Chapter Seventeen: Lights, Camera, Action

For a whole of ten seconds, nothing was said on the scene. It was safe to say that Harry Potter and his Aurors were completely confused. What should they have been? Draco bloody Malfoy had thrown them in for a loop! They had been working twenty four hours a day on this investigation and all of the leads and clues they had found led them right here, to this heavily guarded door that they had just broken through.

And what had Malfoy done? He had exclaimed that the man they were looking for wasn't here! The bugger hadn't even gone inside, how could he know such a thing?

It took Harry exactly twenty seven seconds to get over his confusion and for anger to bloom. It had been Malfoy's information and Malfoy's bloody lead that had gotten them to this door. It had been on Malfoy's word that Harry had invested all of his time and a fair bit of resources on this particular part of the mission. They had worked tirelessly at the Department of Mysteries. His Aurors had been working night and day. They had scouted this place! How could Malfoy just waltz away like that? The least he could've done was stayed and made sure this was a dead end they were facing.

Besides, all of the information they had did point to this very place. Harry was more than certain something of fruition would come from raiding this abandoned boarding house in the darkest reaches of Knockturn Alley. There just had to be. It went against all common sense and logic to assume there was nothing here.

Harry knew if he didn't go along with the plan he had spent so many hours formulating with the best Aurors available in his department, he would be doing Hugo a great disservice. And that was the last thing he ever wanted to do. It had become his mission, his prerogative to find Hugo Weasley. It was almost atonement for not having been able to save his best friend from dying all those years ago. Perhaps if he managed to bring Hugo back home, he'd be forgiven for not being there for Hermione the past five years.

So Malfoy could go fuck himself.

"All clear," he heard his deputy head confirm from the other entrance to the house. "Waiting for signal to proceed."

Harry didn't hesitate sending over the green light. They were going to have to go through with the raid without Malfoy. Harry reasoned that Malfoy had probably had a good reason to bail on them. The man was clearly fickle and had his own way of doing things, but that didn't mean Harry had to follow the blond git on every word. Besides, Malfoy had probably been hopped up on pain medication. He probably hadn't been thinking straight. He would have been a liability if anything.

At least, that was what Harry told himself to settle his conscience.

They rushed in the front door, the other strike teams doing the same. The building was completely surrounded from every corner, every possible angle. There was no way that anything would escape them today. This mission would be a success if it was the last thing Harry ever did. Almost every single head in the Auror department was present for this, so there wasn't really much of a chance that they could screw it up.

They passed an annihilated door. One of his Aurors kicked it in – Probably Basil, as the man had always been a little bit enthralled with being dramatic. Ten Aurors followed Basil into the room to investigate, wands covering every angle of possible attack. Everyone was on high alert and Harry was proud of his team. They had worked and trained hard for this. Every single minute of practise, all the hard effort, had been leading to this.

And they were here now, fighting like a well oiled machine.

Harry's heart began to thump as it always did on these kinds of important missions. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. If there was anything Harry loved in life, it was this feeling. This dreaded anticipation before they finally achieved something great. Harry hadn't failed many missions over the course of his career and he supposed this wasn't going to be one of them, either.

Malfoy had told them the basic layout of what most of the boarding houses resembled. He had outlined it in great detail to Harry's logistic analysts and they had strategized together what the best approach to raid would be.

There were three floors to the boarding house. The ground floor, which Harry was currently on, the second floor – which the team that had penetrated from the roof would scope through, and the basement.

Malfoy had said the most logical place to keep the children locked up would be on the basement floor.

Harry had decided that his team, the one that had broken through the front, would proceed to the heart of the house and invade the basement chamber. They would be charged with the task of bringing the kids safely out of the house. That left the roof team to take the second floor, and the team that had entered in the back to scout the ground floor.

Overall, Harry thought the plan was simple, but that it would work.

The psychopathic kidnapper wouldn't know what had hit him. Even if he had been anticipating the Aurors to attack, there was no way that he would be able to defend himself against this many highly trained men. Harry and his team would be out with the children before anyone knew it and the man would be behind bars in Azkaban before the day was over. The chances for success were very high in this case. Harry was confident that they would manage perfectly.

As they approached the centre of the house, Harry found the door that led down to what was unmistakeably the basement. With a quick scan, he gestured for the Unspeakable to go ahead and work on getting the door open.

