CH24: Striking Back

November 2nd

12:05am

Hogwarts, Scotland

Severus Snape

'There's still time.'

That was the mantra of Severus Snape for the past week. As Voldemort congregated his forces, issued extensive training regiments, studied the old deed of the grounds and, what had kept him occupied, ordered the brewing of over three thousand potions.

That order was fulfilled, and his boots clacked on the stone floors of Hogwarts' halls as hastily tried to make his exit. His hurried steps had attracted attention from the portraits whose disgruntled words would've been outraged cries if he'd not punished them heavily this past term. His brutal tactics had served him well, now though, with the watchful eye of Dolohov lurking the halls on a magic carpet, he had to be careful.

'Voldemort already suspects me, keeping me preoccupied and in constant company of another Death Eater, my time as a spy is coming to an end.'

With that in mind, Snape had to get the warning out. Voldemort was massing and death was coming.

'Damn you Dumbledore,' Snape mentally cursed the deceased headmaster. 'Leaving the wards in the hands of a boy, madness took you long before I did.' He'd discovered that little titbit the moment the man was dead and now, the only way to apparate was off the grounds.

He'd seen where the place was on the map and knew the plan was to apparate onto the southern side of the ward line. And so he did exactly that, the road to Hogsmeade turned into indescribable colours and shapes before his eyes. Then, it stopped, and Snape was standing in a field by a cliffside.

'This is the place; I am sure of it.' Snape turned on his heel and drew his wand in one motion. 'No trap… could this be a decoy so that I may not interfere?'

Snape took a step back as he prepared to apparate away. 'LEAVE.' His mind shook with the word. 'DANGER, LEAVE.' Snape closed his eyes and turned to his occlumency skills, blocking out the foreboding voice of unknown origin. 'A compulsion…' Snape turned again and stepped forward. The voice got louder but Snape was the master of his own mind and so with each step, the voice grew until finally the field turned into a sea, a sea of tents with a large stately building on a rise past the camp.

"Stop right where you are!"

Snape searched the dark for the voice, tracking the origin to his right. Two wizards in black trousers and vests stood side on with their wands aimed directly at him. 'I do not recognise their regalia.'

"Your wand, drop it!"

Snape weighed his options; submit to unknown wizards and pray they were loyalists or fight them and however many came after. "Are you loyalists?"

"Damn right we are," the one on the left said. "Drop your wand, we won't ask again."

'This is a waste of time.' Snape dropped his wand and spoke clearly. "There isn't much time, I need to speak with Potter or Greengrass."

"Sure you do buddy," Snape's wand was summoned to one of the loyalists hands whilst the other came over and slapped magic dampening cuffs on him. "Too bad you just missed them, maybe they'll come visit you in the dungeon when they get back."

"Wait!" Snape exclaimed, more panicked than he'd ever been before. "Voldemort is coming, you're all going to die by dawn if I don't speak to whoever is in charge here."

The loyalists looked at each other with worried expressions. 'Finally, you imbeciles.'

"HAHAHA." The left one laughed in his face. "No wonder this one escaped Azkaban the first time, even Dumbledore believed his shite."

"How do you think I managed to find this place? I have no reason to lie!"

"Partner, a moment?" The right one seemed the more sensible of the two as he gave Snape a calculating look. The two stepped away a few paces, enough to keep an eye on him but just far enough away to not be heard whispering.

It only took a moment but the two came back and the right one said. "We'll wake Auror Moody and he can deal with you."

"Good." Snape stood straighter, relieved to have been taken seriously eventually. As he waited for one of the loyalists to return with Moody, Snape looked around at the sheer size of the camp. 'The famine must've been harsh on these people, but so many… perhaps we do stand a chance.'

"Severus Snape." The proclamation was followed by the metal 'thunk' on the dirt by Mad Eye Moody's artificial leg. "This is an unwelcome surprise." Moody wasn't alone, flanked on either side by Kingsley and… Black.

"Evening Snivellus."

"Black, quiet." Moody's command was obeyed but Sirius still sneered at hi long time rival.

"He says Voldemort is coming sir," the loyalist who had stayed with Snape said, "something about a large army."

"Is this true?" Kingsley asked his old order comrade.

"Yes. There is a device in the ministry that knows the location of every old pureblood property–"

"The net, we know," Kingsley interrupted him, "do you know its whereabouts?"

"No, but he's using it here, tonight." Snape watched their eyes widen. 'They know of the net… how?'

"Kingsley organise evacuation, we retreat to Hogwarts as planned." Moody's order was carried out immediately, Kingsley rushed off towards a tent larger than all the others with Black in tow. "How long do we have?"

"Not long, listen Potter has to–" Snape stopped speaking as he noticed Moody's magical eye focused on something above and behind him. Snape turned and saw large blue cracks forming in the ward line he'd just traversed through. "It's too late, he's here."

November 2nd

11:53pm

Ministry of Magic, London

Daphne

"Have you gotten lost, Harry?"

