In the reviews for last chapter, people finally told me that I've been using 'Invocation' where I should have been calling Jen's summoning 'Evocation'. That has now been fixed in all previous chapters.
As a follow-up, if you notice that I've made a mistake somewhere, please bring it to my attention. I have never claimed to be perfect, and I know I'm going to screw up somewhere. I'd much rather hear about it immediately and fix it sooner rather than five chapters later.
Disclaimer: Were the heads of house all members of staff who taught all seven years rather than the elective teachers who only taught five years and so would have more time to handle their students' problems? Is so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.
Chapter 15
Worse Fates
A tawny owl fluttered amongst all the other birds sailing above the tables in the Great Hall. Spotting the recipient of its burden, he pulled his wings in close to his body and plummeted toward her, only spreading his limbs out once more when he was nearly to his destination. Once the human girl had taken the thick envelope that was tied to his talons, he snapped up a slice of ham from a nearby plate and took off again, eager to return to his perch and get some sleep before yet another human rented out his services.
Jen was too preoccupied to concern herself with the owl, however. The letter in her hands had no seal stamped into the wax, but the handwriting itself was familiar. Where had she seen this before?
"Are you going to open the letter or just stare at it?" Tracey asked, forkful of eggs waiting in the air.
"I was just trying to figure out who it's from," she replied as she tore the envelope open and pulled out the single sheet of parchment contained within. "I know I know the handwriting, but I can't remember from where… Oh."
Padma glanced up at her displeased tone. "Oh?"
"Yes, oh. I know why I recognize the writing now." Turning back to her best friend, she explained, "It's the same person who sent me the first letter."
The Slytherin winced in understanding, at which point Luna had to jump in with the most awkward question possible. "First letter? What are you talking about?"
"It… was a letter someone sent me anonymously. All he said about himself was that he was a secret admirer and fancies me. I thought I knew who it was from, but when I replied to that person, I was told that he was, in fact, not the author."
Luna did not seem pleased with that answer if her scowl was any indication.
"So it's a letter from a secret admirer. So what?" Morag dismissively asked.
"This letter is a little… different." They did not seem convinced, so steeling herself, she prepared to read it aloud. Normally, she would not even consider doing this, but the author of this letter had crossed a line. She might also need a little assistance to deal with it.
To my dark-haired darling,
I hope this letter finds you in fine spirits. I was hoping that you would reply to my previous note, but I realized after a few days that you are not the sort of woman who would end this game so quickly. You were a tease even on our first meeting, but I can read you like none other, and I know your heart belongs to me just as my own belongs to you.
A sharp tink interrupted her, and the Ravens, along with one lone Snake, glanced over to find Luna with her eyes closed and her nostrils flared while the tines of her fork ground slightly against the ceramic plate.
"Okay then…" said Morag in a slow, worried voice. "That's the end of it, I hope?"
"No such luck. It gets better."
I will say, however, that I was hurt that you would go so far as to even pretend not to see me. I do not ask for much, simply that when we are alone as we were in Edinburgh that you show me the slightest hint that you are not simply toying with my heart. The heart is a delicate thing, my sweet, and it can be bruised should you be too rough with it.
If you would be so kind, could you also pass a request to your blonde friend?—
The others' eyes turned to Luna.
—I noticed her eyes wandering over you while you and your friends were shopping. I do not know if you were aware or not, but I think it would be best if you let her know that your love is already spoken for. It will be hard to do, for despite your façade, we both know that yours is a gentle soul, but you know, too, that I am a jealous wizard. If she tries to steal you away from me, I will defend you as is my right. Whatever injuries she leaves with will be her own fault, and I do not wish to upset you by hurting your friends. I do not enjoy having you angry with me.
I think of you every night, my wondrous Jennifer. Please do not make me wait too long to hold you once again.
Yours forevermore,
Your greatest admirer
The five girls sat silently for a moment, four of them considering what she had just read, and finally it was Padma who voiced what Jen herself had been thinking. "Well… That was creepy. And you don't know who wrote this?"
"Not a clue. It's just one of the myriad of reasons this thing,"—she gave the sheet of parchment a sharp snap—"worries me."