The team of twenty and Harry stood there with baited breath and pounding hearts as the Unspeakable performed the complicated wand work necessary to get through the door. In that uncertain moment, that fleeting scary moment, Harry felt as if the Unspeakable might fail and then their mission would surely be over. But the moment passed and the door clicked open, much to Harry's relief.

Stepping in front of a stairwell that led into darkness, Harry stared down into the pit where he knew Hugo and countless other children waited to be rescued. This was it. This was the end of their long journey. It would all be over in a matter of minutes.

And with that, Harry took the first step down to the end of the beginning.

/

Hugo was surprised when the cage door swung open.

He hadn't actually expected to have managed! He had really thought that his magic had abandoned him to die. He wouldn't have blamed the magic either at that moment, because cowards clearly didn't deserve magic. But Hugo wasn't a complete coward – he had gone through with the plan, after all! Perhaps that was why his magic had come back to him. Maybe he did deserve it after all.

He slowly scrambled out of his cage, making sure to be quiet as he did so. He kept his eye trained to the door. It wouldn't do well if he got caught now. The man would surely kill them all where they stood, Hugo first for even attempting what he was trying to do. Hugo's heart began to pound. The man only had to look through the window to catch them, but Hugo hadn't heard the man come back downstairs. The room beyond was still filled with acrid smoke.

Hugo hurriedly, but quietly, rushed to the cage of the blonde girl. All of the children stared at him with wide eyes. They hadn't actually thought that he'd have managed to go through with the plan. But now that it was in action, there was no going back. They were almost relieved that something good was happening for them, something in their favour, even though it might end up blowing up in their faces and getting them killed. The wrath of the man wasn't a pleasant thing to face they knew from experience, but they were already goners anyways.

It wouldn't hurt to go out with a fight.

Well, it would hurt very, very much, but at least this way they had some chance of survival. They trusted Hugo, and Hugo very much trusted them. So, instead of rushing towards the door and saving himself – something he knew he probably had a greater chance of doing unnoticed than if all of the children escaped – he tried very hard to open the lock of the blonde girl's door.

She was staring at him curiously, but beyond that she did nothing else. Hugo managed to shift the lock a little bit, but he was completely exhausted! He couldn't do it...he couldn't possibly manage to get all of the cages open, at least not in time. They didn't have that much time. Hugo would have to manage somehow, even if it was impossible.

Then it struck him. The blonde girl had magic too. "You have to concentrate with me if you want to get out," he whispered to her. She looked at him for confirmation and he nodded eagerly. "Here, concentrate on the lock right here," he gestured.

And soon, with their combined efforts, the lock began to shift.

The blonde girl seemed surprised that she and Hugo had managed to get the lock open. She hadn't been sure if the plan would actually have worked. She had just gone along because the other children had needed a little bit of hope before the end had come their way. The girl knew that the end had been impending, unavoidable, something they just couldn't run from. But it seemed for the first time in a long time, she had been wrong.

She helped her newest friend open the locks of the other cages. It went quite a lot faster when all of the children worked together. One by one, all of the children managed to release themselves from their cages – each harbouring a wide grin on their face. This development was fantastic!

When they were all free of their confinements, they stared at Hugo and waited for instructions as to what they were supposed to do next. Hugo had been the mastermind behind their escape. He was the one with the plan, the one with all of the answers. They had doubted him at first, yes, but he had proven himself more than capable. They trusted that whatever he had on his mind would probably work.

They had never felt so elated.

Hugo himself was quite elated. He had doubted the success of his plan, as well. But now stage one had been completed successfully. They had managed to do part of the impossible! Now all they had to do was go through the door and hope that the man was too occupied to notice that they were missing from their cages. It was just their luck that something had gone wrong for the man, distracting him.

Only... were those footsteps they heard on the stairs?

"Children!" they heard the man call. "I've a surprise for you! We're going to have a party!"

All of their eyes widened simultaneously. Their hearts began to speed up in panic and a cold sweat broke through the circle of children. They hadn't expected the man to become unoccupied so shortly. They weren't prepared for this little glitch in the plan. Whatever good luck Hugo might have had a few moments ago, it was clearly all gone. This was the worst, this was something he couldn't handle...

But nonetheless, he was brave now, so he would have to deal with it. "Hold the door!" he hissed as quietly as he was able.

/

Hermione was more impatient that she should have been, waiting for Draco to be finished questioning the undeserving bitch brat in the holding cell. It was completely understandable that she was impatient, of course. It was something that had become natural to her wherever annoying things were concerned. And Manny? Well, she was annoying thing number one.

