WHO: The Lestranges and the Dearborns WHAT: Family dinner and a fight WHEN: Tonight WHERE: Wales WARNINGS: Violence. Unforgivables. Death.
“You know,” Rabastan said conversationally, wand weaving through the air as he fiddled with the complex web of wards surrounding the Dearborn home, “We should’ve killed the both of them at the same time. They would probably be less mouthy if they were orphans.”
The wards were surprisingly complex, but, then again, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising. The younger Dearborn was DMLE, and the boys would want to be extra vigilant after the death of their father. Still, the Death Eaters were trained to easily deal with such hurdles.
Rabastan continued to muse aloud as an alarm ward melted away. “Or perhaps they’d be more like the Potter boy.”
Rodolphus frowned at the name, an instinctive reaction that had started to haunt him lately. His arm was held steady as he gradually wore down the wards of the Dearborn property, concentrating on it enough that he would be aware of tangles in the wards or heavy, jinx or curse-laden wards. He thought the Dearborns were making this awfully complicated. His patience was already thin, which would hardly bode well for them. It was silly, really.
“The both of them are nuisances, but perhaps not as lucky as that boy,” Rodolphus said, the twist to his mouth on the word ‘lucky’ making it clear he held a great disdain for Potter’s particular kind of luck. “It’s really a shame we can’t kill their whole family and then them. I’d quite like that.” A pause and then, “Maybe the boy could be the orphan. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“I believe his name is Kristoff,” Rabastan replied, his own frown deepening as he unraveled a particularly nasty hex. The Welsh night air was delicate and cold, which was yet another incentive to hurry up with the wards. “Or Karl? Something with a ‘k,’ but I suppose that’s beside the point. I just think we should wipe all the Dearborns off the face of the earth. Poor Karl was born into an unfortunate family.”
“Maybe we could make them faces in the earth,” Rodolphus said, amusement thick in his voice. “You know. Like those Americans, but much more macabre.” He was laughing at himself as he jerked his wand over a ward and it felt it crumble. “It’s been a long time since I used transfiguration on a person.”
“Now there’s an idea.” The laugh Rabastan breathed out was a visible puff of air. The few remaining wards were beyond his expertise, and his eyes gleamed with quiet admiration as he watched Rodolphus work. “Almost done? It’s cold enough to castrate you out here.”
“Maybe cold enough to castrate you,” Rodolphus said, with a smirk, a light laugh and then he snapped his wrist. A ward fell. He nodded at Rabastan, thought, not quite catching the expression on his face as he made his way through the last of the wards.
“Get ready.”
As the last ward dissipated, Rabastan was struck by the urge to simply blast the front door off its hinges with a well-aimed blasting curse. But ‘surprise’ was the watchword of the evening, so he settled for transfiguring the door into a pile of confetti instead. The two men strode through the entryway, wands drawn, footsteps silenced by a charm, attention honed in on the soft sounds of laughter and conversation drifting from the kitchen—
“Good evening, Dearborn family,” Rabastan announced from the kitchen doorway.
Owen hadn't heard them come in; his usual attentiveness was off, his guard down knowing that he was safe in the family home he'd grown up in, safe behind extensive wards that had only been strengthened since the war began. He had been distracted, his attention on his son instead of the doorway as he laughed trying to get his son to repeat the swear word Kevin had said. "Okay Kev, one more time, what did the delivery guy call our order?"
"Shits and chips."
"Owen, stop laughing at him; he's going to think that's okay to say," Owen's mother scolded him, but couldn't help grinning at it herself.
This only made Owen laugh more, which only encouraged his son. Kevin looked about ready to say it again when his eyes went to the kitchen doorway, and with full confidence asked "Who are you shitheads?"
That was something that Owen normally would've corrected Kevin on saying -- even if it was hypocritical, considering who he'd probably learned it from -- but Rabastan's voice standing in his mother's kitchen was enough to cut a wave of panic through Owen's stomach to let him know that there wasn't time to explain to Kevin who those "shitheads" were. His wand was out a second later, and the portkey Spongebob watch that Kevin was wearing was activated to get him out of the house to send him to Baz, Chelsea, and Gwen's place.