"Maybe if you hadn't decided to chase a bunch of random wizards, you wouldn't have to put up with it," Luna replied with uncharacteristic cattiness. The tight crossing of her arms over her chest revealed that the majority of her temper was probably – hopefully – the result of her fear. "And now not only do you have some strange wizard stalking you, he's threatening me. Thank you so much."
"He can threaten all he wants. He's not going to hurt you."
"How sure of you are that? After all," the blonde said, though her face brightened as she thought over what she was about to say, "unless you stay next to me the entire time we're in Edinburgh, there's no way you can guarantee that I'll be safe there."
"I might do just that." It would not even be that much of an obstacle for her meetings with her suitors. Sirius and Cissy knew that she could leave Hogwarts whenever she wanted, so she just needed to let them know that she would be otherwise occupied on those third Saturdays. She would also have to keep her movements hidden from Luna or recruit her other friends to run interference while she was out. This marriage had to happen to continue House Black's ascendance back to the glory they enjoyed for all those centuries before Voldemort bungled that up. This was her House, after all; soon enough, the family's power would be her power, and she refused to let the House she would lead lose that power if she could do anything to prevent it.
Jen liked her girlfriend, really she did, but Luna's territoriality was becoming increasingly inconvenient.
Mollified by her agreement, Luna nodded and turned back to her breakfast, and that was when a commotion at the staff table caught their attention. Bagshot, the witch Marchbanks had hired on to teach History of Magic and who had literally written the book on modern British history, had shot to her feet and was now staggering around the table, her hand splayed out over the front of her robes. Babbling and Burbage rose to their feet and were looking worriedly at the woman; even Snape had turned eyes from his breakfast to see what was going on. Two steps down the middle of the Hall… three…
The elderly witch pitched forward and landed on the stone floor with a dull thump.
A moment of silence fell over the students. Closing her eyes briefly, Jen could almost smell the faintest shadow of cigar smoke and feel a chilly breeze playing with her hair. Or maybe it was her imagination; she could not say for sure. What she did know was that as Bagshot had fallen, her eyes were stuck in the flat stare of the dead.
"Students, clear the room!" Sprout barked, her gaze tilting slightly towards the Hufflepuff table on the far right. "First period is hereby canceled!"
Personally, Jen would have insisted that her baby Ravens and Snakes stuck around – death was something to be faced and accepted as a fact of life, especially a death as clearly natural as this one, else the world would be filled with cowards who tried to flee the Baron's grasp like Voldemort – but with a sigh she stood and pitched her voice to carry down the Ravenclaw table. "You heard her. First- and second-years, come with me. Third-years, too, if you want." Turning to lead her charges from the room, she smiled slightly when she felt that the majority of her third-years had chosen to follow along, as well. Considering that she had spent a substantial portion of her time her first year at Hogwarts serving as in a big sister role for them – not too much a change from her last few years working in Candyland – it was no great surprise that confronted with the death of a professor, they would turn to a familiar face.
It was a bit more surprising that her second- and third-year Slytherins were scurrying from their table to tag along with their Ravenclaw friends. The smile she wore widened.
"I need one person from each year and house to get up here to the front of the line!" she told them while leading them out of the Great Hall and toward the front doors. If she was going to work with close to two hundred students from three different education levels, especially since she had already decided how she was going to distract them for ninety minutes, she was not going to do it inside the stuffy castle. The five students gathered at her command, and she asked, "What classes did you have first today?"
"Runes and Care," the third-years immediately answered.
The little girl who had been nominated to speak for the youngest Ravens looked around for a moment before piping up, "We had Charms."
"Still working on the levitation charm?" she prompted, earning a nod. That should be easy enough to cover, though it would be boring for the older years. "What about you?"
The second-year Ravenclaw shook his head. "Free period," he eventually explained to her raised eyebrow.
All that was left was the twelve-year-old Snake, and after a long moment, he looked down and muttered, "History."
