It seemed like a thousand eyes were staring at Harry as he crept low through the catacombs beneath Paris. Yet, the skulls were eyeless. Seeing their empty sockets made the hairs on the back of Harry's neck stand up, but he knew how to be brave in the face of terror.
Death seemed to follow him no matter where he went. It forever tormented him in his day-to-day life and kept creeping in at the most unexpected moments. Perhaps that was what he was destined for as the Master of Death. Knowing what it entailed, he did not relish his position, but he faced it head on regardless. To fail to do so was to give up on the most basic principle: he needed to help those who deserved it.
The men and women whose skeletons laid in the catacombs were long since dead, but they could just have easily been the victims of Emile and the other Death Eaters. The man was deranged and a danger to everyone else in the world, and Harry needed to be the one to put a stop to him.
The quiet footsteps of the Aurors lingered in the air around him, reverberating through the maze-like corridors that made up the catacombs. Cyrus had given Harry the exact path he needed to follow in order to reach Emile's outpost, but he'd been unaware if there were any tertiary outposts, traps, or any escape routes. That was why Yacine ordered her Aurors to spread out throughout the catacombs in a circular pattern so that they could steadily converge on Emile's location.
A squad of four Aurors flanked Harry, moving cautiously just behind him as they slowly moved forward. They only came to a stop when Gabrielle, standing just in front of Harry, held her left hand up in a signal for them all to halt. The blue ball of light that clung to the tip of her wand had just suddenly turned a dark violet.
"There's magic ahead," Gabrielle warned them as she peered into the light, analysing the glowing strands of white light that danced throughout it. "We have wards and a pair of explosive hexes embedded in the walls if anyone passes who's not bearing the dark mark."
"Alain," Harry said, waving the man forward. "Stick close to Gabrielle. As soon as we're upon the traps, I'll need you to analyse them and see if you can bring them down."
"Yes, sir," the tall, brown-haired man nodded. Like Harry and some of the other Aurors, he had to stoop to be able to walk through the catacombs without banging his head on the ceiling above. He walked right behind Gabrielle and placed his hand on her shoulder to ensure that he matched her pace perfectly as she continued forward.
Harry's wand stayed ever at the ready as they wound their way around the walls of bones, eventually coming upon a short staircase that took them half a metre lower into the earth. The only light came from the wands of two of the Aurors at his back; the third Auror kept his wand at the ready in case of any ambushes from the rear. Despite the fact that only two of the six of them were able to respond immediately if combat broke out, Harry didn't feel any concern. He knew that he was more powerful than any Death Eater out there. His only worry was that they'd accidentally trigger a trap that would kill one of them before anyone could try to defend themselves, which was why he was being so cautious with having Gabrielle and Alain on the lookout for anything.
Everyone was clearly focused on the mission at hand like true professionals. Harry had been worried after his last conversation with Gabrielle that she'd be a bit resentful towards him for not choosing her over Daphne, but she'd been her normal self today. She showed no fear as they'd pushed on into the catacombs, only eager to finally put a stop to the plague that'd been harming her country for far too long.
However, not everyone was so brave.
It took Harry a moment to recognise what he was hearing. It sounded like the faint jiggling of keys, but when he glanced back and saw the nervous tapping of an Auror's leg on the ground, he realised that it was coins bouncing around in his pocket. The man, Mathis, stopped his tapping the second Harry's eyes landed on him. He had a twisted smile from the fact that he had a wicked scar stretching across his lips from his chin to his hairline, but Harry could see the slight embarrassment in it at getting caught out.
"Take a breath," Harry murmured to the man so that no one else would overhear. The rest of them were still continuing on forward while Harry helped the man.
"This place is terrifying," Mathis said, his eyes flickering to the various skulls visible in the walls amid the pile of bones. "I know all about Emile Delacour and what he's done. He's an alchemist, but he's also delved into the darkest necromancy imaginable. I can help but fear that these skeletons will rise up and swarm up all."
