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Chapter 71
Sirius sat behind the wall he had conjured and waited. Harry had come to him with the plan he cooked up for going after the death eaters who appeared when you said you-know-who's name. Well his concept idea for a plan to be built around, there was a lot of actual planning missing. Sirius had thought it was too simple at first and couldn't believe it would work, but the more he thought about it the more he realised he couldn't think of a reason it wouldn't work.
After a few days he had taken it to Bones and she, like him, thought it was too simple but also couldn't find a reason not to try it. Together they refined the plan and Bones called on Aurors Proudfoot, Butters, Rosewood, Larch, Otters, and Rivers to work with Sirius. They were the same Aurors he had worked with at the start of summer when the inferi had attacked Hermione's home. Bones even permitted Proudfoot to use the Imperius curse for the mission in exchange for an unbreakable vow that he would never use it outside of a situation authorised by the head of the D.M.L.E.
They still had a few things to plan. The first thing was the location. They needed somewhere out of sight of muggles but still close enough to civilisation that if the death eaters looked at a map first it wouldn't look odd. They also didn't want to be out in the open for too much of the fighting. That's why they had chosen a muggle sports stadium. They chose a football stadium that was being torn down after a replacement had recently been built. It was almost perfect, it let Sirius and the Aurors spread out in elevated positions surrounding the target area. A few transfiguration spells even had each of them able to hide behind a solid concrete wall over a foot thick.
The next problem was the bait. Proudfoot spoke to an unspeakable who confirmed Hermione's insight that it would need to be a magical creature to trigger the taboo. However, a common magical rat wouldn't work. Something about there being no connection between a rat's magic and an artificial ability to speak. The long and short of it was they needed a magical animal that already had the ability to speak, but that was still unquestionably an animal and not a person to transfigure into bait.
In the end, they settled on an old raven that had lost his owner to illness recently and whom nobody was interested in adopting. Sirius could actually do the transfiguration into a human. It was a side effect of his Animagus training. When you spend time understanding what it is to feel human so that you can return yourself from your animal form you can apply that same understanding to turning animals human.
The human Sirius produced was odd. For one it was only a child. Increasing the mass of the raven was a matter of power and while Sirius could create an adult this was easier and he didn't want to tire himself out before the trap was sprung.
Margaret (Mags) Rivers, one of the Aurors and the youngest of the group also pointed out it may not be a bad thing. "Think about it, while we chose the old raven because if she died it wouldn't be a tragedy. It's still better if she survives and whoever turns up may hesitate on seeing a child."
Auror Proudfoot shook his head in disbelief. "Some might but a lot of these people are monsters."
"Monsters who could consider kidnapping the child and blackmailing the parents as a better plan than outright murder." Larch shot back. "I'm not saying it's a guarantee, just that it may shift the odds in our favour a little."
"I'll take any advantage we can get. If it increases the possibility that we all get to go home tonight by one in a million I'll take it." Said Larch as he tried to work out the controls for the floodlights so that the stands would be in the dark while the field was in blinding light.
The other reason the child was odd was because it had no concept of being human. Despite what it looked like it was a bird. An intelligent bird with curiosity but still a bird. It gave Otters a start when it hopped over to her and imitated the sound of a muggle car alarm before saying "Hello treat please."
"Right, everyone get into position and remember while we want them alive to answer questions, I want you all alive at the end of this more." Proudfoot dismissed them all while he put the Imperius curse on the raven girl. Immediately the raven stopped behaving like a raven and started behaving more human as Proudfoot exerted his mental control over the animal.
Sirius walked around the stadium until he was behind his own concrete barrier and took a seat next to it while he waited. He watched as Proudfoot, Otters, Rivers, Butters, Larch, and Rosewood made their way around to their locations. They were all spread out in elevated positions with full cover and they expected the suspects to appear in a well-lit open field with no cover. He couldn't want more favourable conditions for a fight.
The raven jerkily walked out to the middle of the pitch. Sirius stood up and slipped behind his cover. "Lumos." He lit his wand to show he was ready and soon everyone else lit theirs signalling that they were ready. Then when all the lights went out raven shouted out "Voldemort!" As loud as her lungs would permit.
The silence stretched out as nothing happened immediately, each second felt like a minute until suddenly there was a wave of cracking sounds and twelve people in hooded robes appeared from nowhere. Before the first crack had even finished echoing through the stadium seven immediately started casting anti-disapparition and anti-portkey wards.
Almost as soon as they landed one of the death eaters realised it was a trap and called for them all to retreat. Unfortunately for them, the wards had gone up faster and they were all trapped there.