"Ah. Well, I can't cover that with you, nor Care of Magical Creatures." Runes and Charms, yes, but that left nothing for the second-years unless she wanted to teach them Runes a year early. Not to mention, from the numerous comments her friends, Morag in particular had made, the first year of Ancient Runes was exceedingly boring, but they needed that foundation to know what they were doing—
Or did they? A small smirk grew as she realized the perfect plan and directed her charges to a wide area next to the lake. None of them had ever seen a levitation charm cast like this before. "Okay, I have a plan. Firsties, over to my right; second- and third-years, to my left. I'll be with you in just a moment." After setting the first-years to practicing their charms, dropping a few hints along the way that they might want to watch the show she was about to put on for their seniors, she turned back to the kids she had worked with for a longer period of time. "You're going to be working on the levitation charm, too, but in a slightly different way."
"The levitation charm?" Miles, one of her third-year Snakes, whined. "But that's so simple. Can't you teach us something better?"
She rolled her eyes and flicked her wrist, conjuring a fir stick in her hand that she could use both as a prop and a pointer. Green smoke followed the tip as she drew a symbol that looked a great deal like a capital 'M'. "All right, question for my Runes students. Which Futhark character is this?"
"Ehwaz!" chirped one boy before anybody else could even open their mouth.
"Correct. Five points to Ravenclaw. Who can tell me what it does? You."
The Snake she pointed at smiled broadly. "The ehwaz rune, meaning 'horse', is the rune that is related to travel, transportation, and movement in general."
"And take five points for Slytherin." A wave of her fake wand made the smoke vanish. "Now, ordinarily runes are carved into physical objects, but they don't necessarily need to be. If you instead carve them out with your magic into the air"—she sketched the rune again, but this time it possessed the iridescent sheen her runes always took when she was using runic casting—"you can use them to cast spells, like so."
A fist-sized rock at the edge of the water rose smoothly into the air. Unfortunately, none of her students looked all that excited of learning another way of casting a spell they had already mastered with a wand.
"You can even use them for spells you don't know the incantations or wand motions for." Tapping the rune, she switched the force from upwards to away and increased the strength immensely, and the stone rocketed away to create an enormous splash when it hit the water.
That got their attention.
"A little more interesting now, isn't it?" she said with a grin. "The hard part is drawing the rune. The incantation is Epoto, which you'll find very useful to know even if you don't use this kind of casting much in the future, as it is also the incantation to activate runic scripts. The rest of the spell is all about sketching the rune and telling it what you want it to do."
Leaning back, she watched the two years' worth of students shouting out the incantation and waving their wands around in the air for a moment before turning her attention to a first-year who wanted her help. For all that runic casting was classed as a Dark Art, it was anything but true dark magic, and a quick bit of research the previous year had revealed that the majority of the British magical population, even those involved in law, had no idea what it was. The chances of her getting into any kind of trouble for teaching it to the kids was therefore low, and it was a flashy bit of magic, which meant it would keep their attention until it was time for second period when she sent them to their own classes and rushed to Arithmancy.
And if it happened to push some of the second-years into Runes who otherwise would have given it a miss or to serve as the starting point for reintroducing the neutral 'Dark Arts' to the island? So much the better.
Filius glanced up to find Griselda and Pomona walking into the staff room. "And? What did Poppy say?"
The head of Hufflepuff shook her head sadly, and the headmistress elaborated, "She said it was sudden cardiac arrest. Even if Poppy had been in the Great Hall when it happened, considering Bathilda's age, she probably wouldn't have been able to get her heart beating again."
"She was two hundred years old," Severus muttered. "It isn't a surprise that she died. It's a surprise it took this long. It's the truth!" he added when several professors shot him glares at his irreverence.
"Be that as it may, it still leaves us with a problem." Griselda groaned while settling herself into her chair at the head of the table. "I hate that we have to talk about this while Bathilda is lying up there in the hospital wing, but there is no point in delaying the inevitable, I suppose. What are we going to do about covering her classes? In less than an hour, there will be…" She flicked her wand to summon a sheet of parchment from the stack of schedules and looked over it. "Scratch that. Her next class is the fourth-year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws immediately after lunch. We have a little more time."
