WHO: Dante Avery, Caroline Dufort-Podmore, Evelyn Mulciber, Fred Weasley, and a bunch of hapless Wandless. WHAT: Order members attempt to smuggle more Muggleborns out of Diagon Alley. Death Eaters have other plans. WHEN: Tonight! WHERE: Diagon Alley WARNINGS: Violence, and lots of it! Severe injuries. Blood. Evelyn.
Thirteen. Thirteen from the day before, gone. And while Caroline rejoiced in this success—that was thirteen who would have clean beds and food and maybe a chance at a life of a sort—the win also made her wary.
There was bound to be a reckoning.
“Ready?” she whispered to Fred, standing in the shadows next to her. The teenager would not have been her first choice for this foray, but Fred was clever, quick and resourceful—and well, they couldn’t coddle the younger members forever. Neither was it right to. Youth was no deterrent to their enemy, after all.
“I’m always ready,” Fred replied with a flash of a grin, even as he gripped his own wand a little tighter than usual. Living and working in Diagon, the Wandless had quickly become one of Fred’s biggest concerns, and the fact it was illegal to help them didn’t discourage Fred in the slightest. Rules had never been his thing anyway.
He stepped out of the shadows slightly, beckoning to a Wandless — Athena, a muggleborn he’d delivered blankets to before. Engaged, with the original wedding date fast approaching but no hope of actually making it. He’d joked to her about going to extreme measures to make sure she fit into her dress. She’d shrunk even more since then.
He pointed Athena in the direction of their hidden portkey then stepped back into the shadows as quickly as he’d left their safety. Subtlety wasn’t his strong suit, but they had to be careful. Which meant he couldn’t just mass evacuate the Wandless like he wanted to because apparently that would draw too much unwanted attention.
“How many can the portkey take again?” Fred whispered to Caroline.
“It only needs one person touching it, as long as everyone’s touching that person. Like a human chain.” Like side-along Apparation, although the situation didn’t really allow for an in-depth explanation of the properties of portkeys. Caroline ran a finger along her glamoured moustache. “If we can-”
A blinding burst of light hit them. It was a distraction technique; enough to draw out a response if the parties hit were engaged in something they should not have been, but not enough to cause any real damage just in case its castor had made a mistake. Evelyn Mulciber (disguised; determined) was not taking any chances this time.
After the Order somehow managed to sneak a handful of Muggleborns out of Diagon Alley the day before, she and the younger Avery spent the morning scouring the place, watching for any suspicious activity. And suspicious these two were.
Dante lingered behind Evelyn, waiting and ready. It was his job to follow her lead here, but more importantly, to make sure there were no more mistakes. They’d taken enough losses recently, between the wolf and these wandless who’d managed to slip between their fingers. He still thought they should have isolated them somewhere else, somewhere without the same access to the public at large. But who was he to argue with the Dark Lord?
An older Wandless woman was started by Evelyn’s spell and tried to make a break for it, stopped by Dante’s before she reached her target. Tendrils snaked up to tie her up -- he didn’t want to hurt her before they got answers, but if she was running, she had to be up to no good.
And then a red strand of light shot out from Caroline’s wand, severing the vines currently winding their way around the woman’s ankle. Flashes of light still dancing around the corners of her vision from one of the duo’s spell, she reached into her coat pocket and flung out a handful of runic stones in the direction of the nearest Wandless—shielding charms that would activate the second they hit the cobblestones and (hopefully) keep most of them safe.
“Go!” she shouted to Fred before thick fog dispelled from her wand, blanketing the area between the Death Eaters and the rest of the alley. Two could play at this smoke and mirrors game.
Unable to defend themselves, the Wandless were retreating. They knew better than to put themselves between this. “Come,” Fred urged, reaching for the nearest one he could still see, who jerked away their arm in mistrust. Taking a chance that the fog would obscure him enough, Fred dropped his disguise to reveal himself to the wandless he passed every day. “We can get you out,” he urged again, pushing another towards the location of their portkey.
Evelyn gestured to her compatriot to deal with the wanded person blocking their path, while she would bring down shields and dispel the fog. She worked quickly against the defensive maneuvers, sending in harsh bursts of wind to clear their view and holding open a window wide enough for Avery to get a few shots through.
Curiosity about the runes was almost enough of a distraction, but not quite. Dante was well-versed in following orders by now; if he’d been with someone younger, he would’ve made the same call Evelyn did. He waited for the right moment and aimed a few quick spells through, first attempting to freeze his intended target (instead of blow everything up, which was his usual go-to). The second was intended to pummel them as Dante advanced, the first sidestepped by his opponent, the second boxing them in the chin. “This isn’t going to work,” he warned, calling out for both the Wandless and those helping them to hear. “No one’s going to be leaving today.”
Death Eaters. So many of them were talk before action. At least among the younger ones—not that Caroline was complaining about that. Arrogance and the time they spent grandstanding more often than not led to mistakes, or at least split seconds that allowed her an opening, time for a spell that would otherwise have hit her mark too late.
Still, she was cool-headed enough to acknowledge that ensuring her particular partner for this dance was in too many pieces to swagger around this part of the street anytime soon was not the modus operandi here today, even as her mouth filled with the salty metallic taste of blood from where she had bitten her tongue as his curse had snapped her head back. Stall; stall and then get out. A volley of arrows shot out from her wand while her hand reached into another coat pocket, throwing out a duplication rune that filled the alley with mirror images of her current glamour, obstructing her opponent’s view of an undisguised Fred and the Muggleborns he was currently leading away.
