Things thus far gone according to plan. Distractions were working as intended, and even the interference (in some cases) by the DMLE was expected. The Wandless would be saved this day, Aberforth knew that without a doubt.
The aged wizard was waiting for a particular type of quarry, however. He didn’t believe for a moment this evening would end without Death Eaters being called, and so he was waiting at the ready. Really, dueling terrorists was his forte over being any sort of soothing presence when it came to evacuating terrorized, distraught civilians.
Thankfully, but unfortunately, Aberforth didn’t have long to wait, either. The secondary wave of telltale pops from incoming apparition began to fill the air: someone had signaled their cohorts. When a black robed figure appeared a good twenty feet in front of him, Aberforth wasted no time. With a flourish the cobblestone street beneath the Death Eater’s feet sloshed, suddenly becoming quicksand.
Evelyn's landing was less than solid, though it took her only a moment to realize why. She swatted down an incoming curse and levitated herself just high enough that she could solidify the ground below her and land back down gracefully. Now, where was she?
Of course. Dealing with some fool vigilante again, it seemed. She blew out the glass in the shop next to her would-be assailant and threw the shards his way.
The shards coalesced into feathers as they sprayed against Aberforth’s side and then fell to the ground. Clearly not dealing with one of the rookies, then, given the apparent ease that his opponent righted herself. With a swish, he fired off a rapid Deprimo to pulverize the Death Eater into the ground.
The spell hit Evelyn's freezing curse mid-air, throwing each effect back to its caster. She shifted to the side to avoid its impact, but the cobblestones froze just behind her, an obstacle she couldn't afford to forget. "Finally, someone who's not afraid to show their mettle," Evelyn called. "Diversa!"
Aberforth’s shield caught the brunt of his own spell, a flash of light against the invisible barrier as it connected and triggered — an invisible hammer smashing down onto the ground a foot in front of the wizard which shattered two of the stones. “Real sodding sorry you haven’t been having a challenge,” he spat back, side-stepping himself to avoid the Death Eater’s next curse.
Barely. Aberforth wasn’t as spry as he was decades ago, even if he wasn’t immobile, and the spell sparked against his cloak which promptly exploded into dust leaving him in his regular robes. Too close.
“Vertigo totalum!” he intoned, going back on the offensive as a cover for animating a bench a few feet away and enticing it to maul his opponent.
Her shield weakened the spell as it came at her, but couldn't avoid the effects entirely. Nausea and vertigo swept over Evelyn, and while she couldn't focus on her opponent, she began firing acid curses in every direction without regard for civilians or even other Death Eaters.
It was one of those ‘good guy’ moments where Aberforth’s shield snapped in front of a civilian in the path of a curse, saving them, but in payment for that another splashed up his arm, sizzling through his robes and eating into the skin on his arm. Despite the pain and the inherent danger of letting the curse continue, Dumbledore snapped off a blasting curse at the Death Eater before turning his wand on himself. A soothing blue glow stopped the curse in its tracks, but did nothing to heal the wound.
With enough distractions in place, Evelyn took her moment to counter the vertigo and get her feet back under her. Just in time, of course, to get blasted back off them and into the shop behind her. Annoyed, she summoned the man responsible into the shop with her; he wasn't getting out of this that easily.
Getting yanked towards the shop and Death Eater wasn’t what Aberforth was expecting. It was a more tactical move rather than hot-headed, and yet another sign he was dealing with someone with experience. Instead of fighting the summoning, Aberforth instead banished a shelf full of odd musical boxes towards the Death Eater even as he hurtled into the shop with broken glass from the front window, blown out prior, slicing into his sides.
A collection of strange, new-age instruments crashed toward her, and the cacophony was anything but melodic. The few people who had taken cover in the shop when the chaos began hid themselves behind the counter now, but Evelyn didn't care about them.
There was a player piano going in the corner, some jaunty melody wildly inappropriate to the moment. Evelyn turned her wand on it over the meek protestations of the shop owner ("Would you rather it be you?" she asked and he ducked back down). Soon the piano's well-charmed strings were severed and reaching out to grab at the vigilante's arms.
The vigilante’s severing charm caught the magical strings mid-air, but the result wasn’t what he was expecting; the charmed strings didn’t break in two. The curse reflected off of them with a loud twang that made Aberforth’s ears sear. The strings continued their aerial dance and wrapped around the arm the older man had offered up to catch them, and stop them from subduing his wand arm. Which was only part of the problem, it seemed, since they wrapped tightly, glowing gold, and dug in.
With a sharp look to the owner who’d peeked over the counter again, Aberforth bellowed, “What the fuck, learn to duck!” With his movement impaired there wasn’t much to do except levitate the piano, and then fling it in the Death Eater’s direction, attached or not.