"But since we're already discussing it, we might as well finish up," Wilhelmina cut in. "If need be, I can cover her next class, but not the one after that; I procured a flock of Fwoopers to show the fifth-years, but I have to return them within the next couple of days. I don't have any classes on Wednesday or Friday, however, so if you need me to teach History on those days, that should be easily doable."
"I'd prefer not to split the duties of teaching History among several people if I can avoid it. I worry about the lack of consistency and the inconvenience to you and the students both if they came up to you to ask about something, say, Charity mentioned in class and you not having any clue as to what they are talking about." A thoughtful sound came from the headmistress as she pursed her lips. "But that is a good thought. I'll be looking for someone to take over the class on a more permanent basis, but someone who is otherwise less occupied would be the best person to take over in the short term. Aurora, what do you think?"
"What? Oh, no, no, no," the dusky witch quickly denied. "History's not my thing."
"Working a full job clearly isn't, either," Severus added in a cutting tone. "You teach five times a week, all at night, and you don't grade any more essays that the rest of us do. It isn't like you do anything else useful around here."
Septima shot the Potions professor a sharp glare. "While I wouldn't have phrased it quite the same way Severus did, he does make a valid point. If anyone has the time available to cover that class, it would be you."
"But…" Aurora looked around the room, perhaps to find a sympathetic face, but Filius could tell that was in vain. Of all twelve – now eleven – teachers employed at Hogwarts, she was the only one whose job was part-time, a fact he knew from his years helping Minerva keep the school's finances straight. "What about Rolanda? She does even less that I do. Now that the first-years' flying classes are done, all she has to do is be in her office a few hours a week and referee the Quidditch matches. And she doesn't give out any homework that needs to be graded! She's perfect for this."
"Rolanda isn't interested in a full-time position," Minerva explained with a shake of her head. "She spends most of her time taking care of her ailing parents, and her brother, whom they all live with, earns more than enough to keep them comfortable. She technically isn't even employed as a member of staff. She just volunteers her time because she loves Quidditch and watching children learn to fly."
"And speaking of money, you would be compensated if you agreed to this," said Griselda. "Until I find a new professor, you would receive the salary for both History and Astronomy. Minus the value of duplicate fringe benefits, of course."
"I… But…" With a frustrated huff, Aurora crossed her arms and slumped back in her chair. "Fine. Since I don't seem to have any choice in the matter. But! I want to grab a couple of NEWT students to help with the homework. If you're forcing me to work during the school day and at night, too, I won't have the time to grade all the essays from one class, let alone two."
"That is acceptable," the headmistress agreed after a moment's consideration. "Check with Severus to make sure the students you approach aren't already busy helping him out. I'd like a copy of the list once you've made it up, too. Providing that kind of help deserves a commendation in their records."
"If you need suggestions, you can always take Miss Granger. I'm trying to nudge her into teaching," Minerva explained when they all glanced curiously at her, "and I think this would be a good opportunity for her to get some hands-on experience."
"She wouldn't want to work with me," commented Aurora, her smile bearing all the sweetness of poisoned honey. "And while it would be amusing to force her to grade essays two or three times the assigned length like she made me do until I forced her to stop, I worry about how the students' marks would suffer. Perfectionism is not always a virtue."
"How did you force her to stop?" Filius asked. He had had the same problem with Miss Granger up until the middle of the third year, and while she still had a penchant for going overboard on her essays, it was far more restrained than it had once been.
"I held her back after class and told her that if she did it again, I would give the assignment a zero because she refused to follow directions. If I ask for a one-foot essay, I want an essay that is one foot long, not two and definitely not three."
A weak chuckle went through the room from everyone but Minerva and Severus. The former scowled; the latter just shook his head and asked, "Why didn't I think of that?"
"Thank you, Aurora. That takes one load off my mind." Blowing out a loud sigh, Griselda waved them all away. "Meeting adjourned; get ready for your classes. As far as the kids are concerned, today needs to be business as usual. I'll worry about finding someone to fill the post, but if you have any suggestions, I'll be happy to hear them."
