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Act IV - Skin In The Game
Chapter 31: Massacre
Night had fallen, starless and cold, and Walden Macnair strode across the rooftop without fear.
Or so he'd have told anyone who asked, and indeed, he did not appear to be afraid. But there were hints as to his true emotional state, for those who knew what to look for. The biggest was the weapon, of course, his cursed battle axe that had devoured the blood of countless magical beasts, witches, wizards and muggles alike. The weapon could be summoned instantaneously from his robes, with less than a thought. There was utterly no reason to carry it in his handsβ¦. Unless he felt that the second it took to pull it out was still too much time to go unarmed.
Even with his wand in hand.
The second hint as to his nervousness was that he wouldn't shut up.
"Hmmm, just as expected. There's that fuckin' trawler! Trust the madwoman to go enlist more people to get her soldiers out," He said idly. "And that will excite those dementors again! Ugh, hate them!"
The area around the rooftop buzzed. The wards around this place were weird, and didn't feel like wards at all. But they worked, and prevented apparition, or portkey, and for some reason, attracted beetles, slugs, leeches, spiders, and all sorts of nasty crawling things towards it. Or maybe this place was just infested with them from the start?
"Well, either way it's nasty," said Macnair, idly stomping a centipede that skittered too close. "And the decaying smell doesn't help things either. This whole place reeks of salt and dead flesh and ice and⦠metal?"
The blade that came at him was blacker than the night, moving at speeds that would have made a snitch jealous. Any normal target would've been pierced several times over before they even realised they were under attack, killed in seconds.
Which only served to make it all the more impressive that Macnair stopped it, unscathed. Just a single spark, and the weight of the weapon clashing into his own, was enough to make the Ministry Executioner both exhilarated and infuriated at the same time. The black blade, a longsword with rubies glittering at the hilt, suddenly vanished, leaving a crack in Macnair's favourite murder weapon.
"Huh, you don't see that everyday," he noted.
The attacks that followed remained unseen, but the sparks that leapt up as his axe slashed against the invisible blade lit up the night. Whoever was attacking him was fast, very fast, pushing Macnair to the extreme. With frightening agility, Walden spun around, and somersaulted thrice, avoiding the buckshots of blasting curses that crashed on the rooftop in his wake. Levelling his wand, he raised a Protego, only for the black sword to shatter through it like a mallet through glass.
"Damn it!" cursed Macnair, barely managing to escape the sword's trajectory. "So we've a mercenary that fancies himself a swordsman, is it?"
The fun thing about the axe was that people always, always paid attention to the bladed tip. Not that it didn't warrant it, for after decapitating as many magicals as that axe had, it had gained an intrinsic property of drawing blood even if it was merely close to someone's skin. But Macnair wasn't like the others, his speed and strength was such that he could afford to fight mostly in lightning-fast thrusts and wide-angled swipes, taking advantage of the cursed weapon that could deflect nearly every spell that Aurors were known to cast. He did the same this time, and drove the axe forward with all his considerable strength β
βAnd found empty air.
"GURKKK!"
Blood spewed out of his mouth.
"You dodged my blow?" he half-murmured, half-snarled. "No, you tricked me. You snuck around and struck me from the back, you son of a bitchβ¦."
"No," murmured his invisible attacker, twisting his wrist and driving the black blade that was impaling through Macnair's abdomen deeper, as the Executioner spewed blood again. "I was simply that much faster."
The blade pulled away, and Macnair dropped to his knees. His entire body had gone stiff, like it was made of thick lead. Just attempting to raise his right hand was next to impossible. Desperately, he tried to edge his fingers towards his left sleeve.
His killer corporated, a hooded, cloaked stranger, grabbing his hand, and forcibly pushed it against his left sleeve, where the Dark Mark lay. And right then, a deafening klaxon rang through all of Azkaban.
Stupid fool! Thought Macnair deliriously. The Dark Lord would now come, and before him, the rest of the Inner Circle the dementors would be here right away. They'd come! They'd all come! They would surround the bastard and kill him horribly.