Sirius and the others started to rain stunning spells down on the death eaters. Three of them fell quickly but the one who had noticed it was a trap had rallied the rest under her command and they had formed a tight circle around her, each overlapping their shield charms making a brace of stunning spells nothing but a test of who exhausts faster. Sirius was just about to shoot a Bombarda curse at the ground in front of the nearest death eater to him when the woman in the centre grabbed hold of the raven and pulled off her hood revealing Bellatrix Lestrange. Her voice boomed through the stadium magic clearly amplifying her volume. "Let us go or the girl dies."
It was obvious to Sirius that it was a ploy of desperation, if she had been thinking Lestrange would have realised nobody would use a real child as bait. Sirius saw an opportunity and with a quick wave of his wand, the raven returned to true form, shrinking out of Lestrange's grip and immediately trying to fly away.
Bellatrix in her fury tried to turn her wand on the poor bird but had to switch to ducking behind the shield wall as a particularly nasty piercing hex from Rivers would have taken her head off if she hadn't. Sirius was sure Mags, as she insisted everyone call her, had a soft spot for the raven. Lestrange trying to kill her must have set the young Auror off.
The rest of the Aurors pressed their bombardment of stunners. It didn't win them any ground, but it did stop the death eaters from forming any kind of effective counter attack. As death eaters' spells splashed harmlessly against the large block of solid concrete Sirius was hidden behind, Sirius went back to plan B. B for Boom. He pointed his wand at the ground in front of the nearest death eater And shouted the spell "Bombarda!"
The ground in front of the death eaters exploded out from underneath them knocking three of them backwards. Immediately the Aurors capitalised on the opportunity of the broken phalanx. The ring of death eaters started to fall one after another, as the ones on the broken ends of the ring had to try and block stunners from multiple directions. While this was happening Sirius watched as Lestrange disillusioned herself and started to run.
Sirius wasn't going to let Bellatrix go free if he could help it so he shifted into padfoot where his keen ears and nose would be able to follow his mentally deranged cousin. He ran down the steps of the stands like one of the hounds of hell after an evil sinner. He could hear Lestrange's footsteps as they pounded into the turf and he gave chase, his four legs eating away at the distance between them far faster then her two made progress to the tunnel that led off the pitch and beyond the wards.
Sirius leapt at her hoping to sink his teeth into her neck but there was too much guesswork involved with her being invisible. Still his teeth sank into flesh as he heard her scream in pain. He tried to pull her to the floor and pin her but unfortunately what Sirius had a hold of was her left arm. Lestrange was right handed and instinctively jabbed her wand into Sirius's side and hit him with a repulsion charm sending Sirius flying albeit with a chunk of her arm in his teeth.
Lestrange tried to turn her wand on Sirius but maybe it was the pain or using her magic for a different spell but she had dropped the disillusionment and was now the only death eater on a field surrounded by Aurors. Before she could curse Sirius she was too busy shielding and deflecting stunners to do anything but run. Sirius could only watch as she ran down the tunnel leading to the changing rooms and mentally cursed as he heard the crack of disapparation as she passed the ward line.
Sirius climbed back to his feet. His human feet as he shifted now that he could no longer chase Lestrange. He looked around and there were eleven death eaters all unconscious or possibly even dead for a few of them. Bombarda wasn't exactly a gentle tap and a few of the death eaters had already been unconscious on the ground. Still, if any of them had been killed Sirius couldn't bring himself to care. He remembered too much of what was lost in the previous war to the hands of these bastards to feel any sympathy for them. Now all that was left was the cleanup and of course the paperwork.
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Sirius walked into the high rise that was the new ministry of magic. It was a muggle building in the middle of London that was due to be torn down. The building had been condemned for of all things faulty electrical wiring but it was structurally sound. It was on loan from the mundane British government after Fudge had gone cap in hand begging to their prime minister. The Ministry had tried to keep the location secret but unfortunately they had had to tell the Wizengamot and so news was quickly spreading.
The ground floor looked like it was a normal mundane office building with people walking in and out. The only clues Sirius could see that this wasn't mundane were one, the lights. Magical lights didn't have the flickering that the mundane weird tube lights did. Two, the receptionist wasn't looking at a computer screen. And three, some of the people walking in and out didn't quite understand what mundane business outfits were supposed to look like. For example, Sirius saw one guy in a lime green suit, a Hawaiian shirt and he was wearing a purple tie draped over his shoulders like a stole.
Sirius walked up to the receptionist and gave the woman what he considered a charming smile and said. "Afternoon. Warlock Black here to see Director Bones."
The receptionist checked through her book of appointments and confirmed that he did indeed have an appointment. "Take the stairs behind me up one floor and go through the security check, then take the lift to the sixth floor. The floor receptionist will direct you from there."
Sirius nodded his thanks and did as directed. The security in this building was a lot tighter than in the Ministry. Something about actually losing the Ministry building if not the organisation to Voldemort had deflated the sense of arrogance that a lot of the entitled pureblood heads of department had had before. Fudge in particular was pretty much shut in his office working on his early retirement announcement. In the wake of the changes Amelia Bones had been able to push through all the security checks she felt was necessary.