"Gabrielle would've detected any magic like that," Harry assured him. "And even if they did, I can handle skeletons, inferi, or any other monsters he sends at us."
"Merlin, don't even mention inferi," Mathis shuddered, looking like he was about to be sick.
The last time he'd been in a place like this, Harry had been the novice. Dumbledore had guided him through all of the tribulations of hunting for one of Voldemort's horcruxes with a steadfast ease that'd left Harry with a degree of comfort. Now, it was his time to comfort his subordinate.
Harry cringed at his slip up. He had to remember that even Aurors hadn't been through everything that he had. "If you need to go back up—"
No, no," Mathis said as he forcibly sucked in a breath. "I'll be fine."
Harry patted the man on the back as they hurried forward to catch up with the group.
They rounded a smooth bend that slowly sloped downward, exactly as Cyrus had said. They weren't far from the outer reaches of Emile's defences now, and Harry wanted to be sure that they were ready for anything.
Gabrielle came to another sudden halt, stopping the rest of the group.
"It's here," she said, peering into the light on her wand. Her eyes glanced up, identifying an upside down skull embedded amongst the other bones. Harry saw it too. At first glance, it looked like any other skull around here, but he could see that it'd been disturbed not too long ago. The dust on it was far less than could be found on any other skull around here except for the one in the wall directly opposite it. "These skulls have explosive hexes embedded in them."
Harry pulled out his wand and thought of his love for Daphne. "Expecto Patronum."
His familiar stag appeared before him, glowing brilliantly in the dimly-lit catacombs. It almost seemed to breathe an air of calmness and relief into all of the Aurors.
"This is a message for Yacine," Harry stated clearly. "We've reached the outer edge of Emile's base and identified several traps and wards. We're waiting for all of the other teams to get into position before we proceed any further. Waiting on your confirmation."
When he finished, his patronus bounded off through the walls of the catacombs in search of Yacine.
"I know we're waiting, but should I at least start to map out the ward scheme of these traps?" Alain asked Harry.
It was tempting, but if Emile had been overly cautious and set up a detection ward within his trap for anyone trying to interfere with it, then they could give themselves away far too quickly.
"No," Harry shook his head. "We should all just take up positions in case we get any unexpected visitors. You can stick close by the wards so you can be the first one to check them out once Yacine gets back to me."
Alain nodded and aimed his wand at the ground just a few feet away from the skulls. A spray of colour shot out from the tip of his wand and left a multicoloured line stretching across the floor from wall to wall to mark off where they shouldn't pass by lest they risk triggering the traps.
Mathis, Gaëlle, and Pierrick all took up defensive positions against the walls near the slope they walked down, leaving Harry and Gabrielle alone in the middle.
"I don't like this place," Gabrielle murmured softly.
"Neither do I," Harry agreed.
Gabrielle glanced around the corridor. "Isn't it strange that we haven't run into any ghosts yet. I can't imagine that there aren't a handful of witches and wizards buried in this place."
That was true. Although ghosts tended to roam the places they'd once visited as a living person, many chose to linger around the place where their physical bodies were laid to rest. The number of hauntings that were reported in the catacombs by muggles made it a likely place for ghosts to linger. So why hadn't they come across any yet?
"Maybe they congregate elsewhere, or left this area once Emile moved in," Harry suggested.
"Ghosts are too stubborn to just leave without cause," Gabrielle argued back. "There's something wrong here."
That much they could agree on.
A few moments later, Harry caught sight of a silvery great northern diver phasing through the wall nearby them. The small bird came to a stop in front of Harry, and Yacine's voice suddenly rang out.
"We've run into a snag in a few of the other sections," she said, her voice clearly reflecting her frustration. "I'm sending all teams who are able to proceed deeper into the catacombs to capture Emile and any other Death Eaters. Go as soon as you receive this message."
"Guess that's our cue," Harry said, gesturing to Alain.
"What could be happening to the other teams?" Gabrielle wondered aloud.
