No disclaimer today. Nothing in canon really fits this chapter.
Chapter 18
Extinction Event
"You really think this is where he's hiding?" Jen asked her companions. "It looks a little… less than subtle."
The three black mages hovered in the sky just outside a large compound, Jen's magic supporting her whereas Priest and Menagerie sat on a flying carpet the African wizard had brought with him. The property itself was still busy despite the late hour: numerous people wandered the grounds, the children running around in the snow without a care for the cold while the adults preferred to huddle around the large bonfires scattered about, though they were still outdoors rather than in their houses. The joy of having just ten days until Christmas was obviously greater than the cold or darkness of a winter's night.
It was the exact kind of place she would choose to hide within were she in the Turk's position, but to be fair, she would happily risk collateral damage if it increased her chances of safety. Avatars of the Light Powers were not supposed to be so callous.
"This is where you say you found the largest amount of light magic, is it not?" Priest asked. "Here he would feel the safest, especially so close to the winter solstice. Just as we are powerless on the shortest night of the year, so too will the Turk be vulnerable on the longest."
"Besides, we already checked the other places." Menagerie rubbed her hands against a few of her tattoos, and Jen looked over to find that those images were fidgeting in excitement. "The buildings near London had the same kind of setup that flat did, but they were empty. Same for the two other places. Process of elimination."
Priest nodded. "We questioned a local wizard. He said that the Buckleys, the people who live here, keep to themselves and do not appreciate others poking around. Few people would think to look here for a stranger, and if he managed to convince them to make an exception for him – undoubtedly by appealing to their obvious support of the Light Powers – that would fit his preference for hideaways."
"Buckley, Buckley," she repeated, tasting the word. "Why does that name sound so familiar?"
"I believe you have said that your family is heavily invested in politics. Are they an ally or opponent?"
She shook her head. "No, it's not a Wizengamot family, and I don't think it was the name of one of my mentor's repeat clients. I must have heard it at school somewhere, but for the life of me, I can't remember why.
"I suppose it can't be that important."
"Are we going to have to sneak around again, or can we just jump straight to the fun stuff?" Menagerie demanded of her partner. "The solstice is coming up, and I haven't reached my quota."
Quota?
"You know the answer to that," he replied. "If we capture one of them, we may interrogate him or her about the Turk's location. After that? We will have to see."
"Fine, fine." The pair began their descent, Jen drifting along behind them. It meant she was perfectly safe when golden lightning appeared from nowhere and struck Priest in the chest and the arm when he shielded Menagerie.
"What the hell?!" the Greek witch demanded as she took control of the carpet and pulled them away from the now white-hot boundary of a previously unremarkable ward. "White magic wards?! This isn't the Turk's magic! Is there another one?!"
Jen did not have time to ponder the question. The sudden light show had alerted the residents, and the children were streaming into their houses while the adults either joined them or raised their wands. The pockets of mages shined silver, and then animals forged from moonlight took to the air and stampeded toward the avatars.
"Cry havoc and let slip the Patroni of war," she muttered to herself.
A groan preceded Priest pushing himself to an upright position. "That does not look good. Menagerie? I do believe stealth has failed us."
"About time." Ink burst from her arms and back before turning into monsters, and the winged beasts flew into battle with the totems that approached. "Queen! White magic wards have to be bound to something of the Power's! Find it and break it!"
"That'd be easier if I knew what I was looking for!" she yelled back even as she dived. The Turk had kept his enchanted bottles of water around the perimeter of his flat; maybe this white mage had done the same? If so, it would have to be something hidden inside the hedges that surrounded the property.
Some of the magical totems split off from the rest of the pack, and these turned to pursue her. That was not what she needed right now. Taking a chance, Jen conjured a fistful of cursed fire and hurled the blue and white flames at the animals. She hoped that the collision of light and dark magic would cause them both to be eradicated.
No such luck. Cursed fire was not as strong as its big brother Fiendfyre, or maybe the Patronus Charm was somehow protected from Fiendfyre's ability to consume matter and magic, but either way, the totemic spirits charged through the flames unscathed. Starting to get a little desperate, she flung a finishing charm charged with hate and dark magic, but while she made the lead stallion's form waver for a moment, it was not enough to deter it from rushing into and through her.
