Authors note: This is a very long chapter! Well, not all that long, but a lot happens. I am still beta-less, so if you notice any edits, please let me know! Woohoo, we're in the midsts of my favorite parts (well the most fun to write). This is sort of a fast paced one, any comments or reviews on how it's written would be appreciated! Thanks, and Enjoy!
Warnings: Violence, some gore, not a ton, and of course, a note about the violence at the end.
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, alas.
Adrian Pucey - Phobos
Liam Baddock - Deimos
Theodor Nott – Oberon
Draco Malfoy – Chaos
Vincent Crabbe - Moros
Gregory Goyle - Pallas
Blaise Zabini – Pan
Pansy Parkinson - Nyx
Daphne Greengrass - Hebe
Morag Macdougal – Nike
Millicent Bulstrode - Cerberus
Elijah Harper - Cratos
Anthony Vaisey - Tyche
Malcolm Baddock – Hecate
Astoria Greengrass - Eris
Flora Carrow - Nemisis
Hestia Carrow – Hypnos
Ginny Weasley – Tartarus
Seamus Finnegan – Hyperion
Neville Longbottom - Chiron
Dean Thomas – Prometheus
Demelza something or other - Selene
Anthony Goldstien - Styx
Terry Boot - Perses
Zacharias Smith - Chronos
Kevin Entwhistle - Pontus
Jack Sloper – Morpheus
Ritchie Coote - Erebos
Colin Creevey - Metis
Dennis Creevey - Eos
Mandy Brocklehurst – Leto
Michael Corner – Charon
Stephen Cornfoot - Atlas
Orla Quirke - Lamia
Ernie Macmillan –Minos
Sally-Anne Perks – Aether
Draco paced up and down the line of his troops. 30 motionless figures stood, hands clasped behind their backs, staring straight forwards. They were in black cloth pants, and body hugging black shirts, to allow for maximum agility while covering as much skin as possible. They had taken squid ink, notorious for dying the hands of anyone that used it, and painted their eyes and lips black where the masks let skin show. On each forearm and on their backs, and across their abdomens, they had written their code name in the ink. No one wanted to say it, but it was incase they needed to identify a body.
Draco had given each one a ring (stolen from his parents deserted closets) and Perses had worked out the blood magic, if they touched their own blood to the ring, and pressed for more than a few seconds, it would activate and bring them back to the library.
Draco was keeping his face impassive, but he was jittery. The apprehension and odd pulling from within he felt on the full moon was present even today, while the sun remained out. Oberon and Cerberus were staying behind, with the four youngest of their numbers.
Draco took a deep breath, knowing he needed to have some sort of speech, and go over the plan one more time. "Alright, in a moment, we'll pair up, and apparate to the place we all discussed. Once there, I'm not going to lie to you, things probably won't go as planned. You all know your teams. All we are doing is breaching, holding them off, and then the three looting teams will separate, and take anything worth taking. Then sabotage, with me and Pan will go, spoil any food we can find, snap any wands we can find, set any prisoners loose we can, and generally make nuisances of ourselves. I know, for some of us, you might see someone you know, and it'll hurt, but if we don't end this war, then it'll end us. We can't have that, can we?"
The cry of no, in unison made his heart swell. They had been working on their stealth, fighting, shields, hexes, everything. They had spent the weeks making potions necessary; everyone carried dittany on them, meant to save any limbs lost. They were all stronger than he could have imagined, and it quelled his rage at all of the wrong-ness that had happened, on all sides but his some days when in the past it would have been too much.
"Alright, lets go. Once we're there no talking, so I guess all I have to say it, die with your masks on kids, and if anyone looks at you funny, fight back. Be brutal."
They walked out, together, through one of the walls that had once been, before Draco's home had burned, and Nemisis slipped up to him, quietly taking his hand. He gave it a squeeze, and then took a deep breath, and concentrated hard on apparition, even though he was new to it, he couldn't splinch Nemisis, that would not be a good way to start off the mission. The crack, and sickening jerk made him want to vomit, but he managed to land upright, easing Nemisis, helping her catch herself. He turned to the others, and held a finger to his lips, examining the position of the sun.
Nearly sundown, close enough, likely. He motioned to Phobos, and he and his group of larger boys moved forwards, towards the old orphanage, keeping to the shadows. Draco saw rather than heard their spells, jets of red light. He nodded to the next set, to go behind the others, making sure everyone was stunned, dead, blinded, or bound. Then the three looting teams, led by Nyx, Chronos, and Nike. Then, the remaining 5 of them set off, Tartarus and Morpheus with Pan, and Nemisis following Draco himself, as the entered.