The shield Evelyn ducked behind pulled the piano into pieces as it struck, ivory keys and brass pedals flying in all directions until all that was left was the strings and the vigilante attached to them. The untethered ends wrapped their way around Evelyn's wrist, binding the two into close combat. "You're just a bum, vigilante scum," she spat, then blinked a few times at the strange words coming out of her mouth.
“A bum? That’s dumb,” Aberforth growled, but instead of casting another spell he yanked backwards with his arm, pulling the strings even closer in quick attempt to get the Death Eater off guard. How often were they dealing with more physical altercations, anyway?
Evelyn glided forward like a dancer drawn closer to her partner. They were mere inches apart now, and trapped together; there were few spells left that wouldn't affect the caster just as badly as the intended victim. "What have you done? You think this is fun?"
Tapping his wand again to the charmed chords that were making them rhyme, Aberforth muttered a freezing curse hoping to shatter them, and perhaps the Death Eater, all at once. “I don’t have the bloody time to sit here and listen to you rhyme.”
"Geez, don't freeze!"
“Godric, please. Stop rhyming with ease.”
"Don't be absurd, you flaming bird."
“I’m bloody well not, stop calling me kettle, pot.”
"To get out of this mess, what do you suggest?"
“On the count of three, break these frozen cords with me.”
"Fine. Then, you're mine."
But at the final number, Evelyn aimed her wand not at the piano strings but at the Phoenix, with a nasty burning curse (and then Gobbledygook to follow and get finish the rhyme.)
It wasn’t that Aberforth wasn’t expecting betrayal, but he did need to be free of these infuriating piano cords and not be bound together. He’d just snapped the frozen cords with a charm when the burning curse hit, spreading all over his chest.
Free, Aberforth stumbled back in pain, but not before aiming his own blasting curse at the treacherous woman.
This time, it was the nicely-displayed violin collection that came crashing down on Evelyn as she flew backwards. A peep of distress came from behind the desk. "Shut up." They shut up.
Her wrist, still wrapped in the piano strings, snapped with the force of the blast. She cradled it tight against her chest, broken and throbbing. Others may thrive on duelling, but it was among her least favourite parts of being a Death Eater. And she was well over this music shop.
She magically hauled herself to her feet, if a little unsteadily, and she was done playing games. "Avada Kedavra."
A trombone flew in front of the Killing Curse, making a sad noise as it exploded amid a green flash. Aberforth, chest still smoking and charred, from the burning curse, shot a few ropes in an attempt to bind the Death Eater, but that was it. The rest of the Order had ample time to get the Wandless out, and the longer he kept here making this woman throwing Killing Curses increased the chances of a civilian getting hurt.
“‘Til next time.” And then he popped out with a crack.
Molly Weasley & Maddie Savage v Clement Max
Molly had just gotten another of the Wandless sent off with one of the Quidditch players when a commotion behind her caused her to turn and look. They’d been discovered, and Death Eaters were approaching. “Expulso!” she shouted without hesitating, aiming at a wall near one of the Death Eaters in the hopes of making him topple.
He didn’t fall, but the spell was enough to make Clement unsteady on his feet, his burning curse poorly aimed at Molly as he tried to right himself.
Ducking, Molly managed to mostly avoid the curse, though it caught the tips of her fingers on her non-wand. She tried to ignore the pain as she flung rooftops items on the Death Eaters head with a “Deprimo!”
Footing regained, Clement followed up the spell with a suffocation charm, enjoying watching his opponent suffer as she struggled to breath. But a flying fragment of roof caught his shoulder, the spell dropping. “Ossisquasso!” he shot at her instead, while she was still regaining her breath.
Still on the ground and trying to return her breathing to normal, Molly didn't have time to duck the yellow beam of light that was shot her way. It hit her calf and the bone there shattered, shooting pain throughout her body.
Unable to stand up she shot a quick slicing hex at the Death Eater's feet before throwing up a shield charm.
There were certain orders that the Hits had been issued with when it came to responding to this incident. ‘Fight Death Eaters’ was not one of them. And yet.
Maddie saw one of the group (that she assumed was the Order) crumple to the ground and she acted on instinct. She flicked a banishing charm at the Death Eater, taking a moment to glance down and make sure the woman who had been fighting didn’t need more assistance and received a weak thumbs up in return.
Clement was doing his best to ignore the slicing hex, not so much because of the pain but because if he thought too much about the sticky substance he could feel soaking through his robes, looked down and saw it, well, he wouldn’t be much use against this woman then.