Jen screamed as her entire was set alight. At least, that was what it felt like. Any injuries she had just received, she knew, were completely disproportionate to the pain currently wracking her body.
She tumbled from the sky and landed heavily on the hard-packed ground, managing to avoid injuring herself by pure luck. Shakily getting to her feet, she glared at the Patroni that now circled her. She had to find some way to keep these things away from her or, even better, destroy them. If she did not, she would be a sitting duck for the Turk.
The horse pawed the ground aggressively, and throwing its head back in a silent cry, it rushed at her once again. A twist of her wrist created a stone wall in front of the beast. She half-expected it to slip through her barrier like a ghost, but to her surprise, it jerked out of the way and ran around.
That was a nice discovery, but she still had to contend with nearly a dozen creatures of light magic pouncing upon her. A circular wall sprang into existence between her, and them, and when they rose into the sky to jump over her defenses, she pulled the stone higher and nearer. Soon she was encased in a spherical shell, a hole at the top too small for even the tiniest of the Patroni to fit through her only source of fresh air.
Well, this is inconvenient, she thought. What options were available to her? Physical defenses worked, surprising though that was, but if Patroni could ignore cursed fire, it was possible that they would slip through a purely magical shield. She could possibly wrap conjured glass around herself so she could see out while keeping the spirits away, but that would prevent her from taking a proactive role in the fight. No one had ever developed a counter to the Patronus Charm; there had never been any incentive to do so, and with the known arithmantic formula a tiny fraction of what was there—
Except she did not need a completed formula, did she? When the stallion had gone through her, it came near enough that she felt the structure of the spell with her sonar. Much of it was garbled nonsense, too light for her to make out in any useful detail, but its core was composed of normal, neutral magic. That was what gave it its cohesion; the light magic was more or less a shell, something to give the spell its ability to scare off Dementors and lethifolds and black mages. If she left the light magic portions alone and instead created a counter just to the core, some spell that would interact with it and cancel it out….
With a nod, she let her power twist and distort itself as she sculpted it into the appropriate form. Sparks flashed when she pulled her magic to nudge these threads apart and bent it so it would tug that one out of position. A long minute passed, but then she collapsed the dome to reveal the totems that had taken up a watchful guard around her self-created prison. The horse barely had time to look at her before she flung her hand out, a jet of orange light streaking between them.
The Patronus crumpled into itself and vanished in a puff of glimmering mist.
Now the tables had turned, and she spun in circles to throw her anti-Patronus spell at each of her pursuers. Only once they had all been eradicated did she turn her attention to the hedge. This was her real challenge: what had they bound these wards to? Enoch bequeathed no white magic. Marduk, as she already knew, would be limited to wind, lightning, or water, and of the three, water was the easiest. There was no moat here that she could see, however, and wind or lightning would have to be contained for them to have any effect. Anchors for the Seelie Queen's boons could be anything. Aatxe would probably require statues of youthful heroes. Holda….
Oh. In hindsight, it was fairly obvious.
She sprayed the hedges with cursed fire and watched them catch like tinder. Holda, Mother Earth, the patron for the white magic of phyturgy. The anchor for the ward was not hidden inside the plants; it was the plants. Now that the bushes were burning with unquenchable flame, she returned to the air, her hands occupied with killing the Patroni in her path. "The ward should come down in a minute," she told her allies as she approached and then passed them. "Keep them busy. I want to try something."
The way wards were constructed, they needed something to serve as a foundation. Generally, that was a large stone, granite or marble if the person designing the defenses could afford it, but they could also be tied to circles around the object meant to be protected or even built on top of a pre-existing ward. In the latter case, the stronger the base ward, the stronger the wards on top of it, which meant that the Buckleys had probably built their compound's wards off of the white magic ward surrounding them. It was hard to get more powerful than black and white magic.
They most likely did not expect the avatars of Darkness to conquer their defenses, but Jen did not know if they had all run into their houses in order to escape through the Floo or. If not, they would do so as soon as someone realized that the wards had fallen, and that would leave no one to interrogate. She needed to keep that from happening, which would turn this entire fight into a waste of time.