A nervous chill seemed to fill the air as everyone congregated around Alain. Whatever it was that was happening clearly wasn't bad enough for Yacine to warn Harry about, but it didn't sound good. Could they have accidentally triggered some traps or found that some of the catacombs had collapsed in? It was useless to speculate, but the eeriness of the catacombs lent itself to playing upon the worst fears of the mind.
Alain's wand weaved through the air like a conductor as he steadily untangled the magic that made up the wards in this place.
"No alarms or secondary traps that I can detect," Alain grunted. "But he sure didn't make unravelling these things easy."
"Take your time," Harry said. There was no point in any of them rushing if a mistake could potentially cost them their heads.
The first beads of sweat began to form upon Alain's brow when one of the two skulls fell out of the wall and onto the floor. The sound of it clattering made Mathis jump in fear, but he quickly recovered, looking embarrassed again.
"First one's down…" Alain murmured. "And… there's the next."
The second skull fell out of the wall too.
"The explosive traps are done, but I can't take down the wards that cover the catacombs without getting to the ward stone or just blasting my way through it and making a lot of noise," Alain told Harry. "If I had more time…"
"How long would you need?" Harry asked.
"At least three or four hours," Alain grimaced. "Maybe more if the ward is more complicated than it seems on the surface."
"We don't have time for that," Gabrielle pointed out.
"No, we don't," Harry agreed, biting back a sigh. He didn't like this. "Can you at least tell me what the wards do?"
"There's a few blended together," Alain began. "The first is a detection ward for anyone who passes into the ward's radius. That then triggers several others. One checks for the Dark Mark, and if you fail that check, then it checks your magical signature against a list of approved guests. There's another ward that presumably warns Emile the moment anyone crosses the wards, authorised or not. Then there are a few others I can't identify. All I know is that they send signals to various places within the wards. Most likely, they're triggering other traps within the catacombs."
Harry wanted to punch the wall. There was a reason that Curse-Breakers were in such high demand. Wards were tricky at the best of times, and it took a lot of patience and careful manipulations of magic to be able to negate them. If they went through this, they'd likely be arming a number of traps within the catacombs that would undoubtedly slow their progress. Alain could try to disarm them again, but he wasn't even a proper Curse-Breaker; he only had some meagre training from some additional courses that the Ministry offered their Aurors. He would be slow and more likely to make mistakes the more complicated the traps were, but what other option did they have?
"Alright," Harry let out a deep breath. "Here's the plan: we continue forward cautiously. We take our time and let Alain disarm any other traps we come across. Gabrielle, I'm trusting you to keep up your detection charms to let us know when we're about to run into one. Gaëlle and Pierrick will keep up with the lights. You two need to keep your eyes open for anything dangerous too while Mathis and I stay ready as our first line of defence against anything nasty we come across. Is everyone clear on that?"
"Yes, sir," they all said as one.
Harry nodded in approval. "Then let's step through these wards and deal with whatever comes our way."
Everyone swiftly returned into formation and proceeded forward. A shiver ran down Harry's spine as he felt himself step through the magical ward—his sense for such things was much keener than most. The hairs on his arm stood up as the wards read his magical signature, leaving behind a faint itch that he refused to scratch.
The bones seemed to grow dustier and grimier the deeper they went into the catacombs. The passageways grew narrower and the floor less even. Harry wondered how long these corridors had been abandoned for before Emile came upon them. Likely hundreds of years given the thick spiderwebs in every nook and cranny.
Gabrielle kept everyone appraised of anything malevolent when they neared it. Alain continued to disarm trap after trap, clearly growing exhausted from the effort. The catacombs seemed designed to withstand a siege with the way that Emile had prepared them, but it worried Harry that they still hadn't come across any Death Eaters or signs of life. He'd gotten the exact route from Cyrus, but was it possible that the man had misled him?
A scream shattered those concerns.
Harry's body coiled up like a spring ready to unleash its energy as the scream reverberated down the corridor they were in. It seemed to echo through the bones in the walls, making the sound last far longer than it should.