He gritted his teeth, ready to attack again even as his legs started to feel weak at the thought of that thing he was definitely not thinking about, when suddenly he was thrown backwards.
He scrambled to his feet again, wand at the ready with a curse for his new attacker when he saw who it was.
At least now he was definitely not thinking about the blood.
He changed his attack last second, aiming his stinging jinx at Molly’s shield instead of at Maddie.
“I know you don’t have any morals, but attacking the injured? Really?” Maddie was incredulous as she brought up her own custom layering of shields, designed to block as many different kinds of damage as possible.
She flung a bolt of lightning at the Death Eater, not bothering with the initial protocol of disarm and restrain. Whoever was hiding behind that mask deserved to hurt.
The pain of the lightning bolt was also a welcome distraction from the ever-spreading blood. He knew he should try and stanch the flow but that involved touching the blood. Instead, he fired off a rapid succession of spells at Maddie, weak at first but growing in strength as the continued to bounce off her shield. “Crucio,” he roared, hurt and frustrated but finally able to make it through her weakened shields.
Maddie shrieked, the acid hex she’d been about to cast failing as her knees buckled. Going down on one knee, she focused inward on the pain, trying to clear her mind so she could get back into the thick of things. The Cruciatus was fucking cheating.
Summoning her strength, Molly shot another exploding charm at the ground near him to break his attention and concentration and then turned to focus on Maddie. Even though she didn't know her well, she knew that her name had come up as a potential Order recruit so she could be trusted. “Can you get us out of here?” she asked urgently.
So intently focused on his curse (though he hadn’t wanted to hurt Maddie originally, it turned out that torturing her was fairly cathartic), the explosion knocked Clement off his feet. He pushed himself back up and brushed himself off, hand touching the blood stained robes as he did.
He felt sick.
With what effort he could still muster, he sent a stinging hex towards the women then skulked away to find help.
Maddie hissed as the stinging hex hit her shoulder, but still managed to hold her ground. There were pain potions in her future if she could just get them out of there. Taking one last look after the Death Eater slinking away, she focused her attention back on the other woman.
"We should be able to apparate out of here. Is there anywhere in particular you'd like to go, or just away?"
“Anywhere to start with,” said Molly. “We can find a specific place one we're out of danger.”
Nora Cadwallader to heal Clement Max
Clement slunk off while the Order lady was helping Maddie back to her feet, knowing that if he didn’t get out of there soon he wouldn’t keep it together much longer. Not when there was this much blood all over his robes. Even just the thought of it made his head feel light and his legs feel like collapsing beneath him.
“You!” he snapped, spotting Nora helping one of the Wandless. “Heal me. Now.”
Mediwitches and wizards did not always know what they were getting into when they were sent out into the field, and Nora couldn't make heads or tails of what had happened here earlier. She continued her calming instructions to the woman she was with, assured her she wasn't badly hurt, and moved on to the rude man behind her.
She saw the blood on his robes even before she registered the mask he wore; he needed healing, no matter who he was. She steeled herself. "Alright. Sir, I'm going to need you to take a couple of deep breaths while I perform a diagnostic spell. Is that alright?"
Clement didn’t appreciate the suggestion that he needed to calm down, but he trusted Nora as a mediwitch and so reluctantly followed her instructions, breathing deeply.
She ran the spell over him and found out what needed immediate healing. She did not allow her troubled conscience and concerns about whether she should be helping a Death Eater interrupt her as she worked. In the field, it was not her choice to decide who could receive medical attention and who couldn't based on what she thought of them as a person.
Still, there was an element getting in the way. "I'll need to be able to do a full inspection if I'm going to fix you properly," she said, gesturing toward the mask he wore.
“No,” Clement replied, short and sharp, stepping backwards. “If I remove the mask I’m going to have to kill you.”
Something constricted in Nora's stomach. She took a deep breath. "Fine. But threatening me isn't going to get you healed any faster."
“I suggest you try and hurry this along regardless,” Clement said, impatient and in pain. “You never know what is happening with your husband while you’re here wasting time on magic stealers.”
Nora's fiery eyes glared at the sudden mention of Rhys (and the implication that this man knew who she was and who her husband was), but she was a professional and acted like it. "There's no call for that. I'm going to need you to stay as still as you can. This may pinch a little." She inspected what she could, weaving spells to staunch bleeding.
It did pinch, Clement grimacing behind his mask at the additional pain. The bleeding slowed to a stop, allowing Clem to let his mind wander to other things like which robe shop he could terrorise to replace the blood drenched ones (he wasn’t staying in them a moment longer than necessary), and if Maddie was too getting healed or doing something stupid like going after another Death Eater. “Are you almost done?”