Her feet touching down on the gravel, Jen quickly made her way to the door of Priest and Menagerie's warehouse hideaway. She had good news, but if they were to capitalize on it, they needed to move quickly. She had no idea if the Turk would change the location of his home base, either on a rotation or by simply picking somewhere else to crash for a time, or what schedule he might be using, and her information was already an hour old. Honestly, they probably had plenty of time, but there was no way to be sure—
The black witch stumbled to a stop, her head turning to the left to check on what she thought she had seen from the corner of her eye. No, she was not, in fact, going insane. Sadly, that just raised more questions. "Priest!"
Several tense moments passed before the dark-skinned wizard came close. "Queen. We were not expecting you to visit. Is there a prob— Ah. That is what caught your attention."
"Yes, that is what caught my attention." She pointed a finger at the 'that' in question. "Why did you skin a woman and pin her pelt to the wall?"
"I would think the reason should be obvious. Protection."
"Protection." He nodded, and Jen brought her hand up to her face and massaged the bridge of her nose. At least it was better than her first guess, which had been that Menagerie had an utterly awful idea of what construed tasteful interior decorating. The other black mages were supposed to keep a low profile, though, for her sake if nothing else. If they attracted the Aurors' attention, Priest and Menagerie could run off to a different country. She, however, still had to live here. "You're going to have to walk me through that one. How does the trophy from killing some random woman protect you from the Turk?"
"One woman's death would not. Four, however, are quite effective. Nor is it a 'trophy'; it is an essential part of the magic." She gave him a look that showed just how unimpressed she was by the explanation. "What do you know of the Sleeper's magics?"
"Just what I've read from my mentor's books. Assume I know nothing and start from the top."
He nodded amicably, the polite smile she had never seen leave his face utterly unaffected by the shift in conversation. "Very well. My patron deity concerns himself with connections. People, animals, objects, places; everything is connected to something else, whether those connections are conceptual or a little less abstract. His favor allows me to redirect those connections as I wish despite how nature would prefer them work. As my own mentor once described it, we sever that which should stay together and combine that which should never be.
"To answer your question, these women protect this place from the Turk's own attempts to divine our location because I gave them that power via breaking a connection elsewhere. First, I needed to find four individuals, preferably four who possessed similar physical make-ups and histories; this is an application of sympathetic magic, much like your trap for the Turk, and so the greater the similarity among them, the stronger the spell I could cast. For this specific piece of magic, I chose four women who were married to working professionals and who had a single teenaged child."
"How would you even know that?" she had to ask, her gaze still focused on the single skin visible. The hide was darkened, possibly due to the woman's habit of tanning herself but more likely the result of whatever preservation process Priest had put her through, though her mousey brown hair was intact and the strange designs traced into the skin were rimmed with red. Jen could only guess that those designs had been carved into the woman's flesh while she had still been alive. More disturbingly, from this distance and with the ambient shadows, it appeared almost as if the skin was quivering of its own accord. "The thing about their husbands and children, I mean."
"I have a spyglass that was enchanted to reveal information of that sort. It was an expensive purchase, but I believe it has proven to be well worth the price," he answered with a negligent shrug. "Because I wanted to protect this building, I had to remove protection from something or someone else who was connected to these women. In this case, it was from their children. So long as we are in need of their services, their children will experience all manners of ill luck, though those misfortunes will not be of the fatal variety. I also needed to keep them alive, and that necessitated a second piece of black magic—"
"Why? Couldn't you just tie them up and feed them a couple of times a day?" she asked. That seemed like it would be the simplest thing to do.
"That is more complicated than one would first think. The stable we have already put together is trouble enough, and those individuals we can sedate to make them more manageable." Jen opened her mouth and immediately closed it again. No, she actually did not want to know the details of that 'stable'. "As I was saying, I needed to keep them alive, and so I performed Jameia again, this time stealing from their husbands. The dead live on in the hearts of their loved ones, and so to maintain their consciousnesses here, I quenched that love. All that remains in the breasts of their husbands is whatever resentment, bitterness, and anger that was previously drowned out."
Four women who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, all of whom would have husbands who, upon interview by the police, would come across as people with motive to murder their wives? Jen shook her head. And to make matters worse, losing both parents in such a short amount of time would certainly count as nonlethal misfortune for the kids. She did not know whether to be unnerved or impressed.