The change in the air was immediate, any lingering laughter disappearing with the activation of Kevin’s portkey. Jeremy’s wand was in his hand in fractions of a second, but it was his mother who made the first move with an Expelliarmus aimed at the Lestrange in the doorway.
The spell was easily blocked, a flick of his wrist and it rebounded. Rodolphus grinned at the assembled Dearborns and took a step into the room. He spoke, but even as he spoke he was sending pieces of furniture flying: plates smashing, a chair heading towards one of them. “You didn’t invite me? And my love for family dinners is well documented! Frankly, I’m offended.” The knives flew across the room.
"If you weren't invited, you shouldn't be barging in here!" Owen yelled back, stopping the chair with a spell that kept it hovering in mid-air only a few inches from his face before spinning it back around and firing it back toward the Death Eaters just as a plate cracked into the top of his head.
"And I'm offended that you have the gall to show your faces here," Phillipa Dearborn scolded Rodolphus as if he were a naughty child, despite that they were nearly the same age. One of the knives sunk into her shoulder, which she pulled out against her better judgement and threw back the Death Eaters' way. Rodolphus didn’t quite dodge it: the knife dug into his robes, grazing against skin but not embedding itself. "Get out of my house."
“But we only just got here!” A well-timed slash of Rabastan’s wand stopped the chair in mid-air. Another slash caused the chair to break apart into knife-sharp fragments, and a little flick sent them hurtling toward the Dearborns. He trained his wand on the older brother, the healer, and hurled a ball of green acid his way.
Jeremy’s shield wasn’t enough to block all of the acid, drops eating away at clothes and skin alike, but the bulk of it made its way to the wall and the floor as layers began to dissolve away. “Time’s up anyway!” he said as he sent a large wall clock towards the Death Eaters. With the same idea, Phillipa sent a cast iron frying pan specifically towards Rodolphus’s head.
“Get. Out. Of. My. House!” she repeated.
“I don’t think so,” Rodolphus said, calmly, as if things weren’t being thrown every which way. He cut the clock in half, bits of it going everywhere, which delighted him and he was grinning at it when a frying pan quite literally nearly sent him into the back wall. Stumbling back, he stopped it right by his head.
Lifting a hand he curled it around the handle of the pan and looked towards the Dearborns mother as he dropped it onto the floor. “Did you throw that at your charming husband one time too? Do you think that’s why he left?” He laughed and it was a cold sound as he sent a bone splintering curse into the fray.
"If you think some fifteen year old taunt is going to bother me..." Phillipa replied, leaving the response hanging as if it didn't bother her. (It did. But that was beside the point.) She sent the same slicing spell at Rodolphus that she'd used to chop up her family's fish earlier that evening just moments before the bone splintering curse hit her in the arm, causing her arm to crack in a multitude of places and for her wand to go rolling out of her hand as she screamed.
Owen, meanwhile, was firing off every spell he could think of in the moment at the two Lestranges -- Incarcarous, blasting curses, freezing charms, stunning spells, anything that would slow them down (and hopefully capture them before they could flee.) Maybe the Aurors weren't able to do anything about the Death Eater threat anymore, but perhaps the Order could.
Rabastan’s wand was a flurry of movement as he deflected Owen’s spells — with varying degrees of success, as a blasting curse he sent careening away exploded over his head, pummeling him with debris. A shard of wood embedded itself in Rabastan’s shoulder, but he could easily push through the pain. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” he told the former Auror, and his gaze cut to the other Dearborn as he used a levitation charm to fling one brother toward the other.
Being thrown into the air did nothing for Jeremy’s spellwork — his own bevy of whatever he could think of going wide as he tried to stop his body from colliding with Owen. He managed it, though he careened into the oven at an angle that sent his shoulder out of place and the rest of him quite thoroughly on the floor. Through a hiss of pain, he aimed ice at the floor where the Lestranges were standing.
Phillipa grabbed one of the fallen knives with her free hand as her eyes scanned the floor for her wand.
The ice was creeping across the floor, making the kitchen floor harder to manage as Rodolphus brought his foot down on Philippa’s wand. He heard a crack, though it didn’t snap and Rodolphus grinned at her. “Are you going to try and stab me?” he asked. He heard his own delight at the question but, well. Sometimes people trying to stab you was a little bit fun.
