Make A Wish: The Legend of Mister Black
Original Story by Rorschach's Blot
Rewritten by CassieAsterisk
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter or any related properties. If I did, I like to think I'd be a bit more careful about what I say on social networks.
This is a REWRITE of the excellent story by Rorschach's Blot, readable right here on FFN. I started this as a bit of creative writing practice and found that I quite liked the result; so after asking the almighty Blot themselves for permission, I decided to cast my doggerel into the sea of the Internet for others to enjoy. If the Blot or others tell me I can no longer do so, then I shall stop.
That being said... enjoy!
AN: To answer some reviewers; this isn't a full on remake of the original fic. It's more of a remaster, aiming to keep the general structure of the original while improving stuff like grammar and brevity. What can I say? I'm just not very original.
Chapter 8: The Fall of the House of Consiglio
"Get me the French and the Dutch on the conference Floo," the Praefectus Praetorio ordered as he walked into the meeting room. It was much like the Muggle equivalent, but on the table sat a miniaturised hearth that burnt with enchanted flame.
"Yes, sir," an officer confirmed. Casting a couple spells and tossing some powder into the tiny fire, it flared purple before settling. "You're through, boss."
"Good," he acknowledged. "Vermeer, Dupuis. I've had an individual by the name of Black running through my city doing Merlin knows what for the past two days, and I believe you might shed some insight on him?"
"Well, hello to you too, D'Angelo," Vermeer's voice replied crisply through the flames. "So what chaos has Black stirred up in your neck of the woods?"
"Oh, nothing much," Praefectus D'Angelo replied sardonically. "Just took a look at one of the Vatican's most priceless artifacts and immediately spotted a bunch of flaws in its ward schematic."
"The Pietà ? That was Mister Black?" Dupuis- head of the Gendarmerie d'Magie- said in disbelief.
"The very same, according to the Swiss Guard," D'Angelo said. "His mage sight picked up that a couple of the core supports in the web were a different colour. When they checked, they found that the ward would have failed entirely within the year if they didn't take action."
"Different colour?" Vermeer said, and D'Angelo swore he could hear her eyebrow raise. "But mage sight is monochrome."
"It usually is... unless you do something risky," Dupuis explained. "So risky that it would be insane to even try. I knew he was powerful, but..."
"Suspend your disbelief for a while longer, because there's more," D'Angelo interrupted. "Not long after, he popped up again and scared the shit out of my team running surveillance on Alberto Nachelli."
"Nachelli... the don of the Allied Magical Families?" Dupuis wondered.
"Indeed. He walked in to Nachelli's bar and sat at the table of the man himself," D'Angelo recited, not quite believing his own words. "And just after they listened to that idiot Fudge on the radio, he threatened the whole Magical Mafia with annihilation if they didn't toe his line- no Dark Lords, no killing of civilians."
"Merlin," breathed Vermeer. Being the only one to have met Black, she knew that he was perfectly willing to follow through with that threat. "And I'm guessing he left a smoking crater where the bar used to be?"
"No! That's the part I can't understand!" D'Angelo exclaimed. "Nachelli's big on respect; he's had people killed for less than what Black did. But all he did was thank the guy, pay for his drink and then call a meeting of the Allied Families. He even said outright that attacking Black would be suicide."
Nobody spoke for a while, each person contemplating the kind of power it would take to have Italy's most feared man running scared.
"So now I've told you all we know," D'Angelo said, breaking the silence. "Care to fill in the blanks?"
Vermeer, having met the man first, shared her tale of his heroics on the Kalverstraat, including the rumours she'd received from Britain about the new variety of magical animal he'd discovered in the poppy fields. Dupuis, for his part, concurred with Vermeer about Black's seeming omniscience; detailing his time in Paris, his 'accidental' killing of the serial murderer in Marseilles, and the fact that his blood was one of the deadliest substances known to man.
"...some of my men are theorizing that he's some kind of super soldier from the magical side of the Second World War," Dupuis finished. "And I want to say they're wrong... but honestly, they're getting pretty damn convincing."
"After what you've just told me, I can't blame you," D'Angelo concurred, a tinge of awe in his tone. "You couldn't have warned me this guy was coming, though?"
"We would've, if we knew he was going your way," Dupuis replied. "We lost his trail in Monte Carlo. He took a portkey to one of the casinos and just as the locals got on the scene, someone scored a massive win, lucky bastard-"
Before Dupuis could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by a Patronus phasing through the door- a silvery platypus, which whispered a message to him. As he listened, his eyes widened. "I don't believe it."
"Let me guess," Vermeer replied jokingly. "It was our friend Mister Black that scored that win."
Dupuis didn't reply, and the silence told Vermeer all she needed to know. "You're joking!"