"Wait," she said as she thought over Priest's phrasing. "What do you mean, 'maintain their consciousnesses here'? Are you saying that they're still aware? And they know what's going on around them?"
"Oh, yes." His smile widened the tiniest amount. "If you are interested in conversing with them, they are even able to answer questions, though you will have to limit yourself to yes or no replies or provide them some means of communication for which they may use solely eye movements. Being flensed removes the rest of their motor control and the breath with which to speak."
She looked again at the woman, and sure enough, the Muggle's green eyes were roving around the room, though they alighted on Jen and Priest more often than she was willing to attribute to sheer coincidence. By the Baron, this was getting a bit much even for her; she, at least, just killed her sacrifices outright. "Do… they feel pain like this?"
Priest rocked back and forth on his heels, his arms crossed over his chest as he considered her question. "To be honest, I actually do not know the answer to that. They probably do, but I cannot say that I have ever asked them," he said in a thoughtful voice. Then he shrugged. "But does it really matter? What brings you here today?"
"Do you remember the letter you sent me three weeks ago? You said that you couldn't track the Turk." He nodded. "I found him."
"How?!" demanded Menagerie with a snarl. The Greek witch stormed out from between the stacks of crates. "We tried everything we could think of, and we came up with nothing. How did you find him, and how are you not dead yet?"
"I'm going to guess that last question is because you think I was stupid enough not to run if I ran across him unprepared and in person," she replied in a dry voice. "Quite simple, really; I didn't go looking for him myself. I sent someone else to do it for me, and he told me what he found only an hour ago." Admittedly, having a pooka assemble a picture of the Turk's current lair using bits and pieces of her own memories was a decidedly uncomfortable experience, and she had been forced to play a guessing game with her scrying mirror both to identify the location in question and find a safe place where they could teleport in, but in the grand scheme of things, those were really minor inconveniences.
"You sent someone else to do it for you?" Menagerie asked with stark disbelief.
"Is not a queen permitted to have subjects?" Jen replied in a mild tone. She shook her head. "It was more complicated than just pointing to someone and telling him to follow the Turk around and report back, true, but the end result is the same. Now, are we going or not?"
Five minutes later, Jen teleported into a small alleyway that she had already visited and cast a silencing charm over to drown out the crack of their arrival. "He's two blocks that way," she said while pointing to the right side of the alley. "How are we going to do this? Quick and messy, or slow and quiet?"
"Quiet might be best for the moment," decided Priest. Menagerie shot him a displeased look and sucked up the small swarm of creatures she had already released. "This could turn into a fight, at which point we cannot be sure it will not attract attention, but there is no reason not to try to sneak in and kill him unaware."
Of course, their outfits – full business suit, hooded coat and trousers, and half-naked – did not naturally lend themselves to 'not attracting attention', so Priest threw up a Notice-Me-Not over them as they walked the short distance to the Muggle housing complex where the white wizard had hidden himself. "You have a room number?"
"Flat 209. It faces the other side of the property, so he should not be able to see us coming until we're already there."
It was somewhat strange for three mages to prepare themselves to attack a fourth in the middle of the Muggle world, and Jen could not help but think about just how many problems the aftermath of this battle was going to cause. Thanks to having and Auror for a cousin, she knew just how thin the Obliviators were stretched normally, and this? This might just push them to the limit if things went bad, particularly if something else happened at the same time. On the one hand, she really would prefer not to run the risk of attracting the Ministry's attention to herself for violating the Statute of Secrecy, but on the other, she really needed the Turk's head on a platter.
Decisions, decisions.
"The door's trapped," she warned when they got close enough for her sonar to reach it. Priest looked over at her and slowly lowered his hand from where he had been about to pull out his wand. "Light magic of some kind, but I can't tell what spell it is."
"This is your operation, Queenie," Menagerie prompted quietly. "How will you get us in?"