She sat there in her chair just outside the door, jiggling her leg to some unknown rhythm in her mind. She tapped her fingers against the arm of her chair nervously. Whatever Draco had wanted to get from the girl had better be useful. If it hadn't been, Hermione would make sure to cut all her nasty looking hair off.

She didn't doubt for a second that she would actually do something so crazy.

It was all she could do to remain quietly in her chair. She wanted to shout, scream obscenities, get up and be destructive. She had no idea what had gotten into her, but at that moment she really didn't care. She had years of frustration and anger all pent up inside her little body. It was only natural that she snap under this kind of situation. Yeah, she was snapping, alright.

It didn't matter if she was snapping or not. All that mattered was that Draco got what he wanted and in a timely fashion. Apparently, this was important and she'd just have to trust him on it. So she waited, silently cursing the man for taking to so long. Couldn't he have at least allowed her to come in and listen?

Right. He had done that, but she'd screwed it up. Why was she snapping? Why did he care if she snapped anyways? Right... because she was fucking up the investigation. God damnit! When had she become so useless at everything?

She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. Her entire body was tingling with anticipation. Somehow she just knew that today was a very important day, that today everything would be over. Somehow, she just knew that Draco would eventually make things come together. It didn't help the rush of adrenaline that was already flowing through her veins. Her body told her to get up and run, to burst through the door and fight her enemies. Her mind told her to sit still and wait for Draco or suffer the expensive consequences.

Suddenly, a door was slammed open, crashing against the back of her ill placed chair. It nicked her shoulder and almost sent her sprawling to the floor. Tears automatically sprang to her eyes and she let out a low string of curses. Looking up, she saw Draco's unfocused eyes staring at her and his flushed cheeks.

"Geeze, Granger," he muttered, pulling her up from the floor. "Sorry!"

She didn't care. All she cared about now was him telling her what he had found out that the Aurors hadn't managed to get out of the girl. She had always assumed from the start that Manny had outlived her purpose, but now she was glad that she had kept the bitch locked up. Perhaps she had been of some moderate use after all.

"What's going on-" she started to ask. But Draco didn't give her the opportunity to question him. Instead, he just grabbed her by the hand and began dragging her towards the lift. She had to scramble to keep up with his pace. When they reached the lifts, he began jabbing at the button viciously, just like she had not even half an hour ago. "What the hell, Malfoy? What's wrong?"

"Man. Street. Have to go...Fucking lift!" he growled. Instead, he dragged her to the stairwell, and they began to run up the stairs. "No time, Granger! Keep up!" he shouted over his shoulder.

How the hell was he running so fast up the stairs when he had been on his death bed only a short while ago? Hermione wondered what kinds of other tricks the man had up his sleeve, but then decided immediately that she really didn't want to find out. She was already out of breath and they'd only gone up about four flights of stairs. She didn't know how much more she could go. She was horrendously out of shape.

Lack of sleep, take out, and improper nutrition were really beginning to take their toll.

Suddenly, Draco took a sharp left and exited the stairwell. She was barely behind him. "Hold the lift!" he shouted to someone.

Praise the Lord!

They could take the lift. The exercise had been an embarrassing experience. She wondered if he would comment on it, but he was much too distracted. Instead, he just jabbed continuously on the Atrium button and impatiently waited for the door to close. All she could do was stand there and pant, clutching the stitch that had formed in her side. But he seemed completely unfazed. In fact, besides his ruffled hair and pink cheeks, he looked absolutely normal. Everyone in the lift was staring at them, but he didn't seem to notice that as well.

The doors had barely opened when he grabbed her hand and pulled her out before everyone else was even aware of what happened. They began running down the length of the Atrium to the apparation points and she was strongly reminded of escaping the Ministry during the war. Except, then she'd had a valid reason for all the exercise. Now, she had no fucking clue what was going on.

The guards there didn't even bother stopping them or commenting on the disturbance they were making, the attention they were drawing from everyone. Apparently, this was a common occurrence where Malfoy was concerned.

When they reached the apparation points and Malfoy had apparated them to her house, she was really thrown for a loop. She grabbed his arm and tugged him to a stop. "What is going on, Malfoy?" she asked him.

"No time to explain," he panted, showing that the exercise had put him under some kind of strain as well. "Got to go. Stay here, Granger, I'll come back for you."