"It was him, alright," Dupuis breathed. "And what's more, the subsequent investigation has cracked open a massive magical cheating ring; one of the other players had charmed the table. In return for fingering the cheater, they're honouring the bet and adding a reward on top."
"Jesus," D'Angelo muttered, as his sharp mind started to formulate, reconfigure and scrap a hundred different plans. Sure, this man Black seemed like he was on the side of the angels, but he seemed to be a magnet for havoc regardless of his intentions. God, how he wished he'd taken retirement when it had been offered to him last year.
As he said his farewells to the other police chiefs, D'Angelo's plotting was interrupted by a cry from the door.
"Sir," a panting Folchini cried. "I- I think I know why Black was in the city!"
D'Angelo simply closed his eyes in resignation and motioned for him to continue.
"Do you remember two days ago? When we got the report that Tony Consiglio was dead of natural causes?"
"Yeah, and right after that, the accident," D'Angelo replied. The enchanted car containing the majority of Consiglio's lieutenants had crashed without explanation, killing everyone inside. "Wait, you're not saying...?"
"Exactly," Folchini cried. "It all came together when I read the report of Black talking with Nachelli. You know what Tony Consiglio was like; he would never have followed any rule of Black's, and his lieutenants were all of the same mind..."
"So Black offed them before revealing his presence in the country," D'Angelo muttered. "Bloody hell."
"What worries me, sir," Folchini replied, "is what Consiglio's son is gonna do once he figures this out."
"You're sure of this? This man killed my father?" a middle aged man in expensive attire queried his subordinate.
"Everyone else seems to think so," another man in slightly less affluent gear replied. "What you want us to do, boss?"
The first man sat in silence for a while, before standing. "Get my driver. We're going to pay this 'Mister Black' a visit and show him exactly why one does not fuck with the Consiglio family."
His driver was summoned, and within the hour, the three mobsters were standing outside the hotel room where Mister Black was last reported to be staying. Consiglio's driver, a massively muscular man, was ready to bust down the door, while Consiglio and his lieutenant had wands drawn and a curse on their lips.
On Consiglio's signal, the big man shouldered the door, and it crumpled like tissue paper. The other two mobsters rushed in and cast as soon as they saw the unassuming young man reading a book on the couch.
Consiglio's eyes widened as his spell hit nothing but the couch cushion, while his lieutenant's curse hit the wall near the window of the room, cracking it. Black had dived behind the couch before the spell had left Consiglio's wand.
How could someone be that fast? Consiglio thought, while his mouth, working on autopilot, screamed a vague threat about ripping out Black's heart. Just as he was about to cast a blasting curse at Black's hidey-hole, however, he was forced to dodge a Reducto from Black as he rolled out from behind the couch.
A few more spells were traded, Black dodging their hexes with a dancer's grace while returning some of his own, before Harry decided that he needed to try something more unorthodox. Pointing his holly wand at the lead mobster, he yelled "Accio... er... crazy man!"
Consiglio had but a moment to realise what had been said before he felt himself flying at top speed toward Harry... and the cracked window he was standing in front of.
"No!" he screamed, as Harry jinked out of the way of the speeding mob leader, letting him plow into- and through- the window. As he plummeted to his death, Giovanni Consiglio could only scream and muse on what a terrible idea it had been to threaten Mister Black, before a sickening crunch sounded his end.
While Consiglio's lieutenant could only stand there dumbfounded at the fate of his boss, his driver had somewhat more initiative. With a great bellow, the massive man charged Harry, who barely had time to break his assailant's wand with a blasting curse before being scooped up in a crushing bear hug.
As the big mobster was doing his level best to break every rib in his body, Harry thought frantically as darkness crept into the edges of his vision. He couldn't cast, the man's charge having knocked his wand out of his hand, and something told him accidental magic wouldn't save him this time. He writhed helplessly in the man's iron grip... until his hand brushed against the polished bone handle of a knife in his belt.
The pugio!
Purely on instinct, he yanked the blade from its scabbard and sank it into his attacker's stomach, twisting it viciously. This had the desired effect, loosening the big man's grip, and he struggled free; as he did so, the knife sliced across the big man's torso, blood and guts spraying from him. He barely had time to contemplate the pain of the wound before he keeled over, dead.
That done, Harry- now covered in the driver's blood- swiveled his head to meet the terrified eyes of the third man, who had just watched his boss defenestrated and his colleague disemboweled. He took a step towards the man, who finally decided to listen to the voice in the back of his brain telling him to run like hell; a strangled sort of noise escaped from his throat, and he bolted out of the room.
Harry watched him leave, then absentmindedly started casting some Reparos here and there; fixing the shredded couch and the various other casualties of the short battle. Sitting down, he held his head in his hands and wondered to himself just how and why these things kept happening to him.