Phillipa's eyes darted down to the wand under Rodolphus's shoe, then back up to the man as she tightened her grip on the knife's handle. She'd spent years thinking about what she would do to the people responsible for Caradoc if she were ever face-to-face with them, and now that the moment was here, nothing was coming to her like she wanted it to. Finally she replied, "I'm not going to try; I'm going to do it," before making a run at Rodolphus, only to veer to the side to try to take out his brother with the knife instead. Rabastan let out a hiss of pain as it sunk deep into his side. It ignited a spark of anger deep within him, and he grabbed the woman by the arm and jabbed his wand into her throat.
Owen, who'd wound up on the floor himself trying to avoid being tackled by the incoming airbound Jeremy, took the opportunity to shoot a slicing spell at Rodolphus's ankles from underneath the kitchen table.
Bracing himself for a knife attack that never came, Rodolphus wasn’t expecting the slice at his ankles and it hit, biting deep into flesh. He shouted out with surprise and pain, nearly tripping as he lurched into a kitchen cabinet and braced himself against it. The table had to go.
He set it on fire.
Rabastan laughed as the table burst into flames, jerking Phillipa closer to him, wand still trained at her throat. “I don’t think you boys realize how serious this is,” he taunted, mouth twisting into a sneer. “We’re not here to fuck around.”
As punctuation, he angled his wand toward the woman’s stomach: a smile of blood began to soak through her shirt. Although she tried, Phillipa couldn’t bite back a scream.
Everything felt like it was moving very fast and very slow at the same time. Jeremy had pulled himself off the floor, his wand aimed at Rabastan but all the spells he’d meant to cast died in his throat. His eyes watched the blood bloom and he knew that he could still fix it, that there was still time, but not while Lestrange could use her as a shield for anything that was cast. “Let her go,” he found himself saying, neither a demand nor a plea but something in between.
Owen had missed what happened at first, distracted by trying to douse the burning table while trapped underneath it, the flames searing his sides as he rolled out from between the wooden legs. His mother’s scream pulled his attention back to the death eaters, though, and he slowly got up to his feet, trying to force himself to compartmentalize as if this was any other fight he’d been in with the DMLE, and not one happening in the kitchen he’d grown up in and that his mother wasn’t the hostage in this situation.
“Yeah, lets… let’s not fuck around then. We can talk about this,” Owen added, casting a spell that he hoped would force Rabastan to let his mother go.
“Now, now, Owen,” Rodolphus said and his wand flashed with the bright light of a slicing curse. “That was very uncivilised. I don’t think we’re going to stand for that.”
Rodolphus turned to Rabastan, grinning at him, before he looked at Philippa. The blood from the wound at her stomach was still spreading. It would be a fatal wound, if untreated. The healer, Jeremy, was bound to know that. He suspected the other Dearborn did too.
Rodolphus smiled as he raised his wand, an expression which lacked any warmth as he aimed his wand at the woman and cast another spell and then another, deep, dark cutting curses which burrowed through skin. Two of them cast in a row and then Rodolphus turned around. “Oops.”
Jeremy knew there was too much blood. It was obvious anyway, but he knew too much to not be aware of the timeline that he was facing. The timeline that his mother was facing, and one catch of her eyes made him realise that she knew it too before they closed entirely. His wand shifted, aiming at the wounds with a blood slowing spell, though a part of him knew that it wouldn’t make a difference.
“Now, that’s what I call closure,” Rabastan said brightly, letting Philippa’s body crumple to the floor in a heap. His wand slashed as he stepped over her, hurtling a volley of slashing spells at both Dearborns.
Owen's breath hitched in his throat. His mum and Jeremy were exchanging looks and he had seen Looks like that before, and he rejected it. He snapped into offensive attacks, hurling a chair into the path of the slashing curses as another struck him across the side. He threw a volley of spells back the Death Eaters' way, yelling "get mum, I've got this," to his brother. He had to have this. Jeremy needed space to do his Healer thing. It was fine. They were fine. It was going to be fine, and the Lestranges were both going down.
