Chapter 39
Parvati puked into the already filthy toilet in the Room of Requirement.
She may have miscalculated a teensy bit.
Alas, poor young Ms. Patil was now intimately familiar with the concept of "collateral damage." Twelve students had been killed in her last attack.
Twelve students. Twelve thirteen-year old children, who, as far as Parvati could determine, were completely innocent. Sure, they were Slytherin, but even someone as radicalized as Parvati was rational enough to understand that merely being Slytherin should not be worthy of execution.
Parvati recognized that she had transcended revolution and crossed the line into pure terrorism. Terrorism against the "bad guys," perhaps, but terrorism nonetheless.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, they say.
Still a terrorist.
Parvati took a swig of water and spat into the sink. She wiped her face with an already damp t-shirt. Whether it was sweat or tears that she wiped from her face she could not tell.
When she had learned of the full extent of her attack, Parvati had fled, panicking, to the Room of Requirement, where she had then spent the next several hours alternating between pacing and crying and puking.
"Shit... Shit..." she muttered to herself, probably thousands of times.
Parvati tried to think of how she should respond.
One thing was certain- stopping now would destroy the whole point of her revolution. Dead kids was a tragic accident. Collateral damage. Perhaps even necessary in the grand scheme of things.
She could not let those students have died in vain. She would make them martyrs for the war against Voldemort.
After all, she thought, there would not have been a war in the first place if Voldemort would just chill out.
Then she thought, what would Ziad do in this situation? Would he stop?
Of course not. Ziad would stop at nothing to achieve his goals.
Somewhat comforted, but still with a sick feeling in her gut, Parvati began planning her next move.
It couldn't be violent. She had to use the stick and the carrot in relatively equal amounts.
They would fear her now. No doubt about that.
After all, they would assume that the murder of the twelve Slytherins was on purpose. And that she was willing to kill as many people as necessary to achieve her goal.
First, though, she had to really wonder what her goal was.
That was fairly simple.
The end of Lord Voldemort's reign of terror and the return of true free democratic rule to Magical Britain.
The next morning, as Professor McGonagall left her office and headed down to breakfast, she found a message on the wall, burned into the stone much like the last one.
This one was more cryptic and less militant.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Further down the hall were more words, blackened and twisted against the old stone of the wall. McGonagall finished reading the cryptic poem and stood in front of them.
I present my demands:
Lord Voldemort must leave Magical Britain,
The Ministry of Magic must be free of his influence,
The reign of terror must end, or more will die.
I will leave Hogwarts alone.
For now.
Wait for me on the first of March. If my demands are not met by then, you shall feel the wrath of God unleashed upon you.
Parvati huddled in the thick snow that lay beneath the thin copse of leafless trees.
The cold had seeped through the layers of camouflage clothing and settled into her body like an annoying acquaintance who just won't take a hint and go away.
She surveyed the target zone.
A bare field sloped downwards in front of her, ending with a small farmhouse a good six hundred metres away.
One wing of the old stone house had been used as a garage before the houses previous occupants had been found dead, with no apparent cause of death.
The house had been reoccupied by a group of Death Eater affiliates. Nasty sub-humans who murdered and tortured for fun. Below even terrorists- they had no agenda other than self-fulfillment through sadism.
They weren't very funny people.
Which is why Parvati watched them start to file out of the house through the scope of her sniper rifle.
The sniper rifle- something Parvati had gotten for herself during a brief foray to a British military base- was a thing of beauty. She loved that weapon. The weapons available to a witch or wizard weren't really able to reach out and touch somebody a mile away in the same way muggle weapons could.
Parvati watched the first man- a filthy man with mangy brown hair and nasty robes- start walking down the path towards the nearby village.
She adjusted for the wind and quickly calculated the difference in elevation before squeezing the trigger.
A loud crack echoed across the field before quickly being absorbed by the snow.
A second later the man collapsed in a puff of red mist.
The remaining three men turned their head wildly, searching for a threat, wands raised.
Crack
A second man fell.
Crack
The third collapsed in a heap.
The fourth and final man turned to the source of the sounds, eyes wide with fear.
Parvati paused, finger on the trigger, the crosshairs jittering on the man's head. She could see the man's eyes, unblinkingly staring past her, dilated and bloodshot as the man's mouth opened in a silent scream.
No mercy.
Crack
Author's Note:
Wow, this chapter is really dark. Unexpected. Well, I suppose that comes with the territory. Seriously, it's really hard to write about terrorism and stuff in anything approaching a lighthearted and whimsically absurdist tone.
Oh well, I'll give it the ol' college try with the next one. Try to make up for the last few.
You know it's getting dark when the bit with the guy murdering dudes in cold blood while in Indonesian prison is the funnier bit.