Skimming the surface of the wards, she reached the apex and used her finger to paint the air with iridescent color. She mostly used her runic casting with Futhark, the language she knew best, but she needed strength right now, and of all runic languages, Egyptian was the best for wards. A slithering serpent and an elaborate rectangle together created a barrier that would prevent teleportation of any form, and after a moment's thought, she added a falcon and an ostrich's feather. That should keep those already here from sending out any further warnings of what was happening. Her magic pulsed, and two palings sprang into existence.
Another thirty seconds passed before she felt the heat of the wards give out. Too much of the hedge had been destroyed to support it any longer. Pulling her arms and legs together, she let herself fall toward the wizards and witches on the ground. Bolts of orange and pale green slew the recreated Patroni and the casters alike. Priest and Menagerie were quick to chase her, and soon the air sang with the sounds of death. Their impenetrable protections destroyed, the Buckleys standing guard were no match for three merciless killers.
Menagerie was the first to storm the nearest house, two three-headed dogs whose bodies had been stretched out like rats' flanking her. "Where are they?" the pinkette screeched a few seconds later.
The house was empty of people. A fire burned in the fireplace, but there was no sign of Floo powder on the mantel, so they had not escaped that way, and if they had decided to teleport away, why run into the house first? Grab the kids and go. Leaving Priest to calm his partner's enraged ranting, Jen drifted through the house, her sonar doing a better job of scouring her surroundings for clues than her eyes ever could. The rooms were all messy, but in most of them, it was the chaos of a small child or two living there. Only a few rooms held the subtle differences that came from panicked flight: toys and belongs kicked against the walls to get them out of the way, fresh dings from a door being slammed open. She followed the trail as it led her through the hallways to what she presumed was the parents' bedroom, and from there… yes, from there they ran to the closet. The closet that she could see from here held no one.
But if they were not there, why did all the signs point to them having run there?
She walked nearer, and only once she got close enough could she feel it. There was a tunnel hidden near the base of the wall, one that had to twist space on its way to its destination considering that wall was the one that separated the closet from the hallway she had just walked through.
"Priest! Menagerie!" The pair came at her call, and she motioned them over and pointed out the opening. "Think they took off through there?"
The dark-skinned wizard nodded. "I would expect so. We need to scout it out and make sure there is no one laying in wait to attack us while we crawl. Menagerie, if you would be so kind?"
The conjoined canines ran up and scrambled into the hole.
Jen was quick to follow, her flesh melting into that of a cat's. The tunnel was not very long, little more than a dozen feet, and to her slight surprise, the parents huddled in the center of the panic room were more concerned with comforting their children than watching for any attackers sneaking inside. Did they expect that the wards would keep them so safe that they needed nothing more than to make a token attempt at escaping? They all screamed in terror when the monsters charged out and sprinted in a circle around them, strong jaws keeping anyone from breaking away from the group and running to safety. Slipping into the room herself, she returned to human form and waved her hands. All the wands the parents held flew from their grasps and hovered in the air in front of her, and another gesture cut off their routes of escape by blocking the other openings behind a waist-high wall of ice.
Trapped like rats they may be, but being disarmed should keep them from doing anything stupid.
Some grunts came from the only open tunnel before Menagerie poked her head out. "This all of them?" she demanded while climbing to her feet.
"Considering all the tunnels? Should be," Jen replied, letting her eyes wander over the assembled Buckleys. Gathered here was a large group of people, a substantial proportion of whom were children of various ages. There had not been that many adults who stayed on the grounds to fight them, so that meant either some of the Buckleys – perhaps the young adults who were single or had not yet had children of their own? – had taken the opportunity to leave and alert the DMLE, which meant they were working on borrowed time, or the white magic of the wards had increased their fecundity. Perhaps it was because of the genetic defects she had taken on with her adoption, but the former option honestly angered her less than the latter.
The Grecian witch gave her a ghastly grin. "Excellent."
"Contain yourself," warned Priest, walking past them and stopping in front of the crowd. "Everyone! We are looking for one particular individual, a Middle-Eastern white wizard. We know one of you is or plans to harbor him here in this compound. Tell us where he is, and we will erase your memories of this and leave you in peace. Try to hide him, and the night will become much less fun."