"Yes," said the stranger. "In fact, I'm counting on it."
He didn't even have to wait for a second longer, as an agitated dementor shrieked through the air and rushed at him.
Macnair heard him say something like 'bind' before he flipped his sword, held it in a vice-grip, and stabbed the incoming dementor through the face, and into the rock. The beast screeched and screeched but could not escape. It was as if its body had suddenly become tangible.
"Who?" He asked. "Who β who are you?"
Yellow eyes stared down at him through a black hood. "It's just a waste of time for the predator to speak with his prey."
The stranger hissed something, and Macnair felt something prick against his neck. The last thing Macnair saw was the sight of his own headless torso, as his vision faded to black.
Both Sirius Black and Severus Snape had always stressed the importance of psychological shock when it came to warfare. Whether it be Death Eaters leading an attack upon some hapless Lord's manor, or hit-wizards gearing for a fight against a deadly enemy, shocking the enemy into action had always been a top priority.
Dementors were ethereal creatures, flitting in and out of corporeality only when it was time to suck out a hapless victim's soul. They could turn tangible at will, using their claws to grab their prey, but for the most case, they were the same as any other wraith. So when Harry bound the dementor by channelling the Black Family Magic through the sword of Godric Gryffindor, he rendered it permanently tangible, and inflicted psychological shock upon the natives of Azkaban tower.
He dropped down to the next floor, and was instantly surrounded by twelve of those nightmarish beasts, their hoods half raised and their claws out to sunder his soul. They never expected him to hack their claws off with a blade, making them howl in shock, fear and momentous fury. They rushed away to escape, but their attacker had other ideas.
"Sagitta Diabolis."
To the enlightened mind, the Diabolis suffix was perhaps the most versatile addendum to any branch of magic. It did nothing to multiply a spell's potency, area of effect or even quantity. It just had one single effect β to empower the spell using the power of the Anima, or something directly connected to the Anima. For the uninitiated, the Diabolis suffix could channel an arbitrary bestial instinct from the Anima, and transform the nature of the spell, making it impossible to control. But for Harry, it was simply a matter of choosing which Family Magic to pour through to fuel the spell's motions.
Which in this case, was the Black's.
Purple arrows exploded out of his wand, and stabbed the dementors, pinning them against the walls and the floor.
Twelve, and one with the sword, thirteen. One of the most powerful numbers in Arithmancy.
He raised his wand and poked it against a dementors' face, and hissed.
"Expecto Patronum."
The last time he had conjured his patronus, it had been in the Defence classroom against Draco Malfoy. Instead of the dazzling bright white stag, the entity that had burst out had been a hodgepodge of different creature parts than one single entity.
This time, it was the same, only instead of being jet-black with fumes of Death oozing out of it, the mist-fiend was golden-yellow, as if borne of living flame.
The flames of Summer.
The dementor let out a loud death-rattle, as the flaming patronus dived into it, pervading through every inch of its hollow existence and purging it with a flame it would not, could not extinguish.
And it wasn't the only one.
The Black Family Magic wasn't based on a core concept that governed the Universe like Death, or one of the fundamental tenets of existence, like Summer. The Black's domain was limited to a far narrower scope.
Binding.
But sometimes, even narrow, particular fields of domain were at times, impossibly more dangerous and versatile than expansive ones. Contagion. Blood Magic. Enchantment. Curse. There wasn't a single concept in the entirety of the Dark Arts that did not employ any of the tenets that the Black Family Magic, that Tezcatlipoca did not rule over. It was why they were regarded as the darkest of the magical families since time immemorial, and while despite their limited field of prowess, they were feared by nearly every other family in existence.
Harry wasn't a Lord Black. Even his heirship was less because of blood, and more because of the command of the Black Lord. But as he had hypothesised, he was a fairly efficient medium for the Abstract, and in the right conditions, could channel the Family Magics if there was a suitable anchor here in the real world. Sirius, the Lord Black, had been the anchor that summoned Tezcatlipoca, the Black Family Magic, and invoked him through Harry, binding it in his blood until he found a way to bring his godfather back.