A slashing spell hit his own side but Jeremy didn’t let it slow him down as he made his way to where Rabastan had left his mother, crumpled on the floor in a way that looked unnatural and wrong. He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat, panic weaving its way through every part of him as he cast spells on the wounds and reached for a pulse. But all that was left was entirely too much blood and the knowledge that he couldn’t leave Owen alone with both Lestranges.
Rodolphus didn’t much care for the Dearborn’s pantomime, the rushing around as if it was going to make much of a difference. Their panic hung heavy in the air and Rodolphus made a show of kicking the mother’s wand entirely out of the way, even as he volleyed spells back at Owen, curses to slow his breathing and break bones. He blocked as many of Owen’s curses as he possibly could, but some burst through shields, hitting true and Rodolphus felt a wound open in his side, a deep slash which stopped him for a moment as his hand went to it.
“Damn it, Dearborn, these robes were just dry cleaned.”
Another slashing curse connected with Rabastan’s thigh, and he grit his teeth to keep from yelling out in pain. Streaks of light ricocheted off the shield charm he threw up, and while his brother focused on the former Auror, Rabastan’s attention swiveled toward the Healer. “There’s nothing you can do,” he ground out, and the red flash of the Cruciatus illuminated the room, leaving Jeremy nothing to do but scream.
"I don't give a shit about your laundry," Owen spat back at Rodolphus, shooting a blasting curse, a slug-puking spell, a tripping jinx, and an expelliarmus his way before his own shield gave way to a bone-crunching spell that ate away at his left arm, followed by something that made him feel like he was having an asthma attack. He struggled to fill his lungs with air as he stumbled back, and the sound of the cruciatus hitting Jeremy definitely didn't help. His eyes narrowed in a wild, panicky rage, Owen turned his wand on Rabastan now, shooting off a blasting curse, a disarming spell, a failed attempt at crucioing Rabastan himself (he would've deserved it, Owen would've thought later), even a spell to cause uncontrollable sneezing. Anything to make them stop. He could barely breathe and every part of his body ached, but he'd been trapped under one of Rabastan's cruciatus curses before, and knew what he was feeling was nothing like what Jeremy was going through.
The blasting curse had sent Rodolphus stumbling back, already having trouble staying straight on his feet, the slicing curse at his ankles making him weaker than usual. He cursed under his breath, straightening himself as quickly as possible, catching Owen’s weak attempt at cruciating his brother. Rodolphus’ eyebrows flew up. He was almost offended.
“You’re using that on him?” Rodolphus asked, because he couldn’t help himself. He tutted and shook his head. “This is how you do it, Mr Dearborn” and he flung the curse at him. The screams that followed were proof enough that Rodolphus was much better at the spell than Owen's temporary lapse in judgement.
Owen’s screams drew Rabastan’s attention, and he broke off his Cruciatus on Jeremy so the healer could watch his brother be gripped by the spell. The sight was almost enough to make Rabastan forget he had a knife jutting out of his side.
It wasn’t, however, enough for Jeremy to forget, eyes registering the knife even as the rest of him barely registered much of anything else. A flick of his wand aimed to drive the knife in deeper and then he sent slicing spells at both Lestranges — decidedly aimed at arteries.
Distracted by the sudden surge of pain blossoming in his side, Rabastan was too distracted to deflect the slicing spell. The curse connected with his femoral artery, and he almost dropped his wand as blood began to gush from this thigh. “Rodolphus,” he ground out. “Time to go.”
Rodolphus was beside Rabastan in a flash, one hand reaching around him for support. He glanced at the Dearborns briefly, giving them a nod and an entirely genuine, “This has been fun,” before he apparated out with a loud crack that hung in the kitchen air.
Owen barely had registered that the crucatius curse had stopped when the pop of apparation announced the Lestrange's exit. He rolled over onto his back, still struggling to breathe, bleeding from more places than he could count. "Jez, we… can you get mum to Mungo's?"
Jeremy opened his mouth to reply but his response got caught in his throat. He couldn’t seem to make his voice work, not when he knew the only place his mother was going was the morgue. He tried to stand up but his entire body objected, leaving him to crawl over to Owen at a pace that felt agonizingly slow. “No,” he said finally, quiet, final, and pained. “We need to go first.”