Good question. Looking around at their meager surroundings – just the trapped door, a small wall with a window, the railing on the balcony – an idea finally came to her. Jen bent down a little and spread her thumb and index finger, and a gap in the blinds on the other side of the window widened to let her peer in. No one waited for them in that room, especially with the thin layer of dust covering everything, and the door leading deeper into the flat was closed. Perfect.
Standing straight, she trailed her left hand down in front of the wall, and the faux stucco wall melted into a thick, gelatinous ooze. The goo flowed to the ground, the entire window sliding down with it, and once she had created an opening large enough for them to enter, she forced the molten wall to rise in thick streams and cover the door. A flick of her wrist transfigured the now-resolidified material into steel cables. Their quarry was not going to escape this way. She glanced at her companions and raised a finger to her lips, and then she stepped over the window.
Behind her, she felt Priest and Menagerie giving each other a look. Menagerie eventually nodded and followed her inside.
A monster that faintly resembled a hairless, leather-skinned jackal leapt off the pink-haired witch's right leg and wound its way between Jen and the wall. Large ears pointed at the ceiling for a moment as the creature listened to the other room before falling back. A low rumble slipped from the beast.
Now that they were in, how were they going to get to the Turk? After a moment's consideration, she laid a silencing charm over the opening she had made. It would not last long, but they would not need it for very long. She touched the wall with one hand and made a fist, then splayed her fingers out in the direction of the other room. It took a moment, but soon enough Priest's eyes widened and he gave her a nod. Jen held up three fingers, then two, then one.
Time to get loud.
She thrust both hands at the wall. The sheetrock and wood exploded outward, the entire wall crumbling into a hailstorm of projectiles, and before her first attack could reach its target, she shook one hand and let loose with streams of lightning. This was not ordinary lightning, though; it was the pale green of death. One of the major drawbacks of the Killing Curse was that it could only hit one target at a time, but while waiting for the pooka to return, she had taken that Unforgivable and spliced it into a wide-area lightning spell she knew. The result spoke for itself.
A bolt of white-hot lightning flashed back from the middle of the room. With the hand not otherwise occupied, she unleashed the spell she had already prepared and conjured a large chunk of steel to take the hit for her. More lances of green flashed out, Priest and Menagerie getting into the action now, and she banished the metal back at the mostly demolished kitchen and used her now-free hand to flood the room with fire.
The Turk dived out from behind cover, his wand flashing out to spray water at the flames in his path. Menagerie was the quickest to react and flung her lethal curses at the now-visible wizard, but he dropped his wand in the same instant that he waved his free hand. A gale tore through the room and blew fragments of the wall into the air to block the fatal curse, and then the debris shot towards them.
Jen stopped both curses to cast a shield that absorbed the blow. A twirl of her hand transformed the pieces into knives, and another flung the blades back just as a loud crash could be heard from the front of the room. Running toward the opening she had made, she spotted a man in a white robe soaring through the air to the spot where she had noted his wards stopped. A twist, a crack, and the Turk was gone.
"Modi li tout! Nou te gen l'! We had him!"
"The Turk is slippery," said Priest in that damnably calm voice of his. "This is not the first time he has escaped what should have been certain death, and I doubt it will be the last. That we came as close as we did to killing him is an achievement in and of itself."
Menagerie scoffed and reabsorbed her chimera. "No, I'm actually with Queenie on this one. How did we fail in killing the son of a bitch after surprising him like that?"
"The next time we meet, you can ask him. I am far more interested in learning how he avoided our scrying, personally." The dark-skinned wizard peered out the whole at all the people who were already slipping out their doors to learn what had happened and sighed. "However, I do not believe we will have the time."
"Maybe more than you think." Walking away from their entryway, Jen laid a Muggle-repelling charm over the flat. "That should keep out the Muggles, but sooner or later, the DMLE will arrive, and I want to be gone when that happens. I don't feel like getting interrogated today, and I need to get back to school if I want my alibi to hold up."
She was just glad she did not have any classes scheduled for Wednesday mornings. Her friends believed that she was off visiting her family, but if she could be seen by other witnesses in Hogwarts while the Patrolmen or Aurors were investigating things, that would be more evidence in her favor on the extremely slight chance that anyone decided to question her about this.