Evelyn's hex scattered the approaching arrows every which direction (and if a few managed to embed themselves in the flesh of fleeing Wandless, well, that was simply an added bonus). The sudden addition of a new opponent was an irritant, but only made Evelyn more curious and determined.
She changed tactics. "Accio blue shirt." Her casting was calm and deliberate, much unlike the Wandless woman that the summoned blue shirt dragged over to her. "If you're so keen to protect them," she taunted quietly, "Protect her." The woman fell to the ground and writhed under Evelyn's curse.
Ah, so this one was a strategist. This was something tucked away for later, to be turned over and examined when she and Fred gave their report to the rest of the Order, but in hindsight Caroline wasn’t overly surprised. The Order were about protecting people; the Death Eaters were more interested in creating bodies. Her shielding runes were designed in part to spare the Wandless from being used in this manner, but duels with Death Eaters were like board games where the rules were rigged against the Phoenix’s side, eternally twisting and changing and as elusive as smoke.
She didn’t speak. Her opponent would know which of the seven glamours forming a sem- circle around her and the struggling Muggleborn were the Vigilante Prime if she did. Instead she silently raised her wand as the glamours mirrored the gesture. A blasting curse bloomed out of hers, aimed directly at the woman’s middle. Identical appearing curses sprung from her illusioned selves, but they were just harmless ghost whispers of the real thing.
Evelyn maneuvered the Wandless woman between herself and the bulk of the streams of light, but took enough of the damage to count her out for a moment. While Evelyn recovered, she traced out the source of her pain to determine which curse had been the effective one and kept her eyes focused on the lone figure who must have been the real one.
With Caroline taking care of the old woman, Fred turned his attention to the other Death Eater, casting a shield around him and the two wandless nearest to him, then following Tonks’ instructions from their lessons and quickly following up with a confundus charm to try buy enough time to get away.
Dante, off-balance from getting out of the way of the first vigilante’s blast, cast his own shield charm just in time to deflect the confundus, which ricocheted off and hit the building above him. The mirrored images’ attention on Evelyn meant he could focus more on making sure the Order members didn’t escape. They couldn’t afford any more mistakes.
His first curse bounced off the younger Order member’s own shield, so he reluctantly aimed at the ground next, blasting the stone from near their feet instead.
The ground beneath Fred shifted, tripping him and breaking his shield. Debris flew up, hitting him and the surrounding wandless, a sharper rock piece lodging in his calf. Wincing, he used the rock pieces to his advantage, casting a Draconifors to turn them into mini dragons which he set on Dante.
The dragons weren’t something he expected, and they caught him off-guard while he was glancing over his shoulder to check on Evelyn. They singed his trousers and his hair before he could blast a few of them away and clear a path to the vigilante and the wandless. His next curse was aimed at the wandless instead -- they were helpless, which was a bit cruel, but the vigilante had to know that there were consequences. “Extensio!”
The wandless were still protected by Caroline’s runes so the spell bounced off and squarely hit Fred, a scream let out as his body felt like it was being pulled in all different directions. “finite incantatem,” he managed to get out, just as his non-wand arm shoulder popped out of its socket.
His body no longer felt like it was being ripped apart, but his spell had stopped Caroline’s too, her smoke dissipating into nothing and her shields dropping. “Lacarnum Inflamarae,” he shot a fireball at Dante, hoping to distract him enough that his follow up body bind curse would find its mark and buy him some time.
The rapid succession of spells did their trick: Dante was busy enough trying to dodging the fireball that he almost didn’t realise there was even a follow-up to begin with. The latter whizzed by his ear, but it didn’t matter much in the end. He was scalded enough from the fireball that he fell to the ground anyway, a hoarse cry escaping his lips as the burn hit his nerves.
This was getting out of hand. Forced out of the fray by the earlier blast, Evelyn spent precious moments recovering and studying the dynamics of the fight, and with the shields dropping, she took her chance. A forceful thousand-cuts curse barrelled out of her wand toward the rune-dropping vigilante.
Who staggered backwards, hand pressed to her middle even as the flares from a last curse blossomed from her wand, then fell. That now red-seeped hand fumbled at the lining of her coat, searching for a healing rune that would at least stem the flow of blood. “Finite,” she whispered, and the runestones scattered around the alley exploded into dust. No evidence at least. Less trouble for Fred, the rest of the Order.
Everything was heavy, distant. An eerie, still calm fell. Her eyes slid shut.
“Molliare!” Fred yelled out as Caroline grew more unsteady on her feet, cushioning the hard ground for her fall. Shielding himself, he rushed to her side, draping her half-conscious body over his, struggling with his own limp arm.
He reached into his pocket and threw something to the ground, darkness shrouding the alley as his Peruvian Powder did its job, hiding them from the Death Eater’s view. It was a good thing he knew this alley so well, fumbling towards the hidden portkey, wand in mouth as he tried to support Caroline with his useable arm, adding more weight as he convinced a couple of Wandless to hold on to her.
At least they couldn’t see the blood stained clothes they were grabbing on to.
They reached the portkey, Fred giving them a quick “Ready?” as he touched it, hooking them out of darkness to safety.