aurors in a fair fight, at least with the Dark Lord on their side.
However, war wasn't fair.
What they were planning was a slaughter, even though Lucius already had the headlines ready for the papers in the morning that would make it seem like a seamless transition of government.
It didn't matter if anyone believed it. They just had to believe it enough.
The men began to rush into the cabinet, charging with a certain amount of gusto, although Lucius was fairly sure that was just for the Dark Lord's benefit.
They were moving rapidly, and it wasn't long before it was Lucius's turn with the rest of the inner circle.
The Dark Lord was to go last, of course. It fitted his sense of drama, and it also allowed him to watch that no one chose to stay behind until the fighting was over.
Lucius forced himself to leave in the middle of the pack; Bellatrix was first, already anxious that she'd miss out on some of the carnage.
As Lucius passed through the cabinet, he suddenly smelled the coppery scent of blood.
A loud, strange sound was coming from up ahead, and he could see dead bodies everywhere.
"Shields, damn you!" he heard one of the mercenary leaders shout.
Draco had chosen to put the cabinet in the Prefect's bathroom, likely because he knew that it wasn't going to be used over Christmas break.
How he'd managed to get inside, Lucius didn't know.
What he did know was that there was blood on the tiles, and the door to the hallway was clogged with bodies.
He heard Bellatrix screaming in rage up ahead.
Carefully putting his shields in place, he stepped forward, over the body of a dead Belgian. The loud pop pop pop sound had already stopped.
Stepping out into the hall, he saw a strange sort of shield with the logo of the Ministry on it. There was a slit in it, presumably for a wand, and smoke was rising from the slit.
At least twenty men were dead, and Bellatrix was kicking the shield.
"Filthy muggle tricks!" she screamed.
There were even more injured men in front of him, although they were working to cure their wounds as well as they could.
"What's going on," he heard the Dark Lord ask from behind him.
"I'd imagine it's Hebert," Lucius said dryly. "Thinking she'd be fooled into drinking was... optimistic."
The sounds of explosions came from further down the hall. Lucius doubted that whatever the girl had used would work again; the men were quick to adapt, and while the first men hadn't known what was happening to them, they'd be alert to the danger now.
Unfortunately, the girl wasn't likely to only have one trick.
"We should have dealt with her a long time ago," the Dark Lord growled. "This was supposed to be a simple operation."
"Your Seer didn't warn you of this possibility?"
"It said she wouldn't be fooled," the Dark Lord said. "It also said that we'd trap her in the end."
"We'll just have to minimize the damage in the meantime," Lucius said.
They moved forward.
Those who had been to school at Hogwarts knew the layout implicitly. The mercenaries did not.
There were bodies at the bottom of the moving stairs. It was the Russians; alcohol had likely slowed their reaction times.
"I suppose we should have warned them about that," the Dark Lord said absently. He didn't sound as though he regretted it much.
He hadn't really taken to the Russians.
They stepped quickly down the stairs, deftly stepping as they switched positions. There were paintings in the walls, but all of them were cowering. Some were missing.
Were they all reporting to the Hebert girl?
It wouldn't matter, not in the long run. One girl couldn't fight an army. Even the Dark Lord couldn't do that, although he just might be able to survive one.
"I wanted to teach here once," the Dark Lord said. He took a deep breath. "I'll make it great once again, teaching the children the truth."
The sounds of screams from up ahead, followed by the explosive sounds from before.
"She's using guns?" the Dark Lord said.
"Guns?"
"Firelegs," he said. "Muggle weapons. I'd have thought a shield would work fine against a gun."
"I doubt the ones that died knew what it was."
They turned the corner, shields carefully raised. There were dead men here, too, with another shield at the end of the hall.
"Careful, Lucius," the Dark Lord said.
He pointed at the ground.
Marbles were scattered all over the ground, and it looked as though some of the men had been in the process of falling when they'd been hit by the fireleg.
"If you can't maintain a shield while you're falling down, then you don't deserve to be a mercenary," the Dark Lord said. He scowled. "I'm beginning to suspect that we were given inferior soldiers."
"They probably thought it didn't take good soldiers to kill sleeping men."
The Dark Lord waved his hands and the marbles all ended up at the end of the hall.
He walked over to the shield and then waved his wand.
A weapon appeared behind the shield. A long cord was attached to the trigger.
"Disillusioned weapon," the Dark Lord said. "She'd have been smarter to disillusion the entire shield."
"How is she getting away?" Lucius asked. "I'm assuming that some of the men are smart enough to use the human revealing spell."
The Dark Lord shook his head.
"I'm not sure."
The next hall had bodies but no shield.
When the Dark Lord erased the enchantment, they discovered that this shield was behind them, and the entire thing had been disillusioned.
"She shot them from behind." Staring at the carnage, the Dark Lord said, "She let them get used to the pattern of attacking a visible shield so that when they saw none they rushed forward."
"And shields are one way." Lucius felt a prickle in his own back.
How sure were they that she hadn't somehow looped around behind them.
"We didn't try to recruit this girl why?"
"Avery, sir," he said. "He had a grudge."
"The boil thing," the Dark Lord said. "That was actually inspired. It's a pity that creativity like this can't be harassed. I like to encourage that kind of of thinking."
That was a lie, of course. Punishing people with the Cruciatus did not encourage creativity. People were so afraid that they would be punished that they tended to be either conservative or foolhardy.
The Dark Lord was controlling and wanted things done his way. Hebert would never have done well because she wouldn't have been willing to bow to him.
"Well, the same tricks won't keep working, and she'll run out of them soon enough."
Assuming they didn't run out of men. At Lucius's guess, there had to be fifty men dead already, a quarter of their force.
The Dark Lord wasn't worried because he assumed that they were going to destroy the auror corps in one fell swoop and that the transfer of power would occur soon after that.
Only years of experience kept his doubts off his face.
"Your victory is assured, my Lord."
Lucius found himself suddenly wishing he was anywhere but where he was. Although it was likely that the girl was going to die, it was possible that there would be casualties along the way, and he doubted that the little kindnesses he'd shown her would be enough to keep her from putting a hole in his head.