"Speak for yourself," Menagerie cut in with a roll of her eyes. "I'd prefer it if they acted stubborn."
"What are you talking about?!" one old man demanded. A young woman, likely an adult granddaughter or even great-granddaughter but possibly just an extremely young wife, grabbed his elbow and tried to pull him back. "Harboring someone? The only strangers here are you! You come here, attacking us for no reason, asking about white wizards of all things—"
Priest interrupted, "If that is how you wish this to go, so be it. Menagerie." He took a step to the side and swept his arm from her to the huddle of bodies. "The stage is yours."
"About time." She swaggered up, the tip of her wand tapping repeatedly against her bottom lip. "Let's see…. No, no, no, no, no…. You!"
A jab of her wand yanked a little boy from his mother's arms and out of the protective circle. It was a surprise when she cut the summoning charm off before the boy was more than halfway to her, but the reason why became obvious. As soon as he fell to the ground, a scaled leonine monstrosity hurtled out of Menagerie's abdomen and dug its long claws and longer fangs into his flesh. It absolutely savaged him, ripping and tearing for several seconds before hopping backwards to let the Buckleys see his broken body, and then it jumped in again to continue its gristly task.
It was a long thirty seconds before the boy stopped screaming and moving, and then the only sound in the room was his mother and father's wails of grief.
Menagerie clapped her hands together, looking for all the world like a little girl who had just received the pony she always wanted. This time it was a slightly older girl who was chosen, maybe five years old as opposed to the boy's three, and she hung in the air screaming while the beast stared up at her and licked the blood off its jowls. "Let's try this again! Where's the Turk?"
Jen turned away when the screams started again. There was a better way to do this. She summoned the old man to her, a silencing charm cutting off his accusations or denials before he could make them. "Don't try to fight me," she ordered him. "If you fight, it will take me longer to search your mind. The sooner we get what we want, the fewer of your family has to die."
That stopped his twitches in their tracks, and he just stared at her before giving a single swift nod of his head. She smiled softly in reply and bored through his eyes with her mental probes. They tore his thoughts apart as they dug deeper and deeper, gentleness abandoned for speed, but the more she rooted through his memories, the stonier her expression grew. Where was it?! They knew the Turk was here, but why did this man – the Buckleys' Head of House, no less – not know a thing about him?!
Except…. They did not know the Turk was hiding here. They had assumed he was, but assumptions were not the same as knowledge. This entire venture had been a waste of time, and all these deaths? Utterly pointless.
She pulled her mind out of his head and looked dispassionately at his slack face. She knew going in that with how rough she was, he was probably going to die, but she expected he had known the same. He was willing to give his own life to protect the rest of his family, and she could respect that decision even though she personally valued her own safety above the rest of the Blacks'. Dropping his corpse to the floor, she shook her head and walked past her sadistic colleague. In the course of her search, Menagerie had killed three more children, and several adults in the crowd were sporting bloodied or even missing limbs from where one of the three-headed-dogs had bitten them, presumably because they had attempted to save their children.
Menagerie had been more courteous to her since the attack on the Turk's flat, but that did not mean the Greek wizard would listen when she said to stop. Taking the unholy glee of her expression into account, Jen would be lucky if Menagerie did not sic a monster or two on her.
Priest was methodically working his way through the Buckleys' wands, tucking those that fit him well enough into the belt of his suit and throwing away those that did not. "They really don't know anything about the Turk," she told him when she got close enough. "He was never here. You must have just missed him at one of the other locations."
"Are you sure the man whose mind you raped would have been in a position to know for sure one way or another?"
"He was their Head of House. He would have known."
Sighing loudly, the wizard stood. "That is a disappointment. I was sure he was here."
"So was I, but he's not. Get her to stop so I can vanish the mess and modify their memories, and we'll go look at the other places again."
"That I cannot do." She stared at him in confusion. "Black rituals all demand something from those working them. I suppose the Gatekeeper asks for death?"
"Yes, but I don't see—"
"The Grand Wyrm has her own demands. In order to earn her goddess's magics, Menagerie must make an offering of pain and fear. This is one reason I will not interfere in her harvest of torment," he told her.