Cocky Lord Voldemort had not set up many wards, he needed people to come and go too much, and trusted his death eaters far too much. Draco crept along, keeping himself low, Nemisis moving lightly behind him. He peered around a corner, spotting two hooded figures, guarding a door. A good a place as any to start.
"Obscuro. Obscuro."
He hissed, his wand poking out the tip of his shirtsleeve. The effects were instantaneous, as the two people whipped out their wands, unseeing eyes searching, heads swinging wildly seeking the source of the charms.
"Petrificus totalus. Petrificus totalus."
Both men fell, their hoods and masks falling away, still blinded, eyes darting frantically. He crept forwards, Nemisis following him silently, her overeager tongue held, as it was when she concentrated. He took out his knife, crouching before the men, pulling off their masks completely. He pulled up one of the men's sleeves, and cut straight though the dark mark, shallowly, but enough to draw blood. With his finger, he signed his C over each of their foreheads in the one mans blood, so that if others came by, they would know these two had been dealt with by one of their own.
Archaic? Yes. But the longer he was left to his own devices, and not just him, the wilder they all seemed to get, blood no longer bothering them as much as it might have. Some of the others maintained an odd reverence for life, but Draco couldn't help it. When the fury over what had been done to him and his friends, and his mother took over, he didn't mind ripping a few people to shreds. Although, part of him knew that later, when he wasn't possessed by a wild adrenaline, he would feel sick, and horror at himself, as usual.
He signaled to Nemisis and crept through the doorway the men had been guarding. Inside there were a few people, battered, bloody, and chained to the wall. Draco aimed a careful diffindo at the shackles, cutting them all, and then moved through, looking for faces to save more willingly. No one he knew, but he sighed and helped Nemisis try to gently rouse them. They held their fingers over their mouths, and gestured towards the door, quietly spelling the shackles off of the white, bloodied, but alive captives.
Draco signaled, Nemisis falling into place behind him immediately, and they both moved down a set of stairs at the back of the little wooden room. They found a kitchen, with some food stores, and a quick Incendio began what would surely be just the beginning of their distraction.
A death eater came running, to see to the smoke, and spotted the two, pointing his wand, but before he could say anything, Nemisis surprised Draco by drawing her wand, and saying, "Defodio!"
The gouging spell worked quickly and wildly, a large chunk of the death eaters midsection gruesomely scooping and squelching its way out of the man, who fell to his knees, with a scream, cut short by blood bubbling on his lips. Draco tried to move Nemisis along, but the determined little girl batter his hand away, and knelt next to the dying man, dipping her finger delicately into a small puddle of blood pooling from his mouth, and wrote a shaky N on his forehead.
Draco gave her a nod, not wanting to speak, and though he knew it was sick, he was proud of the 15 year old, even though killing was bad and all that, she had stuck to the cause wholeheartedly, and lets be real, Draco wasn't squeamish or picky about whether victims lived or died in the first place.
The two moved along the ground floor passage, meeting up with the other looting group. Draco signaled for Nemisis to join the others, and while she looked annoyed, and narrowed her eyes, she didn't break the cardinal rule, and said nothing, following Pan further on down. Draco moved along searching for a staircase that would go down.
He found it, some kind of muggle storage cellar from when this had used to be an odd orphanage, and stole down the stairs, treading as lightly as he could. His eyes adjusted, to see two large guards, armed and ready, more serious than the ones from before. He narrowed his eyes for a moment, thinking he recognized one of them.
"Eviscero. Petrificus Totalus."
The first mans stomach ripped open, his intestines spilling out, but the second man, the familiar one, just fell to the ground. Draco moved to the man, crouching next to him, hissing, "You let him kill our mothers, and you tried to kill me."
He tore off Yaxely's mask, and pulled his wand up, to the man's face. "Defodio," he snarled. The mans eyes scooped themselves out of his head, though petrified, he was unable to even scream. Draco signed their faces, using the strange mans blood, not wanting to touch Yaxley more than necessary. Then he opened the door, and when he saw what he did, finally someone he recognized, he was a little surprised.
Author's note: So, I know there are those out there who are on the side of the argument, that Draco can't kill. And I'm actually sort of with you there, I don't think he would be able to murder someone who hadn't done anything, but he's always been extreme in canon, and so I imagine if his mother and friends were threatened and slighted, and he was humiliated, and remember, he blames the werewolf-ness and everything being ruined on Voldy, so I don't actually think he would have any problems killing death eaters. So that's why he does. No worries, he's no sociopath, he'll be shaken by it later.