As he went through security Sirius had his identity verified three different ways. He was probed for dark items and curses and even had to spit into a cup with a few drops of potion that would detect if there were any active potions in his system. That last one Sirius suspected was exaggerated as potions were too varied to test for everything like that. Still maybe the exaggeration would keep the attempts to bypass it to a minimum.
He made his way up to the sixth floor and was directed to an office with a security guard outside. Sirius recognised the woman as the same one he met the first time he had been to Bones at work after he had been granted his freedom. "Hey is the director in?" He asked when she looked up from her pile of paperwork.
"Not yet. You are about ten minutes early Warlock Black and due to your escapades last night there is a lot of work. The director is running about ten minutes behind schedule."
Sirius mentally added that up to a twenty minute wait and suppressed a groan. "Well, it looks like I'm in for a wait." And Sirius conjured a chair for himself in the corner out of the way.
Amelia came rushing through fifteen minutes later looking haggard. She tried to call Sirius into her office immediately seeing him waiting but Sirius wasn't having it. "Amy take five minutes to breathe. I will go get us each a coffee from the breakroom and be back in a few minutes. In the meantime catch your breath.
The head of the Aurors looked incredulous at being ordered around like that but there was nothing she could do about it. Sirius was a civilian and not under her command and he was the Warlock of House Black. So Sirius went and got two large cups of the cheap coffee and found a half a pack of custard cream biscuits and swiped them.
When Sirius made his way back to the office he noticed that Amelia's secretary was smiling at him a little. Sirius didn't need to be a genius to work out she respected her boss and had been trying to get her to slow down and take five minutes all day and was glad Sirius had been able to slow her down even a little before Amelia burned herself out.
The door opened itself as he approached and Sirius found Amelia sitting behind her desk leaning her head back with her eyes closed. She was clearly awake just as it was clear she probably shouldn't be. Sirius placed the coffee and biscuits on the desk in front of her and asked. "So what's going on?"
Amelia didn't open her eyes or move much at all but she answered anyway. "After you captured eleven death eaters last night you mean?" Sirius grunted in the affirmative. "Well none of them are highly ranked but we have been able to learn some things from them. You-know-who has sorted his people into ranks. You have the people closest to him in one rank, people who have proved their loyalty in some way in the second and what basically amounts to canon fodder until you prove yourself a loyal servant. Most of the third group have come from the random inmates Voldemort had freed from Azkaban."
She stopped for a moment to breathe before continuing. "The taboo squad's people are entirely from the third group save for whoever is babysitting them. Supposedly it's so whoever is leading them can report back to you-know-who and inform him of who is ready to be moved up a rank. In reality it's an opportunity for the inner circle to have the others sucking up to them while they hit soft targets."
"What do they think Vold- shit, you-know-who's response to last night is going to be?" Sirius mentally kicked himself for the almost slip up.
Amelia glared at him. The building's wards were nowhere near as robust as the ones on the true Ministry building. They had had to slap them together in a short time warding each floor separately. A slip up like that could weaken them quite substantially. It's why they were so careful about who they let in. "Varied. Some seem to think you-know-who himself will storm this place and free them like he did from Azkaban. Others think he won't care, they are expendable. I think we need to be prepared for retaliation attacks either tonight or soon."
Sirius winced at that, innocent people were likely going to be killed in response to a plan that he had brought to the director and he had participated in. Amelia noticed his reaction and in a firm tone told him. "Cut out the pity party Black. The death eaters are already conducting raids regularly. People are already dead and dying. If nothing is done they will continue to do that. As it stands He has less than two hundred followers and you helped bring in eleven of them last night that's over five percent of his entire force. That's a big hit to their operations. The only part I'm disappointed by is that you didn't manage to bring down Lestrange as well."
That bolstered Sirius's resolve so he moved on before this topic had a chance to dominate the entire conversation. "So what's going to happen with the prisoners?"
"That was something I was just meeting with Fudge over; he is refusing to make a decision on the matter. He basically has both feet out the door already and just sticking around to dot the T's and cross the I's for whoever is next. Honestly if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them."
"Well they are all escaped prisoners. Fudge set the precedent with me that escaped prisoners are to be given to dementors for them to kiss. It was only after the legality of my being in prison in the first place was brought into question that I got my trial. So follow that with some modification."
"Set up a tribunal of three witnesses from the Wizengamot. Offer each of the prisoners an opportunity to defend themselves under Veritaserum. Any who were under the Imperius or similar get to go back to prison and finish out their original sentence with nothing added to their record. Any who were acting under their own accord but haven't committed or aided a murder go back to prison but for an additional ten years. And any who have committed or aided in a murder of anyone, pureblood, muggleborn, muggle or even a goblin or house elf get the dementors kiss." Sirius said. He may have sympathy for any innocents who may be killed but he had none for death eaters. Not after he saw what they had done to James, Lily and his aunt Doreia.
