Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling, I am just playing in her world

A Lord's Charge

As soon as Croaker had closed the dining room door he rushed to get out of the house and beyond the wards. As he ran he pulled his cloak over his head and the charms of his work robes activated. If only his sister hadn't been late returning with his grand-nephew he wouldn't have to respond to some key department head of the ministry that had raised an 'all alert alarm' because he had thought he saw something. Or worse their pet was puking because they had fed them chocolate frogs. However, not only had he not accomplished his errand, but he couldn't politely get out of dinner, which had interrupted their discussion, and placed it on hold 'till after dinner.

He had planned out the whole evening, encourage his sister to sign a few documents, then get back into his office where he had spent most of his days since the official announcement, slightly more than a year ago, that you-know-who was back. After that the fools had became more idiotic than usual. The department of mysteries had a rather tentative connection to the rest of the ministry. One where the ministry provided them funding, and they provided their active combat operatives that weren't actively involved in research to be a force the ministry could call open in need. It only took a few ridiculous calls from the numerous inept bureaucrats that called 'all alerts' because someone had not been adequately deferential to them, when even the greenest greenhorn realized that bunkering in the department could be stretched to them being actively involved in research. I mean they were actively involved in research, even if it was volunteering to hold the clipboard for a member of the research branch.

Unfortunately it couldn't be stretched to I was on the way to the department to find some research I could actively participate in to ignore your asinine 'all alert alarm' because you found you had no bog paper while a-sitting on your throne. Finally clearing the anti-apparition wards and apparating to the go room and he was momentarily flummoxed. Sure there were the usual ten 'on duty' aurors scrambling into protective uniforms that might be ready to go in fifteen to twenty minutes. There were however, also four experienced other unspeakables that like him, would be ripped as greenhorns after getting back from the latest 'crisis'.

Croaker took command of them and nodded to Falcon, so she knew she had point. He armed himself with his offhand shielding wand, whilst joining the out ward facing group to Falcon's left, he also grabbed with his right hand the port key the four had taken from the alert table that made several high-grade portkeys keyed to the ministry official's token that was the source of the 'all alert alarm'. It was just shy three minutes since the alarm was raised, when the group port-keyed out, ready to face an embarrassing situation they couldn't even imagine that caused the latest call to arms.

Prior to arriving as they punched their way through an unexpected anti-portkeying ward they realized that this was actually a legitimate alarm. As their high-grade portkey would have been created with a tunnel through any friendly ward, so it didn't have to do what a normal portkey couldn't, and what it was now doing. As their spin's frequency varied looking for a harmonic to exploit against the foreign wards their travel shuddered forward, causing stress centered on internal organs. They were going to be bumping this landing; hot, hard and violently. Exactly how everyone liked to arrive into a potential warzone.

Knees took the brunt of the two plus "g" landing, training kept all five, though crouched, upright as three nearly clear shields turtled the arrivals. The portkey dropped as all five drew their second or like in Croaker's case primary wand, with the hand that had been holding the portkey. Seeing the primary and her body shields not under fire, Croaker requested, "Status Ma'am?" As the three shields that three of the incoming five had raised on entry were dropped, seeing no immediate threat. The head of the Auror department was nearly as good as giving him an extra unspeakable, and would never have called for help, unless the situation was dire.

"Niece floo'ed out just before connection was lost. We three are only friendlies. Ward's four minutes at best from collapse. Counted over twenty hostiles. Haven't seen Him. When is back-up arriving?" Madam Bones efficiently replied.

Croaker during the earlier conversation had activated his alarm, and was sure his team had too. He had pointed to Falcon and raised three fingers, she had negated with two fingers. Placing his hand on Dove's shoulder he shoed her while keeping Dove beside him "Pessimistically five minutes on mine, but seen as your finest were rolling around on the go room when we bailed, twenty minutes on yours. Your wards could fall any minute so the initial dance card is us. Are they any good at providing cover fire?" While talking Falcon who hadn't been too happy on the split had though acquiesced leaving with the team's best close range heavy hitter Viper, whom she had wanted to leave him as his back-up, and Bear the team's tank, shield specialist and secondary healer.