The surveillance team were waiting with bated breath, in the manner one would when watching a storm about to hit a farmstead. They'd just seen Giovanni Consiglio, his driver, and one of his top lieutenants walk into the same hotel that housed one of the most dangerous men in the world, with murder in their eyes. They'd called for backup; now, they were gambling on who would be leaving the hotel in a bag.
A question that was promptly answered as a team of eight wizards apparated in- just in time to hear breaking glass and a scream that ended abruptly in a crunch as a man plummeted to his death. Fearing the worst, they gathered around the corpse.
"Sweet Merlin," one of them breathed, "that's Giovanni Consiglio! Look, he's wearing the House Consiglio ring!"
"Then we might not be too late," a gravelly voice sounded- the policewizards' leader. "Go, go, go! Alpha team up the stairs, Bravo in the elevators!"
A chorus of affirmation, then the eight wizards- in two groups of four- moved as one into the hotel.
Alpha Team bounded up the stairwell, only to be caught short by another corpse lying crumpled at the foot of one of the sets of stairs.
"That's one of the Consiglio made men," said a member of the surveillance team, catching up to the main force. "Holy shit. Was he thrown down these stairs?"
Pausing only long enough to check that the man was indeed dead, Alpha Team continued their ascent, meeting with Bravo who stood on the opposite side of the ruined door to Mister Black's room.
Using hand signals, the leader counted them down, then as one they stormed the room... only to freeze at the sight that awaited them. On the couch sat a man with a rather haunted expression on his face, staring at the bloody corpse of another, idly playing with an ancient looking knife.
"Ah, hello," the man greeted, his voice rather too calm considering the blood and guts that decorated the floor in front of him. "And what can I do for you, gentlemen?"
"Er... Mister Black?" the team leader said, unable to tear his sight from the dead man. He looked to have been disemboweled, and not in a particularly pleasant way either if the silent scream frozen on his face was any indication.
"Yes?" the other man said. Harry, for his part, was busy suppressing the urge to giggle at his ridiculous luck.
"Are... you alright, sir? Are you injured?" the officer asked rather lamely.
"Oh, no, I'm a bit bruised, but otherwise just fine," Harry confirmed. "I'm guessing you want me to come with you, huh?"
"Um... yes," the officer confirmed. "But first, could you sheathe that, er... dagger? It's making the men nervous."
While he'd been talking, Harry had been juggling the pugio absentmindedly; only now did he seem to notice he was still wielding it.
"Oh, uh, sorry," he said, wiping the blood off the blade with a sleeve then sheathing it with a snap. "With all the excitement, heh, it kind of slipped my mind."
Grabbing his things, Harry moved outside as directed by the team leader. As soon as he was out of earshot, the lawman collared one of his men.
"Angelo, take another man and report this to the Praefectus," he whispered.
"Yessir," Angelo said. "Uh, sir, out of curiosity... who is that?" he asked, pointing at the corpse in front of them.
"That, Angelo, was Salvatore Carillo," the leader whispered tersely. "One of the most dangerous men in Italy... and the lead suspect in the murder of my predecessor."
Angelo could only gape as implications resolved in his mind. "That's Salvatore Carillo? The Butcher of Sicily?" he asked. "Black... gutted him like a fish!"
"I hadn't noticed," the team leader said, sarcasm dripping from his tone. "Don't you have a job to do?"
Angelo snapped off a quick salute in lieu of a reply, and promptly disapparated, reappearing in the Praetorio bullpen with a crack. It was against regulations, but Angelo figured that the Praefectus would give him a pass this once.
Ignoring the annoyed looks from his fellow officers, Angelo moved straight to the Praefectus's office. The big man himself was inside, working on a massive stack of paperwork, and he looked up at the disturbance.
"Angelo?" he asked, eyebrows raised. "What are you doing here?"
"Reporting on the situation with Black, sir," the breathless man announced.
"Is he still alive? Did you get to him in time?" the Praefectus barked.
"Er... yes and no, sir," reported Angelo, nervously. "Consiglio got there first... and we know this because he hit the ground next to us right after we apparated in."
"Merlin on a stick,' the Praefectus mumbled. The Consiglios were extinct, then, and that meant a massive power vacuum in the dead center of the Allied Families' leadership. The organized crime scene in Italy was set to become very interesting over the next couple months. "Tell me everything, Angelo."
"...and as we got to the room, we found Mister Black sitting down and doing knife tricks with this ancient looking dagger," Angelo finished. "He'd gutted one of the mobsters and was covered in his blood, grinning like he'd just won the lottery."
"Grinning?" the Praefectus questioned. "Did you get an ID on that mobster?"
"Yes, sir, it was..." Angelo paused, shaking his head. "It was Carillo, sir. Salvatore Carillo."
The Praefectus could only gape in amazement, before he wordlessly bent down, resting his aching head on the cool wood of his desk and praying that Black's Italian rampage was now over. If not... he'd be buried in paperwork from now till retirement.
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