"What about the possibility of them being broken out of prison again?" Bones asked.
Sirius thought for a second. "Unbreakable vows. Any who won't give an unbreakable vow not to unlawfully leave the prison of their own free will will be given the dementors kiss as well."
"We'd be crucified in the press." Bones said only half by way of objection.
"Possibly, but at the same time it could be seen as decisive. I'm not skilled at interacting with the press but someone in this building must be. Get them to draft a press statement and send it off to the Prophet. Maybe offer an exclusive interview if the coverage is good or something?"
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Harry waited inside the expanded trunk. Grandfather Charlus had given him permission to set the trunk up in his classroom and Hermione and Ron had gone to get everyone he had agreed to teach while Harry tried to mentally put himself in the mindset of being their teacher.
Hermione walked down the stairs that led into the expanded space leading Ron, Ginny, Fred, George, Susan, and Hannah Abbott. Hannah had been a last minute addition when Hermione had approached Susan. Susan had asked if she could bring her best friend along and Harry had given in when Susan had convinced Ron to ask if she could join.
Once everyone filed in Harry, doing his best impression of his grandfather teaching a potions class said, "Right well the main focus for now is going to be defensive footwork. To do this we will be using stinging hexes. If any of you aren't prepared to take a stinging hex, well there is little point in you being here. First can everyone here cast the stinging hex quickly and reliably?" He paused and everyone confirmed that they could in fact cast the charm. Harry had expected as much. While it wasn't taught in the Hogwarts classrooms most students learned it in their second or third year.
"We are going to start with a demonstration. Ron, Hermione and Ginny, when I say start the three of you are going to keep trying to hit me with a stinging hex until one of you succeeds."
The only one who wasn't surprised by Harry's plan was Hermione as he had discussed it with her the day before. Harry made a show of setting his wand down on a small table and moved to the centre of the room where he called "begin." The three people trying to hex him were rather reluctant at first until when Ginny finally tried it Harry easily sidestepped and gave her a look that clearly questioned if that was all she had.
Ginny wasn't the type to surrender to a challenge like that and immediately followed up with a string of three stinging hexes back to back clearly spaced so that Harry would have to dodge into the path of the left or right if he wanted to dodge the middle one. Harry instead turned sideways, sucked in his gut and let the middle and left one pass incredibly close to him.
Seeing Harry do that had Ron and Hermione joining in with full vigour. Spells were zipping at Harry a few times a second but he managed to duck, weave and side step around them all for about ninety seconds, after that Ron had Hermione and Ginny spread out more and with the spells coming from a much wider angle Harry had to do much more wild and erratic movements to avoid getting hit. Movements he couldn't keep up for long and after about maybe thirty seconds of the high pace Harry felt the sharp sting of a hex hitting him in his thigh.
Harry collapsed to the ground not in pain but in exhaustion and between panting breaths asked. "So. What. did that. prove?"
It was Susan who answered. "That sometimes the best way to deal with an enemy's spell is to just dodge it. That entire time you could have been using your wand to cast whatever spells you wanted. But it also shows that dodging isn't the only thing you need to do because you quickly wore yourself out."
Harry nodded. "Exactly. Dodging is an extremely useful skill. Any spell that doesn't hit you doesn't affect you. Which of you actually caught me?" He asked as he climbed back up onto his feet. Hermione held up her hand indicating herself and Harry nodded to her in acknowledgement. "Good work. How many spells did you fire before you hit me?"
Hermione looked a little annoyed for a second before saying. "I didn't count. Probably more than twenty."
Harry grinned at her. "More than twenty really basic hexes. Now tell me, if they were the kinds of curses you use in a life or death fight how would you feel after firing twenty curses in such a short time?"
Hermione's eyes went wide as she realised where Harry was going with this. "I would be struggling to hold my wand up if they had been curses." She admitted.
"Exactly, most of the people we are concerned with would have opened with an unforgivable curse. Some of the only spells that completely ignore the shield charm. They are also, according to what I have learned, rather power hungry spells. The best way to deal with them is to not let them hit you. Now the best way to do that is to not be in the vicinity of death eaters. I suggest several miles but we are going to assume you will have tried that already and this is plan B." Harry joked, a few of them laughed. "For the first lesson we will be pairing off and one of you will try to use the stinging hex on the other while the other one only dodges. After five minutes we will switch roles. Also remember if you are casting this is good aiming practice. So don't hold back."
They paired off Harry and Hermione, Ron and Susan, Fred and George, and that left Ginny and Hannah. Almost immediately the room was full of the sound of people reacting to getting hit with the hex. This was going to take a while.