"Watkins isn't too shabby. He isn't as good as me though. Can we think about this optimistically though?"

Croaker laughed, "There are few in my department that I think could stand-up toe to toe with you Bones, and optimism is for after you somehow survived. Pessimism is your best friend for this cluster f... Dove, your right of Bones then Watkins, Bones is point. Watkins is providing covering fire against anything on your left. You," pointing to the second guard he didn't have a name for, "are to be shielding Bones and Watkins. Dove you are shielding unless I let something in on the right. I'll take the fight to them, right of your position. Bones advance or retreat as straight as you can. Falcon will be protecting your far left from the rear, but I need you to hold a one-ten sweep centered on the front door." Un-heard by the none-unspeakables, Croaker heard Falcon chime in on his earpiece charm that was within the cloak's hood that if Viper and her split from Bear left and right they could hold one-eighty sweep.

"Negative! Standard one-thirty sweep of three four man teams, you're down a man." Croaker stated and waved off Bones confused look, "Talking to Falcon, you give me one-ten we'll have less overlap." Normally he would have his speech contained with the hood but there wasn't time to switch it on and off as he organized a group that both had and hadn't got unspeakable cloaks, and far too high a chance of mixing who he talked to. Bones could roll with the extraneous details.

"And you're down your whole team! We will stay partial split off Bear and hold one-fifty if you swear Bone's is good enough to hold one-ten." Falcon response was heard only by Croaker and Dove.

"Agreed, and yes will hold 'till second." Croaker waved off Bones again.

A deep growling male voice challenged Croaker. "I should have your wing at least, sir." Dove voiced so all heard his comment. Croaker thinking initially of an after mission reprimand then shelved those thoughts as he thought if they were around for the after mission talking he would let this insubordination slide, and it might be inspiration for the aurors causing them to deliver beyond expectation.

"I never really played well with others Dove. Protect the primary and you can patch me up when the music stops." The wards fell and they heard Falcon leaving through the rear accompanied with rapid spell fire surprising the terrorists. "Well then, cannons to the right of me…" Croaker spelled the front door to open with his offhand and had shot three extreme blasting curses with alternating wands to the areas that became visible as the door travelled; prior to exiting into the chaos he had served.

Bones followed in his lee with a diamond formation behind her that meant that Dove and Watkins were leaving through the right and left of the door at nearly the same time as she covered their exit. Ahead of her to the right was a pure madness of multiple spells, constantly going out at an arc of nearly one-sixty, which had the death eaters on their back foot. They appeared to have completely shocked the death eaters as they were allowing them to get out of the bottle neck of the entrance ways. Bones added her own blasting curses to the left and straight ahead. Watkins was providing covering fire better than she had hoped. They were covering nearly twenty more that the requested one-ten. She noticed that over ninety percent of the spell fire was theirs going out, and saw multiple enemy fallen. If the enemy stayed this confused they might just survive this.

The second she thought that way, it seemed someone with a cruel sense of humor decided to hammer in Croaker's belief of pessimism during the fight. From the left and far right two individuals rallied the enemy and heavy fire came in that was too much for the shielding. A piercing spell hit her left hand and she dropped her left wand losing thirty present of her fire power, and the ability for shielding unforgivables while staying offensive. Watkins had a fist chunk of the left side of his torso taken from the peripheral edge of a spell in the blasting curse family that left a gaping hole in the wall of the manor house behind them. At least Mathews had deflected most of the spell to the left of their position and thankfully Watkins left arm was fully above the trajectory or he wouldn't have it anymore. Dove dropped his shield from the center and shifted left to stabilize Watkins before he bled out. So with Mathews throwing everything to shielding their exposed left side and Bones shielding the front with her only wand and Watkins down, their unit was offering no offense and that gave the attackers confidence to recover.