He'd barely finished talking before he started running like a mad man down the street. She had no idea what was going on, but decided to take his word for it when she realized she couldn't run after him at the pace he was going.

/

When they reached the bottom of the staircase, Harry knew that his Auror team was knotted in a tense ball of nerves. He could almost feel the tension rolling off of them and realized that he was in a similar condition. This was the end. This would be the end of it all...

"Charge down in three," he gently whispered. He had no doubt that they'd heard them. "Three." They'd worked on this forever. "Two." He checked around himself for any visible sign of a trap. "One." Two Aurors blasted the basement door out of the way and they all burst through the opening.

The force split into a well practised group of three, charging into separate directions of the basement as required, searching for any sign of the captive children. The basement was adequately large. It seemed to be composed of three rooms – the main room where they all stood, and two separate rooms on either end of the basement, off to the side. Harry immediately charged towards the left, while another group went towards the right.

They were all silent, the sounds of their footsteps barely audible against the concrete floor. They were all alert to the imminent danger that was clearly present in the basement. They knew that above them, Aurors were tearing through the abandoned house, looking for any sign of the man that lived and operated here. Harry thought that perhaps they might have even caught him already.

All Harry had to do now was focus on finding the children. If he did that, then his mission would be complete and they all could go home.

Giving the sign for two of his Aurors to blast apart the door to the left side of the room, Harry burst into the side chamber, debris still settling from the force of blasting the door. It took Harry's eyes a minute to adjust to the darkness, even with a dozen well placed lit wands. But he was immediately disappointed. This was not where the children were kept, that was for sure.

The room seemed to serve the function of a very disgusting looking kitchen. There were buckets upon buckets lined against the wall. All of them seemed to be dirty with what appeared to be some kind of porridge like substance. Was this what the bastard had been feeding the children? Harry stepped closer to examine the buckets that must have served as dishware.

"Take a sample for the labs," he ordered one of his Aurors. One immediately stepped forward and began to carefully take a sample of the disgusting looking substance. Harry almost felt sick. The smell coming from the buckets was putrid.

"I think we've found something, sir," came a voice through their communication devices. He immediately rushed out of the room and found one of his Aurors gesturing to the room off the right side of the basement. An Unspeakable seemed to be removing wards off the door.

Harry's heart began to pound once more, forgetting his disgust. They'd found the location of the children. It was action time.

When they burst through the door, Harry felt that this was it. They were going to be successful, finally, and then he'd show Malfoy how right he was in sticking around and going through with the case. Yeah, Malfoy would see that he wasn't completely riding off the blond's instincts. Harry could have instincts of his own.

But when his eyes adjusted and he heard the Auror next to him intake a breath rather sharply, he focused his eyes to survey the room.

The room was rather small and had a dungeon like quality about it. The walls and floor were made of concrete and held many a scratch marks on them. Some of the gouges in the wall appeared to have been made by finger nails, leaving chunks of skin, nail, and blood behind. The place had a filthy smell to it, a corner filled with a pile of old feces and vomit. There was a thick layer of dust on the floor. The ceiling appeared to be made of wooden panels. He could see the pairs of feet of his own Aurors above him, walking on what was probably the ground floor.

But the dismal condition of the room was not what surprised him and his Aurors. No, it was the two very dead bodies that lay on the dirty floor. One appeared to be of a very tall – almost seven feet tall – man. He had a distended belly and a very large beard. The other seemed to be of a shorter, portly man, the same distended stomach and a large beard as well. They both seemed to have six fingers on their left hand.

They appeared to have been brutally murdered. The taller man had his neck severed almost completely off. It appeared to be a brutal hack job. Harry could see the jagged skin and pieces of bone. The other man seemed to have been disembowelled, his intestines strewn about a few feet from his body. They both had had their limbs smashed in, judging by the awkward angles they lay. Both of their eyes had been gouged out, their tongues removed from their mouths.

It was a horrific sight to have seen. Harry had seen murders like this before during his time at the Auror department, of course, and on some level he was always prepared to see the brutality that occurred amongst humans. But it always unsettled him to witness this kind of cruelty. Who was sick enough to do something like this to people? They would have to take samples to figure out the identities of the men.

Harry received the confirmation of clearance from the two Auror parties on the floors above him.

Malfoy had been right. Neither the man nor the children were here.

/

So they were basically done for.