"I am, but you should go to the hospital to make sure there is no internal damage," Nora said firmly, not taking her eyes off his healing injuries.
“Yes, of course,” Clement agreed, trying to remember if Abbott was scheduled to work today. “Now, when you are done, some of my other colleagues may also need your help. Keep an eye out for them.”
If the command bristled Nora, she didn't show it. "I suppose we're foregoing the paperwork and signature on this one."
That did bother Clement, who liked to keep all his St. Mungo’s paperwork in order, and who before joining the Death Eaters would have agreed that there were issues with this not being documented, but he could no longer let himself care about such things. “I don’t see you asking any Wandless for signatures,” he pointed out. “Thank you for your help, Nora,” he added, making it even clearer that he knew exactly who she was. “We’ll be keeping you in mind for next time any of us need assistance.”
Remus Lupin & Cai Vane v. Humberto Pyrites
You never knew what to expect when Yaxley assigned a task these days. Unless it was cat rescuing, but, much to Cai’s disappointment, that was a task that seemed to be reserved specifically for Jasper. His wand was out at the ready as he entered the Alley, though he took a moment to assess what was going on; tropical birds, drones, dragons, people on brooms. Diagon looked a mess but this he could deal with. He waved his wand, a dragon losing its ability to move and dropping to the ground, returned to its original size. At least he wasn’t protecting Dea—
Before he could finish his thought they swept in, terrifying as ever.
It wasn’t his job to stop them. In fact, he was fairly certain that stopping Death Eaters was the most disapproved activity in the DMLE. He raised his wand at another dragon, trying to focus on the job he knew he could do, when he saw a masked figure approach a man who was helping a Wandless. Wand at ready, about to attack while the man’s back was turned.
“Expelliarmus!,” he instinctively shot at the Death Eater.
The Death Eater’s wand went flying from his grasp, but that didn’t stop The Great Humberto. Without hesitation he whirled, sending a trio of cursed playing cards right back at the man from the DMLE that had dared intervene, and then returned his attention back to the Wandless rescuer.
Said Wandless rescuer - Remus Lupin - gestured toward a thronging knot gathering around a hovering figure on a broom, pressing the Wandless toward freedom, and turned in just enough time to snap his wand and shield the other figure from the Death Eater’s cursed playing cards. They curled, burning up as cinders that were then aimed at the Death Eater’s face.
“Cheers!”
Getting a face full of ash wasn’t what Humberto was anticipating, and despite the mask he coughed out some that had entered through the slit in his mouth. Next, he withdrew several doves and let them fly about -- a half dozen swooping at each opponent with more ferocity than one would have expected.
The Death Eater was barely slowed down by the loss of his wand, much to Cai’s surprise, shielding his face with his arm as the doves swooped at him, viciously scratching and pecking. “Vinculumus,” he shot, not remembering until too that that he could hardly hand over a chained Death Eater to Yaxley. But at least it gave him a second to vanish the birds.
As the chains wrapped around his legs, Humberto scoffed. “I’ll have you know I’m an escape artist!” Except that did nothing for the fact that he was now wandless (the irony!) and immobile. It was time to up the ante, and so he snapped his fingers, summoning a top hat into existence. A deadly one, one with a bladed rim. “Catch!” he bellowed, flinging it back at the meddlesome DMLE member.
The blasted doves, whose beaks and talons seemed to go straight for the eye, were easily vanished with a growled “Evanesco!” and Remus turned back to the Death Eater, now flinging the bladed hat. He trusted the law enforcement officer to be on his toes and stooped, offering an upper cut of a silent Blasting Curse that, if successful, would hit Humberto in the ribs and send him into the bricks beyond them.
With no wand to shield himself, Humberto took the brunt of the curse in the chest. His ribs caved in, fracturing, and it pitched him off the ground, chained legs and all, before sending him sailing across the alley into a brick building. Hard.
The knife-hat was vanished and Remus had taken care of the Death Eater before Cai could react to more than that. “You should get out of here,” he told Remus. “There’ll be more people trying to stop you otherwise.” He glanced back over at the Death Eater, slumped against a building. Cai couldn’t do much more to stop him, but hopefully he’d bought the Order a little more time.
Accio. The Death Eater’s wand sped toward Remus and, gripping it in a white-knuckled fist, he nodded grimly. He appreciated Vane’s tact and though he wanted to take the Death Eater with him, he knew that maintaining the escape for the Wandless was what made the most sense. With a crack of Disapparition, he was gone, off to help defend the Order’s line.
“Thieves!” Humberto wheezed, barely noticeable over the chaos in the alley, but there was nothing he could do to stop anyone.