Croaker had somehow strong armed through whatever rallying had almost started on his side so at least their right was currently safe. Thankfully then the second group of unspeakables arrived on her new position. Two raced toward Croaker, Four as a unit pressed with two attackers covered by the other two shielding straight ahead of her position and the final two took off to the far left to get to the back of the property and help out Falcon's team of three. She wondered how they could work out where their colleagues were and how to split up without the hand signs she at least had seen Croaker and Falcon use earlier.

Bones didn't see much more of the fight. With the new team pressing the front and Watkins patched, Dove headed right toward Croaker, making that squad full strength. Mathews and a patched together Watkins demanded she get into the house. She didn't push the point as she wanted to get Watkins and Mathews to safety. She could rejoin after leaving Mathews to watch Watkins. She knew that she could get back to help the unspeakables faster if she helped Watkins hobble into her home, with Mathews protecting them, than if she wasted time arguing in the open. Arguing wouldn't get her guard detail into safety also. However, they had barely reached her home when the death eaters fled.

The final tally was seventeen dead death eaters, nine had escaped. Two on their side were badly injured, Bear was in worst shape, but hopefully she wasn't likely to die, she had already been taken from the crime scene. Croaker was the next badly hurt but Bones figured he was too stubborn to die. How he managed to trick his body into fighting as he did constantly at full strength, when it was more dead than alive, she couldn't be bothered to worry about. Viper and Falcon were the next most injured and would be recovering for at least a week from their injuries. Their fifth wounded, Watkins should be perfectly healed by tomorrow. Her injury was already completely healed so she didn't count herself amongst the injured. So on a day she thought for sure was going to be her last; the good side had all survived.

She couldn't help but laugh as right then her on duty aurors portkeyed in. She needed to think up some nasty assignments over the next few weeks. "Go make a perimeter and look for wands, assume everything is an enemy portkey for handling procedure." Saying the last part let them know how incompetent she thought they were, and in case they hadn't worked out what she thought of them she carried on. "Also search for the anti-portkey ward and get that torn down too."

Croaker twisted his head from the stretcher Dove had strapped him in, as if he was an invalid, to the one Falcon was on beside him. "Not that I am complaining but what was your team doing that meant you were ready to respond immediately."

"The Potter wards collapsed earlier today and we were alpha for the site even though he would have been on the express at the time. Lucky beta were pulled back as soon as it was determined there was no threat. But seen as it shouldn't have been possible because…

"Well then we were 'glorified guards', but nothing was found even if the whizzes searched for hours. They were saying the wards appeared to never have existed when the alarm came in. They went back to the department and we met your sorry arse. It is ironic that in the two deployments the one that we thought would be interesting was the boring waste of time. Then we got this one as the follow up.

Madam Bones realized her aurors had unfortunately competently located, and brought down the anti apparition ward as the paper pushers portkeyed in on their normal portkeys for after event evaluation.

"Madam Bones, why did you floo your niece out first. Standard procedure should have been you leaving first at the sign of danger? You endangered your guards' lives when you didn't take care of yours."

Or Joy, she looked at Croaker and silently begged him to do something.

"Dove," Croaker got the attention of Falcon's team healer, "You should strap Madam Bones onto another stretcher as we need her looked at by the department to verify that unknown spell didn't do anything and see if we can reverse engineer it. Now that the anti-portkey wards are down we need to be immediately extracted so valuable information is not lost.

"Crucio!" Lord Voldemort, yelled, cursing the second of the examples he was making of the hopeless idiots that couldn't attack and kill one woman. He had sent twenty-six of his follows. Only eight came back. Well nine but he was dead before the healer could arrive. Two were so badly injured that they wouldn't be much use to him anymore. So he decided to use them as an example to drive home to his followers that there was no reason to ever dare failing in one of his commands. It saved on wasting healing supplies on them too. He had quickly waved the healers off from healing them.

Authors Note: The chapter's title and Croaker's battle cry about cannons are referencing Lord Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade" so that is obviously not mine.