He couldn't command the magic, or utilise its spells. But that didn't mean he couldn't utilise its concepts.
The dementors were said to hunt their prey through contagion. And being created from the same source, they were invariably connected via strong bonds.
Bonds that Tezcatlipoca had just bound together in a single knot. Amplified by the power of the number thirteen.
All thirteen dementors wailed and wailed, their fear, their agony flooding through their hive mind into the rest of their kind, their brains melting with agony as the power of Summer fueling his patronus unmade its prey completely, leaving nothing but ash.
Thirteen dementors dead. Just like that. And the agony that the entire Hive had felt had terrified and enraged them, made them utterly, utterly uncontrollable.
The key was to layer shock atop the already successful attack. To build a sense of invulnerability around himself while tearing on the opponent's side. To inflict so much psychological and physical damage that the enemy would be fundamentally incapable of continuing combat.
More dementors were arising, screaming their death rattles as they sensed the loss of their own. Born of the Abstract they might be, but not even their senses could penetrate the impenetrability of Death's cloak, not when its rightful bearer was under its protection. The fear and confusion had already set in. Their power was halved by the utter loss in discipline, as they rattled and wailed and ran around in general confusion.
"Expecto Patronum Duo."
What was once night was drowned in twin flashes of blinding gold that eclipsed daylight. The two patroni, born of Summer, assaulted the dementor horde with extreme prejudice, glowing brighter and brighter in the darkness with every passing second. Every now and then, a tendril of golden light would erupt out of the patroni and grab a dementor close to them, incinerating them to dust.
More will come, said a voice inside his head. More will always come.
That was fine. He would β
He paused his line of thought and snapped his hand down, Godric's blade corporating itself midway in his palm, snapping a dementor vertically into two with the blade. Two equal, diametrically perfect halves flopped to the ground.
Unmoving.
"STUPEFY!"
A streak of crimson tore in his general direction. Harry snapped the spell with the blade. Using Summer, he had found out, instantly rendered the Cloak invisibility moot, a peculiarity most possibly arising from the clash between opposing Family Magics.
But that was fine.
"Confringo Duo."
The exploding curse hit the unidentified attacker in the chest, which exploded into gore. The man was dead before he hit the floor.
"I was right," Harry murmured to himself. "What started that night at the cemetery needs to be finished now for good."
Death Eaters weren't the type of people that should be permitted the privilege of living, let alone walking the streets and running the government. Lucius had died at the hospital site, as had Greyback. Voldemort had believed that he had Harry trapped, gotten his hands on the prophecy and likely had the DMLE in hostage to lure Albus Dumbledore into this hellhole that was Azkaban. And with people like Fudge and Umbridge at the heart of the government, Wizarding Britain had gotten so corrupt that the rot had spread to its very heart.
The only way to keep it from destroying everything was to amputate it.
Purge it away.
A role that Harry was quite enthusiastic to take.
"GLACIUS DIABOLICA!"
It was only too easy. Whatever portal that lay open at the heart of Azkaban tower and was instrumental in maintaining the enchantments around it also fueled the same magic of the Diabolis suffix. A massive draconian form erupted from his wand and attacked the Death Eaters with extreme prejudice.
The Death Eaters were finally doing the right thing. Some casting shields to protect themselves from the icy demon that froze everything it came in contact with. Others were hurling precision attacks trying to penetrate or obliterate it in a single strike, only for the creature to reform. But it was too late. The shock had already afflicted them, the sheer atrocity of what was being done to them had turned their ability to logically reason upside down.
"It's a summoning," yelled an abrasive voice that Harry identified as Rabastan Lestrange from one of the memories Snape had showed him during their sessions. "Kill the caster and it will end."
"Please," said Harry, his hood keeping his identity hidden. "Believe that with all your heart. It will make things all the more funnier in the end."