The man was coming down the stairs, clearly looking to talk or gloat to them about something – something important enough that they were apparently going to have a party about it. Hugo wondered if that was the man's way of saying that he was ready to perform the ritual to take away their magic. It probably was. The man was mental, after all. Only he'd think that that was something to celebrate about.

They did their best to hold the door. Some of the children even concentrated their magic against the door. Hugo hoped it would be enough. The man was powerful, after all, both physically and magically. Hugo knew he and the other children didn't stand a chance. He'd somehow have to make it work anyways, though. He'd have to try to figure out some way to get the rest of the plan to work. They'd come way too far to let the man win now. He couldn't let anyone else die, especially since escaping had been his idea to begin with.

So Hugo began to look for an escape route throughout the room. Perhaps they wouldn't need to use the door to escape. Maybe there was some way that they could go through the walls. Maybe there was an opening, or something.

As the children held the door as best as they could, Hugo began to quickly survey the room, the blonde girl encouraging him to hurry along. She said that she'd help the rest take care of it. He should just focus on finding a new way out of there. He took her advice and began to focus on the walls.

The whole room was built with concrete. There were no openings, not in the walls, not in the ceilings, and not in the floor. There was no window, no way to let air in except for the door from which the man would be coming through any moment now. Tears began to prick his eyes as he noticed their predicament. This was all his fault.

"Come on, you have to think," the blonde girl whispered to him. Some of the other children also nodded, murmuring their assent. For some reason they seemed completely confident, determined in Hugo's abilities even when Hugo knew he was going to fail now. "You can do it."

He knew for a fact that he couldn't do it. How were they so confident in abilities that Hugo didn't even have to begin with? How could they trust him so closely? Hugo barely even knew them, hadn't known them for all that long. But he knew that they'd been through a whole lifetime of miseries together, had seen things together that just couldn't ever be undone. They had bonded over atrocities. Perhaps that is why they were putting their lives so willingly in his hands.

Either way, they were going to be dead. He might as well try his absolute best to get them out of the mess he had put them in.

Maybe there was still hope for his plan to work.

"Hey, you little shits!" they heard yelled at them through the door. They stared up at the little cracked window at the top of the door to find the man staring down at them in horror. "What the hell do you little fucks think you're doing? OPEN THIS DOOR!" They all only pushed the door shut as hard as their little bodies and limited magic were able to. They stared at Hugo desperately, hoping he had some kind of plan to get them out of this mess.

But he didn't.

He quickly ran his hands over the smooth concrete, hoping against all hopes that there was something there that would give, that perhaps an opening had just been hidden away from his sight by magic. The man began to pound at the door and the children whimpered, staring imploringly at Hugo to hurry up. But Hugo had run out of options and there was nothing more he could really do for them now.

Yet he still tried, still searched for a way out that wasn't there in the first place. But there was no use. The walls were smooth, the floor was just solid concrete, and there was no way he was going to be able to reach the ceiling without the help of the other children. That was the issue. There was no time for him to come up with another escape plan and there was nothing at his disposal to improvise with.

Then the man began to really pound at the door. The door began to budge, the window cracked even further. The children began to cry, screaming wildly at each other to hold on. It wouldn't be long now, they hoped, Hugo would find them a way out.

But when the door gave in an inch, and the man's sixth finger poked through, Hugo had no choice but to throw his entire weight at the door, helping the rest of the children budge it securely shut. He concentrated as best as he could to throw his magic at the door. Perhaps his magic would keep the man out for a little while longer. Maybe his magic would save them somehow.

The man screamed wildly and Hugo realized that one of his fingers had been severed by the force of the door shutting. That was really bad! He was howling and pounding, clearly angrier than he had been before. There was no hope for them. They had killed any chance of kindness.

The blonde girl kicked the severed finger away. Hugo knew that it was only a matter of time that the man found a way to get through.

Tears began to pour down Hugo's cheeks. "I'm so sorry," he whispered to the other children. They only stared back sympathetically and with a sense of panic and fear that was also present in Hugo's eyes. There was nothing more he could do except hope that the man just went away and came back later, giving them enough time to say their goodbyes.

But as always, luck was not on Hugo's side. Instead of giving them time, the man retreated and came back with what appeared to be an axe. He began to viciously hack at the door, making the children scream in terror. This was it. This was the end. There was no rescue, there was no escape. There was just this – getting caught and failing, even if he wasn't a coward anymore.

None of it mattered.

It looked like his plan was going to fail after all.