"Keep moving," Jorgen said curtly.
Everything had gone wrong from the start; it had been meant to be a simple mission; killing sleeping men wasn't honorable, but they were attempting to change the world.
Stepping into a bloodbath wasn't what he or any of his men had expected. Some of them had been cut down as they'd tried to apparate away, forgetting that this accursed school was a death trap.
Now he had no way of knowing which way they were supposed to go; the men who had been supposed to lead them had been killed in the initial rush, and none of the rest of them had any idea of the layout.
"We should find a window," Maiken said from behind him. "Transfigure a ladder. This place is a hellhole and it's a fools' errand to stay here any longer than we have to."
Personally he agreed; he didn't share the almost superstitious fear of Voldemort that some of the others had, although he respected the man by reputation. His preference would have been to go back through the portal, but the moving stairs had deposited them somewhere else in the darkness, and he wasn't sure how to get back up.
"Most schools have Quidditch pitches," he said. "We can get there and steal the school brooms. They'll be good enough to get us to the coast."
They moved quickly. There were only ten of them left; they'd started as a squad of twenty men. Jorgen dreaded having to talk to the families of the men he'd lost.
It was the perils of the profession. Men died when they lifted wands against others. It didn't mean that it didn't bother him.
"We should have asked for triple pay," he heard Magnus mutter from behind him.
"Shouldn't have taken the job," another man said from the back.
"Quiet," Jorgen said. "They say that the witch is a seer and can see anything that happens in the castle."
Hopefully she couldn't understand Norwegian, but Jurgen wouldn't put it past her.
They slipped into a classroom.
"We're on the fourth floor," Magnus said, going to a window. "It'll be tough making a ladder that'll go that high."
"A rope ladder then," Jorgen said curtly. He pointed his wand at a desk, and a moment later a thick rope ladder appeared. It was seventy feet long; more than enough to reach the ground, and it was thick; enough to carry all of their weights.
Using a permanent sticking charm to attach the latter to the floor, he nodded, and the men started to unroll it, blasting the window outward and rolling the ladder out.
Jorgen gestured.
He was their strongest Wizard, so he'd remain behind to guard the rear. Their second strongest would go first, to guard the bottom while the others were vulnerable climbing down.
Two men watched while one man went down; they'd attack anyone who attacked while their men were vulnerable.
There wasn't room at the window for more.
Jurgen heard a scream from outside; Magnus hadn't had time to get to the ground yet.
His head jerked around, barely in time to see something large lunge into the room and latch itself to Maiken's head. It was a spider the size of a pig.
Maiken screamed and gurgled and fell to the floor.
Jurgen pointed his wand and green light spat out and hit the monster, but more and more were swarming into the room, climbing onto the walls.
His men were lashing out with their wands, but then he saw something drop from the ceiling.
Everything went dark as the Peruvian darkness powder exploded.
After that he saw dim green flashes of light, with men screaming in all directions.
He felt a tremendous pain as something landed on him.
After that, he didn't feel anything else.
He gasped for air; he wasn't used to running. Most wizarding work was fancy footwork. Outside of a few of the experts, most wizarding fights lasted less than a minute.
Endurance simply wasn't necessary for ambushing people and wetwork.
Still, he regretted drinking the night before. His head ached, and it wasn't simply the fact that he and the others were running for their lives.
"We should not be here," he grunted to Gregor. His brother had always been the more intelligent of the two of them, not that he would ever tell him that.
"We were told that she was dangerous," Gregor said. "But the pay, it was not enough."
"Dangerous? Baba Yaga in little girl form maybe," Alexie said.
He'd seen the children, and one had a face that had changed like that of Baba Yag. He'd even seen chicken feet as it had chased them down this hall.
"They were just Boggarts," Gregor said.
"Boggarts don't work for anyone," Alexie said. "They hide in corners. They are for little children, not grown men."
"Then don't be a child," Gregor said. "Be a grown man."
He handed Alexie a flask.
Alexie took a long, deep drink. The liquid inside burned as it went down, a pleasant, familiar burn that helped to calm the nerves and quell fear.
The boss was dead, so they were taking orders from the third in charge. He was a green boy, related to the boss. He'd never have been in charge under normal circumstances, and Alexie was uncertain that he should be now.
"We were paid to do a job," the boy said. "What will our reputation look like if we abandon it just because of a few boggarts?"