Jeremy Dearborn v. Gerald Avery feat. Eddie Carmichael
The wards throughout the Alley were down. People on brooms were appearing out of nowhere. Death Eaters were sparring on the street.
Running out to pick up some food should not have been this complicated.
With this much chaos erupting around him and who knew what going on with the security in and out of Diagon Alley, Eddie wasn't about to apparate and risk a splinch, but he definitely didn't want to be here, either. If he could just get back to the relative safety of Knockturn Alley, everything would be fine. He pressed himself up against shop walls and looked carefully around corners and edges so he didn't get hit by some stray piece of magic.
As long as no one noticed him, things would be fine.
With the news that the wards had fallen in Diagon Alley and a melee had come down to risk the Wandless, Gerald dispatched himself as quickly as possible to be a part of the force to waylay the obvious vigilantes.
… like the one by the wall, whose shifty demeanour more or less shouted out that he was up to no good. He was young, if vigilante glamours and faces were to be believed. Phoenix desperation. Gerald flourished his wand, intending to strike the the brick above the boy with a blasting curse with a Stunning spell hurried thereupon.
The crash of the bricks above him made Eddie dodge low, just low enough to avoid the stunning spell. His arms flew up over his head and protected it from the worst of the falling bricks, but the impact of them left his arms bruised and scratched. After a moment, the barrage of bricks lightened and Eddie was able to scan around to see if that spell was on purpose. When he saw the Death Eater staring down his general direction, he felt sure it was.
He threw his arms up again like he surrendered. Over the chaos, he tried his best to be heard: "I'm just trying to get home, mate!"
“Yeah mate, you should just let him go home!”
Jeremy might have told himself that he was mostly in Diagon Alley as healing backup, that he was only there to help the wandless, that his mediocre dueling skills wouldn’t matter in the end. But once the Death Eaters arrived, it didn’t much matter what he had or hadn’t told himself prior to this moment. The sight of the Death Eater robes was enough to tap into an anger that he’d spent a month trying to suppress, and he found himself reacting before he could really think it through as he aimed a temporary blindness spell at the figure.
There was the appropriate kind of vigilante. The boy no longer a thought, the Death Eater turned, blocking the spell with a slash from his wand. It sizzled somewhere on the pavement as he flourished and sent a Stunning spell quickly followed by a neatly intoned “Confringo!”
“Yes, but what about you? Ready to answer for your crimes?”
Jeremy might have managed to avoid the blast directly, but a outdoor stand of cauldrons for sale was not so lucky, multiple flying through the air and hitting him directly. But it didn’t stop him from aiming a knee-reversing hex followed by a stunner of his own, neither feeling as vicious as the Death Eater ought to deserve. “Are you?”
“My crimes?” he laughed drily, “Crimes to secure the State!” But before he could opine further, he was cut short.
The knee reversing hex hit Gerald and he fell, thankfully putting him out of the way of the Stunner. Gerald, now feeling his ire rise, cut through the air with his wand and growled out a Slashing hex.
“For the privileged and pureblooded,” Jeremy replied before the slashing hex hit squarely, deep and brutal, not fatal yet problematic all the same. It was more than enough to distract, throwing off a bone shattering curse before he had to bring his attention to the blood seeping through the fabric of his shirt. He aimed a quick healing spell that would barely help, hoping nobody noticed in the chaos anyway.
“Obviously!” There were few punches to pull with regards to choices. “Some of the dirty Wandless May have escaped today,” he said lurching to his feet and into the path of the bone shattering curse. It hit him squarely in the hand. Growling in frustration, his next spell produced a set of flaming ropes meant to tie and constrict Jeremy.
“But you won’t!”
Jeremy threw himself ungracefully out of the way of the ropes and onto the ground, so close that he could feel the heat off of them as they flew past. He aimed water at them before sending them back, hoping to use the Death Eater’s spell against him.
"Confundus!" Eddie could have left. He nearly did, once the mysterious man distracted the Death Eater and cleared the path. But still, it felt wrong to abandon the person who'd just tried to save him, so from his vantage point behind the Death Eater's back and after a few moments' hesitation, he fired back, trying to buy the man just enough time to react.
And Eddie’s spell hit true. Now confused and disoriented, Gerald stood and stared mildly up at the air. Why was he in such a place? Diagon has become space for riff raff and the … the Wandless!
He turned to his two opponents and with a jet of smoke, found himself beyond them. Though the wards had to hold, he knew he had given his all that day. With a jet of smoke he vanished.
And Eddie wasn't sticking around to see what happened next. With a quick wave of thanks, he ran off and got the hell out of there.