Paranoid? Maybe a little, but when she was breaking enough laws to earn herself the Dementor's Kiss ten times over, she had the right to be excessively cautious.
The three black mages returned to the ruined living room, their new task that much harder with all the rubble strewn around. "Look for the wardstone," Priest ordered. "It is likely somewhere central to this apartment. If the wards were over the entire building, he would be less defended. It has to be here."
Picking her way through the debris, Jen frowned at the splotches of white-magic-induced heat splashed here and there on the ground. The Turk had not hit these areas with lightning or wind, so why did it feel like his magic? Feeling around more closely, her sonar soon picked out a stronger source of heat. "Hey, Priest?" she asked while looking at the remains of the five-liter water jug she held in her hands. The plastic was practically burning with white magic, but only on the inside; the outside was completely normal. "Did you think it odd that the Turk was conjuring water with his wand rather than using his elementalism?"
"I did not notice that. If you are correct, that is indeed strange. Why do you ask?"
She looked around the room with new eyes. Sure enough, there were more water bottles scattered everywhere. "Because I think all these jugs of water have been imbued with white magic."
The African wizard stopped his searching and looked where she pointed. "One easy way to find out." Walking over to one sitting on top of an end table, he cracked the seal and stuck the tip of his finger inside.
"Priest!" Menagerie shouted when her colleague seized up and dropped to the ground, his entire body shaking for a long, worrying moment and a high scream trickling through his gritted teeth. A flick of her wand vanished the bottle and the water from where it had spilled when Priest's fall pulled it off its perch. Her flash of fear instantly turned to fury. "What the hell were you thinking?!"
He slowly pushed himself into a sitting position and raised his hand. The tip of that finger was still smoking slightly, and the skin over it had been horribly burned. "I was thinking this was the most convenient method we had to check whether Queen's theory was correct. It clearly was."
"But why would he do it?" Jen asked. After watching Priest get his arm shredded and pay it little mind, she was not greatly concerned about the damage he had inflicted upon himself. "What's the point?"
"The women I transformed have to be placed around the area they are meant to protect," the wizard explained. "I think this might be a similar situation. By infusing this water with white magic, he could hide himself so long as he stayed within its boundaries. Assuming he succeeded in twisting the magic to work as a ward rather than as an attack, it would certainly prevent ordinary scrying charms from finding him. It might also explain why you saw him using his wand to conjure water. That aspect of his power was already invested in his defenses." Priest shook his head and forced himself to his feet. "He prefers using his white magic, but we have seen him using his wand in a fight before. Never at the same time, though; I believe he cannot use or even hold his wand if he wishes to manipulate the elements, though whether that is a command from the Storm-Hunter or there is an unfortunate interaction between his magics, I do not know."
"I think it might be the latter. I can't use a wand because of how I cast magic; it burns out the core and sets the whole thing on fire," Jen muttered. "Let's assume we're right and this is how he managed to avoid you. Can you scry for his magic rather than his location and try to find where he's hiding that way?"
"Possibly. We will have to give it a try," he answered.
Multiple cracks came from outside the building, and Menagerie glanced out the hole in the front wall the Turk had made. "Wizards in blue and black robes just arrived."
"Sounds like Law Enforcement Patrol and Hit Wizards. Investigators and fighters, respectively," she elaborated at the other witch's uncomprehending expression. "Are they headed for us now or dealing with the Muggles first?"
"They're holding back. We have time to get out of here."
"Then let us not tarry." They looked behind them to find Priest opening the oven and pulling out a chunk of stone. A spell quickly reduced the anchor to dust. "Wards are down. Queen, we will be in touch."
The pair turned on their heels and vanished.
"Of course they'd leave me on my own." Jen shook her head and looked out the hole herself. Surprise, surprise, the Hit Wizards had noticed the wards dropping and had left the Patrolmen on their own to hurry toward her. Time to go.
A spin of her own, and the flat was completely deserted.
Creole Corner: Damn it all! We had him!
That was undoubtedly the shortest fight scene I've ever written. That said, it didn't make any sense for it to be longer considering the circumstances.
Silently Watches out.