Green light flashed, and Alexie stared at the man who stood behind the kid.
The kid fell.
Everyone stood with wands pointed at each other. At least some of them were still loyal to the old family; however, none of those people were alive or here.
"Reputation is worth nothing if you are dead."
Everyone looked at each other, and they nodded. They had somehow found themselves in a girls bathroom, with some of the toilets broken.
That was unfortunate.
"Do you hear something?"
Alexie frowned.
He could hear a grinding sound from behind him, and a sounds like that of several small snakes hissing.
"That wall," he said. "It seems to be moving."
It was the wall with the sink, with fixtures that were like snakes. The snakes seemed to be moving and the whole thing seemed to be sinking into the ground.
He turned to look at it.
His last memory was of red eyes and giant fangs. He didn't remember anything else.
Neither did his fourteen companions.
"Keep discipline and we'll stay alive," Jakob barked. "We're better than the rest of the rabble out there."
Although their government would deny it, they were actual members of the Norwegian military.
Norway wasn't supposed to have a military, not by international agreement anyway. No Wizarding country was.
However, everyone was almost certain that MACUSA and the Russians had military forces hidden somewhere, and the Chinese definitely did.
Norway felt that it was foolish to depend on an international coalition of weak minded bureaucrats to safeguard its borders.
His men nodded. All twenty were still alive, although some of them had been wounded. It was due to a combination of luck and shield discipline.
Being shot from behind would have still gotten them if they'd been in the front lines, though.
His men all nodded, their faces not showing whatever fear they might be feeling.
"We have to kill the witch," he said. "I'm sure you are all familiar with what she looks like now."
"Should be the only teenage girl in the castle," Oskar said.
"Don't take any chances," Jakob said. "Kill on sight. The girl is clearly much more dangerous than our employer let on."
"No plan survives first contact," Oskar said.
Jakob had been uncomfortable with the plan from the beginning. Attacking a sovereign nation was a prelude to war; even if Norway completely denied any responsibility, Britain could chose to fight.
Their only option was to complete the mission.
The place was supposed to be crawling with aurors, The fact that they'd seen none of them indicated that the first part of the plan had gone well. The girl had somehow avoided being poisoned.
Presumably if they reached the Great Hall they'd be able to slaughter the aurors posthaste.
The plan had always been to finish the aurors off here, and then apparate to the Ministry to finish off whatever troops remained there.
It had seemed foolish to him. Twenty men could slaughter two hundred if they were asleep. Only the possibility that some of the men might not have drank enough to incapacitate them had made the large numbers make sense.
"He brought us for the girl," he said.
What kind of man brought two hundred people to slaughter one girl?
What kind of girl needed that kind of caution? Apparently his caution hadn't been unwarranted.
The second part of the plan likely wasn't going to happen. The rest of the rabble didn't have the kind of discipline his men had, and were likely already scattering to the four corners of the globe.
The Dark Lord's inner circle only had twelve people left, and thirty two men weren't enough to take over even a Wizarding country the size of Great Britain.
Still, every auror that they killed was one more who wouldn't be counterattacking Norway. If they killed enough of them, it might be enough to keep Britain from fighting back at all.
"Go," he said.
They made their way silently down the stairs. They were all disillusioned, and their footsteps were quieted by magic.
If they could avoid Taylor Hebert and simply cut a few throats silently, he'd consider his job done.
They were all using human revealing charms; it helped them keep track of each others locations so that they didn't trip over each other, and it helped them avoid ambushes.
At least these stairs didn't move. What fool would have moving stairways in a school full of children?
"It's clear up ahead sir," his second in command relayed the message.
"It's clear behind," he said. "Let's go."
They moved through several more hallways. They'd reached the second floor, almost to their goal when he heard the man ahead of him cough.
It was unusual for his men to break silence like that; in order to overcome the spell quieting them, it had to be an outrageously loud cough.
He heard other coughs; the sounds of men hacking and gagging. Before he could ask what was happening, he felt something crawling on his face, Before he could react, things were in his mouth and ears and nose.
He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't cast a single spell.
All he could do was die.
Their bodies would lie forgotten for days until students were unfortunate enough to smell them, and others to trip over them.
The death toll would be amended then to an additional twenty.
"This is our hiding place. It's not big enough. Get your own."
"Those things are coming! Let us in!"