Harry and Daphne moved quickly through a muggle alley in London. Whilst the others were under the effect of the polyjuice potion and were able to enter the building freely, walking the halls as top-level death eaters, the pair of them had to be stealthy about it.

"No, we're taking the visitors' entrance." Daphne didn't need to see him to hear the indignation that they would be lost because of him on an important mission. They kept walking until they came to an odd red box with the word 'TELEPHONE' written on all sides at the top. "This is it, hop in."

Harry opened the door and let her step in first. The box was taller than it was wide so when he followed her, the tight space became unbelievably cramped. Harry reached into his pocket and pulled free small round pieces of metal Daphne recognised as muggle coins placing them in a silver slot beside a bizarre black device.

Once Harry had placed the coins in, he brought his finger to the device and twisted thrice until they heard a 'ding.' The box moved, descending at a snail's pace. The street disappeared above her head as Harry said "disillusionment," applying his own immediately. Daphne followed suit and soon enough the only way she knew he was still there was his breath on her neck.

'Not the time, Daphne,' she chided herself as her hormones tried to overtake her mind. Soon enough the floo hall of the ministry came to view and they landed off centre, close to the atrium. Three closed figures awaited them near the atrium, she already recognised the round pudgy faces of the Carrow twins, and the curly plume of Augustus Rookwood joined them.

The atrium was empty, leaving her to think that their muggle adventure was for naught. 'Better to be safe,' she thought as she stepped out of the box and onto the floorboards of the floo hall. Daphne assumed Harry joined her walking towards their comrades - Halim Shafiq as Rookwood, Jessica Odgen as Alecto and Bill Weasley as Amycus.

As soon as she reached their position, Daphne whispered, "are we all here?"

Harry, on her right, whispered back, "yes. Lead the way guys."

"First floor, we can take the elevator up." Rookwood-Shafiq led the way to the elevators at the back. It often slipped her mind that the atrium was the eighth floor of the ministry which had been the cause of her difficulty finding Scrimengour's office the first time she and Harry visited him.

All five of them piled on the dinky elevator and grabbed hold of the brass handles that protruded from the ceiling for support. The elevator lurched backwards then began the gradual ascent towards level one.

"Why do you think it's the minister's office again?" Amycus-Bill asked. The briefing for the mission had been short for Bill. Originally, he wasn't going to be a part of the team but having an expert on wards and Goblins might prove necessary.

"You'll see, he has a window that looks out on the atrium, but it's not high enough up." Daphne guessed the illusion would be placed roughly around the fifth floor, not the first. "Which makes me think it's an illusion."

"An illusionary window is the basis of this mission?" Jessica Ogden's disbelief was palpable.

'Certainty is a luxury rarely acquired.'

"Our people dying in their beds is the basis of this mission." Harry came to the defence of Daphne swiftly. "Trust Daphne, her instincts are rarely wrong."

'I stand corrected.'

"Level one - Minister of Magic and Support Staff. Have a nice night." The robotic voice of the elevator brought any chance of continuing the conversation to an end. Harry and Daphne disabled their disillusionment as the group departed the elevator.

"Back left, move quickly."

They set off at a jogging pace, down the hall past the under Secretary and junior undersecretary's offices. The hall took them to the waiting room outside the minister's office. Several small tables filled the right side of the room with a secretary's desk in the back left. Seats that Harry and Daphne had sat on, waiting for an audience with the minister laid adjacent to the large gleaming wooden doors that led to the minister's office.

'Nothing to wait for this time.'

Daphne walked up to the doors and pushed them in easily, revealing Pius Thicknesse's current office. The decorations were incredibly ornate. Detailed rugs were laid out under the desk, tables and armchairs that the minister had placed around the room. Every wooden piece was gaboon ebony, carved to absolute perfection. The chairs and the inlay for the desk were the finest occamy leather. Where there was metal accents, they were goblin gold, the rarest and most valuable metal in the wizarding world.

'A far cry from Scrimengour's tastes.' Daphne remembered the simple utilitarian room Scrimengour had kept and wondered what the lion haired man would say if he saw what his office had become.

"Go on Daphne," Harry prompted, "test your theory."

Amycus-Bill, who was already at the window, spoke as she approached. "I definitely see something, Wizard magic but it's not just an illusion."

'Gods, prove I'm not foolish.' Daphne stepped up to the window, stood exactly where she remembered Scrimengour had and looked down at the atrium below. Instead of fiddling with the key through her shirt like he had, Daphne pulled it out and pointed it at the window. The key vibrated in her hand and pulled itself toward the window but just as it would've stopped on the glass, it disappeared into it, up until halfway.

Daphne looked back, saw Harry's encouraging eyes and twisted.