Some part of him was a little unnerved at how little remorse he felt at the entire thing. He knew he should feel terrible for all the butchering he was doing and would do.
He could have self-justified it as killing werewolves and dementors β dark creatures that fed on innocent people. He could have told himself that the country was at war, and as an officially appointed hit-wizard, he was exercising his legal authority to purge these Death Eaters and free the DMLE forces held hostage in the heart of the building. By destroying the dementors, the traitors and the Death Eaters inside, he was inflicting damage on Voldemort and leaving him with a lasting message.
Showing him that having power did not make him immortal or above justice.
But he wasn't there for any of those.
The Azkaban prison was constructed upon a massive Circle directly connected to the Anima, where Ekrizdis had crafted the dementor species and manifested them into existence. The hollow creatures had an existence that just sickened him. By killing them, he was probably bestowing an act of mercy. They would suffer, but only for a moment.
And then they would find peace.
In Death.
As Death's Vessel, Harry was just going about doing his duty, ending every single speck of magical abomination that threatened Reality. He could have sold himself either of those excuses too.
But he didn't.
The truth was, he was a man seeking vengeance. He was not there to protect the DMLE hostages, or to offer salvation by Death to the wretched existences that had turned traitor to the Ministry. He wasn't there because of the legal authority Amelia Bones had given him either, and the fact that he had the legal right to do so as a hit-wizard during such extenuating circumstances was a flimsy excuse at best. And despite how much he would have wanted to say it, he wasn't there to fulfil his role as Death's Vessel and exterminate those sorry existences either. Because somewhere deep inside the darkness of his heart, there was a math equation running that told him that the prison currently housed the greatest army Voldemort could boast of. That even if he slaughtered a significant fraction of them, it would enable him to hurt Voldemort for good.
Even if it meant committing deliberate, calculated murder.
The least he could do was own it.
Like Ignotus said. He couldn't stand at crossroads forever. A choice had to be made.
So he slaughtered them. Just killing the enemy wasn't enough. He needed to systematically rearrange the landscape to send a message. He needed to make the opposition believe that there was no place in this world that they would hide where he would not find and annihilate them.
"CRUCIO!"
The jagged ray of wicked crimson nearly struck him in the chest. His attacker was a woman in her late forties, with hair as dark as the night, and a strange darkness marring a face that could have been called beautiful at one time. A face that he had seen multiple times back at Grimmauld Place.
A soft-pitched giggle broke his reverie.
"Oooh, who is this? A wee little mercenary? Come to Bella!"
"Bellatrix Black," said Harry slowly.
A light of recognition flickered through the woman's face. "You know me."
"And more," Harry murmured. "Unfortunately, it isn't your time. Yet. Carpe Retractum."
A thick, black rope of magic extended out of his wand, and pierced into the wall of the other side of the compound. Harry leaped down, his invisibility melding him into the darkness of the night, his yellow eyes glowing in the darkness, appearing less like a person and more like a spectre of wrath.
"CRUCIO!" yelled Bellatrix, and countless streaks of lights followed, perforating the air between the two roofs. Fire, lightning, hets of jagged crimson and yells and curses that kept attacking the blur that seemingly passed through them all, unfiltered, unhindered, before landing on the other side's corridor. The percussive impact of their detonations against the enchanted walls of the ancient castle were powerful enough to turn any muggle deaf from a hundred feet away.
Yet their target didn't fall, and kept rushing through the corridors, partially due to his invisibility, and because the thick pillars and the darkness served as obstacles for the projectiles.
Walls crumbled. Pillars shattered. Ceilings collapsed.
Nothing hit the target.
His eyes were a godsend in this situation. The heightened awareness and stream of information about the various magical existences within Azkaban tower made it extremely easy for him to sort out the right prey, as well as their natures. The hollow nature of the dementors made them easy targets from hundreds of feet away, and the Sagitta Diabolis was a horrifically easy tool to bind them in place.
Sixteen.
Eighteen.
Nineteen.
Twenty.