Then, suddenly, the scream stopped immediately. The faint echoes lingered a moment longer before fading too.
"What was that?" Gaëlle asked quietly, brushing her long brown hair back behind her ears.
Everyone knew what it was. The only question was if the scream came from a Death Eater, an Auror, or something else entirely.
Before anyone could reply, another scream rang out. Even being prepared for it this time didn't help Harry stop himself from tensing all of his muscles. It was a woman's voice, and she was screaming with all of her might.
"We should keep going," Harry urged the group on.
They were moving closer to the screams now. They came in short bursts, only lasting a few seconds before fading. Mathis was bouncing his leg restlessly again, but Harry didn't have the heart to stop him. If this was what he needed to do to keep his head in the game then so be it.
As they walked down a long, curving corridor, Harry was the first to spot the sign of flickering lights coming from up ahead.
"Extinguish your wands," Harry ordered in a hissed whisper.
Gaëlle and Pierrick obeyed at once, leaving everyone standing in darkness. Harry pressed his back to the inner curving wall and slowly crept forward towards the light, making as little noise as he possibly could. His wand stayed in front of him, ready to strike. He very nearly did when he saw the dark form on the ground, but then he saw the blood leaking from it and the lantern sitting on the ground next to it.
Harry slowly stepped away from the wall and walked across to the opposite one while keeping his wand trained further down the corridor. He couldn't hear or see anything in the inky darkness beyond, but that didn't mean that something wasn't out there.
"Mathis, Pierrick," Harry said. "Get over here and cover me."
The two men hurried forward as Gabrielle, Alain, and Gaëlle took up the rear position just within the light coming from the lantern. Harry crouched down next to what he now realised was a body laying on its front and rolled it over.
The first thing that confronted him was the silver mask of a Death Eater. The second was the stench coming from the corpse. The third was the gaping wound in the Death Eater's chest.
"Fuck me," Gaëlle spat.
Mathis looked over his shoulder at the body and gagged.
All of the internal organs looked like they'd been forcibly removed. Something had shredded open this Death Eater's chest and smashed in his ribcage before taking everything else. All that was left was meat, blood, and bone.
Harry conjured a pair of thick gloves, which he promptly donned before examining the body closer. He felt along the edge of the wound, grimacing at how jagged it felt. Most cutting curses, even dark ones, cut cleanly. Something like this was either done by a creature or a spell that mimicked a creature's claws.
Dark magic always left marks. Harry knew that better than most. His fingers scoured along the inside of the Death Eater's chest cavity, getting covered in viscera, searching for anything that could hint towards dark magic being at work, but he found nothing of the sort.
"I think it was a beast that did this," Harry said aloud.
"A beast?" Pierrick repeated.
"What kind of beast would do this?" Gabrielle frowned. "He's missing all of his organs."
"I don't know," Harry murmured.
Peeling the gloves off of his hands was tricky without getting any gore on his skin, but Harry managed it well enough. He banished the gloves away and stood back up, frowning at the darkness ahead.
"Send some lights further ahead," he ordered Gaëlle and Pierrick.
The two of them conjured small balls of flame that they sent careening down the corridor towards the darkness beyond. Harry's eyes scanned the darkness carefully, finding nothing.
"We're not alone down here," he cautioned everyone. "Be careful."
Their formation grew tighter as they progressed. Within a minute, they came across a stairwell at the end of a three-way junction, just as Cyrus had said. They were close to Emile's base of operations now.
"Looks like we're the first ones here," Alain said, his voice tight and clipped.
"Maybe the other teams were the ones Yacine said were held up," Gabrielle suggested weakly. No one seemed convinced.
"We can't go searching blindly through the catacombs for the other teams," Harry said. "They might have gotten off route if things were more difficult for them. Our goal remains the same. We can't let Emile get away."
"Are you sure that we can handle him alone?" Mathis asked.