Jen crossed her arms and stared intently at him. "If that's one reason, what's the other?"
"Have you listened to her complaints?" He gave her a friendly smile. "I can keep her from killing everyone we come across, but when she finally gets started, it is safer to step back and let the carnage run its course. Once there is no one left to torture, she will be agreeable to departing." His statement was punctuated with a helpless little shrug, as if he was asking her 'What can you do?'.
Disgust hit her like the Hogwarts Express. She was fine with killing when it was necessary, even if it offered a concrete benefit, but this? There was no point to this. Fear and pain could be obtained without a senseless massacre.
Shaking her head, she directed a thought towards the runes that floated above the compound and shattered them and their wards, then snuffed out the remaining pockets of cursed fire that still burned. Maybe some of the Buckleys would recognize the change and take the opportunity to escape. Maybe they would not and would therefore die. Either way, she washed her hands of this. "I'm here to kill the Turk, not slaughter my way through people whose deaths provide no advantage to our mission. Let me know once you find out where he actually is."
"Very well," Priest replied graciously. "Until then."
Twirling on her heel, she vanished from that place and reappeared high in the sky above Hogwarts. Hopefully someone there was smart enough to take the hint.
"This the place?"
"That it is, and I can see the bodies from here. Savage, Tonks, go in and dig around. Dickerson and I will look for any witnesses."
"Dickerson and his weak stomach," Gabriella Savage scoffed as the two witches crossed the line of scorched grass and ash piles. "If he couldn't stand to look at a dead body or two, why did he even sign up as an Auror?"
Dora shook her head. She knew the real reason why Gabriella was so grouchy; the older Auror had been called in from a date with her beau, and the closer they got to the site, the more this looked like it was going to be one of those all-night paperwork marathons. That said, Dickerson's reputation for easily getting sick at crime scenes was still a definite irritant. "Did you hear the rumor that he's playing up his squeamishness just so he gets passed over on the messy assignments? Some of the guys are doing some digging on the side, and the Coolidge siblings supposedly are taking bets about when they'll find something."
"When aren't they running some book or another?" Gabriella said with a short laugh, her normally buoyant mood restored a little. For all her affected gruffness, she truly was easily amused and fairly lighthearted. "All right, Tonksy. What do you see?"
"Twelve bodies. No visible blood, but it could have been absorbed by the grass." She bent down to feel the surprisingly firm earth next to the nearest corpse. "Or not. No wounds that I can see. Killing Curse?"
"Maybe." Figuring out if a murder was the result of the Unforgivable was hard in the field because there were so many poisons and curses that would not leave any external marks, but it was important to know if that were the case. The Killing Curse could not be cast by just anyone; it took a certain degree of power and a lot of hate to use it, and those two together ruled out the majority of suspects. "Not the Death Eaters, though. They'd have cast the Dark Mark before they ran off. Priori Incantato."
They both stared in shock as a shining boar floated from the tip of the wand she had picked up. "A Patronus?" Dora muttered, looking over the crime scene with new eyes. Not the Killing Curse, then, but the Dementor's Kiss. Except the Kiss did not kill this quickly. Soulless bodies would survive for days until they finally died of dehydration, even longer if they were forcibly fed and watered. And the Dementors had sided with Voldemort, so did this mean that this really was a Death Eater raid? But why no Dark Mark?
Unless the Death Eaters simply had not left yet.
Gabriella had clearly come to the same conclusion, and the pair of them moved toward a nearby house. A tap of the more experienced Auror's wand on her badge made it gleam blue for a moment. "Possible DE raid. They may still be here. We're checking the houses out one by one."
"Understood," replied Chief Auror Robard's voice. "Be careful. Try to arrest them only if you think you can do it safely; otherwise, just take them out."
"Will do. Wands at the ready, Tonks."
They slunk through the far-too-quiet house, eyes twitching as they tried to watch everything at once. All the bodies outside were adults, but in a compound of this size, Dora would expect more people than just those and a bunch of kids, besides. So where was everyone?
Spotting a single cabinet door that had been left open, she slipped around the kitchen island to keep some cover between her and whatever it turned out to be. "Found a secret passage or something. We'd have to crawl through."