Blasting hexes welcomed him without mercy, while the rattling shrieks of the dementors pierced his ears, bringing the preternatural cold with them.
Harry rolled his eyes. As if the dementor's cold had anything on him.
"GLACIUS MAXIMA!"
A spiralling harpoon of arctic-cold wind erupted out of his wand and crashed into the twenty-first dementor, its mist-like fabric solidifying at its touch. The XXXXX beast was instantly pinned to the wall, pierced in more than two dozen places by the crystals of black ice, as it shrieked in wanton despair.
Harry stabbed its mouth with the blade. Poured raw Death energy into it. Amplified by the product of powerful numbers three and seven.
No more shrieks.
Killing the enemy was good. Killing the enemy in the most brutal ways possible was better. The shock factor became multiplicative.
"He's in there!" yelled someone. Forty streaks of multicoloured radiance lit up one of the offices, exploding it into a gale of dust and debris, obscuring their senses. Just outside the room, a Death Eater yelled something obscure, before his decapitated head dropped to the floor.
Spells were fired. Shouts were made. People and dementors working in tandem.
But they couldn't find him at all.
Looking up at the top of the prison using her pair of Omnioculars, Amelia Bones blinked at the magnificent sight a few times.
"Wow, I know how to pick 'em, apparently."
Rufus Scrimgeour put his own pair away, and sighed. "What are we going to do?"
"The purge has begun," said the DMLE Director. "And if the boy is going all the way to provide for a distraction, it means one of two things, either our people are trapped in there, alive. Or, he found something really nasty inside the place that's forcing him to attack from the shadows."
'You're ignoring the third possibility, Amelia," said Rufus. "It might just be both."
Putting on the Omnicular pair again, she noticed Harry Potter leaping from rooftop to rooftop, weaving in and out of the attacks, appearing a little more than a blur, and even that was when Godric's blade flashed in the darkness, clashing against enemy spellfire. With every spell that approached, he shifted and flew out of its trajectory like a stray ribbon in the wind. It was a beautiful and alien performance that transcended what should be possible.
Suddenly Albus Dumbledore's cryptic comments about Harry Potter made a lot more sense.
"Idiots didn't even bother to wonder why Potter went to the rooftops in the first place. Whoever's in charge of this attack, clearly they aren't very good at this." She looked at her fellow compatriots. "The prisoners are in the low security wing of the tower, deep down in the heart of the building. We move in, get the people out, and send him a signal for him to wreak havoc."
"What makes you think the boy would even last until then?" asked Proudfoot. "Dementors, death eaters⦠one person can only fight so many."
Amelia pursed her lips. "Harry's grandfather, my first boss, had a saying. Encountering entities of extraordinary power changes people. Fighting them, surviving them, even more so. Albus Dumbledore did that, first against Grindelwald, and then against the Dark Lord. In both cases, he was an adult wizard with plenty of years of expertise under his belt. But Potter is different. He's raw, like a nerve. He, more than anyone else I know, has had to live with that experience in a very small time period. The first time I met him, he was a confused boy that had barely survived a murder attempt by a fluke of magic. And look at him now."
As if to emphasise her point, the entire tower groaned. Nobody could tell if it was stronger or louder than the previous explosions, as the standard eardrum was not designed to intake the violently chaotic sounds at this range, but it struck hard all the same.
"It's just the beginning," she said, crafting a complex privacy ward that would make all of them invisible to the sensory wards placed in the outer periphery of the entrance. "Having to face off the Dark Lord has raised Potter's bare minimal definition of competency so staggering that it looks surreal to the rest of us. From here on, he will only grow stronger, dangerous and terrible. And the things that will oppose him will try harder, and he will only be more dangerous and more terrible for it. If you have the sense, and I know you have, you have seen it. Felt it."
Kingsley unconsciously stepped back. Seeing Potter slash Dawlish's tongue, and amputate an arm had left him shocked to the core.
Amelia smiled at Proudfoot's caustic expression, as well as everyone else's shell shocked ones. "Food for thought."
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