"Please," Gabrielle scoffed. "Harry killed Voldemort. I guarantee he could take care of all of the Death Eaters down here by himself."
That seemed to reassure the others. Harry felt them all glance over at him.
"The stairs are trapped," Gabrielle informed everyone. "We can stay here and wait for a few minutes until Alain dismantles the traps. If any of the other teams meet up with us, then great. If not, we do as Harry said and keep moving."
Despite being the most junior member of the group, no one challenged Gabrielle's statement. Even Harry felt proud of her. She'd make an excellent Senior Auror one day, at least once she got her arrogance fully in check.
As Alain got to work disarming the traps, Harry examined those that remained on watch. Mathis was still nervous. It was plain to see by everybody, but no one chose to comment upon it, despite the worried looks that his colleagues sent him. Gaëlle and Pierrick still looked ever the professionals, but Harry had noticed a slightly nervous jitter escaping Pierrick's mouth every so often. Gaëlle remained calm, but for how long, Harry wondered. Everyone had their breaking point, even him.
The steady breathing of Alain set a tone of calm for everyone. It reminded Harry of the time that Hermione established wards around them in the Forest of Dean when they were on the hunt for Voldemort's horcruxes. Her smooth voice had helped him to calm himself, even when he was dealing with the worst of his anxieties.
This place was bringing up too much of his memories of his hunt for Voldemort's horcruxes. Perhaps it was Cyrus's claim that he and Emile were working to resurrect Voldemort that had brought up such things in his mind. Regardless, he couldn't allow them to bog him down or distract him.
Alain's steady progress down the spiral staircase gave Harry something else to focus upon. He carefully monitored the man's progress, even when it slowed due to the exhaustion that was weighing heavily upon him. Gabrielle stood by his side, guiding Alain's every wand motion towards the nearest trap.
By the time they reached the base of the staircase, it was clear that Alain was thoroughly tapped out of energy. Harry pulled out a carefully-wrapped sandwich from within his robes and offered it to the exhausted man. Alain took it eagerly before pulling out a shrunken-down goblet of water from within his robes and returning it to its normal size. He drank deeply from it before tucking into the sandwich with the enthusiasm of a man who'd been stranded in a desert for weeks.
"No one's come," Gaëlle commented morosely, glancing around the empty corridors at the junction where they all stood.
"They could be running late," Mathis suggested weakly. Everyone knew that it was a foolish hope, but what else could they do but believe in their comrades.
"I think—" Harry began, but his words were cut off by a woman's scream. It was the same one that they'd heard before, and it was coming from down the stairwell.
Pierrick moved before anyone could react. He went storming down the stairwell as Mathis and Gabrielle called out his name. Harry was the first one to follow his trail downward, sprinting down the staircase as fast as his feet could move him.
When he reached the base of the staircase, he found himself in a long corridor occupied only by him and Pierrick. Pierrick had his wand out, illuminated at the tip to shy away the shadows. The old, decrepit bones in the walls reflected little from the grime that covered them.
"Back up," Harry warned Pierrick.
"The woman couldn't have been far," Pierrick retorted as he slowly crept forward. "She might be right ahead of—"
The words slipped out of Pierrick's mouth as his throat was slashed. Harry hadn't even seen the dark blade as it'd come flying out of the darkness until the ruby-red blood had splattered across it. Pierrick dropped to the floor, clutching his throat with a desperation that Harry hoped he'd never see again.
"Pierrick!" Mathis shouted from behind Harry.
"Stop!" Harry shouted back. "There's something down here!"
In the distance, a dark groan echoed down the corridor. It had an unnatural sound, deeper than a man's voice and yet lingering like it came from an organ. Once more, the hairs on Harry's neck stood on edge as he readied himself for an attack.
Whatever was down here wasn't friendly, and Harry had an entire team to worry about.
He couldn't let anyone else die. Not again.
A/N: Hey, thanks for reading! If you are interested in reading more or supporting me, check out at p atreon .com(slash) ashox