"Keep an eye on it. Make sure nothing comes out," ordered Gabriella. "I'll check out the rest of the house. If there's nothing…."
She nodded. She did not exactly want to go down it, either, but someone needed to, and as the first boots on the ground, of course it would be up to them. Maybe they would get lucky, though. It could be a panic room of sorts, and they might find the family that lived in this house scared but otherwise okay.
A few minutes passed before her partner returned to the kitchen and shook her head. Enter the passageway it was, then.
Getting down on her hands and knees, Dora slowly made her way down the tunnel. A short distance from the entrance, she found a wall of ice blocking the way, and she carefully vanished the ice until she could squeeze out of the tunnel.
"Savage!" she shouted when her eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the room.
Her partner hastily joined her at her shout, and the two witches stared in shock at the scene that was revealed by the lanterns hung from the walls. The entire floor was painted red with blood, and the source was obvious.
Another tap preceded Gabriella's shaky report. "Chief, we've got between forty and sixty more bodies here. Looks like a mix of kids and adults. They've all been torn apart."
"Spellfire?"
"I don't know. Wait." She bent down to peer at something on the floor. "Negative. Animals of some kind. I see two… three… six or seven different paw prints just from where I'm standing. Maybe more. And…." She grimaced. "And I think they ate some of the bodies. It doesn't fit the Death Eaters' methods, but I don't know who else could have done this."
"Get out and secure the area. Forensics and backup will be there as soon as they can. I'll appraise Scrimgeour and Bones. We do not need more monsters wandering around starting shit right now."
Morag took the newspaper from the owl's claws and sent it on its way with a few knuts and a slice of ham. She then immediately began pulling it apart. "Sports for me. Jen, your politics. Padma, international events. Luna, gossip or headline news?"
"Headlines, please."
Jen accepted her section of the paper with an appreciative nod. Late in November, Morag had mentioned that it really did not make much sense for them all to buy their own copies of the Daily Prophet when there were only occasionally interesting articles and they all focused on different areas of news, anyway, so for the month of December they were trying out her idea of pooling their money to buy a single paper and sharing it. If anyone spotted any captivating news, she would let the others know, and for those sections that multiple people had at least some interest in – such as Padma's newfound desire to hear about any changes to werewolf legislation that could possibly lead to Parvati being able to come back to Britain – they would simply pass the relevant pages back and forth. It also cut down on the amount of space four opened newspapers took up at the breakfast table.
Skimming her area, Jen shrugged and set her section down. Nothing particularly noteworthy, just more announcements about the upcoming Solstice Ball that Cissy would undoubtedly have more detailed knowledge about. "Anything interesting?"
"No," Padma sighed.
"The Tornadoes' winning streak finally broke," announced Morag. "Lost to the Arrows 300 to 270. Took long enough."
"Good for the Arrows, I suppose. What about you, Luna?" The blonde stared at the front page in her hands, which had started to shake. "Luna?"
The blonde dropped the paper and all but dived into Jen's arms, face buried in her shoulder. Her robes slowly grew wet with tears.
Padma, Morag, and Jen shared a confused look before the Hindi witch reached over and pulled the page closer. "'Massacre in Leicestershire'?" Reading through it, she summarized, "Aurors were informed of a disturbance at the family compound belonging to the Common House of Buckley last night. Upon investigation, they found every member of the family murdered by person or persons unknown. They say it wasn't the Death Eaters but was more likely someone with a grudge against the family. Unless any current members of the House bearing that name come forward in the next thirty days, the House will be declared extinct."
Her heart sinking, Jen looked down at her girlfriend. "Luna? Did you know the Buckleys?"
The blonde nodded. A few seconds passed before she pulled her head away from Jen's chest and looked up. "That's my mum's family."
Oh. That was why she recognized the name.
"They don't like my dad, so I never saw them much, but my mum always hoped that they would warm up to him. When she had her accident, they pushed us away even more. Still, I thought that… someday…." Unable to continue, she squeezed even tighter and shoved her head once more against her family's murderer.
All Jen could do was awkwardly hold her as she cried.
…Oops?
Silently Watches out.