A struggle at the door was followed by flashes of green light. The survivors didn't last much longer.
Black widows enlarged to the size of pigs were deadly from above.
"I'll kill any man who runs," Delmar said. "We've got a job to do, and men to kill, and this isn't any different."
"She's trapped the whole damn castle."
"We've figured her traps out, haven't we?" Degmar said. "If we don't kill who we've been sent to kill, all of this will be for nothing. Otherise Lukas and Oliver, Noah and Isak will have died for nothing."
"Right," his men said.
Degmar had been promised a part in this new experiment, the new Homeland. Voldemort had promised to bring back the muggle concept of nobility.
All wizards were not created equal; that should be obvious to everyone. Most wizards were sheep, barely able to cast spells at all or to feed themselves. They were content to live petty little lives, and to never grasp for anything that wasn't easily available to them.
It wasn't so much about the muggleborn, although in Degmar's opinion they were latecomers who hadn't paid their dues and expected everyone to accommodate their strange ways.
It was everyone else, the people who'd looked down on his family his entire life. They'd looked down on his profession, not realizing that his was the only profession for real men.
Every wealthy family had gotten that way by crawling over the bodies of their lessers. The truly noble families had won their places with blood and sweat and death.
In Britain, Degmar would no longer be considered trash. He'd be royalty, and maybe more. Voldemort couldn't live forever, after all, and if someone helped him over to the other side a little faster than might have been, who was to know?
"You can run," he heard a breathy voice in his ear. "But you can't hide."
"Who said that?" he asked. He slapped his hand to his ear for some reason he couldn't understand.
"I'm coming to kill all of you," the voice said from somewhere behind him.
He whirled and green light flashed.
His men stopped.
"Fan out," he said. He cast the human revealing spell, but the castle was too large, and there was no one nearby.
"It'll be soon," the voice said.
"Where is she?" he muttered. He'd heard rumors that she wasn't actually human; that somehow she was an ascended boggart; the queen of boggarts.
It might make sense as to why the human revealing spell couldn't pick her up.
"Revello," he shouted, pointing his wand.
The more general spell should have revealed anything that was invisible or concealed. It didn't reveal anything, other than a few bugs in the air.
The British were filthy, he decided. They never would have stood up for that kind of filth in Norway.
"You'll never find me," the voice said right beside his ear.
It has a strange, inhuman sound, and he whirled, but there was nothing there.
"It's a trick," he said. "A spell we just don't know about."
The others were staring at him. Some of them looked dead on their feet.
He'd have to start endurance training when they were done with his.
Taylor Hebert appeared at the end of the hallway, and instantly fourteen wands snapped out, and fourteen beams of green light intersected her form.
"I am immortal," the girl said. She sneered at them. "I am death, and I have destroyed worlds. I will destroy this world, and I will laugh when it burns."
Degmar felt his heart beginning to race; as it did, he felt a fiery pain running from a spot on the back of his neck directly to his heart and from there down to the side of his arm.
He saw some of his men beginning to fall.
"Fear kills, you know," he heard the voice in his ear. "Speeds the heart rate, spreads the poison."
Poison.
He grabbed for the pouch on his belt. Bezoars didn't work for everything, but it was the best he had.
His men were all down, gasping for air.
He popped the bezoar in his mouth, but the pain didn't stop.
"That won't help, you know," the voice in his ear said. "This is actually the result of a potions mishap, originally designed to help you breathe. This,... doesn't do that."
He gasped, trying to point his wand at himself.
He felt something stinging his hand, over and over and over again. His hand spasmed, and he dropped his wand.
He could hear convulsions from some of the other men. Some of them were foaming at the mouth. None of them had been able to heal themselves.
The only sound was that of labored breathing; it was the sound of men whose lungs were being eaten from the inside out by a potion of such lethality that it would eventually be declared a war crime.
Degmar struggled with each and every breath. He hoped that the girl would show up to stand over them and gloat. He had a second wand in his pocket, and he knew how to cast with his left hand.
He desperately hoped that she would show up, so that he could be the one who killed the Boggart Queen. At least then his name would live on as more than just poor trash from Stovner.
She didn't.
One by one his men gasped their lives out.
Had she tried to frighten him simply to speed up his heart so that the potion would take effect more quickly? How had she administered it?
He hadn't smelled anything strange, and he certainly hadn't drunk anything.
In the end, he never knew.