The window rippled from the key like a droplet falling into a pond and the illusion came down. The atrium disappeared, to be replaced by a dark candle lit room as big as the main hall at the chateau. On the right wall was a map of the British Isles and two wizards stood by it, pointing at something. In the middle of the room was a large chunk of twisted rock and metal with runes carved into every inch of the base. Three men stood around the rock formation, each of them solemnly staring at one spot.

'It would take an arithmancer months, maybe even years, to decipher the purpose of this thing without prior knowledge.'

"Well done everyone, the war will be over before breakfast," one of the men spoke. Daphne knew that voice, knew that golden man-bun.

'Yaxley.'

She raised her wand and thought 'stupefy.' Satisfied when a red bolt collided with the side of Yaxley's face and sent him down to the ground hard.

"Everyone put your wands down and your hands behind your head!" Rookwood-Halim's commanding voice took control of the room before everyone's shock did. The four men remaining dropped to their knees and put their hands on their heads, Alecto-Jessica collected their wands. The men were lined up on their knees with Halim and Jessica behind them, Daphne and Harry stood in front.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Harry Potter," the furthest on the left said, then nodded at Daphne, "and you're Daphne Greengrass."

"Is this the net?"

"It is."

"What were your next targets?"

"We have no other targets."

Daphne shared a look of relief with Harry. 'They don't know where we are, we're safe.' Daphne stepped away from the interrogation to inspect the artefact. The stone looked similar to that which she saw in the ancient vaults of Gringotts. 'There must be magical properties laced in the stone,' she ran her hand across the jagged metal fused into the stone, 'goblin metal weaving then adds the finesse, not too dissimilar from wizard magic.' Across the stone's upper face were gems, scattered sporadically over the surface. As she moved around the large block of stone she realised there weren't any gems on the sides and that it wasn't one stone, it was three. 'Odd it almost looks like… the British Isles.' The stones represented the isles and the gems… 'the houses of the old families. Bastions of wizard superiority to be toppled in the name of goblin equality… ingenious.'

"Is Greengrass Manor destroyed?" Daphne called out, finding the gem that represented her manor in Oxfordshire blinking with light.

"No."

'No?' Daphne turned swiftly to look at the lead man. His sinister smile meant he knew she was figuring something out, something she wouldn't like. "You said you had no other targets left."

"Did I?" The man's glee generated shared nervous glances between the five loyalists.

"Why isn't Greengrass Manor a target?" Harry asked, jabbing his wand into the man's throat.

"It isn't, or rather, it was but now it's not," The man wore a sinister smile seeing their confusion. "Besides, real prize is to be claimed elsewhere."

Daphne turned around to goblin artefact and cast her eye to the Isle of Man. A gem in the middle of the eastern coastline was lit up like a firework. "No…"

"Oh yes missy, and I believe I've stalled you lot long enough. Without their heroes, your people are finished, and nothing will stop Vold— hrghg."

The man's body slapped to the ground as he bled out through the laceration in his neck, courtesy of Harry.

"Go. All of you go, help evacuate the people to Hogwarts." Harry's command couldn't have been followed faster; Bill was already halfway out the door after the first 'go.'

Daphne stopped her sprint before it could start. "We can't leave this here."

"We won't," Harry said, reassuring her, "your family needs you; I'll be right behind you."

Daphne leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek before rushing off to the elevators herself. The last thing she heard from the room were cries of "please!" but she couldn't stop, Harry was right, her family needed her, and it might already be too late.

Author's Note

Okayyyy second to last chapter in this arc. Bit of a shorter one but is just a set up.

Not much to say about Snape's POV. Dolohov is on a magic carpet cause Daphne blew up his legs back in the hall of prophecy. I did consider putting the Snape POV after the ministry raid but felt that it built more suspense at the start.

Another ministry raid, I know. But this one is incredibly important for several reasons. One: It closes out the key plot point. Two: We get a glimpse of what the goblins are capable of (will make sense later). Three: To show Harry's faith in Daphne hasn't shaken rather than just telling you all. Four: Harry is still that guy (prisoners? What does that mean?).

The ministry levels tripped me up a bit. The atrium is level eight, but going up from there the level numbers decrease. So, from top to bottom its 1 to 9 and not the other way around. I always thought the ministry was submerged too so if its sublevel one, two, etc, then that makes sense but it doesn't say that so idk.

I wonder if any of you guessed where the entrance was… If you remember, during their first meeting with Scrimengour he touched the ring in his shirt and stared at the window frustratedly. He said that there was a way that could fight more aggressively but the wizengamot wouldn't allow it. Props if you did, a nice surprise if you didn't. I'm really trying to make these stories feel connected especially from the book to book.

Next week is the arc finale. After that I've got two more arc and the next one has 4.5/7 chapters completed. Its all coming to a close.

I have also decided to write a sequel as well. I know some of you were eager to see one and I just couldn't help myself thinking about it. I won't even begin to start planning it until this is done, it'll be written more as a spin-off stand alone book rather than part of the series but I've got some pretty cool ideas for it already.

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed and see you next week

RevanchistVII